will the cloud rain on the direct hire employment model? 1

[boyze]

will the cloud enable or perhaps drive the demise of the direct hire employment model? i already see it starting in my world

Have Fun!

James A. Pike

http://www.xl4sim.com

http://www.erieztechnologies.com

 

[SomptingGuy]

"libraries" in the list of defunct overhead items? Not everything is on the WWW. Hopefully historical client-confidential documents aren't.

- Steve

 

[beej67]

PDF sir.

And on the cloud.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[CheckerHater]

"IT and other corporate BS"?

 

[moltenmetal]

OK beej67, a sole proprietor has low overhead. Great observation of the obvious. What exactly is your point?

A bill-out rate equals salary plus payroll burden plus overhead plus profit. Salary and payroll burden (payroll taxes, benefits etc.) are real costs. So is most of the overhead: insurance, heat and light for the office, promotion/marketing so customers know who you are etc. Drop your overhead by eliminating typists etc. and making better use of technology, and you can either choose to drop your rate and hopefully pick up more business, or keep it where it is and make more profit.

If your argument about the "multiplier" as "taxation" is that the overhead is staying the same despite the decrease in admin staff etc. because the professional management are paying themselves more, or wasting the money on stupid unproductive corporate BS, I guess that's the shareholders' business and they should hire better directors or invest in something else. It's also the customers' business: they can shop for lower rates if they want.

As a company we'll use sole proprietors for some things, while others we'll want a firm with some assets and some depth to do for us. That's unlikely to change due to the "cloud".

 

[beej67]

OK beej67, a sole proprietor has low overhead. Great observation of the obvious. What exactly is your point?

Cloud computing, office automation, and office decentralization open a new window to allow organizations of any size to have the same relative overhead as a sole proprietor.

Large engineering firms could jump to this new model of business *today*. They choose not to purely out of organizational inertia and fear of change.

That's my point.


Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[moltenmetal]

OK, I got you. You're saying that new firms don't need an office or cube for every employee. Yep, that's true- but not having that does have down-sides too, which have to be borne in balance. Many organizations are reconsidering the telecommuting model because they've discovered that they don't know how to manage it. Any organization STILL won't have the same relative overhead as a sole proprietor, though in your model it should grow less quickly- though such an organization also has limited maximum practical size in my opinion. Overhead increases to some extent with organizational size irrespective of where the people physically work- you don't get the power of the group for zero cost. Then again, none of us is as dumb as all of us sometimes.

 

[beej67]

Hey, I get you.

Whoever cracks that "scaleability" nut first is going to be hailed as a genius while all those who fail to crack it will be conveniently forgotten.

I personally think it's a nut that can be cracked.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[beej67]

Some interesting articles on the subject:

http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/in-focus-the-rise-of-flexible-working

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

I still say, go back and read your Toffler and Naisbitt. In spite of they having written their stuff years ago, in the case of Toffler at least 30 years ago with Naisbitt being a bit more recent, as they came pretty close on some issues and of course missed by miles on others, like not having foreseen the invention of the PDA nor the ubiquitous nature of wireless technology.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[cranky108]

I still say there can be some local bandwith issues that hender this.

Also some jobs just can't be phoned in field engineering for example).

But at the same time, with more telaconferencing it can have an impact on travel for meetings (as can be seen from the pie chart).

However there can be some issues with special software.

 

[GregLocock]

I use broadband by cellphone at home. It works OK for videoconferences and is more than adequate for license pinging, costs me about 15 bucks per gig. A typical work day is around 0.4 Gb. Admittedly if I have a large file transfer (a big data file might be 2Gb) it'd be quicker to drive into town and do it over the company intranet but luckily I don't do much of that and plan it in advance.

However I am about to switch to a Catia based product that will probably insist on downloading CAD data every morning, my opinion may change rapidly.


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[cry22]

You cannot pass knowledge (train young engineers) by being in the cloud.
The senior dude is the go-to-guy at the office who gives the right answer in 5 seconds instead of spending 5 days for the wrong answer.

 

[cranky108]

The go-to-guy is also the ont that will retire next week, and really dosen't care if things fall apart after he leaves. This is more true since they no longer support his pension.