Reverse Outsourcing

In 1994 I left the large insurance company where I had worked for the last six years. One week after I cleaned out my desk all the IT people were called into a meeting and told that almost all IT was being outsourced and that they would be let go within 90 days.
I can't count how many people called me and wanted to know how I knew this was going to happen and when I knew it.
In truth I knew nothing and had been planning to leave, actually had a contingent offer for about 3 months.

In time however the company thought better of it and brought some of those jobs back in house.

Dell seems to be doing the same thing at least for the corporate accounts that have pull. I expect that this trend will continue as word gets around to even the retail customer who buys one machine that the tech support isn't worth the trouble when you can't understand the person on the other end of the line who is speaking a dialect of english that in not understandable. It may take a little longer but everytime someone like me has a bad tech support experience the word gets around. This is one of the areas where users groups can still have an impact.