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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

A paradox of our industry is that while the IT community includes a disproportionate number of libertarian thinkers, most turn into communists during work hours.

Yes, I’m talking to you, you communist liberal socialist propeller-head!

I offended you. Let me take back the most offensive epithet. You aren’t really a liberal. Is that better?

What was the primary practical difference between the world’s failed communist economies and its successful capitalist ones? The communist bloc nations managed their economies centrally. Capitalist nations decentralized theirs. Most IT organizations look more like communism than capitalism. Really.

  • IT has a fixed budget, which it allocates. Sometimes it forms a steering committee (politburo) to share the responsibility. It’s central planning.
  • If the central planners don’t understand the value of a request, the request has no value and is rejected. The government decides what has value, not consumers.
  • IT is the sole supplier. Demand is satisfied through central production or not at all. The government owns the means of production.

Even our desire for industry standards has a communist overtone. Our need for compatibility vastly outweighs any desire to choose from a variety of suppliers. In IT, real choice in the marketplace is a bad thing.

That sure looks a lot like communism to me.

Here’s one final bit of evidence. Economists will tell you that the law of supply and demand operated in communist economies just as it does in capitalist ones, with one difference. Capitalism balances supply and demand by adjusting price. When demand exceeds supply, prices rise. Centrally planned economies fix both supply and price through central planning. So when demand exceeds supply, the result is a shortage.

That’s an exact description of most American corporations: The internal demand for information technology generally exceeds the supply. The result is excessive use of low-tech or patchwork solutions.

Before you write to tell me I’ve obviously never managed a real IT organization … I have, and I understand the realities. I’m not advocating the complete chaos of a fully decentralized IT economy inside your company. Companies need to balance the standards-based infrastructure and concentration of resources central IT delivers with the ability to recognize and satisfy local or small-scale opportunities end-user-computing provides.

But then, I don’t advocate a fully decentralized economy for the U.S.A., either.

Neither do you, I imagine — do you really think we can do without Alan Greenspan?

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Premise 1:Businesses aren’t moral agents.

This isn’t up for debate. The Business Roundtable, the official voice of American industry, made this clear in 1997: Businesses exist solely to maximize shareholder value. Fiduciary responsibilities? Yes. Legal obligations? Sure. But moral? Since most business success comes at the expense of competitors, they can’t be.

Premise 2: Businesses have no patriotic duty. Don’t be aghast. It’s all about shareholder value, remember? If moving manufacturing to Kuala Lumpur helps, fine and dandy. If opening a post office box in Bermuda to avoid paying taxes increases profits, wonderful. A business isn’t beholden to any particular nation. (Best exposition on this subject: Arthur Jensen’s speech to Howard Beale in Network. Rent it and you’ll find that Paddy Chayefski brilliant satire has been transformed into the business community’s manifesto.)

Premise 3: Patriotism and morality have no connection. Unless you think Americans are intrinsically more deserving than other people, or that any action, if performed by the United States of America, is automatically good, it’s inescapable that patriotism has all the moral content of being a Chicago Cubs fan. At best, patriotism is about self-interest — not a bad thing, but not a moral issue.

We’re ready: Is moving work offshore immoral? No.

You’re acting as the agent of your employer, an amoral (not immoral) entity. You’re increasing shareholder value, a goal with no intrinsic moral content. And for every human being you lay off, another gets a job. Offshoring is morally neutral.

You are, perhaps, being unpatriotic: Creating unemployment here by transferring jobs elsewhere isn’t to this country’s benefit. Even that formula is simplistic, though: If competitors reduce their costs by going offshore and you don’t, all you’re doing is contributing to your company’s failure — in the long run you save no jobs at all. What choice do you really have?

Your choice starts with your methodologies. Some lend themselves to offshoring. Others, such as “adaptive methodologies,” are better suited to up-close-and-personal on-shore staffing … and hold the promise of increasing the productivity of your developers and integrators enough to compensate for offshore rates.

Adaptive methodologies don’t fit all situations. Neither, for that matter, do the methodologies required for successful offshoring, nor anything else for that matter. Adaptive methodologies, offshoring, the Rational Unified Process, structured analysis, and all the other techniques available to you are just tools in your toolkit. Your responsibility isn’t to offshore, onshore, or anything else.

It’s to use the best tool for each job.

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