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Train Your Own Replacement
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo reports on how some employers are asking the workers they're laying off to train their foreign replacements - having them dig their own unemployment graves. 'Almost one in five information technology workers has lost a job or knows someone who lost a job after training a foreign worker, according to a new survey by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers.' It looks like a real dilemma where if you refuse to hire your replacement, you are fired without severance and are ineligible for unemployment benefits, and if you quit, you don't receive severance and are ineligible for unemployment."
Sorry, it's not in my job description.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No sense in helping them to look good eh?
I propose a third option:
Train them to do things the wrong way, reap maximum amusement out of your last days at the firm, and laugh as you walk out the door.
I'm not in the computer industry, but I'm wondering how long it takes to train foreign workers? If your job is so valuable that it takes a few days to train someone to be as competent as you, then how does that reflect upon your job?
Imagine training a foreign physician in what you do. How long would that take? 7-12 years?
I don't have to worry about 'training' my replacement.
And whats worse-in my case the employer lied. "Oh no we're not training them to replace you, we just expect that you will be busy with other projects..." Yeah other projects like looking for work. They paid for it in the end....HAH! And when they asked me back to help "save the company"....I didnt feel much desire to.
Let the employers make their mistakes. You're going to get laid off anyway, so you might as well use the time to start looking for a new job instead of whining about having to train your replacement. Unless you're extremely well organized, it's not like your replacement is going to get much out of your training.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Cmon people...Start Training the BOFH way!
BOFH: "In order to make sure that your computer is operating at its full capacity, you must daily feed your monitor water whilst holding down the degauss button".
Trainee over phone:" Sir, this is no problem.." ***BZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzTTttttttttttttt***
BOFH: "Next trainee. I'm going to like being replaced".
Sig it.
Step two: train your trainee to be incompetent.
Step three: laugh at the karmic justice of them firing you for being expensive and getting a useless employee in return.
Step four: read the classified ads and fail to find a new job.
At least both you and the company are screwed.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Fine! But Rasheed is not getting my red stapler!...
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
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%.
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
This is common practice at my job... I work as a state-licensed privately-run datacenter, to which state gvt agencies outsource their mainframe and other large scale Unix processing.
When we sign a new contract for an agency, we send computer operators and other staff there for a week to get trained by the state employees that are about to get laid off
Well, in Maryland at least, you do receive unemployment benefits if you are fired. Also, you can receive benefits when resigning in leui of being fired. A friend of mine just went through this.
He worked for Lockheed Martin and was going to be fired.
Instead, he resigned and received benefits. No severence though...
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.
CVS? Nah, we tried that but it didn't work. We're using visual source safe now.
Ok, first you model everything down each class and method level in UML, then you apply the elaboration bongfizzle according to rational unified process...
We're targeting this release to run on the Longhorn codebase...
I'm sorry, but you must adhere to the *letter* of the EJB spec. That means you cannot use java.io.*, cannot have worker threads, no socket communication, scheduled events, or application lifecycle events.
You absolutely must check in everything before you go home at the end of the day. That way you don't lose anything if your workstation dies. Build failures? No problem, someone will fix it before you get in the next day.
You can start coding as soon as you acquire linux licenses from SCO...
Remain calm! All is well!
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..
Remember the phrase 'slow learner'? well if your on the payroll to teach your replacement, and your worried that mis-training them will get you in to trouble, just remember the phrase 'slow teacher'! you could spend a whole year just teaching someone, very very very slowly and extra extra carefully, every single detail of your system until they kill themselves out of bordem. Then you can get started on the next one ;)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
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...
Here's what I don't understand. The article states $136 billion dollars of salary (per year) will be moved outside the US in the next 15 years. Don't these businesses realize that when they stop paying the american people to build their products, that the american people they rely on to BUY their products wont have any money because they pushed all the jobs overseas? What will McDonalds do when McDonalds are all automated and nobody has any money to eat at McDonalds? When a company moves all its staff but executive off shore, aren't they removing that much money in the very market they want to compete in, therefore hurting themselves in the end?
Agreed This happened to me in 2001. The overseas "Consulting" outfit that was hired to replace me as an admin/dba received all the training i deemed appropriate. Needless to say after six months of unacceptable downtime on the servers- security breaches- software issues - and piss poor performance (although the stupid CFO and accountants were happy) i had sitting in my lap a very lucrative support contract. Same job - part time- twice the money. Go figure. The world is full of idiots and i'm starting to beleive they are ALL accountant types.
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
Here's what will happen in reaction to this article.
A lot of people will respond and tell us how angered they are over the injustices that it is being done to their peers. Then, they will move on to the next story, because in America individuality reigns supreme and the media has twisted our common history to the extent that people do not realize that it was trade unions that made possible the establishment of fair labor standards, such as sick pay, vacation time, a 40-hour week, health standards in the workplace, age-limits to enter the workfoce and so forth.
People will complain about the raw deal that they get from corporations, yet fail to understand that they have been co-opted into thinking of trading unions as their enemy.
So long as trade unions are vilified in this country and workers continue to believe that they can beat the system individually if they just continue to make themselves more knowledgeable and their skills more marketeable -all good and lofty things but not the solution to this issue- I will remain unimpressed by these stories for two reasons:
1) They contain a pinch of xenophobia, at least most of them do.
2) People are not looking for root causes and fool themselves if they think that foreign workers are not also continuing to make themselves more knowledgeable and their skills more marketable.
It's time to collaborate with your peers with the same passion that you work on open source software: Union Makes Strength
For those of you that fail to understand that life is sacrosact and that profits are not everything,do not bother. History has proven you wrong. Only a short time ago, a worker could not hope to reach his thirty's because his working conditions were so inhumane and miserable.
Know your history, know your past. It will empower you to face the future.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
First time was a crusher, guys sent from India, working for an offshore vendor - my primary task was to train them to take over for me, since I was terminated in lieu of them taking over systems support and development. Funny thing was my friend got me the gig there four years earlier but just about all of my training was of the OJT variety, though as a seasoned programmer, it doesn't take me too long to get the underpinnings of the system after I dig a bit. I got another offer, and even though it was for less pay and temporary, gladly took it to escape the burden. One of my team members trained a fellow for six months, thinking that the guy was going back to India. Then he suffered the ultimate insult as the individual got to relocate here and take his work from home position.
Second time I didn't have a job lined up and a team in Mexico took over my function. While I didn't train these folks in person, I was charged with preparing a comprehensive how-to guide that covered every facet of system support and development on that particular application domain. Knowledge transfer was conducted via email and my prepared HTML kit that covered everything from overviews to FAQ on the system. It was easier to stomach, minus the person to person mode.
You do it because as long as you're accepting a paycheck, you're obligated to serve as directed. At least that is the way I was brought up. A honest days work for an honest days pay and all that jazz.
Within a 45 minute drive of my house, I tally >5-10K jobs gone, either to India or handled by immigrant visa worker here in the states. By those numbers, you may be assured that these arn't rinky dink outfits, these are corporate giants in finance, defense industry, semiconductors, etc...
Maybe it's not come to your IT department yet. But the prospect will come soon to the executive management, unless you work for a very small shop, and they will consider it. I served a contract in the summer at a pharmaceutical company and the staff there boasted no way would offshoring and/or outsourcing pervade their organization. A few months into the assignment, senior management there announced a bold new initiative, a partnership with IBM that did indeed involve wholesale migration of their application and systems programming to Indian locales.
Here's a list of firms that have indeed embarked upon campaigns that involved US workers training foreign replacements:
You can read about more companies here that have ex-IT workers that can share the same stories. These arn't satellite systems out on the peripheral horizon, only impacting a small percentage. If anything, I'd say the numbers quoted in the story are way under the mark, given these are core systems like accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, financial capture, EDI, MRP, reservation scheduling, accounting, etc...
Yay globalism.
AZspot
I know most of us "white collar" folks despise unions, but look at what autoworkers did when Japan and Europe started taking US auto companies to the cleaners, and the Big Three started treating people like shit. They unionized. Then they striked. The motto was: we don't care if you can't do as well if you can't treat us like shit. You won't do business at ALL if you treat us like shit. Unless you want to close shop and go into making floral arrangements, you'll negotiate with us.
Honestly- what would happen if tomorrow, every IT worker simply got up from their keyboard at noon, turned off their cell phone/pager, and didn't come back for the rest of the day? We'd all be instantly fired in favor of people in India? Bullshit. Businesses are weak on the outsourcing front because they can't outsource everything. Strikes make it an all-or-nothing proposition, and contrary to popular belief, they can't just pick someone off the street; it still 'costs' quite a bit to hire someone. Unionizing doesn't make you the boss, but it does even the playing field, because as a single worker, you're rather powerless.
Today, despite HEAVY competition from Europe and Japan, UAW auto workers:
Wouldn't you kill to be able to have most of that? I sure as hell would. Detroit is looking better by the second.
...and I have to say that as much as I have always despised the US auto industry for building incredible crap, they've gotten far better over the years. This is despite major manufacturers actually setting up plants here in the US, because it's cheaper! So much for the argument that worker-friendly policies make you unable to compete in the global market.
Bank of America/Fleet just announced they're laying off 12,500 people. According to a BoA rep, guess what department will be one of the hardest hit? You guessed it- infrastructure, aka, Information Technology. Even better, most layoffs will be in the Northeast, because down in Georgia, land of the 2-year-old-strip-malls, real estate(and workers) are dirt cheap.
Oh, you can also vote for politicians who support striking down at-will employment laws...
Please help metamoderate.
... are missing it. Think about unionizing. And if you do, watch the union bosses and make sure they don't get blackmailed or bribed. That's it for advice. The two choices are watch jobs go away and paycheck shrink or vanish, or keep jobs, build better stuff, keep mo money for yourself and inside the nation where it recirculates and helps the economy as a whole.
You are one of only two or three professions who have the clout-if unionized-to shut the country down business-wise, a *pretty_dang_ snazzy* bargaining chip. And there ain't didlly squat uncle sam or any coalition of corporate bosses could do about it, because YOU CONTROL ALL THE STUFF AND THEY DON'T KNOW HOW.
You could force an end to outsourcing and H1B abuses, you could force "fair trade" over hideous and erroneously termed "free trade" scam billionaire's ripoffs with it's unequal excise taxes between nations (our exports are taxed a lot higher usually by other nations on most products), you could force "safe computing" as a standard on the manufacturers, you could actually stand a chance against the marketing weenies on important technical and engineering aspects..... you could make quality job 1 everywhere, and keep getting paid for it, instead of "ohh, it's shiny now, ship it out!" decisions...
buy a clue, look at the article again...
wall
handwriting
All you need is a union. If you wait, it'll be too late. Snooze ya lose....
I bet just over slashdot you could have several thousand people start a union within a few days....or hours really
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.
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
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.
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.
Thank god I am safe at Vandelay Industries...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Homer: You don't quit your job because you don't like it, you just go in and do it really half-assed.
Personally I would consider the moment I was notified that I was being laid off as the time I was laid off. If they want me to continue my normal job for x amount of time then that is fine. If they want me to train a replacement then they can pay me consultant rates. Once you are notified that you are being laid off for no cause, how can you be fired for cause. You are not required to finish up your week or month or whatever, the employer and employee simply agree that is the case but they can't make you do it. As far as unemployment eligibility goes they can't very well fire you once for no cause and then for cause when you refuse to train a replacement. If they want you to train a replacement, tell them you want consultant rates or extended severance and benefits.
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.
Technology Workers need to take a serious look at Unionizing.
As much as a perons's ego wants to deny it, only standing together can we stop our jobs from being lost to slave labour.
I 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...
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
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
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...
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!
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.
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..."
Minnesota rules I'm unemployed right now, so I have to go through these... the relavant parts:
2. Partially or Totally Unemployed Through No Fault of Your Own Even with enough wages to qualify for unemployment benefits, the reason for your job separation could disqualify you from receiving benefits. Some reasons are:
Quit without a good reason caused by the employer - Leaving for personal reasons or circumstances, not because it was the employer's fault.
Discharged for misconduct - For actions such as continued, unexcused absences and/or tardiness; breaking company rules; neglect of duties; insubordination; being impaired by drugs or alcohol on the job; fighting; harassment.
Refused a job or failed to apply for a suitable job without "good cause"- For refusing work that was suitable for you based on your work history, training, skills, ability, the pay scale in the local labor market, the distance to the job, and how long you have been out of work.
On strike -When off work because you are a member of the striking union or are participating in the strike by honoring a picket line.
NOTE: If you were not laid off due to lack of work from your last job, a Customer Service Center representative will contact you and your last employer for additional information. If you are disqualified from benefits because of a job separation, you will be mailed a written determination explaining the reason.
I've also heard it from court papers that "if a reasonable person would quit in this situation" Thus you can quit if you are assigned a job that while you can do, is not safe. They might agree that being asked to train your replacement before you are laid off counts, or might not, hard to say. A reasonable person might not quit, but would agree that it is a reasonable thing to do, OTOH, it is a safe job that you are qualified to do. You better be able to prove they were intending to lay your off after this though.
I wouldn't expect unemployment offices to have much sympathy for a company moving your job offshore though. They have some ability to make life hard on companies, but I'm not sure how much (likely very little)
Afterall who doesn't have old unused letterhead paper from their old employers lying arround? Not me I always make sure I have plenty.
One just signs it in the name of a manager that's no longer employed there, using a date when he was there. So on the infinitesimally small chance that they actually ring up & check, things will still appear above board.
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.
______-___--_-__-_---_-----__-_-___-_-_---_-----_
The h-1b visa is not legally used to lower wages -- only to acquire unique talent that is not available in the domestic labor force. Therefore, if you are training your replacement and your replacement is here on an h-1b visa, you can take action against your employer.
Seastead this.
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 may get flamed and modded down for this but I'm going to put forth my honest opinion on this anyway. In my opinion, the shift to employing Indian and other offshore workers is not, in the grand scheme of things, as big a deal as some would have it.
.sig is actually somewhat relevant, at least to the angry majority. taken from dante, it translates: "The only road to paradise begins in hell." hope you're all on that road, headed in the right direction.
I work at a smallish company (around 250 employees including our offshore team) comprised of an engineering group split roughly 50/50 between our Boston-area (Mass., USA) office and our offshore contractors in Bangalore, India. Over the course of the last 2 years we've struggled with, and eventually found, a working balance between onshore and offshore talent. A 50/50 split (for most teams -- some are mostly offshore, and for others we can't find any good candidates outside the states) seems to work out best. More of the seniors/principals/architect roles are onshore, but we have some very senior people from india as well. Some of them come onshore for months at a time. In general they're treated just like regular employees. (In my personal experience I've actually preferred the personalities, dedication and skills of these workers on at least an equal basis with their local counterparts.)
It is a model that does more than allow our young business to keep costs down. If we hadn't moved our callcenter offshore, the increase cost per customer care call might well have bankrupted us, or forced a major extra round of financing we might not have been able to obtain. The whole thing could have tanked and we'd all be out of a job. As it is now, we're enabling a booming middle class in a poverty-stricken 3rd-world country (which in the long view is a very good thing for the world), at the same time that we've gradually improved the quality of our average developer (and CSR rep) and found a stable, economically viable, harmonious balance.
I know this is not the same experience many bitter recently-laid-off engineers have gone through, but it is *my* experience, and a perspective that doesn't get heard much.
I honestly believe there will always be a market for onshore talent. startups will never be able to immediately get a whole operation offshore from the get-go. fledgeling companies will need local people on local hours able to meet face to face at any time. my take is, I'm going to continue to train both on and offshore developers, do the best damn job I can, keep honing my own skills the best I can, and it ALL improves my situation -- and my resume.
working with people all over the world is a phenomenon that's not going to go away. so to the posters who suggest mis-training their potential replacements, I ask, which would you rather be: a whining dishonest saboteur who left a shambles behind in their position? or someone with solid experience working with international teams to create good software? to me the choice is clear.
like anything in life, make the best of it, and of yourself.
ps perhaps in this case my
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
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
Not remotely possible for them to sue. The best they can say is "you didn't do your job when you trained this guy". Then again... if the guy doesn't speak good english or there is another language barrier, then how can you be expected to *force* them to understand what you're saying.
;)
:)
Also, it's very difficult to prove someone was trained "badly". How much the person picks up is entirely up to them. If the person is so daft and just doesn't "get it" in the time allotted, oh well... what's a guy to do??
Also, if you're training your replacement, your co-workers will likely being doing the same thing soon, so there's no worry about "sabotaging" them, since they'll be joining you shortly in the unemployment line.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
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
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.
"What? You think I told him to destroy the network? The guy doesn't even speak English--what did you expect?" Yes, it's cruel and unfair--but that's what makes our country great.
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."...
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.