Outsourcing in the global age

Outsourcing your IT infrastructure is pitched as a great way to save money. Imagine that you can focus on your core competency while someone else handles all that techno-babble that goes on. Having seen how this works, I have to say that it really sucks.

First, there is no savings. In the old days, you hired technology people and they got to work with you so they knew the company. They were interwoven into the company. Developers, architects, database administrators - they all worked for you and knew how things worked. Sure they cost you money and if one left it was a pain to replace them, but you had other people to help. In the end, it wasn't so bad.

Then outsourcing came. You're going to save lots of money by moving those servers into their datacenter where they have lots of staff trained to do stuff. No longer worrying that Joe the hardware guy was on vacation. Perhaps the outsourcing team "hired" your IT staff. Looking great so far. You're paying less. Fantastic.

Now you need some work done. Why, they're going to rent you a complete seasoned IT team. Fantastic. Except the people are green. Those guys that worked for you, they're off doing other projects and aren't available. These new guys don't know your business at all or the infrastructure or even the language that the current stuff is written in. The work is a complete failure. Turns out, the outsourcing company gave you whatever they had available, which were people none of their other clients wanted.

Oh, did I mention layoffs? The outsourcing company announced some layoffs and turns out they did a "workforce reduction" and some of the senior IT guys you respected lost their jobs. They've been replaced with Joe the "I just graduated from a 30 day IT class" because it's cheaper. They just saved lots of money and you got nothing but more delays because the people scheduled to do work for you are not capable. You spend more and more of your time managing the relationship and the work that the outsourcing company is supposed to be doing.

But you know what? They need another set of cuts. Joe is almost competent after a couple of years, but the outsourcing company is trying to cut costs again and Joe got the sack. His replacement is from somewhere in Asia. Oh, and they got him really cheap. You think Joe was green after his IT class? Ashwani is now trying to do Joe's work and is screwing it up. To make it worse, accents are hard to understand and his workhours are not 8-5. He's sleeping when you need him. Of course, you could pay extra to have someone there during your 8-5, but the outsourcing company warns that no one wants to work that shift over there so they'd get someone even WORSE then Ashwani during your 8-5.

In the end, the outsourcing company rakes in money from you. You end up spending more and more time (and money) managing their people and their mistakes. Let's not mention the hours on the phone that you need to spend talking with their management about how they've screwed up again and the impact it has on your company. They don't really care.