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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."
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?
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.
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%.
Train your replacement well. Tell him you're well aware that he is going to replace you, and that the pitfalls in his (new) position will be the foolish managers who've hired him because he is cheaper than you are, but less skilled. Tell him that as soon as he has enough experience he should immediately look for a new job, as you are now, because ultimately, he (and you) are better off working for someone with some fore-sight.
:)
You can sit together, looking at job sites all day looking for a new job. You will be seen as diligently performing this latest job function of "training". You might even earn some extra kudos from the PHB.
It will be a bonding experience. You'll wander onwards into the job market - and he'll climb the corporate ladder at your old job.
In a few years time, you'll have kept in touch, and can call him up to see if the company he's working at is hiring. He might even be your boss
no wrong attitude....
:-)
train him WRONG... fricking screw them as hard as they are screwing you.
sorry, but if your boss doenst know your job enough to train your replacement then, you will screw them nicely
just like how I rot13 all the sourcecode I write every night....
it will take them decades to figure it out. espically when I tell them... "what??? It's psudeocode! you are tellimg me you hired someone so unskilled as they dont know what to do with a psudocode file?? I'll gladly help you as a contractor for $200.00 an hour, minimum 10 hour billing."
sorry... but if they want to screw you, feel free to return their favor.... just do it legally...
In my case, I was the local It that they decided that I could write apps, they never specified the language nor bought the tools... and yes I deleted all my self bought tools when I left... I dont want to violate any copyrights...
oh and be sure to call OSHA and BSA and tip them off to unsafe working conditions and suspected software piracy, that is always good for a payback to a company.
do I sound bitter? at least now I have a good job with a good company and they are smart enough to use CVS and buy the tools we need....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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...
Or, if you live in Minnesota, there is no such thing as an unjust cause. At first I was puzzled by this "dilemma," because in the Socialist Upper Midwest about the only way you can mess up getting unemployment checks is to be working a job on the sly.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
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. ---*
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.
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.
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.
I have heard tales of great men, who made a cron job that would destroy their computer and source code at 10:00am every monday morning -- unless they were there to stop it.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Simple solution. Train them but train them badly, very badly. Train them with stuff that sounds plausible but is diametricly opposed to right. What are they going to do, fire you?
@de_machina
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.
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...
Invent your own forms and policies, create a complete and utter fantasy business and have you and a few other train all the new people against that.
Of course I'm not sure what sort of civil or criminal liabilities there are in sabotage...
The real solution here is to just do what you are told, train your replacement. And now that you have no job simply stop buying things. Once the economy crumbles and the US finds itself unable to compete in global economy you can move to India and get a job driving taxis.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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!
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
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.
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