Indian outsourcing of IT jobs gets massive backlash in UK
http://articles.economictimes.indiat...an-outsourcingIndian outsourcing of IT jobs is once again in the limelight, after a week-long IT debacle at Royal Bank of Scotland andNatwest, that left customers locked out of their accounts for a week, is estimated to cost the bank a large chunk of cash in fees.
Shares slumped 9.1 %, meaning over £1.7billion was wiped off taxpayers' 82% stake in the bank since the problem started last Thursday.
RBS has cancelled its plush corporate hospitality expenses at Wimbledon, chief executive Stephen Hesterhas announced senior management will face the music, and the bank, which was bailed out by the UK government and is part taxpayer-owned, faces an FSA investigation.
Reports in the UK media peaked Wednesday quoting "bank insiders" as saying that the entire problem was kicked off by an inexperienced CA-7 IT operative at RBS' Hyderabad back office, who wiped out vast swathes of crucial data while performing a routine upgrade.
Ca-7, a routine banking software produced by Computer Associates, is reported to be at the root of the problem. According to some reports, RBS is considering legal action against CA, an American backbone It provider as well.
The link between an alleged inexperienced Indian in Hyderabad and a major meltdown of taxpayer value in the UK, has kicked off a massive backlash against outsourcing to India in the UK media.
As a senior Indian IT professional points out: "Most of the explosive reports are not in the financial or technical papers, but in the general media." In the midst of a double dip recession, while outsourcing may not be as bad a word in the UK as it is in US, local media is quick to look for a scapegoat to blame.
It's not scapegoating when it really was the problem in this case.
RBS replaced their experienced local IT staff with fuckwits from offshore. Said F'wits didn't know how to properly back out of a screwed up software upgrade and rooted a bank and p'd off millions of customers for over a week.
Gee, that outsourcing sure saved you heaps didn't it...
The biggest problem with outsourcing is that it is done to save money, so you don't get the top notch, or even middle tier, you go for the bargain shops. In India, and the rest of the world, they are bargains for a reason.
And that expensive in house staff ? they are expensive for a reason, you hired the best when you were staffing it yourself. In the end you get what you pay for.
Some of my calls to Oracle(SUN) support were so surreal that I was torn between manic laughter and devastated sobbing as I tried to resolve critical production issues.
The good Indian programmers are offered jobs in Europe and US.
So basically you are mostly outsourcing to the not so good .
This is something that falls on deaf ears, in my experience. I've worked with some excellent techs from India and KL, and these folks are not only working in a language other than their native tongue, they are doing tech in a foreign language, and on top of that have to try and decipher the various idioms, accents, colloliqisms, and random chatter that accompanies your typical tech call from an enduser that frequently shouldn't be allowed near a computer, much less work on one. But like all lowpaying jobs, you get folks learning and moving up, or folks that just don't care.Originally Posted by Al-Bundy
Inhouse support co$t$, and the folks that dwell where the air is thin, get a whole different level of support vs "joe user" who just has to suck it.
inexperienced staff don't feel the pressure of 1000's of people being able or not able to work based on your knowledge based decisions.
Some people don't really know the physical layout of systems, sites so don't get the impact.
IT has become very pigeon holed, this allows segments to be plucked out and sent to cheapest place in the world, while the rest of the staff don't understand how systems gel together.
If the escalation was properly handled then the team handling the issue look at fault - but if the guy doing the upgrade blew away huge amounts of data the restores could run to days. Maybe something in the backup system is not "fit for purpose" there.
When doing this kind of work, on mission critical transaction based systems, you put in place the backups and back-out procedures before you start. Modern servers and SANs all come with SNAP technology which allows nearly instantaneous backups.
My problem is with the "yes-men" middle management professional layers within the company outsourcing the functions. They are usually too gullible to accept the contracts that their peers in the outsourcing management teams give them. You frequently see the actual "augmented staff" coming in being not actually what was advertised. Your upper management says we can get three really good offshore guys for the price of one local/citizen, and that there will be no degradation in service. In the meantime, the managers/projectmanagers reporting to that upper management team end up trying to save money in their own budget by buying "less good resources" and suddenly you've got trouble.
My guess is that around 70% of all outsourcing projects fail due to weak implemented processes. I can't blame the guys from India if they aren't well integrated in the project.
Another thing is that India already has price problems. No wonder if you inflate wages around 10% a year.
For a short time Oracle/Sun used a call center in Columbia - very surreal - like I had dialed into a Cheech and Chong skit.
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