Attention, CIOs: Stop outsourcing or YOU will never retire
Youth must have its fling, says biz forum chief
Posted in Management, 14th March 2013 10:44 GMT
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The IT hero for many youngsters: the father
It might be a truism to suggest the average UK school kid’s view of IT work is probably better informed by the Channel 4 comedy IT Crowd than any actual tech professionals. But it may be that the programme is actually a good start: the forum said its research showed that “the majority of young people have little understanding of ICT in the workplace or the technical skills needed to support careers”, but added that while there were no role models in the industry, teens look to their fathers.
That'll send a frisson of pride through some IT pros, but the creation of a caste of hereditary IT workers is not the preferred response to the current skills crisis - if only because it would take too long.
Still, the IT dads out there probably offer a more reliable insight into the realities of working in the technology sector than the views of government ministers and officials, who reflect the outlook and ambitions of the big vendors.
“I think the government does a good job of talking to the Googles," said Harris, diplomatically.
He cited BT as a company that’s particularly good at mentoring teachers. But the national telco is, at heart, a vendor and whether consciously or not, some of its executives will perpetuate their view of the world, just as bosses at Google or Microsoft would be expected to do.
And it is the views and wishes of vendors that are echoed in schools, which is why some kids treat Explorer as the default suffix to the word Internet, or why PowerPoint seems to be their default show-and-tell preparation tool.
So, again, it’s down to CIOs, architects and other IT pros to define their roles, fight in their profession’s corner, and give youngsters a gateway to rewarding technology careers.
“It’s not about the next CIO or chief architect. We want to have really good tech jobs at all levels in the UK,” said Harris.
And perhaps that’s the crucial point: creating jobs in the UK. This is where Harris is unequivocal about UK industry’s failure to give youngsters a path into IT in the first place, and to the top of the tree in the long term.
“Employers are absolutely part of the problem,” said Harris. “We’ve outsourced too much. Outsourcing became an end in itself.”
Cutting back on jobs may have netted short-terms savings, which, of course, boost the bonus of the CIO and CFO who waved such strategies through. But another result is now a dearth of youngsters with three to five years of experience, and, arguably, of mid-level IT pros.
March of the apprentices
Contractors are a stopgap, said Harris, but one that only postpones the day of reckoning - a view shared by 40 per cent of companies, the forum’s research suggested.
The suggestion that higher education should be the default route for 18-year-old school-leavers, and employers’ adherence to graduate recruitment policies, doesn’t help matters; it might actually work against producing rounded IT workers who’ve cut their teeth on the routine tasks that are often the first to be shifted overseas.
“There are plenty of 18-year-olds who don’t want to go to university,” said Harris. One approach that he wholeheartedly gets behind is apprenticeships. Or put another way, people beginning to learn IT from the ground up at 18, or even 16.
Even if you’re reading this while remembering stumbling into a lecture hall with a crashing hangover to grapple Pascal, you'll know plenty of people who stumbled out of school at 18 into work and, having opened up a couple of Sinclair Spectrums and got stuck in, are today senior professionals, even partners at consultancies, who only recruit graduates. You don’t know of any? Well, I do.
Of course, the problem with starting at the bottom is that you’re, well, starting at the bottom. Apprentices may not be set afire at the prospect of six months of administering login IDs at their new employers before being switched to tech support for another six months. But, then again, they may not be overly excited about the idea of racking up debts of £30,000-plus learning Java and C++ at university, only to launch themselves into a graduate trainee programme that starts them off... writing software to administer login IDs. If they’re lucky.
“It might help us match the outsourcing price point,” suggested Harris. It would be naive to think that the UK will match hungrier emerging economies on price points.
Thus, UK Plc should adopt a UK-first policy when it comes to its tech work, said Harris: “If we can do in the UK, do it. If can’t be done, then place it overseas.”
What are the alternatives? Either more jobs higher up the food chain are shipped overseas because that’s where the talent is, or the current cohort of IT bosses are kept in harness until they drop - even if by then they’re capable of nothing more than managing user password resets. Neither seems an appetising prospect. ®
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COMMENTS
UK Companies are getting exactly what they desrerve
TBH this isn't so much because of outsourcing, which had an effect, but far more damaging was the Intra Company Transfer tax scam, these took jobs directly out of the UK job market.
I contracted for 18 years in the UK and saw the market killed in 5 years by the wholesale importation of cheap labour, I was out of work for 6 months in 2009 and the Jobcentre was full of guys with 10-15 years experience, you could hear them at the next table signing on describing how their company had brought in cheap non EEC staff who they had to hand their jobs over to, has been happening a lot and I had a number of contracts at UK sites where the majority of the IT staff were non UK labour brought in on ICT
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inside-outsourcing/2011/03/offshore-it-workers-in-the.html
I've got a perm job in Northern Europe now there are lots of experienced UK IT workers here, and I still get calls from agents desperate to find UK staff, but for the wages UK companies want to offer it's not worth the hassle, and I don't trust UK companies as far as I can throw them, they have the cheap young clueless foreign workforce they want now who they can bully to finish projects with threats of being sent home (saw one young team lead hospitalize himself staying up a full UK day, then on the phone till 3-4am to India every night trying to get his project working) they should sit back and enjoy their extreme cleverness, every time I read about another failed UK government IT project or screw up at a bank I just give thanks I don't have to deal with that kind of rubbish anymore.
This isn't just an IT problem
This has been happening in other industries for years and years. Businesses don't want to spend any money on training school leavers/grads so they look for already qualified staff. These staff get older and retire so then businesses moan about there not being qualified staff in the UK anymore.
Guess what? If YOU want skilled staff, YOU have to help them get those skills. If you're worried about them leaving, then you're obviously paying them less than they are worth. It should be part of every companies strategic thinking, "where do we want to be in x years time? what new technologies do we want to use". Then train staff in those technologies and hey presto, in x years time you're where you want to be and have skilled staff that are the envy of other businesses.
Its hardly rocket science.
Re: Clueless
'Competitive' means 'more profitable for management and shareholders.'
The UK has some of the worst board-level management in the developed world. Caste sclerosis and institutionalised arrogance and entitlement are a lethal combination.
There are exceptions - some managers do still work their way up through the ranks - but too much upper management seems to hold the oiks who do useful stuff for them in infinite contempt.
Rather than moaning at schools and colleges for not turning out oiks that are docile enough and smart enough - but not too smart - management could begin by admitting that most of the 'top talent' is parasitic and useless.
Any moron can cut costs by spending less. Currently those morons often have the top jobs. What's needed is a clear-out of the top levels, which replaces those morons with people who know what strategy is and understand that actions have medium-and long-term consequences on profits, and short-term gains can create long-term disasters.
Oak ceilings and dead ends
" the current cohort of IT bosses are kept in harness until they drop"
Well they also choose to stay in harness.
There's a real problem with career progression in IT in the UK. You do not have to go very far before the next step up the ladder, if there is one at all, means abandoning some or all of the technical work you (one hopes) enjoy and are suited to.
So there's an accumulation of managers who are either not particularly IT literate or not particularly suited to management and this creates a barrier between IT and the business.
There are some enlightened places where it skills are rewarded without requiring a move to management and even some where good skilled workers are paid more than the people who manage them (as ought to happen when staff management skills are easier to come by than some of the technical specialities) but it's not the norm.
The Civil Service (as of ten years ago when I worked there) treats IT as a blue collar activity (with time-and-a-half on Saturday and double time on a Sunday so guess when all the out-of-hours work happens) and there's no route up the tree, never mind a way of being involved in guiding the business.
My current private sector employer treats it strategically but only involves anyone with any actual IT skills once all decisions have been made, with marketing more likely to have an input into new work. There's a huge gap between the people (reading the Register instead of) working on the various command lines and management such that it is inconceivable that anyone in IT with IT skills could ever become head of IT.
If there was a recognition that businesses would do better to have IT skills all the way up (and across) the organisational tree then the recruitment and management of IT staff would improve, as would the career prospects and it would been seen as less of a dead-end career for geeks and freaks.
Why bother
Why would you 'do something with computers' when the pay is less than your average surveyor / solicitor yet you have responsibility for the firms entire turnover and need to have knowledge superior to anyone else in the business?
Might seem arrogant but you will need to know as much about Tax as the accountant to configure the ERP, as much about manufacturing for MRP etc. I'm always amused when someone says 'oh I don't bother with computer stuff' yet tries to talk down to you about their 'expertise'.
Until such a career has the same cachet as an Architect and similar pay not many parents will want little Johnny to pursue it as a career.
Little Johnny if he has enough sense to do the job will see he is better off doing something that won't be offshored (though few jobs are immune) or onshored (thanks to successive governments subsidising big business by allowing ICT abuse).
Anyone my experience in corporate is that CIO's come from the business not IT they then have a series of advisers that are IT competent. Something I call the parliament model. This is why outsourcing is so common, sometimes they listen to vendors with nice lunches more than their advisers.
The new Office:
