Outsourcing Developer's Job
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Has anyone been through a cycle or outsourcing at their company? UPS is in the process of outsourcing coding, unit testing and integration testing to India. They are starting with 10% of projects as pilot phase. For most of the developers on my project, that's the part of development that we enjoy. We put up with requirement, testing and design meetings and tasks, just so we get to write code. Just wandering what we have to look forward to, and if it is worth staying and waiting it out. One of our best developers has left already and looks like others are testing the water.
The writing is on the wall, dude. Start looking now. And to management everywhere contemplating trashing your company for short-term gains in profitability - companies are built on the back of quality product. Quality product is designed and produced by quality employees. Treating the people who build your product as a disposable commodity, replaceable at a whim on the basis of cost, is a sure way of ruining a company. Just ask HP about their experience with Fiorina.
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Which, if they're offshoring solely on the basis of unit labour cost, they will most likely do.
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And then you can return on a consultancy basis to clear up the mess
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And then you can return on a consultancy basis to clear up the mess
And possibly inherit several more gigabytes of incomprehensible VB that you won't be allowed to rewrite :^)
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Has anyone been through a cycle or outsourcing at their company? UPS is in the process of outsourcing coding, unit testing and integration testing to India. They are starting with 10% of projects as pilot phase. For most of the developers on my project, that's the part of development that we enjoy. We put up with requirement, testing and design meetings and tasks, just so we get to write code. Just wandering what we have to look forward to, and if it is worth staying and waiting it out. One of our best developers has left already and looks like others are testing the water.
What Dave said. If the outsourcing ultimately fails, you will be left with a mountain of crap code to fix. If the outsourcing succeeds, you will be laid off. Either way, the first to leave get the best choices.
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What Dave said. If the outsourcing ultimately fails, you will be left with a mountain of crap code to fix. If the outsourcing succeeds, you will be laid off. Either way, the first to leave get the best choices.
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And possibly inherit several more gigabytes of incomprehensible VB that you won't be allowed to rewrite :^)
Dear God no, I still remember with horror the form_load event in a VB app that had been shipped out to India, it contained over 5000 lines of code, including labels and goto statements. While this would have been bad enough in itself, this code was called from all over the application because it contained big chunks of application logic. The thing used to spew modal and non-modal dialogs all over the place even when called from an event such as a socket connection leading to all sorts of messages about "cannot show non-modal messages while a modal dialog is displayed".
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What Dave said. If the outsourcing ultimately fails, you will be left with a mountain of crap code to fix. If the outsourcing succeeds, you will be laid off. Either way, the first to leave get the best choices.
Yeah, my biggest problem is that I have 17 years into a 25 year pension. Believe it or not UPS still offers old timers a pension. My wife can't work for health problems, and the pension pays out until both of us die. Just don't know if I can make it 9 more years the way things are going. It just started this year and we're already wading knee deep in it...
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Has anyone been through a cycle or outsourcing at their company? UPS is in the process of outsourcing coding, unit testing and integration testing to India. They are starting with 10% of projects as pilot phase. For most of the developers on my project, that's the part of development that we enjoy. We put up with requirement, testing and design meetings and tasks, just so we get to write code. Just wandering what we have to look forward to, and if it is worth staying and waiting it out. One of our best developers has left already and looks like others are testing the water.
Isnt UPS a government agency?
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Yeah, my biggest problem is that I have 17 years into a 25 year pension. Believe it or not UPS still offers old timers a pension. My wife can't work for health problems, and the pension pays out until both of us die. Just don't know if I can make it 9 more years the way things are going. It just started this year and we're already wading knee deep in it...
Dude. Face reality. It's tough giving up the pension, I know, being of tremendously advanced age myself... But given your own description of the rapidity with which this is happening, your position is not going to be there for another 9 years. It's a lot easier finding a job when you still have one; if you get laid off, at your age, you will have a VERY difficult time finding another position.
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Dear God no, I still remember with horror the form_load event in a VB app that had been shipped out to India, it contained over 5000 lines of code, including labels and goto statements. While this would have been bad enough in itself, this code was called from all over the application because it contained big chunks of application logic. The thing used to spew modal and non-modal dialogs all over the place even when called from an event such as a socket connection leading to all sorts of messages about "cannot show non-modal messages while a modal dialog is displayed".
Reminds me of an asp project I worked on that was partially offshored. There were a couple of great guys on that team, surrounded a bunch of talentless dross and a douche-bag manager. Unsurprisingly both the talents moved to the US. The standard page consisted of 2 methods, copied and pasted naturally: 1000 line plus page load, and a 500 line plus page unload. Average cyclomatic complexity: Over 5000.
10110011001111101010101000001000001101001010001010100000100000101000001000111100010110001011001011
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Isnt UPS a government agency?
You're thinking USPS.
10110011001111101010101000001000001101001010001010100000100000101000001000111100010110001011001011
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Has anyone been through a cycle or outsourcing at their company? UPS is in the process of outsourcing coding, unit testing and integration testing to India. They are starting with 10% of projects as pilot phase. For most of the developers on my project, that's the part of development that we enjoy. We put up with requirement, testing and design meetings and tasks, just so we get to write code. Just wandering what we have to look forward to, and if it is worth staying and waiting it out. One of our best developers has left already and looks like others are testing the water.
On the bright side, are you a good developer? Do you have good communication skills? Can you turn this into an opportunity to take a lead/management position. Your company needs people to manager the offshore groups technically and manegrial wise and that person may be you.
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You're thinking USPS.
10110011001111101010101000001000001101001010001010100000100000101000001000111100010110001011001011
oops!
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Isnt UPS a government agency?
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On the bright side, are you a good developer? Do you have good communication skills? Can you turn this into an opportunity to take a lead/management position. Your company needs people to manager the offshore groups technically and manegrial wise and that person may be you.
Well, they haven't even bothered to tell us what career paths are available now, or even sat down with us individually and listened to our concerns. The only thing we know is, the developer paths will start drying up. UPS is already bloated at the mid-level manager position, so not sure what will be available there. For now, giving direction to the offshore developers is our main task (training them now). As far as skill go, I got started late and this is my only developer job, out of college. I can hold my own in C/C++, but not sure of new stuff. I taught myself .net (vb/c#), java and wcf, but not sure I could impress anyone in an interview. I suck at web development. I can force my way through it, but the results aren't pretty. So I guess that's why I'm apprehensive about leaving. The stress and mgmt stupidity is starting to affect me outside work, as well as on the job (had it out with my manager last week, in a meeting. I won that one, but it wasn't pretty), so I'm starting to think about looking elsewhere.
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UPS (United Parcel Service) is private. The USPS (United States Postal Service) is government-run.
Thanks for the clarification
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The writing is on the wall, dude. Start looking now. And to management everywhere contemplating trashing your company for short-term gains in profitability - companies are built on the back of quality product. Quality product is designed and produced by quality employees. Treating the people who build your product as a disposable commodity, replaceable at a whim on the basis of cost, is a sure way of ruining a company. Just ask HP about their experience with Fiorina.
God she's horrible. She now wants to run for a seat in California. Like a few thousand people still don't remember being laid off so she could get another jet... She ran that company to the point where it was nearly dead and then blamed her being thrown out on sexism. My wife got a laptop when Fiorina was in charge. PoS won't even boot anymore cause the design was so bad the board fried from stardard use. Being told to get a household fan and have it pointing at the keyboard so the keys won't burn your hands while it is running by a one of their tech tells me something bad.
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Yeah, my biggest problem is that I have 17 years into a 25 year pension. Believe it or not UPS still offers old timers a pension. My wife can't work for health problems, and the pension pays out until both of us die. Just don't know if I can make it 9 more years the way things are going. It just started this year and we're already wading knee deep in it...
app1dak wrote:
17 years into a 25 year pension
Don't count your chickens before they hatch. All sorts of things can happen before that time (as you're seeing now), don't stay at a job just because you might get something good down the road. <Anecdote> This isn't quite the same, but a while back I worked at an employee-owned company (only employees and retirees were allowed to own stock) and so many people there were long-timers looking forward to retirement on the piles of stock they'd bought over the years. Then the company spun off our division and required that we sell back the stock we had (I didn't have much, but it had tripled in value since I'd gotten it) -- leaving all those long-timers with huge unexpected tax bills. The lesson is that even if you want to stay with the company a long time, the company may not want to keep you for a long time. Also, don't put all your eggs in one basket. </Anecdote>
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Well, they haven't even bothered to tell us what career paths are available now, or even sat down with us individually and listened to our concerns. The only thing we know is, the developer paths will start drying up. UPS is already bloated at the mid-level manager position, so not sure what will be available there. For now, giving direction to the offshore developers is our main task (training them now). As far as skill go, I got started late and this is my only developer job, out of college. I can hold my own in C/C++, but not sure of new stuff. I taught myself .net (vb/c#), java and wcf, but not sure I could impress anyone in an interview. I suck at web development. I can force my way through it, but the results aren't pretty. So I guess that's why I'm apprehensive about leaving. The stress and mgmt stupidity is starting to affect me outside work, as well as on the job (had it out with my manager last week, in a meeting. I won that one, but it wasn't pretty), so I'm starting to think about looking elsewhere.
The best way to protect your job is to be needed. You have worked for your company for a long time. You know the product. You add value to them. Stress blinds people. Take a step back, cool down, listen to your management. Why did they hire the offshore developers? Is it only cost related? Do they wont to convert your product to a technology that requires skills that the local team doesnt have? What is it? How fast can you become an expert in it? be friendly with your manager. Tell them your plans. be willing to go to take a course in whatever direction your company is taking. offer to share the expense with your compant. Even if you had to leave the company you are C/C++ developer with many years of experience. You are not going to starve anytime soon.
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God she's horrible. She now wants to run for a seat in California. Like a few thousand people still don't remember being laid off so she could get another jet... She ran that company to the point where it was nearly dead and then blamed her being thrown out on sexism. My wife got a laptop when Fiorina was in charge. PoS won't even boot anymore cause the design was so bad the board fried from stardard use. Being told to get a household fan and have it pointing at the keyboard so the keys won't burn your hands while it is running by a one of their tech tells me something bad.
ragnaroknrol wrote:
She now wants to run for a seat in California.
I know, I saw that! Unreal. And not to drag politics into a Lounge thread, but that had to be one of the most telling moves of the McCain campaign, when Fiorina started appearing on the stage with McCain, billed as one of his principal economic advisors. Based on the solid credentials of ruining a once great company... speaks volumes about McCain's grasp of business and social realities. X|