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I'm in IT. Have been for 20+ years now. I work with a bunch of folks that I would match up against any Corporate IT team for all around expertise. We're the team that "gets it". We do it all because we've done it all. What takes others days or weeks takes us minutes or hours. What they can't comprehend, we understand without even needing it to be explained.
So how does outsourcing come in? Well, we're outsourcing. Have been for a while but we're outsourcing more and more. Started, as I'm sure it has elsewhere, with outsourcing of Production Support. They said it was to free up our resources for more value added work. Sound familiar? It's now moved into new development and many other areas of our organization.
Let's look at what makes this special team so good... we've done it all. We started off as programmers back when you needed to know how to program. We worked on all platforms (Mainframe, Client/Server and Web), all operating systems, multiple languages, all the hot technologies, databases, applications and production implementations and support of everything we worked on. We knew whatever decisions we made and systems we implemented we were going to be responsible for and live with for years to come. We've come up through the ranks, we know what works and what doesn't work, we know how to diagnose problems and how to get things working again, quickly. We can solve problems on platforms and in applications we've never seen before by asking the right questions.
We're the crucial middle portion of the IT organization that pretty much gets it all done. We interface with Sr Management and we interface with developers. We know how to communicate effectively at all levels and we make things happen. We push for the platforms we know we'll need to keep the organization going in the future. We know the strategic direction (heck, we implemented them all) and we make decisions that align with that direction.
So, who will move into our positions in the future? Who will be the folks that truly make the projects succeed, the platforms work, turn the visions into reality and think beyond just a single program or a single system? With all the positions below us being outsourced, there's no one in the organization to step up into our position! Who will set the direction of the company and see it through to fruition? Who will be the enforcers of the strategies and align decisions with those strategic directions? I fear that there will be no one to do it.
Consultants don't have to live with choices or decisions they make - they develop and move on. The long term viability of their solution is of little concern as they won't be around to deal with the problems. Sr Management cares about the next quarter and they too don't care about the long term consequences of doing things quick and dirty and cheap. They too will likely be gone when the true impact of their short sighted decisions brings the company to its knees.
Not much we can do now but sit back and watch an organization that we cared so much about, that we've built with our sweat and blood, start to crumble before our eyes. In a matter of a year or two, what took decades to put into place will be gone. Like a disease taking over someone's body, outsourcing is eating away at the organization. Might not look bad from the outside right now, but as the disease progresses, and all the vital organs are attacked, the major life supporting systems will fail and then die. So will IT and so will the company.
RIP
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