back to article Bad times are just starting for India's IT outsourcers, says JP Morgan

JP Morgan has predicted tough times are around the corner for India's big IT services outfits. In a report released Wednesday, based on meetings with 15 players, the firm concluded "the demand environment for IT services has likely weakened further in June." Author and JP Morgan's head of APAC telecoms and India TMT research …

  1. steviebuk Silver badge

    I can't stand...

    .... outsourcing. But if you're going to do it, at least in the UK then why not oursource to areas in the UK. Areas that are remote that you know people struggle for jobs. Doesn't all have to be in the same area. Then you get IT engineers that could end up actually being good but are stuck in places like Cornwall etc where IT jobs aren't readily available. Yes, those engineers might very well get high paying roles remotely for other companies but some won't. As companies are still insisting on the bollocks "You need to be in the office one day a week".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I can't stand...

      Skillset etc.

      Because of decades of outsourcing, our corporate overlords have essentially hollowed out the UK's IT expertise.

      Anyone with 1/2 a brain should be retiring in their 50s if they can afford it and realistically a LOT of the experienced IT staff in this country are in their 60s and retiring too.

      I'm in my late 40s and the minute I Can get out of this shit show of an industry I'm out. OR if I can get a job in another country. There is no respect for engineers in this country,.

      What this means is that there is a MASSIVE skills gap. You MIGHT have kids graduating now, but they are starting on £16k, which is what I started on in 1999, so why would you do a job that entails compulsory late nights, weekends, zero overtime or TOIL, being dictated to on how to do your job by people who struggle to turn a laptop on.

      I was drunk the other night and ruined some poor dude who was quite proud of his AWS engineering job. He's never seen a server, doesn't know about networks, no idea about security, literally silo'd to know his little slice of the world and that is it. and THAT is what is coming up the ranks.

      Other countries where Engineers (or medicine, etc) are valued, push their kids into university. Parents in India don't eat for days so that their kids can go to school and then to university to get an education and then hopefully a high paying job.

      In this country we have "the intelligencia" being used as an insult. We have people in those poor areas making excuses for htier kids not going to school, even today some dude whose being fined £100s because his son refuses to go to school making excuses for his kid.

      What makes it worse, is that then people in those areas who in a lot of cases actively discourage their kids from going to university and call these office jobs "not real jobs", because apparently the only REAL jobs are getting cancer down t'pit then COMPLAIN about how advertisers ignore them (because they have no money), how people like those of us in IT or even marketing and communications earn more than them.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I can't stand...

        Retiring in their 50's?

        No children, working in London, downsizing to the countryside - then maybe. But, not for most of us.

        But then I obviously only have 1/2 a brain!

        I certainly agree with the last paragraph though.

        My father did manual labour all his working life, so he appreciates my brother who used to fix gas mains and now lays utilities on building sites, because he can understand that work. When I tell him about my work, which is often literally out of this world, he has no interest. Patents, many 'world-first' applications of new technology, even working for Formula 1 and most of the space industry primes - he's not interested and has never said that he is proud of what I have achieved.

        I was the first one in my extended family to go to University, and luckily received a grant as my parents never gave me a penny and I had saved up a little from summer jobs. I simultaneously studied 4 HND's in 2 years and was offered a place directly on an MSc. Even though the standard grant allocation was for 3 years the LEA said no to funding the MSc and so my education ended there.

        1. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

          Re: I can't stand...

          Have you maybe tried comparing what you do to something he does understand, like "my job is the equivalent of the entire utility system, gas leccy and sewage, for the entire town of {whatever town in your home nation is an equivalent} and I'm the one who installed it all" or somesuch? I had to do similar with my dad, who was a military officer in charge of aircraft maintenance as he thought all I did was telephone lines. At the time I was an optical tech for a global fiber telecom company which shall go nameless (as I refuse to admit I ever worked there.) The equivalent in his world would be being in charge of all computer links as well as supply lines between all repair shops for a global airline company. Not a perfect analogy but he was better able to grasp it then.

        2. Vometia has insomnia. Again.

          Re: I can't stand...

          My parents used my grant to pay for foreign holidays for themselves and my sister (I wasn't invited). I still believe that grants are a good idea but they come with the same problem as everything that presumes your parents will actually support you.

          1. Efer Brick

            Re: I can't stand...

            What the actual guddam fluffy nuts!!!!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I can't stand...

        "There is no respect for engineers in this country"

        Yep. Was at a place which appeared a nice place to go, small with a tiny IT team. The other engineer, from what I could tell was actually doing a 2nd/3rd line role. She was still learning but for someone who'd only been in the role for a few years never having done IT, she was good. What were they paying her? The wage of not even a 1st line engineer, about £21k

        This went on for years because the flexibility of place was good. But when we all got "regraded" it was deemed we were all on fair wage for our roles. Her role, JD wise, had completely changed. The actual legal JD had changed but they still said she was 1st line and only worth £21K! She'd eventually had enough and quit.

        Its ridiculous. All I'm seeing at the moment unfortunately is MSP work or "You need to be in the office at least 2 days a week". We're in IT FFS, it can all be done remotely.

      3. ChoHag Silver badge

        Re: I can't stand...

        I more or less agree with your rant but I do have to say: the schools are shit.

      4. TheOtherNeo
        WTF?

        Re: I can't stand...

        I seem to be in IT for about the same amount of time as you. Can't stand this hyper-specialisation BS going on.

        May be the same for you where all these fancy job titles are just what you do. Now I had to make a CV that mostly covers Digital Transformation. Was telling my wife that I don't think about this, because for me it is just something you do.

        As for the silo'd expertise, that just drives me nuts. A few years ago had to deploy SAGE ERP, and every person on the supplier's team could only work on one small subset of the deployment. Even worse, they have been doing it one way since the start. I insisted that it needs to be deployed on VMWare ESXi and EMC SAN storage. They did not understand this at all, and tried all along blame their issues on that. Eventually I had to spend time on the SAGE forums where the "greybeards" provided the answers from their experience. So, in the end I, with no SAGE experience, had to get everything fixed up, and ended up maintaining it instead.

        1. ecofeco Silver badge
          Pint

          Re: I can't stand...

          All this. ^^^ The fracturing is insane.

          I, and of course a few here, are probably the last of the generalists.

          I'd move to systems architecture, but I have never been interested in working insane hours, let alone fanatical delusions of requirements. And the fracturing makes it impossible to keep up with all the competing formats that rely on a far too granular knowledge to just work. Let alone play nice with each other.

          And DO NOT get me started on the documentation!

          That's for me when I think about the mess of current I.T. --------------------------------------------------->>>>>>>>>>>>

          Everyone here is welcome to join me.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: I can't stand...

            IT, or the organisation behind the IT...?!

            Personally I find the tooling on offer today better than ever, however the integration of stuff (particularly where outsourced) is impossible to stay on top of. Systems operating on different timescales with different information interchange requirements; and missing processes for really obvious situations such as removed, renamed or deleted records.

            Then there are the hundred-odd interconnected systems that fall over due to integration whenever anyone so much as sneezes.

            The failings usually lie in the organisation above not being prepared to do what's necessary to break and re-organise, even if it means building an entirely parallel replacement and switching over; preferring to just stick plasters on top.

            But if you need surgery, a sticking plaster is not going to cut it!

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I can't stand...

          I was recently involved in a large(ish) storage infrastructure replacement project. The project managers originally pencilled me in just for the OS migration work that in theory I'm employed for, so never included me in the early planning or asked my opinion on the architected solution (not even the bits that affected 'my' systems).

          But along side of my specialised OS experience, because of my long career history, I'm also a generalist in other technologies with more practical experience than many of the SMEs. When they finally started including me in the planning for the rollout, I saw just so many deficiencies in the design that I could not keep my silence. At one point I threatened to resign (this is not something I regularly do) because the deployment was so flawed and could never run to the time-scales they were trying to work to. On top of that, too many purchasing and licensing decisions, and physical ground work had already been completed to alter the design to something that would have been much more performant and resilient.

          So, we completed it, in time-scales close to what I was suggesting (and no, I did not sabotage the deployment to make a point - I actually worked my socks off just to try to make sure it happened), about 4 months longer than they thought it would take. I also ended up picking up additional tasks outside of my OS responsibilities, because no one else in the extended team could do what was needed.

          As a result, we've got a functional but unsophisticated storage environment that has not implemented many of the potential failover and performance features we could have used, all because the people doing the planning were not prepared to actually consult with those with the experience.

          I've said to myself that if there is ever a storage failover event, I'm going to get out of there pronto, because it's not going to be pretty. But such an event could have been transparent if only....

      5. OhForF' Silver badge

        Respected jobs/education

        "Other countries where Engineers (or medicine, etc) are valued, push their kids into university"

        Seems to be true for a lot of european countries other than Blighty but that causes a problem that might be worse.

        There's no respect for traditional craft masters let alone journeymen or apprentices thus parents attempt to send every kid to university (even those that seem to struggle with basic reading comprehension skills).

        I predict that the biggest issue with the skilled labour shortage hitting for real is going to be plumbers and other jobs where you need to get your hands dirty and not us IT guys.

        1. Bebu
          Big Brother

          Re: Respected jobs/education

          《I predict that the biggest issue with the skilled labour shortage hitting for real is going to be plumbers and other jobs where you need to get your hands dirty and not us IT guys.》

          I am guessing you have the likes of Berlusconia in mind but this is already the case in Oz.

          We will be soon pilfering your few remain tradespeople after having abducted most of your nurses and other health professionals.

          If its the $ or £ you are after then you are "quids in" pursuing a trade like that of a plumber or sparky - no student debt - pretty much immediate high income. Like undertakers there is always an unavoidable need for plumbers.

          Of course you might have difficulty discussing the epistemological foundations of ML(ChatGPT) with your colleagues - not that you would get more joy from your IT colleagues any more than asking a QC "practitioner" about the quantum mechanical foundations of their dark art nor a cryptocurrency jock about the mathematical basis of their legerdemainery.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Respected jobs/education

            Around here, asbestosis and associated diseases were quite common among the plumbers when I was growing up. To a kid, it was definitely one of the jobs to stay away from, if you valued not gasping for air in your 50s or 60s.

    2. pimppetgaeghsr

      Re: I can't stand...

      It's not even outsourcing, those outsourced places are getting too expensive compared to the UKs stagnant wages, we have basically put young people in crippling debt at 6% interest which is essentially just a tax now considering it will never be paid off with the UKs stagnant wages. An entire generation of importing immigrants to do all the work cheaply makes 60k a 90th percentile wage which won't even get you a mortage in the areas where you can earn such a salary. All I see applying for tech roles in the UK now is people from Turkey/Egypt or some of the less rich parts of India, really only people desperate enough and this is also reflected on our southern border.

      We have no skills from our own citizens as a result as everyone is pitted against the person next to them. In the semiconductor industry I see it constantly from out of touch boomers at the top still thinking we are in a different decade where people will come out of a 4 year engineering degree and accept at salary under 30k. 10 yrears ago whilst millenials were still the biggest cohort of uni students this might have worked but we have moved on in our careers, the youngest people want to work at FAANG because those are the only companies where you can make good money as stocks inflate.

      The UK's broad attitude is that we are just a temporarily embarassed superpower when in reality we will need to rethink a lot just to keep up in the 21st century with the coming tech revolutions. Tech is considered some lines of code a monkey on 25k a year can write and people with the best experience are treated like shit. I've seen this happening all over ARM/Imagination and whatever is left in the UK semicon industry and US corporations have caught wind and moved in to poach those people. Outsourcing to India was so last decade to those companies, now the cheap place they outsource to is the UK.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I can't stand...

        35 years in the game and all I see these days is people just want to push buttons and manage costing apps in IT on cloud services, no one wants to actually build anything useful or make some decent infra/apps do interesting stuff. We even have names for them, "Finops Engineers", what the actual eff? You use spreadsheets, look at charts and then moan at anyone in the dev team trying out anything interesting 'cos your brief is to save money at all costs , above and beyond all other considerations and you think you deserve the title "engineer". That's the state of modern UK IT business, full of "pencil pushers" who wouldn't know a code struct from a hole in the head.

        I feel so sorry for kids coming into the IT biz these days, sold a ton of bullshit after being force to go to Uni and get £65k in debt only to find out that you don't actually use half the crap they taught you and you'd have been better off within a BTEC and some online training course, all the time working in the industry to get some raw experience at the coal face.

        I started off as a kid out of college doing "tape monkey" jobs on mainframes back in the late 1980s, a touch of Novell Netware and over to PC land as the clock rolled over into 1990. 20 years on Unix and DB admin work, now I bash out infra building code in various languages, just seeing out the clock and hopefully out of the biz before I'm 60 and away to finally do something more fulfilling with my life before they "deep six" my sorry carcass.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I can't stand...

        There are good people I know on joint salaries of about 50k. Both work hard and look after kids inc special needs. Housing association home - and they are considered the lucky ones by a lot.

        Personally I’m in the 97th percentile, and have an extremely average 2 bed semi bought 15 years ago. And that’s the limit of what’s affordable Even on that level of income.

        The redistribution of wealth desperately needs to happen; and, in a rather perverse manner the current high rates could lead to some of that.

        Trouble is, is shitting on 99 percent of people the right way to do it?

        The UK is fucked just like Japan was with its stagflation and the incumbents haven’t the balls to do what’s necessary to reinvent.

    3. abend0c4 Silver badge

      Re: I can't stand...

      I now live in a popular European outsourcing location. There is a good standard of education and plenty of IT work - if you're happy with £30K per annum after a decade of experience.

      Outsourcing exists to save money (or to give the appearance of saving money) and it's unlikely you'll find many people in the UK prepared to undercut those rates.

      Of course it can't last - FoM means young people who aren't "stuck" in the equivalent of Cornwall go to other European countries once they've got some experience so the cheap labour will eventually have to be sourced elsewhere. Unfortunately it won't leave behind a legacy of sustainable local industry as there isn't sufficient local demand.

      1. CheesyTheClown

        Re: I can't stand...

        The issue is the number of people needed to be productive.

        No code and low code is a big driver for business systems today. It is getting to the point where a good low code platform is enough to handle most IT development tasks.

        Add ML to the mix.

        Since I started using copilot and Bing Chat to assist my work, my productivity has increased drastically. Not two or three fold. Substantially more than that. I am now completing projects on my own in less time than it used to take to spec the projects out. What’s worse is that the quality has improved greatly in comparison. I expect that these very early generation LLMs are going to improve considerably in very rapid succession. And once I finish my current project, I hope to switch to running an open source LLM which I expect to perform substantially faster and increase my productivity a great deal more.

        I can honestly say that I could now complete 12-20 large scale IT projects in a year with these tools compared to the past where I used 3 months just to hire an outsourcing team to do one.

        I think we’re about to see a considerable collapse of labor requirements thanks to a single LLM with one-two skilled developers greatly outpacing managed projects with 10-30 people and all the paperwork and bureaucracy.

        I am tempted to design and build a large database project based on a previous project using one other developer and an LLM and establish real numbers for before and after for LLMs.

        1. OhForF' Silver badge

          Digital assistants and LLM boosting productivity by an order of magnitude?

          With 20 years of experience in my field i can get away with just implementing new stuff without too much formal specification and get it to work. I'd need signifcantly more time than implementing it myself to just write the specification to outsource it to a team without domain knowledge and the other systems and interfaces the software has to work with so can believe that part.

          Beating a team that hasn't previously worked in our environment will work as long as i'm able to finish the project close to the time they need to understand what they are supposed to do so it should work for at least the smaller projects. Even with having more experience than the 4 members of our smallest team together i can see no way that copilot or Bing chat (or whatever tool) boosts my output enough to compete with that team on my own.

          We could probably use LLM to produce the specification and other documentation and not have noticable changes in the quality of those documents but using those to outsource will probably end even worse than our latest attempt (wasn't involved in that until they called me in to help fix it two month after the commissioning date).

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I can't stand...

          maybe in your special case, but if that were generally true github would surely cost more than $10-$20 a month, which is practically nothing.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I can't stand...

          If you're the business manager, using less people to get the same stuff done is obviously a "good thing". Outsourcing to implement things like PowerBI has been disastrous in my local area. I reached a point where I demanded that IT let me at the data sources and tools myself; or I would not use them at all.

          After all, it's thirty times quicker to explore my own requirements than have to explain them to someone else. And when they inevitably move; then I have to explain them again. And again.

          I'm not here to support a dozen others jobs while slowing down my own activity.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I can't stand...

        My son lives on Warsaw, doing BE java dev, and earns a good wage, for his first job. His second job pays equally. He works about 50 hours a week but is happy with the money / time trade off. He's been offered London roles and just isn't interested.

        Certainly when we visit Poland it seems a very nice place.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I can't stand...

          Living costs definitely an advantage (for now), and nicer than central London.

          There will be a point where the 50+ hr weeks are unwanted I'm sure, but if you can get yourself mostly clear of a mortgage then what's the problem?

          Our new neighbour moved in yesterday, he's a unity programmer on his first day today with Playground games in Leamington Spa. We had a nice chat yesterday about the old crap I look after in Fortran 77 and C!

          He's also, despite Leamington's relatively high prices as a London commuter town considerably better off than before.

          A/C as this post identifies where I live!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Always found offshore outsourcing / modern day slavery

    Large companies support this "cheaper" support method, more profits for fat cats.

    I have on numerous occasions found that offshore is leaving somebody with your data that should not have access.

    It also takes jobs away from local economy, don't pay taxes, and is this a form of corporate / modern day slavery?

    Why do we have more scams originating from offshore?

    1. Natalie Gritpants Jr

      Re: Always found offshore outsourcing / modern day slavery

      "Why do we have more scams originating from offshore?"

      Maybe because 99% of the population is offshore.

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Why do we have more scams originating from offshore?

      Come now, you don't think the UK has more scammers than the entire rest of the world, now do you ?

    3. Killfalcon
      Trollface

      Re: Always found offshore outsourcing / modern day slavery

      People in the UK are just too lazy.

      It takes a lot of work to run a proper scam - you need to be calling hundreds or people, sending millions of emails, just to get a single bite. The kids these days don't have the stamina for it, the fortitude to push through the dry periods until they find themselves the right marks. There's just not enough unguarded confused old folk with savings to trick out of, y'know?

      Just no hustle, y'know? My Grandad worked four jobs, one of them even legit, to scrape by after the War. People just don't think like that anymore!

      (check the icon)

      1. Plest Silver badge

        Re: Always found offshore outsourcing / modern day slavery

        To quote the Driscoll Brothers from Only Fools and Horses....

        "Our dad worked from morning til night for nothing but a pittance and an 'orse shit sandwich for dinner!".

      2. An_Old_Dog Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: Always found offshore outsourcing / modern day slavery

        Kids these days, they don't want to work a scam the hard way. They want to use an 'app' for that. Hmm ... now there's a potential software market.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Always found offshore outsourcing / modern day slavery

      Yep. They outsourced the management of a database system at one local council I was at. When I left this was still ongoing with the shittest onsite Help Desk Manager ever. It was their job to secure all local accounts, that includes the account the outsourced company used to remote in. It should only have ever been open on the days they required it. So one day they come in the morning finding one of the main databases has been deleted AND its backup. Turns out one of the remote engineers based in Indian had gotten a little pissed off, found the account enabled and for whatever reason connected and did what he did.

    5. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

      Re: Always found offshore outsourcing / modern day slavery

      Slavery isn't a problem if the slaves are willing and free to leave if they wish to do so.

    6. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Always found offshore outsourcing / modern day slavery

      "It also takes jobs away from local economy, don't pay taxes, and is this a form of corporate / modern day slavery?"

      Usually, no. Some places have used forced labor, which is slavery, but they're not common in outsourcing and you clearly weren't talking about that. Hiring people in a different country to the one you live in, where you pay people an amount they accept and they have rights to participate or not is not slavery. It would not be slavery if I hired someone in the UK on that basis, nor if I hire them in a country which often pays less. Would you consider outsourcing to the UK, on a salary acceptable to the UK resident doing the work, following UK labor regulations, as enslaving that worker?

      Similarly, the tax situation is not only not slavery, but not at all surprising. In my example, my British colleague would be paying tax to the UK, not to the country I'm in. That's to be expected, and my country wouldn't have a justification to complain about it.

  3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "After 34 years with the firm"

    34 years is certainly a highly commendable amount, but gee, how lucky it is for him to get out right before the crunch.

    1. Kevin Johnston

      Re: "After 34 years with the firm"

      I have always wondered at what point 'x years with the company' actually becomes a liability? I know that all roles will be different but most management positions need an awareness that 'we have always done it that way' is not the same as 'optimal approach' and that is something which needs refreshing by finding out how other people approach challenges and processes.

      1. pimppetgaeghsr

        Re: "After 34 years with the firm"

        Which is why you always take the offer of more money and expansive roles. Don't wait for the counter-offer.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "After 34 years with the firm"

          These Indian offshore companies are just on a race to the bottom based on regular fresh meat from the local universities. They even call them Freshers. Management sets targets for numbers hired and the proportion that are billable.

          If the pandemic and war in Ukraine have taught us that sovereign capability matters government needs to change companies for exporting IT jobs so they realise the true cost of hollowing out.

          Similarly the majority of economic migration is from India who are such good friends of ours that they buy embargoed ruzzian oil and military hardware. Further they enable untraceable supply to Europe where some are desperate enough to buy.

          They must be laughing at us in Modi-land.

          Only the least informed corporate purchasers do..

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "After 34 years with the firm"

            government needs to _Charge_ companies for exporting IT jobs so they realise the true cost of hollowing out

      2. OhForF' Silver badge

        Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

        'we have always done it that way' is something you can ignore but you should still keep those grumpy old guys in the communication loop.

        'we have tried that a couple of years back and had to roll it back after x' is something that might help you save effort and money.

      3. Bebu
        Holmes

        Re: "After 34 years with the firm"

        《I have always wondered at what point 'x years with the company' actually becomes a liability? 》

        Three (x == 3.)

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "After 34 years with the firm"

        Essentially, the cost-benefit curve consists of plotting what they will offer in the way of redundancy for every extra year you add.

        The break-even point varies by circumstance, but it's somewhere around 55 to 60. The closer you get to formal retirement age the less the benefit is in sticking about. The trick is then, to have your years of service in a suitable range in that window at the point of a company re-organisation.

        Anyone working for a single company for 30-odd years probably isn't doing the same role over time. Or I would hope not!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A persons usefulness is a maximum of 20 years these days before they become a liability provided that all the optimum variables are achieved.

    I worked this out using the following; (P) Pension, (L) Length of service, (S) Salary, (K) Knowledge, (Rr) Reputation and Relationships and (C) Company, (N) Number of people employed, (Pr) Profit.

    K=Yearly evalutation result

    R=Number of times involved in projects over 100K

    C=Pr/N

    S=C/K*R

    L = (P*10)/S

    Thus giving the length of service before becoming a liability from between 10 and 20 years.

    Giving the whole reasoning;

    Using the formulas above and the calculations below we can see that the length of service (L): 10 ≤ L ≤ 20

    Pension (P): Calculated based on salary (S) and length of service (L) using the formula:

    P = S * (L / 10)

    Example value: If S = $50,000 and L = 15, then P = $75,000 (annual)

    Based on savings for 30 years and that you'll only live 5 years after retirement.

    Salary (S): Calculated based on company profit per employee (C), knowledge (K), and involvement in projects over 100K (Rr) using the formula:

    S = C / (K * Rr)

    Example value: If C = $1,000, K = 0.8, and Rr = 3, then S ≈ $416.67 (weekly)

    Knowledge (K): Assessed through yearly evaluations or other relevant indicators. The value can range from 0 to 1, with 1 representing high knowledge.

    Example value: K = 0.85

    Reputation and Relationships (Rr): Qualitative assessment of an individual's reputation and relationships within the company. This value does not impact the length of service (L) directly.

    Example value: Rr = 4 (10 being the best and lower numbers being how useful you are to the company)

    Company Profit per Employee (C): Calculated based on the company's profit (Pr) and the number of people employed (N) using the formula:

    C = Pr / N

    Example value: If Pr = $2,000,000 and N = 100, then C = $20,000

    What companies fail to realize however is that you can't make up for a loss of creativity.

    1. katrinab Silver badge
      WTF?

      Was this written by some management consultant / ChatGPT type entity?

      It looks superficially impressive, but is actually complete b*******.

      1. cookieMonster Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        management consultant / ChatGPT type entity, is there a difference??

        1. ChoHag Silver badge

          I understand the robot is cheaper.

        2. doublelayer Silver badge

          Of course. The management consultant charges a massive amount and will get very angry if you say the work is garbage. GPT costs little or nothing and generates the same level of garbage, but if you say so, it will apologize as many times as you want it to and generate new garbage for you every time.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      This looks like the output

      Of the idiots at the American consulting company that convinced our C suite to let 20% of our company be redundant. Maths != brains to do the actual work, so even outsourcing to India won’t save them now.

    3. Bebu
      Childcatcher

      What's that then?

      《What companies fail to realize however is that you can't make up for a loss of creativity.》

      "Loss of what?"

      "Creativity."

      "I am certain we that we have never had that problem here. What is it? Is it painful?"

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      There's some truth to be had in here, albeit perhaps found by the approach of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks!

      Most employees around where I am - around year 15 or so are that bitter and twisted by the wider organisation's failings and inability to change, that that is more or less the point where the calculations for do you sit-it-out and aim for VR on favourable timescales versus going elsewhere become most of the thinking on career planning.

      People sitting about debating that probably aren't as productive as wide eyed graduates that believe they can save the world and will be the next CEO.

  5. TimMaher Silver badge
    Trollface

    Nobody mention AI

    The grunts in large outsourcers are going to be replaced anyway.

    Either the customers will run their own or the bosses will implement so called “AI” as a service.

    In other news... Infosys. Will Rishi become poorer?

    1. CheesyTheClown

      Re: Nobody mention AI

      AI as a service?

      1) Open Bing chat.

      2) Ask “write a bash script to download and install Alpacca on my machine

      3) Open Alpacca URL

    2. Sudosu Bronze badge

      Re: Nobody mention AI

      I always read AI as Al, like Albert or Allan.

      i.e. Al Bundy

      Now that would be a good LLM.

  6. TeeCee Gold badge
    Mushroom

    IMHO

    It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of chiselling incompetent thieves.

  7. hairydog

    I keep reading about AI. It is supposed to stand for Artificial Intelligence. But that's intelligence in the 'espionage' meaning, not the 'thinking' meaning.

    All AI seems to be good at is Automated Plagiarism. It steals other people's work and anonymoses it.

    Without people to steal from AI will end up stealing from AI.

    1. Mad Chaz

      I think it's more intelligence in the political sence. It can spew out BS that sounds smart, but is just word salad.

      1. Bebu
        Childcatcher

        word salad.

        You do salads a disservice I feel.

        A salad is a confection selected from of a variety of (technically) mostly fruit, a few vegetables and nuts, variously dressed, layered for their contribution to the overall texture and flavour. Done well it is a gastronomic art!

        In simpler, more honest days this might have resulted in pistols at twenty paces with the likes of Carême!

        If you are you are concerned that you might find a gauntlet at your feet - yes I am taking the piss.

        Politicians can barely achieve the standard of post vindaloo vomit.

      2. Someone Else Silver badge

        It can spew out BS that sounds smart, but is just word salad.

        Sounds like Sarah Palin, except she never "sounds smart".

    2. UK DM

      But thats is also what humans do. Someone shows them a thought in person or written. They then plagiarise that thought later in another context.

      Just because the AI is more able to point towards its sources people want to label it as something bad. Humans are all standing on the shoulders of giants and clinging onto the notation they are something special.

      AI is proof of the proverbial monkey banging on a typewriter able to churn out Shakespeare.

      Maybe the real issue with outsourcing now is the UK customer knows AI exists and doesn't want their trade secrets in the form of instructions and prompts leaked into an AI model for rest of the world to know.

      As all the outsourcers are surely trying and doing this even if you write a contract prohibitting it. There comes a point where, you've got to consider, but I can just do that myself.

  8. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

    Meltdown

    I believe there's a slo-mo meltdown going on of the Indian IT sector.

    Most Indians are desperately trying to escape the country towards the West, especially the U.S. and Europe, but strong labor rules are a roadblock. I suppose you could say the boom times are definitely over.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I am glad

      I hope it melts down

      I have been “replaced” 3 times now with workers from TCS and InfoSys

      Each time they have had to engage additional workers to replace me

      The companies have ended up with poor skills and paying over the odds but TATA and the others are TRULY MASTERS OF THE DEAL tying companies in to 5 year deals

      Stupid UK managers

      But I have now been unable to find a job for 4 months

      1. Dagg Silver badge

        Re: I am glad

        Each time they have had to engage additional workers to replace me

        I was brought on in a company that had been bought by an Indian company that was going to move it to India. However once they tried to get everything up and running they found they just didn't have the skill set. So they keep bits of the old company in Australia and used locals to fill the gaps. Ha Ha

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I am glad

        Go into the NHS or local government until you find something else.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Meltdown

      You can be sure the density of H1Bs increased during the US layoffs.

  9. Happy_Jack

    I have sympathy for the individuals but not the outsourcing companies. They are somewhat lacking in openness and honesty, in my experience.

  10. bertkaye

    dishonesty, incompetence, and bruised goolies

    Given the degree of non-honesty I have encountered here in the US from offshore-base recruiters, and the level of incompetence I've experienced with so many H1Bs, not only do I have no sympathy at all for Tata and their bretheren, but I will be smiling when I read news of their collapses into a black hole. The double whammy of poor economies and advent of AI tools will kick them in what doctors call 'the goolies'. Okay well, some doctors, not my doctor.

  11. EricB123 Silver badge

    What Goes Around...

    I was in a Tata office once. There was a counter with a giant sign saying "H-1B Express"!

    No country for an "old" engineer over 40 in USA...

  12. Groo The Wanderer

    I find it hard to feel any sympathy for India's outsourcers given how they gutten the market in Florida back when I was on contract there from Canada. Market rates dropped 40% in one year of their predatory body-shopping. Turn-about is only fair play. :)

  13. Vader

    Most of the coders I have dealt with in India when we did a lot of outsourcing were poo. You explain things so many times and then they still foul it up and lie to your face. Deadlines mean nothing they don't care.

  14. renniks

    From my experience, replacing the Indian outsourced Helpdesks with ChatGPT would be an improvement

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like