Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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
and if they don't train their replacements, they don't get their severance pay. It would suck to be in that position.
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
"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.
In one of the cases in the story;
>She says the training took about two months.
>If your job is so valuable that it takes a few days to train someone to be as competent as you
Quick, name a job that doesn't take a few days for someone to at least feel that he could take over your job given that you have the same academic education?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
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.
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.
Train My Replacement?
Sorry, it's not in my job description.
Seriously, in most states a sudden take-it-or-leave-it change in your job requirements is a "just cause" to quit your job and still claim unemployment.
If you weren't in the business of training people in India... and you don't want to get into that business, you shouldn't have to.
If you quit it is much harder to get unemp benefits. Better to be terminated if you figure you will be anyway. Pay for how much time do you expect to get? The prior poster seems to forget, when you are asked to train your replacement, because it's implied you will be replaced soon, you do need to question the employers loyalty to YOU and what carrot they plan to give you for your remaining loyalty.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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..
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
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?
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
Then again, it can be satisfying to watch the people who fucked you over lose their jobs as a company fails. But there are usually nice people who don't deserve to lose their jobs who'll get screwed over in the process too. Revenge is sweet, but getting your old boss' job, saving a company's ass, then using this line item on the resume to get an even sweeter job is far, far better for you in the long run, and is really the best sort of revenge you can ask for (not to mention you can't put "they begged me to come back and I told them to bugger off" on your resume).
Almost one in five information technology workers has lost a job or knows someone who lost a job after training a foreign worker
That's like saying Almost one in five information technology workers know Kevin Bacon. It's a ridiculous and illogical statement.
"The big question in our lives is how to be at the same time a hedonist and in a hurry" - Alain Ducasse (?)
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
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
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.
It's amazing how stupid my advice becomes under those circumstances. Nothing I put in writing is going to be incriminating, but I'm sure that something I say every minute or two is going to point him in the wrong direction.
The bottom line is that companies probably do have the leverage to do this, regardless of the fact that it is unethical and illegal to require a quid pro quo exchange for unemployment eligibility. The reality is that they wouldn't ask you to do it if they didn't need what you know. And I certainly don't consider any illegal agreement forced on me under duress to be binding in any way. Let 'em sue.
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.
Most people are stupid. Exploit them.
I chuckled at your post. It was amusing. Then I re-read it. Maybe you're serious? Wow. If so, what a cynical, sad, empty way to see the world and your fellow human beings. Dig a pit for your neighbor, eh?
Sorry, not me. I prefer a more friendly and societally beneficial viewpoint:
Most people are human. Be nice. Even when they aren't.
That doesn't EVER mean that I let myself get walked all over. On the contrary, true care and consideration for your fellow human beings means that you don't let others exploit your niceness wrongfully either, since that's not good either.
Just remember... it's always about money. No job lasts forever. No one owes you a job. Don't take it personally.
No, it's only sometimes about the money. People are fired every day because someone in management makes a decision based on emotion, or a dislike of someone, or some other issue. Often it may be justified with money, but not really be about money. Other times, you're right, it IS about money.
You're right that no job lasts forever, too. The only constant in the career path is change, to coopt a phrase.
I like your other two sentences too. No one owes anyone a job, though in a position where I may be the one making such decisions, there may be a time that it's the right thing to do to hire someone to help them out. And your advise to not take it personally, though often difficult to follow, really is wise.
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.
I think the idea here is that you train someone you don't know is going to replace you until you get fired.
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.
>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?
The key phrase here is "as competent as you". If you're being outsourced, that's not the goal. It's a minor consideration. The company is not trying to buy competence... they've already got it (or one would hope). They're trying to buy a cheap warm body to make next year's balance sheets look a little better. Competence doesn't factor into the equation. The company hopes that eventually this new person will perform as well as the one they let go, but in the meantime they're quite happy to have significantly less productivity if it means they can pay them a small fraction of what they pay their current employee.
There's also the difference between "unemployment", given by the state, on the state's terms, and "severance", given by the company, on the company's terms. You might be eligible for unemployment, but give up a (heftier) severance deal if you quit early or get fired.
Then again, IAN anyone who has experience in this field whatsoever, so take with as much salt as needed.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
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
"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."
IBM? Heh.
"Derp de derp."
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?
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.
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.
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...
loyalty? i think a lot of the people in this situation would settle for "respect". and if you're not getting any of that, i have one word for you to consider:
union.
remember: your boss bargains in good faith with his supplier because if he didn't they wouldn't do business with him. your boss bargains in good faith with his distributers because if he didn't they wouldn't do business with him either.
why does your boss think his labour is exempt from this common sense?
2 1337 4 u!
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...
Exactly. If they could fire you without severance for not training your replacement (when "trainer" isn't your job), then all they'd need to do to reduce layoff costs would be to assign everyone an impossible task (translate this manual to sanskrit!) then fire them for non-performance of duties. The dope who thought she'd be instantly canned is, well, a dope.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Because he has a lot more power over his labor than over his suppliers and distributors. This is especially true in an economy where jobs are scarce, like the current U.S. one.
Economic transactions are affected as much by the relative power of the actors as they are by the supply and demand situation. Corporations today have much more power than even a large group of individuals, since the corporations can affect the individuals either through the legal system (they can afford many more lawyers than individuals can) or through the government directly (I think it's accurate to say that corporations control most of what goes on in the U.S. government today, at least for those things that affect U.S. residents). Any economic model which doesn't account for power disparity is one that simply isn't going to be accurate.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
And come on, we can all see the writing on the wall these days right? They may blow some happy smoke up your ass about there being enough work for everyone and how they hope the India venture will compliment the local developers and yadda yadda but at the end of the day you know you're training the guy they want to replace you with. If they don't offer to contract you back at $200 an hour in a couple of months it's probably because your project wasn't really all that important to the company and was shit-canned anyway.
But hey, I've been there before. You can very confidently look your manager in the eye when he brings your pink slip by and tell him "You know your job is next, right?" Because it is. He might be buying in to all the happy smoke the company's blowing up his ass about how they'll still need managers around even though all the teams they used to manage are now in other countries. But hey, I got a line on a new job. I'm going to be an outsourcing consultant. And I'm going to pitch outsourcing our prison systems. That's right, lets ship a bunch of felons for incarceration in India. I bet it would be a lot less expensive to keep a prisoner over there than it is here.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
ergo: union. a union is about balancing the power between ownership/mgmt and labour. when you negotiate your contract - if you have one over and above the nda, that is - it's usually you versus the entire, organized, funded monolith of management. they hold all the power and the most you can do is threaten to walk.
with a union, you have the threat of the entire labour group's work to rule, slowdown or strike. it balances things out a bit.
programmers need to stop thinking about themselves as some sort of "upper" class. yes, we have some very specialized knowledge and create things that have great value... but so do carpenters and electricians.
we're tradespeople and we need a trade union. if you think otherwise, remember your hubris and vanity when you get the shaft from management.
2 1337 4 u!
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..."
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!
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?
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 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 #$#@
Yeah you're right, let's all be 100% practical. PRIDE is completely meaningless.
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.
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.
______-___--_-__-_---_-----__-_-___-_-_---_-----_
That first line was a little over the top, but I was emulating the Ferengi, and they are nothing if not over the top when it comes to profit.
There is a kernel of truth though... you have to admit that there are plenty of beancounters stupid enough to think that they can magically switch without a *long* transition period (years) when moving to an outsourced engineering model when your business culture is an on-staff engineering team.
It happens over and over. When people say "I kind of feel bad charging so much money for such simple work after they laid me off" or "why should I help them, they're jerks, they laid me off" I say, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you're getting paid for doing work you would have been doing anyway just for a lot less money if you hadn't been laid off. They made the bad decision. You make the profit.
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.
In the USA,
Ah, you're going to relate an anecdote about an American manager who screwed you over. We've all been there, brother. Word.
where the managerial class
Where the what what? What's a managerial class? Last time I checked, in this country few people get jobs in management at companies because of who their parents are. In fact, the vast majority of people I've known in management (including myself) worked their way there.
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.
Wait, a German comes in, screws a bunch of people over, and quite possibly breaks half a dozen labor laws in the process, and you blame America for this? I think you need to step back and rethink the moral of your story, there, Sparky. All you've shown is that assholes abound, regardless of country of origin.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Rather broad strokes coming from an Anonymous Coward, eh? Hate to break it to you, but QUALITY has nothing to do with it--it breaks down to the bottom $ (or rupee, as it were). Since the cost of living is much lower in India, firms can pay much less for comparable labor. Whether or not it was worth the additional infrastructure costs, language problems (yes, 'American' is NOT 'English'...), etc, is a completely different issue. Keep that in mind before you stupidly generalize the American workforce.
I'm with Marshall Brain, and others, in thinking that we should eventually phase in a basic living wage (not 'welfare'), rather than letting our fellow man starve simply because he's unproductive dead weight.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Before the dot domb, I was constantly amazed at the hostile attitudes on slashdot toward unions. I'm not sure if that sentiment was a by-product of union-bashing propaganda or just plain selfishness. Now that the IT worker is no longer an endangered species and worker's rights are getting trampelled on, I's wager a few more people around here are starting to wish they had the protection of union representation. A bit late although better late than never.
"we're tradespeople and we need a trade union"
Excellent point.
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 -=-
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 also use the threat of violence. Consider if you wish to be a member of a group that were it not called a "union", would be a criminal organization.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
You've confused "right" with "power". There is no right to steal (a.k.a. tax).
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Wow! Companies can be violent too. So can football teams. Should we ban them?
Seriously. It is rare for unions to be violent. Stereotyping them is just ridiculous. Modern unions are more about ensuring managers don't exploit employees (and recovering employee entitlements when they do) than collective bargaining or strikes.
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.
programmers need to stop thinking about themselves as some sort of "upper" class. yes, we have some very specialized knowledge and create things that have great value... but so do carpenters and electricians.
I think we need to start thinking of ourselves as professionals. Unions are for blue collar whiners who refuse to adapt to the economic tides. We would be much better served by professional association, akin to the lawyers BAR or the AMA.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
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.
programmers need to stop thinking about themselves as some sort of "upper" class. yes, we have some very specialized knowledge and create things that have great value... but so do carpenters and electricians.
I think the difference between electricians and programmers is that electricians don't give away their work for free.
-a
Just for one week, what would happen if everyone walked out? Just leave the machines to themselves and to the tender mercies of the script kiddies... for one week?
How long would any company - any society - be able to go before caving in? Not very.
Seriously: a hackers' trade union sounds like a very, _very_ good idea.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
..."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.
Personally I think it's a good idea. IMHO, welfare should only be for
Full-time students, who are (theoretically, at least) too busy studying to work and will "pay back" any money they get given by their greater potential productivity;
People who are physically or mentally incapable of working; and
People who, through no fault of their own, are in a position where their income disappears.
In particular, people falling into the latter category should only receive benefits while they actively search for work and/or contribute back to society (ie: work for the Dole).
People who voluntarily resign, IMHO, don't fall into either of these categories.
Still, I guess that unless you resign on the spot, you can at least save up a bit of money to tide you over.
That's exactly what you should do. If you don't have at least 3 months salary squirrelled away somewhere - particularly if you have a mortgage or other long-term debt - then you're being irresponsible. I do concede it is difficult in some circumstances to save up that much money, but if you don't have it saved, you shouldn't be resigning.
It would be interesting to see how it works if you give them six-week's notice. Does that eliminate the six-week period?
Not IIRC. It's 6 weeks from the day you leave. You can *register* for the Dole the day you walk out the door (and I highly recommend doing so), but you won't start getting any payments for 6 weeks.
Ah, so instead of using the herd approach to getting a backbone we should use the force of law to artificially restrict the number of programmers by requiring admittance to a guild prior to being able to work in a field? What ever happened to just having a spine of your own?
I do not have a signature
> 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..
I agree. A union could probably throw some great parties while employers set up contracts with overseas companies, but that's about it. How do you prevent them from just ignoring the union? Import/export controls? On software? Nobody wants that and it won't work very well anyway. We need only look to the tenets of free software/open source to see how an attempt to control the movement of software this way could backfire.
A professional association is a much better idea. I'm a member of my state bar association (IAAL), as well as being a developer, and there could be many parallels. Looking at the professional engineering scene is probably an even closer match.
States license Professional Engineers, and require their supervision/approval for all sorts of things like building bridges and buildings. The PEs run firms that employ young engineers who work under the supervision of the firm owners. Those young engineers eventually meet the qualifications for licensure themselves. Sure, certain PEs can farm out their work overseas, but most don't, recognizing that the long term survival of the *profession* requires that they pass on the knowledge and eventually the licensure locally.
Is the creation of software an activity that should be regulated in the same way that construction is? I think it's easy to say *yes*.
who's moderating the meta-moderators?
Apologies - this post has a US-centric viewpoint.
I don't have a problem with the global economy. What I have a problem with is that it seems the US is the only country openly embracing this global economy. Our trade deficit is currently at an all time high.
I'm not in favor of total isolationism, but OTOH I would like to see increased tarriffs and some protectionist laws in place *until* we achieve a level playing field.
Otherwise, how can our standard of living not go down?
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And corporations don't? The only difference is that they're well funded enough to hire the police or the army to do their headbreaking.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
How is it 'violent' to call a strike? If anything, history has shown that violent means have been used much more frequently against union workers than by them.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
You are forgetting that Corporations had trained "security forces". People walking picket lines got their skulls caved in, or were simply outright killed (look at the way Ford Motor Company, and GM went after strikers in the early 1900's). This happened many times while police stood by and watched as these "communists", and "anarchists" were shot and beaten by company employees.
This is a big reason why many Unions later on took a more extreme postion, and at times, violence against Corporations and their goons. They felt that it is better to fight back then just lay down and die.
The Slashdot crowd best look at the history of Unions in the 19th and 20th centuries to better understand where we are today.
What do you have to thank Unions for? How about:
-40 hour work week (not that employees today get this)
-Paid vactions
-Health Insurance
-Pensions
-Workplace safety
All things your freinds in Corporations have fought against or ignored time and again.
Organized crime did become involved with the labor Unions in the 1950's because they saw the potential to skim money from the membership, no secret there. The members were victims of abuse from the mobsters too.
Consider that people working in similar jobs, ones that have Union representation generally have higher pay, more time off, and better working conditions.
Corporations and our Government have done a great job in stripping rights away from workers and shifting them to employers. Unions are not as strong as they once were, and when was the last time you heard of violence from Labor Unions?
Employees will always do better for themselves if they work together for the good of all. Unions are not perfect, as I am not perfect, and you are not perfect, and Corporations are not perfect. You would be better off joining in a group than going it alone.
Trade and Labor Unions many times offer health insurance, training, pensions, legal advice, and other services to the membership that many companies or Governmental agencies do not provide. The Unions try to do what they can for the membership but are being increasingly marginalized in today's society. Corporations firing strikers, Federal Government ordering strikers back to work, and people with attitudes like yours puts Unions at a disadvantage.
For years, Corporations have been engaged in illegal and immoral operations. Such as, knowingly selling defective products, dumping toxic waste, ignoring workplace safety rules, gouging consumers, hiding income to not pay taxes, lying to government regulators, lying to shareholders, and much more that I can't remember or just don't know about. Being "asked" to train your replacement, or losing all benefits is about as disgusting and degrading a thing as can be done to a employee.
Consider if YOU wish to be a member of a group that if not called a "Corporation", would be a criminal organization (Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Parmalat, etc., ect.).
Simple - to switch jobs in those industries requires almost zero personal investment.
Often times several years of OJT is required to switch blue colar jobs. Unplanned job changes SUCK for everyone and just because you went to college doesn't change that. Have some respect for the workin' man.
On the other hand, suppose you just got out of school $40,000 in debt as a programmer, and you lose your job after six months, only to find no other jobs available. Are you going to go back to school for another 4 years to become a lawyer or a doctor?
You are confusing working smarter with improving your education. I can assure you that having more degrees does in no way make you a smarter worker. It does however mean that you are more educated.
Suppose you lose your job at age 35-40. Now what do you do? You can't possibly survive until retirement age.
My God, do you actually think losing your job is a permenant affliction? Ever hear of a career change? Of course, all the automotive people were whining the same whine when IT was booming and their industry had plateaued. Now it's IT while healthcare is booming. Next the healthcare people will complain while some other sector booms.
You probably can't afford to go back to college again since you may have family/house/etc.
Now we are getting to the meat of the problem: how people manage money! The real problem with today's economy is that a lot of people live 90 days from bankruptcy. Most of the time it's because of choices they make to have stuff or to do things earlier in life than they should. Here's how to fix the situation:
Step 1: SELL THE HOUSE. If you are upside down on your house, you are probably loaded with debt. Get it over with and realize that you are bankrupt and see an attorney. Time to start over.
Step 2: Sell the Lexus, SUV and Minivan. Stop making $600-900/mo in car payments. Get a late '90s saturn with low miles or something you can afford now that your life has changed.
Step 3: Adjust your lifestyle to fit your income. Live well below your means, not at your means. Take the kids out of Karate, gymnastics, off-season soccer, softball, baseball, basketball and cancel the $5,000 vacation you take every year. Stop eating out all the time while you are at it.
And if you do go back to college it will probably deplete much of your retirement savings - just postponing your financial problems.
Here's the deal: going to school, getting a high paying job with a good 401 K doesn't work. If your value is based on what you know, then when what you know has little value, what happens to your career? Why go down the same road twice?
It sets you up to retire with $150K in the bank after you pay off all the debt from financing junior's college. $150K will pay for maybe half of the bill when you have major health problems. If you want to prosper, work on developing asset income. Start business. Buy income properties. Write a book, screenplay or some music. Learn to work the stock market. Set up an income that isn't dependent on the good graces of an employer.
However, there has to be an outlet for people who spent a fortune on their career only to find that it has ended.
It's called get a new career - the same outlet that is open to the blue collar people who according to you make "zero personal investment in themselves". You could learn a lot from them: they adapt to the times.
-- $G