Surviving Outsourcing?

An anonymous reader writes "As some of you may know, HP is negotiating with DPWN, parent company of DHL, to take on outsourced parts of DPWN's global IT Services business unit. As a worker in that business unit, I and my colleagues are part of what HP is negotiating for. I moved into my current position fresh out of university and so far haven't experienced corporate shake-ups or outsourcing initiatives. I enjoy my work and the opportunities that go with it, which is why this announcement was so distressing to me at first. Then I began hearing about the opportunities HP has internally. If you've been through a similar experience, what advice would you give for someone being outsourced? Should I 'ride the wave' and join the new company and culture, or dust off the old CV/resume?"

Comments

From my experience

[jskline]

You should do both. Face it. The reason the shake up is there in the first place is because someone in the food chain isn't making enough money and wants to change things around so that they make more.

This likely will result in a possibility you come on to the new company... or not. Remember a lot depends on how much you are willing to accept as a reduction in pay which ultimately will happen at some point.

In the event that they don't want to pay you what you believe your worth, they will go for the lesser costing options (other people), and you would ultimately be out looking elsewhere.

Been there; done that.

India or Bust!

[feedayeen]

You could move to India, the land of opportunity.

Some outsourcing insights

[technormality]

Outsourcing is always done for one thing and one thing only. To save money. What this means is that those who get outsourced are expected to do the same work or more work for less cost. It wont be apparent immediately, often you move over to your new organization with your salary and most of your benefits intact. What happens over time is salary increases and bonuses become smaller than they would have been had you not been outsourced. Also your new employer may not backfill workers who retire or quit. Other places they start to pinch would be training and travel budgets, maybe even redo your 401k contributions to give you less, etc. Over time they will reduce costs one way or another. Hard to give advice on this since its a very personal decision. How confident are you that you can move to another job? Do you like your current job and coworkers? You need to factor these things in when deciding to move over or find a new employer. You may want to ask if you would be entitled to a severance package if you decline to move. If severance is a sizable chunk of money its another component to factor in. Best of luck!

Based on my experience

[sthomas]

I've been on one side or the other of 35 acquisitions. My experience is that the only people absolutely guaranteed of a job when it's all done are those who are have a written retention offer as an incentive to keep them in place and not bail prior to the merger closing. Many people will keep their jobs, some will lose them, and no one other than the aforementioned can be certain of either.

If you are uncomfortable with the uncertainty around your continued employment, then there are two options: live with that stress and all of the potential negatives and positives continued employment or sudden termination bring -OR- take your fate into your own hands and go in search of employment elsewhere ahead of time and on your own terms. No one can really tell you which is better, as you have to determine what your threshold for uncertainty and stress is.

I have known many people who have done both, and have had it work out better or worse for them. Some can handle the stress of uncertainty, some really can't. For those latter ones, taking the initiative to determine their own fate was far better for them health-wise. I have always stayed on through the acquisitions, and it has always worked out well for me personally.

One last word of advice I have for everyone I have ever worked with, for, or over: always keep your resume up to date! Don't wait until you are in fear of your job or suddenly terminated to get it out and "dust it off." Changing jobs is stressful, and this is one thing you can do in happier times to help see yourself through the rough ones. Also, it's great to update it with accomplishments when they are fresh in your mind.

I always encourage my employees and peers to get out their resumes and update them no less than yearly, but ideally as often as quarterly. At the successful completion of any large project, I let my teams know "that is resume-worthy, and these are the points you should include" and list the things I think they should be proud of accomplishing.

Don't let your resume get stale, or when you're out of a job it's one more roadblock to getting yourself back in the saddle.

Good luck with the acquisition, whatever you choose to do!

Lie like you have never lied before

[DCFC]

Although many factors are beyond your control, you can give the impression that you are really positive about the whole thing. Cooperate enthusiastically about the whole process. You can't stop it, or even slow it down, your goal should be to ensure that management think you are "part of the team" and "have the right attitude".
You need to do wholly BS stuff like ask those controlling this mess if there is some way you can help.
As a techie turned CIO turned headhunter I laugh openly at the "great opportunities" at HP or any outsourcer. My former colleague at PC Magazine Guy Kewney refers to these as "Industry Standard Lies".
They have as much credibility as the many fine offers I get in emails from Nigeria and China for wealth and health.
But you must not share my laughter.
You must sound impressed with these fake offers, maybe even apply for some. This is best done as innocent questions, like asking the new management about them, and how you could apply. They will be selling them to you, so we now have both of you faking it to each other. That will look good when they decide who to dump.
You may wonder if they will be taken in by this fake enthusiasm. The odds are better than you think, unless you have already met some HP managers, and then been amazed that people like this are allowed to be in charge of anything.
They're not exactly very bright are they ?
You will want to leave of course. Anyone who has seen outsourcing knows that the good people will want to walk.
But in any market, you want to be the one who decides when you leave. Buy some time and maybe the horse will learn to sing.

Re:Why not try it?

[Nursie]

Just what I was thinking - do both!

I went through something similar a couple of times within a few months a little while ago. First time round I got a lot of reassuring "we want your expertise" noises, then a payoff and a goodbye. Then I got a new job at a small company and it happened again.

Second time it was another big company (let's call them "large indigo") and we had all the same talks and speeches and the same reassurances, only they actually meant it. Unfortunately it's very hard to tell this. Anyway,I'm still with them and am not only very happy (and in the same job) but it's kinda cool having the opportunity to move around the company and the world once you're on the inside.

So, YMMV, but don't be too pessimistic.

Some tips from the "other side"

[saigon_from_europe]

It seems that I am on the other side of the story (dark side?) since I actually work in an outsourcing company. I work in Serbia, and we provide some programming for one company in USA.

It may be that we are not a typical example, but in our case there are about 60 employees in USA and 20 here in Serbia.

Complete R&D, marketing, and all top-jobs in IT are done in USA. Here in Serbia we do very basic tasks only.

In our particular case, we are not doing the job very well. Successful outsourcing requires very good communication channels. Due to geographical difference and esp. if there is time zone difference (like USA - India) communication must be perfect. This is very hard to achieve. That would require trained people in USA to write good specs, to know how to handle tasks and everything. For a beginning, just to know what they want as a product. In practice, that would mean that good managers will do some good work and bad managers will do some bad work, just as if there was no outsourcing. Outsourcing will just make existing communication problems bigger.

In our particular case, since we work in extremely regulated industry, things are even harder. Everything in the process has to be double-checked, documented and so on. In theory, this makes things more easy to outsource, but in practice, as major job has to be done in USA, outsourcing does not seem too beneficial. In our case, only thing you can outsource are junior jobs. But they have problems figuring this, and they try over and over to send us any tasks they find "labor intensive". This won't work. Outsourcing company is not a cavalry you call when you are in trouble. If you want to treat it like a cheap labor for boring tasks, you'll be in a huge problem.

As a complete surprise to a geniuses who believe that outsourcing is a solution for poor business practices, people that work in outsourcing companies are human, too. When treated as junk, they treat their employers as junk, so they tend to leave for small increases in salaries, since their job satisfaction is low and salary in only measure. Even more surprisingly, if treated as humans, outsources tend to behave just every normal employee. They learn about their jobs, they are ready to spend some time there when salaries are not the highest in the city and so on.

It's a bit different story when large company, like HP decides to outsource entire department. I don't see how this could be efficient. It's not a problem to replace junior John Doe with Asok in Delhi, but if you need to replace every trained team-leader, every mid-manager with the Indian counter-part, it seems to me like a recipe for disaster.