San Francisco uni IT bods to protest Tuesday over cuts, outsourcing Dozens of IT workers slated to be laid off from their jobs at the University of California, San Francisco are planning a protest this week. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) labor union says that it will be helping some of the 78 laid-off techies take part in a protest Tuesday outside the research university's …
People are just resources to be bought up then thrown away when cheaper ones are available.
Forget quality or long term cost - go cheap, then cash out your bonus and leave any mess behind.
IT is just computers. Any idiot can do it.
What's the problem?
Downvote button here \\ | //
"This reorganization is an unfortunate but necessary step to rein in IT costs, which have risen sharply," the UCSF spokesperson said. "The pressure is driven largely by the increased demand for specialized IT services, including the electronic medical record and the use of big data for research aimed at improving diagnostics and care for patients."
Hm. Central IT presumably absorbed the workload of embedded faculty IT from the biotechnology projects. Because if researchers have to provide their own IT, they include the costs of hardware and staff in grant applications, they recruit the workers themselves, they do it on the fixed term contracts associated WITH research grants. Seems a bit fishy to me, or at least something where lessons an be learned.
A down vote without any argument or reason why someone disagrees with what I said. I'm just trying to get to grips with what's going on in UCSF. Is this the start of something? Are there lessons to be learned? Is this the way forwards? Opinion seems to be against outsourcing IT support overseas etc.
But it sounds as if the IT department there is pretty huge, it's possible that it's simply grown too big over the years as projects were added, department sprung up etc. It happens surprisingly frequently in large organisations particularly when IT staff initially start as part of a department before being merged into the IT department later, I've seen that a couple of times over the years.
The problem here is they seem to be wanting to primarily reduce spend, but outsourcing tends not to do that from my experience and will always result in lower customer (staff) satisfaction and/or increased cost per completed incident/project.
Exactly. As was my point that for research computing, the staff operate on fixed contracts tied into the funding stream. If staff involved in research IT are centralised, then the organisational core takes on responsibility for them, swells, and then leaks as research projects (and funding) end but staff remain and are redeployed.
"I'm not a fan of outsourcing IT.. But it sounds as if the IT department there is pretty huge, it's possible that it's simply grown too big over the years as projects were added"
The Uni isn't downsizing, they're firing seventy eight techies and outsourcing their jobs to cheap labour in India. And as you say, it's a false economy as it leads to a lower quality service. They could fire seventy eight admin staff and nobody would notice.
"On their last day of work, pink-slipped employees will protest the University of California, San Francisco's decision to replace them with lower-paid workers from India"
"It is the first time a public university has ever offshored American information technology jobs, undermining its own mission to prepare students for high-tech careers."
"when IT staff initially start as part of a department before being merged into the IT department later, I've seen that a couple of times over the years."
The more common case is that departmental IT staff get the boot as central IT expand and take over, but central IT then find they need more than the original complement of departmental staff onsite to keep up with demand.
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