“The phenomenon of technology outsourcing for cutting costs is becoming more relevant for TU graduates. All in all, we can agree that ‘outsourcing’ is here to stay for quite sometime and that we had better understand and cope with it, rather than let its complex implications affect us.
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In case you are yet to experience it firsthand, be aware that in today’s multinationals it is near impossible to not be touched by outsourcing. In developed economies, such as that of the Netherlands, it could entail losing your position to someone in India or China. While present day European labor laws still make this a bit tricky to accomplish, corporations have been steadily and successfully pushing for legal reforms in this area. Paradoxically, in so-called ’emerging economies’, being part of a subsidiary department of a European multinational generally seems to entail being forced through a growth curve without the necessary support structure.
While previously predominantly banal tasks were lined up for being shipped offshore, nowadays they include the so-perceived hardcore competencies. However, while senior management in Europe loves the prospect of cost cutting, middle managers are a lot more apprehensive about shipping key project tasks to offshore centers. I vividly recall my conversation with a lead designer at a major European multinational’s subsidiary in Bangalore. He was strongly urging me not to commit the same ‘mistake’ he had made by taking a designer’s position at the Indian subsidiary. ‘It’s been four years since our department was set up in Bangalore and we have yet to receive a single, meaningful work-package,’ he lamented. ‘We only get study projects which the Netherlands development center isn’t interested in undertaking.’
The result is a catch-22 situation: offshore teams don’t mature unless they receive major work-packages, and they will never get major work-packages until they prove their maturity.
Despite the above, the rat race to set up offshore subsidiaries in places like Bangalore is giving rise to some insane inflation. A funny example from my personal experience is when I was turned down for a vacancy for the Indian subsidiary within the same department, for the exact same position I held in the Netherlands, citing my lack of qualification and experience. Funnily enough, owing to my being at the European site, I was later a technical consultant to oversee and check the deliveries from the Indian division when we shipped a pretty mundane side-task to them. If that’s not inflation of the Indian talent pool and the job market, I don’t know what is! The long-term implication is a sad waste of talent and investment.
Nevertheless, the recent, increasingly foreign, majority stakeholders in Dutch multinationals are pressuring the need for outsourcing from the Netherlands. So, you had better understand this perplexing phenomenon and its implications for you in order to sketch-out a personal strategy to deal with it. Measures, such as specializing in a unique offshore or onsite key skill for your line of industry, could mean riding on this wave of opportunity instead of being sunk by it!”
Ramesh Chidambaram is from India. He is a recent MSc micro-electronics graduate of TU Delft and now works for Infineon Technologies A.G. in Austria.
“The phenomenon of technology outsourcing for cutting costs is becoming more relevant for TU graduates. All in all, we can agree that ‘outsourcing’ is here to stay for quite sometime and that we had better understand and cope with it, rather than let its complex implications affect us.
In case you are yet to experience it firsthand, be aware that in today’s multinationals it is near impossible to not be touched by outsourcing. In developed economies, such as that of the Netherlands, it could entail losing your position to someone in India or China. While present day European labor laws still make this a bit tricky to accomplish, corporations have been steadily and successfully pushing for legal reforms in this area. Paradoxically, in so-called ’emerging economies’, being part of a subsidiary department of a European multinational generally seems to entail being forced through a growth curve without the necessary support structure.
While previously predominantly banal tasks were lined up for being shipped offshore, nowadays they include the so-perceived hardcore competencies. However, while senior management in Europe loves the prospect of cost cutting, middle managers are a lot more apprehensive about shipping key project tasks to offshore centers. I vividly recall my conversation with a lead designer at a major European multinational’s subsidiary in Bangalore. He was strongly urging me not to commit the same ‘mistake’ he had made by taking a designer’s position at the Indian subsidiary. ‘It’s been four years since our department was set up in Bangalore and we have yet to receive a single, meaningful work-package,’ he lamented. ‘We only get study projects which the Netherlands development center isn’t interested in undertaking.’
The result is a catch-22 situation: offshore teams don’t mature unless they receive major work-packages, and they will never get major work-packages until they prove their maturity.
Despite the above, the rat race to set up offshore subsidiaries in places like Bangalore is giving rise to some insane inflation. A funny example from my personal experience is when I was turned down for a vacancy for the Indian subsidiary within the same department, for the exact same position I held in the Netherlands, citing my lack of qualification and experience. Funnily enough, owing to my being at the European site, I was later a technical consultant to oversee and check the deliveries from the Indian division when we shipped a pretty mundane side-task to them. If that’s not inflation of the Indian talent pool and the job market, I don’t know what is! The long-term implication is a sad waste of talent and investment.
Nevertheless, the recent, increasingly foreign, majority stakeholders in Dutch multinationals are pressuring the need for outsourcing from the Netherlands. So, you had better understand this perplexing phenomenon and its implications for you in order to sketch-out a personal strategy to deal with it. Measures, such as specializing in a unique offshore or onsite key skill for your line of industry, could mean riding on this wave of opportunity instead of being sunk by it!”
Ramesh Chidambaram is from India. He is a recent MSc micro-electronics graduate of TU Delft and now works for Infineon Technologies A.G. in Austria.
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