Bladewatch.com

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article3602122.ece

IF the past eight months in the City have been grim, then the financial sector should hold on tight: the situation is likely to get worse and job losses in London could surpass those seen after the dotcom crash, according to experts.

As the City digests the bailout of Bear Stearns and prepares for an economic downturn, forecasters are tearing up the job-market predictions they made only a few months ago.

Experian Business Strategies said that job losses from a workforce of about 350,000 in London’s financial-services sector may reach as high as 20,000 – nearly 20% more than the 17,000 witnessed after the collapse of the dotcom bubble in 2000.

An interesting article, I wonder a mixture of things relating to this. Firstly no one likes to loose their job, whether they’re an employee or a contractor, but it is the cost of doing business. I wonder though how much of this is a result of losses, and how much is simply ‘restructuring’ the cost of doing business. What I think we might find is a mixture of things, we might find there is more a tendency to outsource elements of the IT; a drive to more efficiency in the way we do things in terms of people and the kit. A focus on delivery and achieving more with less, grid or virtualization being examples. Related to to this is the way we not only provision the server, but the way we pay for and charge back the IT teams, as we move to a 24/7 operation we need to work smarter, be able to have our people work when the business requires them, whilst providing the standard 8-6 kind of infrastructure support they expect. Does this mean we move to the follow the support model? Where the guys from New York can do oncall for the London support teams? Where Singapore can do some of the weekend work? How we structure this in terms of payment, structure (the way we do things in London is…), as well as the compliance and security issues is going to depend on your business.

Some back office roles might go, some trading positions might go, IT could be a target for efficiency drives. What you will find is a more focus on the revenue generation against cost argument, the statistics conversations – number of help desk calls closed, revenue vs cost comparisons etc. Interesting times are ahead, as with many industries, what raises itself as a downturn can often create even more jobs and opportunities – hardware recycling for free? On-demand IT engineers – Can I rent a grid/vm or Wintel guy? I need him between 7pm to 7am. The role might be the same, who signs the pay check, how you’re paid for might not be.

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