Greg Stigers hits the spot about outsourcing overseas.
I now work for CGI in England, having been hired by IMRGlobal a year ago.

IMR got the Y2K contract for Schroders on an offshore (India) basis and did
well enough to
get an onsite support contract for 30 staff afterwards.

We also had an offshore facility doing exactly the sort of work Greg
describes -
 standardising JCL error messages, increasing Quiz report limits, but not
doing
 it on the cheap. Indian project leaders come over for 3 month stays in
England,
 learning standards, culture (English culture - there's an oxymoron) & the
sort of
 test results that convince an English user.
Even so it has sometimes been an uphill struggle getting everything done in
the "right"
way.

Now at Schroders over half our staff are Indian; some over for a couple
of years, some for ever, all on fair English salaries.
And of course they're very clever. The effort required to get a job like
this weeds out
 all but the most clever & determined graduates.
But there is as everywhere a chill wind blowing; we're doing the same work
with 19 people today that we did with 22 when I joined last February, and
our voluntary staff turnover has dropped from 15% p.a. to 0%.

 But if we're all in favour of globalisation in world markets, including the
use of sanctions from the WTO to prevent people buying locally for
"cultural" reasons, we really can't exclude the labour market, can we?

Dave Heasman



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