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IT Layoffs At Insurance Firm Are A 'Never-Ending Funeral' (computerworld.com)
dcblogs quotes a report from Computerworld: The IT layoffs at MassMutual Financial Group will happen over a period of many months, and it's going to be painful for employees. Employees say they are training overseas workers via web conferencing sessions. There are contractors in the office as well, some of whom may be working on temporary H-1B visas. Employees say they notice more foreign workers in the hallways. Approximately 100 employees are affected. The employees are angry but can't show it. A loss of composure, anything other than quiet acquiescence, means risking two weeks of severance pay for each year on the job. But maintaining composure is hard to do. "I know a few people that are probably close to a breakdown," said one IT employee. [A second IT employee described the emotional impact of the layoffs on employees in this way: "It's like a never-ending funeral."] Intel also confirmed major layoffs in April, which will affect some 12,000 employees or 11 percent of its total workforce.
Do you hold yourself to the same standard? When you have reached some certain level of salary, do you give up a raise because you have earned enough and it's not reasonable for you to accept more for your efforts? Are you a greedy bastard when you advocate for a higher salary, instead of allowing a summer intern to be hired?
I just don't buy this logic. If a corporation, operating under the rules set by the government and regulators, can increase its profit and continue providing its services, why would it not do so? I don't see in law any requirement that companies have social welfare or domestic employment goals in their incorporation requirements
If we're unhappy with the results of this behavior, then we should set new rules. But blaming them for following the incentives we've set is silly.
<sarcasm>But, but, but... regulations are bad. We should let the market decide....</sarcasm>
Yeah, this falls under the category of C*Os being crooks and lying on their H1B applications. That should result in jail time for everyone involved even tangentially in the decision. Fraud is a felony.
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I worked 3 contracts for HP.
Each of them ended the same way. After years of successful operation, and after a few failed attempts, they eventually handed the operations to another group either outsourced or over seas.
The very core of an IT person is employing automation. We work to handle more than we could before. We build systems and procedures that ensure against failure and allow for our obsolescence.
I've never minded it.
But this is no longer an IT thing. Any job can be outsourced and automated.
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
...Trump keeps saying he'll do something about it.
Yeah, and what he'll do is expand it. Trump loves the whole H-1B idea, and he's said so repeatedly.
Trump: “I’m in favor of people coming into this country legally. And you know what? They can have it any way you want. You can call it visas, you can call it work permits, you can call it anything you want...."
Trump: "We need highly skilled people in this country, and if we can’t do it, we’ll get them in. But, and we do need in Silicon Valley, we absolutely have to have."
Trump’s answer during the Megyn Kelly interview was consistent with his answer during the CNBC debate. He said again that Silicon Valley needs highly skilled workers, and showed his support for the H-1B program. Further, he appeared to support employers sponsoring H-1B workers for green cards, saying, “We absolutely have to be able to keep the brain power in this country.”
Also, he said, “I know the H-1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me. I’m a businessman. These are laws. These are regulations. These are rules. We’re allowed to do it. I will take advantage of it; they’re the laws. But I’m the one that knows how to change it. Nobody else on this dais knows how to change it like I do, believe me.”
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"But how to fix it? Make it illegal to outsource offshore? Or even outsource in-shore?"
Eliminate the whole H-1B visa peonage category. If you want to come to the US to work, come as a regular immigrant. Let there be just one category of immigration, starting with getting a permanent resident visa. This benefits you as an immigrant, because it gives you same rights everyone else has, including being able to complain without being shipped back by your overseer, and puts you on the same basis as other workers in your area.
With India. You just can't. Their quality of life is so much lower and they have so many desperate people. I can't compete with people who lack clean air, water and food security unless I give up those things.
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IIRC, Bernie's plan was "significantly increase taxes on the middle class", which might actually work, assuming the economy doesn't tank as a result of the taxes. I like his honesty. When politicians say "tax the rich" what they always mean is "increase taxes on the middle class", but people keep falling for that lie.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Come on guys, fight fire with fire! Everyone walk together! Everyone! Maybe even leave a few fires burning, not that you caused any. Get together and agree on your severance package and demands present it to the company as a group. Make it painful.
They can't do this easily without you. Make them give you a golden parachute.
Folks, we are Americans! Our forefathers sailed the oceans on wooden ships the size of school bus. We are hearty, tough, and are not to be trifled with.
We have to stop getting trampled. This is not who we are.
Get together. Stand together. Fight the man together.
Take it to social media.
Blog it.
Make noise.
These jerks are taking your jobs and your livelihoods. If this company wants to move to India, let them go sell their shit in India, but make sure another American doesn't do business with them.
Make sure TRUMP spouts their name at his rallies and what a disgrace this company is to the USA.
Look outside your tunnel. Get your friends involved. It is time to man up and bring it!
And it would be a total shame if you put up a kickstarter page to help you all stick together through this.
Maybe a sympathetic hacking group would get involved to create mayhem until you are able to get back in the saddle.
It is time to drop the hammer and get tough. They do not tell you what you get as severance, you tell them. You are not a dog being fed scraps.
Knowledge is power. Don't go gently into that dark night!
There's a larger point to be made here.
Let's review our basic civics classes from back in elementary school and ask ourselves the test question. "What are the three branches of American government?"
Then let's ask ourselves which branch of government makes laws and provides for funding of issues like monitoring Muslims, building Walls, deporting 11 million people, kicking the fuck out of ISIS, changing tax laws, or even making America great again?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
After all, they're the only thing that has ever worked against a bunch of asshat employers.
That is all.
This will continue to happen until it is a dangerous practice. Dangerous on a personal level. It continues to amaze and disappoint me that there aren't more (any?) stories of high ranking executives and officers being found mysteriously disemboweled.
"Gee wiz, I really would like to outsource this entire department to shitfuckastan, and find the carrot juuuuust big enough to keep the staff here to train their replacement, but I sure am worried about my entire family being slowly murdered and eaten in front of me when I get home"
I know that's not actually how the world works, but a boy can dream.
never drink kool-aid from a big vat
You like tax and bank fraud? That's what it is. Understating the value of a property like that, you're committing either tax fraud or investment fraud.
Now, of course Trump will never face charges himself, at least not criminal ones, since he can agree to pay a large "fine" instead, but that's a separate issue...
She was a big supporter of TPP until she flipped recently for the purpose of vote whoring. She'll flip again. Her and her husband supported that whole "Clipper Chip" fiasco and she is clearly anti-encryption. She supports criminalizing "hate speech". She supported CA's draconian 3-strikes BS. She absolutely hates the 2nd amendment. She's stated in the past that she'd happily engage in gun confiscation given half a chance.
Basically, she's an anti-liberty statist who has absolutely no qualms against screwing over anyone and everyone when it's convenient for her.
And don't think I'm saying Trump is better, he's not and I don't believe for a second he'll do anything about situations like TFA states. There's a reason the Libertarians are polling in the double digits and that can only be a good thing.
Better question: which branch ENFORCES the laws?
As in, it's already illegal to hire an Indian, er, H1-B, when an American is available. Clearly that's the case here and everywhere else. Why do we keep reading about people training their foreign replacements when it's not supposed to be happening, and why aren't executives in jail already?
We can't call it a union (although the CWA just won their 6-week fight against Verizon, so there's that..) but a professional organization is what's needed. A professional organization can hire lobbyists, who will pay Congresspersons whatever is necessary to counteract the lobbyists on the business side. There has to be a way to level the H-1B playing field so body shops can't abuse it, and no one company or set of companies gets a huge advantage. If I were king that's the first thing I would do - cancel the entire program temporarily across the board so no one can keep profiting from it, sort out reasonable limits on it, and restart it alongside a professional organization. The organization would act like a combination of the AMA and state licensing boards, ensuring a high barrier of entry into the profession (i.e. no more coder bootcamp yahoos or paper MCSEs.) It would also enforce quality, make members responsible for messes they create, etc.
The other thing that a professional organization can offer is a reasonably standard training progression through an apprentice-style program. The big offshorings I've read about lately have been at utility companies, Disney and insurance companies. I wonder how many of those jobs they got rid of were mainframe-related. I work in the airline IT industry and it is getting extremely hard to find people to replace the retiring mainframers, and these people will be needed for quite a while. If you had a bunch of apprentice-level people working with the older guys and learning that skill set as one of a broad set of other skill sets, you wouldn't have the knee-jerk offshoring reaction. Plus, you could have a mix of "master craftsmen" and apprentices to spread out the salary levels. Yes, people with 25 years' experience and a family to support are more expensive than fresh grads who don't even have a goldfish to care for and can move tomorrow if needed.
I really think this is the only way to ensure that we have a steady supply of new people coming into the field. Not every system out there is built in Web Framework of the Month; I've been lucky to have the opportunity to work in lots of IT subspecialties with a diverse set of systems, ancient and new. I worry that new people aren't going to get this opportunity because Tata and Cognizant are abusing the H-1B program. Mainframes are ancient, but some of the core banking, government, airline, utility and insurance systems have decades of business logic embedded in them. TCS and the like have the perfect sales pitch for mainframe-dependent CEOs -- "fire your senior guys, sign here and we'll put 50,000 coders on the project tomorrow; you won't even know you have a mainframe."