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Techies Asked To Train Foreign Replacements
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Jun 10, 2006 06:37 AM
from the have-a-good-trip dept.
from the have-a-good-trip dept.
Makarand writes "David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Bank of America (BofA) is moving thousands of tech jobs to India and has asked its techies to train their Indian replacements or risk losing severance pay. Although there is nothing in writing that says precisely this, the employees have been made clear about this responsibility in their meetings. BofA is outsourcing tech work to Indian companies whose employees do the work at half the cost of what a U.S. worker gets paid. According to an estimate, outsourcing has allowed the bank to save about $100 million over the past five years."
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splitting semantic hairs (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article (regarding requiring training to receive severance): ""I know hat's parsing things a bit," Norton acknowledged. "What we ask associates to do as part of getting severance is that they stay on the job until the job is transitioned."
Norton (and BofA) is parsing employees in a more metaphorical sense, cutting them into tiny pieces. It's a violation of a tacit ethic.
Next: ""It's a common practice when your job is being transferred from one person to another that you train the new person," she added. "We expect our people to stay until their jobs are consolidated.""
Yes it is a common practice. What's not so common (though it's seemingly becoming so) is a scenario where the person you're training is transparently there to be trained because they're going to do the job on the cheap. What's not so common is the egregious in-your-face requirement to train someone to replace you when you had not been planning to leave!
I've trained replacements before. And, I KNEW I was expected to finish that work to consider my work satisfactory. But, it's always been when I was moving on. I'd like to be in a place where when faced with being required to train my cheap-suit replacement that I could refuse on principle alone.
It's unfortunate and worse, unethical, to require training your replacement to receive severance. As an aside did you ever wonder why severance packages max out at ten months, e.g., by some algorithm you get X months pay for each year served, with a cap at ten months? Ten months (actually, 300 days) is how long an employee has to file an action on discriminatory practices! Often times training cheaper replacements targets older and higher paid employees.
And finally and most offensive: "But BofA stands out because it acknowledged earlier this year that it understands how much the practice offends its U.S. employees.
Barbara Desoer, BofA's chief technology exec, told BusinessWeek magazine in January that she was aware how much grumbling it caused when workers at the bank's Concord technology center were told they'd have to bring their Indian replacements up to speed before being shown the door."
First of all, the bitch Desoer doesn't deserve the title CTO, she's a fucking hatchet man... she isn't managing technology, she's betraying her work force, I'm guessing for some pretty decent blood money... Fuck her.
So outsourcing and required replacement training is becoming common enough companies begin to admit it. The tipping point is here, they can all claim they do it with the rationale, "everyone ELSE is doing it." Posh!
This is legal but it's unhealthy. The return to the shareholders is short term and long term this practice stands to damage employee morale, and based on the kind of "replacement" results piss off the customers.
A global economy is coming. For some it's a speeding train coming right at them, and they've been tied to the railroad tracks by their employers.
Re:splitting semantic hairs (Score:5, Insightful)
As the current situation is, I wouldnt really call it a global economy. Something more like a segragated economy, where the main trick is to move work to one place, while keeping prices artificially high in another through legislation, then reaping the profits on the market discrepancy and allowing a rapid transfer of funds from the middle class.
A good step towards restoring a free market and getting something even remotely like a 'global economy' would be to reconstruct the intellectual 'property' monopoly legislation from scratch. Western, and american, labour would get a whole lot more competetive (maybe even maintain the current standard of living at half the pay!) if they didnt have to fund, directly, and indirectly, huge grotesquely inefficient copyright and patent taxation financed monopolies.
Parent
Re:splitting semantic hairs (Score:5, Interesting)
You hit the nail right on the head. The problem is not that Indians (and Mexicans, for that matter) are "stealing" our jobs, it's that they are willing to do it for a lot less money. Honestly, you can't blame the companies for going with cheaper labor that can do the job just as well, or close to it (though forcing the American workers to train their replacement is a different story). If Americans were willing to work for lower wages, then labor wouldn't NEED to be outsourced. Of course, the problem isn't only that Americans aren't willing to work for lower wages, it's that we often aren't able to, so what you're saying, or something similar to it, would be the way to go. If Americans started to work for less, basic (and slightly simplistic, but still mostly valid for an approximation) economics says we would pretty much maintain the current standard of living, but only in the long term. In the short term, it just wouldn't work, because it only works if EVERYONE is working for the lower wages. The "early adopters" would be screwed until everyone else's wages went down by the same amount, at which point prices would also come down to meet demand. So the way to do it, as you say, is to start out by lowering prices a bit (revamping copyright/patent/monopoly law would be a reasonable start, though some would argue monopolies would help with this transition) and let that naturally be followed up with a lowering of wages, then rinse and repeat until we're competetive on a global scale.
Another way to ease the trasition would, of course, be to cut taxes like whoah. Americans pay, on average, a net of about 40% of their income to the government (not only income tax obviously, but including basic economic principles such as "corporate taxes raise prices," etc.). If we were to cut down on pork-barrel spending alone, that could probably be reduced to 35%, maybe even as low as 30%. That means the average American can take a pay cut of 5-10% without changing his net income at all. Then if you're willing to cut government programs that don't quite count as pork-barreling but still provide less benefit than what they cost, you could potentially bring total taxes down to 20%. That means we could bring wages down even lower (20% lower) without hurting the average American household's standard of living, with the exception of those who rely on whatever social programs are cut. Even still, losing a program is preferable to losing your job to someone overseas.
Parent
Re:splitting semantic hairs (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean like Iraq?
Parent
Re:splitting semantic hairs (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, sounds complicated. I have a more simplistic idea for simpletons like me: I'm going to move my Bank of America accounts to another bank who employs solely domestic workers, and encourage friends and family to do likewise. If such loss of customers affected BOA enough, Bank of America would have to drops their fees to compensate to lure business back to them. But, then that would lower their profits forcibly accomplishing what you've detailed, right?
Parent
Re:splitting semantic hairs (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, we have web-based banking (not AJAXed or fancy, but does the trick), automatic bill pay (though I don't use it), direct deposit, wire transfers. Yeah, I do hate the lack of just *tons* of ATMs, but the CU ATM Network isn't so bad, if you plan ahead a bit before traveling.
Forget Mega-Corporate banking. Join your community. Join your local Credit Union. (No, I don't work for a Credit Union
Parent
Re:Short term epidemic (Score:5, Insightful)
>practice stands to damage employee morale...
That's one of the problems with the way performance is evaluated now. They're ALWAYS looking for the short term fix, because that's the timeframe used to gauge performance. If you institute a short term policy that looks good NOW, but hoses the country or the company later, by the time that happens, you'll have moved on, and it's someone else's problem. Further, there's absolutely no incentive to introduce stable long term solutions under these conditions, because all the credit for them will go to your successor, as he/she will be at the helm when the your decisions bear fruit. In the meantime, it's your fault for that great big hole in the budget (the cost of putting those solutions in motion).
Parent
Re:splitting semantic hairs (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to leave, you can.
Similarly, if the employer wants to kick you out, they can also.
What I have seen is that once you go up the management ladder, esp. in a big company, you tend to have less contact with the employee as a person.
This inturn changes the view of the higher level manager about the employee - from a human being to just another resource.
And when you are just another resource (in their view), it is easier to replace them with
We need to Boycott (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Actually... scratch that.
Oblig. Quote (Score:5, Funny)
Time to change banks... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Time to change banks... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Time to change banks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yesrs ago, I sold auto parts at car dealerships, mainly to body shops. A good-sized local body shop chain was buying parts from us for 5% over cost, delivered. They came to us and said that they were going to switch to someone who would sell them parts at 3% over cost, delivered, unless we could match it. We let them go.
About 18 months later, they came back: "We want to come back to you." Why? Because my company could provide better service. The 3% over company would deliver parts once a day, that's it. If something was missing or wrong or broken, they wouldn't try to find it someplace else and do a second trip that day, they'd just order another one and deliver it when it came in.
So when this body shop chain came back to us, we said, "Okay, but it's 10% over cost now." They agreed.
The moral of this story? Maybe in five or ten years, when US industry figures out that the front-end savings they're getting on offshored labor translates to a higher "total cost of operation," they'll come back to the US labor market. And when that happens, salaries for US tech jobs will rise.
I'm prepared to ride it out.
Parent
NO. Time to change to a CREDIT UNION (Score:5, Informative)
Any services you know of that a bank can do a CU cant?
Didn't think so.
Plus, they are nicer, have better customer service and seem to do a better job hiring hot chicks to run the teller lines.
Parent
Re:Time to change banks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not join a Credit Union? They offer the same services, tend to be local and regional (which helps the local/regional economies) and in my experience their customer service is far better than that of commercial banks.
Best of all, they are non-profit, which eliminates the greed factor that drives outsourcing.
Parent
Half the cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Another Silly Outsourcer....... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been amused by many companies over the years who thought they could save a huge bundle of money, when in reality the staff employed in those functions they want to move makes up perhaps 20% of their organisation but makes the most impact. Do people in a foreign country answering your calls, where it is totally obvious they know not even the most basic things about where you live (and you have waste time and money repeating things twenty times), does that sound good and make you want to use that company? I'll quote Joel Spolsky and Pradeep Singh:
"(Here's something Pradeep Singh taught me today: if only 20% of your staff is programmers, and you can save 50% on salary by outsourcing programmers to India, well, how much of a competitive advantage are you really going to get out of that 10% savings?)"
You also have the additionally huge costs of training those new employees, or outsourcing organisations, up in the ways of the organisation, the products, the technology and you also spend huge amounts of wasted time and money on communication. I've known many banks who've had that experience. A poor call centre worker gets the warm ear treatment from a customer in Europe, US, Canada etc. because the website is throwing up errors and he/she can't complete a transaction. A call is logged and there is a series of frantic phone calls and e-mails to the outsourced programming company in India, who needless to say, haven't got the faintest idea what they're talking about. Also (and this happens even in outsourcing companies situated in the same country but in another part) because they are not physically located in the heat of battle, and within on-site reach, they just don't give a shit. They'll do it when they've got time.
"Because they don't actually work for Bank of America," the engineer replied. "They work for Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, which are both in India. They do the work at half the cost of what a U.S. worker gets paid."
Would anyone like to guess how much time, money, effort and resources is going to be spent trying to communicate with these idiots, and actually get anything done?
In short, you need to have your support functions in your company with you completely, and they need to be as close to your paying customers as you can get. If there is a market in India for your products then by all means get close to your customers and open offices in India (and how many BofA customers are in India?). After all the diasters, and let's face it we know companies everywhere have had total outsourcing disasters, I can't beleiev anyone thinks they're still going to save money like this. Idiot CEOs and boards still have this ridiculously stupid fucking idea that the world is a place separated only by a common language - English. I think even British, American and Australian people can agree that that is most certainly not true. I suggest these idiot board members go and read the number one, definitive guide on running a multinational company properly - as well as making some serious profit.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/18619769
Re:Another Silly Outsourcer....... (Score:4, Informative)
"Curry smelling dot-head" is bigotry.
Idiots like you are what allows _real_ bigotry to flurish, you cant even recognize it when you see it.
I have met some quite skilled folks from India over the years. Mostly in telcos engineering departments... but they were in the US and either born here or on their way to US Citizens. The ones answering the phones while still in Bombay... chances are "idiot" is a pretty good description of their skill level and experience in whatever job they are doing. The GOOD ones get better jobs after a short time.
Parent
This is why you should have money saved (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why it really pays to have your own severance package set aside in a savings account. If I was given the choice these people have been given, and I had 3-6 months of expenses in my savings, I'd tell them to, "Train my replacement your own damn selves." I might even do it if I didn't have such savings, depending on how blatantly it was presented to me.
If you plan ahead, you give yourself the power to make a statement like that if it needs to be made (assuming it's worth making).
Quality (Score:3, Insightful)
Like Digging Their Own Grave (Score:4, Insightful)
B of A SUCKS!! (Score:5, Interesting)
By the by- what BofA did is illegal... (Score:5, Informative)
the thing right off as soon as you see it.
It's in violation of Federal Depository Regulations (The one that governs check cashing, etc.) to place a hold
on a Government check- per the regulations, they are to be treated as if the check was a CASH
transaction.
It's a violation of Federal law for them to do it and any fees incurred by this hold are due back to you
including any fees the people you pay end up charging you, etc. I've had BofA branch managers stand toe
to toe with me on that one, only to back down when shown a copy of the actual regs from the Fed website.
They know the regs, even going so far as to being balsy enough to try to palm off things that aren't in
the regs as being "per Federal Depository Regulations"- and I've had to jam it down their throats
repeatedly. Again, it's a good thing I'm shifting my banking elsewhere; this BS is just one more good
reason.
Parent
4 letters... (Score:3, Funny)
B. O. F. H.
Evil. (Score:5, Funny)
From a business standpoint, it's neccessary (the training, not the outsourcing), but it's still evil.
Kinda makes you want to have some fun with crontab and shell/perl scripts.
Like keep randomly changing posix group, ou, or dn info in the LDAP directory.
There was a perl script I wanted to write a while back called "jackass-milter" for sendmail. (a take off of spamass-milter, for spamassassin).
All it was designed to do was take each message that passes through the exchanger, constrain to body text (not attachments, or headers), then run a series of regex's on the body based on what the author wants to do to the message.
Example? Regex searching for things like
A good regex that searches for nouns and verbs and randomly replaces it with the f-bomb. Another good one is to search for all instances of "the", but only randomly replace it with "teh". Spell-checkers be damned!
What does this have to do with Indian-outsourcing? Sabotage. Make sure you do enough damage on the way out the door. Nobody gets out alive.
EVERYBODY GET DOWN!!!!111one one one
(here he comes....here comes speed ra-cer...)
More Fuel for the Fire (Score:3, Interesting)
bunch of things (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, current employees have a choice: they can drop their pencils immediately and leave without severance pay, or they can do an unpleasant chore with severance pay.
Third, in training their replacements, they might also try to teach their foreign replacements about collective bargaining, US salary levels and benefits, and the kind of profits that their company will be making.
Well, those employees that still know about that sort of thing can. If you're part of the SUV-driving, Bible thumping, Republican voting crowd and don't remember why exactly people used to organize in unions and that sort of thing, then just think of the outsourcing as a free market mechanism for getting rid of inefficiencies--you in this case.
Re:bunch of things (Score:5, Funny)
The proper way to benefit from trickle-down economics: kneel at upper management's feet. Aid them in removal of pants. After they've swung the hatchet enough on your brethren, they'll undoubtedly start to perspire, and condensation will form on their genitalia. Wait patiently for it to fall, then complement your utter superior on the salty goodness.
The wrong way to benefit from trickle-down economics: criticizing Republicans and SUVs. You may as well vandalize George Washington's grave with a back hoe, traitor. Why do you hate America, m874t232?!
Parent
vote with your money? (Score:3, Insightful)
They need a horror movie scenario (Score:3, Insightful)
When you get down to it, this is not too dissimilar to the horror these soon-to-be jobless people are facing. Not only will you be fired, but you will be forced to train the people who will replace you?
The knee-jerk reaction of many will probably be, "train'm wrong!" but I'm sure they've already thought about that and have some way of preventing that.
If that group of people were unionized, they wouldn't be facing this. They wouldn't have to train their replacements. They could all agree to decide to walk out at once leaving this business to hurt for their decision. Hell, for that matter, if they were unionized, they'd have some leverage and not have their jobs outsourced to India.
On one hand, labor unions are a pain in the ass. On the other, it's easy to see what employers are willing to do to individuals.
Re:Trend will turn (Score:3, Insightful)
You, literally, wouldn't believe, how far the American dollar goes in India.
Re:Isn't that really... (Score:5, Funny)
vindaloo. stings more.
Parent
So dont do business with them (Score:4, Insightful)
I am sure the bank claims it takes reasonable precaution against identity theft....but you just can't protect data from the techies that work on it. And when you can't trust the techs, you can't trust the company.
Just say No.
Parent
Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Over the longer term, what have these idiotic managers done? They've disconnected themselves from the very communities they serve. Sure, it's cheaper to have a bunch of lower paid foreigners do this work. But do they really understand what they're doing and why? Will they know when they've run in to a problem? Will they be able to reason their way through regulations and laws they had nothing to do with?
And ultimately, you know how employment agencies always instruct people to leave your work on good terms? It cuts both ways. If an employer cuts ties with large groups of employees under less than favorable terms, don't expect any good will from the public when the going gets rough.
Frankly, I see this as a huge disconnect between management and the techies who actually make things go. If anyone here owns this stock, I recommend they sell within the next year or so. A company this arrogantly ignorant doesn't deserve your money. Oh, by the way, that's captalism too.
Parent
Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen (Score:5, Insightful)
First, there is the cost to the employees of finding a new job, which is never fully reflected in severance pay. Severance pay probably only covers the amount of time the employee will be idle. Other costs include retraining the employee to fit the new job (paid by his new employer), the psychological effects of having his job terminated (paid by him, his family, and society at large), the costs of moving if the new job requires it, and the loss of community if he does have to move. This last item is important: while a loss of community has all sorts of ill effects, the expectation of losing it several more times over the course of your work history is even worse. Ask anyone raised by parents who got moved around a lot by the military.
People who expect to move away end up less trusting, less willing to invest in new relationships, less willing to participate in community functions or worry about local issues. There was a time when the rich still had some sort of shared community life with their workers, and it was a time when employers had loyalty to their employees. But now those who own the wealth--and decide how it will be used--are more distanced from the rest of us, and have no stake in that shared community life. So they'll happily move jobs to Outer Ohfuckitstan to earn an extra 1% return on their investment, without regard for the problems these moves cause the wider society.
The country that benefits from the new jobs also receives increased inequality between the well-off and the poor. India's rise has been accompanied by increased tension between wealthy urban areas and poor rural areas. Back when everyone was poor, the rural areas weren't likely to complain about not having electricity, because few did have it, and it's hard to want things you don't see anyone else enjoying. While an increase in the standard of living is wonderful, it is poisonous to a society when extreme inequalities in wealth exist. Of course, by this metric, our own society is very, very unhealthy.
There is another cost that employers do pay, but rarely fully account for when planning an offshoring: the loss of expertise. No matter how well the departing employees train their replacements (and what's their motivation to do a good job?) it will be years before the replacements can match the original expertise. Some of the knowledge lost in transition may never be rediscovered, leading to permanent inefficiencies.
No, I'm not a socialist. But I'm coming to the belief that collective ownership of wealth is a good thing. If Bank of America was owned by its employees, then their salaries would show up on the "income" side of the accounting ledger rather than the "expenses" side, and much of the motivation to outsource would evaporate. Otherwise, there is an inherent conflict of interest between management and labor: management wants to keep costs low, and labor is simply another expense to be minimized.
Additionally, a worker-owned setup is necessarily more efficient. Workers have the greatest incentive to make the company run as efficiently as possible, so management doesn't have to spend its time figuring out how to best motivate the employees. The workers would just tell them. Worker-owned companies are also more concerned with long-term stability, because there is no golden parachute waiting if they can just keep the stock prices from tanking in the next three quarters. There is only the promise of continued employment. Finally, when a few investors own a company, the goal is to maximize their profit. When workers own a company, they still want to maximize their returns, but they can accept a wider variety of payment: a cleaner environment, more free time to spend with their families, improvements in the social fabric of their communities, less stressful working conditions.
In short, collective ownership allows the wealth of a company to serve the many, not the few. So bring it on, free market boy.
Parent
Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen (Score:4, Interesting)
companies are allowed to maximise their own profitability and they can do this by outsourcing.
It is questionable whether this is true. Usually it is not a company that maximises its profitability, the managers are maximising their own income. If they cut costs in half, in the short run the company will be more profitable and they can raise their own salaries, get a huge return on their stock options, etc. In the long run, they don't care if the company goes down, they have left their previous post a long time ago. Capitalism works if it is in the best interest of all employees, especially upper management, to make a company profitable. Unfortunately, that is not how it works in practice.
Is the fact that these replacements will be trained by current employees bad?
Yes, it is. If I was forced to train my replacement, I would do a pretty bad job. I would give him source code (maybe that three weeks old version which has some obscure bugs in it), some out-of-date documentation, tell him a bit about what the programs are for, and end with, "if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask." Believe me, there is no way he will be able to ask the right questions before I have left the company. After a year or so the shit will really hit the fan, and the boss has two choices: either hire me as a consultant, for which I will ask an exorbitant amount of cash, or suffer the complaints of angry users. In the end, the company will have to bear the losses.
Now, the way to do some successful outsourcing, is to fire the employees who are rubbish anyway, and promote the remaining employees yo a job as coordinator of outsourcing. Then you have the people who know how to do the job guide the people who are doing the job. And your new coordinators will be pretty happy about training their replacements because they benefit from it too.
I'll end up by telling you a true story. I once worked at a software company, and we got a big job for maintaining some specialized software for which there were a few dozen clients. The guys who originally wrote the software were too expensive for the company where they worked, so they fired them all and outsourced the job to us. Our first task was to make a small change to one of the programs. Unfortunately, the system was constructed in such a way that you could not compile just one program, you had to compile them all, and deliver new recompiled versions of all programs to all clients. We tested our change and delivered the programs to the clients. We soon found out that the guys who had written this stuff had been pretty angry for being fired, and had riddled all programs with small bugs. Not things you would notice immediately, but things that would rear their ugly head after working a while. There was no good way to trace these small surprises, the only thing we could do was fix bugs when they were reported by clients. We had one client who had to restore backups on a daily basis. After a year, ALL the clients had dropped the software and moved on to a competitor's product. Those are the dangers of "insensitive outsourcing".
Parent
Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen (Score:4, Interesting)
If I had to train my own replacement I would definitely do the worst possible job just meeting minimum reqiurements (just what most executives have done in their decisions).
Parent
Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill O'Reilly, is that you? Sean? Rush?
Jesus, I hate this kind of bullshit. You're either with us or with the enemy. Either you support outsourcing or you're a commie.
So, the author of the parent post is not only a xenophobe but a socialist as well? To reject outsourcing as currently practiced is to reject capitalism in general?
Nice broad brush stroke buddy, but it doesn't fly. Your analysis of situation is based on an idealistic text book "free market" which does not exist in the real world. There are no free markets. There are trading agreements, treaties, immigration laws, manipulated currency valuations, etc. all of which are politicized, contrived and not influenced by magical "invisible hand of the market". These factors render your simplistic analysis and conclusions useless.
It's kind of funny. Back in the sixties, it was the ultra liberals and socialists who were the overly idealistic utopians. Today, it's the no-libertarians who stick their head in the sand when comes to reality. They regurgitate garbage written by the CATO institute then stand back and look at you indignantly as if you are an idiot not to see the gospel truth in their brilliant remarks. If you disagree, you're a commie.
Parent
Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen (Score:5, Interesting)
It amazes me that this is your perspective. Perhaps you are trolling but I'll take you at face value.
The US welfare system which is woefully inadequate, in combination with its lack of social mobility result in a more or less permanent underclass of hopeless individuals. For you to say that the US system is a social "hammock" tells me than you have little knowledge of the world outside your borders. Most of the rest of us in the "West" have much more redistribution of wealth than you folks do and yet, people still go to work, there are still thriving and successful global businesses which come out of the various countries in Europe plus Canada, all of whom have a sane and humane social model which stands as a stark accusation of the great waste of human potential in the US. The fact that the richest country in the world, with the highest health care spending per-capita, still can't find its way to provide basic health insurance for every citizen is repugnant. For the sake of ideology it seems, folks in the US are willing to stand by and watch people die for lack of decent health care, and live without a hope of a better future for themselves or their children.
I'm afraid that you have been listening to the words of others without giving them much thought or investigating for yourself.
Parent
Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen (Score:4, Funny)
What causes this isn't capitalism, it's power politics. If the social costs of extreme wealth were properly assesed to their source, then there would not be the extreme difference between the wealthy and the impoverished. But those with the power, in it's various forms (including money) craft the rules of the game to benefit themselves. This isn't capitalism. This is socialism of, by, and for the wealthy and powerful.
When you see extremes of wealth and poverty in the same civilization, you know the game is rigged. You many not know the details, but the fact is evident.
Parent
Re:Isn't that really... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
What goes around comes around (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that companies don't realize in foreign outsourcing is the long term impact on their business:
Let's cut off our noses to spite our faces. Let's shoot ourselves in the foot. Heaven forbid we do something with long term positive effects when short term effects will be to put lots of money in the hands of a few at the top so that they can oppress the masses more and become richer.
There truly needs to be legislation restricting the outsourcing of jobs to foreign workers. Otherwise we are going to see bad times ahead for the majority of Americans.
Parent
Re:Isn't that really... (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, but doesn't mean you can't teach your replacment a thing or two about being a bad employee.
You: "Ok Vishnu, when you write code make sure you never use indents... Managment hates that. And keep everything on same line. Oh and never ever EVER comment your code unless you want to talk about your current mood and what you had for breakfast that morning."
Vishnu: "I see..."
You: "Oh... Also... Make sure you take your phone off the hook and never delete your voicmail so that no one can leave you a message. It will make you look uber busy... Make sure you never reply to his emails regardless of what the urgency is because he'll think that you are working hard and too busy to play with email all day. And you'll get a raise pronto."
Vishnu: "What does 'uber' mean?"
You: "It means you know what you are talking about... You should use uber in every sentence when you are talking to the Boss in the states. You'll get a raise for sure. Also... When he does call make sure you have some of the Punab music...
Vishnu: "Punjabi..."
You: "Whatever... Just make sure it is playing playing really loudly in the background every time he calls. He will apprecieate your culture."
Vishnu: "Oh thanks for your wise teachings..."
You: "No sweat. And one more thing do you read Slashdot?"
Vishnu: "What is that?"
You: "Oh great... If you don't know what Slashdot is... You'll loose your job for sure!"
Vishnu: "Oh no!"
You: "Well buddy... I'll clue you in. Reading Slashdot is more important than actually doing any work at your job and you should always have it open at work and hit refresh every few minutes to see if there are any new stories. Then if you see anything that you don't have authority to talk about you need to make a comment with outrageous claims so that you get what they call 'modded up' and everyone will think that you are the head honcho and you'll great a raise for sure! Not only that but the more mod ups you get, the better karma you'll have!"
Vishu: "Oh blessed karma! Thank you American sir!"
You: "Anytime."
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Re:Isn't that really... (Score:4, Funny)
Vishu: "Oh blessed karma! Thank you American sir!"
You: "Anytime."
Vishnu (muttering to himself): "What a dick"
- Vishnu Ramachandran
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Re:Isn't that really... (Score:4, Insightful)
Vishnu: Pardon me, but what kind of Cracker Jack box did you get your programming skills from? I have a PhD in Computer Science from Pune University where my thesis was on Automatic Retargetable Code Generation techniques, and I've contributed kernel code to Debian and OpenBSD. Now you are asking me to sabotage code like some uneducated American code monkey whose sole qualifications during the dot-com boom were that he had a pulse and could read? Please, sir, don't train me. Just take your severance and go.
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Re:Welcome to the world America created (Score:5, Insightful)
They always cost more in time, opportunity costs, or actual cash.
Point in fact:
The contract job I'm doing has me writing a Linux system's wrapper library to make their drivers look more normal to Linux developers.
They also have a foreign contractor in India developing a similar interface as a kernel module.
I'm getting about 3 times what this guy's getting paid per hour.
The tasks in question are comparable in effort to do- and the guy's not an idiot.
I'm into testing on an alpha and trying to figure out where the performance bottlenecks are.
He's still not got anything properly working yet.
He started before me by several weeks.
I'm where I am in only 4 weeks of 50 hour work weeks- in another set of the same, it'll
very likely be a releasable product in the case of my work.
Offshoring doesn't always produce the results you think it will- and in many cases it causes
bad will. In a time where companies like Dell, who were one of the first to offshore work,
are publicly bringing the work back into the states because it was actually the same end
cost with better results to outsource it to places in Oklahoma and similar- the PHB types
at BofA are offshoring stuff to India, thinking it'll save them money. Short term, it might.
Long term, it's going to cost them all of that savings and possibly more. I'd not want to
use a bank that thinks it's okay to outsource any of it's functions to a foreign country
that's been known to have it's employees mis-use personal info for personal gain- good
thing I've been working on going elsewhere for my banking needs.
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Re:Screw "em, Walk Out! (Score:5, Insightful)
To really spite them, you should make the effort an train your indian replacement, in a creative way.
Step 1 is to dig all those SOX and ISO-9000 procedures, you have been forced to fill out over the years. Per definition, they describe your work in a reproducible way. These should be the base of any training. Make your replacement memorize them an apply them in harmless cases, where they don't generate too much mayhem. This alone should easily occupy about 3 months worth of training time and prove totally worthless while being the perfect employee by the book.
Step 1a, if above mentioned documentation doesn't have enough volume, take the time and have the trainee update it. This alone should cover another 6 months.
Step 2 have your trainee sign of every thing you've told him, that he learned and understood the procedure. By the end of every day, you shoudl have at least 4 signed papers by your replacement how well you've trained him. Add copies of these signed statements to your daily work log.
Step 3 stop doing any regular work - except for problems that are not easy to fix an will appear again after you've left. The trainees and the managers should get the impression your job is just easy routine. If some manageroid comes with urgent requests, let him know that you don't have time for it, as you have to train the replacement for your severance pay and the replacement isn't ready to perform this yet. If they want it done anyway, get it in written and signed on paper, best with HR also approving that you don't have to train the replacement while doing soem other things. Give a reasonable time frame (eg Rebooting a desktop: 2 work days)
Step 4 is only valid if you get the explicit written order, that you need to stop training your replacement for some time period. Use it to to the fullest.
Step 5 you naturally work only from 9 to 5. Should your trainee be late or has to leave early, complain immediately with HR that he fails to appear. If your trainee has certain time constraints, make sure you make it as hard as possible for him to keep them.
Step 6, do all work under the account of the trainee, best let the trainee do the typing. If something gets messed up, it was him. How do you say in hindi "rm -rf
Step 7, if you can stomach it, always be nice and friendly with your trainee. Try to connect with him, make him feel comfortable. This way, he'll be easier to have him do things that have long term consequences.
With these easy steps, you should be able to cover any time necessary to get the full pay, generate a good enough paper trail to document your outstanding commitment and can do more damage than any other way. If you manage to coordinate these procedure with collegues, you might be able to teach all trainees the same crap while leaving out the importatn stuff. Nothing beats having some poor indian schmucks create 5 documentation copies of the same irrelevant procedure on how backup tapes are stored, while leaving out that the backup job needs to be run manually every day.
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Re:Red Herring (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's one thing when an employee has voluntarily quit his job, or is retiring, to ask him to train his replacement as his last task. That makes sense, and I can't imagine anyone thinking differently.
Neither is the case here. You where not planning on leaving. You are not superfluous, the job you where doing is still going to get done. Only they'll hire some Indian for 1/3rd the price.
That is not standard. Infact in many countries in the world it would be downrigth illegal. Under Norwegian law, for example, you can only fire people if a) they failed to do their job or otherwise to uphold their part of the work-agreement. b) The job they are doing is no longer going to be done and you can't possibly use them in some other position in your company. Or c) Your company is experiencing a lack of business and needs to reduce the workstaff to stay in the black.
"We make a profit now, but we'll make even more of a profit if we fire you and hire an indian to do your job", simply ain't on the list of acceptable excuses.
Requiring you to actively assist in such an undertaking just adds insult to injury.
Yes, I realize americans don't enjoy much, if any, protection against being fired for any reason at all. I'm just saying it's not all that strange to be upset about this -- seeing that in many parts of the world people where upset enough about this kind of shit to make it illegal.
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