Time For Greysourcing?
from the focus-on-the-expertise dept
With all the talk about age discrimination in the tech field (and there's no doubt that it is an issue), and other complaints about offshoring or outsourcing of jobs, an opinion piece out of the UK suggests that those feeling the brunt of such things, might want to play up their experience difference and start offering "greysourcing" services. The idea is to get a bunch of experienced techies together, and then be able to pitch services to companies by showing thousands of combined years of service focusing on whatever technology they need. While, certainly, some projects will still need recent college grads or newer technologies -- there are still plenty of older technologies that are important in various projects. Being able to offer a wealth of experience in those technologies should be a selling point rather than a worry. However, the trick is in teaming up to offer the combined experiences, rather than just applying for individual jobs.
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This is exactly what I and some associates do...
It rocks. Oh, and it pisses off our old employers no end. Serves them right for laying us all off.
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Yo this is bill u homey g's
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If the older generation has something to offer, then the companies in question will have something more to worry about than the legalities of their decisions. I think "may the best man win" is appropriate here.
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But Resourcing Companies, HR and Senior IT managem
Try getting past an IT resourcer to a client if you are the wrong side of thirty, let alone 40.
This is a pity as the best teams are balanced with skills and depth of business experience. It's all well and good having a team of young blades armed with six months experience of the newest tool on the block if they have no real idea of the mindsets of the end users in the sector they are working in. It might work for extreme programming teams working on some new web 2.0 app but it is unlikely to work so well developing an order processing system in a lumber yard for example.
Some skills are transferrable, programming is programming (whatever the language) but learning the nuances of business can only come with time however talented the individual is.
A simple analogy is, would you trust a firm of lawyers/attournys fresh out of college or an established firm with a mixture of new and experienced employees on the books?
You would hardly tell an experinced attourney that he couldn't practise law simply because he didn't have case experience with the latest IP legislation.
This IT business is a very broad church and yeah some of the members of it do themselves no favours but the shortsightedness of the employers will lead to genuine long term problems once this planet is short of cheap IT resources, a day that is approaching increasingly rapidly.
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Grey Sourcing
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riiight
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