Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Education

Outsourcing you

“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.

br />
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.

Editor Redactie

Do you have a question or comment about this article?

delta@tudelft.nl

Comments are closed.