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> but as more skilled workers enter the labour force, I think that too will start to get marginalised to some degree and teams will shift back to having their o

> but as more skilled workers enter the labour force, I think that too will start to get marginalised to some degree and teams will shift back to having their own IT departments I am not sure if this would the case though. Why would an employer use skilled workers to do something mundane like setting up a kubernetes cluster vs something that actually differentiate their own business from others.

dcolkitt 6y ago
Large and established businesses hire high-paid high-skilled workers to coordinate their legal affairs, maintain their accounting, manage their public image, and control their finances. None of those things are part of the core business or product differentiation. Yet large corporate orgs still expend enormous amounts of resources on those activities. In fact in most companies the second highest-paid executive is the COO, which pretty much just means the guy in charge of all non-core activities. I think the simple answer is that most corporates are highly risk averse. Being in startup culture blinds you to this. Startups are comfortable with existential threats in the background, because they're constantly on the verge of failure anyway. They might neglect their liability, public image, or cloud TOS risk. Fast innovation in the core product is a far higher priority for a hypergrowth startup. In contrast, large and mature organizations are going to be extremely sensitive even to small risks. The typical large company is slow-growing but highly profitable. The number one priority is to avoid killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Think of the most conservative, bean-counting , button-down loan officer in suburban Topeka. Once "Cloud TOS Risk" enters the business lexicon, said beancounter is likely going to insist that the company in question has a plan, before releasing the tens of millions in loan refinancing that modern corporate America relies on in their leverage capital structures. It doesn't matter how big of an actual risk is. These processes are driven by "check-the-box" CYA theatre.
Abhinav2000 6y ago
Partly due to cost-benefit. I am hopeful that there is such a large mass of skilled labour or labour that can be skilled (so many graduates these days), that we can give them jobs and avoid having everything tech infrastructure related being pushed off to the big cloud vendors. As another comment replying to you mentioned, firms hire in-house accountants, lawyers, etc. --> If the cost of tech employees becomes favourable vs. outsourcing to the cloud, then why not internalise? Its a big risk to put all your eggs in somebody else's hands. With in-house tech, you have somewhat more control. My 2c.

dcolkitt 6y ago

Large and established businesses hire high-paid high-skilled workers to coordinate their legal affairs, maintain their accounting, manage their public image, and control their finances. None of those things are part of the core business or product differentiation. Yet large corporate orgs still expend enormous amounts of resources on those activities. In fact in most companies the second highest-paid executive is the COO, which pretty much just means the guy in charge of all non-core activities. I think the simple answer is that most corporates are highly risk averse. Being in startup culture blinds you to this. Startups are comfortable with existential threats in the background, because they're constantly on the verge of failure anyway. They might neglect their liability, public image, or cloud TOS risk. Fast innovation in the core product is a far higher priority for a hypergrowth startup. In contrast, large and mature organizations are going to be extremely sensitive even to small risks. The typical large company is slow-growing but highly profitable. The number one priority is to avoid killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Think of the most conservative, bean-counting , button-down loan officer in suburban Topeka. Once "Cloud TOS Risk" enters the business lexicon, said beancounter is likely going to insist that the company in question has a plan, before releasing the tens of millions in loan refinancing that modern corporate America relies on in their leverage capital structures. It doesn't matter how big of an actual risk is. These processes are driven by "check-the-box" CYA theatre.

Abhinav2000 6y ago

Partly due to cost-benefit. I am hopeful that there is such a large mass of skilled labour or labour that can be skilled (so many graduates these days), that we can give them jobs and avoid having everything tech infrastructure related being pushed off to the big cloud vendors. As another comment replying to you mentioned, firms hire in-house accountants, lawyers, etc. --> If the cost of tech employees becomes favourable vs. outsourcing to the cloud, then why not internalise? Its a big risk to put all your eggs in somebody else's hands. With in-house tech, you have somewhat more control. My 2c.