Leadership By Numbers

Category Management
BusinessWeek has a write up on "The Return of the Outsourced Job," certainly a divisive topic in a recession. What does this mean for your job ? Outsourcing occurs in a variety of forms, from H1-B work visas to off-site data centers. Iowa Senator, Chuck Grassley, and Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders, have taken the offensive tack for trimming back H1-B visas, an action that is seen by outsourcing executives as "a restrictive trade practice." The intent of the proposed legislation is to constrain employers from using H1-B guestworkers to replace employees that have suffered a layoff.

A Federal Reserve report indicates that the sort of outsourcing which purged IT departments of talent is no longer seen as cost-effective (or politically appropriate). But, chief financial officers are still keen on balancing their workforce with a lean staff, augmented by outsourcing resources for at least the next 32 months.

Despite the downturn in H1-B usage, IT professionals are still in a difficult job market. The Janco 2010 IT Salary Survey gives a listing of headline summaries:

• Layoffs have focused on middle management and IT support staff
• Enterprises that have cut costs in lieu of laying staff off are now planning to institute a round of layoffs in order to meet 'their numbers' for 2010
• Companies are continuing to reduce the benefits provided to IT professionals.
• There now is a surplus of seasoned IT professionals available.  For the second time in less than ten years, retirements are being put off because of the downturn in the stock market and the resultant reduction in savings available to support IT professionals as they retire.  Added to this is an influx of retirees who are looking to get back into the job market due to of the massive reduction in their investment portfolio.

This bleakness frames a specific IT population, as well as suggests some opportunities. Organizations are going to continue to flatten out their management to line-workers ratio, so being skilled in technologies important to the company is essential. And, there is the possibility of jumping in front of the outsourcing parade, giving leadership to "cloud computing, managed services and Saas."  

It's workable for there to be on-premise management for hosted, cloud-based, resources. Google, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco are marshaling vast armies of technology into the cloud. I'm looking hard at everything from VDI for the client, to federated directories between a cloud-hosted service and on-premise servers.

But the most important survival characteristic for 2010 is not about techie skills, it's about working with techies:  having the ability to handle morale issues is going to be the single most significant work trait. There is nothing vaguely cloudy about keeping a positive focus; work hard, make friends.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, outsourcing, h1-b