Customer Reviews

OUTSOURCE: Competing in the Global Productivity Race

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I started reading this book with no high expectations. Yourdon is best known (notorious?) for the loud and repeated claims about the Y2K crisis, prior to 2000. He was hilariously wrong, though he certainly did well out of consulting and convening conferences over it. So I anticipated more of the same puffery here.

But gradually and grudgingly, I raised my opinion of this book. There are no shrill polemics. No hysterical call to arms. Instead, you get a sober (and sombre) study of offshoring. Yourdon goes calmly through the driving forces. He points out that the ongoing improvements in computer hardware (Moore's Law) and communications show no signs of abating. It is these which have made offshoring economic to date. And if those trends continue, offshoring can become even more persuasive.

Yourdon suggests that for you as an individual, try to quantify your productivity if you are an American information worker. He pointedly does not restrict his audience to IT. Then see if your productivity justifies your higher cost, relative to an offshore worker. If not, you should upgrade or even change professions. He makes a very cynical but cogent observation that if you do not quantify your own productivity, someone else might do it for you, like an offshore vendor, who will not have your interests at heart.

For an American company, Yourdon recommends a focus on Business Process Engineering. The book is thankfully short on acronyms and buzzwords. But it does advocate trying a radical improvement in your workflow, in order to stave off offshoring.

"OutSource" is a fast-read book that rapidly covers all of the
important ground regarding outsourcing today. Useful directly to
us knowledge workers, the book is also a must-read for any
business manager in just about any American company.
Yourdon points out a vast array of just-being-considered for
outsourcing disciplines. He also carefully goes through the
various issues of quality and long-distance management and how to
embrace these challenges. Although outsourcing is not new,
elements of the game are changing and the foreign fields remain
fertile and ever-suitable to a growing list of activities.
Yourdon explores government's torn role in this fate and he
continually provides both the knowledge worker (us) and our
employers with insight and advice. The book is a must read for
any modern worker as job-fluidity will only increase with
technology and we need to know how to cope and how to exploit.

Outsource: Competing in the Global Productivity Race is a persuasive overview of the outsourcing phenomenon. Author Edward Yourdon's premise is that outsourcing is not going to disappear anytime soon, and -- given the success that many companies have begun enjoying during the past few years -- it is not likely to level off anytime soon. Outsourcing is now a mainstream phenomenon and is affecting more and more workers, in nearly every knowledge-based sector. In a nutshell, this is Yourdon's book of how to prepare yourself for the inevitable."

For those Americans who would hope their representatives in Washington would get involved and pass laws to stem the flow of jobs overseas, there is little that Washington will likely do to help knowledge-based workers whose jobs are in danger of being offshored. While the loss of jobs is a crisis to many of us, Yourdon makes note of the oil crisis of the early 1970s and a speech that Jimmy Carter made in April 1977. Carter said "If we fail to act soon we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions." Nearly 30 years after Carter made that speech, oil is at an all-time high and nothing has been significantly done to reduce our dependency on oil; or to find a better solution.

If Congress is apathetic when it comes to an effective energy policy that affects an entire nation, it is clear that preserving the jobs of C and Java programmers is likely to be at the bottom of any congressman's to-do list. In 2005, national security, Medicare and Iraq are just a few of the issues that seem to be far more pressing to the nation than the loss of programmers.

The book is written about outsourcing in general, but has a heavy slant to programmers whose jobs have been outsourced to India. The prime advantage India has over other countries with cheap labor is a large base of workers that speak English. While the salaries in China, for example, are even lower than in India, the language barrier is significant.

The main claims of proponents of outsourcing are of increased productivity and major cost savings. Whether these claims are real is to a degree immaterial, as the perception among CIOs is that outsourcing has an immediate cost savings. This is primarily due to the fact that the salaries and benefit costs of overseas programmers are radically less than those of their U.S. counterparts.

From a productivity and efficiency perspective, many Indian firms are CMM level-5 certified, something that their U.S. counterparts can't attest to. At the end of the day, is better and cheaper code produced in Bangalore and Mumbai? Yourdon states that it is hard to find hard and fast answers. But with outsourcing the rage, there is the perception that Indian firms are more productive, formalized and efficient than their US counterparts is being accepted as fact. For many, perception is reality, and the reality is that jobs are being sent overseas by the thousands.

Outsource:Competing in the Global Productivity Race is written for (and beneficial to) anyone who feels that his job may be in danger of being outsourced. The book is well-written and pragmatic, and Yourdon notes that there are no simple answers to be found, nor are there any obvious choices. The book guides the reader who is working in a knowledge-based position to better determine where the trends in outsourcing are going and how to best save their job and simultaneously prepare for the inevitable. It is not that every knowledge-based job will be outsourced, but rather that the potential exists that every job could be outsourced. With that, it behooves everyone to get make sure they are prepared.

In 1992, Yourdon wrote Decline and Fall of the American Programmer. In the book, he predicted that U.S. programmers would "suffer the fate of the Dodo bird" as companies shifted jobs from American workers to those overseas to take advantage of lower pay, less labor regulations and higher productivity. Yourdon admits his prediction was partially incorrect. U.S. programmers have not gone the way of the Dodo bird and hiring is resuming; but in spite of everything, huge numbers of jobs are being sent overseas.

While Decline and Fall of the American Programmer was focused exclusively on technology workers, Yourdon writes that every knowledge-based job is vulnerable to being outsourced. From radiologists to tax preparers, telemarketers to architects, and more.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of Outsource is the composed manner in which Yourdon writes. Outsourcing is a controversial, political and extremely emotional topic, and Yourdon provides a balanced view of the outsourcing phenomena.

One of the solutions suggested to stemming the flow of jobs overseas is protectionist federal regulations. Yourdon believes that such measures are doomed to fail, in that you can't protect knowledge-based worked in the same way that steel and agriculture products can be protected. Yourdon admits that there might be some short-term benefits to a protectionist strategy, but will fail in the long-term. His view is that protectionism is simply blaming someone else for the existence of competition; and such an approach does not solve the problem. His solution, and the overall advice in the book, is to make each and every American knowledge worker more prepared to face competition from overseas.

Of the books 10 chapters, the most compelling is chapter 6, which provides seven strategies in which to deal with the threat of outsourcing. The first is to be proactive, with the last being to consider a career change. Yourdon does not promise and secrets or miracles in the chapter and attempts to provide some common, yet often overlooked, sense.

Outsource ends with the following quote: "I was taught very early that I would have to depend entirely upon myself; that my future lay in my own hands." This book shows you how.

Last night I finished the book Outsource: Competing in the Global Productivity Race by Edward Yourdon (Prentice Hall). I'm highly impressed with Yourdon's treatment of this subject.

Chapter list: Introduction; Key Factors Driving Outsourcing; Today's Situation in IT; Additional Forms of Outsourcing; Likely Trends for the Next Decade; Implications for the Individual; Implications for Companies Supplying Knowledge-Based Services; Implications for Companies Buying Knowledge-Based Products or Services; Implications for Government and Society; Conclusion; Index

Since outsourcing (especially off-shoring) is such an emotional subject, it's hard to find a book that doesn't quickly descend into histrionics and hand-wringing. And in the past, Yourdon has had a tendency to paint doom and gloom scenarios (like Y2K) and hype them. But in this book, the whole subject of outsourcing is treated in an analytical and realistic way. Yourdon accepts the fact that the American consumer wants cheap, high quality items, and that companies have to consider outsourcing to provide those products. When foreign knowledge workers can be found for a fraction of the cost of US workers, it's hard to ignore. So by acknowledging the reality of outsourcing, Yourdon moves on to what you can do as an individual to protect yourself.

To me, this is where the book shines. Yourdon lays out a number of steps that a knowledge worker in the US can take to protect their career and weather the trends that are becoming more common. This is the only (in my opinion) rational approach to take. You can yell and whine about how companies are unfair, but ultimately your career and ability to pay your rent is up to you. Taking Yourdon's advice may not stop you from being off-shored or outsourced, but you'll be ready for it if it does happen, and you'll be able to keep moving along with your life.

Recommended reading for everyone that earns their living by what they know...

I really liked the book's coverage of the issues and the consequences. I liked the comparison of government's stand on outsourcing to the Jimmy Carter energy plan. Retraining will not be enough. (Retrain for what?) Outsourcing will get bigger and affect more people and government will do nothing until it is too late for many. Author's bottom line, Look around and justify your job. Make sure your company can survive the new world. If it can't, change companies or jobs or go into business for yourself. Not a pleasant outlook but very realsitic. I'm glad I read the book before I am outsourced again.

A sobering and instructive review of the troubling outsourcing trend and it's implications for all knowledge workers in the US, UK and other developed nations. An entertaining and practical read of your risks and what you can do about them.

In the style of all of Yourdon's books, this is a practical, down-to-Earth read with positive value for those who have been outsourced and those who might be line for it and don't even know it. Another timely edition by this highly readable author.
Five stars!

This is basically an updated re-release of Decline and Fall of the American Programmer. I haven't read all of it yet. The outsourcing info is pretty good, but also somewhat simplistic.
The personal strategies for knowledge workers are very similar to Decline and Fall. It was surprisingly common knowledge. There was not alot of info on retraining strategies. Yourdon basically states the obvious recommendations of moving to a place with more jobs (rather than one plant towns) or getting out of the field, neither of which are great or innovative recommendations.
I found the recent two months' articles in CIO much more pertinent. They say that you should include more business training and specialization; that and analyst who knows the business is the job retained while programmers will either be temp/contract workers or outsourced. It also recommends getting an additional degree in biology or engineering, which will be the fastest growing fields for computer applications in the next ten years. These are real suggestions, rather than the typical silver bullets suggestions in the industry, or obvious ones like Yourdon's advice.
Also - some of the reviews on the cover of the book have some of the worst grammar I have ever seen.

I really enjoyed the observations and the illustrations. Yourdon explains the value proposition of outsourcing and then explores the impact of the phenomenon on various industries. I very much enjoyed the enlightening discussion.

He totally missed the impact of outsourcing on the ERP Universe (SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle etc). There is no mention of anything ERP anywhere in the book.

I was disappointed that Yourdon did not cover the IT industry in detail. It would have been great if he took a stab at navigating today's IT World and designated IT job roles that are easy targets for being outsourced, besides data entry jobs.

He has focused too much from the Mainframe Programmer's view point and assumed everyone can relate to it. I felt the advice to be too broad and generic.It is too high level, and does not have sufficient detail.

There are no diagrams, pictures or models of any kind in this book.It is just a straight up discussion on the topic. I would have liked to see a 4-quadrant distribution of various job roles just like Covey's Time Management Matrix.

He defines the problem clearly but is reluctant to go into the details or offer solutions. He just says we are all doomed and there are no guarantees no matter what you do. He does offer some general guidelines such as - work harder, be proactive, be prepared to relocate etc.

A few examples of how people have successfully handled the threat of outsourcing would have been nice.

Hope to see a more detailed coverage in the next book. This is a fascinating discussion that is far from over.

I use this information from the book quite frequently (as I do most with Yourdon series of books). The statistics by country and by discipline of when to use (and not use) outsourcing is really helpful. The highlights of tips and techniques identified aren't just hear-say, Ed backs them up with plenty of examples. This book is a MUST READ before anybody decides to dip into outsourcing.

OUTSOURCE was a great read. I recently have started my own business and this book gave great pointers on why outsourcing was for me. I definitely will recommend this book to anyone who has a business and they would like to save money or get goals accomplished faster without having to hire employees or waste current employee time doing work that can be done via outsourcing. I also recently found a site called ShortTask that allows you to put (sort of obviously) short tasks on the web for other users of the site to do, while saving you time. Depending on what your goals are they can be accomplished quite quickly, and it's nice because the website already has a pretty good user base that is willing to do these tasks. If you'd like the link is http://www.ShortTask.com . Again this book is definitely one of my favorites and if you are having second thoughts about purchasing, get rid of them!