Slashdot Mirror
Techies Asked To Train Foreign Replacements
Makarand writes "David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Bank of America (BofA) is moving thousands of tech jobs to India and has asked its techies to train their Indian replacements or risk losing severance pay. Although there is nothing in writing that says precisely this, the employees have been made clear about this responsibility in their meetings. BofA is outsourcing tech work to Indian companies whose employees do the work at half the cost of what a U.S. worker gets paid. According to an estimate, outsourcing has allowed the bank to save about $100 million over the past five years."
Salt in the wounds?
From the article (regarding requiring training to receive severance): ""I know hat's parsing things a bit," Norton acknowledged. "What we ask associates to do as part of getting severance is that they stay on the job until the job is transitioned."
Norton (and BofA) is parsing employees in a more metaphorical sense, cutting them into tiny pieces. It's a violation of a tacit ethic.
Next: ""It's a common practice when your job is being transferred from one person to another that you train the new person," she added. "We expect our people to stay until their jobs are consolidated.""
Yes it is a common practice. What's not so common (though it's seemingly becoming so) is a scenario where the person you're training is transparently there to be trained because they're going to do the job on the cheap. What's not so common is the egregious in-your-face requirement to train someone to replace you when you had not been planning to leave!
I've trained replacements before. And, I KNEW I was expected to finish that work to consider my work satisfactory. But, it's always been when I was moving on. I'd like to be in a place where when faced with being required to train my cheap-suit replacement that I could refuse on principle alone.
It's unfortunate and worse, unethical, to require training your replacement to receive severance. As an aside did you ever wonder why severance packages max out at ten months, e.g., by some algorithm you get X months pay for each year served, with a cap at ten months? Ten months (actually, 300 days) is how long an employee has to file an action on discriminatory practices! Often times training cheaper replacements targets older and higher paid employees.
And finally and most offensive: "But BofA stands out because it acknowledged earlier this year that it understands how much the practice offends its U.S. employees.
Barbara Desoer, BofA's chief technology exec, told BusinessWeek magazine in January that she was aware how much grumbling it caused when workers at the bank's Concord technology center were told they'd have to bring their Indian replacements up to speed before being shown the door."
First of all, the bitch Desoer doesn't deserve the title CTO, she's a fucking hatchet man... she isn't managing technology, she's betraying her work force, I'm guessing for some pretty decent blood money... Fuck her.
So outsourcing and required replacement training is becoming common enough companies begin to admit it. The tipping point is here, they can all claim they do it with the rationale, "everyone ELSE is doing it." Posh!
This is legal but it's unhealthy. The return to the shareholders is short term and long term this practice stands to damage employee morale, and based on the kind of "replacement" results piss off the customers.
A global economy is coming. For some it's a speeding train coming right at them, and they've been tied to the railroad tracks by their employers.
I for one welcome our new Ind...
Actually... scratch that.
Just great... Now I have to learn Hindi to challenge my bank errors...
Didn't read the article, but that's pretty f'd up if it's true.
I've always banked with BoA, but the outsourcing and this are enough to make me consider switching. Can anyone suggest a well-established bank with a good online system and good spread of brick-and-mortar locations?
Sorry - But IndiaTech is not worth what you pay for it most times.
Interesting that the article quotes the figure of half the cost. Five years ago, people were saying Indian companies could do the work for one-tenth the cost. If Indian salaries and other costs increase 20% a year for a few more years, the advantages of outsourcing will have largely disappeared. In the long run, good for India and good for U.S. I.T. workers.
Training your replacement is standard operating procedure for many jobs. If you don't like it, the time to argue about it is when your work contract is being signed. The fact that the replacements are Indians is a red herring here -- it'd be the same if the jobs were being moved to the Appalachians.
Once upon a time autoworkers and shipbuilders were considered high-skill workers. Hell, look back far enough (1800s) and button-manufacturing was high tech. The commoditization of IT is happening faster than the commoditization of these old-line businesses. So we should get out of the notion that 'internal tech support' is somehow a 'high tech' job that requires local presence all the time. Yeah, a portion of tech support jobs will remain local (until the smart robots take over, heh) but most of the jobs will go to where the cheap smarts are.
Go somewhere random
I wonder if they know that "tatas" are American slang for a woman's breasts? You know, as in "bodacious tatas"?
I'd sure want to hire a company named "Tata Consultancy": "I'm off to consult with Tata"... the mind boggles.
Definitely, indian tech workers will be demanding more in the future.
This is something new now, and they are making considerable money they have never dreamt of before for their country's standards, but when the standard of living rises, so the wage demands will.
But when ? I reckon not earlier than 2 years.
Read radical news here
I'll simply repeat another of my comments from the past about this.
1 7/sr=1-2/qid=1149421474/ref=pd_bowtega_2/202-73591 57-8712641?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&v=glance [amazon.co.uk]
I've been amused by many companies over the years who thought they could save a huge bundle of money, when in reality the staff employed in those functions they want to move makes up perhaps 20% of their organisation but makes the most impact. Do people in a foreign country answering your calls, where it is totally obvious they know not even the most basic things about where you live (and you have waste time and money repeating things twenty times), does that sound good and make you want to use that company? I'll quote Joel Spolsky and Pradeep Singh:
"(Here's something Pradeep Singh taught me today: if only 20% of your staff is programmers, and you can save 50% on salary by outsourcing programmers to India, well, how much of a competitive advantage are you really going to get out of that 10% savings?)"
You also have the additionally huge costs of training those new employees, or outsourcing organisations, up in the ways of the organisation, the products, the technology and you also spend huge amounts of wasted time and money on communication. I've known many banks who've had that experience. A poor call centre worker gets the warm ear treatment from a customer in Europe, US, Canada etc. because the website is throwing up errors and he/she can't complete a transaction. A call is logged and there is a series of frantic phone calls and e-mails to the outsourced programming company in India, who needless to say, haven't got the faintest idea what they're talking about. Also (and this happens even in outsourcing companies situated in the same country but in another part) because they are not physically located in the heat of battle, and within on-site reach, they just don't give a shit. They'll do it when they've got time.
"Because they don't actually work for Bank of America," the engineer replied. "They work for Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, which are both in India. They do the work at half the cost of what a U.S. worker gets paid."
Would anyone like to guess how much time, money, effort and resources is going to be spent trying to communicate with these idiots, and actually get anything done?
In short, you need to have your support functions in your company with you completely, and they need to be as close to your paying customers as you can get. If there is a market in India for your products then by all means get close to your customers and open offices in India (and how many BofA customers are in India?). After all the diasters, and let's face it we know companies everywhere have had total outsourcing disasters, I can't beleiev anyone thinks they're still going to save money like this. Idiot CEOs and boards still have this ridiculously stupid fucking idea that the world is a place separated only by a common language - English. I think even British, American and Australian people can agree that that is most certainly not true. I suggest these idiot board members go and read the number one, definitive guide on running a multinational company properly - as well as making some serious profit.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/18619769
this is like asking auto factory works to build the robots that will replace them (i dunno if that is shaky enough for a /. analogy)
Does the ultimatum say anything about training these replacements well?
My bank has a call center in India as part of its "travel agency" arm. Or maybe it's my credit card. Anyway, I was recently booking a trip and throughout the phone call, found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the person on the other end of the phone. So while he was looking for flights, I was trying to figure out what it was that was making me angry. He was helping me in a competent fashion, seemed to be trying to get me the best fare and flight, I had no trouble understanding him. I couldn't figure it out. Later, after the call was over, I replayed the conversation in my head but couldn't pin point it. There was just something about his manner that was annoying. Then I went into the kitchen to get a coffee and a co-worker, who is from Bangaloor came in and started talking to me. That's when I figured it out. My co-worker has the same speech mannerisms as this guy. I've never paid attention to it before because my co-worker is 'just another guy' and since I can usually see his face when he speaks, everything's cool. But with this guy on the phone, there was a certain 'condescending' manner about him and the way he said certain things that really riled me up. I believe it's just the way their local language mannerisms translate to english.
lol
Honestly, if you're counting on your employer (or anybody, for that matter) to look out for your interests and "play nice," you're just asking to get a situation like this dropped in your lap. It doesn't matter what your contract says, and it doesn't matter how nice you think your boss is. If somebody with enough power thinks they can save/make some extra money, expand their own influence, push their own agenda, etc., there are ways around contracts and nice lower managers. After all, if you can't pay your own expenses for a few months without a severance package, you can't afford to fight them in court, now can you?
This is why it really pays to have your own severance package set aside in a savings account. If I was given the choice these people have been given, and I had 3-6 months of expenses in my savings, I'd tell them to, "Train my replacement your own damn selves." I might even do it if I didn't have such savings, depending on how blatantly it was presented to me.
If you plan ahead, you give yourself the power to make a statement like that if it needs to be made (assuming it's worth making).
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
The replacement worker is always trained half ass in a layoff, can you imagine the quality of the training, when its a layoff, your replacement cant even speak english, and they are in India? how stupid
Most desktop computers fail because the chips work loose. Before calling hardware support please attempt the following. Carry your PC to the stairwell and drop it at least three floors. If the PC still doesn't work call support (by the way, don't tell support you dropped the PC - they don't like their job being done by others.)
How do the interviews for these places go?
Welcome to the free market. There is somebody in the world who will do your job for less than you. You will lose your job. Industry will move to whichever government offers the least protection to its workers, and the most incentives to business. Should workers begin to criticise their pay/working conditions/lack of human rights, then business will threaten to move. The vast majority of people (myself included) will take a pittance and a quiet life, rather than fight a well organised, well funded status quo. If we can eat and have a roof over our heads, we thank our lucky stars.
We're all third world now baby.
before getting a bullet in the brain.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I've been with B of A since the mid 1980's. The past couple of years they have begun making this loud sucking sound. They suck fees out of my account that lowers it below a threshold and then suck more fees out. On one single day after I screamed, they credited back over 200 dollars in fees into my account. They've been putting 5 business day holds on Govt. checks that used to go in as cash. They obviously have the fees dept. going full tilt, along with the bean counters. I'm moving soon and as soon as I'm settled, they're history. I've had it with them!
Looking at the shift from Bank of America to Bank of India, I feel it is a pretty tasteless and incompetent change for the worse.
I am pretty sure that most customers will probably vomit en masse and leave for another bank.
4 letters define how the training should be conducted:
B. O. F. H.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
... who thinks that saving 100m$ over five years sounds rather i ridiculous for a (supposedly) large bank? I can not even imagine that it is worth the bad publicity they get through this.
If I were an American I would be extremely pissed off by this Bank of 'America'. What will they do with their next 100m$? Some TV commercials?
US Geek "Ok, now once every 12 week we get this file called "master customer records" and copy it to /dev/nul.Then once every 8 weeks email this file called "CEO_pr0n_copy" to the Washington post.
Indian Geek "seems strange but you Americans are a stange lot". US Geek " now the last thing before I leave copy this file called "master_crdusr.pwd" from the main system to a nice gentleman called Ivan and his email is HAXr3d@owned.com.ru."
Indian Geek " I be thanking you very much for this help"
US Geek "yeah your welcome ya tea towel wearing bastard"
You assume Indians can't "even" speak english? Well, they speak a heck lot better english than you speak Hindi.
Secondly, you sound like a nationalist. The american workers live in what they define as "democracy", however that can be very much doubted. But if they do, they can vote for better rights for the workers. In many (democratic) countries this would never be happening, so it's all up to you people to fix your country.
Until then, these things are just your own fault, and there is no one you can blame but yourself. A corporation is forced to act like this if it maximizes the win for the stock holders (which it probably will as claimed in the article). It's their only obligation by law. If there's no law against forcing some worker to train a cheaper one, then what are you people getting upset about? Sit back and enjoy the show, and expect a heck lot more of this.
To me, this is hilarious.
At least, if I were working for BoA, and in any way could manage to do it without going bankrupt, I'd just tell them: "Fine...good luck with that...I'm outta here. Oh, and be prepeared to spend money, lawyers, and time when I sue you..whether I think I'll win or not, even if I have to represent myself!" hand them my employee badge, and walk straight out.
Maybe the workers could band together for a class-action, or at least organize to share legal costs.
I understand that many with families and in debt up to their eyeballs might not take that option, but a large subset of IT workers *are* single, and could handle the financial disruption.
I have walked out on employers before when they became completely unreasonable, and taken the financial hit. To me, without a family/kids to support, and having saved and otherwise acted financially responsible, it was worth it. Maybe I'm too "old-skool" as the phrase goes, but there are some principles a person should not hesitate to stand up for, if at all possible.
I wonder how they would react if a third or more of their IT staff refuses to cut their own throat and walks over this, and what would they tell angry customers?
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Purely evil.
;)
/[\w|\n]yours truly\n/i /[\w|\n]cordially,\n/, change it with "I find you strangely attractive".
;)
From a business standpoint, it's neccessary (the training, not the outsourcing), but it's still evil.
Kinda makes you want to have some fun with crontab and shell/perl scripts.
Like keep randomly changing posix group, ou, or dn info in the LDAP directory.
There was a perl script I wanted to write a while back called "jackass-milter" for sendmail. (a take off of spamass-milter, for spamassassin).
All it was designed to do was take each message that passes through the exchanger, constrain to body text (not attachments, or headers), then run a series of regex's on the body based on what the author wants to do to the message.
Example? Regex searching for things like
A good regex that searches for nouns and verbs and randomly replaces it with the f-bomb. Another good one is to search for all instances of "the", but only randomly replace it with "teh". Spell-checkers be damned!
What does this have to do with Indian-outsourcing? Sabotage. Make sure you do enough damage on the way out the door. Nobody gets out alive.
EVERYBODY GET DOWN!!!!111one one one
(here he comes....here comes speed ra-cer...)
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I think Rome in the not conincidentally latter stages of its empire outsourced its legions. Didn't work out too well from what I remember. There wasn't exactly a lot of loyalty in that set up.
I wonder what will the overpaid U.S. execs think when the Indian companies at some point realize they can do better taking over the business themselves and cutting out the overpaid parasites.
Bastard Operator from Asia?
Peace, Love, Unity, Respect
Now all your personal data, including your ssn, password, and most importantly your cash flow, are coming across the desks of low-paid foreigners. They have no natural loyalties to our country, let alone their clients, and their low pay gives them incentive to abuse their power, to your personal detriment.
I am sure the bank claims it takes reasonable precaution against identity theft....but you just can't protect data from the techies that work on it. And when you can't trust the techs, you can't trust the company.
Just say No.
I thought the definition of layoff was when they no longer needed someone to perform your job function (they're eliminating the position) and as such they can not replace you within some specified period (a year IIRC) without first offering you your job back.
How can BofA lay people off and ask them to train their replacements?
Quite seriously, if I was told to train my replacement, I'd go out of my way to make sure he is useless. I mean, what guts does it take to tell someone to dig his own grave?
Yes, I'd train him, but my working script would be every single antic from the BOFH archive. And I'd also hand him the dictionary from the infamous Monty Python sketch.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is just more fuel for the fire. Next there will be an article about some CEO complaining about how there aren't enough skilled IT workers in the U.S. and how college students are not entering the field. I just don't understand how U.S. companies can continue to build up so much ill-will (or bad karma if you will) with practices that BoA at least acknowledges are offensive and yet continue said practices. A big price is going to be paid for these betrayals someday, a very big price.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Do a bad job on the training. Do just enough to avoid getting canned early. No more.
That company recently announced over 5000 job cuts. You can bet they weren't in India, China or Russia.
>This is legal but it's unhealthy. The return to the shareholders is short term and long term this
>practice stands to damage employee morale...
That's one of the problems with the way performance is evaluated now. They're ALWAYS looking for the short term fix, because that's the timeframe used to gauge performance. If you institute a short term policy that looks good NOW, but hoses the country or the company later, by the time that happens, you'll have moved on, and it's someone else's problem. Further, there's absolutely no incentive to introduce stable long term solutions under these conditions, because all the credit for them will go to your successor, as he/she will be at the helm when the your decisions bear fruit. In the meantime, it's your fault for that great big hole in the budget (the cost of putting those solutions in motion).
First of all, many US companies derive disproportionately more revenue abroad than they create jobs abroad--that's an imbalance that must be corrected. From that point of view alone, outsourcing is inevitable.
Second, current employees have a choice: they can drop their pencils immediately and leave without severance pay, or they can do an unpleasant chore with severance pay.
Third, in training their replacements, they might also try to teach their foreign replacements about collective bargaining, US salary levels and benefits, and the kind of profits that their company will be making.
Well, those employees that still know about that sort of thing can. If you're part of the SUV-driving, Bible thumping, Republican voting crowd and don't remember why exactly people used to organize in unions and that sort of thing, then just think of the outsourcing as a free market mechanism for getting rid of inefficiencies--you in this case.
Just wanted to let you know.
Blar.
I recall just a short time ago when India based direct hire developers were 1/10th the cost of a US developer. Churn was high, analysis skills low to non existent, and it took at least 3-5 India developers to do the job of one good US hire. But, you could hire ~8 or so (with telcom and travel costs eating up the rest) for one US person so it saved money. Most of the time.
Times, for highly educated Indian's, are a chang'n! Wage rates are WAY up with 15%-25% increases expected per year and automatic increases after travel to the US, EU, etc.
If the the best BoA can do is 1/2 the labor rate of US hires they are going to be taken to the cleaners in short order. Soon you will see the consultants mucking through the BoA exec. offices offering to 'fix' all the issues and cost over-runs, bring in new staff (at much higher rates than their current US direct employees), and otherwise continue to clean them out.
Might I humbly suggest that the solution to this is maybe a large but local Credit Union?
Any services you know of that a bank can do a CU cant?
Didn't think so.
Plus, they are nicer, have better customer service and seem to do a better job hiring hot chicks to run the teller lines.
I don't have a BoA account so I have nothing to close, but I wonder how many other techies are going to their local BoA branch and pulling out their money. What a great opportunity for the credit unions. Imagine the advertising campaign: "Your Federal Credit Union, we don't send jobs overseas."
wherever I go, there I am.
Before this gets any crazier, some laws are needed to regulate outsourcing. I am law-challenged, so all I can suggest is, in the scenario that job(s) get severed because of outsourcing, the people getting replaced _have_ to be given other jobs within the organization. The idea of outsourcing is, the outsourcing entity goes on to do better/other work, not _stop_ doing work! For example, in this case, it would have been much better if at least some of the employees being replaced were given managerial positions over the Indian staff. Everyone needs to push for laws on stuff like this, not just the blokes being laid off.
The parant comment is SOOOO accurate!
So when you want to debit the account, you just click the transfer button and type in xxxxxx(U.S. Techie's account) and that's all there is to it!
The real kicker that TFA didn't seem to mention was, alot of times the people "leaving", didn't know they were leaving. So while training a replacement when you know you're going to be fired is one thing. Training Abdul in MySQL database management only to get fired the same day his training is complete without warning or notice, is rather cold-fucking-hearted. I knew companies outsourced, when you notice large tech companies and even telecoms doing it (Dell, HP, Comcast, Time Warner etc) then it's a real kick to the gut to not just see replacement training for firees but not even telling the fired person what's going on.
You know in a movie or tv show when the bad guy and the good guy meet up for something and a situation occurs for say a hostage release or whatnot? And the good guy always hands over or does what the bad guy says cause he believes him at his word he'll let the hostage/bomb/whatever walk away unharmed? Yea what happens most of the time? The bad guy double crosses the good guy, gets what he wants then shoots the other guy in the back or goes aganist his word simply put. Thats what this feels like, yet you aren't even aware of it. Sure some, maybe half the companies based on what interviewed people said, do let you know in advance. Even thats kinda of lowball, but still not knowing is a pretty scum like move.
Aw Frell this
This is pretty bold and unacceptable. There is no reason why someone should be required to train someone taking their livelihood away from them, and there is no way that any ethical argument can be made in favor of this. This is plain and simple greed, and this is simply the way business is done. The way to handle something like this is to hire people on as training consultants. The job is finished before any sort of training, and anyone wanting to stay to train the newcomers gets a raise and further severance. The fact that the jobs are going away at all is asinine, but if they are going to go the jobs left in America will be the training and management. Unfortunately, they will not create those jobs but rather heap those responsibilities on the lower ranked employees for no extra compensation, which is the American way. I can't believe anyone would accept a job from a company like that overseas anyway. I guess the exploitation by American companies is worth a wait in line now, in this country and others. What a strange world we live in...
Apple pulling out of India was funny, but if BofA ends up doing it, I'm going to be taking a good hard look at every single transaction I & everyone I know has made from last year, untill then.
Can't be fukin wit mah money bishes...
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Golly! Well, what do you know -- the fine folks at the SF Chronicle have suddenly discovered that major companies like Bank of America are outsourcing technical jobs to India. Imagine that! Years after the fact, the SF Chronicle finally picks up on this disturbing new trend in American business. Wow! I am just amazed at the stellar reporting guys, just splendid work, just splendid.
Anyway, all razing of the Chronicle aside, I'm not sure why anyone should get their knickers in a knot over the fact that Bank of America's management expects their employees to stay on the job until the Indian replacements come up to speed. The same thing happened to me over 10 years ago, when my job flew south to Texas. At the time, a few conversations with the Texan's replacing my group revealed that they made about 1/3 of the money in Texas compared to what we made in the Bay Area. We certainly had plenty of opportunity to compare notes with these folks; the company flew the Texans in and had them stay for about three months while we trained them on our jobs. Was it irritating to train my replacement? Well, sure, yah... duh. But, considering that the company had already decided to replace me, what good would it have done to complain? Who would care? At least I had money coming in, and I knew exactly when my job would end. I'm no big proponent of outsourcing jobs overseas, but I'm realistic too. It's better to take the money and start looking for another job instead of grousing about why companies treat you like crap when they know they're going to get rid of you.
As long as Bank of America thinks that they can save a buck or two by moving jobs to India, they're going to do it, no two ways about it. This is what the global market is all about. Reporters from the SF Chronicle bitching about it isn't going to make one whit of difference, except perhaps to convince Bank of America's management that they need to hire a few temporary PR agents to handle the negative publicity.
Personally, I'm waiting for the time when US firms start shipping off management positions to India. In a few years, when the bulk of the workforce is in India, this might start to look attractive...
Or maybe not.
If all the techies in US would close their BoA accounts and transfered balance on their BoA credit cards to other banks, they would notice. If they outsource to India, we should save 20% too and outsource to some credit union or other bank. Maybe Indian one? I know I will close it this very month.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I have no problem training my replacement when I am getting a promotion or transfer within the company. I have a problem training my replacement when I'm going to get laid off. Next job, I'll insist on a clause in the employment contract stating I will only train my replacement if I am retained within the company in a better position.
BofA's the "merger" of NationsBank and Bank of America. BofA before this merger was the entity that was the pioneering
bank that came up with MICR, etc. BofA after the merger started instituting the policies and practices that made
me leave NationsBank for BofA back when I got married and made a joint checking account back some 9 years ago- almost
immediately after the deal went down, the rules changed to be just like NationsBank's. You can see who was the top
in that merger- and it wasn't BofA. They're NationsBank, just not in name.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I suggest these idiot board members go and read the number one, definitive guide on running a multinational company properly - as well as making some serious profit.
.. I think its board members too know one or two, or rather 4.98 BILLION things about making profit.
I'm not sure which company's board you're a member of (one of the oil companies?), so I can't say how much profit you consider "serious".
However, seeing as how BofA made nearly $5 billion dollars in profit last quarter
I'll tell ya that's serious enough for me.
I am going to close my account on Monday, and move to a local bank.
The meaning of your Life is up to you. Mean well. -- Me, 9/11/2001
Anyone know a bank in the US that still banks in the US? I'll be pulling my savings out of bofa and going somewhere else. Please elaborate on where that 100 million in savings went also. I'm curious if the bofa board of directors put it all up their nose during a business meeting in costa rica, or if they did something like put up a homeless shelter with it.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Posted anonymously because I (still) work for BoA...
I'm not going to debate the fairness/unfairness of the situation, but what most employers fail to realize is that training a replacement is not that easy. Sure, if you're a techie type, you can explain how the systems are set up, where all the J2EE servers are located and all the other bits of information that a replacement would need. But, in order to operate efficiently, your replacement needs to know how the *business* operates, not simply where the bits and pieces are. And that's the problem - how do you summarize (in my case) over 10 years of experience working for financial institutions? How do you succintly explain the difference between broker/dealer and direct accounts, for example? Or how broker commisions are calculated and distributed? Or mutual fund pricing fund versus equity pricing? I could go on, but you get the idea.
Coding errors are one thing - the more subtle errors occur when some arcane piece of business practice is misunderstood. Even worse, it can take a long time before these errors are discovered, by which time substantial errors in client accounts have accumulated - a nightmare scenario for a financial institution.
Bottom line is that if you want to keep your job, it's not enough to simply be a code jockey. Invest in your future, and take active steps to go above and beyond you job description - become intimately familiar with the business that you're in.
I cannot imagine the humiliation of being forced to train an Indian hired at half your wages to do your job. Bad enough to have to train a local replacement but usually circumstances there are that you're quitting or something. But to be laid off then forced to train some other nationality sweatshop worker to do your job - that just takes the cake. And how ironic - Bank of *AMERICA* - this so classically illuminates the state of our nation. While unemployment here is rising, our corporations are getting fat and rich by using foreign labor at half the price. While I have always had the opinion that labor unions were not needed anymore thanks to US labor policies - methinks that has changed - we need an upswell of unions to force our jobs back onto *OUR* soil!
When you outsource, you don't import a bunch of guys who engage in ethnic nepotism to import other Indians for the huge increases in dowery ($50k frequently) they can enjoy from a green card, as well as minting MBAs and lawyers from the corporate education benefits. That way, when the company finally goes tits up, the way Sun did, you haven't left a mafia in the USA.
Seastead this.
I'm sure they'll do an outstanding training job with all that extra motivation and the new workers will outperform the worn out US workers twofold. The cost saving will be titanic and isnt that great for all of us?
So in our society that is more and more resembling a corporate-controlled cyberpunk dystopia, is it a good idea to piss off the most tech-savvy portion of the populous?
I think it's pretty ridiculous the way they jack with people's lives and then say "it's just business." With all the people they are shit-canning, you't think at least one or a small group of them would seek some sort of revenge. So for a fleeting moment, my mind flashed the idea mimicking one of those horror movie scenarios. In this scenario, one of these 'money saving execs' is kidnapped, then strapped to a pole or something with some explosives near by and then told he had to cut off an arm or a leg or something in order to escape.
When you get down to it, this is not too dissimilar to the horror these soon-to-be jobless people are facing. Not only will you be fired, but you will be forced to train the people who will replace you?
The knee-jerk reaction of many will probably be, "train'm wrong!" but I'm sure they've already thought about that and have some way of preventing that.
If that group of people were unionized, they wouldn't be facing this. They wouldn't have to train their replacements. They could all agree to decide to walk out at once leaving this business to hurt for their decision. Hell, for that matter, if they were unionized, they'd have some leverage and not have their jobs outsourced to India.
On one hand, labor unions are a pain in the ass. On the other, it's easy to see what employers are willing to do to individuals.
I wonder if that "train your replacement -> severance pay" is part of the working contract.
This is why everyone should have 6-9 months of expenses stocked away as an emergency fund. If my boss comes to me tomorrow and tells me I have to train my replacement, I'm telling him to go screw himself. The only reason BofA or any other organization gets away with this crap is because people haven't gotten into the habit of saving for emergencies. If you weren't living paycheck to paycheck, you could tell you boss off if he tried to pull that crap. Unfortunately, the majority of you out there haven't figured this out yet so you're forced into these types of situations.
Have fun training your replacement. Me, I'd take my vacation days and walk.
From TFA:
BofA estimates that outsourcing has allowed the bank to save about $100 million over the past five years.
From Fortune 500:
So... that profit figure was damaged considerably by the $10 million or so in IT expenses. Which means -- using a very rough calculation -- profits rose from $16.464 to $16.465, a whopping %.009 (a thousandth of one percent) by eliminating those jobs!
It's amazing BofA showed any growth over the past five years what with carrying the dead weight of 500 IT people!
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
First time this happened to me was in 1997. Since there was no severence pay, as soon as I had a new job lined up, poof!
Any time they place a 5-day hold on a Government check, get the branch manager to take
the thing right off as soon as you see it.
It's in violation of Federal Depository Regulations (The one that governs check cashing, etc.) to place a hold
on a Government check- per the regulations, they are to be treated as if the check was a CASH
transaction.
It's a violation of Federal law for them to do it and any fees incurred by this hold are due back to you
including any fees the people you pay end up charging you, etc. I've had BofA branch managers stand toe
to toe with me on that one, only to back down when shown a copy of the actual regs from the Fed website.
They know the regs, even going so far as to being balsy enough to try to palm off things that aren't in
the regs as being "per Federal Depository Regulations"- and I've had to jam it down their throats
repeatedly. Again, it's a good thing I'm shifting my banking elsewhere; this BS is just one more good
reason.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
My experience: for each guy you fire, another one gets panicky, looks for a new job, and finds one. You can fire the guys you need least, but guess which one of the others will find a another job first... And then, train a foreigner, knowing you are getting the sack. For fuck sake, this is a BANK! All you need to do is to claim the indian guy doesn't understand your accent, throw in some "unfortunate misunderstandings", and the whole IT dept is on its way to hell. If I had money there, I'd run for my life.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I can't say I feel much sympathy for the BofA folks in the article...if they don't have the backbone to say "no," then they are simply condoning what BofA is doing. I'm not saying it's right, but please take your whine somewhere else. I would bet not a single one of them is a member of the Programmer's Guild or any other organization that has been trying to address this very issue for years.
You lay in the bed you make. Don't come whining because you don't have the balls to stand up to shit like this. Suck it up and move on. Or consider becoming proactive about the problem, joining a guild, pushing for a union, or contacting your congressmen. But please don't whine about the problem you've made for yourselves.
If you know you're getting fired, just don't work very hard.
I'd just goof off until they can you, or simply don't do a good job training, they didn't hire you as a trainer did they?
Worst case they're gonna fire you. If you were attempting to do this new training job you have a few arguements.
They knew they were going to fire you, just wanted to save severance.
Constructive dismissal, you're not a trainer you're a ?????, they just threw you into a job they KNEW you weren't qualified for to have an excuse to fire you.
all BS
they never mention the communication and documentation overhead that is the result of no more face to face and/or informal contact Its as if the managers that make these descisions in sharp contrast with the rest of the world never achieved anything valuable by just having a little chat in the coffee-room Its all about less salary and nothing else...?.
Like, totally!
I just loved that part -- they made a presentation to the workers about "understanding the Indian culture and who the Indian is".
Yeah, right, like any one of those employees who is being replaced really cares about that; that's really rubbing it in.
I have nothing against Indians. Nontheless, someone in managment is really retarted.
I have an account with BofA as of this coming Monday; I'm closing my account and moving my money to a smaller local bank. I ask that other BofA account holders do the same. The only way to stop this out sourcing of American jobs is to boycott the source.
Is there really much difference between
a) Boss: "Train your low-cost, foreign replacement so we can lay you off and save money, or you're fired right now with no severance pay."
and
b) Boss: "Have sex with me or you're fired right now with no severance pay"?
In both cases an employee is forced into doing something humiliating, and threatened with the loss of their income to encourage them to do it. Middle-class people with families to feed, clothe and house have no choice. It's nearly impossible for the average person to build up savings in this economy, and without that cash cushion going unemployed for a period of time is simply not an option. And that's exactly what BofA is relying on-- they've got these guys over a barrel and they know it. Sure sounds like a hostile work environment to me.
Surely there's some lawyer somewhere who'd like to take a crack at spinning these circumstances into gold.
1) Is it just me, or does the sum of $100million over 5 years say one of two things; that the IT spending at Bank of America is hugely inefficient, or they're being ovely optimistic about how much money they could possibly save through the outsourcing. I'm not questioning the need to 'cut off the fat' but at the same time, there needs to be some accountability when the results don't pan out to the promises preached by the powers that be.
2) What is the average pay of the IT worker there? have the been offered the possibility of a pay cut, or some other form of restructuring to allow even a modest amount to remain employed? like I said, all very nice 'cutting the fat' but there is more than one way to 'cut the fat' in an organisation; having seem the wastage before, cutting a few technies is chicken shit compared to the monumental cockups that get done when upper management get their noses into decisions which they're not qualified to make - prime example of these cock ups was in Australia, with National Australia Bank, and $300million lost due to currency trading cockups - who bore the brunt of this financial cock up? the employee's, the lowly grunter in the trenches.
I think they should change it to Bank of India!
When I hear of these companies downsizing or screwing over their workers.
I just make sure of one thing i can control.
I will never do business with them.
Never say never, but dare if i lay down and allow my morgage to pass through their slim ridden fingers.
The thing that companies don't realize in foreign outsourcing is the long term impact on their business:
Let's cut off our noses to spite our faces. Let's shoot ourselves in the foot. Heaven forbid we do something with long term positive effects when short term effects will be to put lots of money in the hands of a few at the top so that they can oppress the masses more and become richer.
There truly needs to be legislation restricting the outsourcing of jobs to foreign workers. Otherwise we are going to see bad times ahead for the majority of Americans.
Unless these poor souls had a contract specifically saying they didn't have to do this, they are up a creek.
Contracts are the ONLY protection labor has. And the better the contract negotiator, the better the contract. That's why UNIONS are such a good idea.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
There's a whiff of xenophobia about all this. I mean, let's take this piece by piece... what's wrong here?
Is the generic idea of outsourcing wrong? That's just capitalism, people. In a free market, companies are allowed to maximise their own profitability and they can do this by outsourcing. If we trust free market principles, it turns out that such behaviour is in the long term in fact the best for everyone - outsourcing ventures are only successful if they achieve the right balance and provide good service for reduced costs. I'd trust that the company's execs thought a bit harder and made more careful studies than you have in the 5 minute interval between reading and replying. If this messes up, it would hurt *them* most. The fact that outsourcing is most profitable is a problem for politicians to deal with, not for individual banks to decide. And like patriotic fervour ever factors into an employee's loyalty.
If the fact that employees are low paid in other countries bad? Low pay doesn't matter as much as wage-price ratios - while according to direct currency conversions people are alot worse off, reduced cost of living in other countries somewhat offsets that situation. In the long term, increased globalisation of businesses helps drive up wages in foreign countries, not the reverse. The only remaining way to ease this situation is by international organisations like the UN, and that aspect is none of the bank's business.
Is the fact that these replacements will be trained by current employees bad? Of course, it's unfortunate for the current employees, but folks, this is what capitalism entails. If these people are skilled enough, they can find other jobs. *Not* helping train their replacements won't help them in any way - and it isn't that their jobs are much easier or better than dealing with Indian trainees. Training the new techs means is good for the company - who get a stabler transition, good for the customers of the company - who get better service, good for the new techs - who are less likely to be corrupt because they've invested effort into a career rather than a short term job, and makes no difference to the employees who are leaving.
Sure, it may be insensitive, but it's just good business sense. Or are you a socialist?
You have identified precisely the critical flaw in capitalist "democracy". Planning in three month increments to a maximum outlook of four years is so far beneath current human potential it is tragic and painful to watch.
Don't be like those poor chaps at Siemens that took the severence to train their replacements, and later complained that their Congressman sold them out http://www.outsourcecongress.org/USA/tata/siemens_ assignment_bonus.jpg. By agreeing to the terms of the severence, they in part sold themselves out. Don't play the game, just walk away.
In Belgium this would most likely be such a union issue, they would not even try it. I know to Americans unions are the evil of all evils. Due to them I get severence pay of 7 months after working only 2 years at a job and they decided to scrap 50% of the people.
What they do hee with outsourcing most of the time is sell off the IT department. Many people will not want to move away from their life and family, so that cuts down in staffing who they then can replace with cheaper people.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
In the words of David Noble:
(Corporations) "have the ability to transfer production from one country to another, to close a plant in one and reopen it elsewhere, to direct and redirect investment wherever the 'climate' is most favourable [to business]. . . . [I]t has enabled the corporation to play one workforce off against another in the pursuit of the cheapest and most compliant labour (which gives the misleading appearance of greater efficiency). . . [I]t has compelled regions and nations to compete with one another to try and attract investment by offering tax incentives, labour discipline, relaxed environmental and other regulations and publicly subsidised infrastructure. . . Thus has emerged the great paradox of our age, according to which those nations that prosper most (attract corporate investment) by most readily lowering their standard of living (wages, benefits, quality of life, political freedom). The net result of this system of extortion is a universal lowering of conditions and expectations in the name of competitiveness and prosperity."
- from Progress Without People
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
$100 million over the past five years -- For a large corporation, this kind of claimed cost saving out of an IT budget is so small as to be highly questionable. That's not to say deliberately false, but rather that the person or group that spearheaded this plan would naturally be inclined to boast of the savings in salaries, while overlooking less obvious costs resulting from the decision, including some that are intangible and impossible to objectively measure. It is quite possible that in the long term the costs will outweigh the benefits.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Can a company get by with less compliance to SOX when they offshore? How much of a savings would that provide?
Look for a credit union to join. works alot like a bank but it is bascially a mutual benefit corporation, their goal is to provide reasonable financial services to their members. As a member, you vote to choose the board that runs the CU from the membership (you can even run for the board if you like). The board then hires the management team.
The members *are* the share holders and part of the goal is to return as much money to the share holders as possible.
Every time I have dealt with a bank I have ended up with a bad taste in my mouth. I *always* look for a credit union ASAP after I move. And, there is no reason you cannot use it as a remote bank as most now have internet banking available and just moving rarely means you have to relinquish membership. Once in, always in.
HTH
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Actually, the entire premise you're building on there is bass-ackwards. If such a transition is properly managed, the gains are long-term: a fundamental change in the IT cost structure. The trick is that these arrangements aren't a slam-dunk, and they require rock-solid management. They're difficult, but they can work - and when done properly, they do provide long-term benefit to shareholders.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic since what you say is quite extreme. A free market is not always best. You need a mix of socialism and free market. The US is one of the richest countries and most capitalist, and yet by far does not have the highest standard of living. Why is that?
It's not directly related to IT outsourcing, but I wonder why people even use these big banks?
My financial institution will never outsource their workers, because I do my banking with a four-branch Credit Union (SFCU). Deposits are insured by the FDIC, but unlike B of A, Wells Fargo, or Citi (my former, evil, bank) you can actually get real customer service from a teller, talk to knowledgeable tellers in a branch, or even talk on the phone to someone who speaks and understands American English. My checking account pays dividends, there's no monthly or per-check fees, and the CU will even reimburse me for up to four ATM charges if I need to get cash from a non-CU ATM.
If you don't like outsourcing, or dealing with outsourced customer support people, don't rant in an on-line forum. Vote with your money and take your business elsewhere. Corporations don't listen to Slashdot discussion, but when enough customers leaving giving "I couldn't understand the person I talked to on the phone" they at least know there's an issue. Don't buy a Dell, don't bank with B of A. Support small, local businesses.
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what other companies have learned? Outsourcing looks good on paper, but the quality of the product is comensurate with what you are paying them. We've removed our outsource team because the quality sucks and they take about 3 to 4 times the amount of time a local programmer does to accomplish the same task, and these aren't super complicated tasks, they're simple everyday webapp development type tasks. I replaced two india based developers with one in-house developer, and the in-house developer gets more work done in a day than the two of them were able to do in a week, and the in house developer's stuff works, I don't have to keep sending it back like I did with team india.
I can think of several other companies that have had the same experience.
What you say (global wages will even out eventually) makes sense to a degree but I don't see why socialist/capitalist is a binary choice, some things just don't lend themselves well to "the market", health care being a prime example.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It may not be wrong. But I don't think legality is the point.
Over the longer term, what have these idiotic managers done? They've disconnected themselves from the very communities they serve. Sure, it's cheaper to have a bunch of lower paid foreigners do this work. But do they really understand what they're doing and why? Will they know when they've run in to a problem? Will they be able to reason their way through regulations and laws they had nothing to do with?
And ultimately, you know how employment agencies always instruct people to leave your work on good terms? It cuts both ways. If an employer cuts ties with large groups of employees under less than favorable terms, don't expect any good will from the public when the going gets rough.
Frankly, I see this as a huge disconnect between management and the techies who actually make things go. If anyone here owns this stock, I recommend they sell within the next year or so. A company this arrogantly ignorant doesn't deserve your money. Oh, by the way, that's captalism too.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
It might save the apt named "bank of america" 100 million, but outsourcing loses money nationally and as such leads to economic decline. If this globalization con worked, we wouldn't be running such huge trade imbalances and deficits, but *we are*. There is the proof right there, hard numbers. The globalization greedsters have had 30 years now to prove their congame works, and they have failed it. All it does is make shorter term profits for a very few in exchange for longer term gradual decline domestically. They have systematically killed off industry after industry, I don't know how much more people have to see of this nonsense to realise what a disaster it has been. They are struggling to keep even the dollar as the reserve currency, that is in decline as well, and primarily because the dollar keeps getting worth less and less as there becomes less need to deal with dollars internationally. Eventually the outsourcing will slow down once the buck ceases to be worth much more than any second world nation's currency, and our economy domestically drops further into the toilet. They have too many people faked out that perpetual debt is somehow a "good economic indicator" or something. Fairy tales for adults, believed in almost like a cult belief.
Tech career advancement (and survival) has always depended more on learning new things than anything else. The annual IEEE salary surveys have demonstrated that priority for decades. Tech people aren't necessarily the best to teach new things to humans, though their main job is to teach them to machines.
Advancing tech people, like the Indians in this story, react to competition by learning new things. Like Americans joining a union.
--
make install -not war
What is new about this topic? I as many others have heard this before. Outsourcing is happening everyone knows it.
Bank Of America - The BOA Constrictor from hell.
Pretends to keep your information private, yet gives out private information.
Charges fees for keeping your money. The Fees aren't enough for the greedy bastards at BOA
Now they do outsourcing. Outsourcing, fucks up everything it touches. Just look at Iraq.
They can hire outsouced workers in India for half price.
Not only do they profit on that outsourcing,
but they need to squeeze the fuck out of more people,
so they decide they will force their American workers,
to train outsourced workers for their jobs before they get their severence pay.
They Save money and Time training this way.
Bank of america should be called Bank of India. - Their very name is now false advertising.
Your service will suffer when you are told you need to write another "ba-check to pay for the ba-camels"
Not only is their outsourcing deal with India profitable, so now lets fuck Central America too.
Some American employees are commiting suicide.
Some insurgents in Iraq are commiting suicide.
Am I missing something?
Personally i refuse to deal with a company who outsources major parts of their business to other countries.
While they may be legal in their actions, its uncool.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They're ALWAYS looking for the short term fix, because that's the timeframe used to gauge performance.
This is the crux of many of our current problems. Behavior follows the reward system and the reward system in the western world is totally out of whack with long term good. Until this is changed things will continue to spiral downward.
In business it's the severe short term focus of institutional investors who don't buy and hold but speculate on a daily basis that causes CxOs and boards to focus on the daily stock price. The CxOs force decisions that improve "earnings" in the short term while sacrificing the long term health of the organization on their underlings. This is continues down through the organization.
Ever wonder why true innovation seems to come from independent startups? Maybe it's because they don't have to suck up to the Wall Street bunch and can look at the long term interests of the company.
Meantime, keep your options open and your parachute packed.
To many people's dismay, I have no problem w/ a company offshoring work, so long as my privacy is maintained within the US borders (ie medical, financial, etc). However, when the laid-off Americans can't find work, because there are tons of H1B workers offering to do the same work for less, we have a problem. Many times foreign-educated H1B workers can afford to do the job for less, because they don't have the outrageous student loans to pay off like many US workers do, or they leave their family back home, and only get a small place to live and ship the money home. Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally against this, however we should not be increasing the H1B quota (already maxed for 2007) when tons of US tech workers are being laid off. If companies want to use that many foreign workers, then let them do it all the way and off-shore it, and let the people who live here have a better chance at a job.
If I was one of the techies about to be unemployed, it would be in my best interests to make that "balance of cost and performance" be as unbalanced as possible. In that respect, I'd probably do a poor job of training my replacement. I'm not a teacher, I'm a worker.
I think the problem with "offshoring" (not outsourcing, although offshoring is a type of outsourcing) is that the company is telling everyone that the solution in America failed them in some way, whether it be price, value, whatever. That hurts no matter where you slice it.
Personally I blame the Walmart mentality, that people will sacrifice tons of quality so they can save money. When it applies to goods, it's reasonable. But applying it to people is only going to ruin a company in the long run.
When people don't join unions. Is paying $2 a week and attending a meeting once every 6 months really that much of a bother? It's certainly make them think twice about doing stuff like that (which would be illegal in a number of other countries)
Get a grip people. The management of BofA has a fiduciary and I would argue a moral duty to maximize proft for the owners of the corporation. Every dollar paid to an employee is a dollar taken from the shareholders. If you imagine shareholders as widows and orphans it might temper your indignation.
You can't outlaw out-sourcing.
That is just the way business is done. Its just an extension of demand-side economics. Everybody's looking for a cheaper way so the cost of production doesn't cause inflation.
You CAN outlaw off-shoring. We all know how effective that is. The borders aren't so much barriers as they are suggestions. A much better solution is the imposition of a tarriff wiping out the difference between doing work off-shore and doing it merely out-sourced.
The gummint would LOVE this as it requires administration but no stake holders and NO DELIVERABLES. The source of funds to pay for it the external to the country. As long as people want to get in because life out side sucks rocks, they can charge the moon and the stars.
We've started doing this all ready. "Take all the "lousy Mexicans"(1) and send them back."
Them go and pay $68.00 a pound for lettuce and you can't find an asparagus tip or a mushroom for love nor money. What do you want to do? Sit inside in an air conditioned room or stand and bend all fuckin' day in the hot sun (and Man it can get HOT.)
1) I say Mexicans but it refers to anyone who did not get to choose who'se cunt s/he slid outta. (Hmm. I didn't get to fill out a form neither.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This didn't used to be the case. Large businesses used to be owned by families and had been in the family for many generations. The family chose who would be the next head of the company, even if it was some dimwit son that was going to do the company great harm. The rational was that the heir had a vested interest in the long term well-being of the company, and even if he was inept, he would be good intentioned. Companies flourished due to the dedicated nature of these owners. Given these were the people that keeled over of heart attacks at 50, but in the long run it did the company AND its employees a great deal of good.
Today, it's "ok who's your CEO this year?" They come, cut quality, lower prices, boost sales and cut workforce, give the company a little short-term polish, and then move on to CEO another larger company somewhere else. Meanwhile, a year later, the company they bolstered up on bad foundations collapses due to destruction of infrastructure.
As much as the people despised the Rockafellers and Fords of years gone by, they had the model right for company survival and growth. Keep it in the family, keep dedicated people at the top.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I run a little network engineering company. We're getting some customers who want 24x7 service and I think if a few of them sign up I can afford to hire a couple of guys in Romania or India to provide night coverage. We'll pay 'em good, they'll get some of our R&D work, and we're free to expand further. Life is good.
Some outsourcing to India will succeed. Some will fail. You cheered when the internet provided you Japanese bondage pr0n, now you get to suck it up when it lowers your wages. Seems a fair trade to me
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
So it would appear that some accents are better than others in their eyes.
The professionalism is gone from software engineering.
It grew from computer science with an influx of new systems and new employees in the '90's. Professionalism went out the window, long hair was grown. For 100 crappy, expensive projects, one survived. A negative image was burnt on people's minds.
Next, the programmer started to become a blue collar worker. They do more for less pay, punch a clock and no one lets them make any business decisions.
Now comes the next backlash, outsourcing. Very few company officers come from IT. Administration is in the dark about IT decisions. They rely on marketing information both coming and going to make decisions. IT gets pissed at installing yet another crap package and stupid patch. It's an US v. THEM situation.
Every software developer that runs around saying "I don't care about the EVIL business side, I just want to program" this is your reward. Complete impotence.
The solution: Software Engineer Professional society. One very effective Professional Society is the Society of Actuaries. They make GREAT money, business decisions and all they have to do is apply mathematics.
dyslexics of America, Untie!
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
is outsourcing tech work to Indian companies whose employees do the work at half the cost of what a U.S. worker gets paid.
Sounds sensible to me to hire whole companies at cost of a half american.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Doesn't matter what you do, the technology you've helped create has flattened the world and made people living anywhere in the world your competition. Sticking your head in the sand won't make the issue go away. You've got to figure out where your place is in this world - where you bring enough value to your employer or your customers that they're willing to pay your price. The same thing happened during the industrial revolution; the ones that thrived were the ones that woke up early enough and were willing to adjust.
1 /qid=1149950227/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7396187-3543345?_ encoding=UTF8
Read the book: The world is Flat
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374292795/sr=8-
It's a bit long-winded but is an important read for anyone in the tech industry.
It is this sort of thing that is leading to the fall of the USA. Believe me, I don't want to be negative, but more and more I feel the actions happening in the country are likely to lead to an economical down fall. Things that I can think of:
- the indebting of the country by the Iraq war
- the greed of media companies and corporate america
- the dumbing down of the education system
- outsourcing of the economy
How long before the country is full of business owners and criminals, because no one can afford what their own country is producing.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
If any of you use BofA investment services, you know that it doesn't even work properly with firefox/mozilla/opera/ or konqueror. It works fine with IE6 however. So annoying.
Okay so if BOFA saved $100 mill, why do they keep screwing me with fees? And where's my higher interest rate, thank you?
Of course the domestic BOFA workers could always pull an "Warp drive problems. All systems inoperative." i.e. "Four hundred years ago, workers who felt threatened by automation (aka outsourcing) flung their wooden shoes called Sabot into the machines to stop them...hence the term Sabotage." What I mean is, they could deliberately teach their replacements wrong. How many times have you convinced your younger brother to do something that would get him into trouble? I recall a guy in college who was taking french but couldn't speak a word. When asked for help translating a paragraph about how great his teacher was, the guy gave him the french words for "She's got big maguffies."
So much for telling your kids that if they go to college and learn a profession they'll have a good career.
The new American dream:
college + profession = good salary = high overhead = outsourced
I wonder how Miss Norton would feel if her job were outsourced.
The article claims that BoA hopes to save $100 million over 5 years, or roughly 20 million a year.
u /database.cfm?tkr=BAC&pg=1
Check out CEO pay here:
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ceo
What's the easiest way for a company to cut $20 million from their budget?
I would argue that the companies doing the outsourcing aren't bearing the full economic costs of the transition, and that there are other costs that need to be factored in.
First, there is the cost to the employees of finding a new job, which is never fully reflected in severance pay. Severance pay probably only covers the amount of time the employee will be idle. Other costs include retraining the employee to fit the new job (paid by his new employer), the psychological effects of having his job terminated (paid by him, his family, and society at large), the costs of moving if the new job requires it, and the loss of community if he does have to move. This last item is important: while a loss of community has all sorts of ill effects, the expectation of losing it several more times over the course of your work history is even worse. Ask anyone raised by parents who got moved around a lot by the military.
People who expect to move away end up less trusting, less willing to invest in new relationships, less willing to participate in community functions or worry about local issues. There was a time when the rich still had some sort of shared community life with their workers, and it was a time when employers had loyalty to their employees. But now those who own the wealth--and decide how it will be used--are more distanced from the rest of us, and have no stake in that shared community life. So they'll happily move jobs to Outer Ohfuckitstan to earn an extra 1% return on their investment, without regard for the problems these moves cause the wider society.
The country that benefits from the new jobs also receives increased inequality between the well-off and the poor. India's rise has been accompanied by increased tension between wealthy urban areas and poor rural areas. Back when everyone was poor, the rural areas weren't likely to complain about not having electricity, because few did have it, and it's hard to want things you don't see anyone else enjoying. While an increase in the standard of living is wonderful, it is poisonous to a society when extreme inequalities in wealth exist. Of course, by this metric, our own society is very, very unhealthy.
There is another cost that employers do pay, but rarely fully account for when planning an offshoring: the loss of expertise. No matter how well the departing employees train their replacements (and what's their motivation to do a good job?) it will be years before the replacements can match the original expertise. Some of the knowledge lost in transition may never be rediscovered, leading to permanent inefficiencies.
No, I'm not a socialist. But I'm coming to the belief that collective ownership of wealth is a good thing. If Bank of America was owned by its employees, then their salaries would show up on the "income" side of the accounting ledger rather than the "expenses" side, and much of the motivation to outsource would evaporate. Otherwise, there is an inherent conflict of interest between management and labor: management wants to keep costs low, and labor is simply another expense to be minimized.
Additionally, a worker-owned setup is necessarily more efficient. Workers have the greatest incentive to make the company run as efficiently as possible, so management doesn't have to spend its time figuring out how to best motivate the employees. The workers would just tell them. Worker-owned companies are also more concerned with long-term stability, because there is no golden parachute waiting if they can just keep the stock prices from tanking in the next three quarters. There is only the promise of continued employment. Finally, when a few investors own a company, the goal is to maximize their profit. When workers own a company, they still want to maximize their returns, but they can accept a wider variety of payment: a cleaner environment, more free time to spend with their families, improvements in the social fabric of their communities, less stressful working conditions.
In short, collective ownership allows the wealth of a company to serve the many, not the few. So bring it on, free market boy.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Hear, fucking Hear! Well said, I'm not sure if even I could have mustered a more earnest venemous rant.
Take consolation that I read your post (I view all threads at -1, so I can see what people are really saying) The indoctrincated children moderators of slashdot are sure to do their best to make sure you are ignored however.
The only thing they still had going has been technology, which was obvius, considering that they can spend enormus ammounts on it, being one of the bigest banks.
Having dealt with software, writen by half-paid Indian IT workers, I can only imagine what kind of shit we are about to witness. Because of that, and in solidarity with fellow US IT crowd, I must say: "So long, greedy BofA, I am taking my $0.02 elsewhere!"
This is exactly why our economy is going to the dogs. Companies keep exporting jobs to foreign countries because the work is cheaper. This saves them money in the short run, but what they don't see is that it is slowly killing them in the long run. For example this article is about a bank. This bank is outsourcing its tech jobs to India. Right now it saves them a few million a year, but what we know about America, which they are not thinking about, is that America imports more than it exports. You may ask how this affects the scenario. Well let me enlighten you. If we import more than we export then exporting jobs means that the money that goes to these workers in foreign countries, most likely, will not be coming back to American companies. If then the money does not come back to American companies, then it will most likely not be deposited in an American bank, thus they are putting their selves out of business slowly but surely. The biggest thing that these businesses should try and remember is this: Yes, Americans salaries are bloated, but those bloated salaries are what drove our economy to the point where it was at before it started to go to the dogs. Do these companies really think that SUVs would cost 50, 60 even 100 thousand dollars if American's salaries were not so high that they can afford to pay those prices. I think not! would anything in this country cost what is does if American's were not getting paid? Again, I think not.
They could save the same amount of money by eliminating one executive position at the top. Additionally, they would avoid the risks associated with placing critical data and software infrastructure so close to terrorist hotbeds. The enemy has tech-savvy help who know all about "back doors". The next big disruption could well be a logic bomb that will force all world commerce into "barter" mode. Just wait.
On the upcoming eve of the next election cycle, many companies are scrambling to take advantage of laws that allow them to munge and mangle the economy for the benefit of their coffers. Having survived this now a number of times, I am just about to the point of saying enough is enough.
If it were me in that position, the severance packages are all pretty much worthless unless your an exiting CEO, CFO or similar. You would be better off to just give them the middle finger, wish em well and hike it out the door and quite literally letting the door slam on the way out.
There are cost cutting efforts and then there is this. Twice I took severance packages and both times I got screwed big-time.
Leave em hanging! They want to save big bucks but make the top people lots of cash... let them do it on their own~!!! We are the ones that did the WORK that got them where they are. They want us to train someone else to do what we know, lets talk some rather large 6 figure salaries for doing that. We were not hired on as corporate technical "Trainers" or "Educators", and is not part of the job description. Odds are also that you still have to pay off student loans for that degree you spent a lot of your life obtaining. Its not worth it. Leave em hanging!!!
Just me two cents.
Cheers
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A constant influx of illegal aliens who suck the life out of our country? A welfare culture in many of our population segments (New Orleans, East St. Louis etc etc etc). A social "hammock" instead of a social safety net.
Political correctness instead of sane policies that address the issues of health care, immigration, welfare and other social ills.
Hell, it's probably the white males fault that we have a low standard of living.
Oh, so where is this magic "third way" that you are talking about? :)
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
This practice truly disgusts me. The textile and manufacturing industries saw this same exact thing occur with everything moving to China, Taiwan, and Mexico. Now the same thing is occurring with IT functions.
But this "problem" isn't the real problem, its a symptom of an overly "free" market with little or no controls. The politicians in this country have not introduced any kind of real legislation which protects US jobs. And this is because big business donates billions of dollars to politicians to prevent them from doing it. That is an absolute travesty.
If the only jobs located in the United States are going to be jobs which require geographic residence within the United States, then we have a huge problem.
Unfortnately, I don't see a solution to this problem for the United States. The only real solution is to move to a country which believes in protecting the jobs and skills of its citizenry. Because almost every country other than the United States does this.
I was an intern working for a tech support company back in oh... 2000 or so. I was busy doing support calls constantly with the "engineers" who were getting paid big bucks. One of my assignments as an intern was to train the President's nephew how to be a tech. This guy had literally never seen a HD before. He was being PAID while I was teaching him for free. After 6 months of driving half an hour each way on my own dime and hoping to get picked up, they finally admitted I was not going to be hired, but I was welcome to continue to come everyday "for the experience" right... I was also training some of their engineers. I walked after that.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
...outsourcing to reveal how racist /. readers are. It's interesting how moderation reveals that racism isn't just an exception but is in fact the sanctioned norm of the 'community'. How easy it is to be enlightened until you think that it's your job that's threatened.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
"has asked its techies to train their Indian replacements or risk losing severance pay"
Then they should train their replacements - badly. They should leave out large chunks of absolutely vital information that their replacements need if they are to do the job.
Then they can spend their severance pay, secure in the knowledge that everyone has gotten exactly what they deserved.
Savings from fucking up workers:
100 million over 5 years = 20 million / year.
Income of (only one! of) the blood suckers:
BoA CEO pay (in 2003) = 20 million.
---
Class war at its best.
By the way, have you ever looked at the profits that are made by the company that employs you? They are public, as well as the number of employees. Now do the division and compare with your salary. Do both after taxes for the real kicks, since profits are taxed less than wages. I get about 1/4-1/3 of the pie, depending on how you count it. And that figure is not even counting the blood sucked by upper management figures. Trickle down economy, I love thee!
That is a pretty dumb thing to do and to add insult to injury it is also a pretty poor troll. If you intentionally sabotage your employers offshoring efforts you could acutally expose your self to a lawsuit. Basically your options depend on:
If your local labor laws state that you have an obligation to train replacements during wholesale offshorings you are basically screwed. If you were dumb enough to sign a contract (believe it or not, you can actually object to clauses in an employment contract before signing it) obligating you to train replacements in the event of a wholesale offshoring you are also screwed since figthing it in court will probably bankrupt you even if the laws favor you. If you have a good union or some type of employee association to fight for you, you might stand a chance. Believe it or not there is strength in numbers. Unions can help in cases like this by bankrolling a single test case into court and thus set a precedent. They can also give employees leverage when dealing with employers in situations like this. I know that worker unity is unpopular these days, even with the workers them selves which I find pretty strange since I have seen plenty of examples of people getting bowled over by employers simply because they didn't stick together. In one particular case the employer acutally wanted to insert clauses into contracts that turned out to be legally indefensible when a few of us got together and hired a lawyer to assess the new and improved contracts the PHBs wanted us to sign. I suppose they either hadn't run them by their own lawyers or more likely they wanted those clauses in the contract for their intimidation value. Either way the PHBs backed down in this particular case. If you really want to do something organize your fellow workers and fight back. I'm not arguing for a return to the old trade union model but worker unity still has not lost it's value.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
. . . next time you're reading about the "tech shortage" in the United States.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
Here's a non-referral link to that book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374292795/
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
I agree with this, but as a small business owner that uses a CU they don't have things like:
SBA loans
Credit card processing
Alex
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
We can probably expect a substantial devaluation in the Dollar fairly soon. Take comfort in the fact that BofA will have to buy Rupees to pay the Indians with ever more Dollars every pay period. That's not even accounting for the rapid rise in pay among Indian tech workers. At some point they'll be stuck with an expensive and unresponsive foreign work force that won't be operating in BofA's best interest. That's what we learned from our "outsourcing experience". Nobody outsources to Denmark. Why? Because those guys cost about as much as us. Time will remedy the current wage imbalance.
Yes, an employee might be asked to train a replacement. But in this case, the replacement is bringing value to the employer (as a less expensive employee) and taking value away from the community and the country.
The employee losing the job is still part of the community and country. Are you prepared to say that the Global Economy makes communities and countries irrelevant?
Most people don't question where money comes from as long as they get it, and people who get rich seem to forget the community and country that helped them become successful.
Out-sourcing to workers outside your country is a betrayal. If you can look calmly at this phenomenon of the Global Economy, it's because you and those whom you love have not been affected.
Yet.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Actually Singapore and previously Hong Kong are much more capitalist than the US
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
your argument is flawed. it is not capitalism to take advantage of the lower wages an enslaved, communist or caste-system society has as a result of its oppression of people. When you see Bush and his big-business pandering minions, think of a new breed of slave trader.
I was already thinking about leaving BofA because of the fees (reminds me of the old Nations Bank days). This just inches me ever-so-slightly more toward leaving them now.
This is really a good thing for the U.S. society, which is capitalist.
In a capitalist society profits for the capitalists are always supposed to increase. This will increase profits, so it's a good thing for the society as it is set up right now.
If the Americans want higher wages they should consider switching to a system which has as a goal that isn't the exact opposite: sustenance wages for all employees, high profits for capitalists.
I mean, this is how I see it anyway. The worth of something to society has to seen with regard to the aims of that society. Being capitalist the U.S. society's aim is to maximize profits for capitalists, and so, to minimize wages for free-laborers. Anything which inhibits that can only been seen as socially bad.
I've got the best credit union on Earth for all of my business-doing needs. Car loan, Visa card, bill-paying. While vacationing in Albuquerque last month, I discovered to my surprise that there's a network of related CU ATMs that allows no-fee transactions... so I'll be using it more for that, too, whenever the chance comes up.
As long as I direct as little business through Bank of America as I possibly can, and take full advantage of the lower fees & better rates available through my CU, I figure I'm doing pretty well. If you have access to any sort of CU, I highly recommend a similar arrangement.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
It is not about having cheaper workforce, not about saving cost, not about outsourcing or offshoring... It is about executives making money! Just trace who actually invest in out sourcing and off shoring companies... those people who actually promote that idea and the same people that bragging about "cost savings".
Cost saving is not as important as making money on the whole process.
However, you will be hailed as a /. champion if you condemn offshore outsourcing.
Illegal aliens cost all of us uncounted BILLIONS each year in social services. Outsourcing to Asia on the other hand just affects a very few and poses no threat to the social welfare system.
We know whose ox is gored.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Wow. I never thought I'd read a worker-ownership comment that got modded up. Everyone always seems to forget that ownership of capital by labor (rather than employment of labor by capital) is completely different from government socialism.
Of course, the biggest problem modern worker-owned firms have is getting investment capital. Workers don't usually have much of the stuff! The Mondragon cooperatives in Spain's Basque Country (arguably the most successful worker-owned enterprises to date) even needed to create their own bank to get capital.
Given the above definition of a "specialty" occupation, doesn't it seem reasonable that the person replacing my job would already have the knowledge required to get the job done? Makes me wonder how the Department of Labor would allow these people to get a work visa when it is clear that all the company is trying to do is replace a higher-paid American worker with a lower-paid foreign worker with absolutely no regard for job suitability.
Here is a great Wikipedia entry for H-1B visa's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1B_visa
"According to an estimate, outsourcing has allowed the bank to save about $100 million over the past five years"
Is it just me, or does $100M not seem like a whole lot of money for a company like BofA? I wonder if the whole thing was really worth it, given all the downsides of outsourcing.
Another real issue not spoken about is that India is seriously poor. I mean really dirt poor. I mean people chopping off the fingers of their children so that they can beg better poor. And while there may be 1 or 10 percent of the Indian population that is middle class by USA and EU standards, (and there may not be that), it doesn't change the fact that everyone else is seriously poor.
And has been poor for thousands of years. And will remain poor forever as long as the Indians that actually do have the ability to do something about it continue to refuse to even consider such a course of action.
Which brings us to the main difference between India and America, North America above the Rio Grande. These three countries (USA, Canada, and Quebec) were founded on the dream that by righteous living, accountable rule of government and rule of law, the right balance between private and community resources, and a commitment to personal, economic, and religious freedom; everyone would prosper. India has no cultural commitment to having all Indians prosper. Just the opposite; Indian society is set up so that there would be four economic castes that determine one's place in the society with no hope of ever advancing. Not now, not in ten thousand years.
So yes, there is a group of technically advanced people who can deliver the IT goods for 20% of the price of the USA or the EU. But it is a slavery-based society. And that fact is never going to go away. It will get more and more uncomfortable for the large corporations because the same technology that allows IT work to be done in the half of the world ruled by despots and slavery allows instant communication of the slave conditions to be constantly fed to the West.
Slavery is a moral issue. Do not underestimate the extent morality will eventually overrule economic considerations. It takes a long time for this to happen, but it always does. The anti-slavery movement in the USA and the EU is just as powerful as the corporate forces there. It simply takes longer to consolidate its force.
No matter how well the departing employees train their replacements (and what's their motivation to do a good job?) it will be years before the replacements can match the original expertise.
Does your statement about replacements matter whether it's off-shore or simply someone leaving their job and training their local replacement? What's John Q. Patriot's motivation to do a good job when he's replacing a departing employee? Are people in India not motivated to have continued pay so they can support, house, and feed their family?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
That is an interesting comment.
/only/ there.
Individuals have rights.
Businesses have no rights. Government have no rights.
The society is a construct of the Individuals. That society them may sustain a Governement, Businesses, etc.
But the rights are at the individual level, and
So, Mr Troll, that 'situational ethic', is absolutely fundamental.
And, btw, Deborde and the Situationists would probably disgree on your use of 'situational'...
companies are allowed to maximise their own profitability and they can do this by outsourcing.
It is questionable whether this is true. Usually it is not a company that maximises its profitability, the managers are maximising their own income. If they cut costs in half, in the short run the company will be more profitable and they can raise their own salaries, get a huge return on their stock options, etc. In the long run, they don't care if the company goes down, they have left their previous post a long time ago. Capitalism works if it is in the best interest of all employees, especially upper management, to make a company profitable. Unfortunately, that is not how it works in practice.
Is the fact that these replacements will be trained by current employees bad?
Yes, it is. If I was forced to train my replacement, I would do a pretty bad job. I would give him source code (maybe that three weeks old version which has some obscure bugs in it), some out-of-date documentation, tell him a bit about what the programs are for, and end with, "if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask." Believe me, there is no way he will be able to ask the right questions before I have left the company. After a year or so the shit will really hit the fan, and the boss has two choices: either hire me as a consultant, for which I will ask an exorbitant amount of cash, or suffer the complaints of angry users. In the end, the company will have to bear the losses.
Now, the way to do some successful outsourcing, is to fire the employees who are rubbish anyway, and promote the remaining employees yo a job as coordinator of outsourcing. Then you have the people who know how to do the job guide the people who are doing the job. And your new coordinators will be pretty happy about training their replacements because they benefit from it too.
I'll end up by telling you a true story. I once worked at a software company, and we got a big job for maintaining some specialized software for which there were a few dozen clients. The guys who originally wrote the software were too expensive for the company where they worked, so they fired them all and outsourced the job to us. Our first task was to make a small change to one of the programs. Unfortunately, the system was constructed in such a way that you could not compile just one program, you had to compile them all, and deliver new recompiled versions of all programs to all clients. We tested our change and delivered the programs to the clients. We soon found out that the guys who had written this stuff had been pretty angry for being fired, and had riddled all programs with small bugs. Not things you would notice immediately, but things that would rear their ugly head after working a while. There was no good way to trace these small surprises, the only thing we could do was fix bugs when they were reported by clients. We had one client who had to restore backups on a daily basis. After a year, ALL the clients had dropped the software and moved on to a competitor's product. Those are the dangers of "insensitive outsourcing".
these are global companies. They rise and fall on a global scale. America can go to hell for all they care. They've got emerging markets in china and india, without a populace that expects a comfortable standard of living.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"Sure, it may be insensitive, but it's just good business sense. Or are you a socialist?"
Sure, after all, there's always the poorhouses for them.
Look, I'm not socialist, and, yes, the xenophobic attitudes don't have any justification, and global economic integration has great benefits (you list some); but there is something wrong when the change is profitable, but all the profit goes to the owners/managers/shareholders, and all the costs of the change are carried by the workers at the front line (who loose their benefits/cost-of-living increases and/or jobs). Why are the people at the bottom always the ones that pay for it all? Here's why we should care: all those workers put out of a job won't be buying things in the local economy anymore (at least until they get another job). Furthermore, we all know that how ever many millions of dollars this change saves, the bank is HIGHLY unlikely to pass those savings on to their customers, so there isn't much in it for me if I'm *not* an employee either. Maybe if I've invested in the bank, but if I don't have the money to do that, I'm SOL.
It looks great on paper. It's exporting jobs for reasons that make short-term economic sense, but it will have long-term costs to the whole economy. Follow it to its natural completion: ALL easily exportable jobs being transferred out-of-country. You'll have a bunch of managers at the top of innumerable companies whose jobs are not impacted (if anything, they'll make more money), but their local market is being forever undermined. The consolation that some products might be cheaper is worthless if companies simply cream the cost savings off as profit and pocket it, or if people don't have a baseline wage with which to survive. Sure, the people at the top can say they are sensitive to the costs of change, but they don't actually bear any of it, so why should they really care?
Given the long-term implication of widespread outsourcing, I'm fully within my right as a consumer to say, "No, I'm not buying your product if you outsource most of your workforce elsewhere." I'll buy local -- even if it costs a little more -- because that is of greater benefit to me. Somebody employed by a local company is more likely to buy *my* product, and keep *me* employed. This isn't socialism or xenophobia, it is understanding how the economy is interconnected in more ways than a single company's financial statements, or even the economy-wide corporate profitability, can show.
It is pure, capitalistic self-interest via my dollar spent and the thought of how much of it is likely to ever come back to me. I'd also like to invest locally so my children might be able to work someday too. I suppose there is a socialist ideal in there somewhere, but I think of the implementation as voting with my money in the sense of "enlightened capitalism". It's got nothing to do with entitlement or workers rights or anything like that. It is placing value in more than the lowest price possible.
There's a world-wide workers union needed, with as most important objective : world-wide minimum wages. This is absolutely necessary, because employers already work globally, and by pitching different countries(the workers of those countries) against each other, they can exploit maximally leaing to 21th century feudalism! This is why nationalism is the new opiate for the masses, keep 'em stupid !
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I've been told by several Qwest managers that when Tata first started bidding on contractors the sales executive said they could deliver consultants for 40% less than US consultants. The icing on the cake was the end of the sentance. "Even less if you hire a woman." Class act those Tata guys. Not only have they preyed on the LS1 system to avoid the equal salary requirments of H1B (not that the DOL actually enforces that), but they get to bring their sexist pay system to the US.
Attrition is at 30% thanks to managements activities. They are unable to hire due to low-ball offers and idiotic interviews but insist they need more growth. They are opening and expanding offshore design centers and asking the remaining employees to help bring these "on-line". We're all sandbagging it by building a lot of stupid processes no sane person would follow, but it's inevitable unless laws change.
If you want to talk about a "free market", why don't you include the whole picture and connect the dots?
If we are paying them X number of dollars for offshored work (different than just outsourced), and someone in the US makes 8-10 times X, sooner or later, someone in the offshore is going to realize that this data is worth a lot more than they are being paid to work with it. The incentive is much higher for law-breaking, and the penalties, being in a foreign country, are harder to enforce.
It is too high a risk. You trust that the execs "thought a bit harder and made more careful studies than you have in the 5 minute interval between reading and replying", but look at Enron and Worldcom in the US. Corruption and exploitation are rampant. And with disclosure laws being what they are, we may never know how bad something may go down off shore.
You need to think a little harder and stop having blind faith in the "free market". The system works differently when you go outside the borders.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
They have no job, no job equals no income, no income means they can't buy anything or have a bank account, not buying anything or having a bank account hurts the company, the company ends up closing because no one has a job because everything they trained for and have the best skills for has been outsourced to other country's.
But hey, if a company can save $10,000 a month and never pass on the savings to it's customers and their CEO can retire with $170 million because he's a good bullshitter and wormed his way to the top, then who gives a shit right?
The US is just as statist and tax-happy as west european countries. It just spends a lot more of those taxes on its military than most countries do, leaving less for, say, health care. It also enjoys a very high standard of living.
I was surprised that the article didn't mention the Kevin Flanagan case, which involved Bank of America, outsourcing, and this 'train your replacement or no severance' policy.
In 2003, Mr. Flanagan, a programmer for BofA, was told that his job was being outsourced and that he had to train his (Indian) replacement to receive severance. (Some news reports say he was fired after refusing.) He went into the parking lot and shot himself.
The Kevin Flanagan Case
U.S. Tech Workers Bear Brunt of Immigration Policy (1st graf)
Techies see jobs go overseas (graf: "Suicide Blamed on Layoff")
I just closed my bank account with them. I had to do it anyway (moved to an area with no BofA branches within 60 miles) but I made sure to tell the agent the OTHER reason why. They can rot in Hell.
Oh, and to add another point.
Your crappy "free market" ideals with regards to offshoring and importing tend to leave out real-world physics and political concerns. It takes a lot more energy to ship something from China than it does to manufacture it here. Energy costs being what they are, this is only going to become more and more of a problem, and I think the whole sad affair of offshoring will eat itself alive and evaporate. Granted, this doesn't affect the tech industry like it does manufacturing.
Also money paid to employees to manufacture a product made in a country typically stay in that country. You can call it socialism, but I call it taking care of your country's national interests. Socialism itself isn't a bad thing, it just has never been done right.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
The kicker to this whole thing is that the prick who was behind this whole IT outsourcing thing announced his resignation this week! Force people out of their jobs and leave before the thing's even halfway done. Nice... Although I'm one of the people who's being retained, I have little desire to work at such a company. When I do decide to leave, I'm not sure if I'll give my 2-weeks' notice, or just stop showing up.
First step of not being ignored is not being anonymous...
There is nothing stopping you from creating an employee owned bank today in the USA today. Why don't you go for it?
Instead of sabotaging the company, which is illegal and actionable, they should consider doing the training very, very carefully. For instance, what procedures does your company have? What are the relevant formulars? Does the Hindu guy understand the technical vocabulary in English? Maybe he should read the fine manuals. All of them. Did he learn binary at his ITT? How about a short test.
Just drag it out for a few months. The management believes training is so easy, it should take a few weeks. Show them how much know-how a new employee needs for the job.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
I really do try to be more careful in my language than that. I meant to say that there is little motivation for the departing employee to train his replacement well.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Bank of America announced today it will be changing it's name to Bank of India.
Sure, it may be insensitive, but it's just good business sense. Or are you a socialist?
Bill O'Reilly, is that you? Sean? Rush?
Jesus, I hate this kind of bullshit. You're either with us or with the enemy. Either you support outsourcing or you're a commie.
So, the author of the parent post is not only a xenophobe but a socialist as well? To reject outsourcing as currently practiced is to reject capitalism in general?
Nice broad brush stroke buddy, but it doesn't fly. Your analysis of situation is based on an idealistic text book "free market" which does not exist in the real world. There are no free markets. There are trading agreements, treaties, immigration laws, manipulated currency valuations, etc. all of which are politicized, contrived and not influenced by magical "invisible hand of the market". These factors render your simplistic analysis and conclusions useless.
It's kind of funny. Back in the sixties, it was the ultra liberals and socialists who were the overly idealistic utopians. Today, it's the no-libertarians who stick their head in the sand when comes to reality. They regurgitate garbage written by the CATO institute then stand back and look at you indignantly as if you are an idiot not to see the gospel truth in their brilliant remarks. If you disagree, you're a commie.
- Your credit union probably outsources their credit card service to someone like MBNA. Which is owned by Bank of America.
- At least until Check-21 went into effect, most banks could return your cancelled checks to you. Check images are miserable.
- Many credit unions in my area have decided that it's not enough to serve their existing base, they have to grow their membership and will now take just about anybody -- probably because their existing membership is getting laid off by the large companies who facilitated the CU's creation in the first place. And to handle this, they're jacking up fees. Honestly, I think they go visit the banks every 6 months, assess the bank's fees and jack up their own to some percentage of the banks so they can still say they're cheaper.
You exist solely to be asset-stripped - your skill, your energy, your money, your property. Get used to it.
I had a savings account with them for about 2 months, i wanted to get a checking account but they didn't offer any free checking. I called their support to cancel the savings account and was speaking to someone in india. As soon as I asked to cancel I was then transferred to someone in america. OK.
Anyway I closed the account and went with another bank that did have free checking and never looked back.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
How do they avoid the taxes? My withholdings are removed from my pay before I get the money.
I see people whom I assume to be illegal immigrants working in the fields. I see people whom I assume to be illegal immigrants bussing tables. I see people whom I seem to be illegal working at McDonalds. All are working for large corporations. So tell me, how do the illegals get to keep their withholdings?
Sure, there are probably small-time employers who are paying cash to illegal immigrants. If you are aware of someone doing this, you should report it to the appropriate government agency. Reporting it to Slashdot isn't going to solve anything.
I wont even get into your "massive amounts of assistance" nonsense. I don't know of anyone living the good life on public assistance, not when you have to pay California prices for basic necessities.
Anyone with half a brain has seen this coming for a few years. Outsourcing tech jobs to India is not some new idea that just surfaced last week.
Anybody who hasn't understood that tech jobs like software development are moving from rich countries to poor countries, has either been living under a rock for the last 5 years, or is really stupid. Either way, they deserve no sympathy. Smart people do not go into, or stay in, dying professions.
Nothing to see here. Move along
It amazes me that this is your perspective. Perhaps you are trolling but I'll take you at face value.
The US welfare system which is woefully inadequate, in combination with its lack of social mobility result in a more or less permanent underclass of hopeless individuals. For you to say that the US system is a social "hammock" tells me than you have little knowledge of the world outside your borders. Most of the rest of us in the "West" have much more redistribution of wealth than you folks do and yet, people still go to work, there are still thriving and successful global businesses which come out of the various countries in Europe plus Canada, all of whom have a sane and humane social model which stands as a stark accusation of the great waste of human potential in the US. The fact that the richest country in the world, with the highest health care spending per-capita, still can't find its way to provide basic health insurance for every citizen is repugnant. For the sake of ideology it seems, folks in the US are willing to stand by and watch people die for lack of decent health care, and live without a hope of a better future for themselves or their children.
I'm afraid that you have been listening to the words of others without giving them much thought or investigating for yourself.
Ah, yes... makes much more sense now. Apologies for misreading it.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
If only it were possible to run a business and be a "socialist" at the same time. Business should be productive members of society too, after all that is what we all, collectively, are.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
The word "xenophobia" is inappropriate. Words are important ... choose them carefully. Nobody I know is afraid of foreigners or strangers.
But what is fearful is the long-term effect of foreign outsourcing by U.S. companies to the economic survival of the middle- and lower-income Americans.
In a healthy U.S. economy, money flows from people to companies (eg. Bank Of America) to pay for products or services, and those companies act as a wealth multiplier -- employing more workers who can then afford to invest in other products or services.
There is a trend today (hopefully short-termed) in which U.S. companies are investing their payroll into other countries instead of the American economy. This is great boon for those other countries, and an exponential starvation factor to the U.S. economy.
To the U.S. company, the wages of those outsourced jobs are far less than the American wages. Great for the companies in the short term. But, eventually you end up with fewer U.S. jobs at lower wages. Bad in the long term for the U.S. company and the U.S. economy. (Perhaps most of the outsourcing companies have decided that the U.S. economy is no longer important to them?)
I want to grow the U.S. economy more than I want to raise the standard of living in other developing countries. I don't want to sacrifice our standard of living in order to raise the standard of living in India or China or Vietnam.
So, if I were a customer of Bank of America, I would let them know (at the corporate level) that I am planning to switch to a bank that is more concerned about preserving the economy of its U.S. customers.
Looking at the site (and judging from your comment) I suggest you check out DCU. :)
The rates are comparable, ATM surcharge re-embursement, free everything.
Though I do dislike the fact that they've opened enrollment considerably so the secret is out
Executives ofte cut positions to make sure that the company meets the quarterly goals which will allows them to receive the obscene bonus. The issue here is that cutting jobs to get their bonus is not possible as IT people are needed to make sure the company does its job. The current fad is to replace current US workers with foreign workers that can be payed a lot less. However, there are many hidden costs with that (mostly job done incorrectly and not to spec). I have been involved in many outsourced projects (as a subject matter expert) and it took me twice as much effort to get them to understand what is required and how to do it efficiently... and in almost every case the code was subpar and buggy and followup cleanup projects had to be scheduled with in-house staff which costs them more overall, but the projects are rated individually and the outsourced version 1.0 was extremely cheap to produce (example of one of the more recent projects is 4.5 million) as opposed to inhouse estimate (same project was 6 million); what was not counter was that the followup to cleanup the mess cost them 3 million and here the outsourced project wound up costing 7.5 million and took 50% longer, but since the executives usedtheir funny math and spin it looked like they actually saved money for the company instead of losing it and I am sure they got their insane bonuses while I had to work weekend to help explain what the specs mean to some underqulified foreign workers (the qualified/smart foreign workers were smart enough to get hired by US companies and move here on H1B, the not so smart are what we pay when we outsource).
If I had to train my own replacement I would definitely do the worst possible job just meeting minimum reqiurements (just what most executives have done in their decisions).
Let me tell you my little horror story about BOA. I had two vehicles financed through them. Decided to trade one in on a new car one day. Dealer calls to get the payoff on my vehicle...we make our deal and I go my way. About a month later, I start getting late payment notices on the vehicle I traded in. So I call the dealer. Asked if they paid off the loan as we had agreed and they stated they had. I advised them that there seems to be a problem. They tell me they were a little late, but really did pay. Next month comes by and I get another late notice. I call BOA. They tell me they did not get the money. Call the dealer. Dealer says they did. Shake stir...repeat. Here is what happened. BOA gave the dealer the payoff on the wrong vehicle and applied the pay off on the wrong vehicle. Meanwhile said dealer has sold my trade in and somebody elese is driving it. It was a nightmare. It screwed up my credit. The difference between the two cars was over $9000 and I had to get a lawyer and in the end worked things out. In the end because I was going to litigate their sorry asses off the face of the earth.
Long story short, don't do business with BOA. Regardless of your opinion on the subject of off shoring. It's just BAD all the way around. They take poor service to a whole new level. And if anything, this sort of thing is only going to make it WORSE.
. . . so, they have many of billions of dollars of income that are completely insulated from any possibilty of consumer anger over this. In the Federal Civil Service, and travel for work? You HAVE to have a BoA travel card. Officer or senior enlisted in the military? You HAVE to have a BoA card, no choice. And you are required, by regulation, to use the BoA card for most official travel expenses, or you don't get reimbursed for them. I wish I could drop my BoA card, but eating all the costs for the little trips Uncle Sam sends me on isn't really an attractive option. So, not only is BoA shafting it's techies, Uncle Sam is subsidizing the process.
I used to work at a software company, where I did technical support via phone, email and fax, plus webmaster work. One time I took a vacation. One of my bosses decided she was going to do my job while I was out of town. When I got back, she gave me a raise. She went crazy doing my job and couldn't believe I was doing it. When I eventually quit that job, I had to "train my replacement". Same boss asked me to come back 3 months later because she'd totally screwed up the web site. So I came back for 3 months on the condition I'd only do web work. They had 2 people doing my tech support job. LOL. Three if you count my boss messing up the web site.
in fact half of everything that you buy are directly due to the results of these countries producing stuff at half the rates of what it costs to produce in this half of the world. nobody complains abt that. just that, since a lot of jobs are being lost now - all the rants are heard here. its all a cycle, when someone goes up, someone comes down.
I'm not at all sure that the median US legal residents (citizens + legal non-citizen residents) have a higher standard of living. Remember how the mean is calculated if you are claiming that the mean citizen has a higher standard of living. I'm not certain that you are wrong, as one super-wealthy person can counterbalance a large number of people living below poverty, but I suspect that even with THAT estimate you are wrong. And the mean is a terrifically unfair estimate to use in this case. I would be more likely to go with the mode than with the mean. The median is better...but that ignores the suffering experienced by someone who lives below poverty, when, e.g., medical care is unavailable, because one can't afford the bus ride to get to the doctor. I don't really think that an extremely wealthy person gains enough extra enjoyment from their extreme wealth to properly counterbalance even two people living below the poverty level.
What causes this isn't capitalism, it's power politics. If the social costs of extreme wealth were properly assesed to their source, then there would not be the extreme difference between the wealthy and the impoverished. But those with the power, in it's various forms (including money) craft the rules of the game to benefit themselves. This isn't capitalism. This is socialism of, by, and for the wealthy and powerful.
When you see extremes of wealth and poverty in the same civilization, you know the game is rigged. You many not know the details, but the fact is evident.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
(the qualified/smart foreign workers were smart enough to get hired by US companies and move here on H1B, the not so smart are what we pay when we outsource).
complete BS, but in your limited view go on adn believe it. Lots of people have left US after recieving an H1B because they can go to Infosys and work in the outsourcing projects, making half as much money but living in a much nicer home with a couple servants and a nice car. Especially in India, money goes much much further.
oh, how do I know? because already several members in my family have done just that.
of course, the BofA system is nice to thwart you. If you are believed to have done a sub par job, they pull your severance pay(it was in the article).
In the case of China, this may, or may not, be a valid argument. In the case of India is it not.
The people getting these jobs are not low caste. What is happening here is that India has an extremely low cost of living (as figured via international exchange rates) so people there can work for what would here be starvation wages and still be rather well off. (Some have said rather wealthy, but I doubt they are doing as well as a successful merchant trader.)
This isn't slave trading at the India end. What it is at the US end, however, may be something a bit different.
This doesn't make this a just thing to do. It means that the specific accusation that you have levelled at them is inappropriate.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There is another cost that employers do pay, but rarely fully account for when planning an offshoring: the loss of expertise... Some of the knowledge lost in transition may never be rediscovered, leading to permanent inefficiencies.
I think this is the most important thing lost to outsourcing. My father's division was outsourced maybe ten years ago (to another American company), the idea being that the other company handled the same tasks for many other, albeit smaller, institutions and could bring economies of scale to jobs that had always been handled in-house. And in theory, it could work, but in practice, the institution suddenly lost its memory. Most of the division had worked there for ten years, and a sizable number for over twenty -- they knew how to handle the politics of the wider institution, they had friends in every other division that allowed multi-division projects to run smoothly, and they knew where to get fast answers. The new company hired on a few of the of the old division, but you can't boil down the knowledge of a hundred people into three. When the new company hadn't managed to acquire the expertise of the old division after several years, the institution's higher-ups gave up and in-sourced it again, but by then most of the old division had moved on to new jobs, and the expertise the institution lost is still hurting it. The idiot who thought outsourcing was the solution to all (nonexistent) problems was fired, but that only goes so far to comfort all of the people who not only had to find new jobs but had to watch others make a mess out of the old jobs they had been proud to do.
Outsourcing is like delegating simple chores to your 8-year-old kid -- in theory, he could clean the bathroom for $5, freeing you up to do your $xx/hr job, but by the time he's called you up and interrupted your work to ask what cleaner to use on the toilet, where the spare sponges are, and whether he needs to vacuum the bath mat, you would have saved time by just doing it yourself. Eventually, assuming he sticks with it, he'll figure it out and even learn how to handle unexpected events like the sink clogging up without referring to you, but you can't look at the cost/benefit of giving him the chore simply in terms of dollars.
you're right. I think I'm going to start buying only american made cloth to put those poor people in NC back into business and run those chinese clothing manufacturers out of business. I mean, those poor people were never able to find jobs in this static american economy that is incapable of making new jobs when the old ones get moved to the developing countries.
You're just nicely ignoring the new jobs that can be created and are created.
A free market is a market where price is determined by the unregulated interchange of supply and demand rather than set by artificial means. The problem is that things like lobbying, pork, tax incentives, and a disparity in the regulatory and tax structures amongst countries act as artificial means to make the "free market" not really that at all, to the detriment of American workers. Maybe it makes good business sense, but it is anti-American for American workers, and there's nothing socialist about wanting to keep jobs here at home. I'm not some kind of WTO-protester type (or some staunch proponent of capitalism either), but maybe some of what those folks were saying years ago was correct after all, because things like what Bank of America is doing demonstrates a corporate attitude that American customers are great to make money off of, but American workers are a disposable commodity.
The funny thing is, I wrote that post to suggest that most people are a good deal more socialist, and aspects of socialism a good deal less insane than is generally made out. Not a single line of my post actually attacks socialism. Rather, I am saying that if you buy into the perfect markets producing perfect results ideology which runs the current world economy, the current behaviour is the logical conclusion.
Socialism isn't a four letter word. If you think it is, what excuse do you have against outsourcing but xenophobia? The response to my post is a chain of knee-jerk 'no I'm not a commie' replies, but after that people seem to get the right idea. Social effects do matter as well as economic ones. Free market principles cannot be blindly followed. Capitalism needs to be combined with social awareness. Etc.
Was that post a troll? Maybe it was. But it seems to me, sitting in a relatively economically left wing country, that socialist economic thinking is quite alive in the US after all. It just needs a name change.
I hope they plan to outsource their customers as well, because I will not do business with them. My philosophy is that if a company does not support the community in which they are located, then they will not get my business.
Vote with your wallet, if money is all they understand, ask everyone you
9 03
know to close their accounts BofA and move them elsewhere.
If enough ppl do it, it will have an impact.
This is not the first time this has happened with Bank of America.
http://www.vdare.com/letters/tl_052103.htm
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=risen090
This has been going on with them for years.
Only money will make them change their mind, as this person killing
himself in their parking lot over it did little but make them laugh.
So as I and other members of my immediate and extended family have done,
ask them all close their bank of america accounts. Then tell them
to pass the word on to all the ppl they know.
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Corporatism
"Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power"
- Benito Mussolini
The collusion between big business and or own Congress, in terms of making rules that reward offshore outsourcing and promote H-1B visas, sounds more like "corporatism" that "capitalism".
That's where I'm at. Just replace Indian with Chinese and you have it.
My employer (who bought my real employer after a chap 11) has decided to close our local office and outsource development to Hong Kong and Beijing. They offered severance and a completion bonus on a fuzzy end date so we would stay to write documents and train our replacements.
It's degrading work getting ready to train kids (most of us are in our 30s-40s) fresh out of college in China to do our jobs. Every day I see at things that need to be done and just let it slide. It's not my job anymore. I try to get motivated to document and train but it's hell. I just don't care.
The worst part is seeing one of the finest dev teams I've ever worked with torn apart and demoralized. All this because of company internal politics. Our office produced great code and made the company money. We just weren't part of the old boys netowork so nobody could stop the axe.
I'm getting my resume tuned up and if I get a good enough offer I'm out of there. I may try to stay for the money but being there is so destructive to my sense of self worth I probably won't.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
accidentally chopped the last part off.
such an IT guild could build a niche both among large companies dealing with large, critical systems and small businesses lacking the resources to recruit and identify top end techs through normal employment channels.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
With manufacturing, it doesn't matter where it happes or who does it. So long as the workers can do the job right, nothing else matters, just ship the goods to where they need to go. Not so with IT. There are distinct disadvantages to IT outsourcing. The most major are:
1) Lack of an onsite presence. If you truly outsource everything, it gets to be a pain because there's not anyone on site itself. Many problems are better solved on site, or even only possible to solve on site. So you end up having to hire consultants to come in and so that, which increases costs not only in that they are expensive but in that you have to wait longer to get thigns fixed and have more lost productivity.
2) Lack of personal interaction. People like face-to-face interactions, just how we are. Where I work we prefer peopel send e-mail, since it creates a ticket and a log of what they want. We respond fast too. However many still prefer to wander down to see us. They just want the facte to face interaction, to feel like someone is really looking at their problem. You lose that with an outsourced IT staff. You never see the peopel you are dealing with.
3) Language problems. This whole "we are going to teach Indians to sound America" idea is a crock of shit. Accents are HARD to overcome. If you didn't learn a language withing the first year of your life, it unlikely you'll ever truly sound like a native. Structures in your brain are just laid down at that point that are hard to overcome. So at best you find people who are competent speakers that sound foriegn. Many (I'd even say most) however have rather poor English skills. Not only are they difficult to understand, they have difficulty understanding you. That can be exceedingly frustrating when you already have a problem and are frustrated to begin with.
Those are just the top three I can think of, there's more I'm sure. The point is that people like having in house IT more than outsourced IT and there's advantages. Well that means that the monetary advantage of outsourcing needs to be greater. For something like a factory where it's all equal, so long as it's cheaper when you factor in transport costs by a couple percent, outsource it. The consumer won't care in the end so long as teh product is made right. However people don't like the foriegn IT outsourcing, and it does cost money in other ways. Thus the savings have to be greater. A 10% upfront savings wouldn't cut it, you'd lose more in other problems and your staff would hate it.
Low-skill manufacturing is always going to be a lowest-bidder kind of situation, but that's not the case with everything. Even higher skill manufacturing isn't that way. Notice that Intel doesn't fab all ther chips in China, in fact they don't fab any there. Their fabs are in places like Arizona, California, Israel, and Ireland. Same with AMD (Germany, Texas, Japan, etc). For various reasons, outsourcing to a lowest-bidder kind of country doesn't work out for them, despite it being a manufacturing job in the end.
For that matter we've seen a reversal in some other manufacturing industries. The Japanese car makers have been outsourcing their production... To America. It's not just because they save on transport, they produce cars for export here as well. Turns out the need labour more skilled than you get in places like China, but it's cheaper here than Japan.
It's not a cut and dried matter that once a job has moved it never comes back.
United Airlines was employee-owned, before their bankruptcy. The problem was, the employees were as greedy as management.
It is generally considered "dirty pool" to have someone train a replacement for any job because the end result is generally someone with all of the bad habits of their predecessor. But in this case, Bank of America is not letting someone go for bad habits, unless one considers a living wage to be a bad habit.
I would suggest this is a prime opportunity for training methodology that results in a type of Hungarian Phrasebook effect. That would be the most appropriate response to this request.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Who else remembers a dozen or so years ago, when they across the board fired all of their tellers and told them that if they wanted to continue their careers at Bank of America, it would be as part-time employees at a lower hourly wage and with no benefits? That soon drove me to our local credit union, with no looking back. BofA = Bunch of A$$holes.
Yes, I'm a socialist.
Time to fight back!
Organise yourselves, join a union, convince your union that now enough is enough, fight back, not everyting your employer tells you is the gods truth, there are moral rights and wrongs.
Remove your funds from BofA, vote with your feet.
And while they enter their new pursuit of reading - perhaps they might review what is awaiting others who have little to no options left.
Best way to do things in todays economy is vote for it with our hard earned cash.. I dont use BofA but if I did I would simply find myself another bank. If enough people ditch them as a bank they will feel it. Best part will be when they ask why are you closing your account.. "Because you outsourced your IT to india!"
Three words: temporary root passwords.
'Nuff said.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
For those Yanqui cowboys who still do not get it, let me take the trouble to spell it out for you:
"All your jobs are belong to us."
As an added bonus, I'll also whisper into your collective ear the Secret Plan (TM) hatched by us evil Indians:
1. Wait for deluded Americans to sell stock in companies which perform offshoring of work.
2. Buy such stock.
3. Turn American companies into Indian companies.
4. Profit!!!
Muhahahahha!
I guess that's about it. Apu here's been pretty busy lately, what with all those dayum eyeraqis setting up bombs everywhere.
Cheers.
PS: Looking forward for this to be termed "Flamebait". I grin. Oh I grin.
A capitalist country shouldn't allow a company from a foreign country to have the benefits of an American Company.
If your workers live outside the US, if your services are rendered from outside the US, if your product is produced outside the US, YOU ARE NOT AN AMERICAN COMPANY!
Bank of America should have to pay import fees for using cheap labor outside the country.
It's not about capitalism or socialism. It's simply about borders, and realizing foreign-made products and services should be treated as such.
It's fine for BOF tech services to move to India. Let them pay an import tax for using those foreign born goods and services.
So, no, they are NOT doing anything better. Just cheaper. If you don't believe me, look into it. You get what you pay for, and when a company, especially a BANK of all things, realise that their customers are concerned about SECURITY more than anything else, find out people in another country have access to their records and information, it's going to be a shot in the foot. No, both feet.
This is going to be a disaster for BoA. Wealthy people are VERY particular about who has access to their records and money. And especially businesses.
Were it not a major bank doing this I might just chalk it up to global economics. But in case you hadn't noticed, bank profits are obscene.
Look at the cost of using a foreign ATM. You're charged anywhere from 75 cents to $3.00 by the bank originating the transaction, and another 75 cents to $3.00 at your bank. So if you draw out $20 you could be paying anywhere from $1.50 to $6.00 for the privelege. And the bankers laugh all the way to the, uh bank.
And lets not forget overdraft fees. I have an old brochure from my now bank from back in the early 90's. Then an overdraft item incurred a $7.00 fee. Now it incurs a $35.00 fee. You can't for one moment tell me it costs the bank more now to process an overdraft than it did ten years ago. It's just outright usury on the part of banks.
And increasingly your choices are being limited by all the acquisitions, etc. Around here we have a choice of three banks, Citizens, Bank of America or Sovereign. And the competition from credit unions and such has been decreasing over the years. Maybe it's because credit union customers might only pay their CU 25 cents for a foregin ATM withdrawal, while the host bank is whacking them with fees that total more than 10% of the dollar amount withdrawn.
But here's the other isssue. You can't live without a checking or savings account. For example, I direct deposit my pay into my bank. On numerous occasions the bank has delayed importing the information and sent my account into negative territoty. I've had numerous rows with the bank over that. So suppose I want to just cash my check and use a cash basis for everything. The thought crossed my mind until I realized my paycheck would be drawn on Bank of America. The rub is that in order to cash a large check at BofA you need to present all sorts of ID, your first born, etc. and now they're even considering charging a fee. On a check! A check is really a Demand Draft instrument. Check out the fed rules on that sometime when you're bored.
The State has no right to redistribute wealth among its citizens. Taxes should be used to pay for products and services required for the functioning of the State and its military, not to give money to another citizen because they cannot / will not work, or to provide healthcare for another citizen who cannot / will not pay for his own. Charity is the province of individuals and civic groups, not the State.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
Dups only count on Slashdot when they're within the same week. After than any reposted story is new again.
Developers: We can use your help.
You know, every single item you mentioned has a smaller, local version somewhere in the US. If someone is really intent on following through with the logic, they could do it. It wouldn't be as convenient as using products from the big players, but it can definitely be done.
Equus Computer (equuscs.com) which builds its white box house brand Nobilis is currently outsourcing some of it's in-house IT to Communinst China. As this company is owned by Chinese-Americans they are giving the family back home some buisness. Currently, Communist China is converting systems & parts quotes to orders & then e-mailing a confirmation to the re-seller so that it looks like it came from the sales rep in America. In the near future they wil be moving the in-house change order system over there. As Equus now has this beachhead, I'm sure other functions will be moved over there.
And yes, it's a big secret. No one's supposed to know that Equus is outsoucing to Communist China. shhhhh!
"Previously" Hong Kong? If you imagine that HK has somehow turned communist because China took it over, you haven't been there. True, it isn't a very free market; much local industry is dominated by monopolists, but that as it always was. That unfortunately is capitalism in the raw.
"In 2010 when those India techs complain long and hard about a lack of loyalty on the part of American businesses, they won't be able to honestly say they didn't see that one coming."
/. article from last week or so (here http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/06/06/04/0022215.s html) about Apple dropping a bunch of Indian jobs. The article interviewed one Indian who complained that they were given no notice of the closings.
Actually, they are already complaining - see the
In all seriousness, while most Indians know Hindi, the main languages of Bangalore and Hyderabad are more likely to be Tamil or Telegu.
Hindi is spoken in Northern India, which is the expensive part of India, and therefore outsourcing is much rarer there.
First, I will say that the rich defininitely get richer faster than the poor get richer, but that's probably OK and unavoidable. The government should tax the rich at a higher rate to help with this - not because it's 'fair' to redistribute wealth, but because the rich derrive a MUCH greater benefit from government services, and should therefore pay more taxes. (The rich are rich because of things like an extensive road system, the government protecting their international business interests, the government inforing intellectual property law, etc.)
But, to suggest that the US stands by and watches people die because of lack of healthcare is just stupid. Contries with socialist healthcare systems do exactly the same thing - they just let more middle class people die.
The fact of the matter is there are only so many good doctors and so much medical equipment. As a society, we can't afford to give everyone top-quality healthcare, and frankly, most people don't want to pay for it. If yo have a rare disaease that can be treated with $300,000/yr in drugs, do you want that covered? Of course. But if you don't have the disease, are you going to pay for an insurance plan that covers those perscriptions, or are you going to select an insurance plan that lets those people die and hope you don't need that perscrption? Most people will choose the later, because saving $1,000/yr on medical costs is more important to them than the change they'll die from an exotic disease that is cured with a high-price perscription.
The other part of this is that there are a finite amount of good doctors. In order to get more people to be doctors, we need to make it more attractive to be a doctor - less up-front medical costs, more long-term payout for services. That makes healthcare not only LINEARLY more expensive as you add people, but actually EXPONENTIALLY more expensive. And it's not like Europeans have solved this problem - the choice isn't "Some people get healthcare in the US, everybody gets healthcare in Europe", the choices are "People who can/want to pay a lot for healthcare get great healthcare in the US, everybody gets mediocre healthcare in Europe." It's the difference between people who have good insurance can all get an MRI within 24 hours in the US and nobody can get an MRI for months in Canada.
The reason healthcare is expensive in the US is that the people who REALLY want is have BID UP the costs of healthcare. You can't 'just give everyone healthcare'. If 30% of the country is not insured, suddenly insuring them is almost a 50% increase in users of the healthcare system. Who is going to treat all these people? Where are the 50% extra doctors and nurses going to come from?
The truth is, you can't just insure everybody without a significant drop in care quality. Paying for everyone to have universal healthcare doesn't get everyone the same level of coverage we have now. That's how socialist healthcare systems work: They don't provide everyone with the same great treatment, they allow more people to die before they can be treated.
Now, I'm not saying that the Americans have it right. Personally, I think we should deny more people treatment - if you're 85 and can't really walk anymore and have alzhiemers and have end-stage cancer, we should send you to hospice and let you die. If it takes $200,000/yr to give you medicine to keep you alive, and you didn't see fit to save the money during your real life to pay for insurance that covers those costs, you should die. If you're born 12 weeks premature, we should let you die. That's basically how socialist healthcare works - if you get seriously ill, the wait time to get an expensive treatment option gives you a chance to die before you can burden the system with your care.
I know this sounds crass, but if people spend their whole lives not saving for money for their own care, it doesn't mean we should then turn around and tax everybody else to pay for it. There needs to be a limit on what we are willing to spend to exte
paintball
What Western countries with high rates of wealth redistribution are thriving? The last time I checked (admittedly over a month ago) a lot of Europe had double-digit unemployment rates. There is also the little problem with Europe's demographic implosion which is going to make things even worse in the coming decades.
Although I'd be against a totally free market civilization, I'd rather have a society that is heavily tilted towards capitalism than one that was mired in socialism.
We are pumping money out of the country right now.
The dollar becomes less viable because of this and will decline against foreign currencies.
At some point- they will stop buying our treasury bills and the financial shows i listen to predict a fairly rapid decline of about a third in value at that point.
So virtually overnight- the cost of all these overseas workers will go up by about 50%.
All products from overseas will go up in cost by about 50%.
On top of that- these countries are already inflating fairly rapidly. Pay increases of 40% a year are not uncommon (along with rampant job hopping- we did the same back in the 80s).
I give the entire thing about eight more years. Then the few of us who managed to hold on to technical skills will become fairly valuable (I'm planning on going contract again at that point).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I know a REAL quick way to save $100 mil. Fire the CEO and not give him his bonuses. Then buyout any stock options he has for pennies on the millions of dollars.
The Bank of America today released the anouncement of it's name change to Bank of India.
In a mass panic panic Americans rushed to empty their accounts, but most found that their that their accounts had already been drained by the increased usage fees for foreign account holders.
I called in and made sure they understood why I'm changing banks.
Obviously, the parent has figured that his position in the new economy involves posting Amazon referral links on Slashdot. Don't ruin it for him.
We need Family-Run countries, with a vested interest by the Owner of long-term well-being, say, threats of regicide. No, wait, we changed that.
Why must you make it into a "we the indians have such a broad and deep view of the world and you stupid americans are so shallow". It's very defensive and attacking the messenger is always the best way to prove you are right . You like it, go and live in india, but most people from india that I know were more than happy to leave.
I still find it wrong that US jobs are being sent overseas, it hurts the economy in the long run, but I wouldn't know that in my limited view...
What is wrong here is using blackmail to force people to give up their intellectual property.
The employees had worked, trained and otherwise educated themselves in order to obtain a skill. Presumably the employer wanted to buy these skills and so employed them.
This employer seems to be suggesting that they have the right to force their employees to just hand those skills over to some else.
I have no problem with them being told to transfer knowledge gained about the employers own systems but forcing skilled workers to "train" the offshore staff in say, unix administration, seems utterly reprehensible to me.
You're right.
I've got a fair amount of money in their bank. This week it gets transferred to another. If enough do this, they'll get the message.
Canada :) But then we have a more moderate approach than Western Europe, who do seriously need to liberalize their economies. Erring on the side of social responsibility is no bad thing in my book.
Companies like this have it wrong. They all seem to want to outsource to one country. If instead, they would start going around the world, they could pick the best of the best. In addition, they would gain marketing all around. the OSS world (including such companies as MySql, RedHat, TrollTech) has it right.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Having worked in IT for several investment banks, here are a few first hand observations on outsourcing.
1. ALL IT staff below senior management level are constantly assessed to see if their role *could* be outsourced. Sadly, not even the most hardworking or loyal staff are immune from this process. There are a small number of individuals (note: not team players) who build themselves an empire reasonably large enough to make replacing them difficult, expensive and a risk to the business (they are identified as the only person who somehow knows to bring back that all important trading system process, when support and the rest of development all failed.)
2. Testing. Testing. Testing. If you are going to get an outsourced team to develop your code, especially from India, then you really have to insist on lots of testing. I have witnessed too many projects delayed or derailed where code was not rigourously tested, and the assumption was that it was being done "over there".
3. "Of course we can do that". Famous last words. Got a requirement for COBOL? The offshore team say they can do that. Another requirement now for C++? The same team can also do that. The next requirement for Ruby? The same offshore team also do that! Wow! What a team. Better check that code very closely, and ensure it was not the same of Java cut and paste experts we used, who did NOT have any real experience with other languages, but would wax lyrical about their previous projects and experience with those same languages.
4. Outsourcing/Offshoring/Inshoring -- Horrible terms for the same basic thing - "We are cutting your job because basically we need keep paying bonus to our CxO, out shareholders, and frankly, this is easier than actually really looking at good ideas to grow or improve our business".
5. Be prepared for a callback. If they outsource your role, and then discover the muppet from the services company they chose, or even the grad fresh from uni in India with zero experience does not have the same level or skills and experience, they may call you back offering to rehire you. If they do this, calmy report you will come back on a contract basis, and name an astronomical rate. You know they are over a barrel, they know they are over a barrel. Enjoy!
6. Never, ever, train your replacement. Perhaps you would also like to go and park a big ol' kiss on the backside of the greasy senior mismanager who authorised you losing your job in the first place. Most jobs take time not because of the technology, but because of the process. the local or company-wide processes, the red tape, the electronic paperwork. Let the new guy or girl struggle. Instead, use your time looking for the next role.
Most US companies are multinationals, they are present in many countries, they are global. This makes the US one of the richest countries in the world and its citizens amongst the most prosperous. The US has benefited from capitalism and free trade. When US companies go to other countries with their products, usually because of better technology, more efficiency and better value they win and people lose jobs. Most countries have gone through this stage, People have suffered. This is free trade, this is the system we have accepted, when it benefits us and when it doesn't. For the US with off shoring now it doesn't, for India, it does. Its either this or to close down free trade and close markets to US companies. So what is it, do we believe in free trade?
That's the macro look. In the micro look things don't look, good, when US companies go to new markets people suffer, now people in us suffer. Nobody can be happy about this but the US being a richer country will have a better solution for affected people, hopefully. And even for people who don't lose jobs there is always an sense of insecurity, this is the worst part of it. The idea that people who are being laid off should train their replacements in India is a cruel joke, macabre. BOA should pay and get these people trained.
The paradox in is in both instances corporations benefit. But free trade gives you an option, But Americans are not helpless, as consumers you can vote with your wallets and boycott such companies.
karma
Your description of the U.S. fits perfectly with a certain image of the U.S. that is promulgated outside its borders, typically by those with little personal experience in the country. Let's see if this fits with your image of the U.S.--hospitals never refuse treatment to anyone. Did you know that? If you are sick or injured you will receive treatment. The only difference is that in the U.S., the ensuing bill has the name of a private company on it and reflects the treatment you received, while in the Canada, your bill is standardized, comes once a year, and says "CRA" on it.
"For the sake of ideology it seems, folks in the US are willing to stand by and watch people die..."
To those of us actually living in the U.S., this type of statement is so wrong it's laughable. Try this--provide me with some stats on how many people in the U.S. died last year because they were refused treatment for lack of payment.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The fact that the richest country in the world, with the highest health care spending per-capita, still can't find its way to provide basic health insurance for every citizen is repugnant. For the sake of ideology it seems, folks in the US are willing to stand by and watch people die for lack of decent health care, and live without a hope of a better future for themselves or their children.
It's natural selection, baby. Right Wingers who support pure capitalism and think evolution is bunk are themselves merely the result of effective meme propogation. All you have to do to fix America is to get the people to recognize this voluntary natural selection in their lives and realize that while it may be optimal for gene or meme pools, it isn't very ethically palatable in a civilization.
What you, and sadly most Americans, don't understand is we are not a democracy. A great deal of, if not all of, the US welfare system is quite unconstitutional. We are not at liberty to create social programs and implement them according to our alleged underlying Constitution. The fact that we do some and don't go all the way with socialized medicine belies the fact that we have some lingering sense of our heritage.
Now whether it seems right to your or not, in a completely different country and continent, that we have a less socialized medical system is pretty irrelevent. Everyone is going to die. Some people on socialized systems die when services are backlogged. Some people get less than adequate care in socialized medical systems because some of the capitalistic motivation is taken out of the system, etc. There really isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for health care in our country our yours. There isn't a perfect system and while ours has flaws so does yours.
Interestingly, there are more medical breakthroughs, that benefit the entire world, coming from operations that are funded by capitalistic medicine that help prolong life. In fact, I'd argue that our capitalistic health care system, with its profit motive, has done far more to save lives and extend the quality of life for all the socialized medical systems, than they have ever done for anyone else. You can benefit from what we do and then complain about repugnance from the outside looking in and miss where you have benefitted and miss the fact that your systems are crumbling due to old age, lower birth rates of those with means, and the influx of cheap foreign labor into your markets that are less well-to-do and cannot contribute at the same rate to sustain the socialized medicine experiment.
Does it suck that health care is expensive here? Surely! But, it's not everyone else' repsonsibility to take care of me.
"Any services you know of that a bank can do a CU cant?"
yeah, give me a VISA check card (Golden One CU runs a credit check before giving out what EVERY OTHER FUCKING BANK IN THE STATE DOES), not hold deposits more than $500, and actually have some farkin branches.
I still have a CU account because all of the branches are too far away for me to go close it, but they treat me like shit. Oddly enough, Bank of America has actually given me *less* trouble than any other bank I've ever dealt with.
Credit unions suck as much ass as most banks do. Don't fool yourself.
Companies have been doing the same thing with manufacturing jobs for years. The company I work for did it last year, moving all of the higher volume lines to China. The people who were being laid off had to help in that project.
The "Bank of America"... with the proud name it has, is moving to offshore workers. Does anyone recall a case where an overseas worker (health sector, I believe) threatened to release confidential client info unless being paid a 'bonus.'
Sounds like a reaaaaaaally safe place to put your money... I hope the customers think so too.
Yep, that's what I would be doing...(Sample training sessions follow:)
"So, you just install this copy of Windows that's burned on this cd...yes, it's a legitimate copy...I think..."
"And these virus/worm things are very good. They automatically replicate and patch problems in the systems. Use as many as possible to correct problems, etc."
Yeah, I'll 'train' them, all right...:-)
The question here is really about incentive.
That was without a doubt the best comment I have ever seen posted on slashdot...no. That was the best comment I have ever seen posted on the internet. Please Please Please dude/dudette send that letter to your congressman. You just presented a whole side of the story that no one is debating. If you truly want to make a difference then please voice THAT concern. There are a lot of people that need you.
Nice Freaking Post.
what?
Over the longer term, what have these idiotic managers done? They've disconnected themselves from the very communities they serve. Sure, it's cheaper to have a bunch of lower paid foreigners do this work. But do they really understand what they're doing and why? Will they know when they've run in to a problem? Will they be able to reason their way through regulations and laws they had nothing to do with?
Let's turn your argument around. Do you think the managers really understand what they're doing and why? Will they know when they have outsourced *themselves* out of a job by relying entirely on another company to do what they were responsible for? Outsourcing eventually works higher up the chain and at each step there is more difficulty and cost in re-insourcing. At some point it becomes a foreignly owned company that is more economically efficient than the original because the management cruft and high priced labor has been removed.
Your argument is invalid at the start because it relies on a categorical imperative: if an action is right for one, it is right for all. If a locksmith moves to Littletown, OH because there is no locksmith for 100 miles around, he might do well. If every locksmith in the USA moved to Littletown, they would not do well. The categorical imperative is a bad yardstick for economic decisions.
Secondly, the US has been "losing" jobs to automation, offshoring, and efficiency increases for at least 100 years, and still has low unemployment.
You may be right about that. However, the company overseas is not the bank. It's the organization of IT contractors that does banking systems. The bank itself is probably still going out of business. The conglomerate may pick up new business, but most of the old business from the completely outsourced bank is probably not coming their way.
I stand by my previous recommendation. This stock is not likely to be profitable in the long term.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
It's funny that this post has been modded funny !
Personally, if I was blackmailed into training my replacement in ANY situation where I was not leaving of my own volition, I would be enraged.
Plus has Bank of America thought about possible fringe "benefits" of this decision? These workers have access to customer data and knowledge of the bank's security practices. Personally, I would go in and fill up my trusty flash drive, note any gaping security holes, and tell them to shove their severance pay up their collective asses sideways.
In that case, why don't you buy your own ATM? You should be "laughing all the way to the bank" in no time!
Of course, your ATM won't actually work unless you connect it to an EFT network. That could involve both a fixed and per-transaction cost (I have no idea.)
So now your ATM is humming along, knows how to contact banks and process transactions. You should be rich in no time. But there's one problem - no customers. There aren't enough people in your living room who want to use an ATM. You'll need a location, preferrably a high-traffic one. Only problem is, you're competing with lots of other ATM deployers. So you either pay through the nose for a high-traffic location, or get a free location in some bar where the owner hopes the ATM will increase sales.
There is one more step before you can laugh all the way to the bank. Cash. You'll have to contract with an armored transport company to service the ATM.
How many transactons per month would it take just to break even?
It's just the other way around: there are considerable short-term costs (of retraining displaced workers), with considerable long-term economic gains (cheaper products and the evolution of technology due to the money saved by outsourcing/offshoring, which enables those products to be delivered ever more-cheaply).
This isn't a dynamic thought. You're ignoring the changes that occur in supply/demand of labor over time.
Compare the wage dynamics of India vs. America over the last 5 years. There has been double-digit growth in wages for Indian techies (with single-digit inflation rates, i.e., they are seeing positive real wage growth), while in the U.S., wage growth has only kept pace with inflation (from around 1% in 2001, to some 3.5% currently, i.e., we are seeing no real wage growth nor decline). India's wages for IT people are now about 1/4 of what they are in the U.S., up from being 1/10 those of Americans' in the year 2000.
In short, there is a balancing of wages between the two nations: India is rising towards the level of America, while America stagnates. Eventually, America's wages will grow again, and India's will keep growing, but at a faster rate than America's.
My biggest concern is that India does not have *enough* IT people. Most of the people there are still dirt-poor, while the IT people get rich. There needs to be some training available for the other 80% of the nation's people, so they too can work in call centers, etc.. With over 1 billion people, India can soak up a lot of rather fantastic economic growth...
Why trade then? Take your argument to its logical conclusion.
Why trade with people from other states? They are just taking your job too. Why trade with people even from other cities -- those pesky assholes in L.A. might be taking jobs from the easy-going folk in San Francisco. In fact, why trade with even your next door neighbor? He too is out to take your job. Right?
Not really, because it is likely to be a *different* job, and not the exact same one you find yourself in. This becomes increasingly-true as an economy's workers become more specialized in the work they do, which will be the case as machines take over the routine work that used to be performed by armies of laborers (manufacturing automobiles comes readily to mind). And because of this, it allows your neighbor to do work you don't have time to do (or don't *want* to do, such as cleaning toilets at movie theaters, or flipping burgers). You trade your money for their time because it makes your life more efficient and more enjoyable.
You are making an argument against free trade at all levels -- neighborhood, city, state, national, international, and even interplanetary (if we ever find others on other planets to trade with), etc.. There is no sound argument against free trade whatseover -- it's one of the very few issues the vast majority of economists agree upon.
Is capitalism good for the poor (and everybody else, in the long run)? You bet it is! See my sig...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
You've just pointed out exactly why there are no pure free markets: it is because governments stand in the way. You correctly note the politicization of various things that *could* be purely-economic: trade agreements, immigration laws, currency valuations, etc..
These are not the works nor the fault of the free market, nor the economists who espouse free market theory. These are the faults of various governments around the world.
Not that any government in a developed nation will be disbanded anytime soon, leaving an anarcho-capitalist society to remain. On that, you're quite right: libertarian ideals are clearly not aligned with modern reality.
And that's the whole point libertarians make: that the free-market systems they espouse *can* work -- if only governments would get out of the way and let them (it's the same argument the socialists of the 1960s made about big-government socialism, except in reverse). Whether that's *actually* true in practice is another question of considerable debate (and on which I debate myself and other libertarians)...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Raveev, when you see any error message, just type "DELETE *.* /S"
Table-ized A.I.
Naked capitalism can be very ugly. Nasty abuses of capitalism are what resulted in the Communist revolution, unions, and plays such as Les Miserables. Capitalism does not guarentee equality. Any equality that has happened under capitalism has been lucky, and may be coming to an end. Large companies have had way too much bargaining power for last 20 years, manipulating politicians up th wazoo. They need a counter-force of some kind to balance them out.
Table-ized A.I.
I remember these guys. Shortly after DEC was swallowed by Compaq, I was on a conference call for an RFP. We had one of the Tata guys on the call extolling the virtues of his company. In an attempt to impress upon us the fact that his organization was a major player, he said, "Oh, it is absolutely true; Tatas are enormous in India."
Several seconds of silence followed. "You don't say...", I finally replied.
If a job is so repetitive that it CAN be outside to a total idiot, we can presume that one was getting paid for simplistic work. If a job was initial setup, then it was the employee's responsibility to ensure that he/she got the compensation expected (perhaps a royalty/revenue agreement) prior to doing the work in the first place. Not expecting continuous pay for something mundane. Nobody should be forced to buy something at a certain price.
Causing future issues to occur is:
a) Taking out revenge on a replacement, who may or may not be competent. No matter how tempting the satisfaction of it, you are unfairly going to cause him to seem incompetent. Furthermore, all he did was apply to a job offer (is that really wrong/evil)? Most people aren't told "hey you'll be replacing some fat guy who'll now be on the street". Although many people think there is a fixed number of jobs in the world and workers somehow use up that amount of jobs, this isn't the case. In fact many people think that by doing a particular job they are not only getting paid but improving global quality of life for others by providing services affordably thus enabling/freeing up others to provide even better services. It may seem like crock, but that's the way it is.
b) The employer is probably insured against this type of stuff (if it's a corporation, one can bet on it). So aside from harming that employee and especially the poor individual customers who depend on the company's reliability, the people involved in the actual decision process of outsourcing the job will not be tinged.
c) The act is a criminal violation of law because of the malicious intent involved. Most are against criminality and would say "we are a nation laws" for other things right?
Sweeden (that socialist haven :p) has a 5% unemployment rate. They have a balanced budget (slight surplus, actually). They don't have as much public debt (as a percentage of GDP) as America. They have lower inflation than the US. They also have a 2.7% GDP growth rate, which ain't too shabby.
If Americans were willing to work for lower wages, then labor wouldn't NEED to be outsourced.
1. Those IT workers in 3rd-world countries live quite well, often having a maid and personal drivers.
2. Why would somebody go into IT with low wages if they can get just as much being a Wallmart greeter or Radio Shack salesperson?
3. Much of higher cost of living in the US comes from following safety and pollution standards that many 3rd-world countries skip. Thus, we would have to risk babies with lead in their brains to lower the cost of living in the US to their level.
Table-ized A.I.
Fancy some irony?
RBI staff threaten to strike work
New Delhi, June. 6 (PTI): Reserve Bank employees, who observed a token sit-in protest today, threatened to strike work if their demands for putting an end to outsourcing of jobs and continuation of revised pension scheme were not met.
Read the rest...
Looks like it's not just US workers who feel threatened ... :)
Just trying to clear it up for people who think Authoritarianism and Socialism have to go hand and hand.
A few yewars down the line they will realise they have no more intrinsic value (as the outsourcing companies and staff are also doing the same thing for just about every other bank) and might as well merge with more failing banks to try to survive.
All I can see with outsourcing is we are paying/training/encouraging people in foriegn countries to work better than us. Yep, not really helping the American education standards or our econpmy in the long run.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
In all manners of outsourcing, it is an expression of antiquated services re-stationed in a country that can adjust correctly to the viability in the cost of living it provides and resembles in that country.
The problem with out-sourcing in America, by the United States, is the fact that there aren't many new jobs and ventures being recreationaly planted and studied for the future. I can't speak on outsourcing, other than knowing that an employee should choose a percentile of stock options to their pay-check if they are certain their business model in the company is a reliable investment sure to draw value in the future. Perhaps, it is your one defining moment to choose that investment, knowing that the assets of the company will change value upon entering that forein country. That induction is to provide services primarily to the United States as originally planned for outsource. Do you think it's not possible for an interest in that corporation would offset or discharge any purchase of its services?
Of'course, I've never been employed in the modern-defined way. I only invest, and draw on that investment as a creditor would. All the outsourced "jobs" will be impossible to compete to, and that's the purpose of the evile people trying to conquer America and split it up with their alleged "Free Trade Zones" and the "Pan-American Union" being negotiated with Bush and Fox and that Canada Prime Minister (I cund remembre la nom). The jobs are going, and the rate of research and development, even the skill to implement new foundation, is not probable to cause any large divergence in skill requirements that those jobs too are not secured by the United States.
In short, trust in Willy Wonka fact: don't give the Everlasting Gobstopper to the bald spook waiting outside. Try to ride the implosion by advancing the company's portfolio and refining its process. You don't see Nintendo and Sony outsourcing jobs.
without prejudice
bah, sorry about the referral link; wasn't paying attention to that. If I was paying attention it would have made sure it was mine instead of google's... :)
That is a great way to describe it! But I wonder if there are any jobs that might not fit that description, that are entirely able to be replaced? Seems to me in most cases tech jobs cannot be replaced so easily, but what about transcription jobs, etc?
I bet it will be good training.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
yes, the low caste aren't getting the work or the money. that is the point. the accusation is quite appropriate.
While we /.ers do not know much on financial matters, we are not so base that we would have to ask you a question on currency exchange and deflation.
Ninjas and pirates. How piquant.
The suicide of Kevin Flanagan was briefly mentioned in the article (without name). Here are more details for those interested:
http://www.engology.com/BobFlanagan.htm
Table-ized A.I.
There is no way I will ever do business with a credit union.
I still remember an article I was reading about a local CU that went bankrupt in Denver or Boulder, Colorado (which is where I am).
When you open an account at a CU, you are not just their customer; you are a "Member" of the CU. Basically, you are not just a customer, you are part owner.
When the CU went bankrupt, those "members" didn't receive all of their money back. The money the CU had left was used to pay creditors, and the rest was divided up by the "Members". No one received all of the money that was in their checking account
At least if I get an actual bank account, I get my money if the bank decides to close. That is a very valuable service. Let me know when a CU offers that.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
The U.S. needs Indian IT workers desperately because all American techies are busy helping Bush monitor web searches, phone conversations, e-mails, IM chat and every other means of communication known to man.
2+2=5 for very large values of 2.
Yes, I'm a socialist.
I don't mind competing with Indians or anybody else anywhere in the world.
I do mind living in an unequal, brutal capitalism, where I have to compete with workers around the world who are educated by their governments and living with the benefits of socialism.
I'm pissed off having to pay off my college loans, when I have to compete with immigrants who were educated, free, at state expense, in some of the best schools in the world in the former Soviet Union.
I'm not pissed off at the immigrants -- they're great guys (and good programmers). I'm pissed off at our politicians who decided that it's our personal responsibility to come up with $30,000 a year for college.
Up to the 1960s, the City College of New York and its associated colleges offered a free college education to anyone who could pass the entrance exam and keep up his grades. CCNY, Brooklyn College, etc. turned out Nobel laureates and the creators of Silicon Valley like Andrew Grove. The New York State and California university system were almost as cheap, and (when Ronald Reagan was governor in California) you could collect welfare to get through college. Those free City and state universities were engines of American technology. Now a PhD is a rich kid's toy.
I don't understand why kids today don't demonstrate in the streets, the way the Indian students do, and the French students do, and demand a free education for them too.
If you have to teach Indian programmers to take over your job, you should learn something from them too: how to organize to demand your rights, and your share of the wealth that you deserve.
You should do what they do -- get a hundred of your friends together, to demonstrate for free schools, housing, health care, welfare, and a living wage. If you don't, then you *deserve* to work behind the counter at Burger King at age 45.
Here's some facts for people who fall for that bullshit from Thomas Friedman. The socialists are responsible for the Indian IT industry itself:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06102005.html
"Sure, it's cheaper to have a bunch of lower paid foreigners do this work."
I doubt it. They've only saved $100 million over five years. That's only $20 million a year...or the price of one ceo.
It must suck to be poor. Take it easy pal.
Oh, poor banks, i feel sorry for them. i mean, it's soooo hard, they're having to eat pea soup just to make ends meet. They're justified for ripping off the consumers at every occasion, I mean, competition is tough!!!......
I can't stand crap like that. What the fuck, do you expect sympathy? Fuck that. I cannot stand when business complain about costs (or people complain for them) and try to JUSTIFY their horrid ripoffs of people or their enslaving of people in places like china and indonesia.
Shit like that comes back around.
So omniscient one, tell me. How did banks manage to run ATM networks in the beginning? Bank fees are excessive. That's my point exactly. And comptetion isn't running rampant if you hadn't noticed. One bank is just like the rest.
I'm so tired of industry schills trying to say banks aren't raking us over the coals. They are but you just want to bury your head in the sand.
I can understand some basic protection can be state-sponsored, but obviously nothing remotely close to what I've witnessed in Europe (where I'm from). Treatment for basic healthcare should be paid-for and especially so by people who can afford it without a problem (99% of the people can buy a darned cold remedy).
Charity should NEVER be compulsory. This totalitarian socialistic mindset is scary. I wonder what would happen if a socialist bloc ruled the world... would they try to impose this fucked up system over everybody? I'm afraid they'd at least try.
I just got my first job, and now I won't be opening either of my accounts with BoA. Hopefully US Bank is independent of the BoA empire, as this is absolutely disgusting.
They have been defining the terms, context, and even the scope of the situation. So "thinking" is limited as much as possible.
Example:
Corporations are a government creation, they only exist as regulations. Yet any talk of regulation to limit them or their influence over government is called socialist or communist (and those two are often equated as well.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"If we trust free market principles, it turns out that such behaviour is in the long term in fact the best for everyone - outsourcing ventures are only successful if they achieve the right balance and provide good service for reduced costs."
NO. Free market principles work only within a context of ethics and morals. Without such they are inhumane. That's why we had slavery. You can justify slavery with your line of reasoning. In fact, I'm sure you like the idea. If you could get away with a child sweat shop, why not? And outsourcing is not best for everyone. The US citizen worker is being screwed. Justify all you want but it's really only best for the greedy foreign corporation who provides the worker bees. The US company is likely not getting a good return (many horror stories), the US worker is being screwed out of stable employment and higher pay, and the US federal and state governments is losing out on income tax from the workers.
"Or are you a socialist?"
No but you are a fascist.
Thanks for posting this. I was leaving my current bank because of oursourcing, trouble accessing my funds, and language barriers with the "service" rep getting it fixed. I was considering BofA, but not anymore.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
It is amazing how the constant influx of Irish, Polish, German, Italians, and other aliens in the past didn't suck the life of our economy but somehow the current influx is. Influxes of immigrants have always proven positive for our country, while the immigrants themselves are treated poorly and the established populations always fear losing jobs and downfall of civil society. Seriously you think people would learn a few things from their high school history books.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Before anyone actually buys this terrible book please check out this hilarious review:
c fm
http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.
And no I will not get any money if you click on the review.
Your local credit union.
Yet at the same time has a higher suicide rate then the USA...
The mood in all of the offices is one of sadness and gloom, knowing that anyone can be hit at any time with the executive greed axe, I think it's safe to say about 80% of the associates are actively looking for other jobs. From the inside, all of the layoffs and cutbacks are causing serious bottlecks in procedures and proecsses. The "Higher Standards" phrase is a complete joke and anyone working for or not working for the big bank can provide numerous examples of lower standards, flawed processes, greedy and selfish decisions by the top brass.
I refuse to do any banking with my employer, myself and everyone else I know and work with use credit unions. What does that say about BofA? Why are you still banking with BofA?
Tell me again about that enlightened social policy?
Does this remind anyone else of forcing someone to eat their own excrement? They don't want to eat it, and when they're done, they won't have anything to show for it.
To quote Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, "[W]e're gonna make 'em eat our shit, then shit out our shit, then eat their shit which is made up of our shit that we made 'em eat."
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
seriously: what is so noble about vying for a bigger slice of the pie? (something otherwise known as 'selfishness' or even 'theft'.)
The reason why companies outsource is simple -- to lower their tax liability. With FTE's, you have to pay FICA, Social Security, Medicare and other payroll taxes. If you outsource (whether keeping it in the country or not), you can deduct the whole shebang as a cost of doing business. I'm sure there are small savings to outsourcing in addition to the tax savings -- but they're nothing like what proponents claim. Administration and overhead increase as a result of outsourcing, negating a lot of the savings. Now I hope nobody mods me as a Troll or Flamebait or anything, but there is a possible solution to all of this -- ***REFORM THE TAX SYSTEM IN THIS COUNRY!!!!*** ... I am a proponent of the FairTax, which would abolish the IRS, repeal the 16th amendment, and take us to a consumption tax where the costs of government are visible for all to see. Take a look at it. You just might like it.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Fuck banks. Join a credit union. Here in Virginia, simply taking a course at a community college makes one eligible for membership to the Virginia Credit Union, for example. The nice thing is that, by virtue of having deposits in a CU, you own shares in it. Therefore, they tend to treat you much nicer (since you're not just a customer, but an equity owner). Plus, because CU's are non-profit, their fees are usually much lower, and they offer much more attractive rates on loans and securities. The only downside of a credit union is a limited amount of total deposits -- which shouldn't affect you unless you're a mid- to large-sized corporation. Those are the only entities that legitimately need access to the huge amounts of capital that banks offer -- the rest of us are far better served by credit unions.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Americans enjoy selling things to us 3rd worlders, that is almost the same than doing jobs that could be here. But then, they get very angry when we have an opportunity for a job that would be possibly done in ther country. It is perfectly fair for us to be able do to those jobs. What is the problem with you? Do you know a trash collector in the USA is better paid than a computer programmer in Brazil? You dont want to know how much a trash collector earns here. Do you guys enjoy apreciate to see us in eternal poverty?
You are forgetting that standard of living and wages are closely linked. I do not want our country to suffer while waiting every other homo sapien to achieve home + 2.5 cars.
How's that MBA working out for you?
You sound like you work in BOA's HR department and are trying to justify what you do during the day in order to sleep at night.
This kind of mentality IS going to break America. It is nothing more than economic terrorism perpetrated through stupidity and short-sightedness and based on greed rather than religious fanaticism.
My answer is easy: I won't trade with BOA. You can call me xenophobic if you like. I am a proud American and will not knowingly do business with a company that cans my peers AND THEN THREATENS TO WITHHOLD THEIR SEVERENCE UNLESS THEY TRAIN THEIR THIRD WORLD REPLACEMENTS. Good lord, I hope you're a troll.
Bank of America my ass.
When you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
guys guys guys....hoe many banks will u'll change....the earth is flat give in & give up.... HSBC goes to india as well. check this link : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/16 37083.cms
"Credit unions suck as much ass as most banks do."
Well, YMMV. My credit union has some really awesome money market and CD rates, for example, and all my accounts get some amount of interest (enough to balance inflation to some extent). The only downside I've seen so far is that they don't do accounts for businesses, they do accounts only for their members/owners. Businesses have to open their checking accounts at a regular bank.
non violent strike. teach them nada. easy for me to say, but jeez i feel like you guys are giving the boss the knife to cut you. is nothing more important than cheap labor skipping? multi-nationals do this from country to country just looking for the cheapest labor they can find. im sure you guys know this already, but unless the world becomes one big country im not sure how this can be good.
I try to keep my money spread out so it's covered by the $100K FDIC limits but my policy is that I never use finacial services that allow 3rd world access to my account info. I've already had scumbags dip into my accounts twice. Both times it was an employee in a 3rd world country working on an outsourced contract. Both times I sued the US headquarters. Both times I won. But it's not worth the risk or the grief.
There is a term for at least steps 1, 1a, 2, and 5. It is called "white mutiny" and I have both seen it employed many times and employed it myself on a few occasions. In fact, I have reason to believe it is going on between two divisions of my own employer right now.
White munity involves doing exactly what you are told to do. Do not read between the lines, do not use proper discretion, and most importantly, do not ask questions. If you do not understand your instructions, you state that you do not understand your instructions. Behave as if you are allowed no autonomy at all. (The one exception is if you are told to do something you know to be unethical or illegal. Then just ask for your orders in writing, whether you decide to obey or not.)
No manager is capable of micromanaging their employees to the degree necessary to prevent errors when the employees willfully refuse to think. The shit will hit the fan sooner or later, and if you are doing this right, you will have adequate documentation to prove that you did nothing wrong.
The clueful among your cow-orkers will catch on soon enough, especially when you perform spectacularly stupid acts in response to direct orders while they are watching. Swing those clueful ones over to your side (and sometimes you don't even have to ask) and it doesn't matter what the clueless ones do -- they're already fucking up plenty.
If you ARE management and need to inflict pain on even higher management, you will have to ask questions. Once it becomes clear that they truly want you to implement the brain-dead policy, document it properly, then shut up and do it. How you choose to communicate this to those you manage is something you will have to decide yourself -- in the case of my employer, management is only thinly disguising the fact that they think the policy is exceptionally shortsighted. I asked a couple of pointed questions at the right time and got quite clear non-verbal confirmation that my suspicions were right on the mark (and not a small bit of surprise that I knew about the underlying situation that induced the policy change).
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I actually used to work at the Concord Tech Center for BofA. Eight years ago, before they were bought by Nation's Bank, it was a posterchild for innovation and development in banking IT. Since then, the senior management has really had it in for that place and the people that work there. It was made clear to many of the people that if you wanted a job, you were going to need to move to Richmond or Charlotte. The initial cost cutting was to move jobs to these places, and the next round was offshoring them.
Happy to have no relationship with the place or the Bank now. But, if you are in the market for a data center, they have about 300,000 square fteet of raised floor space in addition to about 700,000 square feet of office space.
The genius and ethics of Amadeo Giannini are once again insulted by the modern day managers of what he once built. I know a lot of other entities have had a hand in the BOA of today, some as honorable and some not. However the Bank of Italy that he founded in the 1920's is a important keystone of the modern BOA. From what I have read about Mr Giannini he would be ashamed of what his legacy has produced.
Oh well what should we expect from managers that settled a class action lawsuit brought on by Enron investors, for $69m? Of course under the settlement agreement , the bank denies that it violated any law. These are the same managers that, even after buying out a $9M class action lawsuit, still continue the unethical practice of "Largest Check First" check clearing. That is when the bank clears checks in order from largest to smallest, with less regard to when they come in causing more checks to bounce, triggering more overdraft fees for the bank to collect from their customers. The same company that has been convicted of raiding the Social Security benefits of customers with awarded damages that could exceed $1 billion.
I can't help but to wonder what this companies shareholders think of these type of practices and losses, regardless of the bottom line effect. The really bad part is I suspect it is almost certain that my 401K is at least in some small way or another linked to this company or another one just as bad. This type of issue has been nagging at me for while. The meager amount that I have invested in 401K and 403K accounts is still a considerable part of my overall wealth, and my late years will depend upon their wise investments now. I have them well diversified in various managed funds.
There sure seems to be a lot of liquid variation in these funds investment allocations, almost to the point of abstraction for someone of my non professional investment skills. I mean I really do not have the skill set or time to learn such to follow theses things in the detail that it seems is necessary to determine just where my money is invested. I suspect that the only way I would ever be sure is to try and gain full control of the accounts and personally make explicit stock purchases of specific companies. Even if I could find the time to acquire and hone these skills, I am not sure it is viable legally for these type of accounts.
These things extend past my personal financial future. There is also the issue of the ethics of how my money is being used. It is easy with everyday stuff. I noticed who the gas station owners were that gouged prices on September 12 for example, and no longer do business with them. However difficult such decisions might be with individual stocks, they seem near impossible with these managed funds. Anyone took this to the next step? I for one would like to at least do what I could to not make our problems worse, if not help fix some of them.
Matthew
If even banks are outsourcing their service economy jobs en masse, where exactly does ol' George think the jobs in our service economy will be in 10 years? Bootlicking the fat cats?
Fucking assholes (BofA)! Are the completely ignorant of basic macroeconomics? How can you claim to have the wherewithal to run a bank of such size and be so completely fucking irresponsible to our economy.
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
Enjoy the jobs while you have them.
*Snicker*
I've been there when your bullshit code comes back to the USA. We're re-insourcing projects left and right around here since the majority of your software "engineers" (and I do use that term lightly.. software technician might be more like it) seem to do just fine in school but aren't worth a flying fuck where actual code is concerned. Right now at this very moment I know of at least three Fortune 500 companies with operations within twenty miles of where I live who have brought projects back in. Our local university CS department loves you guys because we've had a crop of kids who are particularly good at debugging that have nailed some lucrative positions. The downside is that some of the stuff coming back is so screwed up that it's difficult to find architects who are able to salvage various projects, and at least in one instance the project had to be completely redesigned and reimplemented.
If we outsource to anybody it should be eastern Europe or the Canadians. At least they've got the skills.
Anybody who does business with an uninsured credit union is a fucking retard.
See: National Credit Union Association
I'm sure you'll get that as soon as you develop an IQ > 90.
BoA is just trying to gain operational efficiency. They might have chosen the wrong strategy, but that's besides the point -- it's their mistake to make.
I wonder how many people here have 401(k)'s, and wish their own holdings to perform their fiduciary responsibility and increase share value? What about purchasing consumer goods which are highly affordable because they use cheap labor in other countries, who are glad for the opportunity? I'm not sure the Slashdot horde would even exist without sub-$1000 computers.
I'm just wondering if all this fire and brimstone is merely lip service, or if people really are willing to reduce their purchasing power to save their fellow man from competing with furriners.
Where do we start? That has to be one of the most inflammatory posts I have read for some time.
It is hardly xenophobic to take a dim view of sacking your workers to replace them with cheap labour offshore. There is nothing holy about capitalism that says shitting on people is fine and dandy. This is another symptom of a failure to recognise that organisations are a part of the community that they do business with, and that involves a certain level of trust and loyalty.
Businesses usually demand and expect loyalty from their employees, but don't deserve it if none flows in the other direction. Anyone who has had to endure the run-around we get from some banks' or telcos' helpdesks in Bombay will attest to the fact that they are not delivering a quality service. A recognition that this fails to make good business sense does not make one a socialist.
The Indian outsourcing industry has grown enormously the last 5-10 years, and is now one of the main pillars of the Indian economy.
If, as you seem to imply, all outsourcing attempts were foolish wastes of money, this fact is completely unexplainable.
They've disconnected themselves from the very communities they serve.
What percentage of the community they 'serve' will actually be affected by this? Not a large enough percentage for it to matter. Most people don't work at the BoA or know anyone who does, this issue will completely pass them by.
If anyone here owns this stock, I recommend they sell within the next year or so. A company this arrogantly ignorant doesn't deserve your money.
If I owned stocks in a company that was making itself more efficient, I wouldn't sell them. You sell when the company's getting worse, not better.
I don't see what they're doing that's so 'arrogantly ignorant', and I'm not sure how being born in the right country gives you a right to a job. If I had money in this bank I'd rather they spent their money on my interest, not on the bloated wages of American workers.
Let's not pretend that Americans are better at counting money than those evil foreigners from the 'Axis of Evil'.
Modded funny?
should be +5 insightful. What kind morons modded that? Come on... If that post makes you think "ha ha" rather than "oh shit" then I have a feeling that its the "wealthy and powerful" running their "power politics"
Has slashdot been taken over
In Soviet America, Slashdot laughs at YOU!
Socialist, actually. Cheers mate.
The "big 4" banks in Australia regularly turn over $2B+ each in profit, every year. Then they lay off another 2,000 positions citing the need to cut costs, then post a $2.5B+ profit the next year. Rinse, repeat, increase fees.
Perhaps I am a socialist, but I think the thing that is missing here is organised resistance - i.e. increasing the cost to business of getting rid of their employees. The fact that employees have become so scared of resistance to the forces of capital ('it'll look bad on your CV') allows them to act as they please. People would rather mouth off on Slashdot than actually engage in actions (strikes, consumer boycotts, etc) that have some meaningful effect on the bottom line - the only one that does, of course, count.
At the very least, an organised walkout would deprive the owners of the capital in the place you work of a few thousand dollars per worker. A temporary but satisfying blip. In a dog eat dog free market we should remember that occasionally it is worth landing a punch back, rather that forever acting in the interests of business and believing the bullshit rhetoric that what is good for business and good for consumers is also good for us (we are mostly workers as well as consumers).
I thought optimism as a philosophy went out with Voltaire's Candide.
'Capitalists of the world, unite! Oh
Not really. Ocean freight is very efficient and cheap. Look at the foodstuffs in your supermarket. Packets of food that sell for less than a dollar can be economically shipped across the planet.
What percentage of the community they 'serve' will actually be affected by this? Not a large enough percentage for it to matter. Most people don't work at the BoA or know anyone who does, this issue will completely pass them by.
The question is how much damage to the company's reputation will happen as this news makes the rounds. Clearly a handful of employees won't do it. But two or three hundred will. You don't have to know these folks personally to develop an opinion about this.
Let's not pretend that Americans are better at counting money than those evil foreigners from the 'Axis of Evil'.
I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. I am saying that there are loads of business traditions, policies, regulations and legislation developed over a lifetime of having lived here that a foreigner will take a long time to assimilate. One of the biggest problems with ignorant managers is that they often assume that their employees' jobs are easier than they really are. This leads to the notion that they can simply transfer a career overseas with little or no penalty.
Frankly, I think it would be wiser to try some smaller scale overseas experiments. Build on that experience, make some corrections, and expand only when you have the quality of operation you expect. What was described here is a wholesale move overseas. Everything. Right now.
This sounds quite disruptive. It also sounds like the move of an impatient CEO who is looking to retire soon and sell his stock options. Go ahead. Buy that stock. If you haven't sold it in two years time I'll be very surprised.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Outsourcing has been happening for decades. H&R Block does this with their tax returns, most IT firms has back office outsources, factories have been outsourced starting in the 1980's. Anything a company can do to save money will be done. I would expect to see higher level professionals and executives to go through some of this, though I would also point out that as wages appear to be rising overseas, the costs of the doubled overheads (on there one int the US) will put a cap on what firms are willing to pay, and some work has been brought back, as well as some work form overseas has been outsourced to the US. (Google search for this sort of thing). Unfortunately layoff-inducing outsourcing of this sort happens all the time and will continue to happen as long as communications and transport remains very cheap.
Though I think inadvertently there is some interesting points made in the post - meaning that the company expects to "only" save 50%. Just a few years ago the savings would have been 75%, can this mean that salaries for a number of jobs are starting to equalize? Possibly. In China, professional-level technical talent has risen very high in the last few years and is now comparable to salaries in Latin America (though factory work is still cheaper), though in China the wage pressure is still rising, while in Latin America it has been stagnant for some years. Might mean that some jobs will go there rather than China? Given the costs of managing the outsourced functions, the increased overhead taken on by firms in this mode will put a cap on what they would be willing to pay for this as the costs rise in the outsourced country.
I feel for anyone who loses their job - and hope they can find something else fast. It strikes me as in the employer's interest to offer more positive incentives to keep workers on over the transition, as usually happens (meaning many firms choose to offer a bonus for retention until a certain time), rather than threatening severance? Either way the workers face eventual layoff like many factory workers and medical x-ray analysts.
Simple and to the Point: I do not like your way of life. I feel that an individual should be able to choose to be charitable or not, without being forced (at gunpoint, no less) to spend money on people that are less fortunate due to choice or circumstance. The difference between you and me is that YOU feel entitled to other people money, whereas I feel that any money I get should be earned or given freely.
The claim that one cannot advance if one does not begin with resources is incorrect as well. I started with nothing, and fought my way up to being college educated, skilled, and middle class. At my current rate of advancement, I will be in the upper tax brackets before I am 40. Tell me how the system isn't working?
As for health care, we have a system that provides the OPPORTUNITY for health care to everyone. Its called personal responsibility and intelligent decision making. If you do not like it and you wish to provide for our masses, feel free to voluntarily donate money to help them.
"You are forgetting that standard of living and wages are closely linked."
Thanks captain obvious.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If the employees were to do a LBO of B of A, and think they could manage it better, the more power to them. Nothing wrong with it, "collective" ownership by employees is one model that can work. I don't think it is even Socialist, quite frankly, since the State isn't involved. Still, Europeans outsource their professional work to a greater degree and it is getting faster and faster - due to the laws they have, it is about 10 years behind the US right now, but the destination is inevitable when transportation is cheap, tariffs low and communication is ubiquitous. They do have a more comprehensive social network that accomplishes much very well, and they should be applauded. Given that there has been little true political will in the US to do anything approaching this is distressing, but given that the perception that jobs are easier to get in the US then Europe...?
The word socialism has a meaning. I dont think it means anything at all what you are describing.
I think the word your looking for is Plutocracy.
I invite you to use it instead of (further) mudding the public's perception of "Socialism"
And that's the whole point libertarians make: that the free-market systems they espouse *can* work -- if only governments would get out of the way and let them...
Hey, it's working out great in Somolia...
I worked for an ex-worker owned airline.
Upper management, having reaped the benefits of worker enthusiasm and energies to make the company so attractive (this is in the mid-90's) that it was offered a buyout of the company.
But, the worker-ownership legal foundation for the company was an obstacle as the buying company didn't want to negociate with the workers or the middle managers concerning compensation for their profit-sharing incentives in the company.
What happened ? The upper management from the worker-owned company sold out to their new pals in the rival mega-corp, making a huge profit and left the people that made them that money to fend for themselves in the face of an army of laywers who eventually found a way to defraud the workers of their hard-earned share of the profits and only offering them to keep their job in the new entity and nothing more.
That's all. In this case we can see how theory and goodwill and justice stop when human greed from the upper crust starts getting into motion. The ones with the biggest power will always shaft the ones underneath if it means more money to them. It's human. And it's quite sad.
Still worker ownership remains a great idea. As long as you're not too successful.
If only one impartial reader has seen my rant then my job is done.
Yeah, Slashdot moderators are so blatantly the result of conditioning that they're completely
predictable if not laughable in their conformism.
They have been pissing me off since the fleet merger. Time to see how TD bank north is I guess.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
-In the US, the healthcare is of a very high quality, and you can get tests, operations, etc, done in very quick order. However, you must be within 85% of those that are insured.
-In the UK, the healthcare is of a decent quality, and tests, operations, etc, can take weeks or months depending on how long the wait is. 100% of people are covered.
I'm from the UK and now live in the US. If you're from the UK and are reading this, you simply cannot understand how much better the healthcare in the US is (as long as you're insured of course) unless you've experienced it yourself. The National Heath Service in the UK is not bad, but it's not good either. It's just "ok".
Living in the US is worrying at times. There's always this concern of "am I covered?", or "how much will healthcare cost when I get older?". If you fall on hard times, you can be screwed.
I'm not going to draw a conclusion about which system is best, but I *do* know that if people in the US had UK-style healthcare (even if it was cheaper) they would revolt.
Well, I know a few people on the inside at BofA. There are two IT organizations. One is for commercial and retail banking, serving the people who serve BofA customers. The other is for the bank's internal trading activities. It is well known in the trading side of the world that the IT department serving the commercial and retail banking operations sucks. The problem is that there are so many branches and so many customers that they have almost given up on infrastructure and services organization that scales. The culture at BofA is very averse to firing people who keep their head down, regardless of lackluster performance. Perhaps they are just trying to clean house, and outsourcing looks like an opportunity to do this while possibly getting some positive feedback from Wall Street. Even if it fails, they will have another opportunity to redesign the organization on an "insourcing" push.
It is much cheaper to make something work on IE6 and list it as a prerequisite than it is to design something that degrades gracefully (or very little) when it is rendered in other browsers. If you hate that style of technology, then you should wonder about the IT employees that are comfortable there. If I were in that position, I would be campaigning during the training process to assume a supervisory role over the Indian teams. That might be as easy as coming up with a spreadsheet to track the progress of the "knowledge transfer" as a performance appraisal of the Indian team members. You have to give up your current job if you want a promotion...
They get into a RAFTLOAD of trouble if you report it to the Federal Reserve Board. When shown the regs, the bank branches immediately back down and make the funds available- don't ever let a branch manager tell you that he can't remove the hold as he has the authority to do so.
As it stands, they (at least the managers, and I do believe the tellers have one such as that as well) have clauses in their employment agreements when you hire on that you agree that it's a terminatable offense if you involve the bank in a brouhaha such as this- even the whiff of one will typically get the branch manager fired on the spot, not being able to work in that line of business ever again. They're told they're supposed to 100% understand the depository regulations, etc. as it's a legal requirement for them to work in that business- failing to comply is a big nasty deal and the Fed's acted on it before in the past.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's even more lucrative than Y2K was to my consulting bottom line. I can't tell you the joy I feel telling management drones that I have a fee rate modifier of 1.5 to go in and "fix" (read rewrite) bad code. The stories I could tell of legacy programs that were trashed only to find out that the "new" systems just didn't work. And of one company's desperate search to (re)buy about 5 Vax 8800's just so they could limp back to where there were 10 years ago.
This year I'll have about 800 billible hours at an SF based financial management company that drank the outsourcing koolaid a in '04 and is still struggling to recover from it.
God bless outsourcing and the idiot -read it in an in flight mangazine and gee it sounded keen- managemant.
Sympathy? No. Answer one simple question: do you believe running ATM's is wildly profitable?
If you do, you are free to do it yourself. Don't have to be a bank.
You are escaping the point. Do you allege that ATM fees are "too high"?
It seems that, if the thousands of techies have a problem with training their replacements, that they should consider organizing to stop working. Maybe this company is saving $100 million as they claim they are. How much would they lose if a thousand techies immediately quit? How much severance are we talking, anyway?
XD
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if that CEO costs more than that entire $100M.
(IANAL)
This has quite literally made me decide to move my 2 checking, 2 savings, and my one credit card out of BofA's hands. In America we cast our votes with our money.
I can't imagine what kind of market can exist without a government to enforce property rights.
(IANAL)
B of A has been truly mismanaged in recent years, i believe one of their managers has been indicted in europe's biggest financial scandal so far (parmalat). They do sound like they s*ck badly =) Check out http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q =BANK+OF+AMERICA+PARMALAT&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8& oe=utf-8 for more info.
Now how is this guild not a union? Because there are ways in which it's different from the AFL-CIO?
It doesn't have to demand wage-equality in order to be a union. You don't see the NEA demanding that all teachers receive the same salary.
Unions (non-corrupt ones, at least) follow issues which are important to union members. For IT, important issues include annual cost-of-living increases (important for almost all industries, really), limits on outsourcing (keep the IT jobs secure), availability of tech training (keep the tech workers up-to-date on modern tech), and probably quite a few others.
If such a thing gets off the ground, I want to know about it. I'd be pretty quick to join.
(IANAL)
Americans do not have exclusivity on education, and this opens the door to opportunity.
How did this happen?
The United States (Canada too) has squandered it's wealth by giving inflated salaries to positions that are not justified, by concentrating on luxury goods and high salaries to pay for these goods, and in so doing, it has priced their technical gurus out of the market place. By making education very unaffordable, more Americans then ever do not complete university.
What is the future. Getting back to my water theory, water seeks its own level. The global economy is like the great body of water, will seek its own level. That means, that at some time in the future, the off shore salaries will rise, while the domestic ones will remain flat, or fall. And when the financial benefit of going off shore disappears due to leveling off of costs, jobs may return. I say may return, because they will only return when the education level and competences of the next generation American match those levels provided by off shore countries.
Regarding socialism, there is more good in it than is wrong and it is better in many ways than full capitalism. Just look at the health of nations such as Norway, Scandinavia, and the black listed neighbor 90 miles off shore from Florida. The Spanish neighbors are poor, due to political doings from the USA, but their health standard and education are exceptionally high. In short, a little socialism is good (Old age pension, Medicare, Free education, and low cost universal education). Leslie Satenstein
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
A report published by Timbro claims that most U.S. states individually have a higher GDP than most European states.
Somewhere I've seen a report that says the average poor family in the U.S. is better off than the average middle-class family in Sweden, but I can't find that one right now. The Wall St. Journal's Opinion Journal site does refer to this in an article, though: "[T]he percentage of Americans living below the poverty line has dropped to 12% from 22% since 1959. In 1999, 25% of American households were considered 'low income,' meaning they had an annual income of less than $25,000. If Sweden--the very model of a modern welfare state--were judged by the same standard, about 40% of its households would be considered low-income."
Consider two data sets: 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 27. The mean is 71 / 15 = 4.733.... The median is the 8th entry in the sorted list: 2. When think-tanks and media outlets give numbers, they're almost always talking about median (50th percentile) or other percentiles, which refer to *position* in the sorted sample, not to the "average" you learned in grade school. Note that the median doesn't change in the above sample set if all the numbers (think incomes) above 2 (think $20000/year) are replaced by 2, but the mean suddenly drops to something less than 2.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
This is referring to GDP per capita, not overall GDP, and the use of PPP is always open to debate: it's better than simple exchange rate comparisons, but not perfect by any means. Moreover, the report only touches on the key difference of differing working hours and holidays at the end, and there it 'guesses' that the lower working hours and longer holidays here in Europe are involuntary. I don't agree with this 'guess' at all. I very much enjoy my leisure time, and so do most people I know. In fact, a key demand of trade unions over time has been for lower working hours. This obviously reflects the fact that workers would rather have more free time than more income. If we wanted to work ridiculously long hours, GDP would naturally go up, but the quality of life would arguably go down.
Other things to consider are fuel taxes and imports. Fuel taxes are much higher here in Europe than in the USA, for environmental reasons, and this naturally increases the price of all goods (which have to be transported). As for imports, when I was in the USA, I noticed almost everything was made in China, where workers have very low wages and no rights, and the currency is artificially low (making Chinese goods artificially cheap). This will of course lead to lower prices, and hence higher PPP-based GDP, but the enormous American trade deficit cannot be sustained forever. Here in Europe, a lot of things are still made in the major industrial countries, such as Germany (the world's largest exporter), where workers are paid well, and have strong rights.
There are also many quality of life indices showing the quality of life in Scandinavia is substantially higher than in the USA. It's only anecdotal, but having lived/worked in the USA for a few years, I agree with these, rather than simplistic per-capita GDP estimates, that the standard of living here in Scandinavia is higher. The longer work hours in the USA allowed me to earn more, and hence to buy more goods, but there was much less time to actually enjoy what I did own. It all seemed rather pointless, like an economy in which factories are constantly churning out new parts, which are only used to repair the machines that then produce even more of them.
Finally, Europe is much more crowded than the USA, so the point about housing space, at least to some extent, simply reflects this. I imagine that Americans in the more densely populated states have less living space than in the more sparsely populated ones. Air conditioning is also a strange thing to mention, since it's largely a factor of climate. Why would I need air conditioning in Scandinavia? It's not a 'luxury', there would just be no value in it, since it doesn't get warm enough to need it.
It is amazing how the constant influx of Irish, Polish, German, Italians, and other aliens in the past didn't suck the life of our economy but somehow the current influx is.
...
First of all, there is no "constant constant influx of Irish, Polish, German, Italians, and other aliens in the past"; seriously, you think people would learn a few things from their high school English texts.
The major differences between those European immigrants who came to this country early in the 20th century and the mass wave of Mexican/South American immigration that's been invading the country during the last decade are that a) that the European immigrants were not subsidized by the people already living here when they arrived, and b) the immigrants from Europe weren't almost entirely poor and unskilled. The current crop of illegals benefit from subsidized welfare on several levels including both federal- and state-sponsored substinence and medical care all at the taxpayer's expense. The Europeans who came here received none of that. A lot of the Europeans who came here had skills that they wanted to put to work in the U.S.; that's not the case with the overwhelming majority of illegals coming here today.
Influxes of immigrants have always proven positive for our country,
Really? Seen the tax burden in Kalifornia lately (which is due in large part to providing education and health care for illegals)? How about the financial burden on states like New Mexico and Arizona who are desperately trying to keep their hospitals open for their legal residents? The only positive impact the current overwhelming influx of illegals (and the legal H1B/L1 visa holders) are making is for businesses who don't want to increase what they pay to attract and retain native workers.
Also, just because a trend has been positive in the past doesn't mean that will continue into the future, especially when it's pushed to extremes. That ought to be a major lesson learned from history.
while the immigrants themselves are treated poorly and the established populations always fear losing jobs and downfall of civil society.
The notion that most immigrants, legal or otherwise, are treated "poorly" in the U.S. is patently false. They may not be treated as well as some people think or might like but that doesn't mean they're treated poorly.
As far as the loss of jobs goes, you might want to talk to someone who was actually in the Engineering/IT field during the 2000-2002 period. After the government artificially engorged the IT labor market with H1B/L1 visa to try and keep the dot-coms booming, those who were left after it all went bust were lucky to stay (poorly) employed. A lot of people were pushed out of the market entirely and left unemployed for extended periods or had to change careers entirely. It's easy to talk in patronizing (and erroneous) generalizations when it hasn't happened to you or people you know.
As far as the loss of civil society goes, you ought to take a trip to Mexico sometime given that's who's culture and "civil society" is getting (illegally) infused into the U.S. through all the illegal immigration. If your idea of "civil society" is living out of a broken-down car, then you've got nothing to worry about.
"Welcome to the free market"
"The politicians in this country have not introduced any kind of real legislation which protects US jobs. And this is because big business donates billions of dollars to politicians to prevent them from doing it."
I am fed up with hearing about how "free market" economics are causing these problems. Listen close now. The markets are anything but free! Global corporations have bought the legislation to ensure such. This has always been the case to some extent, there has never been a truly free market anywhere on as a grand scale as a nation. Today the manipulation of markets for the gain of the privileged few are happening very effectively all over the world, it is just a bit father along in the USA than in say Europe. Anywhere national or state level legislation doesn't work out they just bribe or coerce local officials. Wonder why so many in the third world hate us? They see us in the light of these "business leaders".
As for free markets I am not even sure we want really free markets, as they are probably just too volatile to support a stable society. What annoys me is all these business and political types running around holding up a free market as some sort of holy rule that we cannot muck with, when such does not even exist. I wish I had all the answers, I would be most pleased to share them. I can share this much, DO NOT believe the propaganda that we have a free market economy in the USA! The professed aspirations of such aside it is not and never has been such and getting less and less free with every congress. The big difference between today and recent history in the USA is that the balance of power, political influence and wealth distribution between those that produce via their labor and the parasites that exist upon that labor has gotten out of hand, again. Not that is has ever been fair.
Matthew
Does the low caste have the skillset needed for the job?
Your comments are very interesting. One thing I disagree with, however, is that not enough Americans complete university. Compared to Europe, or most other parts of the world, a very high proportion of Americans complete university: arguably too high a percentage. If the percentage was as high here in Europe, free education might become unaffordable.
One of the things the achieved by trade unions and the welfare states here in Europe is relatively high salaries for all workers. Many low-skilled jobs will always be needed, and not everyone is suited for university studies, so the ideal situation is to train those who are better suited for manual work, so they are as productive as possible, and then provide income subsidies high enough that workers in such industries will be able to earn a good standard of living, and won't have to choose between university or poverty. On the other hand, very many who do go to university proceed to postgraduate studies, where as my understanding is that most Americans stop after a bachelor.
An economic system that tries to turn everyone into professionals will waste a lot of resources educating those who really aren't suited to it, and create a shortage of manual labour. Such shortages have to be filled by low-skilled immigrants, who then increase pressure on resources, create cultural conflict, etc, and also expect their children to become professionals, thereby creating a need for even more immigrants, and the cycle continues.
Identity theft is easier to do in India where the entire staff can be paid off for the price of one worker in America.
When those East Indians steal your SSN, you won't be able to get the FBI to prosecute foreigners.
Outsourcing also reduces the number of jobs in America and there's nothing to stop a ton of us from boycotting Bank of America, which I for one am now doing - I'm pulling my BofA account TODAY.
If you want unrestricted capitalism, move to Somalia.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Move to a desert island. Move to some laissez-faire paradise in Africa or something.
If you don't like America's partial socialist system, by all means, MOVE!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Why should I move, when proper enforcement of the Constitution supports what I believe?
What you have just said is akin to a thief telling his victim that "sorry, this is the way the world works... if you don't like me violating your Constitutional rights to property, then you need to move because I am entitled to the fruits of your labors."
Sorry, but I'm staying right here. My nation was not founded on a socialist ideal, it was not meant to be a socialist nation, and I'll be damned if I'll sit by and let it crumble under a system that punishes hard work and rewards laziness in the name of fairness. No, I'll stay right here.
What's funny is that you're telling me to leave, but I have no inclination to do the same to you. If you want to practice VOLUNTARY socialism in the U.S., by all means... spend your money like that! If it makes you feel all squishy inside, who am I to tell you not to do it? Kindly stop telling ME what I can do with MY money, though. I should not have to suffer because you are unwilling to excel.
America is and always will be a partially socialist system, and you know what? The Constitution doesn't say we can't be like that.
Your country was founded on the ideal that only rich men with land should vote. And slavery. But we changed that. Get over it.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The state has evry right to redistribute wealth. Wealth is created by societies, not individuals. If there were only one person on earth, there would be no need for an economic system. Private property is created by the state. Without the threat of state sanctioned violence, there would be nothing keeping me from using what you claim is yours alone. Private property is created by social contract, and that contract comes with responsibilities.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
wrong question. the question is, do members of the "low caste" have the same ability and intelligence as those of other castes, but are being held back and discriminated against and having their opportunity limited?
I can partially agree with what you lay out there, which can be summarized in two sentences
US equals: Very good healthcare,if you can afford it
UK equals: Average healthcare, for everyone
But only partially because it is not the whole picture, more accurate would be
US equals: Very good healthcare,if you can afford it, if you cannnot you will probably die
UK equals: Average healthcare, for everyone. Very good healthcare for those that can afford it
This for me makes the UK version 100 times better than the US version.
If the NHS (National Health Service for those not familiar with UK system) was properly run (aka not by the politicians looking for short term gains for votes) it would be 10000 times better than US model because it would then be
UK equals: Good healthcare, for everyone. Very good healthcare for those that can afford it
Instead of paying a human teller's wage and benefits? Fuck yes it is.
Society certainly has the right to redistribute wealth. And if you take the position that the state has any rights derived from "Society", then certainly it could have the right of wealth redistribution as well. I would agree to that.
However "The State" is not the same as "Society". A truly participatory democracy might be able to make the claim that it is as good an approximation of "society" that could possibly exist, but in many instances "The State" is simply an organization with no more moral claim to the title of "Society" than anyone else. The State may even destroy society, as the Nazis did.
The State only represents the will of the people in POWER. That is not necessarily in the best interest of society itself.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
BUZZZ. Wrong. Wealth is created by the effort and work of individuals. The State can help or hinder the process, but all that's all.
If there were only one person on Earth, there would be no need for any system, economic, legal or social.
State sanctioned violence does mean that the State commits the violence. If you take what I belive is mine, and can prove so to a jury of my peers, then the violence is you face is from the muzzle or edge of my weapon.
True, one has responsibilites. But again, the State should not dictate them, but one's own self honor and esteem. Noblese Oblige, and all that. I donate to various charities because I belive in their goals, or am moved to help their members. Not because the State makes me.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
Right. They can NOW, but the gist of my post is that energy costs are generally rising, and they are unstable, and a little turmoil somewhere can cause big problems elsewhere due to instability. It is only going to get worse with China and India picking up steam. Why ship food when you can grow it locally or somewhere not so far away?
The US has really lost it's way. We don't MAKE anything anymore. We rely on other countries for so much. Lets hope the shit doesn't hit the fan with respect to Taiwan/China. We are sending everything overseas. Our white collar stuff. Our manufacturing. Our agriculture. What will we have left? We can't be bosses and managers for the rest of the planet, they will figure that shit out on their own and realize they don't need us. We need to be more self sufficient. If we get rid of all the low paying jobs, what will happen to our country? Crime will skyrocket. Homelessness will increase.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Fortunately, the vast majority of many generations of Americans don't buy your insane kook kook kookoo interpretation of the US Constitution.
There's a cabin somewhere in the mountains. It's waiting for you. There's no place in this evil gawdless communist hellhole called America for gawd fearing profits-over-people corporate uberdroids like you.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Maybe; but bulk sea transport will always be much cheaper than any other form. For instance, a while ago I had to get some goods from Hong Kong to the US. It cost much more to get it from the port in New York to New Jersey than to get it across the entire world. The US exports lots of corn, wheat, for instance, at very low unit costs, only possible because of this. If gas proces doubled local transport charges would probably go up more proportionately.
Making a "Bzzt" noise in order to show contempt for an opponents argument is just an appeal to emotion, and shows me you aren't really worth arguing with. State sanctioned violence does mean that the State commits the violence.
If you take what I belive is mine, and can prove so to a jury of my peers, then the violence is you face is from the muzzle or edge of my weapon.
The hypocracy in this statement is blatent. A jury is a form of State. Personal property requires little state intervention to remeain secure, but real property requires a state in order for you to exclude others from using it. How is it not initiation of violence to exclude me through force from using what was once a shared resource?
If you believe it is my responsibility not to take your property, is not the state dictating that through the jury system and it's sanction of your use of force?
The fact that you use the term Noblese Oblige indicates that you either do not understand the term or that you believe yourself to be part of a hereditarily superior class. Noblese Oblige indicates the idea that the nobles are obliged to help the poor, usually by telling them what to do while still keeping all the resources and power to themselves. It's a self serving and condescending attitude I find all too common among Anarcho-Capitalists such as Libertarians, which I am presuming you are, as Libertarians are just about the only ones who capitalize the word "State" these days, and you belive that the State serves no useful purpose. In it's current incarnation, it is harmful, but it is also helpful. That's not to say that a group of people couldn't decide democratically amongst themselves what the rights and repsonsibilities of each are to be, and that this wouldn't be a good state.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I greatly miss Lockheed Georgia Employees' Federal Credit Union which I joined in college at Georgia Tech, but I switched away from them for two reasons -- one practical and one petty.
1) The nearest ATM that didn't charge me $1.50+ to use was over 15 minutes drive away. (15 minutes plus a toll or 25 minutes w/o.) Also their hours were very inconvient, and the nearest branch location was the one 25 minutes away. I joined them in college when they still had a branch office in the college, but left them later long after they'd closed that branch.
2) The required signing a digital signature pad for any teller transaction. I hate that and don't trust it. It removes a step or two for a thief to steal the ability to copy my signature on documents.
Nowadays, I'd grumble and compromise on #2, but I can't deal with #1. I lost far more money from ATM transaction fees than I gained from superior interest rates. All other CUs in my area that I can find have exclusive requirements for joining, so I'm stuck without one for now.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Yes, local prices would go up as well. But not only do we have to deal with rising energy costs and their subsequent inflation of costs across the board, but what about the politics of the countries that we import from?
What happens when/if the Chinese manage to unionize? What if they start getting real benefits like we enjoy in the US?
The US economy is operating on exploitation right now. I think we will continue to see repurcutions from it, increasing in severity.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Yes, your money is much safer if you give it to Charles Keating.
What?
The thing is, though, that people who oppose free trade to "take care of the disadvantaged" are full of it, because the jobs are usually going to help someone who doesn't even have an extra pair of shoes.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.