And yes, I'll say it: the banks had that many overpaid contractors as their internal IT was a huge pile of dead wood... and its nothing short of good to get rid of that. And if I am totally honest: even after all that cutting is there still quite some of that left.
On the rates: I fully agree, thats what happened. But to be fair were some IT contractors bizarrely overpaid. Back then did I know guys who where contracting at the same bank for a decade cashing in the premium for being a "flexible" contractor... that was just silly. If you make 200k+ on a job that isnt that stressfull, doesnt involve any risk, wasnt some secret niche and really in truth wasnt that technically challenging either... you know its probably not going to work forever.
There's quite a strong creative component to data science that I suspect will avoid automation for the time being. Consolidating the tools and libraries being employed will probably streamline things long before this happens.
Next time this is tried it might stick however.
The principle reason IMHO that outsourcing has had mixed, to disastrous, results is that many organizations lacked the skills to manage remote resources. I think we've all come across management who couldn't organize an orgy in a brothel and having direct access to resources in-house was the only way they could fumble their way though the management process.
After a year and a half of Covid a lot has changed and the companies that have done well during this period have done so because they had or could develop those remote management skills - and this could well translate to successful outsourcing in the future.
Of course that still doesn't address
1. The turnover of the outsource company's workers
2. Their competence
3. The fact that they deal with multiple clients simultaneously
4. The loss of knowledge of the client company's IT systems.
True, but in my experience was there another key issue which is also very visible thanks to covid. I was once witnessing an outsourcing project where a bank moved 3k jobs to India. The Sourcing and HR made sure that all the people over there were qualified. Lets just leave the typical stereotypes and discussions on those qualifications aside and assume the guys were technically all up to the job. The problem is that they have never worked in a bank (and if so is the banking sector in India probably quite different from a 1st world country). 100% of tech skills, literally zero domain knowledge. Several hours of time difference. Language issues were in my experience not an issue, but cultural differences were. Massively. Because the guys would say "yes" to any question you ask them... from "did you understand the task?" to "did you finish the job?" no matter what the actual answer was. Simply put: A reciepe for disaster. In an offshore set-up has every meeting to be formally planned and agreed, the simple "water cooler talk" where the IT would just shoot some questions to the business when needed did not happen for both the technical barriers as well as cultural ones. And none of that has changed.
I have managed teams based in India and got used to it. But it took quite some experience, cultural awareness and frankly a lot of management overhead to make it work. Most off-shoring projects I see still have the same unrealistic expectations of how everything is gonna get sooo cheap... and in 12 months the interfaces in CH will be burned out or quit the job.
I work for an IT services company where we have some near and offshoring projects that actually work and have been so for years. But it only works for very select companies who understand the effort, challenges and see it as a long term investment to make it work. Thats probably 10% or so of all the people trying...
Bill Gates' quote comes to mind:
None of that, except perhaps #3, is unique to outsourcing.
Absolutely. Anyone who's outsourced anything to India will have been driven insane by this; being told repeatedly everything is going swimmingly, only to face radio silence on the day of expected delivery.
These outsourcing problems we've come to expect are not going to vanish, however, in-house management may have improved as a result of Covid which will make outsourcing slightly more viable - so I'd probably amend my earlier comment to read it might stick a little bit more .
seems low to me. 120-150 would seem more average.
It's #1 for us, domain knowledge back to 0 with each turnover happening 1-2x in a year. #3 is real. #4 slowly happens but it does
Inshallah.
Yes, I've also had the Saudi experience...
MIQEF master program at HSG with 1.5 years of part-time internship experience (could be more until graduation). Around what level of salary can I expect if I look for jobs in the Zürich-Zug region? Is 100k a year realistic? (Finance, quant, data science roles)
Merged the thread as the exact same question was answered in 2021.
How about starting your post with "Dear forum, I would be very happy to hear from anyone with experience in my field. My current situation is...
Then close with "many thanks for any constructive feedback".
Your analytic skills may be top-notch, your emotional intelligence, however, is lacking.
My bad, completely forgot I asked this on this forum already
As it skipped your notice that things have deteriorated since you last asked the question....
https://fintechnews.ch/funding/finte...pile-up/56812/
https://www.theinformation.com/artic...-shutting-down
https://www.reuters.com/business/fin...sj-2022-11-21/
These are just a few headlines from Nov. alone. At this point anyone who is still willing to pay out 100k to a graduate with no track record is probably not likely to be around for very long.
Out of college your first concern should be to find a firm offering you a good opportunity to learn and get experience under your belt, regardless of what they pay, so long as you can survive and you'll be in a position to command the big salaries with the turn around comes, it always does but it will take a while.
The large multinationals are moving a lot of tech jobs in-house again, this is true. Only the house is not in Switzerland. These jobs are being "in-sourced" to low cost locations like Hungary, Poland, India, etc. We see a slight increase in Switzerland, but the vast majority is in lower cost locations.
Spain is also a popular new location for lower cost in-housing! Bratislava has also been now for some years.
I know Nestle has moved a huge chunk of its IT to Spain, a low cost location. But I don't think it was its first choice; I suspect it really wanted to move to India or some such. But didn't do so because none of its staff wanted to transfer there.
The reality of the relocation, they had pay to move a large group of IT professionals to a new location, so their choice of location had to be something reasonably western ultimately.
That said the banks have done the opposite, moving a large group Indian staff to here; paying them small change and cutting all their European IT staff; I know this for a fact bc I was one of the last to go. My department, over 100 employees was 98% Indian the time I left.
As for salaries, well I was earning 120K in 2001 at Nestle, and I got a 30K bonus at some point... that was 25 years ago. Sure I had about 12 years experience by that point, so maybe it wasn't that good a salary... checkout sites like this
https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm
I do think IT salaries in particular have fallen, driven down by [good enough] cheap labour. I also think standards have fallen along with it.
I have have no doubt that the MAX boeing fiasco for example that killed hundreds of people when 2 aircraft crashed after takeoff was caused by out-sourcing the development of said systems to "cheap" labour where they had little or no experience in developing fault tolerant solutions. This article has a different point of view, but is a clearly states that is what they did.
Outsourcing is alive and well in Switzerland in the pharma sector - senior executive staff with required medical education and background are being hired in India at my last company (where they have opened a second office). At my previous one, they offered my friend the job she had been working in on a rotation, but only if she moved to the UK and worked on a UK salary, but still working for “Global” in Basel. My entire team was moved to the same UK office 5 years ago and I don’t do what you call easily outsourced work. I can complement the work of my UK colleagues, but in India, you get what you pay for - even if you are working with people who have medical degrees.
With al the new regulations etc. it makes sense to remain within the EU as well. Things like consulting the new central credit register for consumer credit, data protection etc are all simpler to manage.