Will the IT industry last in Ireland?

billsteersnose

Anyone who keeps their eye on the current trends in the computer and IT sector in Ireland will certainly know of the increasing amount of companies outsourcing their IT support, and in some cases development also, to India and central Europe. Although the obvious cost savings for such moves cannot be denied, are we looking at a situation that will eventually fold the IT industry in Ireland? Or worse still, will it force the majority of our skilled IT workers to find work abroad? Is it time for a career change or is it time to buy a plane ticket?

rick_fantastic

since when is IT Support considered "skilled" work. Anybody can work as a 1st level support agent with a couple of weeks training.

the only thing being outsourced is IT Support and programming on a lesser level.

There is loads of jobs in IT in ireland and will be for the foreseeable future IMHO.

billsteersnose

I know what you mean, yeah. I should have been a bit clearer. If you look at the IT industry, there are IT support jobs and IT development jobs. The IT support stuff can be anything from telephone support to the support of mainframes and banking systems. It all comes under IT support, and when a company decides to outsource, it all goes to India.

Dilly1

Dell have just finished building a 600,000 sq foot complex in Poland, which is larger than there place in Limerick, I wonder, does this mean they are packing up and moving to Poland where they can half their wage bill.
I think with more and more Europeans making learning English as their main priority we are going to become more vunerable and less competative. Intel have record global losses this year. The CEO has already warned that they may not be in Ireland for ever, if they left Leixlip it would kill the area. The same with Limerick.

seamus

rick_fantastic wrote:

since when is IT Support considered "skilled" work. Anybody can work as a 1st level support agent with a couple of weeks training.

the only thing being outsourced is IT Support and programming on a lesser level.

There is loads of jobs in IT in ireland and will be for the foreseeable future IMHO.

Let's be fair here. There's bonafide I.T. support and then there's "reading from a script for the answers and if you can't find it, pass it to someone with knowledge". It's the latter which is being outsourced.

There will always be a market for proper support, especially from small businesses without a dedicated I.T. team. I have yet to hear of any company outsourcing proper servers and network support to unskilled teams in India or the likes.

damnyanks

Worked at a huge bank who tried to move IT and confirmation work to India. It's failing miserably in EMEA & North America. These are meant to be skilled people, personally I found that any teams I dealt with in India were great if you told them what exactly to do.

This was running a project with the development team based in India. they made some serious cock-up's that cost the project 2 months (Whole project was only meant to be 7 months long!)

billsteersnose

damnyanks wrote:

Worked at a huge bank who tried to move IT and confirmation work to India. It's failing miserably in EMEA & North America. These are meant to be skilled people, personally I found that any teams I dealt with in India were great if you told them what exactly to do.

Yeah. This is the sort of outsourcing I'm talking about. HP have done it Bank Of Ireland on a very large scale and large number of other companies have done it aswell.

damnyanks

Personally I'm not too bothered - if people wish to limit themselves to one task alone (Development or support work) then you are asking for trouble.

No such thing as a job for life.

billsteersnose

Yeah, I kind of had the same opinion too. Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Alun

damnyanks wrote:

Worked at a huge bank who tried to move IT and confirmation work to India. It's failing miserably in EMEA & North America. These are meant to be skilled people, personally I found that any teams I dealt with in India were great if you told them what exactly to do.

I've had experience with this too. Maybe it's a culture thing, but if you specify something in the design that's either obviously plain wrong, a bit ambiguous or illogical they'll just go ahead and code it that way without question. A development team in Europe would probably pick something like that up and query it before committing to code.

LoGiE

I don't think so. In my opinion when support is outsourced it leads to a huge drop staff satisfaction. These guys can read a script but if your problem deviates from said scipt it's back to deskside support to sort it out. The end result is the user who doesn't know anything about PC's has wasted two hours trying basic stuff like checking cables are in tightened etc. when an in house tech would sort it ion five minutes. In my opinion the pendulum will swing back the other way in a couple of years and outsourcing will be out of style due to costs....

Heathen

damnyanks wrote:

Personally I'm not too bothered - if people wish to limit themselves to one task alone (Development or support work) then you are asking for trouble.

No such thing as a job for life.

your dead right man, i have learned thi the hard way...
i have been left go from my last 3 jobs in a row.. plus 2 of the jobs i used to work in years ago anre soon going also...

i worked in IT/ manufacturing/ logistics and many more fields and all of them are falling appart here..
so im gonna do something i shuld have done 10 years ago.. im gonna try get a trade.. just a few things i need to sort first to make sure i can live on the tiny wages of an apprentice

but yer right.. if you limit yerself to one field in a certain industry its only a matter of time.. at least with a trade i can go anywhere.. i know a trade aint for everyone but it suits me and my lifestyle so im gonna make a go for it