IT GUYS! Help a student out!

Just re-read goals for a paper i wrote and apparently one of my sources needs to be someone from industry!!

so i got a couple questions if there is any IT/Network admin./Programming people.

-How has outsourcing affected your industry? -Other than C++, Java, what other languages are useful to know? -What NON-TECHNICAL skills are important for a career in industry?

If you can answer any of these questions please for citation purposes, can i get your name, position in the company and company you work for. If you want this to be private, PM it to me and it will be sent to my email, just let me know you pmed me.

Thanks to anyone who can help!!!!

Bump for a good cause. I'm in IT as a secondary job position, but not that far into it, so I'm of no help. Good luck with the paper!

-signed working on a Finance paper

lol good luck with your paper too. Im pretty much done, i need just that ONE resource and ill have everything required for an A on this but... its starting to look like im screwed... i guess its what i get for not reading all of requirements.

You need good people skills. While there is a certain amount of tolerance - maybe even expectation - that anyone top it/computer people are introverted geeks, the reality is that anyone you put in front of your customers needs to have top-notch customer-service, and at least basic sales, training.

Service Manager, Document Imaging Netwise Resources Indianapolis

Unfortunately, what I have to say about outsourcing shouldn't be attached to my name in a published paper because I work for one of the top 3 outsourcers in the world.

pm sent

Outsourcing:

I work in the software engineering business... and outsourcing has taken all of the gruntwork of coding and moved it. The "big picture" design and interfacing is still done here but the implementation is farmed out to India. The short term change has been that all of the very experienced, quality engineers on staff have been forced in to a role where they have responsibility for the output of a team of people they didn't choose and have never met. The work demands excellent, detailed specifications because we squeeze outsourcers like Walmart squeezes mfgs and so they cut any corner they can. You can't just say "I want this" you have to spell it out in intricate detail no matter how small a thing it is. Communication is often a problem not only because of language but because the talent there is typically one smart guy to every 1000 people who are as deep as "(insert tech) for Dummies".

The longer term effects (IMO) are that we are not growing top engineers here any longer as the really good ones were guys who fought the fights at the ground level and learned from the experience. It made for excellent output and good fault tolerance in their design work. We are growing managers now and the kids coming out of school can't find the sort of entry work that we sell to outsourcing so they go elsewhere.

We are not getting any dedication to excellence from a body shop no matter where it is... so as a tradeoff for faster time to market it ends up costing as much or more in project management, code quality analysis, unit testing ,maintenance and repair. The old addage that there is never time to do it right but always enough to do it over applies. I bet in the long term it is every bit as expensive as paying a smaller team of dedicated, qualified people who are in the same time zone but I am a bit too biased to be objective about that. All I can say fairly is that if it were my money I'd spend more of it up front to have the quality built in rather than taped on at the end.

In reply to Xceler8x:

Thank you so much. Your response was not only VERY informative, but also very interesting and i have used the information in your response in my paper. Again,thank you. -Matthew.

Its due in 20 minutes, hope it goes well. Wish i would have asked sooner lol as i see Snorklewacker's response would have also been a nice addition.

in IT, i think a helpful language to know is...

wait for it...

English!

as in English, motherberkeleyer, do you speak it?

cxhb wrote: In reply to Xceler8x: Thank you so much. Your response was not only VERY informative, but also very interesting and i have used the information in your response in my paper. Again,thank you. -Matthew. Its due in 20 minutes, hope it goes well. Wish i would have asked sooner lol as i see Snorklewacker's response would have also been a nice addition.

Glad to help. Snorklewacker backed up a lot of what I said. Hope you get a good grade!

Snorklewhacker nailed it. Throw in that I've personally seen outsourcing take out the entire tip tier of management of a billion dollar corp.

Dr. Hess wrote: Snorklewhacker nailed it. Throw in that I've personally seen outsourcing take out the entire tip tier of management of a billion dollar corp.

I'm currently working as a contractor on the sinking ship that is Con-way. The majority of their IT is preparing to be outsourced, with the contract being signed by the end of the month and the transition finishing by the end of the year.

You can imagine the moral here, surprisingly most of the folks are still working fairly well and they still care about the employee's they support. They just have a huge chip on their shoulder for the upper management wonks (who're all hiding down south in California)

A bit of a back-story. Before Con-way there was CNF. CNF was the parent corp for Con-way, Menlo Logisitics and Emery Worldwide. I started working at Emery in June of 1999. Con-Way, Menlo and Emery were sister companies with CNF providing an umbrella (actually laundering money from the sibling companies to avoid taxes and to avoid paying profit sharing to the Con-way and Menlo employees) In 2005, Menlo took over Emery and changed their name to Menlo Worldwide. In 2006 UPS Supply Chain Services bought Emery from Menlo/CNF and began shredding it and their strong IT infrastructure to fit it all into their Brown soup (went from Windows Server 2003 to server 2000 because they hadn't moved yet), they made such a mess of it that UPS Small Package took over IT from UPS-SCS and has slowly brought things back to current.

While UPS was having its brown-way with Emery (and my former co-workers lost their jobs) CNF decided it wasn't worth keeping around since Emery accounted for 50% of the IT services that CNF provided, so they changed their name to Con-way which leaves Menlo as a child corp to Con-way. In 2006 apparently someone had Gartner prepare a report on the Con-way's IT and it found that they already had extremely low costs for IT infrastructure. However the report apparently stated that they were in a "spiral of death" with the way they were providing IT Infrastructure. Needless to say instead of spending the money to fix the issues found on the report (immature processes, lack of proper backup solutions and positions)

The money should have made it in the 2008 budget, but they spent it on something else instead. So then in 2009 did they spend the money on fixing the problems? Nope. Eventually outsourcing as an idea was raised to fix the problem. Get this quote, "Outsourcing emerged as a possible way to address the Gartner findings without requiring Con-way to invest significant additional funds, which it doesn't have available." Uh, what? Don't you have to pay the outsourcers? Oh right, they'll cut all of their employee's and use the outsourcer's, meanwhile the stock price will soar thanks to all of the profit and the upper management can take a beautiful parachute leap into retirement.

fiat22turbo wrote:

Dr. Hess wrote: Don't you have to pay the outsourcers? Oh right, they'll cut all of their employee's and use the outsourcer's, meanwhile the stock price will soar thanks to all of the profit and the upper management can take a beautiful parachute leap into retirement.

It won't work that way. When I've seen outsourcing implemented it's the complete opposite.

The outsourcer offers a contract that states a price for BARE BONES support. Once the outsourcer is in then they magically find support and service that was not a part of the original contract. This is when the contract goes from a "cost center" to a "profit center". The cost of I.T. goes up from there. The original company may get ticked but they're now being held hostage by the I.T. resources the surrendered to the outsourcer.

The conversation goes something like this:

Outsourcer - "When we signed this contract we didn't agree to 24x7 support at this rate."

Sucker Company - "Well, we understood that you did."

OS - "Well, we can...but at this astronomical price."

SC - "That's outrageous! Give us our stuff back! We're ending this contract now you shysters!"

OS - "Ok, here's the penalty cost for ending the contract early. You'll also have to buy back all the hardware we purchased to upgrade your ancient crap. Don't forget the service contracts that go along with them. Also, good luck hiring back your old staff you crapped all over to outsource your entire I.T. department."

SC - "Aw c'mon guy! Don't be like that. We can work something out..."

This is why letting accountants run your company, or concentrating on quarterly profits, is a bad idea.

This is why letting accountants run your company, or concentrating on quarterly profits, is a bad idea.

Business schools are currently teaching the future CEO's of our nation to run companies through financial statements. Little to no emphasis is placed on the importance of learning their business/industry. I majored in finance and spent a lot of time rolling my eyes at some of the crap being shoveled my way that most of the other students seeming didnt question and gobbled up. I have a feeling its shoveled twice as thick at the MBA level.

Looking at their stock price, (CNW), it may be too late to take advantage of this. Otherwise, The Plan would be for them to announce the great savings they are anticipating, then wait about 6 months for the next price peak and then but a whole buncha puts, because by a year, they will be either bankrupt or well on the way. Any corporation run by idiots who think outsourcing their IT is a good thing will make so many serious business mistakes that it is all over.

GlennS wrote: Business schools are currently teaching the future CEO's of our nation to run companies through financial statements. Little to no emphasis is placed on the importance of learning their business/industry. I majored in finance and spent a lot of time rolling my eyes at some of the crap being shoveled my way that most of the other students seeming didnt question and gobbled up. I have a feeling its shoveled twice as thick at the MBA level.

I had some inside information to Circuit City's downfall. I dated two women who worked there in high up positions. One was in finance.

It's funny you mention knowledge of your core business as being a part of keeping a company successful. For the last few years of CC's existence everyone making decisions at the level of CEO had no experience at the ground level of consumer electronic sales. The few CEO's who had worked their way up were frozen out, pushed out, or shouted down.

I agree with you that intimate knowledge of your core business is more important than most any other kind. I'm not saying a firm grasp of financial realities isn't needed. It is. But ignore one side of that equation and you're asking for trouble. My internet expert thoughts on the matter.

"-Other than C++, Java, what other languages are useful to know?"

.NET

No, really.

Yeah dot net is big right now. C++ is not. Dot net is geared heavily to VB. Try to use the MS dot net compiler for C++ and you run screaming for Borland CPP Builder.

My personal favorite:

Outsourcing company: "And on day X, we take a snapshot of your company and we will continute to provide complete support for every application running at that time. (real fast and in real fine print) everything else is extra."

CIO of victim company: "That sounds like a good deal to me. OK."

Six months later: Oh, you need a new report because you have a new product? Well, that's extra. Says so right in the contract you signed. And, while you used to have a whole team of developers for that, you sold them to us and we whacked most of them, and that report that would have cost you nothing incrimental is now going to be thirty large. SUCKAHH!!!

therex wrote: "-Other than C++, Java, what other languages are useful to know?" .NET No, really.

.NET is a runtime "environment" not a language (like the JRE is to Java). Actually, its barely even really that - its a framework. I hate to be a stickler but I spelled Cummins here once as Cummings and got holy hell from you asshats :)

To me, when I am interviewing candidates, It is more important to be a good thinker. Someone who understand how good design (and bad) is applied, follows solid programming practices and does so in a consistent manner can work in any language (or several). The "language" is a tool - and you need the right tool for the job so being able to choose wisely without falling into the "What is hot this week" trap is also important.

A great welder can make good welds with a crap machine - a crap welder can make a mess with any.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

therex wrote: "-Other than C++, Java, what other languages are useful to know?" .NET No, really.

.NET is a runtime "environment" not a language (like the JRE is to Java). Actually, its barely even really that - its a framework. I hate to be a stickler but I spelled Cummins here once as Cummings and got holy hell from you asshats :)

Shorthand, don't bust my balls. :-p

Xceler8x wrote: It's funny you mention knowledge of your core business as being a part of keeping a company successful. For the last few years of CC's existence everyone making decisions at the level of CEO had no experience at the ground level of consumer electronic sales. The few CEO's who had worked their way up were frozen out, pushed out, or shouted down. I agree with you that intimate knowledge of your core business is more important than most any other kind. I'm not saying a firm grasp of financial realities isn't needed. It is. But ignore one side of that equation and you're asking for trouble. My internet expert thoughts on the matter.

Similar situation at The Home depot, not trying to thread jack but here's my experience. I do inventory management for one of the Home Depot's in town here. My boss has no clue as how to do my job, even the management team members I report to have no clue as to how the system works, they just want to see X on the reports we print out. We just went through a HUGE round of corporate inspections, as in I'm on a first name basis with the area corporate reps, 6 different "walks" in 3 weeks, It's bad when I have to sit there and explain how to update reports to the guy that's making 6-8 times my salary, and makes decisions on my performance and how well I'm "doing my job". HOW THE !#@$@#$@# do you make that decision when YOU don't even know how my job works? not to mention I'm supposed to cover 3 departments and I'm covering HALF the store, there are supposed to be 4 of us, there are currently 3 and 1 of us is out having hip replacement done. And they wonder, "what can we do to help you get your job done?" "why aren't you guys hitting your goals?" WTF? Are you serious? BAH my rant's done, HD stock hit a low of 15$ per share last year right around my birthday, we've raised it to about 25$ in a year, maybe there's something to this customer service first, it was our motto when I managed food service, but when upper management has no clue as to how the little guy gets their work done, it won't last. You have to help they guy that faces the customer every day, before he can truly help you. As a store we haven't hit sales goals in over a month, of coarse all the new car payment from the cash for clunkers program might have something to do with that. As I said my rants done, and I'm sorry for any possibility of thread jacking.

Rant away, Spinout. Here's my observation on HD: They hired this guy that was SO BAD that it was worth like A HALF BILLION DOLLARS to fire him. Now, who is stoopid enough to hire someone SO BAD that it's worth A HALF BILLION DOLLARS to fire? They need to go. So, after almost bankrupting the corporation, it's discovered that it's really worth A HALF BILLION DOLLARS to fire this guy, so they give him a check and fire him, then try to rebuild the business from the ashes he left. People stoopid enough to enter into a contract with someone that requires A HALF BILLION DOLLARS to fire are not going to make good business decisions, or have any clue whatsoever about any part of the business.

So what happened to the guy that was worth A HALF BILLION DOLLARS to fire? Well, he went on to Chrysler to "fix" that company. And how did that work out? Or should I say how many BILLIONS did all the rest of us pay to fix his screwups there?

Oh, and does HD have a in-house IT or is it done in Mumbai?

You looking for results from the US only?

Dr. Hess wrote: Rant away, Spinout. Here's my observation on HD: They hired this guy that was SO BAD that it was worth like A HALF BILLION DOLLARS to fire him. Now, who is stoopid enough to hire someone SO BAD that it's worth A HALF BILLION DOLLARS to fire? They need to go. So, after almost bankrupting the corporation, it's discovered that it's really worth A HALF BILLION DOLLARS to fire this guy, so they give him a check and fire him, then try to rebuild the business from the ashes he left. People stoopid enough to enter into a contract with someone that requires A HALF BILLION DOLLARS to fire are not going to make good business decisions, or have any clue whatsoever about any part of the business. So what happened to the guy that was worth A HALF BILLION DOLLARS to fire? Well, he went on to Chrysler to "fix" that company. And how did that work out? Or should I say how many BILLIONS did all the rest of us pay to fix his screwups there? Oh, and does HD have a in-house IT or is it done in Mumbai?

Agree'd on the stoopidity of some people. And surprisingly enough their IT is done in house, in Atlanta. Probably because, their systems are so FREEKING BERKLIED up that it would cost too much to train the people they outsource to.