I did a BA accountancy a long time ago, or at least it feels a long time ago. In that many people ask why are you thinking of leaving accountancy?. It is a good career path, this confuses my parents when they visit my flat now and again to bring me a parcel of food or something. (I have a terrible diet of Ramen I think it is trading money for health but hey at 9p per meal it is unbeatable for calorific value). In that my parents are stuck in old thinking, they never considered the aspects of globalisation and thus outsourcing.
Ironically to an accountant or ex accountant (I repent) it makes an awful lot of sense to me. It is from the training which conflicts with my own values system. Although oddly enough I do still apply for jobs here not that this has done me much good lately.
Accounting/back office financial work makes a lot more sense to outsource to me. In a way I'm surprised it took this long to get going.. but it could really turn into an avalanche of job outsourcing over the next few years.
Many of these companies have thousands upon thousands of people doing reconciliations, payroll, routine accounting work, and all sorts of accounting type positions. Go to any city in Britain and there is office building after office building full of people doing these types of things.
Its all done on computer nowadays so it doesn't make much difference if it is done in Manchester or Hyderabad. The difference is in Hyderabad you can get a very bright hard working person who is thrilled to work for £1 an hour.
Though there is another deeper reason other than outsourcing, that is the ethic of accounting companies, in that I was exploited heavily during my training, non moving wages costs of everything going up meant I was getting year on year pay cuts. The crick is this in that once you qualify you setup on your own and then it is YOUR turn to exploit the juniors and PQs. (part qualified)
Hold on there a second if I didn't like being treated badly and had to live like a bum for years till I got the ACCA letters after my name. Then quite simply why would I want others to be treated the same way?.
On top of this you may stand and attempt to buck the trend, except that other firms with lower morals and ethics do go on and exploit juniors and PQs, and can therefore lower their prices on the savings. My experience in accountancy was that you shift the price up even a little bit and clients leave.
I think this is indicative of a greater ennui in the UK as a whole as we only seem to care about the bottom line.
Cadbury's closes are we shocked no, the UK's industries are bought up jobs are gone but do we care? not much, as long as we get some kind of bargain to hell with the long term consequences. This was shown when Woolworths folded, in that people who went to the closing down sales complained it wasn't cheap enough.
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