Subcontracting considered harmful

[mirrorshard]

Intermittent thought on why multiple layers of subcontracting and outsourcement are Bad (cf. a point in my previous post about the UK rail system, which I may link to later) - breaking up the organizational chain like that means there's no real way for the people at the bottom to move up it. It explicitly points and laughs at the idea of career advancement.

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I suppose the idea is that people advance either within the sub-contractor's organisation, which will usually be a hierarchically-organised company in its own right, or by moving to a different organisation.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

It's certainly a possibility, but we're into the whole vertically/horizontally organized split here. You might get good solid experience within your operational speciality, but not across the business area as a whole, and jumping organisations is (if possible, especially given the networking you end up doing by default) at least an additional barrier.

The subcontractor's organisation almost certainly is hierarchically organized, but it's organized orthogonally to the original one (the venue, let's say). They might or might not appoint from within, depending on whether they're seeing management skills in their line workers at all (or, indeed, whether they care about keeping their line workers - if it's a job that doesn't require or benefit from any training you can't give in three hours, one worker is much like another, I suspect).

But if they do, you'll still be able to advance only a few steps before you stop being in the business you were when you started.