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."

Comments

splitting semantic hairs

[yagu]

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.

Re:splitting semantic hairs

[Znork]

"A global economy is coming."

As the current situation is, I wouldnt really call it a global economy. Something more like a segragated economy, where the main trick is to move work to one place, while keeping prices artificially high in another through legislation, then reaping the profits on the market discrepancy and allowing a rapid transfer of funds from the middle class.

A good step towards restoring a free market and getting something even remotely like a 'global economy' would be to reconstruct the intellectual 'property' monopoly legislation from scratch. Western, and american, labour would get a whole lot more competetive (maybe even maintain the current standard of living at half the pay!) if they didnt have to fund, directly, and indirectly, huge grotesquely inefficient copyright and patent taxation financed monopolies.

Re:splitting semantic hairs

[ThePhilips]

while keeping prices artificially high in another through legislation

Hardly can disagree on any point made. Thou quoted above is necessarily true. I would say nothing about U.S. - but I can comment about Germany where I live.

After countries of estern block have joined EU, something similar started happening over here. And even more radical: there is no such wide cultural gap between e.g. Germany and Poland as there is between U.S. and India. Business started dumbly moving work from West to East. In Germany on average employee costs about 3-5k Euros. In Poland you can get "best of bread" for about 2k, while prices for middle/low level specialists can be as low as 500 euros/month.

When you look at how the money - 5000 in Germany, 2000 in Poland - gets distributed, you start understanding the real difference. From 5k euros, about 2k consumed by social system, another 1k consumed by all kinds of mandatory insurances. Substract cost of living and you get 750 - all I get on my hands. Ironically, specialist from Poland would get the same cash in the end. It's just Poland doesn't have pile of mandatory insurances, it doesn't have fat ugly over-abused social system, it doesn't have such high taxes required to run such complicated and expensive tax system.

In the end, it comes down to populistic measures (like improved safety in social sector) used by politicians to boost ratings which in the end hits back in shape of new taxes at people who voiced and voted for it.

Re:splitting semantic hairs

[thePig]

Employment is just a contract between you and the employer.
If you want to leave, you can.
Similarly, if the employer wants to kick you out, they can also.
What I have seen is that once you go up the management ladder, esp. in a big company, you tend to have less contact with the employee as a person.
This inturn changes the view of the higher level manager about the employee - from a human being to just another resource.

And when you are just another resource (in their view), it is easier to replace them with any cheaper resource available, as long the quality of the product doesnt go down too much.

The tipping point is here, they can all claim they do it with the rationale, "everyone ELSE is doing it." Posh!
The company is just looking at a way to maximize the profits and to stay alive in the competition.
If everyone else is doing it, the company is taking a risk in NOT doing it.
Business is very fickle, and if you are paying your employee more than what others are paying theirs, it is very easy to lose customers/market-share etc etc.

The problem here is that having a global economy goes both ways.
You gain and you lose.

Re:splitting semantic hairs

[Buran]

Americans aren't willing to work for lower wages

So are you going to lower their monthly payments for taxes, mortgages, car loans, insurance, health care, telecommunications, food, gas, and other things one needs to live?

I didn't think so.

Illegals can only work for less because they don't pay taxes or (frequently) various kinds of insurance. A friend of mine suffered $500 from a hit and run driver to his parked car who was an illegal who didn't have insurance, and his own insurance conveniently estimated the repair cost at $2 less than its deductible.

Illegals are directly screwing honest citizens over.

Americans CAN'T COMPETE WHEN THE GAME IS RIGGED.

Re:splitting semantic hairs

[boingo82]

Not only can't they file for returns, but most of them would probably qualify for EIC - in which case they'd be getting even more back than they paid in.

Re:splitting semantic hairs

[jlowery]

Then if you're willing to cut government programs that don't quite count as pork-barreling but still provide less benefit than what they cost, you could potentially bring total taxes down to 20%.

You mean like Iraq?

Re:splitting semantic hairs

[Excelsior]

If Americans started to work for less, basic (and slightly simplistic, but still mostly valid for an approximation) economics says we would pretty much maintain the current standard of living, but only in the long term. In the short term, it just wouldn't work, because it only works if EVERYONE is working for the lower wages. The "early adopters" would be screwed until everyone else's wages went down by the same amount, at which point prices would also come down to meet demand. So the way to do it, as you say, is to start out by lowering prices a bit (revamping copyright/patent/monopoly law would be a reasonable start, though some would argue monopolies would help with this transition) and let that naturally be followed up with a lowering of wages, then rinse and repeat until we're competetive on a global scale.

Hmm, sounds complicated. I have a more simplistic idea for simpletons like me: I'm going to move my Bank of America accounts to another bank who employs solely domestic workers, and encourage friends and family to do likewise. If such loss of customers affected BOA enough, Bank of America would have to drops their fees to compensate to lure business back to them. But, then that would lower their profits forcibly accomplishing what you've detailed, right?

Re:splitting semantic hairs

[Anonymous Coward]

While you make some interesting points, I have always looked at it from a different perspective. Various studies have pointed out massive inequality in terms of consumption of world resources.

E.g. With regards to "Private consumption expenditures--the amount spent on goods and services at the household ... The 12 percent of the world's people living in North America and Western Europe account for 60 percent of this consumption, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa account for only 3.2 percent." From (http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1785)

Also, "Though accounting for only 5 percent of the world's population, Americans consume 26 percent of the world's energy." From (http://www.solarenergy.org/resources/energyfacts. html)

One can't fault the rest of the world for aspiring to the same lifestyle. However we have only 100% of the world's resources to go around. To obtain some kind of balance, we would either have to greatly increase the amount of goods/energy being produced, or the developed world would have to reduce their standard of living. While the former approach is preferable, it may not always be possible, especially with limited resources like oil.

How does this relate to the current discussion? While moaning about Indians or any other foreigners taking your jobs by working for less, please keep in mind that the only reason he's willing to work for less is because he's not used to having as much. While you're aspiring towards your second car, he's thrilled to get his first scooter.

Re:splitting semantic hairs

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, if they don't pay taxes or for insurance, what is the best solution? Send them back to wherever they are from so they seize to be part of american industry, further weakening our competitiveness in international trade? Or give them citizenship so they WILL pay taxes and WILL have to get insurance? Then they will be paying for public education and subsidized healthcare, just like everyone else. Problem solved."

Irrelevant. Most illegals work for such low wages that they wouldn't pay any taxes under our current tax code anyway. We are not at risk of losing 'competitiveness' by depriving legions of illegals the opportunity to invade our borders and pick our crops. Thousands upon thousands of inmates can do the same work - at least they are LEGAL citizens. We don't award citizenship for illegal behavior - it is an insult to any legal immigrant who went through the proper procedures. Immigration should be select - we should only allow people into the country that can add value and deny entry to the rest. Skilled immigrants DO pay taxes and contribute to society and the economy and should be encouraged. Conversely, illegal immigrants do not pay taxes, do not contribute to society and act as a tremendous drain on educational and health services. See the difference?

Ruining the public schools? There are plenty of dumb American kids to do that, and that HAVE been doing that for years.

Yes - their are plenty of ignorant American school children; taught nothing but touchy-feelly bullshit by unionized liberal assclowns. Nevertheless, they are American children - entitled to the education that their American parents pay taxes to support. I doubt most Americans support paying additional taxes to support some other COUNTRY'S children. I know I don't.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that your kids have no right to employment, and if they price themselves out of the market that's their own damn fault. If someone else is willing to work harder for less money, how exactly _is it_ that you expect a market economy to act?

Assuming this is true, if American children have no right to employment as citizens - than illegals certainly have no right to it either. By your logic; your company could bring in an uneducated, unqualifed moron who accepts minimum wage to replace you and it would be fine since it is the market economy. Where does this stop? Should American workers have to low-bid jobs in order to compete with illegal aliens? Can you not see the problem here or is just that you are so progressive that you would gladly cut your own throat for a principle?

Half the cost

[DoctorBit]

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.

Re:Half the cost

[orthogonal]

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.

You're assuming the cost of outsourcing have gone up.

But maybe it's that American salaries and benefits are on the decline.

(Of course, since CEO compensation is up, we can look forward to great jobs as valets and stable-boys on the lush estates of our masters.)

Red Herring

[bheer]

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.

Re:Red Herring

[Eivind]

Sure it's standard.

But it's one thing when an employee has voluntarily quit his job, or is retiring, to ask him to train his replacement as his last task. That makes sense, and I can't imagine anyone thinking differently.

Neither is the case here. You where not planning on leaving. You are not superfluous, the job you where doing is still going to get done. Only they'll hire some Indian for 1/3rd the price.

That is not standard. Infact in many countries in the world it would be downrigth illegal. Under Norwegian law, for example, you can only fire people if a) they failed to do their job or otherwise to uphold their part of the work-agreement. b) The job they are doing is no longer going to be done and you can't possibly use them in some other position in your company. Or c) Your company is experiencing a lack of business and needs to reduce the workstaff to stay in the black.

"We make a profit now, but we'll make even more of a profit if we fire you and hire an indian to do your job", simply ain't on the list of acceptable excuses.

Requiring you to actively assist in such an undertaking just adds insult to injury.

Yes, I realize americans don't enjoy much, if any, protection against being fired for any reason at all. I'm just saying it's not all that strange to be upset about this -- seeing that in many parts of the world people where upset enough about this kind of shit to make it illegal.

Another Silly Outsourcer.......

[segedunum]

I'll simply repeat another of my comments from the past about this.

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/186197691 7/sr=1-2/qid=1149421474/ref=pd_bowtega_2/202-73591 57-8712641?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&v=glance [amazon.co.uk]

Re:Another Silly Outsourcer.......

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Maybe the first definition here kinda sorta matches yours, for what it's worth: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=idiot

You're still classifying an entire group of people as idiots without knowing anything about them except that they're from India...so maybe you're just prejudiced instead of a bigot. Sorry I chose the wrong word. ;)

Re:Another Silly Outsourcer.......

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Seems to me that poor developers are poor developers (and assholes are assholes) no matter where they were educated or raised. I've met my fair share of clueless, rude programmers and talented, polite programmers, and so far I haven't got any sense that foreign people are necessarily more likely to fall into the clueless and rude category than Americans.

When I read statements like yours and the one to which I originally responded, the impression that I get is that your reasoning goes like this: this person lives in India, and therefore must be clueless and rude. Maybe in real life you generally form your opinion of each individual based on their own merits instead of automatically assuming they're just like everybody else from the same country/school/etc., but your statements make you come across in a completely different light. That's all I'm saying.

Re:Trend will turn

[HateBreeder]

How about 20 Years?

You, literally, wouldn't believe, how far the American dollar goes in India.

my bank's indian call center.

[nblender]

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.

This is why you should have money saved

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

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).

Quality

[ernierubadue]

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

Like Digging Their Own Grave

[Esion Modnar]

before getting a bullet in the brain.

One day in training

[EEPROMS]

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"

So dont do business with them

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Short term epidemic

[mcheu]

>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).

bunch of things

[m874t232]

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.

Re:bunch of things

[smchris]

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.

Aye, there's the caveat. As someone who grew up in a blue collar, Democrat, union home and has had his taste if IT, it has been my impression that the culture is overwhelmed by so-called libertarians of the "Corporation uber alles" variety. Anything for business. So, here's your chance to suck one up for the good of the team comrades.

IF programmers had been unionized like commercial pilots, I think we can see there would probably have been outsourcing eventually anyway. But you might have been able to strike, get union relief, and threaten BoA with a world of trouble. And perhaps have worked for a few more years.

As it is, I see three options:

1) You can take your experience for a walk and pay for your satisfaction with your severance.

Or, since BoA is brutally stupid enough to make you work for your severance:

2) You can be an equally stupid cow and do so diligently until slaughter day. As Joan Rivers would say, "Can we talk?" The Nazi concentration camps had plenty of labor sitting around. You think the people emptying the gas chambers and loading the crematoria were Nazis? Capos. Fellow inmates who got to live a while until a shift to the next "transition team". Do you genuinely feel equally powerless in the face of BoA? Wow. That's sad.

or

3) As others have suggested, you can do everything you can think of to monkeywrench the transition. I suggest small group meetings off-site, off-hours to coordinate. Document. At the appropriate time publish and teach others. Get BoA's name everywhere they don't want it. "BoA The Movie". There are small voices to publicize this outsourcing like the AirAmerica and Jones Networks and plenty of web sites you can glean from portals like Buzzflash.com.

And become honestly close to each other in the process. You'll need the networking.

vote with your money?

[macguys]

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."

Re:Welcome to the world America created

[Svartalf]

In reality, those jobs, outsourced, never QUITE seem to produce the results they think they do.

They always cost more in time, opportunity costs, or actual cash.

Point in fact:

The contract job I'm doing has me writing a Linux system's wrapper library to make their drivers look more normal to Linux developers.
They also have a foreign contractor in India developing a similar interface as a kernel module.

I'm getting about 3 times what this guy's getting paid per hour.
The tasks in question are comparable in effort to do- and the guy's not an idiot.

I'm into testing on an alpha and trying to figure out where the performance bottlenecks are.
He's still not got anything properly working yet.

He started before me by several weeks.
I'm where I am in only 4 weeks of 50 hour work weeks- in another set of the same, it'll
very likely be a releasable product in the case of my work.

Offshoring doesn't always produce the results you think it will- and in many cases it causes
bad will. In a time where companies like Dell, who were one of the first to offshore work,
are publicly bringing the work back into the states because it was actually the same end
cost with better results to outsource it to places in Oklahoma and similar- the PHB types
at BofA are offshoring stuff to India, thinking it'll save them money. Short term, it might.
Long term, it's going to cost them all of that savings and possibly more. I'd not want to
use a bank that thinks it's okay to outsource any of it's functions to a foreign country
that's been known to have it's employees mis-use personal info for personal gain- good
thing I've been working on going elsewhere for my banking needs.

They need a horror movie scenario

[erroneus]

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.

SOS, different day

[pongo000]

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.

Re:Isn't that really...

[tdemark]

I don't know how many "thousands" actually is, but assuming 2500 employees at $70k/year, here are some quick calculations:

2,500 employees * $70,000 annual salary * 5 years = $875,000,000

$875,000,000 * 7.5% estimated federal employer withholding = $65,625,000

Is it possible that the majority of the $100 million saved came from BoA not having to pay the employer portion of employee withholding to the Federal government?

If so, then it all US citizens that have to pay when these companies outsource and not just those whose jobs have been replaced.

- Tony

Re:Isn't that really...

[uncoveror]

Train them wrong so they will break everything they touch. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

What goes around comes around

[doodlebumm]

The thing that companies don't realize in foreign outsourcing is the long term impact on their business:

• Outsource jobs to save money.
• Lay off employees
• Less domestic money available due to high unemployment
• Less business coming into the company
• Companies fail because there is no one "buying" their goods and services that they were so eager to lower the costs by foreign outsourcing

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.

Re:Screw "em, Walk Out!

[Confused]

Walking out isn't a good solution, because probably you're just another cog in the big machine. If you refuse to train them, you'll just save them your severance pay without much effect.

To really spite them, you should make the effort an train your indian replacement, in a creative way.

Step 1 is to dig all those SOX and ISO-9000 procedures, you have been forced to fill out over the years. Per definition, they describe your work in a reproducible way. These should be the base of any training. Make your replacement memorize them an apply them in harmless cases, where they don't generate too much mayhem. This alone should easily occupy about 3 months worth of training time and prove totally worthless while being the perfect employee by the book.

Step 1a, if above mentioned documentation doesn't have enough volume, take the time and have the trainee update it. This alone should cover another 6 months.

Step 2 have your trainee sign of every thing you've told him, that he learned and understood the procedure. By the end of every day, you shoudl have at least 4 signed papers by your replacement how well you've trained him. Add copies of these signed statements to your daily work log.

Step 3 stop doing any regular work - except for problems that are not easy to fix an will appear again after you've left. The trainees and the managers should get the impression your job is just easy routine. If some manageroid comes with urgent requests, let him know that you don't have time for it, as you have to train the replacement for your severance pay and the replacement isn't ready to perform this yet. If they want it done anyway, get it in written and signed on paper, best with HR also approving that you don't have to train the replacement while doing soem other things. Give a reasonable time frame (eg Rebooting a desktop: 2 work days)

Step 4 is only valid if you get the explicit written order, that you need to stop training your replacement for some time period. Use it to to the fullest.

Step 5 you naturally work only from 9 to 5. Should your trainee be late or has to leave early, complain immediately with HR that he fails to appear. If your trainee has certain time constraints, make sure you make it as hard as possible for him to keep them.

Step 6, do all work under the account of the trainee, best let the trainee do the typing. If something gets messed up, it was him. How do you say in hindi "rm -rf /." ?

Step 7, if you can stomach it, always be nice and friendly with your trainee. Try to connect with him, make him feel comfortable. This way, he'll be easier to have him do things that have long term consequences.

With these easy steps, you should be able to cover any time necessary to get the full pay, generate a good enough paper trail to document your outstanding commitment and can do more damage than any other way. If you manage to coordinate these procedure with collegues, you might be able to teach all trainees the same crap while leaving out the importatn stuff. Nothing beats having some poor indian schmucks create 5 documentation copies of the same irrelevant procedure on how backup tapes are stored, while leaving out that the backup job needs to be run manually every day.

In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happens

[FhnuZoag]

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?

Re:Isn't that really...

[tacocat]

A good thought. And most of these new techies will be to afraid of losing their jobs if the say the don't understand it. That's been my experience with overseas outsourcing.

On another note. I think this will backfire eventually. There is growing evidence that the real cost of overseas development is much higher than intially reported. Much of this has to do with the cost of Quality and Risk Management. How much do you money to you save if you spend millions a year backing up all your systems and you don't have a failure? How much does it cost when you backup nothing and the data center burns down? These are classic questions that typically rely on the PHB answer of "It hasn't happened yet so why should it happen now?" and "OK, so it happened and we recovered everything perfectly, so we can stop budgeting recovery expansion projects and spend it on something else"

Yeah, it certainly sucks to have someone put into this position. But how will you react when you are getting trained in your next job by some indian dude who thinks your just some corporate shill and trains you on how to wipe your ass and nothing more? You probably won't feel too good about the position you are put in. The BofA developers can't do anything about the position they have been put in by BofA, but they do have a choice in how they are going to act as human beings. What kind of response will you look back on in 20 years and be proud of?

Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen

[JohnFluxx]

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?

Re:Welcome to the world America created

[Eivind]

They lose more than that. Here's a quiz: How much would it be worth to BoA to NOT have this very article published ?

How many articles like it are they likely to get ?

have they not learned...

[alx512]

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.

Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen

[AB3A]

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.

Re:Time to change banks...

[AnotherDaveB]

Many of those companies returned to the UK

Can you name names?

This is precisely why we should not increase H1B's

[amjohns]

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.

Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Time to change banks...

[superpulpsicle]

The language barrier is really a 2 sided debate.

These people are very interested in learning English and improve their lives. Many of them make alot of sacrifices by coming here. Ask yourself how many Americans quit their minimum wage mcdonalds job to become a contractor in Iraq for big bucks. I am not Indian or remotely close to it. But I have to admit that the language thing is becoming less and less of a factor. They'll just replace one Indian support person with 5 others until it works.

Re:Short term epidemic

[v1]

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.

Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen

[An Onerous Coward]

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.

Re:Time to change banks...

[orasio]

You are missing the point.
That's why you are losing your jobs.
Indians can do the job better than you. There's nothing inherent to been born in the US that makes you capable of anything.
If anything, you have to face lots of challenges, for example a culture that praises money, and not skill, or knowledge.

The way to face the outsourcing "problem" is first to accept that they can work as good as you. Don't try to diss them on that grounds, because managers are not _that_ dumb, and they do know that an engineer is an engineer, in most places.

Of course, they have some handicaps compared to you. The time difference is an issue, the accent is an issue. Enlgish is not _that_ much of an issue in India. Outsourcing is costly, even if you don't do it overseas.

That should be your point, maybe fight outsourcing, but don't fight indians. Indians are as capable as you are of doing your job, and everyone knows that.

And watch out for people in South America. We are great developers, we live in the same timezone you live, we speak english OK, and some of us even don't seem foreigners to US people. Maybe that's why indians are moving their companies here.

Don't worry about me though, I'm not after your job. I like my job here in the Uruguayan telecommunications company, thank you very much.

Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Isn't that really...

[nacturation]

You: "Ok Vishnu, when you write code make sure you never use indents... Managment hates that. And keep everything on same line. Oh and never ever EVER comment your code unless you want to talk about your current mood and what you had for breakfast that morning."

Vishnu: Pardon me, but what kind of Cracker Jack box did you get your programming skills from? I have a PhD in Computer Science from Pune University where my thesis was on Automatic Retargetable Code Generation techniques, and I've contributed kernel code to Debian and OpenBSD. Now you are asking me to sabotage code like some uneducated American code monkey whose sole qualifications during the dot-com boom were that he had a pulse and could read? Please, sir, don't train me. Just take your severance and go.

Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen

[calstraycat]

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.

Illegals don't pay taxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Welcome to the world America created

[sulu9999]

I totally agree with you. I worked for a software company that five or six years ago started on a dedicated effort to move most of its technical staff to India. They hired a boatload of programmers in India and fired a bunch in the U.S. That began a very painful transition -- where the more senior engineers in the US office would have to explain to their counterparts overseas why it is better to use a function as opposed to cutting and pasting the same block of code in several places -- and other rudimentary programming concepts. The turnover in the Indian office was something like 50% a year and so it seemed that retraining was continually necessary. There was lots of contention and politicking between the offices. My experience with that particular group of engineers was that there was a startling lack of personal initiative and ownership. There was a lot of energy put into trying to push the responsibility for failed projects and missed deadlines onto just about anyone else. (Of course, I'm speaking only of my experience and am not painting all Indian engineers with this brush. There were a handful of really solid, hard working, technically innovative engineers with whom I worked.) Outsourcing will only be successful for those companies willing to invest money into an infrastructure to address these kinds of difficulties -- and then whether it pays off is another question. Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable banking with a company that outsourced -- although I'm not sure if the companies have to be forthcoming with that kind of information. I specifically didn't buy a Dell computer several years ago because they outsource, and I try to keep my money locally (i.e. buy at the locally owned garden center instead of Walmart). However, I'm not naive enough to think that outsourcing will stop. It will continue, full steam ahead, until it becomes financially burdensome -- either by loss of customers or rising costs whereever they are outsourcing.

Re:Time to change banks...

[jimicus]

In the case of the parent you're referring to, the most visible backpeddalled outsourcing has been of customer-facing roles. The BoA roles aren't customer facing, so it may not impact the bottom line as quickly.

Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen

[glaucopis]

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.

Re:Isn't that really...

[Aadain2001]

> What kind of response will you look back on in 20 years and be proud of?

The response the leads to the BofA suffering the most. Outsourcing is an insult not only to those that get fired, but our country in general. Yes the cost of living is higher here, but we are the people who use the banks and services that companies like BofA offers. So we are good enough to take our money (and make more money off of it), but not good enough to employ some people from the communities where BofA is located?

Directly telling the employees (who are technically trained and probably spend years of both formal and personal training to learn what they know) that they are not valued, at all, by the company and that they HAVE to train their foriegn replacements is the equvalient of beating a man and then pissing in his wounds. BofA has shown that they don't care about our country or our people, so I say "let them suffer the consequences of their actions".

Pissing off the techs is the dumbest thing any company can do, because of the positions of power that they have. Since there is little to know consequences of miss-training their replacements (after they get their severence that is), I say punish the company. Make sure that one month after everyone has left, they will be frantically calling everyong and asking them to come in and help. That's when you "piss in their wounds" and either say NO, or charge 3x your old yearly salary to come in as a consultant. These are the only actions that some managers/companies can understand from their actions: how does it affect our bottom line.

Companies have rights and do everything they can to make as much money as possible. But employees have rights too and can do everything in their power to teach companies that without them, they are nothing, and that we have the right to be treated as human beings, not office equipment.

Erm, and?

[raehl]

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

Re:Erm, and?

[MaxQuordlepleen]

Now this is an interesting counterargument, and as a Canadian I can definitely appreciate your concerns about a Canadian-style system. However, my belief is that it is both immoral and bad business for a wealthy nation to allow people to go uninsured. it IS possible to have a nationalised health system as well as high quality private care, just ask the Brits.

Re:In a capitalist economy, stuff like this happen

[MaxQuordlepleen]

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.

Re:Take your own medicine please

[MaxQuordlepleen]

Actually, I grew up in a Canadian border town, socialized with and knew many US citizens. I did IT work for a medicare HMO (yes, I was outsourced foreign labour :P), and I understand what a lack of proper, long-term, preventative care can do to a person's enjoyment of life as well as their overall life span. If the fact that hospitals don't turn people away helps you sleep at night, great, but that's not the same as providing adequate care to your citizens.

I also vividly can remember a young woman (a US citizen) who I knew years ago, who managed a record store. She worked hard for her eight dollars an hour and had few complaints, until the day she was diagnosed with MS while uninsured. I am pretty sure that this person would have some arguments with your point of view.

I'm not coming at this ideologically, I don't think that the United States is the great Satan or that there is nothing to admire in your dynamic economic system. I'm usually considered pretty conservative on this side of the border. I just think that your social model is pretty wasteful of human potential. Maybe the US has enough of a population that it can waste a few million children per generation due to inadequate schools, social programs, et cetera, our country has a small population and doesn't have this luxury.

Lower US wages?

[Tablizer]

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.

Re:Lower US wages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would somebody go into IT with low wages if they can get just as much being a Wallmart greeter or Radio Shack salesperson?

I'd take any halfway interesting desk job over spending all day on my feet, in a uniform, only getting rest breaks on a schedule, saying the same things over and over to the average consumer.

Re:That is just plain malicious and unproductive

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way can it be a violation of law to obey the instructions of your employer as they have written then down? You have a job description, which is the basis for your pay. So, follow it - even if they never bothered to update it with the 500 things you do in your "spare time" - it isn't like you were being paid for those, and you have no future career advancement at the company to shoot for.

Likewise, how is following an official company policy or SOP a violation of the law?

A typical employment agreement in the US is that a worker performs some work and gets paid for it. If either party becomes dissatisfied they can terminate the agreement. It is generally rare that employees are under contract to actually perform any level of service. In fact, for most exempt employees in the US if you started showing up to work for 1 hour per day they would probably need to pay you full salary up until the day the officially fire you - because you aren't paid to show up for a particular number of hours per week, but rather to work for them - the pay is the same for 80 hours, 40 hours, or 1 hour. If they want to pay you hourly then they open themselves up to all kinds of labor law (overtime, etc).

In any case, an employee should follow instructions to the letter - it isn't their problem if the whole place falls apart a week after they leave.

Amadeo Giannini is rolling in his grave

[wilec]

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

There Goes the Service Economy George...

[mgbastard]

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.

Re:NO. Time to change to a CREDIT UNION - NEVER!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Anybody who does business with an uninsured credit union is a fucking retard.

See: National Credit Union Association

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.

I'm sure you'll get that as soon as you develop an IQ > 90.