Is Outsourcing Really Good Business?
Greed Ultimately Drives Business
In the pursuit for increased profits, companies are continually searching for opportunities to lower labor rates by moving operations to countries where labor is cheaper than the domestic workforce. In the United States this trend started with manufacturing and has continued with white-collar services such as technical support, help desks, and software development. This move is particularly lucrative when the foreign nationals speak English and India is the biggest benefactor of this trend because of the large population of college educated people who can speak English. And while senior managers and bean counters project large cost savings by outsourcing, I wonder, in the long run, does it really save the corporation money or are there hidden costs that management does not consider in their financial models?
What about the intangible side effects such as cultural differences, time zone differences, communication misunderstandings, and overall customer satisfaction? I would like to offer my opinions on the subject but I will freely admit that I have not been privy to anybody else’s perspective except my own and those around me (I also have experience as a consumer who has been forced to deal with offshore help desks, if you know what I mean).
Are Software Developers Commodities?
I currently develop software for a large financial corporation and have steadily observed functions within the organization move offshore and the associated domestic resource right sized (i.e. laid off). I have seen outsourcing start off small but it has grown more and more pervasive. As a matter of fact in my department the current goal is to outsource 30% of the staff. These are just target numbers to senior managers and bean counters but outsourcing is having a real effect on the American worker. I have seen whole development teams experience associate impacts (i.e. laid off) and their jobs moved offshore. I personally am under constant threat of having my job outsourced, continually asked to justify my existence even though my work and the work of my team speaks for itself. Are us developers simply a commodity that performs work that any person with programming knowledge can do? To me the answer is not only no but hell no!
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