Lloyds Is Auditing Thousands of IT Staffers' Technical Skills (bloomberg.com) 39
Lloyds Banking Group is assessing the skills of thousands of technology staffers in the UK to determine whether they can keep working at the bank once it upgrades its technology [alternative source]. Bloomberg: The British lender, which is carrying out a multiyear overhaul of its systems, put these workers on notice this month that they are at risk of losing their jobs and will be required to reapply for new positions across the bank, according to people familiar with the matter. In a company town hall last week, executives informed those staffers that they were in the process of assessing their technical skills based on a test they took last year to determine where, if anywhere, they can be placed within Lloyds, the people said, asking not to be named discussing non-public information.
It's just a layoff. It's just a layoff. (Score:5, Informative)
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People won't save if they're unemployed.
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It's just a layoff. Because if it wasn't just a layoff, you could train people. It's just a layoff.
Yes, is there some reason you would not want to keep your better employees in a layoff?
I've been through number of them. The dead wood is culled, and you keep the good. The evaluation tests are a little weird, because what manner of company would have no idea who was good and who isn't.
The good ones indeed could be retrained.
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Your metric is how many calls a helpdesk rep completes within a given timeframe. Bob has his friends call up once a week or so with minor issues which can be resolved in five minutes or so.
Susan gets calls which require more in-depth questions and discussion. Her calls can take twenty minutes to resolve.
By looking at the metric, Bob completes four times as many calls as Susan so as an underperformer, Susan
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The really good take the voluntary redundancy package and get a new job somewhere else.
You're left with the average and some dead wood.
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It's just a layoff. Because if it wasn't just a layoff, you could train people. It's just a layoff.
Came in to say exactly this. To those who deny this is a layoff, pay attention to this part of the summary:
"they were in the process of assessing their technical skills based on a test they took last year to determine where, if anywhere, they can be placed within Lloyds"
Any bets on whether the staffs were told about how the test result would be used last year when they took it?
Old geezers in a corporate know that any report would be misused once they reach management's hands, the smart ones would have refu
Experience v.s. fad tech knowledge (Score:2)
It's sometimes worthwhile to also keep people with experience because the same methods can still work even if the technologies changes.
In IT most of the work is to being able to know and understand what the users need, not the tech to be used.
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It's sometimes worthwhile to also keep people with experience because the same methods can still work even if the technologies changes.
In IT most of the work is to being able to know and understand what the users need, not the tech to be used.
Exactly they’ve mastered saying “have you tried turning it off and on again?”
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>I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
From what I've seen of every consultant I have *ever* come across, the only cash-flow the consultant is converting gibberish into is their own. Never ONCE have I seen an ROI that couldn't have been achieved by the people already in place.
In fact, a lot of time the consultants come up with plans that were already discarded by management when the workers themselves presented them.
Lol. Consultants. What a wasteful proposition.
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They've tried to turn this "Understand what the user needs" into a different, less well paid career called "Business analyst" but it hasn't worked out for them because the actual work still requires understanding complex and specific technical restraints.
Lloyds Is Auditing Thousands of IT Staffers ... (Score:2)
Lloyds Is Auditing Thousands of IT Staffers' Technical Skills
Sounds like high season for recruiting agencies.
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Nobody is hiring now. Recruiting agencies are always boom/bust, and now it's bust
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Nobody is hiring now. Recruiting agencies are always boom/bust, and now it's bust
Lloyds is a UK bank, and the UK IT industry doesn't seem to be in any particular crisis, specially for people with three or more years of experience and a whole bunch of those is about to reconsider their job options.
Always a good idea. (Score:5, Funny)
Over my thirty plus years in IT, I've found the best business move is to do everything you can to shake off anyone that might have industry or even business specific knowledge due to years spent doing the job. You want to lose those people because that knowledge won't ever be useful. Much better to make sure the staff all tick the correct boxes for whatever the latest technological fad is. Industry specific knowledge developed over a career is useless. Only fad technology knowledge is important.
Re:Always a good idea. (Score:5, Funny)
Over my thirty plus years in IT, I've found the best business move is to do everything you can to shake off anyone that might have industry or even business specific knowledge due to years spent doing the job. You want to lose those people because that knowledge won't ever be useful. Much better to make sure the staff all tick the correct boxes for whatever the latest technological fad is. Industry specific knowledge developed over a career is useless. Only fad technology knowledge is important.
It occurred to me moments after posting that Slashbots may not be quick enough to understand that this was meant as sarcasm. Mea culpa.
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It is sad how many "leaders" out there think engineers are just interchangeable parts and that domain knowledge is meaningless. Having the depressing job right now of transitioning my product to a team in India who have very little domain knowledge and watching my high functioning team be spread out to other US based teams. Apparently our leaders don't understand th
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Sounds like you should look for a new job, before the transition is complete. Take your knowledge with you and don't leave it behind.
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I'll admit it took me a minute......
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It occurred to me moments after posting that Slashbots may not be quick enough to understand that this was meant as sarcasm. Mea culpa.
Always be conscious of Poe's Law.
Re:Always a good idea. (Score:4, Funny)
We are excited to acknowledge that your deep dive into the relationship between core competency and next generation staffing needs prove you have grasped the necessity of establishing international touchpoints to overcome any failure of agility due to excessive human resource hyperlocality.
Your commitment to a positive customer journey means we can offer you the opportunity to share your expertise with the call centre rock stars who will be performing your tasks going forward.
Thank you for your service.
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Re: Always a good idea. (Score:2)
Re: Always a good idea. (Score:2)
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Thirty years in IT? What crimes did you commit in a past life to be reincarnated into that?
Not sure, but I've spent 29 years trying to figure that out.
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What is even more important is making up plausible reasons for firing your local, expensive staff, so you can off-shore it to a cheaper country, without running foul of the local labour laws and risking unjustified dismissal cases.
Motivation (Score:5, Interesting)
reductions inevitable and some roles being offshored to Lloyds Technology Center in India.
There's the real reason. Brings me back to the days when I worked for company that did offshoring and yearly assessments, but the assessments were braindumps of certs where they did a find and replace on versions and didn't include images that made the questions make sense. (Like questions about Office 2010 that reference the new format .docx...) Since promotions and continued employment were tied to the evaluation and likewise customer billing on certified knowledgeable staffing, cheating was rampant. It's all a billing game though, because if people passed they met the contractual knowledge requirements they sold to their clients.
When IT workers have to be replaceable cogs, offshoring to get the same knowledge seems thrifty. But then some of the realities set in, like being a different time zone and being disconnected from business processes that technology is supposed to enable. So the workers that you'll get are ones that have to work graveyard shifts. So the people you'll get are the people desperate enough take jobs at awful hours. Which leads to willingness to lie about experience and knowledge. Then when those people do get the experience to be qualified, they'll disappear into gigs that aren't as bad. Then later they'll realize the burden on the onshore staff is greater than expected.
At least, it seems like they are running their own service which shortcuts some of the other pass the buck games.
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Lloyds is a UK bank.
"Required to reapply for new positions" (Score:4, Funny)
I suggest they all apply for the CEO position.
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After all, there will never be a skills audit for any C?O position, not even CIO, CTO, or CFO where it would make sense for the occupant to be at least buzzword-familiar with the subjects.
"How many people have you fired today?" (Score:2)
Just more rounds of mass firings (Score:2)
They can call it anything they want but what they *really* want to do is just use this as an excuse to reduce headcount.
Good luck, as their most competent rats leave the ship first.
Who Can We Replace With AI? (Score:2)
Editors: (Score:2)
Instead of providing an alternative source when the original is paywalled, how about only providing the alternative source and completely disregarding the paywalled one?