Outsourcing in the IT Industry. Your thoughts.

[ZacoAttaco]

Hi all, been helping with some network engineering, small jobs.

 

My engineer I was working with, suggested that at least in the networking industry, he sees outsourcing be something very prevalent in the future. He also said there is less and less demand for network engineers.

 

I'd like your thoughts on outsourcing?

What IT jobs can be outsourced?

How big of an issue is it?

How concerned should I be?

What can I do to stop my future career being made redundant by outsourcing?

 

If you have any personal anecdotes or experience please feel free to share.

 

Thanks in advance, Zac.

[manikyath]

outsourcing what exactly?

 

you cant really have Raj "Bob" from IT in india remote into your rack to bolt down a switch.

[lewdicrous]

More and more companies outsource their work loads in order to save money, afaik. It does have its pros and cons, but most companies don't care about the cons.

Either way, they still need in-house engineers for faster troubleshooting and local fixes.

 

Edit: don't quote me on that, this is what I remember reading somewhere in the forum

[wojtepanik]

small companies might outsource some services, I think linus outsources sometimes audio mastering, in some scrapyard wars ( 3 or 4) he outsourced audio master from Poland, its cheaper to do that for small workloads, big companies tend to centralize and outsource their services as call centers, service desks or whole IT departments to cheaper countries to cut down costs, I once worked as a outsourced contractor for big bank in their building but I was employed but some different company, I just provided service to the bank without being their employee

[bleedblue]

I have a job cuz of it, so... cool.

[ZacoAttaco]

1 hour ago, manikyath said:

outsourcing what exactly?

 

you cant really have Raj "Bob" from IT in india remote into your rack to bolt down a switch.

I'm not sure exactly what they would outsource, my understanding was tech support and more basic roles, but I think as time goes on more advanced roles are being outsourced.

 

I agree with that, although I've that's not really a large portion of the job, so they could have a few people in-house to handle immediate issues and hardware issues but still a lot of the staff wouldn't be needed in-house.

56 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

Either way, they still need in-house engineers for faster troubleshooting and local fixes.

Good point, it does mean that there will be less demand for those roles then and considerably less IT staff in-house.

41 minutes ago, wojtepanik said:

big companies tend to centralize and outsource their services as call centers, service desks or whole IT departments to cheaper countries to cut down costs, I once worked as a outsourced contractor for big bank in their building but I was employed but some different company, I just provided service to the bank without being their employee

Thanks for the information and for your personal experience. May I ask what you were involved in, in providing service to the bank? Basic tasks?

[manikyath]

4 minutes ago, ZacoAttaco said:

I'm not sure exactly what they would outsource, my understanding was tech support and more basic roles, but I think as time goes on more advanced roles are being outsourced.

oddly enough, while "bolting hardware into racks" is a pretty small seeming part, on-site support is probably the bigger part of the job once everything is set up as it needs to be.

 

i did a few months of basic "bolting into racks" work at a datacenter, and when you have a lot of hardware piled together, even very low failure rates become surprisingly common.

[wojtepanik]

6 minutes ago, ZacoAttaco said:

I'm not sure exactly what they would outsource, my understanding was tech support and more basic roles, but I think as time goes on more advanced roles are being outsourced.

 

I agree with that, although I've that's not really a large portion of the job, so they could have a few people in-house to handle immediate issues and hardware issues but still a lot of the staff wouldn't be needed in-house.

Good point, it does mean that there will be less demand for those roles then and considerably less IT staff in-house.

Thanks for the information and for your personal experience. May I ask what you were involved in, in providing service to the bank? Basic tasks?

service desk/sec admin

[ZacoAttaco]

21 minutes ago, manikyath said:

oddly enough, while "bolting hardware into racks" is a pretty small seeming part, on-site support is probably the bigger part of the job once everything is set up as it needs to be.

 

i did a few months of basic "bolting into racks" work at a datacenter, and when you have a lot of hardware piled together, even very low failure rates become surprisingly common.

Well this is encouraging, I think data-centers themselves are a good option for a while now. Because, in itself, it's a form of outsourcing. I think companies like having a local connection when it comes to storing data, although who knows at this point.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, ZacoAttaco said:

What can I do to stop my future career being made redundant by outsourcing?

In short, be good at something that can't be outsourced. While network engineers may no longer be employed for the grunt work of company networking, they are still necessary for the definition of new standards, infrastructure planning and more. Other than that, there's not much else you can do - I believe that if your job can be outsourced to someone with half of your education, it's not really worth your time. Engineering is a field that constantly changes, especially in the realm of electronics; you must be prepared to constantly learn new things throughout your career if you don't want to be left behind.

[manikyath]

11 minutes ago, ZacoAttaco said:

Well this is encouraging, I think data-centers themselves are a good option for a while now. Because, in itself, it's a form of outsourcing. I think companies like having a local connection when it comes to storing data, although who knows at this point.

datacenters arent the primary point i'd say, because you can move a datacenter to where it is economical to run..

 

what you however cannot move is the networking in offices, ISP's last mile infrastructure, at home support for people who have no idea how to plug in their modem, etc.

[Sir Asvald]

I was brought it as a contractor for 3 months to complete a project for the London Ambulance Service because they didn't have anyone at that time from their IT department to complete it. It was nice. 

[chiller15]

I work as an IT Technician in a school and this is something that I am concerned about, especially in the near future. I have ~10 years experience working in 4 different schools over that time. Each time I have been part of a dedicated IT support team within that school and it's something that I value. I know the staff, the students and the infrastructure inside out.

 

However with education funding cuts and acadamisation of schools in the UK, a lot of schools have been either outsourcing to local IT Support companies or pooling their IT support personnel across multiple schools within the academy chain. Both of these would make the job become more impersonal by visiting different schools on different days and not knowing the staff, environment or infrastructure very well. I don't like either of these ideas.

[manikyath]

9 hours ago, dieegoperi said:

Think about this:

Each year, thousands of companies need some kind of tech support but can't afford an engineer

Big companies will still hiring engineers

So, the more outsourcing, the less companies will pay (so companies that wouldn't afford an engineer would be able to hire some outsourcing services) and the more money people will get by doing jobs for multiple companies (small size, or even big ones)

or the more (and the bigger) consultancy companies arise.

[Teddy07]

A manager at BMW said recently in an interview:

BMW (German car company) hired more and more IT students in the past years to a point where they now hire nearly as much IT students as engineers. He predicted the trend will continue because the added value of cars lies in the software.

 

Think about it. They are a car company!

 

I can remember that the media fearmongered ~10 years ago about the upcoming outsourcing due to the eastward expansion of EU. Nothing happened so far. It was just fearmongering.

[ZacoAttaco]

Thank you everyone for your comments and replies. It seems there is still a lot of uncertainty but I'm still determined to forge my career. I understand I'll just have to watch the industry around me develop my skills in areas where it's less convenient to outsource. I think it's something to keep an eye on but as long as I pay attention to those around me I'll be fine. I'll just have to adapt and I'm not concerned about that at all.

12 hours ago, chiller15 said:

However with education funding cuts and acadamisation of schools in the UK, a lot of schools have been either outsourcing to local IT Support companies or pooling their IT support personnel across multiple schools within the academy chain. Both of these would make the job become more impersonal by visiting different schools on different days and not knowing the staff, environment or infrastructure very well. I don't like either of these ideas.

Hope it all works out ok in the end.

12 hours ago, dieegoperi said:

Think about this:

Each year, thousands of companies need some kind of tech support but can't afford an engineer

Big companies will still hiring engineers

So, the more outsourcing, the less companies will pay (so companies that wouldn't afford an engineer would be able to hire some outsourcing services) and the more money people will get by doing jobs for multiple companies (small size, or even big ones)

Thanks for the comments, it's encouraging.

2 hours ago, Teddy07 said:

A manager at BMW said recently in an interview:

BMW (German car company) hired more and more IT students in the past years to a point where they now hire nearly as much IT students as engineers. He predicted the trend will continue because the added value of cars lies in the software.

 

Think about it. They are a car company!

 

I can remember that the media fearmongered ~10 years ago about the upcoming outsourcing due to the eastward expansion of EU. Nothing happened so far. It was just fearmongering.

Thanks for this is really encouraging as well.

[manikyath]

20 hours ago, Teddy07 said:

to a point where they now hire nearly as much IT students as engineers. He predicted the trend will continue because the added value of cars lies in the software.

this is why adding a GPS to your new car's loadout costs more than an entire dacia sandero.

[piemadd]

Outsourcing is becoming common for programming. The thing is, if they run into an issue, i've heard that they just stop, don't even try to find a different way to do it.

[AngryBeaver]

I see more and more of this happening tbh. With more and more companies moving to the cloud onsite network engineers aren't as needed. They can just pay a tech company to come in and setup the initial routes then have an aws engineer do the rest.

 

I mean there are still going to be some onsite demand for a network engineer, but those can be outsourced for cheaper via contractors and the like. Also there are still a ton of companies that are mid to small in size that just toss these hats on to a general IT guy and let him provide most of their IT needs.

 

It doesn't mean being in that field is bad, it is just we are moving more towards cloud services in general and if you build your model around it, then you can actually save money compared to actually owning your own hardware. Same for body counts. If you don't have a huge physical setup or more than just your basic networking then paying full time workers to perform those services from time to time doesn't make sense.