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."

Comments

Train them poorly

[bihoy]

No sense in helping them to look good eh?

Re:Train them poorly

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

We spend millions bringing Indians to the US for IT education at our best (publicly funded) universities. We allow indians to move here.

The universities may be publicly funded, but the out-of-country tuitions are in no way subsidized by the American tax dollar, in fact they are a significant profit center for most universities.

Furthermore, I'll take a brain-drain from India to the USA over a job drain from the USA to India ANY DAY.

That's where Bush and the idiotic, anti-foreigner "security measures" have been cutting our economy off at the knees. Now the smart kids are staying home, and even the ones that have green cards are leaving and taking their knowledge with them.

A third option

[cpu_fusion]

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.

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.

Re:A third option

[Nogami_Saeko]

"Good reference" being something along the lines of:

"Does an excellent job of training foreign replacement workers when about to be terminated - highly recommended! - until replaceable...".

I think you might be better-off without it...

N.

Train 'em

[AKAImBatman]

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.

The Ultimate Plan

[rckymntrider]

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

Sabotage would be awfully tempting!

[RealAlaskan]

How could you not keep some little, vital secrets? How could you not allow critical misconceptions to go uncorrected? In short, how could you resist the temptation to totally, subtly screw up the guy you're training? Make sure that you don't pass on any crucial contacts, ``accidently'' erase or corrupt vital documents on your last day, the possibilities seem endless.

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.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[LostCluster]

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.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[ackthpt]

How can you not be eligible for unemployment benefits? The US unemployment benefits scheme must be truly screwed up if you can be ineligible just for quitting a job, or refusing to do something degrading like training a replacement.

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.

Companies hurt themselves...

[corren]

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?

Can techies become a force of change?

[LibrePensador]

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.

Re:Been there done that

[Fnkmaster]

My friend, you need to learn the way to get ahead in the world. When they ask you back, tell them you'll come back if you get your old boss' job. Or his boss' job. Seriously, that's what I'd do.

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).

Do what autoworkers did

[SuperBanana]

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:

• Make $45k or more
• Have a health/benefits/retirement package second to none
• Have incredibly safe, well-lit, comfortable workplaces, with all the ergonomics they need.
• Never get bored; they don't spend years installing door panels. They get rotated, often on a weekly basis, among different tasks. Guess what? That includes the training to be able to do the new task.

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...

Re:Do what autoworkers did

[wintermute42]

I'm all for organizing. I'm a member of a union that is associated with the Communication Workers of America.

I would like to point out, however, that unfortunately there was a difference between the Japanese auto invasion and offshoring of US jobs.

In the case of Japanese imports, workers and the companies where on the same side. While workers were losing their jobs, the US auto companies were losing money and market share. The politicians listened to the combination of labor and corporations.

In this case labor (in our case, engineers and IT folk) are not on the same side as the companies. The companies profit by lowering the wages they have to pay. They get lower turnover among those they still employ in the US (since there are fewer jobs to skip to). So the employees lose, while the companies gain. And so far it is companies that are making political donations.

This does not mean that labor can't have an effect. But it is important to realize that it may not be as easy as it was for the United Auto Workers working to put tarrifs in place to protect the industry from the Japanese.

It is also worth remembering that the United Auto Workers were well established when the Japanese imports appeared. But it was not always that way. Ford, I think it was, tried to break strikes by hiring Pinkerton thugs, armed with ax handles. The unions are there because people worked to put them there. While it's true that many unions became corrupt and bureacratic many of them did not start out that way. They were built by their workers.

Organizing takes a lot of time. Many union groups are small. That means that there is no money to hire a professional staff. The work is done by union members who also work a full time job and have families. And while they are working in the union, they may face the danger of job retaliation.

So don't think that some union is going to come along and fix it for you. It can take a long time and it starts with you.

You IT guys....

[zogger]

... 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

The best time to leave is now.

[djplurvert]

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

Be careful

[hey!]

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.

Plan now...

[BlackHawk]

Hey, you. Yes, you, reading Slashdot instead of working. C'mere.

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...

Endlessly ratcheting up competition==ponzi scheme

[Cryofan]

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.

Re:Thanks, unions, government, and greedy employee

[Milo77]

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...

Re:Train My Replacement?

[kcbrown]

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?

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.

Information in parent is flawed

[deacon]

Let's get something straight from the start:

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.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Frymaster]

Any economic model which doesn't account for power disparity is one that simply isn't going to be accurate.

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.

Re:Thanks, unions, government, and greedy employee

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

If you didn't have unions, the world would be stuck with the labor practices described by Charles Dickens, Upton Sinclair, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, John Steinbeck and company. You know: 80 hour work-weeks, in poisonous conditions for slave-wages owed to company stores - while your children die without health care.

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.

Re:Or you could quit your whining and get on with

[lyphorm]

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.

you need to be smarter than this ...

[sir_cello]

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.

Re:Thanks, unions, government, and greedy employee

[plumby]

American businesses do find it difficult to employ Americans.

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.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[God! Awful 2]

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

Re:Train My Replacement?

[crawling_chaos]

Unions also use the threat of violence.

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.