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Reply With QuoteI did not like it when my home and means of making a living were at the same location.
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Vice President
Nothing in this particular initiative would hurt me but this kind of thing is probably happening all over. The company I work for already has tens of thousands of employees in India and many of them do the kind of work I do. Not as well of courseOriginally Posted by Imperator
. But for less money.
It's a really tough call. The jobs in IT that require an onsite presence are more and more becoming just monkey work. Even without offshoring, one knowledgeable guy per region can usually maintain all the important systems with the help of "hands" at each site that just plug things in, cycle power, swap parts etc. Then that one guy can travel within the region when urgent circumstances demand a skilled person onsite to resolve a crisis. Meanwhile project work and research into new solutions is increasingly being done only at central headquarters type locations and then imposed on outliers. So it's no longer necessary - or even desirable - to have people at satellite locations or satellite regions who are capable of delivering solutions or evaluating long term strategies. This is part of a longstanding effort by many businesses to standardize IT and reduce costs. I can't really complain about it because those businesses often hire the company I work for to implement that model and so far I have always managed to be one of the people who is "leveraged" and not one of those whose job is "virtualized".
What's making this decision so tough is that the local onsite job is for a non IT company for whom I will never be anything more than an unloved and expensive (in their opinion) distraction from their line of business. While staying with my company where I am the guy who delivers the goods and generates the income increasingly means working from home and being deployed across accounts.
Obviously I'm grateful that I will have a job at all and even more that I will be able to have some say about which job. But this is turning out to be the toughest job choice I've ever had to make.
"You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream."
Frank Zappa
Legend of USPO
I did not like it when my home and means of making a living were at the same location.
Take a good hard look, it's coming.
President
In all seriousness...you need to get into a whole other line of work.
I was an MIS for 6 years, between myself and one other guy taking care of about 22 servers and about 150 workstations.
I got out, and it is very fortunate I did - not only do I make over 4 times what I did then - but the corporation merged a number of servers into enterprise systems that are ran by a central IT dept 600 miles away....my old job disappeared, along with about 20 others at other locations.
In one way or another general IT support is a dying field.
You need to leave the field or get specialized in some aspect of it.
You are the one person in this world who will live according to the choices you make. Live life like there is a tomorrow.
Vice President
Long term you are right. I think specialization will be my avenue and I'm working with VMWare Citrix and general cloud computing service offerings to try to find my long term niche there. Leaving the field is not really an option at my age. I have no formal education, not much in the way of people skills, and I pretty much bullshitted my way in to this field in the beginning. I loathe mgmt and sales jobs (no value judgement there just a personal quirk) so I think it's going to have to be IT or flipping burgers for me until retirement. And that's OK.
Unless of course my pottery suddenly becomes a hot item and looks like it could support me. Then I'll grow my hair and beard long and just wear overalls every day. I could live with that too.
"You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream."
Frank Zappa
Secretary of Defense
Sounds awesome. What kind of pottery do you do?
"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort." -- Robert E. Heinlein
Vice President
Wheel thrown functional pieces. Gas and electric fired. Nothing artistic strictly craft. I'm a rank beginner still but I have progressed to the point where I'm not embarrassed to give pieces as gifts and a couple of them have sold in fundraisers for our local art museum. It started when my wife got me in to a beginner class at the local pottery studio as a christmas present a couple years ago. Now I'm hooked. Recently I bought an old kickwheel and then found an electric kiln that was gathering dust in someone's garage and I'm setting up part of my basement as a studio. I was only kidding about ever being good enough to make a living at it but I would do it in a second if it was actually possible.
"You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream."
Frank Zappa
Vice President
Whatever you do, don't mention that someone in Mumbai can do it for less.
Vice President
Believe me it's no secret.
But on the topic of things you shouldn't say during a job interview a coworker of mine is in transition too but his job is moving to Dell and he won't receive an offer from our present employer. During his interview with dell he claims he actually told the recruiter he would rather have stayed with our current company or moved to the company whose offices we work in but that if dell was his only choice he would accept a job with them. Funny thing is this guy is so oblivious I think he might really have said that. Good technician if you need someone to follow a script to the letter time after time or if you need someone to execute precise instructions over the phone. Those skills are more rare than you might think. But he makes even me look like mr socially competent when it ocmes to anything involving unscripted human interaction
"You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream."
Frank Zappa
President
That reminds me of a friend who had a job selling auto parts online. He got fired for not showing up to work on time. In other words, he was too lazy to wake up and walk from his bedroom to his home office that was only 6 feet away. :rolleyes:
Last edited by hairballxavier; 08-04-2010 at 09:17 PM.
Secretary of State
Reading through this thread has given me a realization that, even though our politics are polar opposites, we share some common ground. Years and years ago, when I struck out on my own (best decision that I ever made, for multiple reasons, not the least of which was financial), I grew a beard and let my hair grow - just because I could.
Anyway, for what it is worth, I believe that in this economy, job security for you would be the overriding factor, and that would be with the position taking care of the health care company.
As a side note, if you could find a business partner that is good at the things which you are not, then your own gig might be the best answer of all.
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac H Tiffany (1819)
President
I agree. Don't give them the idea. That was my first thought. But aside from that, why worry that the job will go overseas anyway. We live in a day when computer prople will change jobs many times. I think it is the nature of the job. my son is a programmer and he and his friends have all moved around far more than anyone I know. Besides, it is a job that just anyone can't do. There will always be a job out there. Everything can't end up in India. And that practice is going to come home to haunt a lot of businesses. Recently I had trouble with an appliance and had not checked out the company befpre buying because the name was well known. It was a nightmare and I spent $200 on the phone with a company in Manilla. It's the last purchase I ever make from that company and if I ever have to call a repair person again, I will forgo that, throw the thing over the hill and buy one from an American company. I can't be the only one. I just can't be.
Governor
I also work from home and travel quite alot. It is a major cultural shift to work from home and sometimes I feel I would be more productive if I worked in the office because of it has some support capabilities. I am not worried about out sourcing but it could happen however that trend seems to have slowed down. Outsourcing can be difficult especially in the case of specialized knowledge which you seem to have concerning the setup of your current company.
You'd be surprised how much it can drag you down if you let it. By about week 3, I wasn't getting out of bed before noon and taking at least 2 naps a day. It's all good now, found my rhythm.
Moderator
I never did 'find my rhythm' which is way I need an office.
I really like being home with my dogs, they were my motivation.
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