Career choice

Outsourcing is risky too. These companies promise the world and deliver much less. Your reputation will depend on them and that is risky. Usually there is not enough time to develop the service properly so you are in a vulnerable position. If the service is already developed the outsource company will not be interested as there is no margin for profit. They love to pick up organisations that are in a mess. Your management will eventually use you as the scapegoat by which time the service is working and management take credit for fixing your mess.

Follow the money. Outsourcing is not the end of the world. If you are good at what you do, you will always find another contract to work. I have been a contractor for over 11 years and it will be a cold day in hell before I go perm again. Companies are always looking for good people with the right skill set. If that is you, then you have nothing to worry about. Good Luck in whatever you decide.

You are being set up as a scapegoat. Clearly your employer has no plan to keep their IT function in-house, and you're going to be viewed as "baggage" from here on. Even if you stay, you can count on budgets being cut every year, and being blamed for the resulting problems. Your career and income will only suffer if you stay.

I'm sure I'd follow them if I was younger. I've decided to keep my job for a while, though, and eventually take that other stuff as an afternoon job- only the interesting parts of it, of course.

Reasons:

I had a long, hard talk with my current employers. I was assured, that they'll need my services in the foreseeable future, because there are only a couple of guys left with any idea about which piece of software does what.

Outsourcing in my company was done only locally, and in such a manner, that crucial knowledge remained in the house. So far, only incidental jobs were outsourced. Sometimes, outsourced code haven't even left the building- programmers & tech writers were "borrowed" from our contractors instead. In the future, more critical pieces of software will be outsourced as well, but their development will be closely inspected on weekly or daily basis. Every piece software will be reviewed & thoroughly tested upon delivery. The company intends to keep the big picture for itself. My gut feeling says that it's heading in the right direction.

I was promised education & training for supervision of outsourcing. Basically, it's the same thing as a project management- a chance for me to get a little higher on a food chain. Once I'm there, I won't have to worry about outsourcing anymore. If, by any chance, application development gets hot again, well... I can always get back to it.

Deadline for that +50% 18 month project is pretty tight. On the other hand, I was promised by my current employers, that everything will be done by the book, strictly 9 to 5, no fuss, no hassle. Now, I'm in this profession for more than 20 year (half of which self employed), burned out, and sick & tired of doing long hours. All things considered- for 100% more money, I'd eventually crank out code for more than 8 hours a day a bit longer. But 50% - no way.