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University of California's Outsourcing Is Wrong, Says US Lawmaker (computerworld.com)
Earlier this week, University of California hired India-based IT company HCL to outsource some of its work offshore. As part of the announcement, it announced that it was laying off 17 percent of UCSF's total IT staff. The U.S. lawmaker, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif) and the IEEE-USA find the outsourcing job "wrong." dcblogs writes: A decision by the University of California to lay off IT employees and send their jobs overseas is under fire from U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif) and the IEEE-USA. "How are they [the university] going to tell students to go into STEM fields when they are doing as much as they can to do a number on the engineers in their employment?" said U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif). Peter Eckstein, the president of the IEEE-USA, said what the university is doing "is just one more sad example of corporations, a major university system in this case, importing non-Americans to eliminate American IT jobs." The university recently informed about 80 IT workers at its San Francisco campus, including contract employees and vendor contractors, that it hired India-based HCL, under a $50 million contract, to manage infrastructure and networking-related services. The affected employees will leave their jobs in February, after they train their contractor replacements.
No amount of money could make me train a replacement. If everyone thought the same way, we wouldn't have this problem.
Unions are needed!
Seriously, I'd fucking walk.
And when I interviewed for my next job, I'd be brutally honest about why I did it. If the prospective employer didn't like it, that would tell me all I really needed to know about working for them.
the H1B salary level needs enforcement / direct w2 rules + an COL part to it.
The affected employees will leave their jobs in February, after they train their contractor replacements.
Basically asking someone to dig their own grave. For me to do that the severance package would have to have to approach seven figures. Basically they'd have to pay for my retirement.
They aren't laying off engineers anyway. These are IT people.
Fuck engineering, study something else, kids!
I studied computer programming at community college and went into IT after graduating with a 4.0 GPA. I love working in IT. Especially government IT since I have paid holidays, 20 paid time off days, 401k and healthcare. Alas, no gold-plated watch and/or pension.
Yes, on the days I was supposed to train my replacement I would bring a few beers and some chips to work, sit down, share them, and tell the replacement some funny stories and not to worry about those computer things.
Bummer. You should ask the taxpayers to pay a bit more for your gold-plated watch and pension. No need to thank us.
It's the read-headed stepchild of the professions, and self-styled engineering nerds say they do it for the "love" of inanimate objects. Business-types know this, and will exploit it ruthlessly.
There is truth in this. To quote a favorite villian, "if you are good at something never do it for free". If you WANT to give something away for altruism that is fine (see open source software) but don't let others take advantage of your love for a subject. Always be aware that others may try to take advantage of your good nature.
Fuck engineering, study something else, kids!
No, study engineering. It's a great way to make a living. But spend some time looking at the situation you are in before stepping into it with both feet. There are bad employers even for good professions. Learn to know the difference.
As someone that started in school for an engineering degree and later landed in IT, IT is not "engineering" (it can be the T in STEM but it is not the E).
How many bills did Rep Lofgren introduce/vote for that would have increased the IT budget for the UC system? If they are like most places, IT is considered a "cost sink" and has to struggle to just keep an even budget (as costs increase). You can't hardly blame them for doing what they feel is necessary to maintain the service they are expected to provide with insufficient resources.
Fine! They will just hire contractors to train the new contractors!
"How are they [the university] going to tell students to go into STEM fields when they are doing as much as they can to do a number on the engineers in their employment?"
They'll probably call it "affirmative action" because it benefits poorer Indians. Problem solved!
Ezekiel 23:20
In the area of UCSF $60k with a family is not a fine living. You don't know what you are talking about. Obviously you don't think of anyone else and lack empathy, but I guess that is considered normal here.
lofgren that is
nothing to see here - move along
The point was that if you're making $60k and then given the choice of train your replacement and continue to draw another month's worth of $60k plus some severance package to keep you on your feet for a few weeks so you can look for a job.........or walk and receive $0. It isn't that the fictional person couldn't live on $60k.....it's that the safety net only exists if you agree to train your replacement.
It much easier to say that if you have money in the bank and no kids to feed.
You should ask the taxpayers to pay a bit more for your gold-plated watch and pension.
My request for a $50K cost of living adjustment because I live and work in Silicon Valley got denied. No need to thank me for making substantially less than my peers while serving the public.
What a total bummer! You should join the private sector. We get $50k "adjustments" all the time. Thank you for your service!
Wonder how much the university spends on football every year (including coach's salaries, stadium and all associated costs)?
Could that money be put to better use?
If H1Bs are for jobs no qualified American can fill, and HCL has a whole slew of H1Bs. Laying off American's actually working in those jobs to replace them with H1Bs from HCL should prove something no? The H1B program likely needs to be scrapped altogether. Granted there are some legitimate H1B holders, but it's obvious it's being abused. Anyhow, the bar for H1Bs is too low and vague. EB visas, which require extensive documentation supporting the claimed skill level, should be the go to for skilled immigration. If UCSF wants to outsource, then they can deal with staff physically located in India and all the logistical challenges that entails.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Issues will not be recognized until we start outsourcing congressmen!
In the area of UCSF $60k with a family is not a fine living. You don't know what you are talking about.
So don't live near UCSF. Frankly someone with that sort of salary was probably commuting pretty far anyway. If you lose your job you move if you have to. There is no requirement that you continue to live in a place you can no longer afford. That's just idiotic. I've lost jobs before and the first thing you do is cut expenses any way you can. If that means changing locations then so be it. It's the reality of the situation.
Obviously you don't think of anyone else and lack empathy, but I guess that is considered normal here.
So saying that someone should not let themselves be cheaply bought and that they shouldn't dig their own grave is "lacking empathy"? I don't think you know what the word means. The fact that I have a spine and don't let others walk all over me does not in any way prohibit me from caring about my fellow human beings.
You should join the private sector. We get $50k "adjustments" all the time.
I'm two years into a five-year contract that's fully funded by Congress. If the Republicans shut down the government tomorrow, I'll still be working as an essential employee. It's a nice break from working on one-year contracts that end after nine months. Meanwhile, I'm working on my InfoSec certs for my next $100K+ job.
Nice. I better get back to work so I can pay my taxes so you can get that cushy $100K+ job with paid holidays, 20 paid time off days and healthcare and 401k. If I work a bit harder maybe I can get you that gold-plated watch and/or pension you want. Thank you for your "service"!
Funny thing.. I know a place in Denver where that happened.
The company announced the outsourcing and all the highly skilled admins who had run the place for the last decade bounced out to new jobs within a few months.
They had to call in Microsoft just to document some of the systems for the new H1B contractors.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
It much easier to say that if you have money in the bank and no kids to feed.
Yes it is. But it's not impossible to do even if you don't have those obligations. You might have to live very frugally for a while but it can usually be done. I get that it might be tough for some people but sometimes the price to do the right thing is high. Don't live beyond your means and always have a plan in case things go south.
A politician decried something they know nothing about for political gain? I can't believe it!
Let me tell you, outsourcing these IT services is a hell of a lot better solution than raising tuition on students, which is what most schools have been doing like crazy. Now if we can just get them to stop wasting money on expensive, proprietary software licenses, we'll be in much better shape.
So in that case, they can either, pay IT staff less, fire some (more than they do if they outsource some of the work,) or charge the students more money in tuition... I don't see that being stubborn really helps any... It might move you higher up the axe list.
Speak for yourself.
That is why the smart companies hire the replacements in parallel and in a gradual phase in.
I also have the financial sense to save for a rainy day and not leverage myself to the eyeballs. I've been months without employment in recent years, and my family was provided for quite well despite the disquieting uncertainty.
. . .they haven't outsourced the college administrators first. Given the massive administrative overhead of most colleges nowadays, that would save some serious coin. . .
Bravo. Let's hope this starts a movement.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is absolutely true, and that is why we need to enact employee protection measures to ensure that employees can refuse to train their replacements without losing any severance package to which they are entitled. At-will employment needs to come to an end. If the company doesn't renew your contract? Fine. But otherwise they're stuck paying you even if they do want to hire replacements. These conditions are unheard of in more civilised parts of the world.
Numbers are numbers. Money paid to employees is done out of the money the university has to spend. They either have to take in more of it, or pay out less of it. Which do you propose they do? The rest of the equation is irrelevant. Pretend for a second that YOU have employees, and your costs are going up, but your workload is not shrinking... what do you do?
Speak for yourself.
Right, because Trump didn't outsource the manufacturing of the wares he was peddling to other countries. There's a good chance that "Make America White Again" hat you're wearing was made in China.
Microsoft? Haha, could the contractors not figure out how to press "F1"? Microsoft may make shitty software, but it is still point-and-click. A monkey could generally figure it out.
I don't live beyond my means, and that includes having savings. I wouldn't worry about those bills you mention because they'll get paid in the interim. If they'd worry you, I posit that perhaps you're the one who needs to take stock of his own financial situation before judging another for being willing to live out his convictions.
If I could wave a wand and make all the lobbyists, visa loopholes and bad politics go away, I'd do two things:
1. Make systems engineer/architect level people in IT part of the registered engineering profession with all the requirements and privileges afforded to it.
2. For the rest (help desk, sysadmin of existing systems, etc.) establish a hierarchical guild system where people actually learn the work from masters and there is a progression throughout one's career based on personal achievement of levels of mastery.
Why would anyone go along with this, you ask?
For #1, Professional Engineers are responsible for maintaining licensure through exams and continuing education, like medicine and law. This guarantees at least a minimum standard -- if you know you hired a PE, you can at least guarantee they got through engineering school, passed a licensing exam and have some relevant experience. The same can't be said for a random yahoo who just made it through Bob's AngularJS Coder Bootcamp. In addition, PEs are legally liable for mistakes. If you told a company the trade-off for higher salaries was a guarantee that their project would be delivered correctly or they could get compensated, I think they'd go for it. The model today seems to be to hire a random offshoring firm, get 1000 random new grads working on your project and hope it works...this is a definite improvement.
For #2, having the routine IT tasks (simple ticket-based sysadmin running known procedures, help desk) or development tasks (code CRUD application with these exact specs) broken out as trades also promotes quality. When I started a million years ago, I came from a science background in my education. Learning how to do various IT things required lots of self-study, but I also had an informal "apprenticeship" with my more senior colleagues who taught me a lot. Formalizing this has a huge benefit in my mind -- new grads get paid to learn things the right way, again, MCSE Bootcamp is not the right way. They also are given more responsible tasks over time, not thrown in the deep end where their mistakes will end up costing companies money and downtime. It's not a union, it's a merit-driven guild -- and that distinction would have to be very clear to appeal to the overwhelmingly libertarian crowd who populate IT jobs in large numbers.
Long term, I think this is the only way to go. Healthcare has it right -- doctors (through the AMA) pay Congress bucketloads of money to ensure that the supply of physicians stays low and quality (and compensation) is kept high. We in IT/dev don't get this and we get stepped on because of it. In addition, there is a clear delineation between the professionals (doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, etc.) and the paraprofessionals (assistants, aides, etc.) Computers are part of our daily lives - it's time our profession grows up and becomes recognized as important. Until then, companies will continue to think of IT the same way they see the janitorial or landscaping service -- costs to be minimized.
It sucks though, because if companies didn't have staff by the balls this way they would pull this crap far less. Everyone who takes that deal paves the way for more people to find themselves in the same spot.
This is why we need a basic income.
The question you perhaps should ask yourself is, "Why don't I?"
I better get back to work so I can pay my taxes so you can get that cushy $100K+ job with paid holidays, 20 paid time off days and healthcare and 401k.
My next job probably won't be a government job. Like I said, it's nice break. I doubt I'll become a lifer in the government.
If I work a bit harder maybe I can get you that gold-plated watch and/or pension you want.
The IT folks who worked 20+ years aren't getting a gold-plated watch and/or pension. Those days are long gone.
One easy way that lawmakers could slap down this kind of practice across the board is pass a law making it illegal for companies to require employees to train H1Bs as a part of an involuntary severance package. Your knowledge is your own. You already contributed to the company, and if you are competent enough to train your replacement, you shouldn't be replaced in the first place.
To keep the law simple, if you train an H1B to do your job and are let go within 2 years without cause, the company has broken the law and owes the employee 5 years pay restitution with full benefits for 5 years and a $500k fine to the state. The 2 year time limit can be extended indefinitely if it can be shown that management was conspiring to circumvent the law. If the H1B replacements are so much better, they should be able to pick it up as they go.
Also within the law make it a felony to attempt to subvert the above law, such that management at the company is criminally liable if it can be proven that steps were put into place to circumvent the above law.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I *created* my circumstances, as does everyone else. We all have agency. If you choose to squander it, you can't rightly blame anyone else for the result.
Seriously, if they are going to do that, then lets start cutting federal money to UC. After all, they are saving money now and we no longer need to fund UC.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No it doesn't. The money people are going to do it anyway. Whether you take the money and train your replacement or not doesn't matter. Jobs will continue to be outsourced because there is money to be made/saved.
just took over the UCSF campus.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I used to do over-the-phone tech support for HP when I was green behind the ears, and we'd get customers who would receive shady calls from overseas reps claiming they had a virus, coincidentally some short time after speaking and working with an agent in Hyderabad. I am positively convinced that they accumulated customer phone numbers that were logged for purposed targeting later on.
Another convincing moment was when a friend of mine that I had worked with had his own HP laptop repaired, and received a targeted call from someone overseas about his laptop and an "infection" that it had on it. They had the serial number of his laptop, as well.
It much easier to say that if you have money in the bank and no kids to feed.
Exactly! So have that money in the bank, and wait on those kids until you're financially stable. These are the most basic of life lessons. Make some minimal effort to plan you life, especially to plan for the unexpected disasters. Almost everyone will have one, and it's on you to be ready for the inevitable.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
... to "outsour" our jobs. Nobody likes it when a job goes sour.
Maybe so, but that's offtopic here. These jobs are going overseas. That's the thing: I can compete with H1-Bs, they have the same cost of living I do. But the same guys living in India? Not so much.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's not just about lowering costs. It's about lowering costs by abusing a system, the H1B, that is specifically designed so as to not be about lowering costs but filling holes where there are too few workers. This situation does not track with the purpose of the H1B, so it is an abuse of the H1B process and should be stopped under the H1B rules. If you don't like the H1B rules, get them changed.
Don' t fire a bunch of employees after making them train their imported replacements, in violation of the visa clause...
The employer must attest, and may need to furnish documentation upon rest, to show that the non-immigrant workers on behalf of whom the application is being made will be paid at or above both these numbers:
The actual wage: This is the wage paid to other employees in the company who do the same work.
The prevailing wage: This is the wage for that occupation in the geographical area.
The employer must make similar attestation regarding non-wage benefits offered.
Bringing in workers under H1B to replace existing workers at lower cost violates the clause.
There is the third choice. Take the pay, and botch the training. Be an incredibly bad "teacher". Don't correct even the most basic mistakes. Be like a politician, don't answer any question straight. Be rude and belittle them for asking "stupid" questions. You were hired to do some kind of work, not to teach. They can't really expect you to be able to do a good teaching job.
" At-will employment needs to come to an end. "
Then you can't quit. You have to honor your contract. You're stuck working as long as they're paying you.
Well if you want to come sort and document a poorly documented 60,000 user environment spanning 19 states 48 domains with Exchange, Lync, Sharepoint, tons of SQL databases and a host of custom interfaces to healthcare specific apps that live on AS400 systems be my guest.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
State/federal should cut funding to that university, they want to fire american workers to replace them with labor from india then well they don't deserve tax $.
Trump is only one of the 2 would even touch and attack this crap issue. Even other idiot says trump wants to pay workers less, no he said the increase in pay should be left up to the states cause some states don't need 15$ an hour min cause cost of living in cheaper. Sadly 15$ an hour would push more of this crap forward with companies replacing workers with cheap labor from india or china or a robot.
Notice you never see board members being replaced by foreign SCABS .
oh, what are you going to do about it, run through the streets wielding machetes? shut up and take it you little bitches.
"Whether you take the money and train your replacement or not doesn't matter."
Whether you alone take the money likely doesn't matter but whether people in aggregate take the money or not matters. Disrupting operations costs money, a severe disruption can even be a big PR and stock price hit and that costs the board/executives money.
Have a year with 4-6 major headlines about companies that couldn't do business due to outsourcing and took stock price hits then watch how fast strategies change.
What seems to be the common thread is less the salary level of H1Bs, and more how it's being used. The worst offenses by far aren't from a regular US company filling an individual job slot with an H1B - it's the elimination of an entire department, replacing it with contracted services. Those contracted services then go to a company that primarily employs H1B workers. It's this loophole that needs eliminating, along with the contract service providers that are relying on H1B workers.
Haha, train them wrong as a joke, like Wimp Lo in Kung Pow.
Numbers are numbers. Money paid to employees is done out of the money the university has to spend. They either have to take in more of it, or pay out less of it. Which do you propose they do? The rest of the equation is irrelevant. Pretend for a second that YOU have employees, and your costs are going up, but your workload is not shrinking... what do you do?
There are 10 chancellors on the UC Board of Reagents; average salary is about $400k. That's $4M to start with.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Holy crap.. #10,452.. when did you join?
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
I'm not saying I agree with the outsourcing here, or the issues with training replacements, or the other non-sense. But I'm not sure I understand how this is an H1-B issue. I can't see where it says that people are actually coming here to take jobs and work. They may be coming here for training, but I don't see in the summary how they are displacing people here.
It sounds to me like they are offshoring a lot of these positions. Are workers in India, for example, doing work in India as outsources considered H1-B workers?
I'm not a HR person and don't understand H1-B's. But a lot of the discussions seems to be around H1-Bs and I'm curious how this offshoring falls under that.
When this story came up on Facebook yesterday my first thought was: If they don't want to use US workers then they don't need US government money. Let see if the law makers have enough balls to do something about this.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Yes, unfortunately, Trump gets his campaign merchandise manufactured in China, Clinton will probably stay the course on H1Bs, because the people who want the cheap labor paid her for a speech or gave to the Clinton Foundation (what does that thing do except employ Clintons?), Gary Johnson wants the market to take care of the H1B problem, so I guess Jill Stein is all that's left.
Microaggressions may seem harmless, but they can soon develop into macro-microaggressions.
And before too long you've got a full-blown milliaggression on your hands.
There is the third choice. Take the pay, and botch the training. Be an incredibly bad "teacher". Don't correct even the most basic mistakes. Be like a politician, don't answer any question straight. Be rude and belittle them for asking "stupid" questions. You were hired to do some kind of work, not to teach. They can't really expect you to be able to do a good teaching job.
Damn! I wish I mod points right now - I'd mod you up. Sometimes subversive practices like the ones you've advocated are the only feasible response to a horribly broken system.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I'm pretty sure you are going to be a government lifer. You sound exactly like one.
How do you draw that conclusion?
How much do they spend on promoting white genocide - sorry - "Diversity"?
Peter Eckstein, the president of the IEEE-USA, said what the university is doing "is just one more sad example of corporations, a major university system in this case,
This is the part I find most alarming about this particular case. While I don't care about the details of how an entity chooses to organize, FUNCTIONALLY universities in the public system are not, and AFAIK were never intended to be, private corporations free to cut costs however they see fit.
In UCSF's case, let it be privatized, all its public funding cut, and reparations paid to the generation(s) of taxpayers that supported it with the understanding that it was serving the American public.
In the broader environment, society needs to re-enable scholarship and an understanding that university education is not trade school, and requires public support to the degree that scholars, doctors, _certain_ types of lawyer, etc. are needed. Let real corporations pay to train IT and engineers they need in their own private educational institutions.</whining-about-society>
Third option: Train them wrong. "Sure, of course I'll train my replacement." Teach him the most fucked up version of everything you can, but do so with a straight face. Make sure your trainee is utterly clueless on the day you tell your boss "He's ready to go! Best in the business, this one."
It raises the price of the outsourcing for the employer, and in sufficient quantities by enough employees, could even be enough to make the outsourcing project totally fail.
Who did what now?
Engineering is fine, as long as you are good at it. Being a semi-competent "web developer" or "system manager" is not engineering. It is a problem.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Once an outsourcing company (Indian, US whatnot, but mostly Indian) gets there, a systematic cleansing of third-party contractors and consultants and employees gets started by them. Complaints, politics, making people look bad etc. goes the playbook. Ultimately any position worth anything will be a billable one,and local client VP/procurement would be paid off, etc.
It's just starting at UC.
UCSF has also been in the news recently for treating it's janitors like crap and firing them when they complained, and for raising the salary of their medical center's CEO to over $1 million (on top of the ~$550,000.00 he gets from being on the boards of several vendors who sell to UCSF).
Check this shit out...
It's not just that. Most people live at, or near, their income level. Society encourages this in many ways, and young people in particular are vulnerable to it because they lack the experience with the slings and arrows of unemployment in the face of established debt and other costs, so they don't sock away as is prudent.
When the question of "accept job or don't accept job" comes up, many times, there is a state of panic driving decisions to some degree. Same thing happens when one of the Bobs tells you "hey, you've been replaced by Jayesh, you have three months to train him, then you're on the street. Be sure to fill out your TPS reports. That'd be ghreaaaat."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Not only are health care data privacy laws not enforceable outside the US, but the data is vulnerable to breaches so brilliantly illustrated when a medical transcriptionist working in Pakistan threatened to expose patient records unless she got her back pay. It was revealed that the person who outsourced the work - and was responsible for the salary dispute - had ignored a prohibition from using offshore labor.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
It should be pretty easy to unionize on the spot with all the other people in the same boat. Collectively, they would have all the leverage they need. The fact they all weren't just summarily fired indicates they have something of value that the company needs.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The other factor everyone's missing is: why do people need to make more money for a "living wage"? Simple: too many of their costs have ballooned. And it's not across the board (technology gadgets are cheaper; look how much computers used to cost in the 80s), it's two very specific sectors: housing and healthcare.
Housing costs have skyrocketed in the last 10-15 years thanks to the housing bubble and foreign "investment". What have the politicians done to fix this issue? Nothing.
Healthcare costs have also skyrocketed. ACA was attempted to deal with this, but it didn't address the reason the costs were so high in the first place, it just tries to spread the costs out over everyone, so anyone who's middle class ends up subsidizing everyone who's lower middle class. What have politicians done to address the actual costs of healthcare (as epitomized by the EpiPen issue)? Nothing.
Fix the reasons that people think they need so much more money to live and maybe they won't need such higher wages.
I thought so too . . . until they hold your 3 months severance hostage
My modest proposal -- if a company does the "lay people off and replace them with H1B workers" thing, they completely lose the right to hire ANY H1B workers, not now, not in the future, not ever. And any H1B workers they already have on their payroll get converted to green cards, so they are free to go elsewhere.
So.... If I move to India and re-apply, can I get my old job back?
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
A long time after I did.
No amount of money could make me train a replacement
Funny, a few years ago some ex-colleagues of mine were in exactly that position: their jobs were transferred to India and they were asked to hang around for a few months as a transition. I was thinking to myself "Self, how much would they need to pay you to stick around rather than walk now?" The answer I got was they'd need to about double my salary. But I'm in the happy position that I think I can get a new job in a few weeks if I need to.
Turns out the company made the same calculation. That's exactly what the retention package was. My bros were astounded but decided they could live with themselves. They took the cash, then sat around drinking coffee and interviewing for a few months. I'm sad they lost their jobs but happy they all landed on their feet.
Like I wrote yesterday, UCSF is not a jobs program. It's a graduate university training doctors, nurses, dentists, and pharmacists. That's their mission and primary purpose. They should, quite properly, be spending their money lecturers, professors, and facilities and as little as they can get away with on overhead like IT and security. As a taxpayer and UC tuition payer, that's exactly what I want them to do.
I've seen this sort of deal play out multiple times. It always ends up costing the company more:
1. Non-IT management types want to save money
2. Outsourcing firm promises just that
3. Non-IT management secretly negotiates contract with service levels etc. Unfortunately not knowing all the ins-and-outs
4. Upper management approves the plan based on obvious savings
5. Workers are displaced
6. Service levels drop to the contract minimum, if that, and it turns out a number of critical things were overlooked
7. Extra ala-carte services cost $$$
8. The foreign workers, despite impressive credentials, turn out to be lower performers on average, either due to language issues, inflated credentials, or cultural differences in work ethics.
9. Local management gets leaned on by non-IT idiots that started this mess
10. Problems that didn't occur before are routine, normal problems take weeks to resolve
11. Dissatisfied with the contract at new contractor is found when it is time to renew, with equivalent results.
The best part is that the idiots who kick-start this process get their incentive bonus for savings realized before the problems kick in, then move on to other companies to wreak havoc again.
And yes, there are cases where these deals work out great. There must be. But I have yet to learn of one.
I'd quit immediately if I was told to train replacements before I got fired. Why knot the rope thats gonna be used to hang me? I don't understand why anyone puts up with that kind of crap. Passive resistance until you find another job, then quit asap before you do anything to help them get rid of you.
This is what unions are supposed to be for, things like ensuring that work rules and contracts do not permit forcing employees to train overseas replacements before getting laid off. Non-union employees need to stand up for themselves and not let themselves get abused like this. It would only take one or two instances of an entire IT department quitting en-masse to make the point that making employees train their overseas outsourced replacements is a non-starter. Get a couple CEOs fired rather dramatically when their outsourcing idea results in the company taking a multi-million dollar hit when an entire department quits before they get laid off.
"Whether you take the money and train your replacement or not doesn't matter."
Stocks don't go up in response to losing money.
"If these people were so indispensable they wouldn't be laid off."
Anyone can be replaced but there is a difference between being able to replace someone and being able to afford a major chunk of your operations roles sitting effectively unoccupied or even negatively occupied for 6-12months. The imports don't just not know the company. They generally are completely unskilled workers. It's like bringing in a building full of recent high school graduates and training on the job. People who swear by degrees would be suprised at how little difference a degree makes, either way you are basically starting from zero when they get to the real job.
Other than having a tough to follow accent that just sounds like a large bumble bee on the phone they do about as well as unskilled americans coming into these positions. And as time goes on it's our accent that is the disadvantage. There are far more H1B's/fomer H1B's than americans in US tech companies.
The simple solution is for Federal ADA's to start prosecuting people that replace a American worker with an H1-B. I believe they could argue quite effectively that employee A was replaced by H1-B performing exactly the same job functions and this violates the terms of the H1-B program. The H1-B holder should be immediately deported and the company(s) involved should all be fined a minimum of a years salary.
Personally I'd like to see the law expanded and have these violations make the CEO personally liable.
In cases like this, severance pay is likely tied to staying behind and training one's replacement.
Exactly. IT practitioners might like to think they are engineers, but they aren't. Even if Microsoft says they are.
I wouldn't even concern myself with the top of the top. It could be arguable whether they are worth the cost, but it's the next level and next level of 6 figure administrators that suck the life out of the UC system. And remember there's a pension to be spiked along with post-retirement healthcare that's sucking the life out of the system.
Go here Transparent California and enjoy your weekend.
Well geez, how does anybody miss the solution if it's that obvious. Just have money in the bank! Man, how stupid are people if they couldn't even think of that? Just have money and that solves most of your problems! Why doesn't everybody just have money?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
If your job is being handed off after a training/etc. period, the job is effectively gone at that point. Should one wish to quit, they should be able to quit without fear of losing unemployment eligibility, any pre-existing good reputation, or any other negative consequence of refusing training. Any retaliation, no matter how minor or subtle is to be met with severe penalties (read: ones that discourage offshoring) towards the company and any involved contractors.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I was laid off. Twice, in fact. Both times, I was unemployed for ~6 months. My wife and I had two small children (under 4) at the time, a mortgage, blah, blah.
Our choices enabled us to weather the bad times without them being catastrophic. We didn't buy the biggest house we could possibly afford, despite pressure from our lender and realtor to upsize. And this was in 2003, in the heyday long before the housing bubble exploded. We didn't buy new cars every year or two. We made most meals at home. We did travel the world a bit, but we prioritized savings, of both the long-term retirement and rainy-day varieties.
So when life threw its inevitable curveballs our way, we endured...and despite the snarky presumptions of some asshats here, we didn't run to our parents for shelter.
As I said, we *created* our circumstances, just as everyone does...either through preparation or lack thereof. That doesn't mean I'm without empathy, though. I'm about as tree-hugging crunchy leftist hippie as they come where social/humanitarian issues are concerned. But I have no patience with bullshit puling about victimhood and powerlessness in these types of employment scenarios. If you're a slave to debt or salary, it's because you put the yoke on your own shoulders.
Wife and two kids. Mortgage. More here.
You can't guard against every contingency.
Every financial planner worth their salt will advise you to keep enough cash in reserve to cover *at least* 6 months of your regular expenses, and ideally up to two years' worth.
It's solid advice that we chose to heed from the beginning.
Exactly why I have 6 months worth of "fuck you money" saved up
Twinstiq, game news
This goes both ways. If you realize they are taking advantage of you, start interviewing for other companies. As soon as you get an offer, you move out. You'll lose your severance package, but you won't need it anyways.
And the best way to be ready is that acknowledging you can be fired at any moment, for any reason. Be prepared to interview, and as long as you're good in what you're doing, and there are companies around you that will hire you, you should be good. If there are no companies that will hire you, think about moving to a place where there are many.
But of course until that do your best at your job. Be the best person around, and always have good connections - especially outside your company. Let everyone know you're doing a good job.
You are right, but I would also include anything that is paid primarily by loans and insurance into this list. For example, cars, car repair, and of course college. If we don't see the bill directly, we don't feel bad if they are really expensive. But once the final bill comes, we try to pass it to somebody else.
We don't all need to drive Lexuses (Lexi?) to work, or have the best gym available at college. If we were focused back at utility as we once did, we would get the most reliable cheap car we can get -- God forbid we might even use public transport!, and have our own gym membership. Then we would not have to give 40% of our salaries servicing the loans, or paying insurance premiums.
But the car only costs $250/mo for 6 years (and breaks down at 4), and we don't have to worry about the tuition until we graduate with a degree with little job prospects, and big amount of student debt.
(I say "we" in the general sense).
People don't *need* to go to college. There is a such thing as self-education, and the state already provides for education up to grade 12 for free. After that, local community colleges are very cheap. Too much money for college has led to too-expensive tuition, as well as the mentality that everyone needs a degree to be employable. We probably should be going the other way, reducing or eliminating government money from education and eliminating federally-guaranteed loans, plus very importantly making it so that loans can be discharged in a bankruptcy, making it so lenders are much more reluctant to lend to students (to avoid them going bankrupt right after graduation, you'd put a time limit on it: no discharge within 5 or 10 years, for instance).
Cars are cheap. You can get a used car for $3-5k now, and a decent Japanese car can easily go 20+ years and 200k+ miles with regular maintenance. I'd worry more about gas prices going back up. Public transit is impractical for much of the population; the schedules are too erratic and the routes inconvenient.
If your car breaks down in 4 years, you must have picked a really crappy car, or you drove it into the ground by not maintaining it. Maintenance on a modern car is minimal; mainly just change the oil every 5-10k, and then change the air filter every 25-50k and then change the plugs and coolant and probably belts at 100k. If you can't handle that, you should move someplace where there's bus service; ghettos aren't that expensive and do have bus service.
It does seem to me that a lot of Americans really need to learn to downsize, and accept a life with less formal education, an older and cheaper car, and a place to live that's in a low cost-of-living area where there's probably a lot of Trump voters. Everyone moving into downtown city centers, piling up huge student loan debts, buying ultra-expensive iPhones on credit, and chasing after a lot of mediocre-pay office jobs so they don't have to get their hands dirty is not sustainable.
Even then it does not add up. $50M/80 jobs/8 years = $78125 per employee per year!! So much for an Indian HCL employee!! They are worth more like $20K per year.
A large part of the problem is that when H1B's were instituted, their minimum salary was $60,000. Adjusted for inflation, that should be $120,000 (so $180,000 with the hidden 7.5% social security tax and other benefits).
I saw the billing rates before I retired.
U.S. worker: $90 / hour.
Onshore h1b: $60 / hour.
Offshore worker: $30 / hour. (And have very poor english skills so you can't use them unless you have onshore h1b's).
Quality used to be master degree quality for bachelor's degree wages.
Quality has declined sharply and is now "C" average bachelor's degree wages for bachelor's degree wages.
Use of offshore labor played a huge part in Sysco's recent SAP failure ( I think it cost/wasted a cool billion dollars).
Because offshore labor NEVER says "this is impossible". They always say they can do it. At a minimum, they'll say, "I'll do my best". This is their version of "are you insane? This is impossible!"
They also rotate in and out very rapidly. 6 months before moving on elsewhere. The myth is that they are hot swappable and managers love to hear that it experience with business rules and facile mastery are not needed.
Anyway.. a partial fix is to set H1B wages (not what the contracting company bills but what the h1b employee gets to take as their pay) equal to the top 10% wages. As it is the really rare talent the H1B was intended to provide is often shut out of the lottery by consulting firms fielding thousands to tens of thousands of bachelor's degree candidates.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Holy crap.. #10,452.. when did you join?
Well, if that is surprising...