Outsourcing in Triangle

[rfb]

Originally Posted by ucctgg

Okay. But I hear many people say the triangle IT job market is very robust.
I guess I don't understand the contradiction there.

IT and R&D jobs are always moving to markets with a lower cost per employee. A robust market, like the Triangle, has other jobs to cover those lost, both existing as well as new jobs.

[annabanana123]

Very, very common. I’m in IT and while in the private sector we outsourced quite a bit. The key is to make yourself in a client facing role that can’t be outsourced rather than a pure developer which can. Our R&D managers were here and would spend two months a year in India. When I was at a different company, a start up, I was a R&D liaison and they were in Canada and Russia. Still cheaper even with us traveling to them.

[Repatriot]

Originally Posted by ucctgg

My neighbor is a web developer. He just learned that the company he works for is moving its IT department to Malaysia. Is this something commonplace these days?

Not sure how widespread it was a few years ago, for some companies and sectors this has increased. And watch for it to further increase the minute the COL and Cost of Doing Business increases. Unfortunately I've seen this movie too.

Originally Posted by rfb

IT and R&D jobs are always moving to markets with a lower cost per employee. A robust market, like the Triangle, has other jobs to cover those lost, both existing as well as new jobs.

Agree with the first part, not with the second, at least not for all roles.

Originally Posted by ucctgg

Okay. But I hear many people say the triangle IT job market is very robust. I guess I don't understand the contradiction there.

It is, though a lot of that is due to churn. Big companies here do regular and significant layoffs, so while there are jobs, they are being closed in in one place and opened in another. So YOY it looks like there are a lot of jobs, but are there?

But it's not as simple as looking at this as "IT jobs" - some roles grow, some shrink, some get created and some get eliminated, and many of them get commoditized and then go offshore.

I know of a number of people at a big company here who advertised less than a year ago how they would be moving a lot of jobs here, and those people's jobs went to eastern Europe since.

Originally Posted by JO783

Not sure I get where the contradiction is. This was one company (and I'm guessing not one of the biggies or we'd likely have heard about this in the news). In general, this is a pretty good area to be looking for jobs in IT. That doesn't mean every single company is hiring like crazy and no one in IT is ever fired/laid off/outsourced. It does mean that well-trained IT folks with current skills are in a good position to find other jobs without having to relocate if the worst should happen.

I wish that were true, but I don't think that it is, and is certainly some people are months out of work between roles, more so that such a reputedly strong job market would suggest.

Also, I would argue, and I have no facts to base this on but think that here, unlike as in some bigger cities, that there are more (and more) contract vs. perm roles, and that adds to the churn rate.

And to CapitalBlvd's point, there are more and more junior roles and less senior roles. Few companies here with a larger presence in bigger cities have many senior people here, instead here is more of a disposable or replaceable workforce, with less potential for advancement or job security.

Some companies try to keep this from the news by doing RIFs in dribbles, so less likely to hear about it in the news, but via word of mouth this eventually gets around.