First Hand Experiance
Like many others I expect I have experianced the recline in IT jobs, having spent 8 years at the same company, and three and a half of those in the IT sector when it came to outsourcing the IT Infrastructre I was one of the ones who was made redundant. Before this happened I have spent 6 months working for the outsourcer after a TUPE transfer. The firm a well known IT company, also known for their involvement with Jaguar and other car firms in the UK, had a good team offshore and some of the skills that they brought to the business were good, very good.
While the information and resources that a "business" will gain from this is formidable these outsource companies have thousands of people working for them, whats wrong with not thinking about money in the here and now. These companies come in showing that they can save money here and there, and offer support 24/7 but businesses need to think of the greater impact. Eventually these business relationships will end, and IT will be brought back in house, and when that happens people will have to be recruited and trained. Only thing being that IT will have spent so long with the reputation of that of an outsourced industry that there will be no fresh new people entering the industry from a young age.
This is going to lead to a lack of skills and businesses will struggle to recruit. Why cant businesses identify what the skills they need are and start training their current UK people, or even take on more UK IT Staff who are currently out of work, rather then just shipping it all out.
In the long run you have better trained people and you have less people out of work, lower unemployment and an all round happier industry. The country might be in recession at the moment but its a temporary thing, we are using a prit stick to fix a problem in the here and now, when we should be using superglue for a fix for the next 10 plus years.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
