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Train Your Own Replacement
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo reports on how some employers are asking the workers they're laying off to train their foreign replacements - having them dig their own unemployment graves. 'Almost one in five information technology workers has lost a job or knows someone who lost a job after training a foreign worker, according to a new survey by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers.' It looks like a real dilemma where if you refuse to hire your replacement, you are fired without severance and are ineligible for unemployment benefits, and if you quit, you don't receive severance and are ineligible for unemployment."
Sorry, it's not in my job description.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No sense in helping them to look good eh?
I propose a third option:
Train them to do things the wrong way, reap maximum amusement out of your last days at the firm, and laugh as you walk out the door.
Make it painful for the company to fire you.
I'm not in the computer industry, but I'm wondering how long it takes to train foreign workers? If your job is so valuable that it takes a few days to train someone to be as competent as you, then how does that reflect upon your job?
Imagine training a foreign physician in what you do. How long would that take? 7-12 years?
I don't have to worry about 'training' my replacement.
And whats worse-in my case the employer lied. "Oh no we're not training them to replace you, we just expect that you will be busy with other projects..." Yeah other projects like looking for work. They paid for it in the end....HAH! And when they asked me back to help "save the company"....I didnt feel much desire to.
Let the employers make their mistakes. You're going to get laid off anyway, so you might as well use the time to start looking for a new job instead of whining about having to train your replacement. Unless you're extremely well organized, it's not like your replacement is going to get much out of your training.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
How do you introduce yourself in a situation like that? "Hi Apu, how are ya? They're outsourcing me to...you!"
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
Stories like this really piss me off!!! >:-
Forcing somebody to train their replacement is just absurd.
There needs to be a balance between management power and union power, because this is just absurd.
and if they don't train their replacements, they don't get their severance pay. It would suck to be in that position.
Cmon people...Start Training the BOFH way!
BOFH: "In order to make sure that your computer is operating at its full capacity, you must daily feed your monitor water whilst holding down the degauss button".
Trainee over phone:" Sir, this is no problem.." ***BZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzTTttttttttttttt***
BOFH: "Next trainee. I'm going to like being replaced".
Sig it.
Step two: train your trainee to be incompetent.
Step three: laugh at the karmic justice of them firing you for being expensive and getting a useless employee in return.
Step four: read the classified ads and fail to find a new job.
At least both you and the company are screwed.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Fine! But Rasheed is not getting my red stapler!...
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
this seems very demeaning. does this sell anyone on -an IT union? -Public database of companies demanding this of outgoing workers?
Yes! Evil rules! Good can suck it! Suck it, good!
Train them to !@#$ up ... hehe
Just train them in a nice cordial manner but instead of calling them by their name casually address them as "Scab". Also, delete everything in their source directory on your last day.
why run from Vincenzo?
Not really.
You may safely choose either option.
What if you trained them to do your job wrong, so they totally screw everything up?
In my company I have to train my potential replacements every day. The company wants to have the ability to layoff anyone, anytime without worry. In fact they have a big layoff once every few months. I'm getting used to it.
Not that losing ANY jobs is ever good... but a 1% swing in ANYTHING is hardly a trend. And this is far less than 1%.
This is the kind of stupidity that created the phrase 'digging your own grave". No matter what, you're screwed. If you dig your grave, you'll openly acknowledge that you're going to die. If you don't dig your grave, what are they going to do? Kill you? In both cases, there is no incentive to have the person do a damn thing.
1) Start working on a business plan 2) Train your replacement as poorly as possible 3) Collect your severance pay, use it as an investment together with an SBA loan 4) Go into business for your self
Well.. I think its obvious.. First, take a really long time to explain everything. Also, make sure you find the most expensive English to Hindi translator for the company to foot the bill for.. Give the trainee seemingly useful information but then leave out big important details. This way, you look like youre trying to help, but youre really leaving your mark.. and boy will they miss you :P
Make like my pants and split.
if you quit, you don't receive severance and are ineligible for unemployment.
quiting would only hurt more...but oh well.
WoW: Scheod 70 orc warlock on Shadowmoon
This is common practice at my job... I work as a state-licensed privately-run datacenter, to which state gvt agencies outsource their mainframe and other large scale Unix processing.
When we sign a new contract for an agency, we send computer operators and other staff there for a week to get trained by the state employees that are about to get laid off
Well, in Maryland at least, you do receive unemployment benefits if you are fired. Also, you can receive benefits when resigning in leui of being fired. A friend of mine just went through this.
He worked for Lockheed Martin and was going to be fired.
Instead, he resigned and received benefits. No severence though...
I do not recollect or recall such information at this present time.
How to surf Slashdot ALL day while appearing to get work done. They may be cheaper, but they will never be less productive.
"1 in 5 lost their job or knew someone who lost their job."
Talk about hear-say. That's hardly indicative of how pervasive the problem really is. How about some hard numbers, instead of a bunch of sappy stories about people committing suicide?
Plus, the story claims that you won't get unemployment or might be fired because of something one woman said she believed when she was told she had to train replacements. That's a load of crap to anyone with any clue on how employment laws work.
If you're worried about the severance or are enticed by the extra carrots they're waving in front of you, well, then, dig your own grave.
If all employees resisted, completely walked out of places that were doing it, refused to train Indian replacements...then maybe these companies would think twice. Instead those that are left simply bow their heads down and think "Gee, too bad for Sally."
But...oh, yeah, that's right. IT is too good to be unionized.
I'm a dba/server tech/programmer/network admin for a growing import/export company with offices scattered in a few countries. I've been a little overworked. In the last year, they've hired a dba, server tech, programmer, & a network admin -- all working out of the Mazatlan office, for about 1.5x my salary, combined. And I'm training and training and training.... paranoid? Me? Sure -- if I wasn't the only US employee left.
I was just told I'm being laid off from my company. Many of us here have been forced to spend two or three NIGHTS a week on the phone with our 'colleagues' in India who have turned out to be our replacements over the course of more than a year. While its bad enough to be forced to train your replacement, we were forced to do so on what should have been our own personal time!
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
God I heard about not reading the article but you didn't even read the entire blurb. My hat's off to you my friend!
why run from Vincenzo?
If they can threaten to disqualify you from unemployment for refusing to train your own replacement, then there's a problem with unemployment law.
In most states, they have a short list of "good reasons" why you can quit your job and still get unemployment, such as your employer requiring an abusive number of overtime hours. If this situation isn't on those lists yet, it should be.
Don't get pissed when you're asked to train your replacement. Worry when you *arent* asked, because it means management doesnt think you know anything valuable.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Nobody is going to be happy with being asked to train their replacement but sometimes the additional severence is pretty generous. It might afford you the time to find a job you like better. IMHO it is a good idea to do your best to help and not burn any bridges with your employer.
Your replacement trains you!
Over the past 2 years, well over 90% of the IT people I know have been laid off. Many, more than once. Some, probably close to 20%, but I didn't count, had to train their replacements.
So, it looks like your 1% is VERY low. Sample size is everything, and your sample of you (ONE), isn't big enough to make any conclusions from.
You know, once the Philipine center is completed, your job is toast.
I'm going to have to report you as untrainable.
There was a guy from Homeland Security asking about you.
I'm teaching you wrong.
What is India going to be like with a large number of Disgruntled American Techies looking for something to do?
You know Boeing (or whomever) is just a shell of a company now, how long do you think they can last in the race to the bottom?
Even if the guy you're training is well qualified, there is probably enough that is peculiar to your company and your job that you could do this. He might know that he's not getting the full story, but he won't know what you're leaving out.
It seems to me that this is really asking for trouble, particularly for higher level jobs where the work isn't easily supervised. The story suggests that there are no counter-incentives to this, and I'm not sure how you could build any in, at least under U.S. labor law.
See what I've been reading.
..work, please consider those of us who haven't had a place of work for any appreciable amount of time.
Not all of us suck at what we do; some of us simply can't find employment.
It's pretty close to being free, I think, for $3 an hour developed in India.
Stallman has warranted himself a yearly payout from Rockfeller Foundation, you mean, you nerds all fought for free software without having some kind of backup plan?
hire foriegn workers to outsource your replacement.
It's interesting in that this has the potential to create far more outrage than simply outsourcing.
Gentoo Sucks
I actually had this happen to me last year. I worked for Motorola's helpdesk and was asked to train our replacements in Canada after they decided to outsource their IT. Needless to say I said no...and they really couldn't understand why. Finally they brought the people down where we would have to train them....it was definitely a great morale booster...
But still, your involvement sometimes makes it possible for the job to job to go off shore, where without it the whole plan would have failed.
CVS? Nah, we tried that but it didn't work. We're using visual source safe now.
Ok, first you model everything down each class and method level in UML, then you apply the elaboration bongfizzle according to rational unified process...
We're targeting this release to run on the Longhorn codebase...
I'm sorry, but you must adhere to the *letter* of the EJB spec. That means you cannot use java.io.*, cannot have worker threads, no socket communication, scheduled events, or application lifecycle events.
You absolutely must check in everything before you go home at the end of the day. That way you don't lose anything if your workstation dies. Build failures? No problem, someone will fix it before you get in the next day.
You can start coding as soon as you acquire linux licenses from SCO...
Remain calm! All is well!
>Worry when you *arent* asked, because it means management doesnt think you know anything valuable.
When they laid you off, the already have come to that conclusion.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Sabotage. Screw up so badly at the training, thattwo weeks after laying you off, the company will beg you and offer double the salary so you come back and fix whatever the foreign worker screwed up (by following your teachings).
And today, we will learn about the Remark command. RM for short.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
This is nothing new.
Happens all the time in business.
What do you think is going to happen to all those big paying jobs when the new generation of kids floods the market place?
I'll be pumping gas soon if the prices don't stop dropping or outsourcing.
Like our acceptance of public masturbation.
They saw outsourcing work for the manufacturing sector, but failed to realize that there were still some high paying jobs buying all this stuff.
...and the Geek shall inherit the Earth...
When there are NO high paying jobs here and the allmighty dollar takes over in places that have never seen prosperity, the system will collapse.
I believe that this night holds for us the very meaning of our lives...
I'm not here to tell you how it will end, Im here to tell you how it will begin
be sure to alias err... replace "cp" with "rm -rf" in the profile on the last day. :)
Worry when you *arent* asked, because it means management doesnt think you know anything valuable.
:-)
This is an insightful point. If you can do a good job training foreign workers then guess what: you have another skill for your resume. Since nothing will stop the outsourcing transition, it seems prudent to pick up skills that are valuable in this new reality. That includes vendor management, project management, and remote training. I'd train them well and then tout that I am good at "global cross-functional communication, training, and project management" on the old resume.
No, address them like the filthy fucking curry that they are.
This whole outsourcing trend seems like a real "Catch 22" to me.
.... consumers.
We live in a capitalist society, where the need to make profits forces us to minimise costs where ever possible so we can sell product to consumers at the best possible margin. To do this we outsource production to cheaper countries, and in doing so take away the incomes of our
If everyone loses their incomes due to outsourcing, who's going to be left to consume the products these people sell?
someone goes postal on this.
This is insanity and no one wants to lose their job. And to be forced to train your replacement? That's just flat out wrong..
There's a lot of unstable people out there, already under huge stress. Add this to the mix and you're asking for a body count....
It's sad, it's scary but it will happen. Count on it..
fessing up and saying that it's for money instead of insulting us by saying that foreign workers are: smarter, better educated, harder working, etc.... than us Americans.
Remember the phrase 'slow learner'? well if your on the payroll to teach your replacement, and your worried that mis-training them will get you in to trouble, just remember the phrase 'slow teacher'! you could spend a whole year just teaching someone, very very very slowly and extra extra carefully, every single detail of your system until they kill themselves out of bordem. Then you can get started on the next one ;)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
If the job was moved to another state, at least you'd have the option to follow the job without any meaningful legal barriers. It's not so easy to follow your job to India though.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
You're exactly right on.
In most cases, when your job has no training responsiblity and suddenly gets that resposibility, it's a leverage with which to demand a pay raise or a contract that makes a comittment to keep you around. If they don't give that to you, then you haven't been fired... your old job has ceased to exist and you declined the new one they tried to offer you because it's an unacceptable offer. That's the difference between a logic that disqualifies you from unemployment to one that qualifies you.
I think they're relying on the fear of workers not familiar with the local unemployment laws to not see that they can get their unemployment benefits even if they refuse to train their replacements, and if everybody on a staff refuses to be the trainer than the "send the jobs overseas" plan suddenly gets a whole lot more expensive to the point it tips over...
I wonder what the numbers really are. Personally, I am not affected (but may be one day before too long) but I have a friend who is being sent Silicon Valley East (Bangalore) to train his replacement in September. He doesn't want to train them to do the job badly, because he doesn't want to hurt his long standing customers. Noble, but perhaps somewhat misguided.
If a company changes the conditions of your employment so that you are forced to quit, you may be able to sue them for 'constructive dismissal'. It's the same as if they fired you without cause. You may get punitive damages because they harassed you. You should be able to get unemployment insurance.
Example: You were a network admin but the boss says you now have to mix caustic chemicals without a gas mask.
So, all you groklawyers out there; if you have to train your replacement, is that constructive dismissal?
At the end of me placement as part of my undergrad degree I was asked to train up my replacement. I didn't want to work there anymore and I knew they would end up replacing most of the work I had done for them if the new dude didn't catch on quickly.
So I worked like a bitch in my last few weeks to get the new guy ready. Means that all my hard work was not flushed down the pan.
Knowing someone who has lost a job (eg. friends) would be relatively rare among the set of friends (5-15 people maybe), So the minimum size would be 20% / 15 or a little over 1%. But if it's knowing of someone who has lost a job, you reduce the percentage further. And if you consider some sort of cross-correlation, with multiple people knowing the same person who lost their job, you change the statistic again.
Basically, the statistic they came up with is worthless, and, as you point out, is used in an inflammatory and misleading fashion. I hadn't even thought about it until you brought it up. Thank you.
I'd not refuse to train them, neither would I do a very good JOB of it...
And neither should anyone else.
If your managers (who presumably AREN'T being replaced, knew everything about your job duties and had your skills, THEY'd be doing the training, so there is little chance they'd know.
And, presumably, your replacements won't know, as to need such training, they clearly don't have the skills needed to DO your job...
I'd deliberately leave out as much as I can get away with. It's the company's own fault, if they NEED you to transfer proprietary skills of YOURS to do things that they should have documented, they deserve what they get.
And they deserve to get fucked ANYWAY for the despicable practice of outsourcing.
Corporatism != Free Market
(Posting AC for a reason) ... I had to train the blokes in Boston, MA to do my job.
When I was working for Lotus , bay area in 2000, and got layed off
Make sure he is well-trained, and to do that, make him stick to all the "approved policied and procedures" about good coding practice, good commenting, good communications with management, good deadline handling, etc, and all the ins and outs of the systems. Write highly detailed docs.
First, it'll take an awful long time, so you'll collect extra paycheck(s). Furthermore, your bosses might realise that the foreign worker can't "exactly" speak perfect english, especially when it comes to explaining complex interactions between the software and the business unit processes.
Also, the bosses will realize that you do know what the hell you are doing, and that'll come in handy later on with references.
Lastly, you will have gained a good reputation as a good trainer. This will definitely impress the next employer, since they too will wonder how you handle a layoff.
But remember: You are technically fired, because you cost too much. It has nothing to do with your personality or anything else. It's all about money. Take it like a man and handle it like a professional.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Here's what I don't understand. The article states $136 billion dollars of salary (per year) will be moved outside the US in the next 15 years. Don't these businesses realize that when they stop paying the american people to build their products, that the american people they rely on to BUY their products wont have any money because they pushed all the jobs overseas? What will McDonalds do when McDonalds are all automated and nobody has any money to eat at McDonalds? When a company moves all its staff but executive off shore, aren't they removing that much money in the very market they want to compete in, therefore hurting themselves in the end?
Agreed This happened to me in 2001. The overseas "Consulting" outfit that was hired to replace me as an admin/dba received all the training i deemed appropriate. Needless to say after six months of unacceptable downtime on the servers- security breaches- software issues - and piss poor performance (although the stupid CFO and accountants were happy) i had sitting in my lap a very lucrative support contract. Same job - part time- twice the money. Go figure. The world is full of idiots and i'm starting to beleive they are ALL accountant types.
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
Here's what will happen in reaction to this article.
A lot of people will respond and tell us how angered they are over the injustices that it is being done to their peers. Then, they will move on to the next story, because in America individuality reigns supreme and the media has twisted our common history to the extent that people do not realize that it was trade unions that made possible the establishment of fair labor standards, such as sick pay, vacation time, a 40-hour week, health standards in the workplace, age-limits to enter the workfoce and so forth.
People will complain about the raw deal that they get from corporations, yet fail to understand that they have been co-opted into thinking of trading unions as their enemy.
So long as trade unions are vilified in this country and workers continue to believe that they can beat the system individually if they just continue to make themselves more knowledgeable and their skills more marketeable -all good and lofty things but not the solution to this issue- I will remain unimpressed by these stories for two reasons:
1) They contain a pinch of xenophobia, at least most of them do.
2) People are not looking for root causes and fool themselves if they think that foreign workers are not also continuing to make themselves more knowledgeable and their skills more marketable.
It's time to collaborate with your peers with the same passion that you work on open source software: Union Makes Strength
For those of you that fail to understand that life is sacrosact and that profits are not everything,do not bother. History has proven you wrong. Only a short time ago, a worker could not hope to reach his thirty's because his working conditions were so inhumane and miserable.
Know your history, know your past. It will empower you to face the future.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Isn't it ironic that we are complaining about someone else stealing our jobs, when our job is to get computers to steal other peoples jobs. At least in this case, someone else is getting employed...not something else.
I seriously doubt it though.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Bob Slydell: If you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Bob Slydell: Great.
Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door--that way Lumberg can't see me, heh--after that I sorta space out for an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
The global involvements of the transnational economic elites erode their sense of belonging to a national community. An early 1980s poll showed:
"The higher people's income and education . . . the more conditional the allegiance. . . . They were more likely than the poor and uneducated to say they would leave the country if they could double their income."
In the early 1990s, future Secretary of Labor Robert Reich reached a similar conclusion, noting that "America's highest income earners . . . have been seceding from the rest of the nation."5 This seceding elite is, as John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge say, "increasingly cut off from the rest of society: Its members study in foreign universities, spend a period of time working abroad and work for organizations that have a global reach. They constitute a world within a world, linked to each other by myriad global networks but insulated from the more hidebound members of their own societies. . . . They are more likely to spend their time chatting with their peers around the world--via phone or e-mail--than talking with their neighbors in the projects around the corner."
Fasinating story in the National Interest.
Just convert the Scab into a american, teach him about how much more you make, and about how you dont got to take shit from anyone and you will get another job, doing something much more intersting and still be making 3x his salary.
Or point out that the McDonalds kids make more than him. Remind him that he should never trust the company, don't fuck the scabs skills, make him one of us.
If your replacement can go back to India and start demanding higher wages, expect to see jobs coming back to the U.S., in 10 years after all the americans have had their wills pounded as bad as the Indians who now act like Americans. Maybe even the same guy you trained, will train you to take back your job.
I think I'm going to switch away from learning programing and tech and get into management/law. All i gotta do now is practice being a prick, so I will go find small dogs to kick.
IF anything, teach the Indian the most important thing... YOUR NEXT!
I see you becomming the strongest of all Jedi....
Tax CREDITS for employers, equal to 1.5 times their payroll that is made up of US citizens or those with permanent residency (ie: "green card") to apply to the corporate tax.
The corporate tax is a farce anyway, it's not REAL revenue to the government, as it is treated as an EXPENSE that comes out of the pockets of other taxpayers who are customers or employees of the corporation.
This would level the playing field because it would INCENTIVIZE companies to use US labor (and all those extra paychecks would easily make up for the tax revenue lost), and it would allow existing companies to play by today's rules if they so choose.
It would also incentivize higher salaries, as the more a company pays their employees, the greater their tax savings!
I really think this is a great idea, but I have no clue as to how to try to get it to someone's attention who can do something about it.
Corporatism != Free Market
Just trian the person to always ask the boss asinine questions about things you should have already told them. It's not like they can fire you after you've gone! Hey you have to leave your legacy to your co-workers who survived.
sleep easy, for tomorrow we take over the world...
Well, this is standard practice at HP. Of course, they come right out and tell you that you are being terminated...so in that respect, one can't call them sneaky. I've seen this happen countless times. I'm sure if management had any more credibility with the rank and file, they would try to leverage that by being sneaky...but as it is now, people are so disgusted with Carleton & Co. that they distrust anything they say. - hpMonkey
If you find yourself in this situation the answer is pretty straight forward. Just hold a gun to their head. Training is expensive so tell management that you'd be happy to train the replacement. The cost is $10,000 (replace with suitable amount). Take half up front and the other half upon completion. Another way to look at this is you want severence pay + bonus in advance. *Important note* a written agreement is not good enough, they'll screw you. If they don't agree to this, just quit without notice. Leave your card, tell them if they change their mind to give you a call. If your next employer asks why you quit give them the straight dope. Always take the moral high ground. You must be fair, but show absolutely no mercy.
Azurite is fine covellite is mine.
First time was a crusher, guys sent from India, working for an offshore vendor - my primary task was to train them to take over for me, since I was terminated in lieu of them taking over systems support and development. Funny thing was my friend got me the gig there four years earlier but just about all of my training was of the OJT variety, though as a seasoned programmer, it doesn't take me too long to get the underpinnings of the system after I dig a bit. I got another offer, and even though it was for less pay and temporary, gladly took it to escape the burden. One of my team members trained a fellow for six months, thinking that the guy was going back to India. Then he suffered the ultimate insult as the individual got to relocate here and take his work from home position.
Second time I didn't have a job lined up and a team in Mexico took over my function. While I didn't train these folks in person, I was charged with preparing a comprehensive how-to guide that covered every facet of system support and development on that particular application domain. Knowledge transfer was conducted via email and my prepared HTML kit that covered everything from overviews to FAQ on the system. It was easier to stomach, minus the person to person mode.
You do it because as long as you're accepting a paycheck, you're obligated to serve as directed. At least that is the way I was brought up. A honest days work for an honest days pay and all that jazz.
Within a 45 minute drive of my house, I tally >5-10K jobs gone, either to India or handled by immigrant visa worker here in the states. By those numbers, you may be assured that these arn't rinky dink outfits, these are corporate giants in finance, defense industry, semiconductors, etc...
Maybe it's not come to your IT department yet. But the prospect will come soon to the executive management, unless you work for a very small shop, and they will consider it. I served a contract in the summer at a pharmaceutical company and the staff there boasted no way would offshoring and/or outsourcing pervade their organization. A few months into the assignment, senior management there announced a bold new initiative, a partnership with IBM that did indeed involve wholesale migration of their application and systems programming to Indian locales.
Here's a list of firms that have indeed embarked upon campaigns that involved US workers training foreign replacements:
You can read about more companies here that have ex-IT workers that can share the same stories. These arn't satellite systems out on the peripheral horizon, only impacting a small percentage. If anything, I'd say the numbers quoted in the story are way under the mark, given these are core systems like accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, financial capture, EDI, MRP, reservation scheduling, accounting, etc...
Yay globalism.
AZspot
I know most of us "white collar" folks despise unions, but look at what autoworkers did when Japan and Europe started taking US auto companies to the cleaners, and the Big Three started treating people like shit. They unionized. Then they striked. The motto was: we don't care if you can't do as well if you can't treat us like shit. You won't do business at ALL if you treat us like shit. Unless you want to close shop and go into making floral arrangements, you'll negotiate with us.
Honestly- what would happen if tomorrow, every IT worker simply got up from their keyboard at noon, turned off their cell phone/pager, and didn't come back for the rest of the day? We'd all be instantly fired in favor of people in India? Bullshit. Businesses are weak on the outsourcing front because they can't outsource everything. Strikes make it an all-or-nothing proposition, and contrary to popular belief, they can't just pick someone off the street; it still 'costs' quite a bit to hire someone. Unionizing doesn't make you the boss, but it does even the playing field, because as a single worker, you're rather powerless.
Today, despite HEAVY competition from Europe and Japan, UAW auto workers:
Wouldn't you kill to be able to have most of that? I sure as hell would. Detroit is looking better by the second.
...and I have to say that as much as I have always despised the US auto industry for building incredible crap, they've gotten far better over the years. This is despite major manufacturers actually setting up plants here in the US, because it's cheaper! So much for the argument that worker-friendly policies make you unable to compete in the global market.
Bank of America/Fleet just announced they're laying off 12,500 people. According to a BoA rep, guess what department will be one of the hardest hit? You guessed it- infrastructure, aka, Information Technology. Even better, most layoffs will be in the Northeast, because down in Georgia, land of the 2-year-old-strip-malls, real estate(and workers) are dirt cheap.
Oh, you can also vote for politicians who support striking down at-will employment laws...
Please help metamoderate.
... are missing it. Think about unionizing. And if you do, watch the union bosses and make sure they don't get blackmailed or bribed. That's it for advice. The two choices are watch jobs go away and paycheck shrink or vanish, or keep jobs, build better stuff, keep mo money for yourself and inside the nation where it recirculates and helps the economy as a whole.
You are one of only two or three professions who have the clout-if unionized-to shut the country down business-wise, a *pretty_dang_ snazzy* bargaining chip. And there ain't didlly squat uncle sam or any coalition of corporate bosses could do about it, because YOU CONTROL ALL THE STUFF AND THEY DON'T KNOW HOW.
You could force an end to outsourcing and H1B abuses, you could force "fair trade" over hideous and erroneously termed "free trade" scam billionaire's ripoffs with it's unequal excise taxes between nations (our exports are taxed a lot higher usually by other nations on most products), you could force "safe computing" as a standard on the manufacturers, you could actually stand a chance against the marketing weenies on important technical and engineering aspects..... you could make quality job 1 everywhere, and keep getting paid for it, instead of "ohh, it's shiny now, ship it out!" decisions...
buy a clue, look at the article again...
wall
handwriting
All you need is a union. If you wait, it'll be too late. Snooze ya lose....
I bet just over slashdot you could have several thousand people start a union within a few days....or hours really
having them dig their own unemployment graves
Companies are digging their own bankruptcy graves by hiring Indian workers.
We recently contracted out to India. Never again. we basically had to redo everything they did, and got to market almost a year behind our competition.
I lost my job and had to train replacements in a currency melt down crackpot dictatorship fundamentalist unequal uninsured nofly vortex. Yup. The site is now located in the USA. D.C. actually ..... See that dollar fall!
- DK -
The first draft was 60+ pages, and along with describing how to maintain the sytem it also included notes on defects and poor practices that the sysadmins should address (there were quite a few ).
The target audience for the document was someone with roughly my own skills who simply did not have the program-specific knowledge that I have. The document even encouraged the reader to improvise and adapt the notes; this was only one set of examples of how to do things and surely not the best or only way.
Well, shortly before submitting the document I was given someone who not only wasn't my peer, they shouldn't have even had a job doing anything with computers at all. We're talking a programer who said...
"I use the mouse to copy text."
"What's Ctrl-C? Sounds like too much trouble."
"Notepad is a very good editor."
"It's not possible to compare 2 files".
...I could go on for hours, though I'll spare you any more brain dammage.
The new instruction was that I needed to make sure this person could use the document I was writing. We're talking "Take a finger, reach around, stop when it gets moist" simplicity here.
In the mean time, I was to also train this person to do exactly what I did -- in 1 month -- though it took me about 5 years to learn the basics myself (and I've been doing it for 15 years!).
I've encountered both unreasonable and impossible tasks before, so I attacked this one with the same vigor. I spent most of the month training -- smiling -- and going away as often as possible to jump up and down in deep frustration.
Because _this_person_ was my real audience, I threw out most of the original document, and re-wrote it with such gems as "here is how to create a desktop link" and "follow procedures, even if you think you don't have to" (this I've heard was ignored immediately -- 'too much trouble; I don't need to do all that').
The only thing this person had was an H1B visa...and I'm guessing that they were both cheap and loyal (due to the threat of being deported).
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Train your replacement to do everything wrong or in some fashion that takes enormous amounts of extra time.
Screw the sigs.
That's an incredibly stressful position to be in.
please be excusing my english. I am haveing experence with training a replacment and last day i work i be teling him to push the red button at the end of the day to be teling workers that is end of work for the week. the power all over bolognea was not for six week. replacment fired bos fired. i be seeing bos at refuge with replacment. we all look for job now. i mabee moving to amerika to be take you jobs so be training me good.
Refusing to do something is not quitting. Not showing up for work isn't quitting -- heck that's taking personal time or "working from home". If they fire you then you get unemployment. If they make you so mad that you DO quit than it's your own damn fault. There is no "real dilemma" here, you can always force your employer to fire you and state that there's no way in hell that you'll ever quit. Send email, post memos and send certified mail to leave a paper trail.
The best jobs are available to the best. Therefore, you will have the most choices when you are highly valued by your employer, ergo, the best time to leave your employer is exactly time that it hurts your employer the most.
Always look for new work, always prospect for a better job, and always take it at the moment you are essential to your current employer.
This generally won't happen right away so you don't have to worry about having too many jobs, but you should be planning this from day one of your hire on to any job.
Now you're on your way out, here's what to do:
First make sure your new employer knows that you absolutely cannot leave your current employer out on a limb. Now, take the normal range of notice given in your situation, let's say two weeks. Let your new employer know that you will be able to start at a date that is twice this interval, in this example one month. Further, let your new employer know that you might be able to start earlier if the transition goes well. This usually won't be a problem, the new employer wants you to get started solving his problems right away.
Now, you have two choices depending on how you expect your current employer will react:
1) Wait two weeks and give two weeks notice. If you are working for some seat of the pants operation they may react from emotion and tell you don't bother to come in on monday (see below). Start your new job tommorow.
2) If you are working in a somewhat more proffesional environment, give your employer two weeks notice but let them know you will do whatever it takes to train your replacement. They are now on the spot to hire someone quickly, trust me, it will take two weeks. Now every minute you give to them to train this guy is like a gift, you are doing them a favor, you are a great employeee. Make sure they know you are in transition and that staying this extra time is a compromise but that you are willing to go the extra mile because they have been such a great employer.
Bottom line, you control the situation, you leave on good terms, you have forced your employers hand.
Things to remember:
Employment is a two way street, if you aren't earning money for them (or earning indirectly by saving) then why are they hiring you? Thus, you don't owe your employer anything other than the services he contracted for. It's his problem if he can't make a profit. With that in mind, divorce emotions from your employment activity, if it looks better for you to move right now, then move right now, that's your employer's problem not yours.
Always give notice late on friday afternoon for the same reasons they always fire people late on friday afternoon. You want to give them time to think about any reaction and divorce themselves from any emotional response. Even if your "Employer" is not prone to such a reaction, your managers and coworkers, and you, might be. By giving notice on friday you will have a weekend to relax and reflect on your decision, as will they.
Not directly related, but remember at the exit interview, the correct answer to "Is there anything we cannot tell future employers" the correct response is "you may not tell them anything not allowed by law"
happy job hunting
plurvert
an awful lot of resentment here. What? Is it because they're "foreigners"?. Would you treat them different if they were American? Why? We're on the same planet...right? Stop looking to other people for your security. Nobody owes to you, and nobody's going to give it to you. Let them have the damn job. Do something else. Save your money. Don't run up so much debt. And wear a rubber, for christ's sake!
What?
why doesn't anyone complain to INS that the employment visas are being given to employers who make no attempt to fill jobs locally (*you can get companies on the INS's shit list*)
if someone comes in on a h2b, and you can show they made no attempt to fill that job locally, gripe to INS.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I have for a few years tried to make myself redundant. I've automated everything I could. I trained people to do what I do, so they can do it better than me. I've done that out of my own initiative.
My Bosses like that, and I get more interesting Jobs than before.
I guess it's different if you are made to do it, because you probably won't have any more choice.
get 7 free Japanese lessons.
I worked as a contract employee at one point, and after I was done, they decided to add the job as a permanent position. They contracted me back to train the new guy. What joy that was. Had to teach him PERL in about a week. I walked away with more cash in 3 months then he will in a year.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
I welcome Americans to the club where you are feeling the pinch of capitalist policies. Hire and Fire rules. Imagine what kind of upheaveals you create for millions when you invade, occupy and destroy other countries whether militarily or through multinational corporations.
The day that I 'train' someone else to do my job, full well knowing that it's because of cheaper labour, layoffs, et al., is the day that I've lost all self-respect, integrity and dignity in myself.
Unless, of course, I've voluntarily decided to move on, in which case it makes perfect sense to train your replacement.
The obvious danger with this is that, by leaving your employer high and dry, you will make a reputation for yourself as less than a team player.
Finding God in a Dog
It looks like a real dilemma where if you refuse to hire your replacement, you are fired without severance and are ineligible for unemployment benefits, and if you quit, you don't receive severance and are ineligible for unemployment.
The obvious answer is to incorrectly train your replacement. One of my former employers had been doing this one department at a time, having existing employees train their replacements and then dropping the axe on that department.
When it came to my depertment (Bankruptcy) I pleaded with my co-workers to leave some of the finer details out. No one wanted to, so when the time came for us to commit to paper the process we used to submit a bankruptcy claim to the courts, I made sure that I didn't remind anyone of omitted steps.
Sure enough, the axe came down on our department and we were shuffled off to other areas. Our replacements fucked up during the first month, they improperly completed a bankruptcy claim and submitted it to court. It was summarily thrown out, costing the company $50,000 in one day. I felt satisfied when the story drifted back to our location.
Remember boys and girls, if you're expected to train your replacement. Go along with it, but leave out some critical step and make sure that the replacement fucks up.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Why can't we start a list and boycott companies that are outsourcing and engaging in unfair labor practices. Many of us buy technology and have influence over technology buying. What if we shifted as much money as we have power over to companies who play fair.
Maybe if this happened companies would realize that the cost in public perception outweighs any savings from cutting corners on labor costs.
Is anyone out there refusing to buy HP because it is run by a stupid cunt bitch? Or are we all just buying into the Walmart mentality where we hand our money over to the companies who enslave us?
IANAL but I bet you could find one to take your case. But do it now before your employer goes bankrupt!
sulli
RTFJ.
Blah, blah, blah...
Adding insult to injury.
Buckethead
Ahaha replace me, thats funny!
Uh-oh gotta go, boss wants to talk to me about something.
So ypu can afford any principles later.
Sad but true.
Think about the future.
Are you going to need anything from this employer?
For example, is it possible that you will be consulting and have a proposal in front of some of these people? That you might need a reference? That a prospective future employer might know your bosses professionally or socially?
Be careful of burning bridges, unless you are willing to get burnt (twice).
Alternatively, can you get something from your boss that will be useful to you? For example, maybe he will allow you to spend some time during the training period looking for a job with the resources you have at work. Or perhaps he'll help you network.
I'm not saying the boss is a nice guy or deserves your loyalty, but you may be able to get a quid pro quo, small as it may be, and that would be better than nothing. At very least look at your self interest in the situation as cold bloodedly as you can manage.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This happened to me. After 15 years we were outsourced, after 2 more years we were laid off.
As a professional I did the best job that I could to train the people in what they were going to be doing. I also took notes and documented what I thought their shortcomings ( no note taking was a big one) were in case there were any complaints after I left. I have good references, performance awards and a hefty severance to show for it. Was I happy about the situation? No! Did I act in a manner I would expect any professional would? Yes!
In case anyone is wondering it is not "your" job, if it were you would be paying someone else. It is the company's job and they are paying you to do it.
Why do you play the "racism" card? That's unfair. Just because you disagree with someone that doesn't mean they are "xenophobic" or "racist" or "Nazi" or whatever name you want to call them.
It's funny, YOU are the one calling people names and making ridiculing them for "thinking different". You must accept diversity and accept that others think different than you. Being proud of your country and asking companies to play fair is not a bad thing. It is not "isolationism" or "luddism" or whatever name you want to call it. It' too bad you stooped calling people "xenophobic".
I'm not putting unions down, I'm just saying that, as with everything, too much of a good thing....
Setting defrag to run on all employees computer at midafternoon. Daily.
Enforce the strictest of password protocols and refuse to let employees write their passwords down. (For security reasons)
Keep all ports open on the firewall. The more ports that are open, the more openings for data to flow through!
To save bandwidth when sending large documents, only type a short message like "Here is the document you requested!". Make sure not to patch Outlook before you do this since patches slow things down.
For security reasons, keep the wireless router locked in a metal cabinet.
Those are just some of the many ways to make sure your training leaves a lasting impression on the company that once helped put food on your table.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Be sure that while training them, you teach them competition, American style. Tell them all about how your company's founders worked for another company for a while, then when they knew enough about the business and had developed enough contacts, they went off on their own and started a competing company.
In a year or so, if you've done your job right, they'll go off and form their own company with even LOWER overhead (because they don't have to pay high-salaried American management), and take your old company to the cleaners.
Sure, you'll still be asking "Would you like fries with that?", but at least you'll get a bitter little laugh when you read about it in the business section of the paper a customer left behind.
Do a shitty job... when the new guy fucks up due to poor training... who cares ^o^
_________ Help me get a PSP!
Um, you need to train people to do this? From a lot of code I have read, this seems to come naturally.
They don't always tell you that you're training your replacements.
A good friend of mine used to work as a IC designer for one of the large companies in Silicon Valley. Her group was given some ridiculous deadlines that were clearly impossible to meet. To "help" them speed up work on the project, the company brought in a bunch of engineers from one of its overseas sites. The foreign engineers spent several months here, working with my friend's group, getting up to speed on the project. My friends and her co-workers really went out of their way to help make these guys comfortable, taking them on shopping trips, inviting them over on holidays, etc. Little did they know they were training their own replacements. Shortly after the overseas engineers left, my friend's entire group was laid off and the project was moved to the overseas center.
1) Show up 5 minutes late after parking in a good spot.
....come back 5 minutes late and leave 5 minutes early.
2) Stop by the watercooler/coffee machine.
3) Say hello to all the coworkers that your cool with before taking your seat.
4) Before taking your seat make it look like you just came from the toilet and were not late so the boss doesn't hassle you.
5) Check your e-mail minus any company memos.
6) Start working on something important.
7) If you can't find anything to do then act like your working.
8)Lunch time
9) Get back to work for real this time.
10) Check e-mail again and delete those company memos.
11) Talk to coworkers about the latest rumors and other bullshit.
12) Time to go home.
Personally I quit when from disgust when the company where I work started mass layoffs. Now they are replacing all the old staff with foreigners and new college graduates. I figure it set them back at least 3 years. There is no knowledge transfer because for every round of layoffs more people leave, and it's very clear that you don't share what you know because it makes you vulnerable.
So lots of people are unemployed. Why not get together and start your own company and outsource your own programming? Your new company should be lean and mean and won't even have to support million dollar dead wood management. I started my own company and about a year later it's really taking off. Plus you'll find lots of Americans are willing to work for just the same as you would pay people in other countries. It's the scariest and the best thing I ever did. I am almost thankful. I would never have been able to spend this much time with my kids if I was still at my desk job. Now I work from home for my own corporation. I pay for everything else first, taxes last, and I set my own hours.
Come up with a Vertical Market app for a few thousand and you only need 10 or so customers a year. Take your old knowledge and start working on the next version. Don't take this shit lying down, beat them at their own game and stomp them into in the mud. Go get a DBA at the local court house at least and start coding.
Almost one in five information technology workers has lost a job or knows someone who lost a job after training a foreign worker
Hmm...so lets see here. 1 in 5 people has either had this happen to them or knows of someone that it's happened to? So if I work in a company with 500 people and 3 of them wind up training thier own replacements (Which, of course, would be very well-known on the company grapevine), then I'm counted as one of the 1 in 5 who have had to "dig their own unemployment graves"? Theoretically, it could just be one really popular guy that was laid off like this and he was known by 1 in 5 IT workers.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but if surveys like this are the best argument that can be raised for how much this is damaging the US economy, then we've got a long way to.
...to minimize the financial impact to yourself. Train the people, get laid off, collect unemployment, and find a new job. The net is the same: YOU'RE LOSING THAT JOB.
Thank god I am safe at Vandelay Industries...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I did read the entire article and blurb before I first replied, and I'm still convinced that it provides no real incentive for the workers. While some workers do get some kind of severance package for doing the dirty deed, they're still going to be unemployed, and I never heard of any of severance package that completely compensates for actually employment. A good number of people, as pointed out in the article, are still unemployed after a year. As more and more info-tech jobs are outsourced, it'll be even harder to find the same kind of jobs again. Retraining isn't even an option for some of these folks, as in Mr. Gentry's example, is pushing 51. By the time he re-enters the work force with new job training, he'll have barely a decade of employment left till companies start turning him away outright for 'over qualification'. All in all, this is an outright pisser on everybody's morale in the companies. As far as I can see, this will only create employee outrage and probably some creative sabotage from the very people who will be on their out in a couple of months.
It looks like a real dilemma where if you refuse to hire your replacement, you are fired without severance and are ineligible for unemployment benefits, and if you quit, you don't receive severance and are ineligible for unemployment.
./ reader's English skills, I can understand why employers want to outsource to other countries.
If this blurb representative of the average American
You hit nailed it, baby. You nailed it.
Just 80 years have passed since the culmination of the union activism, and now we have come to this. How sad. How very sad.
All I can say is that Slashdotters who want to find what the above poster and I are talking about, you can go to my sig url and follow the link about social democracies. Read....Learn...Think about it all.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Hey man quit talkn bout our edubucashun sistem like dat! Now ef yool scuze me I got to wach some mTV coz pmp My Rid be da shit!
I truly wish they would make outsourcing various local based companies/positions to exterior countries against the law or at the very least the corporations should be exorbitantly taxed for choosing to do so. Companies and employees should be considered a direct local entity of the positions/duties they are choosing to fulfill.
I'm pretty sure this must be a late April Fools Joke. I've never seen any evidence anyone working customer support in India has ever been trained by anybody.
@de_machina
Yeah, 'rm -r -f /*' runs the backup script.
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
This scenario is the result of overspecialized work for a large corperation. If you do one thing only for your employer, you will always be subject to replacement. Whether by a foreign worker or a machine is the only question. A cog is easily replaced.
The opposite is true when you work for a small business. You will know more about the business, its customers, and product development. If you have the ability, you have a wide variety of tasks to perform, increasing your value to your employer.
The only guaranteed employment is self-employment.
I just remembered that part of the reasons that unions got a bad rap was because of some of things that powerful unions demanded. For years after diesel locomotives were in service, the railroad union demanded that a fireman be on board and paid! Even though such a position was obsolete. The same went for brakemen. Brakes became automatic, but yet the union forced management to have them.
Sometimes, unions can hurt progress.
I followed the link to Yahoo, read the article, and said to myself, "I'd like to read more." So I went to the WashTech web site. And right there, at the top of their page...was a news article dated March 6, 2004. The "new survey" that Yahoo quotes isn't anywhere to be seen.
Maybe I'm just too skeptical--but if they can't post the study before they pitch the story to the news media, perhaps the "study" isn't as authoritative as they'd have us believe.
This happened to me as well. I was offshored to the New Delhi office.
Unfortunately, the transition didn't go as planned... and they had to pay someone from the US $100 an hour to be the sys admin for a month. That person quit becauase my former company was in serious violation of licensing, and they wouldn't pay for the software. As you can imagine, I wasn't too upset about that.
I'd really like to turn them into the BSA, but I just don't think I could live with myself if I did that. I think I probably like the BSA less than that evil company that sucked the life out of me for three years.
Besides, I have a new and much better job now.
-Recovering sys admin
Thanks, unions, for pressuring employers to offer more pay and benefits than labor is worth! Thanks, government, for putting inflationary minimum wage hikes in place and for putting unworkable Worker's Comp and benefit burdens on employers! Thanks greedy lazy American employees for demanding higher and higher wages for less and less productivity! YOU ROCK!
Think about it: If you can just quit a job, for any reason, and claim full benefits, you can really pull one over on them. Get hired, work a bit, then quit. When benefits run out, rinse and repeat.
Also, unemployment is intended to be a buffer for if you loose a job unexpectedly. You are working happily one day, fired the next. This is out of your power, and so it is there to help you. Or maybe your boss makes your work conditions unreasonable (like demanding a huge paycut or hours increase) so you quit. It's not intended if you just decide to quit for your own reasons. In that case, you should either have other work lined up or have the money to carry you over.
Homer: You don't quit your job because you don't like it, you just go in and do it really half-assed.
It is sad for the individuals, but collectively it is just fair. It is payout time for rich countries' protectionism.
Sad thing is, protectionism will probably continue to rise. It has already ceased to diminish, so these sad stories will become more and more common, and people all over the world will have more and more trouble getting out of poverty.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Okay, I've been thinking about this alot. I see the same drivel on fuckedcompany.com, about how IT workers end up training their lower cost foreign replacement in order to collect a little bit of extra living cash for their upcoming vacation.
If a few US workers were to beat the shit out of the visitors, and make sure that the news spread far and wide, it could make the foreigners uneasy about coming to the US. What is more, *IF* the major media picked up on the story it would gain a bit more attention to the cause.
You could even go so far as carrying a hat-cam and a digital8/DV video walkman to record a story about your management, then cut it out to a DVD/MPEG1 Video CD and distribute it freely, it would probably spread -- especially on the p2p networks. Make it funny, though -- we don't want to sit thru a boring movie.
Some groups are saying the issue isn't as bad as it seems. I tend to think that there is more of an issue than simply a few of our mega corporations outsourcing work. Many small companies sold out to the mega corporations (Lucent bought Ascend, Octel, Livingston, others), Cisco buys people for tech, Intel bought Dialogic, etc.... these small companies were probably good places to work. Companies get bought, eliminated, market consolidates due to lack of competition, are new companies being formed?
I don't see many people really doing anything about it. Go to Bank of America, take all of the deposit envelopes, go home, laser print your statement about outsourcing, take them back the next night, swap them out for the current batch, repeat daily until your arrested for tresspassing. Once again, work the media into it.
This isn't really much different than the blue collar jobs. Some people cry these are brain jobs, but judging some of the IT workers I've seen I'd much rather have a blue collar worker because they are probably smarter.
There are a bunch of issues facing the US. I just wish some friendly aliens would visit, that would really fuck things up. (Not like Mars Attacks or Killer Clowns, more like Close Encounters or something).
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
Personally I would consider the moment I was notified that I was being laid off as the time I was laid off. If they want me to continue my normal job for x amount of time then that is fine. If they want me to train a replacement then they can pay me consultant rates. Once you are notified that you are being laid off for no cause, how can you be fired for cause. You are not required to finish up your week or month or whatever, the employer and employee simply agree that is the case but they can't make you do it. As far as unemployment eligibility goes they can't very well fire you once for no cause and then for cause when you refuse to train a replacement. If they want you to train a replacement, tell them you want consultant rates or extended severance and benefits.
One in five?
That's a really misleading number, considering that the job loss due to outsourcing is something around 2.8%.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
You have not experienced what this means until you've been in a meeting with executives debating over who would get credit for exactly how many "synergies" were "maximized" that week (translation - how many jobs were cut/outsourced).
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
They had this unusual policy of laying off ALL of their temporary staff at the end of the year as a way of forcing managers to rethink their hiring and their needs for the next year. So, how did I handle it in late November and early December, when I was told to wrap up my book projects and hand them off to permanent employees, training them in every last detail of how to handle my projects?
I worked my butt off, 50-60 hours per week, making sure that everything was correct, making sure everything worked, making sure that my projects were in good order for management, and for my friends (permanent employees) who would pick them up when I left.
Why? Because I knew they would need writers the following year, and because they paid well! And I got hired back on in early spring, as projects started to heat up.
But that's the old way. Find people who are competent here in the US, pay them well, and expect the best work from them.
Guess that makes you a bubble boy?
And just think, I probably know one of them too. The amazing statistic to be derived from this is not that one 5 know someone who has been compelled to train a foreign replacement, but rather that 80% DO NOT KNOW ANY IT WORKERS THAT HAVE BEEN LAID OFF BUT FORCED TO TRAIN A FOREIGN REPLACEMENT. Think about that.
We see a lot of exposure for this err... fringe issue... that 80% of us (per the article) have never encountered at either first or second hand.
So the Bush bashing post isn't a troll and gets +3 informative, but the parent which in the same tone and lays out many activities that have also contributed to the current situation is a troll? Whatever.
man RTFM
No manual entry for RTFM.
Technology Workers need to take a serious look at Unionizing.
As much as a perons's ego wants to deny it, only standing together can we stop our jobs from being lost to slave labour.
I live in a "social democracy", Sweden, and trust me, you would not want to live here. Social democracy, as it's been implemented here, and elsewhere, leads to economic stagnation and clumsy inflexible downright conservative welfare systems which drain our community of all money, while costing a fortune. The market for techies is just as bad over here, with the difference that we all pay over 50% income taxes. So.. no, social democracy is not the solution to your problems, never has been, and, most likely, never will be.
Only true from a given perspective. Yes, you're being laid off, therefore the company has come to the conclusion that you are replaceable. However, within the scope of those that are being laid off, there are different levels of value. If you last through five rounds of layoffs, it's safe to assume that you have more value than the crew that was laid off in the first round.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I know the parent was modded troll, but i'm biting regardless.
If minimum wage labor is worth so little, then explain why the giant corporations that are fueled by minimum wage labor as so goddamn rich, yet their minimum wage employees are still struggling from paycheck to paycheck...All while CEOs of such companies are practically swimming in cash. If there's any wage that's inflated, it has to be that of a CEO and other top level management positions. Not to mention the benefits these people get....yeah it must be a real killer to offer that dental plan to your employees when you are holding millions in stock options. Get a clue, man...
Well, whether this is worse or isn't worse, is up to you to decide, but it is a similiar situation I went through.
At a company I had previously worked for, I got promoted/transferred to a new position within the company, the rules at the time, is that you have to hold a position for at least 6 months before being eligible for a transfer. I had transferred positions in under that 6 month period; it was approved by HR for a couple reasons, including that I was going from a medial position that required almost no training (printer operator), and that it was within the same department I was transfering (IT).
Problem was, my new manager was an a--hole, and I was going from a full-time position to a part-time position. I got a dollar raise from going to printer operator to mainframe/network operator, which is complete bulls--t.
So eventually, a full-time position became open, at the same position I was at, so of course, I took it. With taking this job, I never got a raise to the amount that beginning network/mainframe operator were getting paid (about $2 more than I was currently getting paid).
Continuing working the position, hoping my manager/supervisor comes to his senses; there was a little bit of shake-up in the department, and a few operators left, so they were hiring on some more operators to replace them. It came down to me training new people, for my exact same position that got paid more than $2/hr more than me. Although, they didn't force me out of my position, like the companies in the article are doing, it is quite an embarrasment to work and train people who are getting paid a substantial more amount of money more than you.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
I would wager you are in your twenties.
Let me tell you something--you don't know SHIT! No offense, but live and learn a little.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Train your replacement, then put on your resume that you have training experience.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
I can understand why you're feeling the way you do. I understand why you come to an office you hate, perform meaningless little chores instead of getting your real work done, and ignore... or try to... that little pressure you're feeling in your chest. The one that spikes when you read another email from management that includes the words "sacrifice", "competition", and "tough decisions".
I know that you'd rather not think about it all. You'd rather just get back to doing what you were doing before the axes started dropping, and your division, your department, your team started getting thinned out, and their jobs transferred to the ones who were left. I know that you know what that feeling is, the one you don't think about too often... except in the middle of the night, after you've just had another "what if" discussion with your spouse about finances, trying not to think about the kids asleep down the hall.
I know you're on Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Dice... all of 'em. And I know you haven't had an interview in at least six months.
You have to get up, off of your ass, and make plans. Then COMMIT. Then execute. DO IT. Go out, get the training. If the money's not there to get it, join a LUG, or whatever. Actually make friends (!), network your skills. Learn from each other. Reconcile yourself to the fact that this is going to get worse before it gets better.
But it will get better. For some of us. The ones who planned, committed, executed. The rest are going to be sorry they waited. And don't crab about the Indians too much. Their time in the spotlight is going to be so damnably short, we're all going to be shocked... most of all, them.
And when it's all over, and it will be, in about 3 years, when the economy comes roaring back and suddenly we realize that we're on the verge of losing all the Boomers who made up the majority of the workforce, then they're going to be scrambling for skilled labor. Only there won't be any.
Or not much, that is. There will be the ones who planned...
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
If it's of any consolation: the next wave of offshoring will be tougher on the accounting/finance people, as their line of work is usually an overhead cost, highly regulated (and therefore standardized), just begging for offshore outsourcing.br>
Remember: the cost of recovering a train wreck is far more than the cost of the train or its cargo.
"This is the kind of stupidity that created the phrase 'digging your own grave". No matter what, you're screwed. If you dig your grave, you'll openly acknowledge that you're going to die. If you don't dig your grave, what are they going to do? Kill you? In both cases, there is no incentive to have the person do a damn thing."
No incentive? Here's the way I see it:
1.) Refuse to train, laid off immediately, no benefits.
2.) Train, and ya get another month of pay. If the company's nice enough, you might even get a month or two severance.
No, this is not 'digging your own grave'. It's just humiliating.
"Derp de derp."
train them wrong.
Or... more insidiously and slightly more ethical... train them right but give them wrong terminology.
"I'll need to install the cam shaft in windows in order to reaffimate your collination."
I worked for a company that was acquired by another company that had 5000+ Indian programmers. The Indian programmers were all H1B and were here just to take money from the pockets of real Americans. I was kind of the "lone wolf" in the company that was acquired - I was a programmer and pretty much every one else was project managers. I was brought in to write an internal program that would then be used by the project managers to generate revenue on their contracts.
Shortly after the acquisition, I was told that the company was laying me off, and that I would be given a severance package for turning over my code to one of these guys.
So they shipped me and the company loaner workstation up to the new headquarters where I handed over the code and met some of these guys.
All in all, the trip went well, and I got to meet some of the people that were putting people who worked very hard to be able to earn a comfortable wage. Do I sound bitter? Must be the coffee... but I digress...
These guys were working for squat - the highest paid of them made 1/5th as much as me. They didn't have to pay for anything (except food) while they were here -- the company paid their living expenses. So they worked and sent their money back home (you know, out of this country) where I'm sure it was put to good use -- making more companies to steal more jobs from America.
You may be rolling your eyes, or even laughing -- just remember how you feel now when you get the call from your boss.
"I'm sorry, but times are tough and we're going to need to let you go. By the way, let me introduce you to Surgahvlesh Humaramaghashandran. He'll be replacing you, and needs to know everything you know. Don't worry that you can't pronounce his name and he can't pronounce the letter "W". You'll get along fine!"
Yeah, just fine.
...always looks good
grg
This is the kind of stupidity that created the phrase 'digging your own grave". No matter what, you're screwed. If you dig your grave, you'll openly acknowledge that you're going to die. If you don't dig your grave, what are they going to do? Kill you? In both cases, there is no incentive to have the person do a damn thing.
Digging your own grave is very simple. Suppose I'm going to kill you and I am not inclined to dig the damn hole unless you are absolutely determined to die a very hard death. You will dig the hole in return for a quick, painless death. If you fail to dig the hole then you're going to be suffering greatly the entire time I must dig the hole
It boils down to the fact that you are going to die. So how do you want to die? Dig a hole, get shot in the head. Don't dig a hole, get shot in the stomach and have your limbs smashed with a shovel so you can lie there and think "Gee I wish I'd just dug the damn hole" as you lie there in agony and I dig the hole?
Actually minimum wage doesn't overvalue anyone. Anyone worth $5/h is paid an hour. These people would not make one penny more if there was no minimum wage law.
The big problem occurs when someone is worth $4/h, is willing to work $4/h, but it is illegal for him to do so. That is the argument against minimum wage.
CEOs are not swimming in cash as you would purport. Some are, yes, and deservedly so. Being the president of a company is no small task. And while there are several people wealthy CEOs, there are many more failures.
I believe it is your turn to get a clue.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Wow, we have so much to be thankful for!
Now, we can get paid to make sure that our jobs get a one-way ticket to India.
I hope McDonald's is hiring!
Great Bush economy, huh?
Remember how bad it was when Clinton was president? I couldn't decide if I was going to spend my vacation in Europe or Mexico - now all those problems are gone! I don't have to worry about my portfolio, competitiveness on the job, my girlfriend or my loft apartment - BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL GONE!
Thanks alot Bush! Thanks for the weak dollar, the sky high unemployment rate that means even if I get another IT job, I'll only get paid 1/2 to 2/3 of my old salary. Now I don't have to worry about doing too much coke, because I can't even afford the soda, never mind the party drug!
Thanks again Bush. Maybe after another war built on lies, deception and half truthes, I might get a job in the Defense Department! I hear they're paying pretty good.
Why yes, my login name is rm -R *. It was my mother's maiden name.
Do you not see that? Telling everyone to continue to compete harder and harder and harder is a Ponzi Scheme?
What is EVERYONE works as hard as they possibly can? The bottom half stills gets cut off. That is a game that has no winners, in the end.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
"To make us more successful and allow the reorganization of our North American workforce to match the global business environment, we need to enable our partners for success. We need you to enable them, help them do better. Don't do it _for_ them, but teach them. You know the saying: "give a man a fish...(you know the rest)" This will make us a success."
I was wondering to myself the whole time his mouth was moving, "does he really believe we are this stupid?"
(and yes, he was speaking with a straight face)
GAWD...
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
You were paid to produce what you did, the company owns the work.
Why would you degrade yourself by sinking to sabotage?
Better you resign the moment they announce the news to you and find another job as fast as possible.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
It's simple really. It is not the value of the argument that is important, but who you are attacking.
For instance, one can attack rich people ad inifinitum with no recourse or counter-claim. Poor people however are no man's land because they are 'poor' and can't possibly be to blame for their own circumstances. Rich people exploited them. Duh?
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I am training my replacements - all three of them. Apparently my company is paying less for three Indian workers. I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
I decided to employ myself to avoid situations like this. But if you decide to do subcontract work for someone, make sure you don't sign a work-for-hire agreement. What this does is sign over your rights to the content you've created. It's basically as if you didn't even create it. All of your inventions and hard work are handed over and in some contracts you aren't even allowed to claim any credit for the creations, even in a portfolio/resume.
While I didn't do much training, I did end up in a similar situation as this article. The corporation grew in size, hiring more people, including "interns" and people from other countries. Suddenly I was asked for the source code of the project I was working on, and all previous projects. Next thing you know I'm no longer needed.
Despite the hype, a sole proprietorship doesn't necessarily equate to freedom. The signs of bondage are all around us. I've decided to do my best not to work for anyone, and not to hire anyone. The sooner we can eradicate the word, "boss", the better. It's far more fulfilling to invent projects, make them become a reality, and enjoy the fruits of your own labor than to sign your body over to some other entity, do whatever they say, and have your fruits taken from you.
Oh well, I've said enough, now I must do my taxes.
Well, then on the flipside...if you provide the employee with "bad" training then isn't it remotely possible you provide the company some recourse to sue you? As the other posters have mentioned it's certainly not a good idea to sabotage your former co-workers, even if you've been the one wronged. You risk hurting any potential references you had at that company in addition to opening yourself up for litigation.
Seriously, the customer has to learn that the reckless pursuit of lower prices, and conversely, the reckless pursuit of profit by shareholders, has consequences.
Walmart is the appropriate retail outlet for cheap, plastic, Chinese junk. But the average citizen needs to learn that what Walmart really represents is a vast income redistribution scheme, and the income that's being redistributed is theirs, to the third world. I'm in favor of raising the standard of living everywhere, but I do not believe that the global economy is a zero sum game and that some must lose so that others can gain.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
My Aged Mum, who doesn't often use vulgarity, has a saying: "There's no use getting into a pissing match with a polecat." You can never raise as much of a stench as a skunk can; why bother trying?
I'd have to say this was a perfect call for "work to rule." Seems to me in this case there's a lot to be said for giving exactly 100 percent--no more, no less. No extra miles need to be walked, nothing helpful needs to be volunteered, no uncompensated extra hours need to be worked. I'd arrive at 8:30 precisely and set the same standards for the immigrant worker as I would for a native-born worker. I would adhere to those as strictly as possible, with no quarter asked and none given. I'd take the prescribed lunch interval alone or with other friends and depart on the dot of 5:30.
The very real angst and distress a person might be feeling is probably best saved for real friends and off-work hours. The few satisfactions here involve preservation of one's own integrity and self-respect while leaving an organization that has laid aside both of those qualities.
Anne
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
You have just provided a probably irate and now possibly malicious user continued access to your software development process. This is just a poor security practice imnsho. Under the circumstances it would be best to have a clean break with the employee and have the additional cost and time of getting the offshoring personnel up to speed already penned in on your project plan.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
I disagree with your economic rationalist approach that there are people fundamentally 'worth' $4/hr. Perhaps there are people who are desperate enough to work for that wage, but that doesn't mean since they will bear that wage, they are worth that amount.
Minimum wages are there to prevent workers getting underpaid when desperate for work. The downside is that raising the minimum wage may increase costs to such an extent that workers are laid off, and one could argue getting $5/hr is better than getting $0/hr. However, placing all wage-fixing rights in the hands of the employer, can quickly lead to 'like it or lump it' starvation level wages.
In addition you state 'these people would not make one penny more if there was no minimum wage law'. That may be true, but they could stand to make a lot of pennies less.
M.
M.
Being faced with the threat of real competition and the prospect of losing your job is a feeling that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. That said, instead of cowering, wake up and do something about the situation:
* Turn fear into motivation. Instead of cowering and waiting for the pink slip, get motivatied.
* Upgrade your skills - particularly your people and business skills.
* Sieze the opportunity to outsource yourself. Start a company. Make your own outsourcing deal: lower your former employer's costs the way you always talk about at lunch and keep the work local!
* Work on plugging your business unit or self into the revenue generation side of the business. Hint: IT is typically a huge cost center that senior management is rarely satisfied with.
-- $G
A dilemma, eh? (No, I'm not from Canada.) The answer is so simple, I'm surprised nobody has thought of this...
All you have to do is teach your replacement all the wrong and worst ways to do things. In the meantime (even if you have to work extra at home to accomplish this), you continue to do all of your work, so it looks like the foreign replacement is getting the hang of things and doing them right, but for less money. Management thinks the cheap labor is ready to take over, and they fire you. Next thing they find out: Big damages. And they, the MANAGEMENT, gets in big trouble with the higher-ups, or with the shareholders, or, if it's a small business, the business loses a lot and could go down. In the meantime, you get your severage package, and before you get fired, you start looking for your new job.
This might seem like a really mean, rude, and nasty thing to do, but think of it this way: The more businesses are damaged by cheap foreign labor, the more they'll be inclined to STOP DESTROYING THE DOMESTIC ECONOMY and hire people over friggen here. And you're getting a job somewhere where hopefully they won't treat you like some kind of garbage.
What reasonable person is willing to work for $4/hour aside from someone freshly here from Mexico or some similar place who doesn't know any better? Yeah it's a real big problem that employers can't take advantage of people by paying them an unreasonably low wage they cannot live decently off of... If anyone is actually looking to get paid $4 an hour, they ought to move to a third world country with few/no labor laws where they can be treated as they wish.
I never said it was a small task to be a CEO, but look at it this way: these companies that thrive off of minimum wage labor would not be able exist without it. Whats the use of a good CEO without the minimum wage workers to do the grunt work? There is none... I agree their job is hard and important, but I also believe that in far too many cases they are paid too much. They should certainly still be well paid and the deserve it, but it ought to be kept reasonable....look at the airlines....why did the government have to bail them out? oh yeah, so their CEO's could keep their nice fat paychecks rolling in...
Sorry I have a case of the "mondays" and I could program a virus that would rip that place off big time... Why waste my time training them if they are getting the job they should get the job if they have the knowldge Say Hello to outsourcing....
"Train your replacement well." - A very good advice as ther rest. 30+ years in developement - many times I have hired, trained, educated people and later on found that I work for them - pays back, every time. It really pays to make friends - they may go up in ladder for what ever reasons. Yes - they may be paid more but do they have as much fun - what I hear when going for a drink with them - mostly not. just my $0.02..
Telling everyone to continue to compete harder and harder and harder is a Ponzi Scheme?
Try working smarter. You can work as hard as you want to - but you will likely end up burnt out and unemployed.
-- $G
Since SBC is working without a contract at the moment people have been calling SBC's DLS tech centers, 877 722 3755 asking workers there to pass on this message that "SBC DSL customers are in the United States and the SBC DSL support work should be too." If you go to 4 yrs of college to be compter or DSL tech and there is no jobs who do they think will buy their product no matter how cheap it is? Management directed employees to reply that "your call has been noted." But DSL employees, who work for contractors, also were warned not to say where they are located, who they work for or to give out any other information. "If any information is given, disciplinary action will take place, this is considered zero tolerance," was the directive from management. Many DSL workers supported CWA's (the SBC union)position because they were going to lose their jobs in a few weeks anyway. Workers at one center told of how they had to train their supervisor, then learned their jobs were going overseas to India. Obviously, SBC doesn't want customers to know that it's shifting jobs overseas, so it's trying to limit any conversation about the subject. The public certainly wants to know, not to mention the DSL workers who are losing their jobs to overseas centers. The CEO of SBC made 53 million last year! I am calling them to tell them if I can't talk to an american I don't want their service. Talk about corporate greed in action!
This is why the most of the IT world needs to get out from under the CFO's thumb and become a real branch of the company rather than just simply data janitors.
All companies need to dispose of the standard model and get a CIO board member somewhat free from the bean counting lunacy of the accounting Pakleds.
Currently, there are laws to protect US citizens from technology immigrants. Companies must demonstrate that there are no qualified local citizens available by advertising vacant positions for a short period of time. Once the time is up, they may then heir there H1b applicants. Yes, I know they get around this many ways, such as sending the jobs overseas and manipulating vacancy requirements but, what I'm getting at is that we must get as cagy and forceful as these greedy pricks.
Go out there and form IT unions and PAC's, hier good lawyers and clobber the selfish, greedy little managerial types. Contrary to what many of them claim, the companies will not dry up and blow away when forced to accept American employment. Money will simply shift from one part of the company, preferably overpaid CEO's and such, to IT. If they try to move overseas simply flex your collective political muscle and prevent them.
I doubt the economy would suffer much from putting the hammer down on the fat cats but maybe collectively we can make the Pakleds suffer the anguish of having to settle for a cheap Lincoln rather than a pricy Mercedes instead of the average IT shmuck worrying about the next mortgage payment.
One nice bit of irony though; many of the bean counting Pakleds will eventually suffer once this yet another dead-end variant fad of outsourcing collapses. I wonder what the next trick, wonder plan is the MBA's will come up with to suck up more of the wealth that should be used to pay IT and other workers proper wages.
I didn't know I was going to be replaced. Until it happened. But, till the last day I was kept busy on their largest customer. Now their ex-customer. I told them that I could deliver on-time and document it later or document it now and deliver later. Mind you I was working 15+ hours at least 3 days a week. Plus on 24/7 pager.
They complained that I didn't document everything in my exit interview. I had to rig many things at my bosses full knowledge. And the specs constantly changed. It is amazingly frightful how far you can push things when you aren't given the money, but it requires constant management.
I guess now I don't care. I run my own corporation and work close to home. I guess my thought is they will pay for their own incompentence w/o my help.
I enjoyed being given 1 week a to train my replacement on VCS, Sendmail, anti-spam tools, pSeries Lpars, and Sun E6800s. It was a good thing he had an NT backgroud I'm sure he's doing just great now! Was a very enjoyable last week. Anyway..... All of IT was outsourced, from Director on down. So we all have great job references. Why would burning bridges really matter anyway? All they are alowed to say anymore is "yes s/he worked here from date x to date Y". No one gives references anymore. The only real references are the names you personally give to your prospective new employer.
I am suprised nobody has performed a denial of service attack against the companies outsourced partner. I am not advocating this action, but considering all the bad vibes that come out of the other post, I am suprised an all out IT war has not occured... Ive Seen the Enemy and They Are Us
Indians are coming!!!
I can see you are not familiar with the concept of a "limit".....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
While channeling the spirit of Wally. You could start with how to appear busy, talking up doing nothing and finally ways to screw any replacement you may have to train.
In the mid-90's I had the opportunity to volunteer with freshmen at junior colleges. Many times the discussion of whether to suffer through the long years of university or take the relatively short (and easy) trek through tech school -- with the advantage of have a job right out of school -- came up. My response then was the same it is now: tech schools train you how to use a tool; universities offer the chance to learn to think. While you won't have a job right out of school, you won't be loosing a job with no where to go when the tools change; and in technology the tools change!
How can you have faith in an education promoted to people who have the time and inclination to watch Day-Time Television wherein they are told they, too, can have a High Paying Job right out of school! Amazing! You can take DTTv'ers and make them MCSE's in two years and they can earn "Big Bucks"...uh, huh. Overinflated salaries earned by minimally skilled inexperienced workers; no wonder companies are dealing with time shifts, language barriers, cultural disconnects -- they were already having to put up with slightly retouched Jerry Springer regulars!
Instead, round out your development with a dash of human life experience. It is amazing how much more you can do with technological tools if you have experience doing that thing first without the technology. Look it -- you can learn all about Gimp but unless you have talent you're still not an artist. Teach an artist how to use digital tools...then you're in for some fun. Say, Maya's been available for how many years now to whosoever wants to grab it? How many tech grads have produced 1/5th what an experienced filmographer has with the same tool, even if the arist began not knowing how to hold the mouse when she began?
Think about it. Learn how to do something, then learn how to do it better with technology. Now, go do the right thing.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Sure - let the CEOS rake it in as long as we the people can decide how much of their profits we can feed back in to the economy via government programs we deem worthwhile. The problem is, the CEOs continue to pay their salaries by finding ways to pay a lower and lower wage. At the same time, they are also politically controlling the tax rate so that the tax burden is shifting from them to the middle and lower classes. We're all going to quickly be in position where we're all making a lot less, and any relief we're receiving via entitlements is increasingly funded out of percentages of our own paychecks. As far as I can tell, the only real disagreeable part of all this is that we don't get a say - or at least no real say. Think of the peoples ability to raise taxes on the rich as a safety valve. When too much wealth begins to accumulate in the upper echelons, the people can adjust the tax rate to stimulate the circulation of the cash. As the wealth becomes more evenly dispersed, enough people will be happy with their wages and taxes will begin to adjust again. This is why capitalism requires democracy to work correctly. Unfortunatly, without campaign reform this safety valve is broken and the poor will keep getting poorer and the rich, richer. When democracy is broken, capitalism is broken...
I have coworkers who are going through this right now. I may have to face it in the near future! Corporate Greed!
"If you don't like your job, you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American Way." - Homer J.
This is the wild west all over again. Cowboys and Indians with a new spin. Indians are playing the part of the cowboys, and American I.T. workers are playing the part of native americans. The U.S. is accepting trinkets for what is really valuable, and didn't start to fight it until it was already in full swing.
It will be interesting to watch this unfold.
Teenagers. Minimum wage effects at least an order of magnitiude more teenagers than single moms with 4 kids.
It's unforunate that some people make more money than others, but every attempt to equalize wages has ended in monumental failure. Furthermore even if you were to redistribute the wages of the mulitmillionaires to the minimum wage employees it would scarcely amount to a significant amount.
Getting paid 'too much' doesn't really mean anything. Too much by your standards? What does that mean? CEOs make crucial decisions all the time, decisions that can result in millions gained or lost. They are worth every penny providing they do this job well. If they don't, they are the ones that suffer for it. (BTW I also disagee with bailing out business with government funds).
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
In the USA, where the managerial class seems to be specifically bred to be missing significant portions of their brains, it happens all the time that employees are ordered to train their replacements. Then they are fired or terminated for chickenshit and denied unemployment benefits.
This happened to me when I the small company that I was working for got taken over by its German parent company. The new six-foot eight-inch 30-year-old 'manager' came in and reassigned everyone to really stupid and degrading restructured positions. Then as they complained, each employee was fired.
Then the fuckhead went out of his way to ensure that the fired employees couldn't get unemployment benefits, even when it wouldn't cost the company anything (I looked into this and it was true) and the employees had been working profitably for as many as seven years. He said that Germany was ruined by socialists and now that he was in the US, he could run the place like a 'pure capitalist'. I considered reminding him that just firing people on a whim and then making sure that that couldn't get benefits was not such a good idea in a country where everybody had a gun collection, but I decided that I really didn't need the weird shit that would come from such a comment so easily misunderstood by a foreigner.
Sure enough the viruses, lawsuits, crank calls, and all sorts of nastiness started happening within a few weeks. Then the sales dropped off. Then the stock price went from 66 Euros to 1.5 Euros in a 12 month period (it's bounced back to 4.5 Euros).
Then it was my turn to jump into the tree chipper.
What a nightmare. No wonder people go postal!
One of my clients had fired a programmer on staff for repeated lateness and other behavioral issues. Unfortunately for the client they told the programmer to start looking for a new job, instead of firing her immediately. This gave the programmer enough time to plant several "traps" that wound up costing the site close to 2 million in revenue by the time our group came in finally found all the issues. Things like disabling programs that report when certain customer charges fail, changing charge codes in a database so they fail, changing pricing ... etc. Really obscure changes that were unnoticed in the flow of tens of thousands transactions a day.
... no stink was ever made publicly by the upper management when they found out, since it would have been their asses on the line for not noticing the drop in revenue. Brushed under the carpet which is pretty common in the corporate world.
Funny thing is
NT
More and more IT people in USA are becoming beggars. I am not talking about foreign IT people living in USA.
Raising taxes against the rich often increases revenue very slightly, if it increases revenue at all. The problem is people do not like being taxed, and will leave the country if the burden is too much. This results in a net loss of tax revenue if enough people do it. Furthermore when you no longer are making anymore money with each subbsequent raise (due to moving up in tax brackets) what incentive do you have to strive for excellence?
Finally your last point is incorrect. The poor have been getting steadly richer, and the rich have been getting richer as well.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
my (ex)employer had me hire and train my replacement and without any offshoring being involved (although the replacement was an ex-brit). as they continue to implode, i'm still hoping the bankrupcy courts will eventually deal with them...
REPORT ALL OBSCENE MESSAGES TO YOUR POTSMASTER
"Shut down the country" is EXACTLY what we need to do.
/ ar ticles/welfare.htm
Has it been done before? Yes, in the Scandanavian social democracies!
Here is it all is, right here. Just read it, brethren, just read it:
http://www.american-pictures.com/english/racism
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Now bend over and take it like a man.
Point me to the last trade union that was formed in the break room of a 20-employee startup company, and I'll be the first to do what those guys did.
Breakfast served all day!
As someone who works for a technology company who has a an office in Atlanta. AND whos CEO is on the constant push to move him up there. I beg to differ.
Our office is in Buckhead, and within a 60 mile readius there is nothing cheap in Atlanta nor in most of Georgia.
After doing the cost of living expenses for the quality of life I maintain in Florida, my salary would have to raise 25k a year from its current level so I can live in the same manner I enjoy in Florida.
Granted georgia does have some backwoods areas but it does have its metropolitans as well. I suggest you visit something other than the airport.
And as for the car unions. Hell, I agree with you. Though, I still personally have a hard time buying American cars, as my japanese ones have caused far less trouble than the american counterparts. And trust me, I have owned from just about every major auto manufacturing country.
Also, unions are good. But they also foster whiny bitches. No one says a job has to be fun or interesting, just safe.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
that a bunch of simple ASPX jobs are being outsourced, because they are no brainers? Those with solid skills, breadth and depth of knowledge can always find work. Problem is the majority of the people do not have expertise in complex or large systems. This whole C# is cheaper and eaiser to development is exactly the kind of project that will get outsourced because it's being marketed at "it's so simple anyone junior developer can produce a good website." Whereas hardcore applications still require people with years of experience and lots of battle scars. Someone who has worked on Databases for DB2 or Oracle don't have to worry about loosing their job. You're typical IIS moneky boy need to look both ways and make sure they don't get run over by the off-shoring bus.
Or do a half assed job. Tell the replacement you usually sit around all day playing tetris.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Employers are very good at picking out the vulnerable, abusable employees... especially in the USA. Just bought a house? Haha, we know you can't miss a payment! Having twins? Haha, you're ripe for the abusing! No kids or significant other? Great! We can work you into the ground!
Your wife is an attorney? OK, you can have the afternoon off.
http://www.american-pictures.com/english/racism/ar ticles/welfare.htm
eat shiat and bark at the moon
People decide how much they are worth. If no one wants to hire you for $5/h, then by what rationale are you economically 'worth' $4/h? You may be worth $4/h to you, to your friends, or on some metaphysical level, but that doesn't matter if no one wants to hire you. That's why the economic rationalist approach is appropriate, if not brash.
An employer can easily offer whatever wage they want, 'starvation level' or not. It seems unfair if someone voluntarily chooses to work at this wage, but you are making them no better off by not allowing the employment to take place at all.
Now you can argue that the employer would hire that person at minimum wage but instead is 'exploiting' them by offering a wage that is much less and they have to take it. In reality when there are thousands of different employers competition drives wages up. Ostensibly greedy employers that refuse to pay more will suffer. Otherwise wouldn't all jobs pay minimum wage?
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Companies do not "give you a reference"
Companies will confirm or deny your date of employment, that is it.
Why????
DEFAMATION LAWSUIT!!!!
How does this work?
Glad you asked!
You hire a law firm which specializes in defamation lawsuits. They hire a company which calls your old employer and asks them leading questions about you:
Was she a drunk? Lesbian? Stole pencils? Republican? etc. etc...
Then your lawyer files a defamation lawsuit based on the bullshit that your PHB spewed over the phone..
Result:
You get a few 10s or hundreds of K, your old PHB gets roasted with a blowtorch..
Win Win!
Remember, half the people on /. are like you, the other half are hired by your bosses to post misinformation to keep you in check and in line. These trolls can be recognized by post which say things like:
You are not eligible for unemployment if you do not kiss your companies ass...
The only people who decide what you are eligeble for are at the unemplyment office.
CALL THEM!!!!
God, If, when I was a dumb impressionable kid, I had a nickel for ever time I took some random persons (wrong!!) opinion as fact, rather than ACTUALLY CHECKING with the real authority involved, I'd have like 5 bucks of nickels, plus about 100K in real money.
The saddest part, I guess, is that it is almost impossible to get kids today (no offense meant, seriously, I was one myself once) to listen to advice which empowers them rather than making them whores and bitches of their employers.
Bah.
Then again, I deserve it, cause I never listened to anyone older than me either.
Ask for a paycut to meet your replacements wages
Some job better than no job
I learned HTML in three nights
I'm self employed
I do this all the time...cut my prices
That's why I'm poor and just got a computer
Guess what?...I'd work for less if I had to
First you give your employee a small raise and a big new title "Manager of Technical Services Team". Second you tell him that he is going to be in charge of a team of new employees. He won't even have to work. He can get everyone to do his work for him. He can just sit back and design stuff!
Once his charges have learned to do their job (his old job), he is expendable. He is also highly overpaid. Then you lay him off. Doesn't matter that he poured his blood sweat and tears into your company for 10 years without taking a single day off sick. Doesn't matter that he helped you make your first $10 million. Doesn't matter that he helped sell your product or made your customers happy. Doesn't matter that he saved your company several times or invented your latest product. What matters is he is obsolete and overpaid and bad for business. There is only one right thing to do. Fire him!
The new employees don't have to be Indian. They don't have to be foreign. It happened to me!
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
Maybe you should just be grateful you got to keep your overpaid position for so long and that you get to keep it for another month while you train your replacement.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Unions and Governments CREATED the middle-class as we know it.
You may prefer serfdom, and the "good old days". Usual liberatarian fantasy bullsh*t.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Train them badly. Train them to do the job wrong. Feed them with lies about the stupidity of upper management. Make sure that before you leave your replacements want to fuck management over.
I pity you.
Your obvious delusion at what is going on and the difference in socio-economic status of big employers and their employees just makes me sad.
Sad, because there are people out there like you, who can't see that things there always the bad with the good in anything. Yes there are some bad unions which are rather inflationary, but this is outweighed by the benefits of having unions, and the number of good unions out there.
Sad because people like you let the companies get away with devaluing other people's lives.
That reminds me; I was training a group of replacements in my department the day before they laid me off. The last day, we had to work late into the night to get everything taken care of. Finally, we all decided to stop at Pizza Hut on the way out. We were seated, and I did an extended stay in the men's room. When I came out, the foreign workers were sitting at the table masturbating. I asked what the hell they were doing. They said, "Can't you see? The sign says, first come, first served!"
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
If minimum wage labor is worth so little
Minimum wage employees generally aren't *worth* the lower limit set by the government. Minimum wage laws artificially raise the cost-of-living by raising the cost to produce products and services. They are inflexible impositions from on-high that stagnate the economy. Strike 1.
then explain why the giant corporations
Small business ("evil satan-spawn" is probably the term more familiar to you) makes up 99.7% of American employers and gives jobs to over 50% of the workforce. Strike 2.
that are fueled by minimum wage labor
Businesses are fueled by customers, not labor. Strike 3. Yer ouuuuta there! But let's give ya one more at-bat:
yet their minimum wage employees are still struggling from paycheck to paycheck
Better to struggle from paycheck to paycheck than not to get one at all. When minimum wages go up, employers cannot hire as many employees. (Or afford to stay in business at all. See also: move operations overseas.) And they cannot afford as much training and further education for the employees they already have. Those tend to be the people who really need the help. Whoops! Strike 1!
All while CEOs of such companies are practically swimming in cash. If there's any wage that's inflated, it has to be that of a CEO and other top level management positions.
Ah, you mean like the retired guy down the street in the 3 bedroom ranch-style? He runs his own business but I don't remember seeing any pools of money out back. Strike 2!
Not to mention the benefits these people get....yeah it must be a real killer to offer that dental pla n to your employees when you are holding millions in stock options.
Yes, everybody's just hoarding money so they don't have to give it to their disgusting employees. This isn't a Charles Dickens novel. Believe it or not, between the dental plans, health plans, retirement plans, overly strict worker's comp regulations, overly strict environmental regulations, mandated programs, union pressure, and constantly rising employee demands for wages and benefits, American businesses do find it difficult to employ Americans. Strike 3, hit the showers!
Sue the bastards! Make 'em pay through the nose!
Apropos: I notice that you have been modded down as "Offtopic." Congratulations. :-)
Of course, you could train them badly so they will fuck up all the good work you have done...that is training isn't it?
President ISES
(International Society for Elimination of Sigs)
"If you don't like your job you don't quit, you just come in and do it really half-assed, that's the American way!"
Usual Marxist fantasy bullsh*t. Hard working individuals created the middle-class. Unions and governments simply get in the way. You can read my response to 'kommakazi' above for details.
Likewise, when there are thousands of different unemployed people, competition drives wages down. If not for minimum wage, these wages would go waaay down. Look at England during the industrial revolution. Know your history.
Lalala
Sure I'll train them. I might teach them all they know but not all I know.....
./what?
So your boss has decided that you either suck at your job or you cost too much for what they get out of you. But you've accumulated plenty of experience. What do you expect from your employers? They need to transfer the knowledge to the new guy, and you're still an employee. Why not get on with it, train the guy up and do a good job of it to get a decent reference for your next job?
Minnesota rules I'm unemployed right now, so I have to go through these... the relavant parts:
2. Partially or Totally Unemployed Through No Fault of Your Own Even with enough wages to qualify for unemployment benefits, the reason for your job separation could disqualify you from receiving benefits. Some reasons are:
Quit without a good reason caused by the employer - Leaving for personal reasons or circumstances, not because it was the employer's fault.
Discharged for misconduct - For actions such as continued, unexcused absences and/or tardiness; breaking company rules; neglect of duties; insubordination; being impaired by drugs or alcohol on the job; fighting; harassment.
Refused a job or failed to apply for a suitable job without "good cause"- For refusing work that was suitable for you based on your work history, training, skills, ability, the pay scale in the local labor market, the distance to the job, and how long you have been out of work.
On strike -When off work because you are a member of the striking union or are participating in the strike by honoring a picket line.
NOTE: If you were not laid off due to lack of work from your last job, a Customer Service Center representative will contact you and your last employer for additional information. If you are disqualified from benefits because of a job separation, you will be mailed a written determination explaining the reason.
I've also heard it from court papers that "if a reasonable person would quit in this situation" Thus you can quit if you are assigned a job that while you can do, is not safe. They might agree that being asked to train your replacement before you are laid off counts, or might not, hard to say. A reasonable person might not quit, but would agree that it is a reasonable thing to do, OTOH, it is a safe job that you are qualified to do. You better be able to prove they were intending to lay your off after this though.
I wouldn't expect unemployment offices to have much sympathy for a company moving your job offshore though. They have some ability to make life hard on companies, but I'm not sure how much (likely very little)
Look at the US during the depression too. Read The Grapes Of Wrath, it's a great book.
Being laid-off without cause generally requires a two weeks notice, or a payment for two weeks of work (although this does differ depending on your location, among other factors.) It is generally considered your work terminates on this date if the notification route is chosen.
When you perform a bad act after receiving the notice of termination, you can still get fired immediatly before your two weeks are up. This can be extremely rare, but is possible if you do something really bad.
This doesn't apply on the two-week payment route - in that case you are already dismissed and have no power in the company. Anything you do after receiving payment would get you fired would be burning your bridges and make it harder for you to get a future job.
..asked me to train my own replacement,
my reaction would be swift...
middle fingers soaring high, as i get the hell out of a place that can't seem to respect their own employees.
-judging another only defines yourself
I agree with some of your points. However, this doesn't make much sense:
What do you mean by richer? Richer as weighted by the cost of living? Or as weighted by inflation? Or in absolute terms? Or relative to the most probable income? The distinction is very important as some imply a more equitable situation than others.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
If IT workers in the US unionize and start demanding more wages and benefits, etc., then that will push companies overseas faster. Especially if there are no US IT people outside the union.
If IT workers start requiring that companies not use them to train their replacements, the effect will be that companies are more reluctant to hire IT workers in the US (because they know they'll be stuck with them for some time). Companies will have less confidence in IT workers here. They will turn to foreign countries for all new hires, since those new hires will train their replacements and thus be easier to lay off if necessary.
Suppose you go to Grocery Store A and spend $500 a month on groceries. Then Grocery Store B opens across town, and you find you spend only $100 a month there. What can Grocery A do? They can lower their prices. They can shut down, so the resources that would have gone to them can go somewhere else. But that hurts! Or, they can use the government to shut down Grocery Store B.
It's easy to prove that the government solution is harmful to the economy. If Grocery Store A is that much more expensive than Grocery Store B, and they are offering the same services (according to the customer), then it has to be that Grocery Store A is that much less efficient with resources, and that lack of efficiency is reflected in its prices. If people shift to Grocery Store B, then they are saving money, and Grocery Store B is rewarded for its efficiency. But banning Grocery Store B means not only hurting the people who run Grocery Store B -- people who ought to be honored for their efficiency -- but it also means hurting the grocery shopper, who now has to pay $400 for nothing every month. That money is, in effect, destroyed.
Maybe Grocery A really is as efficient as Grocery B, but Grocery A has to pay much higher taxes. But that, too, is an inefficiency, even though it is not Grocery A's fault. It all comes out in the price.
Now maybe Grocery Store A is you, the US IT professionals, and Grocery Store B is the offshore IT professionals. But here's another instance of this story: Grocery Store A is Microsoft and Grocery Store B is Open Source.
I know, you guys just want to work at Grocery A and shop at Grocery B. But you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Yes, and by instituting minimum wage you are causing even more unemployment and more poverty. Lower wages are the only solution to the problem of massive unempoyment. Better low wage than no wage.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
i dunno, seems like theres been a lot of hate/blame them not us ads/articles/meh shoveled around. im so saturated that i just discount all that stuff (well, except to post lame stuff like this in response to said discounted stuff). yay greed [insert rant].
screw it, im gonna eat some pills.
|plastic....or gasoline?|
1) this is a power cord.
2) you plug into this wall socket
3) press this button to turn on the computer.
.
.
.
get the idea??
if training is required, theyre not prepared to be your replacement. This is excluding things like familiarizing another sysadmin with the layout of systems within the organization. What i mean is, if you have to say "Now this is what we call linux..." you can tell your employer to go to #$#@
Afterall who doesn't have old unused letterhead paper from their old employers lying arround? Not me I always make sure I have plenty.
One just signs it in the name of a manager that's no longer employed there, using a date when he was there. So on the infinitesimally small chance that they actually ring up & check, things will still appear above board.
Train them so well, they get the work all finished. Convince them that there are other responsibilities that don't exist to deal with after they have finished the work that you were assigned. Then train them to aggressively complete the tasks they replaced you on.
and put themselves out of a job.
I did this on a previous project. I took a defensive nitwit "java architect" (wtf does that mean anyway?) that didn't even now how to type, and taught him to use enough frameworks and tools to complete a webapp well ahead of schedule, while convincing him that there was another huge piece to work on afterwards that would last him a year.
Last time I checked, he was commuting to DC from Atlanta to make ends meet. But hey, I wasn't the one who didn't negotiate overtime pay into my contract.
Chump!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Yes, Massa. You right, Massa! You da Boss. Now you go rach ahead and outsource mah job. Ah be rach here if'n youse wants ta pay me uh dollah uh day foah debugging dem dere Indian programs....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Well said Art. I for one am sick of seeing the incredible whining that happens every time someone mentions outsourcing. Guess what people! "Free Market" means all kinds of great things, like having cool technology delivered to your door overnight without you ever leaving your house, it means cheap broadband, it means 0% financing on new vehicles and lots of other nice things.
But it also means the minute you stop being the best value for money, you are toast. Those who still find something to complain about, perhaps you'd rather try communism?
Richer in terms of everything. In terms of absolute wages, in terms of standard of living, and in terms of real GDP per capita (adjusted for inflation). 'Poor' people today have more goods in their houses today than 20 years ago.
However they may not be richer in terms of the ratio of rich:poor. While the relative gap may be increasing, all are better off historically.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Workers don't vote to not orginise.
Fact is there's absolutelly nothing non-orginised workers can do about a companion joining a union, so why would a vote make any difference?
I don't see anyone else mentioning this:
The result of all of this job upheaval is that things don't work any more. Companies have tech support departments, but they don't really offer tech support. Wang and Sanjay can't support a product unless they are supported by the company for which they work, and they aren't.
We are seeing amazing product failures of a kind we never saw before. Products have problems, and the companies don't fix them. They simply aren't maintaining the level of expertise necessary to staying in a highly technical business.
Yeah you're right, let's all be 100% practical. PRIDE is completely meaningless.
I disagree with your assumption that everyone is "worth" at least $4/hr! US$4 per hour is actually quite a lot of money by world standards, in fact it is well over the world's median hourly wage.
Many people are not worth $4/hr. I agree that there should be some level of charity for those who don't even come up to minimum wage standards, but let's be clear about what it is - it isn't a wage, it's a handout. It isn't self-respect, it's subsistence. Now it is reasonable to demand something in return for money, so those who want to claim minimum wage should have to do something for it, like picking trash off highway shoulders - but they should not ever begin to think of the money as payment for services rendered - they should think of it as a gift from a caring government, and without fulfilling their civic responsibilities that gift may be terminated.
But what if playing tetris is the truth?
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
The CEO has to answer to the shareholders. In a large publicly traded corportation he might be a large one but he usually isn't the largest. Look at Michael Eisner and what happened to him. It is unfortanate what happens to minimum wage workers (I was never one but I was pretty close at my first couple jobs) but it is the CEO's job to maximize the return on the investment of the owners of the corporation. If he can get people to work just as effeicently for less then he has to do so.
Are you talking about McDonalds and fast food orginizations when referring to minimum wage labor? Are those employees unionized? I would hope their unions could get them at least slightly above minimum wage.
However "The Grapes of Wrath" is not what we're talking about - it's a perfect example of an economy ruined by wage fixing. That's what anti-trust laws are for. (So named because in the early part of the 20th century "trusts" existed to set prices in various commodity markets. Kind of like OPEC today, but in the USA! Don't blame the Arabs, they were taught by experts.)
that's just flat out wrong. got some facts to back it up?
Actually bad employer references are kind of a thing of the past.
You are wrong. I've worked at a company where I've had a chance to overhear bad testimonials. In order to skate around direct attacks on former employees, managers will say things like "Read between the lines," or "You can see where this is heading," which are difficult to cite, but send a very clear message.
- rabs
at least in australia, you can LEAVE/walk out, and they still have to legally pay you for unused sick days, leave time etc... And it has no bearing on govt benefits at all (here we get cash $352/14days, if your wife works and gets too much, then they cut it proportionately - http://www.centrelink.gov.au/). Also if its real bad, or if you never want to work, you can stay on benefits for decades, or for the rest of your life, but they dont like it, but you can, no one here is tossed out into the street to live like a hobo. But 99% of people do want to work coz $352 is hardly a windfall, unless you live at your parents house and want to fund your .com startup with that ;-)
The only time there is extra payment, is if you are truly made redundent (no training there) and you get paid more so its not an issue, sometimes 2-3 months worth of pay proportioal to your time worked.
But if usa is that way, that they can refuse all payments if you walk out, then DAMN, your business leaders have screwed your country sideways and left the wet stain.
NOTE: to all employees, backup all your work source/docs etc... to your USB keyring or whatever... you never know when next morning your account is locked and you can't log in to even get your emails/contacts. So be prepared.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
This is bullshit - the free market works both ways. Competition for the best employees will create the best working conditions just as competition for the most profit creates the best products and services. There exists a natural equilibrium - try to shift it in favor of "the worker" and you end up fighting human nature and creating massive inefficiency and discontent.
That you use works of fiction to paint your mental picture is telling. Try reading some economic texts...
How about s/he gain that knowledge the same way I did, through years of painfully prying it out of everyone else in the company. Or figuring it out myself.
______-___--_-__-_---_-----__-_-___-_-_---_-----_
My inexperienced replacements in india are being trained by me.
I can't speak to the quality of the software they produce, but my company has unofficially unstated that 'fsck the customers, we can live off of maintenence revenue for several more years'
Then again, the top executives are
- trying to get their stock options which are underwater for 4 years above the strike price
- staring down the expensising of stock options next year
- selling assets off to 'make our numbers look better'
- relying on rental income from our mostly empty due to outsourceing to india campus buildings to make it look like our software sales are not imploding as fast as they really are
- position the company as a candidate for a buyout because very few people work in a country, the USA, with actual labor laws
Anything else?
Words spoken by the VP or higher ups are discarded, their actual actions and press releases around the world (thanks google news) show what is really going on.
This is the list from CNN - Lou Dobbs: Exporting America.
3Com,3M,,A,Aalfs Manufacturing,Accenture,Adaptec,ADC,Adobe Systems,Advanced Energy Industries,Aetna,Affiliated Computer Services,AFS Technologies,A.G. Edwards,Agere Systems,Agilent Technologies,AIG,Alamo Rent A Car,Albertson\'s,Alcoa Fujikura,Allen Systems Group,Alliance Semiconductor,Allstate,Alpha Thought Global,Altria Group,Amazon.com,AMD,American Dawn,American Express,American Household,American Management Systems,American Standard,AMETEK,Amphenol Corporation,Analog Devices,Anchor Glass Container,ANDA Networks,Andrew Corporation,Anheuser-Busch,AOL,A.O. Smith,Apple,Applied Materials,Art Leather Manufacturing,ArvinMeritor,Ashland,Asyst Technologies,A.T. Cross Company,AT&T,AT&T Wireless,A.T. Kearney,Augusta Sportswear,Automatic Data Processing,Avanade,Avanex,Avaya,Avery Dennison,Axiohm Transaction Solutions,,B,Bank of America,Bank of New York,Bank One,Bassett Furniture,Bassler Electric Company,BearingPoint,Bear Stearns,Bechtel,Becton Dickinson,BellSouth,Bentley Systems,Berdon LLP,Best Buy,BISSELL,Black & Decker,Bose Corporation,BMC Software,Boeing,Braden Manufacturing,Bristol-Myers Squibb,Brocade,Bumble Bee,Burle Industries,Burlington House Home Fashions,,C,Cadence Design Systems,Candle Corporation,Capital One,Cardinal Brands,Carrier,Carter\'s,Caterpillar,Celestica,Cen dant,Cerner Corporation,Charles Schwab,ChevronTexaco,CIBER,Ciena,Cigna,Circuit City,Cisco Systems,Citigroup,Clorox,CNA,Coca-Cola,Cognizant Technology Solutions,Collins & Aikman,Columbia House,Comcast Holdings,Computer Associates,Computer Horizons,Computer Sciences Corporation,CompuServe,Continental Airlines,Convergys,Cooper Crouse-Hinds,Cooper Tire & Rubber,Cooper Tools,Corning,Corning Cable Systems,Countrywide Financial,COVAD Communications,Cross Creek Apparel,Crown Holdings,CSX,Cummins,Cypress Semiconductor,,D,Dana Corporation,Daniel Woodhead,Daws Manufacturing,Dayton Superior,DeCrane Aircraft,Delco Remy,Dell Computer,DeLong Sportswear,Delphi,Delta Air Lines,Delta Apparel,Direct TV,Discover,Document Sciences Corporation,Donaldson Company,Dow Chemical,Dresser,Dun & Bradstreet,DuPont,,E,Earthlink,Eastman Kodak,Eaton Corporation,Electroglas,Electronic Data Systems,Electronics for Imaging,Eli Lilly,Elmer\'s Products,E-Loan,EMC,Emerson Electric,En Pointe Technologies,Equifax,Ernst & Young,Ethan Allen,Evolving Systems,Expedia,Extrasport,ExxonMobil,,F,Fairfield Manufacturing,Fair Isaac,FCI USA,Fedders Corporation,Federal Mogul,Federated Department Stores,Fellowes,Fender Musical Instruments,Fidelity Investments,Financial Techologies International,First American Title Insurance,First Data,First Index,Flowserve,Fluor,FMC Corporation,Ford Motor,Foster Wheeler,Franklin Mint,Franklin Templeton,Freeborders,Frito Lay,Fruit of the Loom,,G,Gateway,GE Capital,GE Medical Systems,General Electric,General Motors,Georgia-Pacific,Gerber Childrenswear,GlobespanVirata,Goldman Sachs,Goodrich,Goodyear Tire & Rubber,Google,Greenpoint Mortgage,Greenwood Mills,Guardian Life Insurance,Guilford Mills,,H,Haggar,Halliburton,Hamilton Beach/Procter-Silex,The Hartford Financial Services Group,Hasbro Manufacturing Services,Haworth,Headstrong,HealthAxis,Hedstrom,He len of Troy,Hershey,Hewitt Associates,Hewlett-Packard,The Holmes Group,Home Depot,Honeywell,HSN,Hubbell Inc.,Humana,Hunter Sadler,HyperTech Solutions,,I,IBM,iGate Corporation,Illinois Tool Works,IMI Cornelius,IndyMac Bancorp,Infogain,Ingersoll-Rand,Innodata Isogen,Innova Solutions,Intel,InterMetro Industries,International Paper,Intuit,Invacare,ITT Educational Services,ITT Industries,,J,Jabil Circuit,Jacobs Engineering,Jacuzzi,JanSport,JDS Uniphase,Jockey International,John Deere,Johns Manville,Johnson Controls,Johnson & Johnson,JPMorgan Chase,J.R. Simplot,Juniper Networks,Justin Brands,,K,KANA Software,Kaiser Permanente,Kanbay,Keane,Kellogg,Kellwood,KEMET,KEM ET Electronics,Kenexa,Kentucky Apparel,KeyCorp,Kimberly-Clark,KLA-Tencor,Kraft Foods,Kulicke and
Shut the fuck up you fucking scab.
Old Employee "Hello I'm the guy currently doing the job you will be doing."
New Employee "Ok"
Old "See this big 'Do not press' button? Push it once and hour on the hour"
New "Whats it do?"
Old (under breath) "Turns off every server in the building"
New "What? I can't hear you"
Old "Oh it just keeps everything working."
(under breath) "When you don't push it"
New "I see" (inspects button)
Old "Any questions"
New "Yes.. Can I get a job recomenation?"
Old (stunned) "Ummm why would you need that?"
New "Becouse I really don't believe I'll be working here long."
Old "And what makes you think that?"
New guy pushes red button leaves old guy to take blame
New yelling back "Ohh nothing"
I don't actually exist.
The h-1b visa is not legally used to lower wages -- only to acquire unique talent that is not available in the domestic labor force. Therefore, if you are training your replacement and your replacement is here on an h-1b visa, you can take action against your employer.
Seastead this.
Well, I believe most of us dont talk bout 10-15 ppl work shops, we are talking about 200-3000 ppl companies and nasdaq ones.
The CEOS get paid heaps, they get lots of shareoptions (probly useless) and also get lots of perks and stuff paid for them, like their own cell, business lunches (3hrs) etc...
Perhaps CEOs should be paid a portion of profits, so if there are NO profits, they get paid same as joe down stairs at $15/hr. Steve jobs gets $1/year, (dont know how he got around minimum wage laws, maybe he officially works 15min/year)
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I get to train two Indians who are here to replace me. No one trained me to get where I'm at now but now I have to spoon feed these guys.
I used to have a smile when every morning when I went into work and would work overtime/nights/weekends for free just to get stuff done/goals met but now I'm actually ashamed to go into work.
Oh well. Way I see it, now two families can eat. Then again, I'm being asked to determine the more capable of the two so maybe one of them may not be so lucky.
Urban legend pure and simple. The reality is that outsourcing creates and has created more and beter paying jobs anmd we insource more than we outsource. It's too bad that most of us are so illiterate in economics.
Accept the suicide training mission. Train them wrong. Take the severance and your fellow axed coworkers, and compete with the outsourced losers.
--
make install -not war
Hm... I like that...
6 month after job outsourced...
On Monster.com...
XYZ Company
Several programmers needed
Requirements:
Basic knowledge of Indian (or whatever language Indian in India speaks).
Extensive knowledge on C/C++ programming.
Job description:
Debugging code written by Indians.
A few days later, company mail box got flooded, all from ex-employee.
Dear XYZ hiring director,
F**K YOU!
Sincerely,
The guy you laid off so you can get cheap programmer from India.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
If there was ever a time I wish I had mod points... it was for this post. Nicely put.
train the person as bad as possible
tell your replacement that stealing is OK
and everyone does it.
teach them bad habits
tell them how to scam
One of the big issues I had with my [former] employer (when I was placed in the same situation as you) were the terms at which I could still receive my vacation pay. Georgia is a "voluntary" vacation pay state - this means that the employer can choose if you get your earned vacation pay or not. My Vacation Pay is a significant chunk of change (2 weeks salary), and as such I want to make sure I secured it. Fortunately, as they closed down the Atlanta office, my employment fell under Arizona (our headquarters') state employment laws.
In the event that you lose your job to another state, keep in mind that the employers' state laws apply.
Bottom line: If you get laid-off in your state because that [local] office is closing, have your attorney look closely at the laws of your employers' "headquarters" state. It could benefit you greatly.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
but when america turns third world i'll still be here picking cotton and writting poems and folk songs about my old job waiting for my 40 acres and a stool...
What we need are a few cats who don't give a fuck, and just embarrass the hell out of the upper level management by slapping them around in front of everyone else. Give them the, "Fuck you, I'm not training any one" rant, and then let the beatings begin.
I'm not talking about any type of slapping around, I mean hitting them hard in the nose first, than putting them in a head lock and slapping them around, reminding them that tomorrow they will be the guy who got his ass beat in front of the indispensable working masses.
It takes a special person to inflict this type of embarrassment in the meanest way possible. To inflict enough personal disgrace that the people who is humiliated just isn't right anymore; their lives are completely fucked forever.
The people who accomplish this task, will be the hero's of the future. Godspeed!
I may get flamed and modded down for this but I'm going to put forth my honest opinion on this anyway. In my opinion, the shift to employing Indian and other offshore workers is not, in the grand scheme of things, as big a deal as some would have it.
.sig is actually somewhat relevant, at least to the angry majority. taken from dante, it translates: "The only road to paradise begins in hell." hope you're all on that road, headed in the right direction.
I work at a smallish company (around 250 employees including our offshore team) comprised of an engineering group split roughly 50/50 between our Boston-area (Mass., USA) office and our offshore contractors in Bangalore, India. Over the course of the last 2 years we've struggled with, and eventually found, a working balance between onshore and offshore talent. A 50/50 split (for most teams -- some are mostly offshore, and for others we can't find any good candidates outside the states) seems to work out best. More of the seniors/principals/architect roles are onshore, but we have some very senior people from india as well. Some of them come onshore for months at a time. In general they're treated just like regular employees. (In my personal experience I've actually preferred the personalities, dedication and skills of these workers on at least an equal basis with their local counterparts.)
It is a model that does more than allow our young business to keep costs down. If we hadn't moved our callcenter offshore, the increase cost per customer care call might well have bankrupted us, or forced a major extra round of financing we might not have been able to obtain. The whole thing could have tanked and we'd all be out of a job. As it is now, we're enabling a booming middle class in a poverty-stricken 3rd-world country (which in the long view is a very good thing for the world), at the same time that we've gradually improved the quality of our average developer (and CSR rep) and found a stable, economically viable, harmonious balance.
I know this is not the same experience many bitter recently-laid-off engineers have gone through, but it is *my* experience, and a perspective that doesn't get heard much.
I honestly believe there will always be a market for onshore talent. startups will never be able to immediately get a whole operation offshore from the get-go. fledgeling companies will need local people on local hours able to meet face to face at any time. my take is, I'm going to continue to train both on and offshore developers, do the best damn job I can, keep honing my own skills the best I can, and it ALL improves my situation -- and my resume.
working with people all over the world is a phenomenon that's not going to go away. so to the posters who suggest mis-training their potential replacements, I ask, which would you rather be: a whining dishonest saboteur who left a shambles behind in their position? or someone with solid experience working with international teams to create good software? to me the choice is clear.
like anything in life, make the best of it, and of yourself.
ps perhaps in this case my
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
...you are the stupidest CUNT ever to grace the pages of /.
Let them keep coming over. It will be funny when they get an American mentality and start demanding equal wages. They may not be greedy about it now, but they will get that way... Or we could just help corrupt them when they come over. ^_^
You may be stuck with training your replacement, but no one said you had to do a quality job of it. You can do a very poor job of training your replacement. You can obfuscate your code. You can bury all the important files in endless and meaningless directory structures that have symlinks that grow back on themselves (like a redneck family tree). You can encrypt files, corrupt files, and zip files together than are totally unrelated. Just leave your work in a general state of chaos to make your replacement's job as difficult as possible. At the very least, your employer will be disgusted with the performance of the replacement and wish they had never fired you.
It worked for me!
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
What wit and wisdom....NOT!
What CRAP!
/more generic ranting on this topic
Coders plus it's everyone who works in these fields that revolve around "computers". man, it's big. B EYE GEE BIG. The cross section of slashdot readers basically. The only exceptions are the young guys here, who real soon are gonna need jobs, too, and most of them would probably be sympathetic and could help out too.. Think they aren't thinking about this? First generation in US history who have a real credible chance of having a much lower standard of living than their parents generation?
The network engineers, the sys admins, the ISP workers, telco guys,cable guys, data entry folks,various media technicians, print and electronic, the people in the financial sectors who run the banks and insurance industries and that fat rip off the middle class magic beans for the cow casino called "wall street", on and on and etc. "IT workers". Guys who run the boxes in the remaining factories. All over. Remember Y2K? Right now the threat of what the ramifications were then is still real,because those dire predictions can be implemented *at will* by the application of coordinated effort, merely by...stopping work. that's it, just don't do it. No sabotage needed, nuthin, just the willingness one day to say ENOUGH! and make it stick.. Just the threat to shut that sucker down, all of it, would be sufficient for major concessions, because there is-NO-replacement for the US IT labor force at this moment in time. Nothing immediate, nothing that would work, it's not even patchable if even a large percentage chipped in and went along with it. it would be an unfixable proble for "da man" and his greed. I mean, IT controls even if people get paychecks across the nation. Everything. I can't think of a single thing that doesn't have IT people connected to it, directly or tangentially.
It's an awesome amount of power there going to waste. The fatcats desparately try to keep it DIS unified, so they can maintain control, and keep the bulk of the power and wealth in a very few hands. Geez, I mean look around, who really calls the shots in this nation? I bet you could fit them in one small room, but it's BECAUSE they got so many IT workers who are willing to EAT IT RAW AND LOVE IT just like these poor folks in the article.
Man I'm hot over that article, because it's already happened to me in blue collar meat world, TWICE.
It-the unionizing and strike potential- CAN be used as a bargaining chip for great social, economic and political change, change that will benefit all of the US basically, at the expense of the less than 1% fatcats who call the shots now, and the mindless fatcat drone wannabes who go along with such practices as outlined in the article, making you train your outsourced replacement! And WHO CARES if it inconveniences those goons! That is not only nuts, it's an obscene moral affront. I'm not an IT guy, just a blue collar schmoo who likes computers,who happens to have an extremly well developed sense of "right/wrong" when it comes to people getting shafted by bullies,from individual on up, who's SEEN the effects "outsourcing" and "insourcing" serf workers has had in my few professions, and now seeing it in the employment fields that were PROMISED to the US people to be the "new replacement" industries. ALL A BIG FAT LIE.
These fatcat goons want as their main goal nothing less than a global two class society, them, and 99% everyone else as near serfs. They want what they get in those second world nations they dig, a technofeudalistic neo aristocracy class, then powerless shufflin drones, blue and white collar, and huge domestic police forces/paramilitary to keep eveeryone cowed.
Look at what their poster boy golden nation is now-one "party", no freedoms to speak of, keep your mouth shut or we'll kill you china. THAT'S their model nation/society/economic model. SAY WHUT? Technologically bent, feudalistic in political orientation. That's what these globalists want in the US, and that means the gradual destruction of the middle clas
I have nothing to back this up with (but would be interested in seeing actual numbers) other than my experience, which tells me in some thirty years we've gone from a world of a handful of millionaires to a world with a handful of billionaires. People who made 100k thrity years ago are now making 1mil. I just don't see the same order of magnitude increases on the low end. It's the relative gap that I was refering to in the original post. Who cares if the poor make 15k a year now instead of 2 or 3k, when the wage of the wealthy is increasing 10x, 100x, or even 1000x times. At the same time poor went from paying 15 cents of tax per dollar (on average) to close to 20, and the wealthy went from paying around 30 to around 25 (I don't rememeber the exact numbers, but its the trend that's important anyway). As if the trends weren't sad enough, American's have been fooled into thinking that capitalism is simply working as designed and that the wealthy deserve everything they've earned. What we seem to forget is that we have a right to tax their earnings and disperse the wealth.
Are you really this moronic or is that a pineapple up your ass?
Our company, which sold kitchen gadgets, had actually been doing well into the recession, and it surprised a lot of us. Stores in the mall all around us were closing down, and we were doing okay. Then, suddenly, we weren't. Our company tried franchising, and it was a DISASTER, and the owners lost a lot of money. We opened up two "mega-stores" which both flopped.
We had this guy, called a "district manager," which was weird because we only had one district. He was this gung-ho, send-'em-to-seminars kind of guy who was used to his big bonuses every year. Around when things got bad is when he taught himself spreadsheet software, and started whacking away at all costs the spreadsheet told him to without reguard to whther it was actually a good idea or not. He cut staff drastically. The management (including me) protested, and proved how this made a bad problem worse, but this only seemed to make him more determined, and he got sneaky.
He sent this "new guy" to my store, and asked me to train him to become an manager like myself. This guy was just awful. He was arrogant, didn't bathe, and right off the bat told me outright he would have my job. At first I thought, "Yeah, you won't last a week here." I was one of the top three salespeople in the chain as well as assistant manager. Two weeks later, I wrote him up because of some serious infraction, with the intent of letting him go, being the worst employee I had ever trained, but for some reason upper management wouldn't let me fire him. Even though a background check showed he was wanted in a nearby county for theft and appraisal fraud. You guys can see where this was going. Yeah, he WAS my replacement. Later I found out he was going to do my job for minimum wage, which was about half of what I made.
Then the company sent me to a "penalty store," which is a store that is in a terrible spot, doesn't do well, has serious building problems, etc... basically, it was an attempt to make me quit. But I was too stupid to see the writing on the wall, so I got "changed to hourly," which meant a pay cut, no commission, and suddenly my pay was determined by upper management. My hour allotment got smaller and smaller, until "they didn't have hours for me" for a whole month. So I filed unemployement.
The company denied I was laid off, and said I was only a contractor. The deputy who handled the case had them on speakerphone, and at some point they were stalling, she said, "Mr. Walrus, you'll get unemployment. I see this happen all the time, they just don't want to pay the taxes or unemployment." So I got my unemployment and a hard, stinging lesson.
Afterwards, they decided I made it too hard, so they fired all the rest of the staff one by one for the weirdest stuff. Like the top salesman in the chain was fired because a "surprise secret audit" showed the register was missing $10, and so they threatened to put him in jail if he ever tried to claim unemployment. He sued and won.
And the guy who replaced me? Tried to rob them blind. He stole account numbers from all the company's vendors, and made HUGE orders shipped to a Mailbox Etc address. Luckily for the company, one of the vendors tipped them off, and because of the amount of money involved, the police got involved, and set up a sting. He must have gotten wind of it, because before the shipments were sent, he fled town and was never seen again.
At another company, years later, I was at the receiving end. The first day of work was the day the girl I was replacing was told she was being fired in 2 weeks. That was pretty stressful.
I have seen stuff like this in the tech industry when I started in the mid 1990's, too. My second job I was at a QA company where they asked us to document everything we did when testing software. We did, and then they outsourced our jobs to Tucson, where people th
What's the most distressing is that most of these people in the article appeared to just take it when they were told this. If more people had the spine to say "fuck you Mr. Manager" (literally) then I believe businesses would take issue sooner. You can't just agree to this shit, it makes the practice take off since you're giving them FREE training! I know it sounds harsh, but this is what needs to happen goddamnit. Fucking suits.
If someone off-shore wants my lousy job, they can have it. Good luck, pal!
In Denmark almost everyone gets at least 5 weeks vacation, universal healthcare, tuition free education, and many other social safety net benefits.
And how did they get all that? They make the corporations and the government bend to their will by virtually shutting down the country in order to get what they want.
It is all about NEGOTIATION, people. If you walk into a car lot to buy a car, and buy that car without bargaining, you are a fool.
And if you let the corporations and the govt and the media scare you into submission with so-called "free" trade without putting up a fight, then you get what you deserve.
See this URL to see how they did it in Denmark:
http://www.american-pictures.com/englis
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Last Paycheck
-how to start one, never done it. Been in two before, that's why my advice to watch the bosses, they are human, the the goons have a lot of carrots and sticks to use in control, ie, bribery and blackmail.
Incidently, that's how so many politicians start out young with some ideals then they seem to lose steam, they actually get blackmailed, then they get bribed. That's another story for another time.
So, organizing. heh, this is geeks we are talking about,yes? Start a source forge collaborative employment security initiative. Something like that. Post on forums all over, use networking, try to get at least one person at every shop interested. Do a write up, have a page, get it submitted as a story/article here, and at other tech forums.There's a ton of political forums, tech forums, hardware and software apps forums, etc, out there, get accounts, be rational,be polite, drop links. Look at these people getting laid off all over, there's a place to start. This is the info age and one guy with a box and a phoneline can talk to the world.
It's what I do.....
An actual org takes incorporation, perhaps as a non profit in mostplaces. Start with a domain perhaps, a mission statement page? ITWORKERS.ORG, there ya go, there's your start, something like that. Goto groklaw, see what they say about the legalities of starting a union are, can't be all that difficult. I'm broke, got zip cash, small double figures in my account. Lucky to have that, too. I can pay attention because it's free, that's about it. I can write though. Not the best, but I can stick a little emotion in it, seasoned with a smidgen of logic, tempered with data, real time and historical. That's what I can contribute. That, and the goons have zero effect on me, been there, done that, a bunch, and I don't scare. Screw 'em.
I'm easy to find, I like to post, let me know when it's happening...
Dec 2002 - The company informed us that they are opening an office in Bangalore India
Jan 2003 - My group got cut in half leaving just me, my boss and another senior software engineer.
- VP of engineer and a newly hired Indian manager headed to Bangalore to open an office and start to hire engineers
Feb 2003 - About 10 Indians engineers meet with us to discuss design, and sustaining work
March 2003 - We continued email back and forth teaching the newly hired engineers to follow our code design - all work had to get VP approval
April 2003 - My group got the pink slip
Arrr, but those "works of fiction" are based on facts. Economics textbooks are mostly based on theory.
advise them of the "correct" way to do things
Well, you're already modded as a troll, but I think you could actually be serious.
Has it occured to you that workers get "greedy" because their living costs are so fscking unbelieveably high, not because they think their "lazy asses" deserve to sit in a damn mansion and drive a friggin' SUV? Actually, their Indian counterparts' income (relative to cost level) is probably on par with or better than theirs.
This is exactly why global capitalism cannot work - it's not a level playing field. With the assumption of a level playing field, the theory seems nice and the system beneficial to everyone. But in practise, it's a big drokking candy store for capitalists. They pick the berries from the cake and move on to the next country.
-=- 4ntifa -=-
If your employer is done with you, it's best for everyone to train a replacement. It stands to reason that you'd be in a pretty good position to know what your job position really is, and how to bring someone up to speed on the task. Replacing yourself is the fourth step in good leadership according to some really influential writing that I don't remember clearly right now.
If you don't want to try to train a replacement, you can (of course) just leave. That's where you're going anyway. Your employer is already done with you by the time he asks you to train your replacement. But there's no need to make it a messy break up. Training a replacement is just part of cleaning things up before you walk away.
It takes a lot of maturity on the part of the employer to not lie to you about what's happening, and a lot of maturity on your part to handle the situation correctly and not vindictively. If you care about the company, the country, the world, you'll do this because it's the right way to handle the situation. Train your replacement, prepare for a change in career, and move on it.
Of course spend some of the time brushing up your resume, and sending it to a few places. That's only rational. But not training your replacement because you're mad is childish and self serving to the detriment of the overall situation. If your employer is lying to you about what's happening, or your replacement being a foreign country is a separate matter entirely, but failing to train your own replacement is just childish.
Those who can not handle change quickly get left behind.
-theed
You globalization lovers do tend to be a bit simpleminded, but I guess I can help you on this one: the rules for the h1b visa state that the companies may not use them to lower wages. Yet, the companies are using them to bring over foreign workers for training. Once the training is done, the foreign workers go back home to work, and you get fired. Once back home the foreign workers work for much less, and the company has lowered wages using the h1b visa, which is against the rules.
Get it?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Then they still need to be trained, duh. Those blocks won't line up on their own.
t
As there's still nothing to stop a worker joining a union regardless.
Seriously, if a bussiness cant survive on 5 people at $5/hr, then it shouldnt be alive any way. (5*5*40=1000/wk). Now if a business is running only on 30% margin and is only making $1000 profit weekly (yeah right) then its hardly a viable business in the first place, but if that small business is making $12000/week, then $5 or $5.20 is hardly going to make a BIG DENT, in their profits. (Yes i know there are other costs, but they are controllable and depend on sales).
s ion2.tv
Show me one example where a small business (pizza shop or whatever) is so on the edge, that a 1% increase in wages will break it. Unless you have 120000 employees, that 20cents extra isnt going to kill you, then again if you have 120000 staff, you are probly making a killing (WALMART)
"Ah, you mean like the retired guy down the street in the 3 bedroom ranch-style? He runs his own business but I don't remember seeing any pools of money out back. Strike 2!"
Thats not what I call a CEO of a corporate , but a MD/Owner). Lots of people that have little companies like to call themselves CEOs when they hardly really are.
We need regulation, otherwise its back to 16hrs/day slave labour, because no business man cares if people drop dead, there are 250m others to choose from.
"Minimum wage employees generally aren't *worth* the lower limit set by the government. Minimum wage laws artificially raise the cost-of-living by raising the cost to produce products and services. They are inflexible impositions from on-high that stagnate the economy. Strike 1."
No, what increases cost of living SIR, is inflation generated by the increased M1/M3/M3 money supply (ie central banks making trillions in loans to govt and all). #1 rule in economics, supply/demand, the more cash is flowing in the system, ie supply, the cheaper it is worth, ie ONE DOLLAR will buy you LESS. So if money supply goes up 6%, that is the real inflation rate, not the faked numbers by govt that say its 3%, see price of food/energy/pm going up.
references:
www.financialsense.com
www.depres
www.perfecteconomy.com
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
No, sorry to bust your tv fed bubble, but unions and governments helped a great deal. The fact remains that these same hard-working individuals would have created another fucking huge revolution here if the unions and governments didn't get the wake up call to economically enfranchise more people into what we call a middle class. Social security is evil to you to, right? Of course it probably is and so is medicare, universal education, etc etc. No, they are not perfect, but you cannot live in a "relavtively" stabile society without them. By the way, have you ever actually studied Marx aside from 40 years of corporate media telling you it's like saying you believe in the devil? And no, you can't pigeonhole me for a marxist for asking that simple fucking question you fucking brainwashed I'm tired of this cowboy shit when I pay high fucking taxes, because I do, country...I'm tired of it, the ignorance any "good ol' boys" like you. NEG KARMA! Sure, bring it on!.
Unions give me crappy roads, crappy hydro, crappy waterworks and they still get paid nearly as much as I do.
You can argue for better software, or you can argue for unionizing software professionals. But you can't argue for both, because unionization leads to crap.
-ac
You've confused "right" with "power". There is no right to steal (a.k.a. tax).
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I just write my code with variables and files named after evil Indian gods, cow parts, and Indian cuss words.
Table-ized A.I.
The vast majority of them have little idea how much more relaxing it is to live in a CIVILIZED country like Australia or Sweden or Norway or France or Denamrk, etc. etc.
The citizens there do not have to worry about being bankrupted by medical problems or they or their children being homeless after a loss of a job.
You mentioned the years of unemployment available in Oz. Well, here in the USA, the amount is little usually that what you mentioned, but generally you can only draw a maximum of 6 months of unemployment. After that--nil.
Also, only families with children can get welfare (with some exceptions for food) here in the USA.
I have no idea why any American over 40 who is not rich/well off would want to stay in the USA when Australia will take anyone degreed and under 45.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I code on a tier 1 app. If the developers walked it would be months before they could get a replacement team up to speed (that's assuming they hired twice the people and worked them lots of overtime). I've been working on it for 4 years, and there are still large chunks of the code I know little to nothing about.
Beyond that they wouldn't have months. Our app is a little quirky. Regulare maintance and trouble shooting keeps things inline, but I garuntee !@#$ would hit the fan before the replacements were up to speed enough to deal with it.
I know we are not the only app like this. Our sister app was outsourced and they are having major troubles, even after several months for an "organized" switchover.
A large scale organized walkout would throw one major monkey wrench into the works, even without direct sabatoge.
We spend millions bringing Indians to the US for IT education at our best (publicly funded) universities. We allow indians to move here. Yet, Americans are not allowed to move to India for work.
IANAI (I am not an Indian), but am a forgeiner who studied at an American university (UNLV). Perhaps the Indians' situation is different, but the US certainly didn't try and "bring me over", I had to apply, get an F-1, write the college's entrance tests, and so on. My father paid for everything, including dorm accomodation, college fees, a car, etc. I never worked in the US, btw. I had the opportunity of getting a year of practical experience in the US after my studies, but decided to go back to South Africa and work at my father's company instead.
Generalized comments follow, they perception, and cannot be based on fact.
:)
Americans are overpaid, most cannot even speak English fluently and they are also lazy.
As a 'foreign' contractor I do the same work for half the price (or less).
Face it, the only reason you need so much money is becase your prices are so steep.
Perhaps consider living in a foreign country where the prices are more realistic, and thus you can charge decent rates?
$30/h is my max, and I'm a senior un*x developer with lots of win32 development skills.
I do not feel the need to emmigrate to the 'land of the free' anytime soon, thank you. But now and again I get contacts from the States, and find that I can charge ludicrous rates since local Americans seem to bleed the industry dry.
-sigh-
Enough ranting... my advice is to get off your a**es and work harder for less. Rasism is not becoming and unions will only perpetuate the problem and kill your industry from the inside.
Mod me down... I deserve it. But I'm sure a lot of international developers feel the same. It's time we got some recognition. Slashdot is so USA-centric it sometimes makes me sick.
You should always have your eye on the horizon anyway: if you're asked to train up a new worker, just accept the mission and in the background, start looking for another job: if you find the other job before the training is complete, well that's a problem for your current employer, not for you: they set the wheels in motion.
To refuse to train someone else is really unprofessional: all of these comments about getting one over on the new guy, or refusing to do the job are just more reasons in the mind of your employer to get rid of uncooperative employees and replace them with more professional ones.
Knowing the bits about employment law that I do, I would say that even if it is not in your contract, you're obliged as a general condition of employment to transfer your job function to someone else if asked: that _doesn't_ mean you train someone in how to be a developer, or in a specific language, it just means that you impart the the tactical knowledge you have. In the same way that if your company is going through a quality process (ISO) you'll be asked to document the way you work. If you refuse, it really is grounds for dismissal.
I had that dubious honor to train my replacement, a recent import from Russia. The company? Court Square Data Group. In Taxachusetts. May they circle the drain soon.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
WHere is Jimmy Hoffa when u need him.
"t's the companies who don't want to employ Americans in India because they sure as hell will end up raising the wages in India and reducing the cost advantage of offshoring jobs."
Oh hell yeah! Can't have those wages being raised.
Ummm...what was the advantage of Globalization again?
It's a tough time.
;-p and I say that without any regrets, because it is still true... take advantage of our consumer base and all the rest of our advantages..... it just 'simply' is not that hard to do.
Education you thought was 'just for you' has somehow found it's way abroad.
Jobs you thought were 'just for you' have somehow found their way abroad.
What do you do?
What do you know? - now comes the important part...
You know: how to do the job, how much it costs to do the job, how much the companies you worked for pay to get the job done.
What do you do? - Organize. Create a consultancy. Identify 'offshore' companies who want to 'do the job'. Offer your expertise. Arrange to provide your 'expertise' to 10 to 100 companies in the States, while 'off-shoring' the work to some company where costs of living is $500 a month.
You get lemons, make lemonade!
The American dream is still alive.... accept it, manipulate it. Bam! It requires a little more thought to start, but seriously.... not that much effort. Get with the program, USA still owns the world
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
"What? You think I told him to destroy the network? The guy doesn't even speak English--what did you expect?" Yes, it's cruel and unfair--but that's what makes our country great.
Who cares whatt the relative increase is? Isn't it important that everyone is improving their lives? If you're making $10K more today than you were ten years ago does it matter if the richest person made $100 million rather than $1 million?
As for taxes, you are partly right. 'Rich' people that make over $200 000 (usually 50+, paying off a mortgage, retirement, and putting kids through college, hardly yacht-rich at all) pay enormous amounts of taxes, as much as 44%.
It's the ludicrously rich people, the Steve Jobbses of the world that aren't getting taxed that much, mostly because they've already accumulated hordes of wealth. You can't tax wealth you already have, just wealth that you will later accumulate.
And I'm afraid capitalism is working, at least against the alternatives. 'Wealthy' people by and large deserve every penny they make, with exceptions of course. Finally as CrhisMaple mentioned we have absolutely no right to tax anyone: income is not meant to be dispersed but earned.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
That's like saying cars are fueled by cash. It's customers that pay for the employees, but it's the workers that actually power the company. Try again...
You, sir, are nothing but an envious thief.
Like my company, that has just announced record profits, but is just about to lay off 20% of the IT dept, as a cost cutting excercise. Last year the CEO got paid over 10 times the amount that this excercise will save the company. My heart bleeds for these struggling corporations.
Paid "too much"
When people are exposed as incompitant and corrupt and resign they get a Golden Parachute, thats "too much" as well.
First off, let me say that I've seen unions from both sides of the table. I was a shop steward in an IBEW shop, and saw people one third as experienced as me get paid twice as much as I was simply because they had put in more time. I've also been directly involved in contract negotiations as management. Right now, workers NEED unions! The simple fact is that the pendulum has swung too far in the employer's direction for it to ever equalize back. It's kind of 'stuck' up there. Only organized labor is going to have any chance of ever movig it a little down from it's present high horse. Whether you want to admit it or not, there's safety in numbers! Don't get me wrong, I'm not pro union, I'm PRO WORKER! It's just that management has made a science out od screwing workers. Unions have their problems too: Corruption, nepotism, and deadwood. BUT that said, the plusses (unfortunately) FAR OUTWEIGH any minuses for at least the near future...maybe even longer!
If you've got to train them, you might as well train them to f**k up your employers' systems in the worst possible way.
"No, don't do exception handling, just stop the entire server if anything goes wrong", "In this country we trust people, so just give full access rights to everyone including the janitor".
Just do a pisspoor job and get fired or drag it out till you can't take it anymore. If you have worked at the company for more than six months you get unemployment, at least where I live. The only way you can't is if you quit. This is to prevent people from working for six months, quitting, getting unemployment, finding another job, quitting etc.
I would talk like a smurfy all day while training: "This is the smurfy server! It runs smurfily! Just hit this smurfy switch right here and it smurfs!" etc etc..
Should do the trick till your smurfed by management.
Who cares what the wealthy make! What's important is the wealth of the poor relative to their cost of living. Remember that although a wide gulf between the richest and poorest is usually a property of widespread poverty, it certainly can occur for prosperous societies as well. The important problem is how to reduce the burden on the poor, not increase the burden of the rich.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
Wow, we had almost the same introductory sentences. Neat! :-)
What about property tax?
The government was granted the right to tax income by an ammendment to the Constitution. You don't have an inalienable right of no income tax after all! I view income tax as a fee from the government for providing services (protection, stability, insurance, etcetera). If I disagree with my current government's tax policy too much, then all I really have to do is "shop for another one" (i.e. move to a different country or set up my own like that Aussie fellow did).
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
When you're told that you need to train your replacement, tell them that you're going to after you take ALL of your paid vacations back to back. If it works, you'll literally be getting paid to look for a new job.
You have absolutely no clue about anything do you. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone, yet people starve to death, there is enough cash in the world to give people a living wage that would not embarrass them, morons like you are so &^%&^% off the planet.
You make me sick
Lame. No one cares about your "work hard, yeah!!!" production and no one cares about the weak ass socialist mirror of production you argue against either. It's all bullshit. Smith this, Marx that: fuck it. Tip: don't buy into the American dream lie and marry a bitch and have a bunch of snotty nosed little piece of shit brats and you won't have to worry a day about fucking outsourcing or minimum wage. What kind of twisted fuck brings kids into this world anyway. All a bunch of child/sign fetishist, "ya'll".
The problem I think lies in the fact that in most industries paying minimum wage, ie unskilled labour, there is a far higher supply of employment, than employers. Mandatory minimum wage laws are of little impact to people being paid well above the minimum wage, and I think with most unskilled labour, if not all, there is a far greater supply of people who want jobs than there are employers.
If there is a mandatory minimum wage, and the job is necessary, and it takes 100 people to do the job, then 100 people will be employed at minimum wage rates. If there is no minimum wage, then these people will be paid 'what the market can bear', which might be very low. Ultimately, there will not be any more or less people out of a job, just 100 people with more money to buy food and support families.
M.
Maybe in your country, but we're talking here about the US of Fucking-A under the Bush administration.
..."programmers need to stop thinking about themselves as some sort of "upper" class."...
A point well made, the practice outlined in the original article along with quite a few other labour issues highlighted on slashdot as affecting IT workers have been and are still common practie in manufacturing.
A few of my ex-colleagues have had to work in China or the old eastern european countries setting up plants to replace the current facilities here in the UK. Two months of hotel living then it's down to the brew, the only upside being that the experience does make it much easier to find alternative employment.
The bottom line is labour is labour, skill, education or even position within a company (remember middle management) offer little or no protection from capital/ownership changes in direction.
You want to stand together, stop jobs from being lost? Then demand to be compensated for your work. That means not working on some free project that redhat, ibm, or whatever other business is gladly taking and making a buck off of(without having to pay you).
My studies weren't subsidized at all when I was in the US. Care to explain that one? Either UT has a problem (have read two posts about it now), or people at UT are somehow picking up stompies as to what is really going on with forgein students over there.
Carry this box of expensive equipment, office supplies and sales leads out to my car. Chop chop, then! ....
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
They would have to, after the training I would give them...
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
I was hired as a salaried employee by a major communications company that I had been working on & off again as a consultant for. I was hired to consolidate the data centers of several companies they had acquired (obviously, laying off the jobs there) into a much smaller number of datacenters with a unified and well documented design. All of which allowed them to lay off alot of engineers and do the same work with less and actually improved their operations significantly. When I was hired, I was told in advance that I would get severed once my job was complete and I would get a full severance package, which I did. So I worked a year, and came home with almost 2 years salary and had my health benefits for 2 years. Not too shabby for 1 years work.
Once I left, the remaining employees that they wanted to get rid of at the former companies were fired for breaking company rules (P2P, surfing, etc).
This is nothing new though, back in 1989 I was working in IT and developing EIS systems, but at the same time developing systems go get rid of Union brakemen at a major transportation company. They were already replaced by automated switches and mainframes, but they had ancient contracts that paid them to sit in airconditioned boxes along the railroad and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. So the company attornies found a way in the contract to fire them. Gave them the option to take retirement and parachute, smart ones took the money and ran, the ones that stayed got fired. My "job" was to build the systems that enabled the company to fire them. We did the same thing with several floors of clerical jobs. Replaced 2000 warm bodies with 100 bodies and a well designed application tailored to their needs. Those 100 bodies more than quadrupled the efficiency of the work produced by the 2000.
My grandfather was a union buster and was an exec in management, and he ultimately realized the Genie is out of the bottle. Before there were COMPUTERS, you used people to do the job. Computers are a force/work multiplier. The more you use (use effectively and efficiently), the less BODIES you need. It's that simple.
Toss in the ultra low wages paid to third world laborers, give them some computer operator skills, watch out... your job is definitely next.
I might sound paranoid, but I think we are heading to a further stratification of the social structure. There will be the ultra rich, and the ultra poor with more and more distinction between the two. At the same time, the world's governments will merge into one...
If you are too stupid to see the writing on the wall and line up another job BEFORE you get laid off, then you deserve every bit of misery that you get... Come on people, offshoring is here to stay and if you still think you can command 1999 salaries for dicking around with computers, you're a moron. Truth is, any idiot can pick up an MCSE book and become an IT "professional," including Indians, who also happen to be willing to work for less than you. Corporate America has discovered that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to keep a network going, and they feel cheated that they've had to pay so much for this service in the past. Payback's a bitch, isn't it? The sooner you people realize that your PHB, VP, and CEO are your ALLIES not your ENEMIES, the sooner you'll have a safe and secure job. Here's a little hint - nobody who has a winning team attitude gets offshored. However, EVERYBODY who sits at their IT "professional" desk and bitches about how these stupid lusers are a pain in their ass and how the company is a piece of shit, gets offshored. You are not hired to be omnipotent gods of the network. You are hired to provide a service to the employess of the company you work for. You are in a service industry, and you are subservient to the employees, not authoritative over them. It's time to get over yourselves...
(I don't remember the exact words but ...)
Homer said "Don't strike, just go into work and do a half-assed job. It's the American way!"
So let me get this straight: basically the reason you should be kept is _not_ competence, it's _not_ productivity... it's just that hopefully noone will show the new guy where the files are and what that mess of piss-poor quality undocumented code does.
You know what? That's exactly the reason why more people like you should be fired, and sent back to whatever burger-flipper jobs they had before the dot com scam.
And you know what? That's precisely the reason the whole "send the jobs overseas" plan is happening in the first place. Because the domestic market is flooded with cheats, frauds and leeches who don't plan to do a good job, but just see it as "hey, cool, I can get a buttload of money for nothing." And who, in many cases, won't hesitate to actively sabotage the project. (E.g., deliberately making it hard to maintain, as "job security.")
All those con artists cost the economy a buttload of money. Money which ultimately comes from everyone else.
Here's an idea for you: how about being unreplaceable for being competent, productive and competitive? That's what a job in programming used to mean. And those are _not_ the jobs who get sent overseas.
Yes, I know, it sounds absurd. It also sounds like real work.
I'm going to say something nasty. You know what I really want now? To see the fraud laws applied to resumes too. Same as selling a non-existing product based on faked specs is fraud, I see no reason why selling non-existing competence based on a faked resume is any better.
I want to see all those fraudsters not just fired, but fined for more than they ever made in that job. And if possible sent to state prison. But at the very least, I want to see the hiring company entitled to sue the pants out of you if you sold yourself as some Java or C++ expert while barely being able to copy and paste a "Hello World" tutorial.
Probably not going to happen, but I can dream anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Or you could try repeating that bit of blackmail that Kevin Spacey's character managed in American Beauty. Run out of the bosses office with your mascara a bit runny, buttoning up your shirt, making sure someone sees you. Doesn't matter that you both might be beard wearing, pizza eating, coke drinking dorks with 50" waiste lines. A good lawyer should be able to come through for you!
I was laid off last year, along with all my development team in the UK, and I was given the dubious honor of not only training our Pakistani replacements, but coordinating the whole training program.
Unlike the original visionaries who drove the original development, our new management were pure short termists. They didn't listen when we told them that the development practices they were adopting would come back to bite them. Over the preceding year, purely as a result of a management drive to win each new customer by agreeing to anything they wanted, the system had become kludged to hell - by now we were scared of parts of it, and we wrote it. Guess how much good quality documentation existed?
Three people were sent over to London to learn all they could about the system we'd spent 3 years creating. I felt sorry for these three guys, so far from their families, struggling to understand something they had no realistic hope of ever getting to grips with. My job was toast anyway - the writing had been on the wall. We were courteous and friendly to them. We tried to help them understand the system. They failed - it was inevitable. The company didn't allocate very much time for the transfer either - it would have cost too much to keep us much longer, apparently.
I'm now in a much more interesting and visionary organisation, from where I've had the bittersweet pleasure of watching that company slowly die. Don't blame your replacements - they're normally nice and intelligent people, who'll normally feel quite bad about the situation too.
Any system complex and interesting enough to be worthy of your time is going to be very hard, if not impossible, to transfer working knowledge to a completely new bunch of people all in one go.
Especially if your management is already in the mindset of cost cutting at all costs.
I am a student now. But I was working in software industry prior to this. I have a few friends who work on projects outsourced to India. It is not the fault of India or Indians that they are picking up the jobs offered to them. The report in yahoo about "training your own professionals", does not potray a real picture of what actually happens. The so called training is nothing more than handing over of responsibilities . It does not involves any technical training. It involves pointing out the location of the source code, structure of the source code, and the build system. This is all you need to take over a software project. Out of the three tasks it is rare that someone will explain to you the structure of the code. The engineer assigned has to mostly pick it up himself. I am sorry for the job losses that are happening because of outsourcing, and sincerely wish that they do not happen. But it is unfare to write an article which questions the competence of Indian software professionals.
I'm a consultant in Georgia and only make $7 an hour. The traffic is horrible. My pickup won't start, so I have to walk 30 miles to work everyday, through the Kudzu, barefoot, uphill (both ways). The only thing we have to eat here is grits, and everyone from here is a toothless, confederate flag waving, cross burning, southern drawl speaking, cousin marrying, gun toting, Pabst Blue Ribbon drinking, Yankee hating redneck. Really. Don't move here. You'll hate it.
Ask me about my vow of silence!
There's this huge broughaha over jobs going overseas. Did anyone care when it was textile jobs going overseas? Not really. How about steel? Manufacturing? Nope. Barely a peep from anything that didn't have the word "union" associated. But now that it's finally worked its way up to white collar jobs, the nation is suddenly endangered.
You know what, folks? Cope! It's part of living in a global economy, whether you like free trade or not. Unless you're totally isolationist, it's something that is just going to have to be dealt with.
I'm not implying that I don't feel for those who've lost jobs, but I've known a LOT of people who have (including my wife, a tech writer, TWICE), and most all of them have found employment if they were, well, employable. Some had to change venues, but to be brutally honest, that was separating wheat from chaff.
Frankly, for the most of us, it's a good wakeup call. I've seen too many people grow cushy in their jobs, and buy houses that, once they get canned, they suddenly can't afford to live in, because nowhere else is paying like middle management job they had for the past 15 years.
$.02, + S&H
Pleased to meet you! Trust me - the boss loves his coffee prepared with laxatives.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I work in the public sector - and tbh - I have never have believed the turnover of staff WITHIN such a large organisation. The repeated restructuring programmes lead to people being made redundant, or even better, being offered some poor secretarial job within the council. This often leads to the temp who was doing the job previously to train the next person, lets call him Joe.
Joe was probably in management before and sits there doing weird shit with the mouse and eating donuts while the guy whos job it was before has no employment rights, trains him up on Excel and Word to a decent standard all while doing his usual job in parallel. Joe now has a job he hates (because he doesn't understnd it or those bloody computers) and the Temp moves on to another contract (almost certainly within same unnamed public sector organisation).
Eventually the temp decides to jack in his crud insecure job, leaving the *cough* in the lurch and another turns up only to do exactly the same thing. Rumour has it that more than 1/3 of this very organisation is made up of Temps... Makes a lot of sense doesn't it!
Suppose I had better do some work then... actually I'm a temp too!
> CEOs make crucial decisions all the time, decisions that can result in millions gained or
> lost. They are worth every penny providing they do this job well.
If they are to gain a percentage of the millions won through their decisions that's perfectly ok, so long as they also pay for a similar percentage of the millions lost to their incompetence...
Unfortunately the story that managers have such a risky life, risk being fired with no income at no notice etc. is complete nonsense. The closer to the the top you get the less personal risk there is. For a start they have enough capital to cope without any income ever again, which reduces personal risk to 0. Even if they screw up, they get pensions, severance pay etc. etc. in amounts that any of the 1000s who lost their jobs due to their incompetence can only dream about...
So anyway, entrepreneurs i'm ok with earning lots of money as it's their captial that's at stake. Managers risk nothing and thus should be paid like an ordinary professional, not like a successful entrepreneur..
DO train the new hire... and encourage him to "press The Red Button" if he is ever in doubt about what to do. In most tech companies, this should result in the self-destruct mechanism being activated. That'll teach them.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Reminds me of stories about the db programmer who had special hooks in the code to handle cases such as when his name was deleted from the company roles.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
How do we fund our social programs when no one wants to work anymore because everyone can make a good living from just collecting from the state?
The US _IS_ a Civilized country. We don't allow our citizens to assume they can do nothing with thier lives and still live a good life. The US provides its citizens with reality while those other countries try to provide a socialist utopian paradise thats always crumbling apart at the seams. Sure they have free healthcare but have you seen the quality of it? And what happens in those countries when the demographics hit the fan and you have more people who are retired than working? Pyramid scheme social programs tend to break when that happens. And lastly the US has a lower unemployment rate than most of the countries you listed.
But thats ok, keep wishing for a great socialist paradise. We'll keep waiting for one to appear on this earth.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Likewise, when there are thousands of different unemployed people, competition drives wages down. If not for minimum wage, these wages would go waaay down. Look at England during the industrial revolution. Know your history.
England? Heck, look at the IT market in the US ofter the bubble burst! Thousands of unemployed IT workers, very few jobs. Didn't take long at all for the wages to come tumbling down, and the requirements to go shooting through the roof.
Tech support for an ISP? Pre-bubble: Any warm body with a modicum of technical aptitude, a willingness to learn, and the ability to put up with clueless end-users on the phone. Post-bubble: 4 year degree, and 10 years experience doing tech support minimum (preferably on the exact hardware the ISP in question uses). This for what is normally considered a pretty much entry-level position in the IT field.
I really have a problem with this whole line of thinking.
It seems to infer that being rich or poor is somehow the fault of the government or some external force.
Sure some people are born into richer or poorer families.
However I think the larger factor of an individuals personality, drive and work habits are a much bigger factor.
Some people are just lazy by nature and will do just enough work not to starve, while others have an amazing internal drive to succeed and excel.
No ill-conceived government taxation program is going to change this.
This is not to say that sometimes people need a little help to get thier lives turned around.
But when it comes down to the whole idea about the rich keeping the poor down, I just don't buy it.
What "right" do you have to tax anyone's earnings? What "right" do you think you have to take x% from them? What is that percentage? Who the hell gets to decide? You?
That's so fucked up I don't even know where to begin.
And you were actually doing alright in your argument until that point.
Your comments complaining the the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting... richer just smacks of jealousy to me.
Wouldn't all the complaints about the rich being taxed go away if we instituted a VAT or national sales tax instead?
Hell, provide a way for people to get back the first X thousand they pay in sales tax (to help out the poor). Don't pay any sales tax on some small number of vitals (basically the foods you don't pay sales tax on today).
Then when the rich guy goes out to buy his multi-million dollar yacht, there's no way for him to hide his income.
Wake up fools! This IS capitalism, and always has been. Aside from the occasional nuisance of a revolution, this has been happening since the dawn of man. All this talk of "freedom" and "democracy" has made our brains numb to the memories of distant misery.
If Americans are lacking in education and skills (a fact according to many in the media), why are Americans asked to train their replacements?
BOB SLYDELL
So what you do is you take the specifications from the customers and
you bring them down to the software engineers?
TOM
That, that's right.
BOB PORTER
Well, then I gotta ask, then why can't the customers just take the
specifications directly to the software people, huh?
TOM
Well, uh, uh, uh, because, uh, engineers are not good at dealing with
customers.
BOB SLYDELL
You physically take the specs from the customer?
TOM
Well, no, my, my secretary does that, or, or the fax.
BOB SLYDELL
Ah.
BOB PORTER
Then you must physically bring them to the software people.
TOM
Well...no. Yeah, I mean, sometimes.
BOB SLYDELL
Well, what would you say... you do here?
TOM
Well, look, I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so
the engineers don't have to!! I have people skills!! I am good at
dealing with people!!! Can't you understand that?!? WHAT THE HELL IS
WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!!!!!!!
It's no use, they'll just bring in consultants to figure out you don't do anything anyway.
is to do a lousy job training your replacement.
Lots of options here:
Communications problems - give correct training but inefficiently.
Train wrongly - effeciently give the wrong training.
Combine the first two - inefficiently give the wrong training.
Others?
I don't recommend these options. I has been my experience that you will do more harm to your self respect that it is worth. Sometimes, knowing you have options to play dirty and choosing not to will lighten your heart however and give you a head start in the rest of your life.
I have never been a big fan of unions, but perhaps we are getting to a point where one in the IT industry would prove useful.
[rant]
I think unions can be necessary. I even think they can be a good idea. I just think they are often implemented poorly.
I admit I have probably been too often on the ownership/management side of the fence to see things clearly. When I have been an employee, I have always been quite ready to walk and have been able to make deals I was happy with.
Let me give one small example of my problems with unions where I live.
It has been my experience that it is so difficult to find good employees that employers will often keep emplloyees on who should have been let go long before. They do this because they need the postion filled. Choosing a replacement is a long, costly and unpleasant task. There is no great hope that the replacement will be any better. Still, the union mentality seems to be that employers take delight in wrongfully dismissing employees and do so on a whim for kicks. Now I don't doubt that some do, but many that I run into are in the situation I describe. I could give other examples.
Now unions and management (owners) need to have an adversarial relationship. I believe they need a cooperative relationship as well which is often missing. To me, a union with a good outlook would be trying to find ways to increase company profits (so long as the members get a fair share of the increase.) Helping to train and motivate employees would be a good idea in my view.
[/rant]
Could have run on but cut things short.
Advice, train your replacement and move on. Cut expenses to the bone and go out and earn an income somewhere. Cutting your expenses is the key.
Inexpensive fun. This is another key. Lots of fun and good times to be had hanging out with friends and talking, joking, making music, working on projects, working on a new business.
Community service. If you are laid off, don't sit around and waste away your time. Do profitable work even if you do not get paid money for it. Grow some veggies, help some of the less fortunate in your home town, work on a Free Software project, clean up your house or neighbourhood.
Be positive even in lousy situations. Keep your dignity. Improve yourself.
A Nony Mouse
Maybe there is hope for this world afterall... We just need more of the parent poster..
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
Wow, you're confused.
Someone doesn't agree with you and their "tv fed", "cowboy", and they think social security is "evil".
Asshole.
Social Security like it's set up right now is fucked up. It's obviously not evil to force people to save for their retirement. It IS evil to force people to put money into a black hole, earning nothing with it, and putting the country into a debt-ridden hole because of simple demographics.
Hopefully once you grow up you'll stop being such a simpleton.
And don't give us any of your bullshit about the Marxist ideal because it's fucking failed EVERYWHERE.
"Yes they worked here and the dates they worked were from X to Y..." is actually a *bad reference*. "He worked here and was one of the best employees we ever had - had the initiative to suggest and implement a new system that saved us $x per year, etc. - we were sorry to see him go and would definitely rehire him" - that is a *good reference*.
I don't think so. Where is the "right" derived from? In a Democratic society, rights are derived from the will of the people. That means that we have the right to set tax rates how we please. It is not stealing. If you feel that the government is stealing from you, then you should remove yourself from society and stop benefiting from everything it provides you. I'm sure if you moved to a remote island in the South Pacific and started a neo-con commune, the same ingenuity and hard work that got you to the top in this meritocracy will get you really far in life.
It's funny, the huge corps, through thier own greed, are about to bring about a whole host of bad things they don't want. They will whine like stuck pigs when it happens. We will have draconian tax and employment rules because of all this, plus we could start having tech unions, which most of us don't want, but if it's that or see your job goto india, union here I come.
I can see it now, "Ah sorry your a programmer, your gonna have to wait for someone from sysadmin union to come and install websphere and eclipse on your desktop. Oh and someone from the PC support union will be by to plug the ethernet cable into your box in the next couple of weeks. Until then you have to sit and twiddle your thumbs......."
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
'Rich' people that make over $200 000 (usually 50+, paying off a mortgage, retirement, and putting kids through college, hardly yacht-rich at all)
Listen closely and you can hear the worlds smallest violin playing for those peope who "only" make 200K a year. That must really suck.
'Wealthy' people by and large deserve every penny they make
No. Most rich people are just lucky. There is a very thin line between being very wealthy and being destitute. There is a great potential in our economic system for a small number of people to make a whole lot of money but it really is just a crapshoot. Sure, it takes a lot of work, in most cases, to have a chance at the big bucks but luck really is a large factor. I don't really see how a billionaire can deserve such an amazingly disproportiante amount of wealth. Does a CEO making 50 million a year really work over 3,000 times as hard as someone working for minimum wage stocking shelves at Wal-Mart?
About 10 years ago, I was told to do just that. I worked for a defense contractor based out of a town just southwest of denver. They had me train 4 replacements. Of course, the first 3 were dufus's. The 4th was a friend and he convinced management that my services were needed. So we both stayed on the project for a year.
I suspect that there isn't a chance in hell that the people that are stuck doing this exercise now will have this kind of luck. Management is to busy shipping off the future for a gain in stock price today.
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
Our politicians try to mollify us by saying there will be "new opportunities" and make us feel guilty for wanting protectionist legislation.
Everyone else in the world plays by different rules. Just yesterday I read a piece where China enacted legislation where it is mandatory that 70% of goods and services for the state must be home-grown. They at least realize that without incentives and sheltering from predatory foreigners there is no progress or growth.
We don't owe the world a damned thing! I don't give a rats ass about the poverty anywhere but here - the country I was born in, live in, pledged allegiance to - and love with all my heart as the greatest collection of souls on the planet. I'm supposed to feel sorry for some schmuck in India because he's there and poor and I'm here and not?
These bastards in Washington seem to think that we'll all do ok being burger flippers and "lawn care specialists". That's a snake eating it's own tail - without a decent income - where are people supposed to get the money to consume and pay for all these services?
Regards, BubbaJon
This isn't an unusual happening in the work world. My husband hired in at a company promising him a permanent job. He was being paid 18 an hour as a machine tool electrician, installing machinery he had helped build. He was asked to train 8 south of the border fellas who couldn't even speak English. When my husband's 89th day was up, they "let him go". Several of my husband's friends in the same field have reported the same thing, and one of them actually worked in that same place after my husband, and they did the same thing to him. Know what? Our unemployment ran out. We have gone through our life savings. We are down to nothing left. I'm 49 and he's 57. Try getting a job that will even pay for the little house on a slab that we live in. The trainee-guys were working for 7 and 8 an hour, owned no homes, so paid for none of the taxes we pay for. It's the new migrant worker jobs. They bunk up 4 guys or more to a hotel room. I was working in an airplane instrument factory, same story. Businesses get a tax break for hiring foreignors, folks, so maybe we should all change races and colors??? So, it looks like the thing to do folks, is start your own business, and hire cheap workers until America falls. Every man for himself, like rats jumping ship while it burns.
Or even better. I would train them wrong. "This system requires a resting period of 1 hour a day. Shut it down around 1pm."
Actually, that's oppression of the minority. The great thing about North America is that you too have the opportunity to go about making yourself rich. The tools are out there. Penalizing someone for making something of themselves is incredibly un-American.
Also - inflation is inflation is inflation - the reason we have billionaires now instead of millionaires is that the value of the dollar is down. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider, but a lot of that is due to compounding inflation. If you rolled back everything to 1974 dollars and did a comparison, you'd see less of a difference than you think.
My $.02
-s
You know, I think you're right - when the government didn't have any employee right or employee protection laws in place, the employee did take advantage of the employees.
That time is over.
Since the government has stepped forward and started protecting employees, union are no longer necessary. In fact, the laws that protect the employee and the union have swung the pendulum the other way, so that unions are the root of many of the problems we have today (especially as far as global competition go)
My $.02
-s
it is hurting our wages too much.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
When we're done training them, the company can get them to do the same job for half the pay
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
Normally I dont like lawyers. However if the employer threatens to terminate you "with cause", thereby making you ineligible for unemployment, then bring suit. Then it will be much cheaper for the company to lay you off properly rather than to fight a court case. It helps if you have additional cirumstances- over 40, not a white male, been having health problems from overworks, etc.
But if you've been planning your departure for some time, and you already have a job "waiting in the wings", you should have been moving all of your stuff out of your office in the preceding weeks. That way, when they tell you to load up a box and move out ASAP, all you have to take with you is the stuff you brought in with you that same day to work.
There are a whole hell of a lot more than "several" wealthy CEO's. Being the president of a company is no small task, but it also rarely warrants tens of millions in compensation and benefits when that same CEO whacks a few hundred or a few thousand of his less fortunate employees -- you know, those same poor bastards who bust their ass each day to keep the CEO in limos and jets.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
I actually went to your URL before I posted my reply. Please recognize that your very out of the way website is in no way shape or form, Gospel on economic matters.
And before we begin here can you quickly tell me whats the difference between the American Propaganda Machine and the European Propaganda Machine?
Ok about Canada. Canada's nationalized healtcare system is a mess. Yes its free, but that doesn't mean its GOOD. They routinely bus cancer patients down to the US so they can be scanned to see how far their cancer has spread. They don't have enough machines or technicians or doctors up in Canada willing to do the job for such low pay. France's scientists just went on strike because they're sick of the pay and budget cuts. Why should someone go to school and become a scientist and then go on to earn only $25,000 a year when you can migrate to another country (such as to the US where many French scientists DO come) and earn much much more? All over europe social systems are being slowly but surely dismantled because they just plain can't afford it anymore. Its a sad reality but a reality nontheless. Public museums that used to be open everyday are being closed down, universities in the UK are preparing top off fees, public schools are facing cutbacks....etc.
Progressive tax system? Did you know that the US has a progressive tax system as well? Yes thats right! Those in higher tax brackets pay more in taxes! Those in lower tax brackets pay less in tax! Thats progressive!
Yes the Europeans have been funding their social programs for decades. For the past 50 years every country in Europe has had an increasing population growth rate. The problem is thats not true anymore. Italy for example is stagnating. The other countries in Europe are slowing down and will eventually begin shrinking in population. So please tell me how does one fund social programs with shrinking populations?
I am not ignorant. I know that the countries in Europe are Social Democracies. Yes they are capitalist to a limited degree. But they are also socialist as they care more about making sure everyone gets obscenely and inappropriately expensive benefits instead of making sure their economies are functioning properly. Does the fact that France and Germany have 9% and 11% rates of unemployment not bother you at all? How can anyone say that Europeans have job security when a great many Europeans can't get a job to begin with? My idea of true job security is that one is able to get another job quickly after quitting or being fired/laid off from their current one, not a garuntee of a job for life from government regulations. Its really hard for European companies to compete when they have such a hard time downsizing. It may seem like a good thing in the short run (the employees get to keep their jobs) but in the long run the company loses business and marketshare to foreign competitors and may eventually go out of business.
By the way, thanks for the multiple ad hominem attacks. They really contribute to a peaceful and civilized conversation that I an American can expect from either a European or a Eruopean minded American.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Unions DID help the working man. The problem is that they became big and corrupt.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
When my company wants to get rid of someone but does not want to lay them off with benefits and severance, they use a fairly underhanded but not unintelligent strategy. They ask you to relocate. They do this to people that they know cannot relocate or are unwilling to do so. A lot of times they will ask you do move to an area with a much higher cost of living and they do not offer any kind of salary adjustment.
They have done it to a few people in my department already. So, if you choose not to move, they can fire you and it is not unreasonable or you can quit and also end up with nothing. I bet the manager that came up with that idea got a raise even though we keep laying people off!
Small business ("evil satan-spawn" is probably the term more familiar to you) makes up 99.7% of American employers and gives jobs to over 50% of the workforce. Strike 2.
Actually, this hasn't been true since the 60's. It's a common rant from the Libretarian crowd (although for different reasons; they're lamenting the decline of small business). Something like 70% of Americans are now employed by medium and large businesses.
Besides, a more relevant figure would be the spread of the dollar value of those jobs. (I don't know those figures.)
Take your crap somewhere else,commie.
Nobody's falling for your 'solidarity' bullshite..
Union scum are the reason why jobs are going to china/india...overpaid losers who are sick of thinking...
get dead
What next job? I'm still looking for the first one.
Jesus saves and takes half damage.
I will not train a my replacement if you are sending my job overseas. You can lay me off/fire me and I will collect my unemployment because it is the law to pay unemployment otherwise suffer a law suit. Based on my portfolio that you help grow + my own investments, I will be secure in continuing my career else where and know that.... I am a proud American who will fight for his honor. Thank you.
Quit but take everyone with you from IT (call it a protest or what-not).
Pool your last paychecks and go buy a $35 business licence.
Together, offer your previous company top of the line training for thier new employees. Figure out how long all of you would have been able to work before they laid you off, how much severance they would have given you (or how much you think you deserved... what are they going to do, say no?), and total it. Then double it. Hell... quadruple it, you have a captive market. Then charge them a flat fee, starting with your total, for one month of training for 5 employees. Every month after that you can give them 20 or 30% off for being good customers. If your professional about it, you'll probably get the contract. Some of the employees still at your old company (CFO probably) may not like it, they may even hate it, but if any of them held it against you they'd be fools.
If someone puts you in that position you are not helpless. You simply have to think like the business and figure out what it is they're trying to get. They want cheaper development. That's not you, it won't ever be you again, but they'll need your help with the transition. That doesn't mean they get to set the terms of the transition (unless you let them), just that they want to do it. Help them, but on your terms.
[why am I always a day late on articles I know something about...]
That's exactly the reason why more people like you should be fired, and sent back to whatever burger-flipper jobs they had before the dot com scam.
Bullshit. If a company is laying you off to save money on cheaper foreign workers, you have no obligation to see to the good of the company in the future. The company-employee trust has been broken, and not by you.
That's precisely the reason the whole "send the jobs overseas" plan is happening in the first place. Because the domestic market is flooded with cheats, frauds and leeches who don't plan to do a good job, but just see it as "hey, cool, I can get a buttload of money for nothing."
Bullshit. It's about money. Don't fool yourself into thinking that there aren't people in the US who do a good job.
Here's an idea for you: how about being unreplaceable for being competent, productive and competitive? That's what a job in programming used to mean.
Bullshit. I know several people who are productive and competent, but are no longer competitive because they can't work for $3/hr. There have also always been unproductive people in programming, and there always will be. I have even worked with some of the very same unproductive programmers that my father worked with 20 years ago. Not much has changed in their level of productivity. They get jobs because they make friends with other people in the company and the other people recommend them when there are openings. It has always been that way and it always will be.
I'm going to say something nasty. You know what I really want now? To see the fraud laws applied to resumes too.
I do agree that there should be some sort of penalty applied to people who lie on their resume. I also think that there should be some sort of penalty applied to salesman who sell a product/service that the company doesn't provide and to the management that allows it to happen. I don't, however, agree with the extent of your punishments. I do think that equal punishment should apply to the person who lied on their resume and the person who hired them. If the person they hired is incompetent then it follows that the hiring manager is also incompetent, do you not agree? After all, it is the manager's job to hire competent people.
On a personal note, you seem extremely bitter and I pray that I never see the world in the same light as you.
What is EVERYONE works as hard as they possibly can? The bottom half stills gets cut off. That is a game that has no winners, in the end.
But that's exactly the sort of game that everybody wins at. It's the whole point of the marketplace, it's the reason the US is ahead of everybody else in so many ways. Ruthless competition is hard on those doing it, but the economy as a whole sees all of it's primary resources (people) get better. We produce more, more taxes get taken in to pay for roads, prices go down and people spend more. It's that whole nasty virtuous circle thing.
Bryan
Actually, companies try very hard to take advantage of their employees. Even with laws they find ways arround it.
The problem now days is that Unions have now become a big evil in most cases. Costing employees a lot of miney, creating lazy workers, gouging the employer with having more redundant workers not doing anything.
Example is looking at roadside crews, where you see 10 people holding stop or slow signs, and 1/2 of them are chating with someone who isn;t doing anything. Then you see 10 more people watching 1 person using a piece of equipment.
But all in all, I would love to see a IT union started, except that we are losing jobs to other countries already. However, with a union set up, we might get some political pull in helping the "American Pride" campain. Push companies to bring their support lines back to the states, and no fireing seasond men and replacing them with right out of school/temp jobs.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
They only represent the unionised employees in that group.
For example here in New South Wales the Railway union signed a agreement in which they'd always give so many days notice before a strike & in exchange employees would get a industrial accord allowance.
Well guess what, only unionised employees the industrial accord allowance, the logic being is that the union doesn't represent the un-unionised employees, so it's up to them to sign their own individual industrial accords before they can get the extra allowance (about double the union fee, meaning we in effect got paid to be in the union).
Also my brother works in a place where only the unionised employees get all the special awards & allowances they bargined for over the years, while the non-unionised employees don't. You see it's only the new employees that belong to the industry union that know not to sign the AWA (Australian workplace agreement), in which give up their right to awards & allowances. They know enough to say they lost their form or left it at their girlfriends & will sign it when they pick it up or get a new form, or they just return it amongst the other forms, filled in but unsigned, because once one starts actually working, one can't get sacked for not filling out an AWA
Total bullshit. Are you going to tell me lawyers, doctors, and top managers just got 'lucky'? You may say, 'no but they had rich parents blah blah' but they still had to work their ass off to get into their respective schools. Advantaged? yes, but not lucky.
Finally your last point is irrelvant. It's not 'how hard' someone works, but how much their labor is worth. I would gladly pay that CEO 50 million a year if he could save my company over 50 million dollars in key decisions. Can that kid stocking shelves do that? Probably not.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Actually many CEOs do make less money if they make bad decisions. Much of their wealth is tied to the stock of the company, and when the stock falls, so does their wealth.
But you're right, it's hard to fire a CEO since he's, well, the fucking president. However he is still accountable to his consumers and the success of his business. It is in his best interest to make his business succeed. Failure of the business will mean failure for him.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Everything you said was correct except this. Employer's don't set wages arbitrarily, they too must pay competetive wages and what their business can afford. If they are only will to pay $3/h, and minimum wage law says you must pay $5/h, they will NOT simply shrug their shoulders and pay people the $5. More likely they will close their business or outsource it. If minimum wage law was instead $15/h, do you think McDonald's would just pay it, or do you think they would go quickly out of business?
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I don't buy it either, good post.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Bullshit. If a company is laying you off to save money on cheaper foreign workers, you have no obligation to see to the good of the company in the future. The company-employee trust has been broken, and not by you.
I'm not as much worried about the individual company, nor about the CEO's bonus, as about society as a whole. Even taking the most conservative estimates on how much is spent on computing each year, and applying the results of such statistics as "68% of Java developpers don't know Java" or "3 out of 4 programmers can't really program"... it's scary. It means _hundreds_ _of_ _billions_ each year are drained just into feeding parasites.
It's money which could be better spent elsewhere. It could mean opening new factories and creating work for a lot more people. And this time for people who actually want to do honest work, not for cheats and liars.
Even if I'm to get in the mindset of "screw the corporations and their CEOs! They have too much money! Make 'em pay!" there are way better ways than this. Change some employment laws. Raise the minimum wage. Stuff which benefits everyone, not just the biggest liars and cheats.
Bullshit. It's about money.
Indeed. And I think being about the money is actually a good thing. Most companies weren't seeing a profit out of those hordes of incompetents taking years to deliver a half-arsed system. If that grandious enterprise system makes 5 secretaries redundant, but requires 4 full time programmers and admins, it's actually making a loss. And that loss might just cause a lot more jobs lost down the line.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that there aren't people in the US who do a good job.
Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of _very_ competent people in the US. But here's the rub: not half as many as are currently getting ridiculously high salaries as programmers.
The plan to let go of the manufacturing industry and make everyone a programmer or other high-tech expert was fundamentally flawed. It's as stupid as saying "screw the rest of the economy, this whole country is going to produce and export movies." Most people just can't either act, direct or write a good script. You only have a tiny fraction of the population who can do that well. Same with programming.
I know several people who are productive and competent, but are no longer competitive because they can't work for $3/hr.
Those can always find another (better) job. I did. Within a month I was hired again.
The last statistic I've seen, said that less than 10% of the jobs were moved so far. Roll it around in your head. If you're not in the 10% most incompetent segment, you'll still find a job. It might involve moving (_not_ to India), or having "only" a 5 figure salary for a change, or other mildly unpleasant stuff, but you'll survive.
I do agree that there should be some sort of penalty applied to people who lie on their resume. I also think that there should be some sort of penalty applied to salesman who sell a product/service that the company doesn't provide and to the management that allows it to happen.
Amen to that. That's another thing I really wish to see.
I do think that equal punishment should apply to the person who lied on their resume and the person who hired them. If the person they hired is incompetent then it follows that the hiring manager is also incompetent, do you not agree? After all, it is the manager's job to hire competent people.
No arguments there. I was just getting that thought myself after I posted the previous message.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
training staff members is what separates a master craftsmen from journey men, and apprentices alike. for example:
the boss comes to you, and in some manner says that you'll be training your replacement. naturally, you're surprised. but you are a master craftsmen. the first lesson is always the best lesson to get everyone lined up in the right direction. my favorite first lesson is to take the trainee, and if possible my boss to one of the finest restaurants in the area. tell them the truth; "that you take your teachings VERY seriously". please remember; educators should not smile, or frown on their students until much later.
after you've ordered them a fantastic meal, and if they wish, all the alcohol they feel comfortable in drinking. and as a master craftsmen, enjoy this moment yourself. remember, teaching is its own reward. be a gracious host, spare no triffle to your students. yes, i said student(S). once everyone is satisfied with their meal, you need to conclude this lesson by testing the class in their understanding of this lesson being modeled.
one such test method is to excuse yourself to use the restroom. you get up and head towards the restroom, at the last second, veer off to the parking lot. get in your car and drive back to work, AND use THAT restroom.
at some point in time, your students will come up to you and request an explanation to this lesson. After all, paying $500 for food, and drink, and having someone drive over to bring you back to work is not something that is done lightly.
do not smile, or frown; until much later. look at the clock, then do a 'double take' look at the clock, DO NOT SMILE. tell your students that their laziness, and lack of respect for working with such a fine company as this is a lesson that cannot be ignored. this lesson result will be placed in their personnel file.
tell them that tomorrows lesson will not be so easy to understand; now frown and shake your head in a small negative manner.
Posting as AC.
I work for a US Multinational Corporation, in one of their non-US sites.
Corporate have decided to outsource software development overseas to India, to a company that has been doing maintenance work for us for a good number of years.
It has been going on for 2 years solid now, and there are lots of problems. They have a very high turn over rate. Entire teams have quit the company after being trained on the product. The quality is not that great either.
What amazes me is the attitude of my colleagues: most of them are in denial! Even the middle managers! They keep pointing out those drawbacks and saying that somewho the corporation will backtrack and reneg on its decision to outsource.
I keep saying there is no way to turn the clock back: corporate sees only $$$ savings, and if this at the expense of quality then so be it! We all accepted made in Taiwan and made in China goods after some mild grumbling, didn't we?
I am now training two Indian young guys to learn the area I am doing, and I know that this will endanger my career.
Being a pragmatic realist, I have resigned to this fate, hoping a good severance package makes up for the years I have been with them.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the US has built it's own pyramid socialist schemes. Medicaid (sp) and social security come to mind. I also could swear I keep hearing politicos down there promising prescription drug plans for seniors.
The US is just as big-government friendly as most other first-world nations. You just spend more on your military than most.
Hell, your Republican congress just approved a resolution praising FDR and his New Deal (only 4 Republicans voted against it). Yep, Republicans congratulating the king of big-government Presidents, who'd have thunk it. They've also presided over the biggest spending increases in decades.
Of course acting professional doesn't mean you have to stand for this. If the employer will allow you to refuse, then refuse. Any company that faults you for that, doesn't deserve to get mentioned in your list of references anyway.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Oh, consumers won't be able to buy the products?
I believe most Americans carry substantial ability to absorb debt. The average American carries over $2000 in credit-card debt alone, and Americans show no sign of reducing spending when their income growth is slowed or stopped.
I only have a credit card to build good credit, I carry $300 of debt on it, pay off $200/month and charge a new $200 monthly. Most of my buddies have several thousand dollars in debt out in cards and no way to realistically pay it off.
Have you noticed all the 'poor looking' people driving expensive almost-new cars? They're living beyond their means. I make a little over $30K/year and I have to drive a ten-year-old Ford Escort and live in a basement apartment to make ends meet.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Quitting makes it more painful to you if you don't happen to have a nest egg, and have bills to pay, and don't have another job lined up. Quitting means you forego your right to unemployment insurance, which is at least something to help staunch the flow of red ink while you look for another job.
So, unless you're somewhat financial secure or confident you can find another job in short order, suck it up, train the lemmings and take your 6 months' of free government cheese.
Or, alternatively, rights are endowed by a creator (as in the tradition of the US Constitution).
Doesn't change the argument though. Which is the better society? One in which exemplary or privileged individuals make 10-100 times as much as an average person, and the bottom standard of living can live in a modest home. Or is it better to live in a society where exemplary or privileged individuals make 1000-100,000 times as much as an average person, and the bottom standard of living is on the streets?
If salaries in the USA went from $30,000 to $500,000, I think that everybody could be fairly happy. I mean, does anybody really need to make a whole lot more than that?
One issue that remains to be solved is the price of land. If everybody wants a nice home on half an acre, and population continues to increase, we'll eventually run out of half-acres. And if you made the bottom wage $30k, home prices would inflate so quickly that soon it wouldn't be much of an income - since homes tend to escalate in value to as much as the local residents can afford.
Are you going to tell me lawyers, doctors, and top managers just got 'lucky'?
The first profession is partially unionized and protected from foreign competition (and not all that wealthy in general). The second are completely unionized, and still their wages are falling compared to what they once were thanks to the HMOs. The third are for the most part lucky.
Sure, an idiot is unlikely to become a top manager. However, a complete genius is also unlikely to become a top manager. Those with very good social skills have a better chance, but they still have to be lucky.
Put it this way - in a Venn diagram top managers fit mostly in the set of pretty smart people. However, they probably make up about 0.1% of the set at most.
Your best shot to become a top manager is to be fairly smart, and also know the right people. And knowing the right people is often luck.
And while the CEO making $50m might make his salary back in key decisions, chances are somebody making $49m would do just as well. And so on... At some point the skill level will drop, but I think that a lot of successful middle managers with the right training could handle a job as a CEO. There is a lot more supply than demand.
I find it interesting that two of the three professions you mentioned are partially or almost completely unionized. Ever try to apply to med school? It is a lot harder to get in than a CS degree program! Is it because only geniuses can handle doctors? Hardly! It is because if they allowed med schools to proliferate like CS programs doctors would be in the same bind as programmers!
My own sense here: neither the spirit nor the letter of the law matter in this case. The expansion of H-1b over the objections of 82% of the American public is just what happens when a country allows things like political donations to play such a huge role in government-rule of law ceases to exist.
Hmmm... I can't agree with you about the IT union, basically because of your earlier points. However, a non-mandatory professional organization might not be such a bad thing. This would allow for lobbying (to counter the less savoury elements of corporate society) while leaving each person to negotiate their own employment.
I'm not convinced that offshoring is a bad idea. There is some short term pain, but that goes along with any economic cycle. I'm sure we'll see results that show that the U.S. economy is actually doing better than expected due to the offshoring. A better economy produces more jobs, and since the skilled workforce is now available, more rapid expansion. In fact, I think the U.S. economy will start to more closely resemble the Canadian economy in that there will be a large portion of the economy made up of small to medium enterprises.
Then again, I'm a pure Keynesian, and a pretty strong capitalist to boot. I favour government non-intervention (outside the judicial arm) in most cases.
Nice chatting with you
-s
Who the hell gets to decide? You?
Actually, in a democracy that would be the voters.
And they shouldn't be stealing from the rich simply for the sake of doing so. They should be attempting to set up a society which will work for the benefit of all.
For example, suppose a creative person writes a really good book, and then retires on the copyright royalties? What incentive is there for this creative person to ever produce again? Does that mean that we should get rid of copyright - of course not! Does it mean that we should balance copyright durations - yes!
The same goes for income. Money sitting in a bank does very little good. If people get their money by being smart, then having them leave it to their kids is also bad - since smart parents will tend to have smart kids, and having smart kids not working hard is bad for society. Does that mean that all inheritances should be taxed 100% - of course not! Does it mean that there should be some tax on inheretance - especially large estates - yes!
Surely you aren't arguing that there should be no taxes at all? Should charity fund all social programs?
Like anything else, there is a balance which gives individuals incentives to work, thus maximizing wealth, while making sure that this wealth helps the largest number of people possible.
Sure, we could become like Sparta and start culling children at birth if they don't seem like they'll amount to net positives for society. Who wants to live in that nation?
I didn't know that about the US
Please remember to use the GPL so those replacements will have access to the source code and not need you anymore!
True to a point; the system only works if a good majority of people have hope for a better future. That is not a given.
This did happen to me, I had to train the new workers from the other side of the world, it sucked. But, to save some face, I simply talked really fast and used the most technical terms I could in the one on one and writen documentation I had to complete. At least I know now that the ones that are still there, (about 1 in 10) are competent enough and not some script monkeys.
Yeah, right.
I like the proposal that minimum wage and welfare should be replaced by a guaranteed minimum income -- so the government ensures that every citizen makes at least $x/year, where x is sustenance level. This removes the burden placed on businesses of paying their employees minimum wage, instead they will likely have to ensure that positions are interesting if they don't pay well (studies have found that people placed on GMI only slightly decrease the hours they work with no other significant changes). It also significantly reduces the amount of bureaucracy in government if they don't need to decided who gets social support. Finally, imagine the benefits to society if artists, researchers, and open source coders didn't have to worry about getting funding or a day job!
If these civil cases against employers for abuse of H-1b visas are brought before juries, the law might matter.
Seastead this.
It's money which could be better spent elsewhere. It could mean opening new factories and creating work for a lot more people.
Creating work for the "programmers" that you fire for not being able to program? In my experience, most of those people are not cheats or frauds, they're just not great programmers. We have all worked with the parasites (cheats and frauds) that you are talking about so I am not denying that they exist. I am just saying that they don't exist on the scale that you think they do.
The plan to let go of the manufacturing industry and make everyone a programmer or other high-tech expert was fundamentally flawed.
I whole-heartedly agree with this.
Those can always find another (better) job. I did. Within a month I was hired again...It might involve moving (_not_ to India), or having "only" a 5 figure salary for a change, or other mildly unpleasant stuff, but you'll survive.
I too was able to find another job relatively easily (within a month, not including the month vacation I took to do some traveling and basically goofing off), but I know other people who have skills that have not been so lucky. Actually, I would be willing to move to India simply for the new experiences. So, if anyone in India is hiring, feel free to contact me!
OK, you may not want to be alive now, so what are you doing to improve your conditions? Get some self respect and go write a book about your views and see if anyone thinks you're even close to 'normal'... hell, read the book yourself and stop bitching about things you have no control over.
"Actually, in a democracy that would be the voters."
We don't live in a democracy, it's a republic, remember. I'm just going to ask a few questions to probe this a little more, not that I necessarily believe what I'm asking:
Who came to the decision that society should work for the benefit of all? I think there's never been one.
Who's to say a creative person shouldn't be allowed to retire on his book royalties? How is his work different from the guy who invents a medical device (an idea), patents it, and in the 20-odd years his patent is in effect, he makes enough to retire many times over?
One point: Money sitting in a bank does not, in fact, sit in the bank. The bank turns around and invests it in all kinds of things. So don't make the mistake of thinking guys like Cheney are sitting on mattresses full of money that is therefore not in the economy.
Why should inheritance be taxed just because it is inheritance? That money has been taxed once as income, and once with capital gains, do you really think the same money should be taxed a third time?
Who decides what a "large" estate is, anyway?
Of course there are extremes to any proposal, but who wants to live in a country where some faceless power takes away their income in arbitrary, capricious ways?
I think the proportion of persons dying of starvation or inadequate medical care (relative to the mean) would be a good measure of the eggregiousness of inequitable distribution.
I have no idea how that metric plays out.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
If you're talking about the US, then death-by-starvation is practically non-existant compared to say, obesity. For other countries that aren't as capitalist, then their poverty is often due to rich people taking their money (ie. corruption). But rich people in the states are not responbile for the plight of the poor in the US. If all the rich people were to quit their jobs and ship out, the poor would become even poorer.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I think that wealth distribution follows an approximate Zipf distribution. Even in the U.S.
alone, the wealthiest 13,000 households command
greater wealth than the least wealthy 20,000,000.
Whether this is good or bad depends on your criteria, but also on the mechanics of the econonmy. Just as an engine requires uneven heat distribution to perform a productive function, some degree of inequity seems obligatory in order to incent labor without corporal compulsion.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
No problem - train them *wrong* - chances are, they'll never figure it out in time.
Make it subtle, but we all know how the job *shouldn't* be done, right?
Well, why should the new guy get the benefit of your experience?
Screw 'em.
Oh, and let your soon-to-be former employer know that you'll "be available, at a reasonable rate, to help clean up any "issues" that might arise with the new guy, who, while he seems nice, may not be the sharpest tool in the shed."
[Apologies to Steve Martin]
What right do you have to have police protection against burglars and thieves or murderers ?
What right do you have to a fire department ?
What right do you have to use of the roads ?
What right do you have for an army to protect you ?
What right do you have to a cable to connect to the internet ?
and most importantly
what right do you have to a stable economy ?
People like you are a real smudge on society, your cluelessness is so amazing. Poor people are not poor because they are lazy, they are poor because they spend all of their money. Rich people are rich because they dont. They economy needs both to be healthy. You one-sided conservatives make me fucking sick.
...but make it a bona fide cooperative union on the outside. It's a word everyone knows and understands, helps sort it out. Unions are about collective bargaining. Nothing mysterious about it, you got more horsepower bargaining when you gopt a lot of displacement, and that means numbers. United we stand, divided blah blah yada blah, you know the drill. The fatcats have unions they just call them industry lobbies, and they have paid off legislators and judges to make sure they get what they want. don't be decieved about most of their public whining about this or that legislation, if they didn't want it at the tippy top levels, it wouldn't make it into law.
Also,I want to make a point, outside this reply, in general, to any non USA people reading this. My advice applies to YOU too. This isn't any sort of xenophic diatribe, it's NOT. I am not. I want things good for you folks too! I will give you a few hints. US "dollars" right now are a precarious stand to hang your hat on. They are phony artifical constructs that some multi billionaire globalist skimmers pull out of their butts electronically. They are illusionary representations of wealth based on contractural DEBT, they don't represent PRODUCED WEALTH. Right now they are frantic to keep up the illusion, to keep ripping off the planet, so don't get suckered in. Work inside your own nations, for your own industries, develop well diversified enterprises, and don't sell yourselves cheap to the globalist manipulators, YOU got the power in your nations too. YOU control everything in your repspective nations. It's the GOONS who keep people on jingoistic tangents, it has nothing to do with how things should be, how wealth is produced, but it has everything to do with how wealth is skimmed and re directed to the hereditary and multiple generational manipulators. Taking a middle class job from another nation -a person there, someone else with a family and bills and hopes and dreams,-doesn't make you any wealth, nothing really lasting anyway. CREATING a middle class job inside your own nation DOES. Don't keep getting sucked into yet another form of geo colonialism, it's always sucked as an ethical business model. It's roughly akin to--well, it's thievery. They'll tell you it isn't, but it is. There's wealth creation, then wealth re-arrangement. the former works, the latter is what the goons always strive for.
Lying on resumes? You mean telling a falsehood in order to make a sale--in this case a sale of yourself? Business does it all the time. There is a huge legal loophole for business lying called "mere puffery".
My "condition"? What are you talking about? Do I know you? If not: you can of course infer the world of me from some posts I made on Slashdot!
Okay. Even if I didn't want to be alive now: you lay down this "what are you doing to improve your conditions?" That's a classic thing to say to depressives by people who think that because "oh, i'm happy, la la la! so i must know what's right!" that they're some sort of psychologist. And, it has, quite throroughly been, shown to be a completely ineffective method for "helping" depressives. "Helping" avec quotes because quite honestly, "a loaded gun won't set you free, but an unloaded one will."
Anyway dude. It's nice to see you're looking out for people: that's commendable. But you can't take Slashdot seriously, it's just a language game. And if you want to help depressives in the future, don't just tell them "get some self respect!" It doesn't work.
You make many incorrect assumptions.
I in no way consider myself a conservative or a liberal for that matter.
I observe the world around me and do my best to draw my own conclusions.
I have been lucky in live to have interacted with a wide variety of people.
I have friends on welfare, friends in subsidized housing, friends that are multi millionaires, and everything in between.
It is very apparent if you take the time to look at the habits of those around you how they got where they are.
Life is the sum of the decisions you make.
I cite pages and pages of specific choices but if you don't want to see, I can't show you.
Amen, Brother.
When you train your replacement, start thinking about all the stuff you won't be able to buy anymore as an unemployed engineer.
Hey, kids! I have a neat idea! Try the same "training you own replacement" thing with all the stores whose products you will no longer be able to buy!
Go to your favorite store and tell them "I lost my job to offshoring and can't buy widgets at your store anymore. I do like your widgets, though and want to continue buying them."
"I will buy a couple more widgets from you if you will help me train your replacement".
"So would you please tell me your source of widgets, the different widget manufacturers you deal with, and the terms of your widget purchase contracts? Tell me how you store your widgets, at what humidity level and who the best widget repairman is."
"I will take that 'training' information down the street to your competitor. You see, he has promised to make widgets for me for one-half of what you charge (which I CAN afford) if only you will give him the information."
"You see, Mr. Widget Seller, I've bought widgets from you for years. After all those sales you owe me some loyalty."
Now, boys and girls, you tell me what moral duty that businessman has to you (other than to kick you in the keister for being a fool).
The moral of the story? You are no different than that businessman selling widgets. Your secret skills and knowledge in your head is all you have to sell. Like the Widget Seller's business knowledge, your expertise has value to you ONLY because it is NOT generally available to the public. So don't ever give anything away for free. The secrets you have in your head are the only thing that makes you worthwhile to your employer. Share them with no one. If he want you to write code, write it. If he asks you to train others to write code for him in your place, tell him to stuff it--which is just what the Widget Seller would say to you if you pulled the above moron replacement training argument on him.
The expansion of H-1b over the objections of 82% of the American public...
The expansion was temporary, and was not renewed by congress. The cap is back to 65k/year, as it was before the dotcom bubble. The limit for fiscal '04 was reached some time in February.
As others have mentioned, it is much easier to get the "replacement trainees" on an L1 visa (employees of a foreign branch of a multinational corp.)
I haven't thought of it before, but it does indeed seem that the difficulty of hiring H1B's and sponsoring employment-based permanent residents may be one of the reasons for the IT outsourcing boom...
If they don't, they are the ones that suffer for it.
oh quit your fucking blabbering, ceos don't suffer if they drive a company into the ground. They have pre-planned severance packages that they get regardless of how they preform. Golden parachute anyone?
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You wanna play ball? ...Ball 3....
Small business ("evil satan-spawn" is probably the term more familiar to you)
Ball 1...I don't ever know where that one came from....
makes up 99.7% of American employers and gives jobs to over 50% of the workforce.
Ball 2...I wasn't even talking about small businesses first of all...you pulled that one out of nowhere...Ball 3
Businesses are fueled by customers, not labor.
Oh, sorry I didn't use the proper corporate gobblydigook to describe my point, sure businesses are fueled by customers, but they are built on employees. You're not going to get good service from a business without well treated employees, it just doesn't happen. Ball 4. Looks like I'm strollin' to first.
Better to struggle from paycheck to paycheck than not to get one at all.
So basically screw everyone who works entry level jobs and force them to live inevitably in poverty. Lets widen the gap between the rich and the poor as much as possible...that never leads to anything bad, does it?... Ball 1.
When minimum wages go up, employers cannot hire as many employees.
I'm talking about big businesses. Not small businesses. The big ones that employ half our population and whose execs account for the vast majority of the money in this country. They can easily afford to pay when minimum wage goes up. Would shaving that 20 cents times x minimum wage employees off the hourly wages of the top level execs really hurt them? Ball 2...
And they cannot afford as much training and further education for the employees they already have.
Yeah cuz I know all those minimum wage employees need so goddamn much training to know how to make a Taco or use a broom. That must cost employers dearly !!!
Also, I didn't know that my local fast food joint (or any other minimum wage employer) was going to help pay my way through college! In your dreams...Ball 4...Looks like I'm strollin' to second....
Ah, you mean like the retired guy down the street in the 3 bedroom ranch-style? He runs his own business but I don't remember seeing any pools of money out back.
Once again you completely miss the fact that I was talking about large corporations, not small businesses, therefore making this comment completely irrelevent. The pitcher's not paying attention, I believe I'll just steal third.
Yes, everybody's just hoarding money so they don't have to give it to their disgusting employees.
Perhaps if they received decent wages they could afford to not be "disgusting" as you put it. Could you be any more obtuse? Not this isn't a Charles Dickens novel, it's real people who lead real lives who deserve a chance at a decent wage.
Believe it or not, between the dental plans, health plans, retirement plans, overly strict worker's comp regulations, overly strict environmental regulations, mandated programs, union pressure, and constantly rising employee demands for wages and benefits, American businesses do find it difficult to employ Americans.
So how many people working in fast food drive thru's are actually getting dental, health, and retirement again? Please I'd love to know....
And hey, those environmental programs, yeah screw those, it's party time! Lets trash the planet for our children! Don't tell me you have none - that's just being goddamn selfish.
Constantly rising demands for wages/benefits generally stems from a constantly rising cost of living. Sure unions can get greedy, and I believe there should be some protection against that just the same as minimum wage is a protection against businesses getting greedy and exploiting their employees. That would only be fair. I'm going home.
It is much much harder to implement such a sales tax, and there are lots of potential problems. For instance, it would drive inflation through the roof (higher prices on everything would make small price increases less noticable by consumers, and thus more stable). They are also harder to enforce than income tax - people selling stuff unofficially (like selling something to a friend at a reduced price) or "under the counter". They are less equitable too, because it makes the cost of products a higher percentage of income for the poor compared to the rich without complicated rebate schemes (which have problems of their own, see below). In general, sales taxes are good for adjusting the cost of a product to account for externalities (for instance, gas taxes can add enviromental damage and road upkeep costs), but they suck at funding unrelated services.
How do you implement that? Most people don't keep their receipts to determine if they qualify for such rebates. There is also the risk of an invasion of privacy. It is also complicated - the middle class certainly can't afford the same taxes as the very wealthy.
Most millionares don't hide their income. What are you talking about?
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
Who came to the decision that society should work for the benefit of all? I think there's never been one.
Who came to the decision that society shouldn't work for the beneift of one man - a dictator? The whole premise of the US Constitution is that society exists to benefit its members. We the people and all that...
Sure, I suppose it doesn't have to, but I doubt anybody is going to suggest that all else being equal it is better to have a society where a few people benefit rather than a society where a large number of people benefit. Granted, not all else is always equal, and we can't just have tyrrany of the majority either. However, the common social good is still an end worth pursuing just the same.
Who's to say a creative person shouldn't be allowed to retire on his book royalties? How is his work different from the guy who invents a medical device (an idea), patents it, and in the 20-odd years his patent is in effect, he makes enough to retire many times over?
He is no different. Patent lifetimes should also be carefully balanced. One should not be able to gain lifelong income from a single invention any more than they can from a single book. Ditto for corporations.
One point: Money sitting in a bank does not, in fact, sit in the bank. The bank turns around and invests it in all kinds of things. So don't make the mistake of thinking guys like Cheney are sitting on mattresses full of money that is therefore not in the economy.
Which is better invested? An investment genuis's money in a bank earning 1%, or his money in stocks and funds of his choosing making 10%? If somebody's main skill is making a little money into a lot of money society should work to try to encourage that person to continue to invest.
Why should inheritance be taxed just because it is inheritance? That money has been taxed once as income, and once with capital gains, do you really think the same money should be taxed a third time?
It will be taxed again when used to buy something. And then that money will be taxed when used to pay workers, etc... Face it, dollars/ yen/ euros/ whatever get taxed ad-infinitum (and yet strangely enough we don't run out of them...). Inheritance should be taxed simply to avoid the emergence of an aristocracy. Based on history aristocracys have a tendency to try to preserve their privliged state at the expense of those who might want to earn their way into it. I mean, do you think that somebody who inherited a few hundred million dollars has to obey the same laws as everyone else in our current society? If somebody earns money more power to them. Their kids didn't earn it. And I'm not against their kids getting quite a bit of moeny, but not enough to ensure a perpetual line of inheritance with 100 generations living off the interest on the original gain...
Who decides what a "large" estate is, anyway?
Obviously, the voters. Estates should be tax-free up to a point where they enable somebody to live an autonomous life without working at all. So if somebody leaves 10 kids $50k each, that is probably fine. If somebody leaves 1 kid $500k that is probably becoming excessive. And it isn't like society wouldn't be able to refine the rules based on experience.
Of course there are extremes to any proposal, but who wants to live in a country where some faceless power takes away their income in arbitrary, capricious ways?
Trust me - nothing like this would ever happen in the USA without thorough debate and discussion. It is unlikely to ever happen - simply because of the influence of those who stand to loose out (those with a lot of money right now, and their decendents).
And we aren't talking about income - we're talking about inheritance. Nobody worked and sweated to earn their own inheritance. And where progressive taxes are concerned, I'm sure Bill Gates won't get a whole lot of sympathy if his taxes go up a little...
> Actually many CEOs do make less money if they make bad decisions
As long as "less money" means 2 million dollars/year rather than 10 million dollars, most people wouldn't see this as a particularly hard lots in life...
Which is exactly my point. Even if you cut 50% of their wages for bad performance, they're still earning 100 times as much as some of their underlings...
Anyway, I'm not just talking CEOs, the ridiculous pay starts a couple of levels below, depending on the size of the company...
I don't know about you, but if I lost 20% of my income that would be a pretty good incentive to do a better job.
Why are you against people making lots of money? I think you underestimate the responsibility these people have.
If you're not talking about CEOs then what 'rich' people are you talking about that are a) ridiculouly rich and b) are in no danger of losing that wealth for doing a poor job?
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
The problem here is that we are talking about reality here. Your argument is often brought up by conservatives when the issue of wealth disparity comes up. The fact is that your point would be quite valid, to some degree, in the hypothetical situation that you provided. If the quality of life were raised to a high level for the poorest people in the U.S., poverty would not be much of an issue. Grnated, poverty is relative but there are definitely people who live in the U.S. right now that are destitute and that is not acceptable in a society that is so prosperous.
The main problem I have with the argument, however, is that is relies on an economy with a disparity of wealth creating a net increase in wealth for everyone. This has most definitely not been demonstrated to be true. I'm not saying it isn't possible but the trickle down theory is far from gospel truth.
I agree that something needs to be done to help those who are destitute, and social programs are perfectly good things.
I just wanted to point out that housing values are a tremendous part of what most people spend every month, and they aren't always easy to control.
Marxism failed when Lenin died in 1924. I "reacted" the way I did because of all the bullshit coming down from the media and people blindly driving around not questioning anything. No, I think my "reaction" should be forgivable. Excuse me for not taking any party line like Marx is great for like we're all just one big happy family. Spit some term like 'you Marxist' out, or, anything that makes "Americans" sound like "god's" gift to the world and, well, sorry, but I will "react." By the way, Marxism has not failed. Marxism is just a philosophy of economy. What has failed is Stalinist Fascism, which, like Corporate Fascism/Socialism, will fail too, in the long run. I don't want to assume you got it all figured out, so I'll chalk this up to misunderstanding. I certainly don't hold any monopyly on anything, but please, if we resort to bringing up the cliche terms, Marxism, Liberal media (what the fuck is that, FOX???) Yeah, at 36, fuck it, I'll raise my opinion and get people to think. So, sorry for the misunderstanding, sometimes we bocome braindead after doing sysadmin work all day and all night and get tired of the fucking brainwashed "meme's" and after paying a shit load of taxes which don't really go to welfare or education but really go toward more fucking bombs to get rid of Saddam (get a fucking life! it's elitist bullshit LIES! from an oil family)... oh, yeah, i've paid into social security all my life. i do look forward to it. sure. why the fuck should i not after working all my fucking life? Also, Social Security IS the result of revolutions. It was implemented in the 1930's. Either that or we would have had one hell of a revolution. So, again, if you got it all figureed out, don't bother because: 1. you got me labelled as a Marxist 2. you got me labelled as an asshole. Yeah, you got it all figured out. Have a great day/night whatever the fuck time your duty pager goes off while you try to keep your job and compete with slave/Marxist labor in India/China. The truth is, all economies are MIXED. I am not a marxist. I am not a capitalist. That is all bullshit categories designed to keep us all separated into our little jihads while a few get drunk off of our ignorance. Take care of yourself.
The same right that we as a socitey decide what we need in order to maintain a stabile society. You don't lie the protection given to you? The education? The roads? The privilege to form an S-Corp or an LLC, and not worry about personal liablility?
Get a decent reference from who? Nobody at my last company was supposed to give references to anybody who contacted them. Luckily for me, some of my friends didn't give a shit about "incurring company liability".
A friend of mine was working a part time crap job at a pool. She then landed a sweet job that paid like 6 times as much. She called in to say she was quiting and her former boss tried to convince her that she was legally required to give them two weeks notice. An employer gets notice in relation to the pay and treatment I recieve there. A minimum wage job does not get two weeks notice when you have already been hired for a 60k job.
I think the point is that losing 20% of an inflated wage is not a real disincentive. It's like clothes being 20% off at Versace. They are still not cheap (or even a good deal in any normal person's opinion).
Ridiculous incomes are not made solely by CEOs. For a start, anyone with a C in their title in big business is doing pretty well, but also numerous other managers/bankers/consultants. By pretty well I mean 7 figure salaries, the kind of people who make enough in a year to last any "normal" person a life-time.
> Why are you against people making lots of money?
I'm not against people making lots of money if they "earned" it. Of course this is just my personal opinion, but i think the "elite" in the city have made themselves a pretty cushy deal where one manager / board member / banker / consultant makes sure the other doesn't come to any real harm.
> I think you underestimate the responsibility these people have.
A lot less in my opinion than say a general, the president, or even just a measly medical doctor, medical research scientist, structural engineer etc. etc.
Anyway, my point is that they can have a good salary for a high-pressure job. But a good salary is *not* in 7 or 8 figures. Pay-outs in that magnitude might be justified if they have done exceptionally well, but from my rather limited experience it seems that even when firms go bust, downsize or are taken over in a hostile take-over, the top of the ladder find themselves a nice golden parachute while the simple person is kicked out on the street with 2 weeks notice (if lucky).
Anyway, I've got quite a few friends in such jobs and you can't blame the people because the system is there and people are free to use it. I just think that the system is skewed and the pay-differential is one thing that has the potential of creating a lot of strain on capitalism, if left unchecked...
I think you have this backwards. The question is could the outsourcing boom happen without an army of US-based H-1b and L-1 visa holders? The reduction of the H-1b quota--at the same time the L-1 quota was effectively eliminated strikes me as a con job(just FYI the full effects of the elimination of the L-1 quota won't be felt until after the 2004 election--the one area in which L-1 requirements are tighter is that L-1 visas require the visa holder to demonstrated continous employment before they get the visa).
No, it hasn't. American's *are* greedy. They believe that they are *entitled* to a job and *entitled* to be paid a certain amount of money for doing that job. Go listen to the union rhetoric. American workers don't believe it's right that they should have to compete to get a job. The world owes them a living and it's supposedly a travesty of justice that someone else is willing to work harder for less pay. It's high time for us to stop whining and start getting our act together. And if you don't like the cost of living where you are: MOVE, dammit! Stop acting like you deserve to have it easy.
This is exactly why global capitalism cannot work - it's not a level playing field. With the assumption of a level playing field, the theory seems nice and the system beneficial to everyone.
The system isn't supposed to be beneficial to everyone. It's supposed to reward those who get off their collective asses and do something instead of whining like little children who don't get their way.
That's for the labor market to decide.
Show me one example where a small business (pizza shop or whatever) is so on the edge, that a 1% increase in wages will break it.
It's not just a 1% increase in wages. It's over-regulation, union pressures, a constant stream of minimum-wage increases (and the minimum-wage system itself, which locks low-worth labor out of the labor market), and employees demanding more than the employer wants to pay. It makes absolute sense that if an employer has a choice between hiring an American employee x at $20/hr (who wants a lot of vacation time, isn't terribly hard-working, and draws a lot of benefits packages) and an Indian employee y at $5/hr (who is dedicated to keeping food on the table) who should that employer hire? I see nothing amiss here, unlike most people in the IT industry.
Thats not what I call a CEO of a corporate , but a MD/Owner). Lots of people that have little companies like to call themselves CEOs when they hardly really are.
It has nothing to do with what someone calls himself. It's about a highly-emotional stereotype used to whip up righteous indignation and envy. Nevertheless, most businesses (which generally *are* legal corporations) are run by perfectly normal people just like you and me. The venomous hatred spewed forth from people here on Slashdot is just ridiculous.
We need regulation, otherwise its back to 16hrs/day slave labour, because no business man cares if people drop dead, there are 250m others to choose from.
No business man cares if people drop dead? Where the hell did you get that idea? It's more of this silly irrational fear and hatred. Besides all that, I never said government should not regulate at all; rather, I said that the current levels of regulation were overly burdensome.
No, what increases cost of living SIR, is inflation generated by the increased M1/M3/M3 money supply (ie central banks making trillions in loans to govt and all). #1 rule in economics, supply/demand, the more cash is flowing in the system, ie supply, the cheaper it is worth, ie ONE DOLLAR will buy you LESS. So if money supply goes up 6%, that is the real inflation rate, not the faked numbers by govt that say its 3%, see price of food/energy/pm going up.
When wages go up, employers must raise prices to compensate for the cost increase. That drives up cost-of-living for *everybody*.
I don't have a bubble, thank you very much.
but unions and governments helped a great deal.
Sure they have. And at this point, they've gone far beyond what is necessary and are burdening employers and contributing to the offshoring problem. Which is what this conversation is about anyway.
The fact remains that these same hard-working individuals would have created another fucking huge revolution here if the unions and governments didn't get the wake up call to economically enfranchise more people into what we call a middle class.
The middle class was created by the work of a lot of individuals and continues to be; the government does not create a middle class.
Social security is evil to you to, right? Of course it probably is and so is medicare, universal education, etc etc.
Not in and of itself, no. But, according to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, it's illegeal for the *national* legislature to do these things. Of course, there is a lot of evidence that the attempt to help people through government has a heartbreaking effect on society. But that's an entirely different discussion.
By the way, have you ever actually studied Marx
Yes.
aside from 40 years of corporate media telling you it's like saying you believe in the devil?
That's a laugh. The corporate media has been tilted far to the left for a long time. They spend their time trying to convince people of the validity of human progress and the purity of human nature--bedrocks of Marx's worldview. And the media doesn't believe in the devil.
And no, you can't pigeonhole me for a marxist for asking that simple fucking question you fucking brainwashed I'm tired of this cowboy shit when I pay high fucking taxes, because I do, country...I'm tired of it, the ignorance any "good ol' boys" like you.
That sentence didn't make any sense. Will you please clarify?
NEG KARMA! Sure, bring it on!
You certainly don't have to worry about *that* on Slashdot. Not if you're a socialist.
The numbers came from this page
Besides, a more relevant figure would be the spread of the dollar value of those jobs. (I don't know those figures.)
The complaint that many jobs are low paying is irrelevent for 4 reasons: 1) A lot of those jobs are supplementary income; 2) People take jobs for pay rates that are satisfying to them; 3) We need to trim down and compete--artificially raising wages aren't going to help; 4) The purpose of a job is to earn income and *not* to pump up the ego--life is tough, stop whining and deal with it. Better yet, work your way out of it. I've seen plenty of people who have very little income work hard to get an education and move up. It works. But only if you're willing to work hard.
Do they need those people? Evidently not. And it's none of your business how much money someone else makes anyway. It's not like your chief executive sneaks into the vault in the middle of the night and steals your pay. Someone (most likely your board of directors) decided he was worth whatever rate he is paid. I don't know the details of your case. But you can always quit and go somewhere else if you don't like the way things are being run.
I'll respond if you can turn that into something that makes sense.
That's your problem. Small and medium businesses drive the economy. Those who argue for extreme government regulation and economic control focus exclusively on large multi-nationals and build ridiculous emotional stereotypes of employers. Then, they argue for government practices that strangle small and medium sized businesses.
Oh, sorry I didn't use the proper corporate gobblydigook to describe my point, sure businesses are fueled by customers, but they are built on employees. You're not going to get good service from a business without well treated employees, it just doesn't happen.
Exactly. That's why companies that don't treat their employees well go out of business. You're getting it after all: you're just not thinking it all the way through.
So basically screw everyone who works entry level jobs and force them to live inevitably in poverty.
Straw man. I never said anything like that. The *vast* majority of people working minimum-wage jobs are doing so for supplemental income (e.g.: teenagers or spouse). They're not living in poverty.
Another data point: illegal immigrants are the quintessential "low-income" wage-earners. A local landscaper here employs illegal immigrants from Mexico for $12 per hour. No joke. Perhaps he's not the evil slave-driving capitalist hyena you suspect him to be? He's not even required to pay minimum-wage but he pays more than minimum-wage. How did a human being with compassion get in the position of an employer, one wonders?
I'm talking about big businesses. Not small businesses.
See above.
The big ones that employ half our population
In other words: how dare they enable half (slightly less than half, actually) of our population to earn a living?
and whose execs account for the vast majority of the money in this country.
So? CEOs are employees as well. They don't set their own pay rate: the board of directors decides how much they're worth. And that's their business.
Even so, the number of CEOs in America who are rich is miniscule. As I noted earlier, 99.7% of American employers are small businesses, each run by people like you and me.
They can easily afford to pay when minimum wage goes up. Would shaving that 20 cents times x minimum wage employees off the hourly wages of the top level execs really hurt them?
Combined with excessive regulation and unreasonable demands from employees who make much more than minimum wage? You betcha. Additionally, as described above, the minimum wage locks low-end jobs out of the labor market.
Yeah cuz I know all those minimum wage employees need so goddamn much training to know how to make a Taco or use a broom. That must cost employers dearly !!!
It's not about teaching them to do their current job more efficiently. Many minimum wage employers sponsor education for their employees to help them get higher-paying jobs later on.
Also, I didn't know that my local fast food joint (or any other minimum wage employer) was going to help pay my way through college! In your dreams...
Not at all. You may be surprised to know that many minimum-wage employers actually do exactly that. Burger King. Chick-Fil-A. Wendys. Just as examples.
Once again you completely miss the fact that I was talking about large corporations, not small businesses, therefore making this comment completely irrelevent.
Once again, you completely miss the point. Your stereotype is only relevant to 0.3% of American employers. And I imagine that it probably doesn't even reflect reality in most of those cases.
Perhaps if they received decent
Ah, there's a question. The rest of the business has been crying out for the IT dept. to do more for the past two year , so we hired a load of consultants to identify how we could be more efficient, which they did - they claim 20% improvement, and so someone senior (as yet unidentified) went "ooh, good, that means we can run IT, delivering the same amount, for 20% cheaper". Yet the business is still crying out for us to do more. Go figure.
It's not like your chief executive sneaks into the vault in the middle of the night and steals your pay.
No, it's not really that subtle.
Someone (most likely your board of directors) decided he was worth whatever rate he is paid.
Oh,yes. That'll be the board of directors (they, I believe, make up a majority of the shareholders) deciding how much the directors should be paid (mostly in share options, so getting more control of the company as they get paid). No conflict of interests, there.
But you can always quit and go somewhere else if you don't like the way things are being run.
There don't seem to be many places that aren't run like this, so not really much of an option.
Pride is not a virtue. At least that's what Nate the Snake told me down in Magincia. Perhaps I should go to a shrine and meditate on this some... where did I put that rune?
Oh,yes. That'll be the board of directors (they, I believe, make up a majority of the shareholders) deciding how much the directors should be paid (mostly in share options, so getting more control of the company as they get paid). No conflict of interests, there.
Actually, there aren't. Those options are worthless if the business is poorly run (see above). I don't know the details, but it sounds like they've decided that they *can* cut those jobs and still. Whether they're right or not is yet to be determined. If they are correct, cutting costs while still providing good service is beneficial to the company. If not, they'll die. Again, see above.
There don't seem to be many places that aren't run like this, so not really much of an option.
Sure there are. We've got a great one right here. Something like 750 employees. Good pay, good treatment, nice place to live (with a very low cost-of-living). Where do you live? (You can email me at jhclouse at juno dot com if you can't reply here.)
Turn off the tv. Really, I challenge you. Get a shortwave, check out democracynow.org, check out some other media. .. but, no, you got it all figureedout. no, I don't have it all figured out, just getting older and listening to shithead know it all punks. Ad hominenum?
"http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=103134&cid=87 89646"
Yeah, pay your taxes, compain that about 2% real goes to welfare while 53% goes to "our" adventures.
Dude, don't even bother responding, or do, who gives a fuck, YOU guys won! Ok? Happy!
And NO the media is NOT liberal. Yeah, Rupert Murdoch is a liberal. Give me a fucking break.
NPR is right-wing to me.
Dude, we live in a 2-party no real "fundamental" difference State! Yeah, Democracy! for the people! by the people! Yeah, FUCK you.
You undoubetdly will have some elequent or some snobby response which I'll never read because this is all fuckin bullshit like arguing with Fox News. Cancel this subscription.
Later,
Enjoy.
I loved that fucking game. In fact, with the possible exception of the Baldur's Gate series, I still don't think anyone has made a better RPG than Ultima.
There's no need to turn the TV off when it's not on in the first place. I don't have time for the garbage on television.
no, I don't have it all figured out
It's good to know you're not arrogant.
just getting older and listening to shithead know it all punks. Ad hominenum? "http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=103134&cid=87 89646"
That's a link to *your* post.
Yeah, pay your taxes, compain that about 2% real goes to welfare while 53% goes to "our" adventures.
The job of the national government is described in Article I of the Constitution. *Only* those powers *specifically* granted to Congress are legal. They do not include socialism or corporatism of *any* kind; all so-called "welfare," whether corporate or individual, is *illegal*. How hard is that to understand? It's not the national government's job.
Dude, don't even bother responding, or do, who gives a fuck, YOU guys won! Ok? Happy!
I'll be happy when we actually *have* won: when the national government is returned to the size and scope circa 1791.
And NO the media is NOT liberal. Yeah, Rupert Murdoch is a liberal. Give me a fucking break. NPR is right-wing to me.
Rupert Murdoch doesn't own most media. And he's not a conservative. Have you seen the sensationalist crap on his networks? And you've got NPR, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, and all of Hollywood on your side. You can't get much more leftist than Katie Couric glowing with delight and describing Castro's Cuba as a "paradise." Give *me* a break.
Dude, we live in a 2-party no real "fundamental" difference State! Yeah, Democracy! for the people! by the people!
It is democracy and that's part of the problem. This nation was intended to be a republic. The garbage you see in this nation is a reflection of the desires of the people. That should convince you of the depravity of human nature; but I'm sure it won't. You'll go on believing that humanity is essentially good and can achieve perfection. It's a fool's errand.
Yeah, FUCK you.
Yes, I love you too.
You undoubetdly will have some elequent or some snobby response
You want to see snobbery? Go look at John Kerry or Ted Kennedy. Or anybody else in the Democrat party. Or anybody in Hollywood. Or most of the people in the elitist Northeast or California.
which I'll never read because this is all fuckin bullshit like arguing with Fox News.
Then why did you bother writing it?
Cancel this subscription. Later, Enjoy.
You too. It was nice talking to you. Hope you learn to calm down a bit before you give yourself heart disease or something.
I jumped into this conversation at the wrong time and I apologize. Honestly, and after having gotten some sleep, you are correct in everything you are saying, even you responses to my emotional outbursts I had while posting; however, it's quite another issue altogether to make claims as to some knowledge into human "nature". I'm not so sure that it's in the natural order at all for humans to be organized into anything other than small bands, perhaps allied into loose tribes/confederacies. Large "entities" such as "ours" are surely better organized as a "republic". A "democracy" of our size is sure to be mob rule. I'm not advocating returning to pre-1791 at all. I'm not advocating status quo, or what you call the elitist northeast, or, how about other social cliches? Like dumbass Nascar beef jerk offs? Ok, I'm not meaning to attack you, not now. And I don't have the answers. But I am steadfast against laissez-faire. I don't hold "capitalism" as being my religion. In smaller societies, organized into trading blocks, so long as the economic forces, whatever they be, develop into not only individual means to prosperity, but maintain social responsibility in the communities where they do business. Profit cannot be the prime motive if we are to survive. Profit is not some Holy Writ. Profit is an end to fruitful "labor" performed, not in some void, but in the context of a given society without which, it would not have been possible. *** It's good to see some people still with enough energy to think arguments out and to dissect other people's arguments. *** My diatribes started one night, after one really bad day, and, having read someone's post connected to one of your threads. We probably have opposing views on society but I'd like my last comment in this thread to be that I hope we're all a little more careful about assuming that human nature is "depraved". That is one big conclusion to draw in any context.
I don't either. I wouldn't want you to get that impression. I just believe that it's been demonstrated to work better than any of the alternatives, when it's done right. Attempting to "channel" economic forces productively ends up getting away from you fast. It's just something that can't be effectively controlled.
In smaller societies, organized into trading blocks, so long as the economic forces, whatever they be, develop into not only individual means to prosperity, but maintain social responsibility in the communities where they do business.
The hearts of people have to change for social responsibility to work, whether the profit motive is there or not. I think you could say that profit-motive is a symptom of my proposed depravity of man. I know we don't agree on that, but...
My diatribes started one night, after one really bad day, and, having read someone's post connected to one of your threads.
No problem. It really was nice to talk to you. It sharpens debate skills. :-)
Take care...