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Laid-Off Abbott IT Workers Won't Have To Train Their Replacements (computerworld.com)
dcblogs writes: An angry letter from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) protesting Abbott Labs' IT employee layoff may be having an impact, but not the way the senator wanted. The layoffs are part of plan by Abbott to shift some IT work to India-based Wipro, a major user H-1B visas, and Abbott is proceeding with the cuts despite Durbin's plea "to reconsider this plan and retain these U.S. workers." Abbott put the number of impacted IT employees at "fewer than 150." Durbin's letter has it at 180. But Abbott may be making changes in how the layoffs are conducted. IT employees, who only spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they were initially told they would be training replacements. But Abbott said Friday that the "affected Abbott IT employees are not being asked to train their replacements." The firm's statement appears to confirm the latest employee accounts of what's going on. One worker said the replacement training may be limited to employees who aren't losing their jobs. The training of replacements was a major issue for Durbin. In his letter to the firm, Durbin wrote: "To add insult to injury, the Abbott Labs IT staff who will be laid off will first be forced to train their replacements."
Yeah,its a marvel how supposedly smart IT workers are not as smart as their blue-collar parents that knew that without a union, they were going to get shit and shoved in it. If you are an employee of any type, you need a union or you're going to get screwed, its that simple. So just continue being high and mighty, and go get in line at the unemployment office. Oh, and vote for Trump, who will end this crap.
It takes a lot of time to be an expert in the IT field. Lot of problems are unique, require research and investigation into the problem. They may come run a script on your PC that takes five minutes but it took hours to identify the cause of the issue and write the script.
You'll get a lot more call center like support, where the buck is passed and no one really knows how to fix it, or cares to put the time in figuring it out for you. You'll get "Oh, have you tried turning it off and on? Oh that didn't work? You need to purchase a whole new PC".
I've considered changing careers myself because the amount of time needed to be put in to stay on top of the latest technology changes and be proficient with all adaptations of windows, android, linux, ios, etc, vs the pay isn't really worth it.
If people weren't interested in it enough to put in hours beyond what they work to keeping up with tech it wouldn't happen.
If you ever feel that IT people act superior its because you're putting in no effort to learn the technology, and you look at us like chumps who waste our time and want us to just magic the problem away for you at minimum wage.
Do it yourself, waste your time instead.
It's amazing that you can substitute Obama for Trump in your statement and it still makes total sense.