Outsourcing

I had lunch today with a few people from my previous job. I haven't seen them in quite a while, but they're working for the company I'm at now, and now that my department has moved to the main headquarters, we had a chance to get together and catch up on all the people we used to work with.

We're all in IT (used to be called DP until they new-and-improved the name), and it's getting pretty dismal out there. One of the guys mentioned the dreaded word, "outsourcing." That's the word that got so much negative press during the 2004 presidential campaign. It became a word that people could only say if they followed it immediately by spitting on the ground. But when he said it this time, it was to point out that the outsource companies in India and China are finding that they need Americans to do a lot of the work.

Meanwhile, the job-loss issue that I see over and over in IT is not outsourcing, but corporate mergers. When two companies merge, nearly all of the headquarters departments at the company being taken over are dissolved. A corporation only needs one payroll department, one accounting department, one IT department. A merger takes two of each of these (and more) departments and throws one of them out on the street.

Over the course of my career (25+ years) I have seen many, many more people downsized or merged out the door than I've seen outsourced. Forget the "peril" of outsourcing. It's corporate consolidation that's the bigger threat.