Britain's I T Industry Laid Off. Shore.

[voidal]

I wonder if they would apply the same logic to the company lawyers?

"A £1Bn takeover bid? Right, find me the cheapest lawyer you can, look under rocks, in sewers down the back of the sofa. Visit third world shanty towns until you find the cheapest lawyer you possibly can. We wouldn't want to waste a single penny on 'advice'."

Or how about the surgeon they get to perform their surgery? "No not you, you aren't cheap enough. I need that guy with the eye patch and the facial tic."

Good point.

But its about power and rewarding management 'Talent'

(where have I heard that before?)

[Grime- skint wouldbe ftb]

I work with offshore Indian IT all the time (and by that l mean every second l am at my desk l am working with them), and l'll list my observations and l appreciate l'll duplicate some earlier posters.

brilliant post, as a devleoper I've worked with Indian outsourcers before (an IT subdivision of Tata among others), and I couldn't have summed up the experience better myself. Be great if you could flesh this out into a long blog post, aimed at management. One thing that particularly rang true is the fact we end up training them and paying them for the privelidge! That's exactly how it felt. For my team we ended up with more daily work... every morning we'd have to spend an hour or so QA'ing the work the Indians had completed the day before, figure what we may as well fix ourselves, then prepare documentaion of all the errors and how to put them right. By the time we'd had a conference call it would be lunch, at which point you'd feel so demotivated and depressed you can barely get yourself though the afternoon. We also found that work that requires creative thought was completely hopeless, you mentioned this with the copy-paste from books. What makes it worse is you feel like getting angry with the guy making the mess, but you realise he's on peanuts and the whole thing is a money-making machine for some modern day slave-driving Indian fatcat, the sort of person Blair would have awarded a peerage to.

At least everywhere Ive worked management see the value of an inhouse team.

[stormymonday_2011]

Run, don't walk.

Work harder, work smarter, work longer - or all three.

And for goodness' sake, whatever you choose to burn your time on - ensure that it is deeply proprietary, as well as profitable.

The price signals are clear enough for all to see; don't spend your whole life in denial.

Well each to his own. I tend to agree with the man who

Dont Run When You Can Walk. Dont Walk When You Can Sit, Dont Sit When You Can Lie Down, Dont Lie Down If You Can Sleep

After 20 years hard slog in IT I know could n't give a running toss if all the systems fell over tomorrow and never came up again. Nor am I going to kill myself in keeping the whole f*cking charade on the road just so some company tw*t can make his bonus or satisfy the latest corporate initiative. No matter how long, hard or clever you work most companies will always find some excuse for stiffing you. So learn the white man's law. Grab what you can while you can and screw the system.

If this mean that current western capitalist civilisation collapses well that is just too bad. It wont be missed.

[goonboy]

...

he had problems finding English developers in London. The stuff we do ain't rocket science (standard .NET web development) but he said that most English people he interviewed didn't want to do pure development - they were more interested in being consultants or whatever. I mentioned that most English hands-on developers go into contracting ASAP, and earn more money than he'd be willing to pay

...

Another reason they can't find English developers, Mr False Bond, is because an awful lot have not only become consultants, but have also had the sense to leave the country for greener pa$ture$ !

What's the point of earning circa a few hundred quid a day if you live in an overpriced place dump like London, with it's woeful public transport, crime and of course those ghastly Londoners ;-)

gB

[goonboy]

I wonder if they would apply the same logic to the company lawyers?

It's not a fair comparison old chap , there's no variance in the quality of lawers, they're all the spawn of an estate agent crossed with a soul of the damned!

gB

Edited August 4, 2009 by goonboy

[LiveAndLetBuy]

Another reason they can't find English developers, Mr False Bond, is because an awful lot have not only become consultants, but have also had the sense to leave the country for greener pa$ture$ !

What's the point of earning circa a few hundred quid a day if you live in an overpriced place dump like London, with it's woeful public transport, crime and of course those ghastly Londoners ;-)

gB

Careful now, Mr Tattooed-ex-Glaswegian-truck-driver-Bond, I wasn't just about pastel-coloured sweaters, male girdles, and acting through my left eyebrow. I could mix it with the toughest of 'em on my day!

Besides - I also happen to be one of those those developers who left the country for greener pastures. Well, in my case browner pastures as I ended up in Spain, but at least it's sunny.

[Lone_Twin]

Super Ted what kind of ICT role was it? Was it support or development?

If development did you have any "working visa" applications and if so what %age?

None but did get a couple of HSMPs however I did specify on the advert "must be eligible to work in the UK"

<edit>Support

Edited August 4, 2009 by Super Ted

[goonboy]

None but did get a couple of HSMPs however I did specify on the advert "must be eligible to work in the UK"

<edit>Support

What are HSMPs Teddio?

gB

[Lone_Twin]

What are HSMPs Teddio?

gB

Highly skilled migrant permit.

i.e: can you convince a civil servant you can speak english, have more than two sheckles in your pocket and know more about IT than them.

granted for up to five years, not employer dependant, almost always leads to a sucesfull application for citizenship after 4 years.

recently replaced by the teir 1 points based system *same thing new name

good to see you posting BTW where have you been hiding?

[goonboy]

...

I could mix it with the toughest of 'em on my day!

...

Besides - I also happen to be one of those those developers who left the country for greener pastures. Well, in my case browner pastures as I ended up in Spain, but at least it's sunny.

Many a supervillain was foiled by that eyebrow raising trick of yours, False One

Poor old gB had to rely upon suave good looks, wit and charm, also some things that explode.

Enjoy the sun, old chap, I shall bid you all adieu pour ce soir!

A bientot

gB

P.S. My favorite spanish drink is readily available in France, a cafe OLE ! HAHAHAHA

[porca misèria]

Another reason they can't find English developers, Mr False Bond, is because an awful lot have not only become consultants, but have also had the sense to leave the country for greener pa$ture$ !

What's the point of earning circa a few hundred quid a day if you live in an overpriced place dump like London, with it's woeful public transport, crime and of course those ghastly Londoners ;-)

gB

http://bahumbug.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/couk-in-a-timewarp/

[Ring Ring]

“Hello, [me] speakingâ€

“Hello, this is J. Random Recruiter. Is this a good time?â€

“Yeah, fine. What can I do you for?â€

“We’ve got a city financial company needs your skills, in particular [foo]“

“Indeed?â€

“Would you be available to work in The City�

“I work for clients around the world. The City is fine. Just so long as they don’t expect my bum physically in their seat on a regular basis. Happy to travel to London occasionally – say, up to once a month.â€

“They’ll pay £150K for this. And that’s a permie salaryâ€

“Great. And that’ll be based on working primarily from home?â€

“No, clients won’t generally do that. But you don’t have to live in London, you can commute in from the countryâ€.

“It’s a minimum of five hours from here to Paddington, one way. About monthly is OK; anything much more frequent isn’t. That’s why I work from home, for clients around the worldâ€.

“You find clients who are happy with that?â€

“Most of my income comes from America, which means it’s losing its value. I’d welcome work coming from London.â€

“And you wouldn’t consider moving�

“Yes, but not to anywhere in SouthEast England.â€

“They might be flexible on the payâ€.

“The money is fine, thank you. Southeast England isn’t. That’s what I’ve escaped from, and I’m not about to go backâ€.

“Oh. So you wouldn’t be interested?â€

“As I said, I’m happy to go up there from time to time.â€

… and it draws to a close. We haven’t even discussed the work itself, beyond the recruiter having taken an interest in my CV. He can use our telecoms infrastructure to do his job (contact prospective recruits) remotely, but won’t countenance the recruits themselves doing likewise.

[goonboy]

Highly skilled migrant permit.

i.e: can you convince a civil servant you can speak english, have more than two sheckles in your pocket and know more about IT than them.

granted for up to five years, not employer dependant, almost always leads to a sucesfull application for citizenship after 4 years.

recently replaced by the teir 1 points based system *same thing new name

good to see you posting BTW where have you been hiding?

Eh up Ted,

Ta for the info!

I've been hiding in my secret mountain hideaway I call the "Eagles Nest", plotting, MWHAHAHAHAH...

gB

[Wol]

int ignorantPopulation = 0;

List<Human> ukPopulation = GetPopulation();

foreach (Human in ukPopulation)

{

if (Human.Vote == Party.BNP)

ignorantPopulation++;

}

Console.WriteLine("There are {0} ignorant people in the UK", ignorantPopulation);

Won't even compile.

Console.WriteLine(

"There are {0} ignorant people in the UK",

GetPopulation().Where(human => human.Vote == Party.BNP).Count());

Much more modern.

[LiveAndLetBuy]

Won't even compile.

Console.WriteLine(

"There are {0} ignorant people in the UK",

GetPopulation().Where(human => human.Vote == Party.BNP).Count());

Much more modern.

Linqy?

(I'll get my coat)

[herbert_goon]

Too right, hell, C++ barely has a grammar!

Don't get me started on operator overloading.

Old goonboy loves this out sourcing caper, after the chaps working for cheap have made their "contribution" (i.e. leaving debug printfs in unix library code (writing to stdout BTW), or such gems as issuing two or three syscalls for EVERY SINGLE BYTE written to a file) poor old goonboy has to come along and clear up the mess.

Ka-Ching!

(Although, I'll agree it certainly isn't for 400UKP a day...)

Who'd have thunk that someone with 25+ years experience might be able to engineer better software than some poor lad in Bangalore who's just done a few weeks on a Microsoft training course (I haven't got anything against Indians BTW, they are actually very pleasant to work with, always polite and pretty smart, just not that experienced, oh well they'll learn)

gB

Ok let me clarify.

I have been working with India and HK/China for 5 years now, both as the whole team and mixed with onshore heads. Most things I am seeing here are equivalent to my first impressions, things took too long, were wrong, I spent more time doing code QA etc. 5 years down the line (and apologies if I am preaching to other Dev and Project managers who have been working with offshore for 5 years) things are much improved. It's simple, build a team and spend time with that team. I know that might to be hard for some developers to understand (because it can be a simple world when you only write code) but it's a key point. I'd point out that I had no influence in the decision to offshore, in addition our company bought shops over there so we all work for the same company.

As for the UK thing, I was only pointing out that it was fair to compare apples with apples. I have met a lot of "IT people", and there is a fair spread of ability. I mention contractors because it is far easier for the less competant ones to move around before being found out - we have surely all met someone like this...

As for my prof's comment, if you think that all the SDK's out there don't qualify as libraries then we are talking on different levels. Imagine the effort you would have to put in to build simple application from scratch.

[workingholiday]

What worries me is that many companies are just one big IT system, but they probably don't realise it. If those companies gift their IT systems to an Indian outsourcing company, then they are potentially gifting their whole company to India.

Outsourcing may end when Indian companies decide it isn't viable to have their management based half-way around the world, and decide to bring it back home.

+1

[the wizard]

I wonder what W. Edwards Deming would have thought about this?

Edited August 5, 2009 by the wizard

[IWantItNow]

Won't even compile.

Console.WriteLine(

"There are {0} ignorant people in the UK",

GetPopulation().Where(human => human.Vote == Party.BNP).Count());

Much more modern.

No it won't you're right, because none of the types are declared of course

LINQ is way better I'm with you all the way, unfortunately our companies flagship products are still on 2.0

[fluffy666]

Too right, hell, C++ barely has a grammar!

Don't get me started on operator overloading.

This is because computer scientists tend to massively over-value neat tricks.. actually having operator precedence is bad enough (1+2*3 should be a compile error, speaking from a scientist standpoint). Operator overloading on top of this is a superb way to introduce bugs of breathtaking arcaneness.

[I want a house!]

But lower paid.....

They are lower paid. I work for a software house. We get half of what a banker developer gets. Thing is, loads of them are losing their jobs, we've not made one person redundent.

Perhaps in the UK our cost of living is too blooming high.

[ParticleMan]

No matter how long, hard or clever you work most companies will always find some excuse for stiffing you.

If your employer is still capitalising a business function which has become commoditised - your employer is screwed.

If you can get away with doing less, less efficiently, and in fewer hours - you're screwed too.

The old saw is "optimisation makes the wrong idea faster" - in this case, outsourcing makes the wrong idea cheaper (the best optimisation is always simply to cease performing the most costly function) while slacking off simply makes the wrong idea less time consuming for the induhvidual concerned.

This isn't the 90's recession. It isn't even the 70's recession. It's a whole 'nother animal.

Edited August 5, 2009 by ParticleMan

[DabHand]

If your employer is still capitalising a business function which has become commoditised - your employer is screwed.

I want to understand this sentence without ambiguity, can you expand the meaning fully for me? Thanks.

[ParticleMan]

I want to understand this sentence without ambiguity, can you expand the meaning fully for me? Thanks.

Extrapolate.

How can a profit center be outsourced?

Is it really a profit center?

Would you not be better off... just not doing whatever the hell it is... and capitalising something that makes money instead?

Commodity functions have fixed and marginal costs.

But there's zero demand for them.

So it's all overhead.

You can get away with this when capital is cheap (glutting) and demand is spiking - the ubiquotous "market share" argumentation of yore.

Right now, it isn't (capital is scarce and demand like Elvis left the building).

If you're funding un-necessary production (either directly as an employer or indirectly via your labour yield as an employee) you're a gonner.

To turn this around, whatever you do do, better be in demand, and, deeply proprietary (ie, relatively high barrier to entry).

This is how recessions heal themselves...

[Joey Buttafueco Jr]

They are lower paid. I work for a software house. We get half of what a banker developer gets. Thing is, loads of them are losing their jobs, we've not made one person redundent.

I don't know of one that hasn't got a job

[slurms mackenzie]

No it won't you're right, because none of the types are declared of course

LINQ is way better I'm with you all the way, unfortunately our companies flagship products are still on 2.0

Isn't LINQ a bit of a turd performance wise?