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IT Workers Facing Layoffs Jolted By CEO's Message (computerworld.com)
HCSC recently announced layoffs for more than 500 IT workers, and expects them to train their replacements from an India-based contractor. But a few days earlier, CEO Paula Steiner said, "As full-time retiring baby boomers move on to their next chapter, the makeup of our organization will consist more of young and non-traditional workers, such as part-time workers or contractors." dcblogs quotes ComputerWorld:
What Steiner didn't say in the employee broadcast is that some of the baby boomers moving "on to the next chapter" are being pushed out the door. "Obviously not all of us are 'retiring' -- a bunch of us are being thrown under the bus," said one older employee.
The insurance provider argues that its members want easier technology solutions that "help keep rising costs in check. Our IT teams are being transformed...focusing on those and other member needs." But Slashdot reader ErichTheRed writes: Having a CEO actually say in public that their company wants to engage in age discrimination and eliminate full-time employment, rather than just carry out the work in secret, is new to me... for those mid- to late-career technical folks, how have you managed to adjust to new realities like this?
The insurance provider argues that its members want easier technology solutions that "help keep rising costs in check. Our IT teams are being transformed...focusing on those and other member needs." But Slashdot reader ErichTheRed writes: Having a CEO actually say in public that their company wants to engage in age discrimination and eliminate full-time employment, rather than just carry out the work in secret, is new to me... for those mid- to late-career technical folks, how have you managed to adjust to new realities like this?
A 200,000/year H-1B quota is why the tech companies have been writing checks to the Clinton Foundation. The web monkeys and cubicle trolls of Slashdot are about to vote themselves out of their own industry.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I saw 50 year olds being laid off when in 1980 when I was entering the field. And that's when we had stronger age discrimination protection (pre 2009 gutting by SCOTUS) and no H1B's.
If you are lucky or a genius (top 1% in your field), you'll be fine. otherwise, count on being dumped on the street without warning at about 45 to 54 years old. If we can get the ACA correctly in place, it would reduce some of the incentive ( "self" insuring corporations realize that older people cost a lot more for insurance starting about age 45 and want to dump them unless they have critical skills).
The next 20 years are going to be bad. A glut of older workers with no savings willing to work at anything to keep from starving. Meanwhile fields like Trucking with 3 million employees may practically vanish over 5 years and the new jobs will only be open to 20 year olds trained in the new technologies (and they may not find enough jobs either- the 30 year olds I know are all about 8 years behind my generation to reach their first cars, first homes, etc.) and I was about 8 years behind my parents generation.
When your skills are hot, save half what you make until you have enough to live until age 80 if you lose your job. If your job is stable, buy a house because that will fix your monthly payments. The house payment stays about $1200 a month while the apartment rent goes from $1200 to $1800 over a decade. Sure there are repairs but get home owners insurance and learn to change a washer and patch sheetrock (EASY for IT types).
Management is good money for 4-8 years but a dead end (layoffs). Getting some critical, complex skill that can't easily be outsources is good. And as long as indian language skills suck, business analysts are going to be safe for a while.
Over time- packages are going to become more common. You purchase them and configure them but you don't code them. Problem is they can be replaced with a new hot package you don't get trained in without warning.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You realize trump imported illegal labor to build his buildings and bought foreign steel as well.
All the politics in the world won't stop the fact that labor at 33% of the price is very attractive. You might stop H1B's (they sort of suck anyway) but then they'll just offshore. Or use L1 visas. Or some other dodge. Or buy a package and just give up a half dozen features they felt were mandatory until they realized they'd have to pay a full time person to support it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This is how you get out of this situation. When you get out of school, pay down your debt, budget, save, invest, and decide what it means to "need" something versus "want" something. By the time you're 40, you should be glad someone is going to show you the door.
The American worker is not safe without organized protection, which only doctors and lawyers have managed to maintain. If you're going to refuse to organize because you're "too smart and unions are bad," then at least work to protect yourself. Because when it comes time to be laid off, it's a bit too late to say "that'll never be me."
Quote from her biography on the HCSC web site (last paragraph):
That quote says she is involved with the management of 5 other organizations.
"... MBA from the Wharton School." Not a background of someone who understands computer technology.
I'm guessing that people who work there will call to have a computer problem fixed and will talk to someone who doesn't speak English well and who has very little knowledge of computer technology. That has happened to me numerous times involving several companies.
Walk out together without training any replacements. This is what labor unions are for.
Force your employer into a situation it cannot handle by itself. It needs its workers and will stop functioning if enough workers walk out.
The visa workers are usually hired by the firm the main company is outsourcing too. Thus, the hiring practices subject to legal review are not by the main firm. They tell the judge or jurors, "Hey, we are just outsourcing the work, we don't do actual hiring of the workers. The outsourcing company selects workers for a project."
And the shenanigans used to justify visa workers are fairly well known, such writing the job "requirements" that happen to better fit a known visa applicant. Inspectors are often clueless dolts who don't know Javascript from Flux Capacitors: pump them full of mumbo jumbo and they glaze over. Or they don't have time to dig deeper to find the real requirements of the job, versus the claimed requirements. The outsource companies have a lot of practice writing around the law.
Table-ized A.I.
It does make you racist. There's simply no other way to put it. America's way of doing things is just like Microsoft- America's biggest company at one time. Extend, Embrace, Extinguish. We don't close ourselves off to the world.
Let me guess..........you still have a job, right?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Yes, competition sucks. Welcome to the global economy.
That cushy job you call "yours" actually belongs to your employer. You are paid at the owners' discretion.
OK, having said all that, I can tell you that, in all probability, the idiots in charge will be furiously back-pedaling in a few years, once they realize that you get what you pay for. I've been through this. Upper management has strictly no clue what IT even does, but they understand the bottom line. If some Indian IT consulting company offers services at bargain basement prices, they don't ask too many questions. To them, IT services are fungible.
If you were good at your job, you might be able to get it back at that point. Of course, if you were good, you probably found something better in the meantime. In that case, you will be thanking your current employer for giving you the kick in the ass you needed to get on with your life.
Might makes right irrelevant.
So, if your neighbor or brother lost his job, in a similar line of work, it's totally irrational to think you're next? I think this has stopped making sense again.
Yes, it's irrational. Didn't you listen to what the political pundits who are pro-establishment, and business owners who are eyeing 3rd world shitholes to export your job to said?
Well, media pundits will say anything, as long as it's stupid and wrong, but the skilled trades have always been going strong. It was manufacturing jobs that people were being steered away from as far as I recall, and that was and remains good advice.
Yes, and no. Pundits will say a lot of things to hit a lot of bases to give them a good view in the eyes of other pundits. Skilled trades have been hit or miss for the last 30 years, you *might* hit it good if you got in during the 90's when there was a need for electricians or plumbers. And by the 00's, they were being laid off in droves. If you got in early as a mechanic in the 90's and bought out some guys shop ~6-8 years after your apprenticeship ended you were also likely in a good spot. If you didn't it could be very hit or miss depending on the region. Part of the reason there has been a shortage in some trades, is because both government levels(federal and provincial/state), have said "trades are outdated, you don't need do THOSE." Of course trades aren't safe from imported labor either. Here's an example from Canada where skilled tradesman were laid off and replaced with 3rd world labor. And the effects of it.
Manufacturing were just the first ones hit, and hit hard. But now you can see imported labor and people being laid off. From janitorial staff to machinists, and IT(at any level) to accountants and legal.
Om, nomnomnom...
more and more data thefts are occurring. These out-sourced outfits taking over entire IT departments are largely maintainers, not designers. They have no chance of keeping up with today's hackers.
Correction: Trump either knew what was going on, which makes him complicit in the illegal actions of his workers, or was oblivious of their dealings, which makes him shit at managing one company.
Either way, he's either a criminal or bad an managing.
Buying foreign steel is not illegal, and so is not employing H1B's, offshoring, L1 visaing people or other things. All of those are things to save money at the cost of domestic interest -- that's why corporations are lobbying it, buying Cllinton to facilitate those aims. And that might not even be illegal.
As for speaking out against worker offshoring or something else. I try not to be impressed by what a person says, because only actions have a real meaning. That is what the grandparent of this post was trying to tell You: Trump is speaking up against offshoring and touting his entrepeneural abilities, while benefiting (either complicitly or ignorantly) from illegal imported labour. He riles against shitty trade deals while benefiting financially from importing foreign steel -- and hurting domestic manufacturing in the first place.
Here are some ugly facts if you are voting for HRC.
Trump Does The Unthinkable - Liz Crokin
Journalist Liz Crokin shares her perspective on Trump. This is a perspective a lot of people don’t want published; it certainly draws fire on the main stream media for the language used by Democrats -- which they are perpetuating Donald Trump is a racist, bigot, sexist, xenophobe, anti-Semitic and Islamophobe -- did I miss anything?
The left and the media launch these hideous kinds of attacks at Trump everyday; yet, nothing could be further from the truth about the real estate mogul.
As an entertainment journalist, I’ve had the opportunity to cover Trump for over a decade, and in all my years covering him I’ve never heard anything negative about the man until he announced he was running for president. Keep in mind, I got paid a lot of money to dig up dirt on celebrities like Trump for a living so a scandalous story on the famous billionaire could’ve potentially sold a lot of magazines and would’ve been a “Huge” feather in my cap.
Instead, I found that he doesn’t drink alcohol or do drugs, he’s a hardworking businessman and totally devoted to his beloved wife and children. On top of that, he’s one of the most generous celebrities in the world with a heart filled with more gold than his $100 million New York penthouse.
In 2004, the first season of “The Apprentice” aired and at that time I worked as an entertainment columnist for the “Red Eye Edition of the Chicago Tribune” and as a freelancer for “Us Weekly”. I had a gut feeling that Chicago contestant, Bill Rancic, was going to win the reality show. So I contacted him and covered the hit show the entire season. I managed to score an invite to New York for the show’s grand finale and after-party.
This is where I first met Trump and got to ask him a few questions. That year, Rancic did win “The Apprentice”. I attended “The Apprentice” finale the next two years in a row. Between that and the frequent visits Trump and his family made to Chicago during the construction of their Trump International Hotel & Tower,..... I got a chance to meet most of his family too and I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with them.
Since the media has failed so miserably at reporting the truth about Trump, I decided to put together some of the acts of kindness he’s committed over three decades which has gone virtually unnoticed or fallen on deaf ears.
In 1986, Trump prevented the foreclosure of Annabell Hill’s family farm after her husband committed suicide. Trump personally phoned down to the auction to stop the sale of her home and offered the widow money. Trump decided to take action after he saw Hill’s pleas for help in news reports.
In 1988, a commercial airline refused to fly Andrew Ten, a sick Orthodox Jewish child with a rare illness, across the country to get medical care because he had to travel with an elaborate life-support system. His grief stricken parents contacted Trump for help and he didn’t hesitate to send his own plane to take the child from Los Angeles to New York so he could get his treatment.
In 1991, 200 Marines who served in Operation Desert Storm spent time at Camp Lejeune in North Carolinabefore they were scheduled to return home to their families. However, the Marines were told that a mistake had been made and an aircraft would not be able to take them home on their scheduled departure date. When Trump got wind of this, he sent his plane to make two trips from North Carolina to Miami to safely return the Gulf War Marines to their loved ones.
In 1995, a motorist stopped to help Trump after the limo he was traveling in got a flat tire. Trump asked the Good Samaritan how he could repay him for his help. All the man asked for was a bouquet of flowers for his wife. A few weeks later Trump sent the flowers with a note that read: “We’
Sorry but your skills are just out of date. The H1Bs have up to date skills that we need to run modern systems to keep costs down. By the way, we need you to stay on for 6 months to train your replacement.
Even better - just write useless comments in your code since there are tools that may punish you if you have no comments but there's no penalty for useless comments.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Why do you think the elite Republican insiders hate Trump? Why do you think they support HRC? Why do you think all the big money Republican donors are giving money to Hilliary? The Republican insiders hate Trump as much if not more than they do Hilliary. They actually don't hate Hilliary, they're just jealous of her because she's the favorite of all the rotten, corrupt bankers and corporate masters. Keep thinking that Democrats are really all that different from Republicans.
IT is getting easier and the salaries accordingly. Just look at the m$ shills and other trolls of slashdot. They only know windoze and m$ visual studio nothing else. Just tell them there is emacs, lisp, python, and omg there are other OS's than m$ windoze and they shit their pants...
Indians, middle-easterners, eastern-europeans know there are other compilers and OS's than m$ crap. Expect them.
Correction: Trump either knew what was going on, which makes him complicit in the illegal actions of his workers, or was oblivious of their dealings, which makes him shit at managing one company.
Either way, he's either a criminal or bad an managing.
Let me ask you, with 500+ businesses do you think he directly manages each and every one? Or do you think that it's more likely that someone down the line from him simply thought "Well, I can do this and show the boss how good of a money saver I am. And he'll give me a bonus for it." If you think the first, you're unimaginably naive. If you're thinking on the second then you probably have some scraping of understanding how how "businesses empires" work. Meaning the person at the top looks at multiple things every day, usually not very closely unless something is going wrong, and leaves it to the people under them.
Keep in mind that Trump has been consistent since the 1980's on this. The reality is, someone down the line thought it was a good idea. Ran with the idea, and it flew under the radar because he didn't look at it. And the management under him simply saw dollar signs of saving and went with it. So now we're getting into multiple issues where the DOJ didn't care, ICE didn't care, other branches of government didn't care. And now we're seeing something else going on, multiple failures of law enforcement and those who prosecute those laws before the courts either ignoring or simply ignoring it. Now why are they ignoring it? Because it's convenient? Because there's orders on high because everyone is doing it? Because they're incompetent? Or a combination of several things. Keep in mind as well over the last 8 years, that ICE agents have stated that the DOJ and the administration have ordered them NOT to arrest, prosecute, and release illegals. If you're going to run with this line of reasoning though, then I'm sure you're lining up to impeach Obama for what Clinton did, instead of holding Clinton directly responsible for her gigantic fuckup with her email server and lying multiple times including to the investigative committee and to the FBI. And instead of going directly after those that ignored the law/ordered it not to be enforced we're gonna go for the top instead.
Om, nomnomnom...
Look - companies can and should be able to outsource their IT depts - particularly if the C level execs have no experience in IT.
quote:
It's been eight months since I left, no significant features committed to source control. We were doing major releases every month previously. They are thinking of bringing us back now but it is too late we've all moved on to better work. Company is losing millions a year by not having all of their refineries using this custom system that's been eight years in development. Tens of millions to re write from scratch. I've heard they are considering bringing us back but we have all moved on to better things now.
Solution:
Obviously don't go back. Particularly don't go back to your old jobs. That would be stupid.
Instead - a team of you fellow co-workers needs to get together. You all know the current system by heart; the backlog and the future of the product. Offer company to replace current outsourced company - with performance targets, bonuses, etc. (No you won't met the current price outsourced company X is offering - they wouldn't be interested if X wasn't doing the job correctly. Your target is higher and you expect (and demand) to get paid more.)
Well, I've seen H-1Bs across the spectrum, from utter incompetents to people I'd hire in a heartbeat. Just like anyone else.
The real problem is that the people behind this don't see IT as a profession, like a being a lawyer or a doctor; they see IT expertise as a commodity, like pig iron. You go with the lowest price supplier, and tough luck to the higher priced ones.
But even pig iron comes in different grades, and if all you do is go with the lowest price thing called "pig iron" chances are you won't be getting a bargain if your requirements are high -- which they should be in the case of something like IT, given how deeply IT is entwined with every aspect of how a modern enterprise runs. And given that level of involvement it makes sense to cultivate a long term workforce rather than a transient one.
If you go for the lowest price you can get you're going to create a problem, whether that is with domestic or immigrant labor. In reality you want to go for the best people you can get, and retain them for as long as you can because they only perform better with experience.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
but then they'll just offshore.
Let them. Have you ever worked with people in India? It's bloody inconvenient. First, there's a 13 hour time difference between California and India which means they're working while you're sleeping and vice versa. Second, their English is hard to understand, due to a thick accent that's further worsened by a hint of the British accent. Third, their idea of an acceptable job and your idea of an acceptable job are wildly different due to cultural and other differences. Basically, India is a crap hole country. The people there are used to putting up with crap quality goods and services. When you as an American complain about their poor quality work they're either shocked or mad or both. Fourth and finally, they don't actually know what they're doing or should be doing. Any first world company that thinks they're going to save money by outsourcing their IT department to India has another thing coming.