Two suggestions and a big question from the “Opportunities and Challenges for Outsourcing” panel at the recent annual
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan
CIO Symposium.
The suggestions:
1) Looking to quickly
staff up a small software development project on the cheap? (And let’s face
it, other than defense contractors and Massachusetts
state government, who isn’t?) Then take a look at an interesting alternative to
conventional outsourcing—Web-based body shops like oDesk, Guru, RentACoder and
Elance). A recent Inc. article nicely
lays out the value prop:
These sites, which work like eBay
or Match.com for small businesses looking to hire outsourced workers, offer
directories of hundreds of thousands of programmers in Russia, India, Ukraine,
Pakistan, Argentina—and the U.S. The contractors' profiles are quite detailed;
they typically include rankings and comments from former customers, work
history, skill level, and hourly rates. RentACoder even displays the number of
times a programmer has been involved in arbitration because of a dispute with
an employer.
At the MIT
conference, Gary Swart, CEO of ODesk, did a terrific job laying out
the growing appeal of businesses like his. “The SMB market has a
tremendous demand for flexible talent,” Swart said. It’s great for companies
that “needed it yesterday but don’t want to pay a lot but want to get started
quickly.” The company‘s business in the first quarter of 2009 was up a reported
105 percent over the same period in 2008.
A swing through the oDesk Website is impressive. Easy to
use, clear value. Regular payments and
clear metrics on deliverables make a win-win for freelancers and employers. The
latter can even pay with a credit cards (depending on your view of skunk works
in your organization, a good thing—or not). Adding additional talent is easy: Search,
point, click. The numbers look pretty good too:
For small projects, online coder marts are certainly easier
and cheaper than wheeling in outsourcing contracts the size of the Mexico
City phone book for your legal department. All in all, perhaps worth a look for ISVs, IT
consultants, project managers, even recent college grads.
2) Lost your IT
job? If you’ve still got credible
hands-on skills, see suggestion No. 1.
Were Rockwell and Orwell Right?
In a moment, the Question. And I think it’s a Big One. But first, here’s why I ask it:
One way oDesk
differentiates itself is by letting employers remotely monitor long-distance
temps. Freelance workers upload proprietary work management software that records
screenshots, mouse and keystrokes, and Webcam images. These are reported electronically
back to employers every 10 minutes. Every hour. Every day. oDesk explains it like this:
Manage Your Team:
Sergey and Christine log in when they are working.
George can literally see the work in their work diaries -- screenshots and memos are recorded six times an hour.
He knows his new hires are being productive and are on the right track.
George is amazed at the level of visibility!
A good idea, again depending on your viewpoint. As a hirer, it seems perfectly reasonable to
know if that that bright Ph.D. in Belarus
is working 30 minutes of your hour on his side project perfecting porno-bots or
napping.
In fact, Swart maintains, this “real-time visibility” is a
big hit with employers AND freelancers
because it shows the coders are doing what they’re getting paid for. (oDesk
also uses numerous other screening, checks and certifications to maintain
quality control.) And sure enough, a
slew of media stories, many on the company’s Website, include comments from
temps perfectly happy to have their every stroke and poke archived. Consider
this typical worker quoted in an IEEE Spectrum article “The All-Seeing Employer”:
“As I’m an independent developer, it was very invasive at first,” Cartwright
says. But he quickly got used to the screen shots and saw the flip side. ”I
like the accountability. Knowing that I was being monitored forced me to reduce
distractions and stay focused.”
Lots of quotes like that out there. Apparently, many teethed on Facebook, and The Truman Show and, of course, Big Brother are
perfectly comfortable playing and working in the LCD limelight. To them, it’s less “Big Brother,” more like
your big brother Odie. It’s all good.
Others are not so keen. Critics have called the monitoring
“e-slavery”, “Dickensian,” “Orwellian” and worse. To which I would add, “Rockwellian” too.
“This [harks] back to the
old-fashioned idea that you have to keep close tabs on your people or they will
steal you blind,” said Gordon Graham, a former president of the Professional
Writers Association of Canada whose own freelancing focuses on the software
industry.”
OK, so he’s a writer, and God knows
we have even lower expectations of their discipline than we do for coders.
Swart notes a) not everyone will be
comfortable with the service and b) freelancers can control the level of online
scrutiny and that the Webcam is optional.
Fair enough.
Now here’s the Question.
How closely should IT monitor
employee activity and productivity?
Yes, we’re talking about temp
coders here. But it could just as easily be your own in-house developers. Or
call center agents, help desk, underwriters, etc., etc.
It sounds like a high-minded,
philosophical question. But let’s face it: The way business, capitalism and the
global economy are evolving, the mania for measurement, drum-tight processes
and KPIs sooner or later will drop this important ethical egg on your
desk.
Do you monitor worker activity
by computer? Why? Why not?
How much is enough. How much is
too much?
