The Outsourcing Trend:
Merely a Part of Globalisation…
Even though it is an important aspect in the current IT state of affairs, the outsourcing process is not about to turn UK in a country with no need for IT specialists.
The actual situation is by no means as bad as maybe some would lead you to believe. Nearly a million individuals work in the IT industry in UK and this has been the situation for some three years now. Advertisements for available IT working places increased by 22% in the first part of 2004 and the unemployed affect only 3.6% of IT job professionals, in comparison to the national average of 4.8%.
Besides, each individual’s career lies in his/her own hands now more than ever, which is something some of us may have been slightly aware of, but which is now stressed by the global vacancies in IT resources. Over 1/3 of the UK employers with such resources simply cannot find the people who have the right kind of mixture of IT skills and business know-how, but nonetheless, opportunities are available.
Some say about a future Britain as a derelict countryside populated by waiters and hairdressers only. How does one come about forming such views? Have we actually looked closely to demographic data, employment researches or skills requirement figures?
We can only feel dismayed when these rumours and prejudices are shouted out as some fatidic prophecy by people who really should keep some balances in the statements they make. It is rather an essential argument and hence it should not be treated easily in snobbish tavern chitchat regarding outsourcing to the level on which fiction becomes a fact.
We are the witnesses of a specific growth in the globalisation process, because of the simplicity by which the internet, for instance, allows us to communicate today. UK has some five times the amount of people involved in IT as India has dealing with IT offshoring. The outsourcing trend remains a little fraction of the global money spent in IT services.
The number of the unemployed in the field of IT is rather low and actually decreasing, while the number of advertised jobs is on the upper curve. We do not deny the importance of outsourcing, but the bare facts and figures available can’t be set into question – offshoring does not imply the dissolution of IT in western countries and there is still a tremendous need for specialists in this field of interest.
It is also true that the specialists to come will have to be somewhat more skilled than your average Java coder, since that is something you can find almost anywhere in the world. What is need now is a clever combination between good business skills and serious IT knowledge. Knowledge is a valuable asset, at least for those who can take advantage of their own endowments.
Criticism addressed to outsourcing is really rather preposterous, since we cannot walk back to the Iron Age or Antiquity. Not taking the major difference that the internet brought about would be clearly suicidal in the business world of today.
