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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?
Those H1B's are just there to "temporarily" fill a lack of skilled workers.
Om, nomnomnom...
So the replacement workers the Americans are being forced to train before getting shoved out the door are from India?
This could make a great "different cultures" comedy...maybe even a rom-com. It would go like this: one of the fresh young faces hires the Boomer who just trained her and got kicked out of the corporation to be her nanny. They could call it "Scumbag Millionaire".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
This is not the first time we've read about laid-off employees being expected to train H-1B replacements. But I've also seen numerous statements that it's illegal to do that. I realize many companies like to play fast and loose with laws, but - why aren't we seeing lawsuits from people in that position? I know some people will be scared they might lose their retirement or severance... but I can't imagine every single person affected would be too scared to sue.
#DeleteChrome
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.
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."
I know a few lawyers that would jump on that comment. Of course "health care" businiesses in general and HCSC in particular are notoriously disinterested in anything but the management's pay checks and bonuses. What other sector would pass out mugs that read "May Your Cup Always be Half Full" - no joke.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
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.
Enough. This Tuesday, it will be time to make I.T. great again. Those who'd have sanctimonious cries of "its a global economy" can talk to the hand. These kinds of layoffs are only possible because of the horrible decisions of corporate executive multimillionaires and billionaires to offshore all of our jobs for the personal gain of a few. Greed at the top masquerading as globalist capitalism is destroying our economy. For the first 10-year period in modern history, America never exceeded 3% GDP growth in any year.
"Hillary Clinton, one of the leading Democratic presidential candidates, supports increasing the cap on H-1B Visas. She argues that foreign skilled workers contribute a great deal to the American economy, and increasing the cap will help push technological development forward in the United States."
https://www.prideimmigration.com/hillary-clintons-position-on-increasing-the-h-1b-visa-cap/
"What difference – at this point, what difference does it make?"
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
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.
Mark Spencer fell through the Buzzword Tree and hit every branch on the way down, except maybe the Synergy branch:
Table-ized A.I.
the people being replaced should walk out, by whatever means (pretending you're depressed is a good way) on the day the replacements are supposed to arrive, and never come back, period !
Trump still outsources as much as possible, and also avoids paying decent wages to his business workers.
Hold it! I thought the HB-1s were hired for their pre-existing expertise...
So why do they need training?
And the unions haven't been cooperative either before so it allowed them to be shunned by most parties - even employees.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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.
I don't really oppose or support higher levels of immigration; from my own selfish perspective it isn't clear which is better. Legal immigration basically just increases the US population, which I'm not sure has a positive or a negative effect. (I work at a company started by a guy who came here from Jordan, and before that I made pretty good money working in SV for two guys from Russia and Pakistan, so that affects my opinion a bit.)
Illegal immigration- the kind that really obsesses people- affects me by letting me buy cheaper strawberries. They're picked in the hot sun by people making $1.50 an hour. I'm not worried about not getting a job picking strawberries- nobody is when McDonalds is still hiring. I'm more worried about expensive strawberries. It may be immoral to exploit people like this, but this is a good racket we've got going and if we were smart, we wouldn't let our xenophobia blind us to the artificially low cost of groceries- at least not until strawberries can be picked by robots.
Outsourcing is a different beast altogether. The economic impact is much worse when the job moves overseas, or (same thing) is filled by an H1-B who earns little money here and then takes it back home instead of spending it here. Companies save fistfuls of money this way and they tend to stuff it into their mattresses.
The guys that replaced me from India haven't committed a single worthwhile feature since I left eight months ago. Guess svn is racist, they should have used git.
In corporation that pays for my bread and butter there is a propaganda dep which sends regularly mails about glorious attempts at different well meant policies. Recently I (and the whole company) got a mail in which this department of truth stated that in order to avoid discrimination of the young a policy of decreasing the average age of employees were to be executed. This was supposed to help company to be more innovative etc. It apparently did not occur to the author that this mail is announces an open discrimination of the old farts (like me). I was just about to inquire this in 'answer all' post when a friend of mine soberly pointed out that my package can be in danger if I did. I still wonder about legality of this mail. It is firmly on local disc and in a backup just in case the said package is not satisfactory.
Newer have understanded how replacing people that all ready know the system helps reduce costs? It cant be good to bring in tons of people that dont even properly speak the language, newer the less know how systems works...
The conservatives shat on the Unions time and time again to where they barely even exist now. This is what you get. You asked for this bed. Lay in it. I already got mine.
Yes, IT people could become longshoremen except that for the most part we are no good at beating people up. But would we be able to whistle at women again?
These jobs were going away anyway and the company is just hiring under paid, overworked slave labor as a way to keep themselves profitable for a while longer....enevitably they are going to fail or be bought out.
What has been lost and forgotten is the value of a well trained, talented, competent, productive employee. This is due to the failure of accounting to provide useful, meaningful, insightful reports to management. And, probably, it is due to management being incompetent to understand the reports.
I do support at Big Corp whose customers are also Big Corps. What we've seen over the past ten years is the IT being outsourced to the point that the people managing the systems are utterly clueless what they are doing. I'm not saying they are stupid and incompetent. I'm saying it is hundreds of times worse than you can possibly imagine.
Yet, things continue to get outsourced. It really is amazing.
There are conference calls involving tens of people that last multiple days, even weeks just to solve very simple issues that a competent sys admin and network person could resolve in a few hours assuming that they did not prevent the situation in the first place simply by practicing a few normal obvious practices in the first place.
The Big Corps are digging further and further into the hole. Its almost amusing to watch.
Here's what happened at Royal Bank of Scotland in 2012. They "made redundant" (aka fired) 1500 experienced locals and replaced them with 750 foreign contract workers.
Within a few months, the inexperienced contract workers screwed an update to the batch scheduling software (RBS, like most banks including HSBC, is an IBM mainframe shop). Then the same inexperienced workers screwed the recovery. It took almost a month to repair.
Wikipedia account of what happened https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
RBS bank's own account of what happened http://www.rbs.com/content/dam...
IMHO something similar will happen at HSBC. Get your money out NOW.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
No one wants to spend any money on training so they prefer to hire either clueless H1Bs who lie about their skill sets or young Red Bull-swilling MIS grads who claim they can learn any technology out of a book over a weekend.
Plus female CEO. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, in 25 years, I've seen much more cruelty, open crassness, and questionably legal antics from women managers than I ever have from men, especially late Boomer and X-er women who all seem to want to be the "Lean In" twit these days.
I understand Trump as declared it a number of times.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
for those mid- to late-career technical folks, how have you managed to adjust to new realities like this?
Drive for Uber.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Unfortunately most Slashdotters think that they are god's gift to IT. None of them could possibly have out of date skills.
I would like to walk through the house of everyone getting laid off to tally the "Made in ________" labels.
Blue Collar workers racing to the bottom brought us Walmart and then wondered where their blue collar jobs went.
You mean... cheaper labor results in cheaper goods and services? Huh, who would have thunk it. Capitalism sure is evil!
Might makes right irrelevant.
Why dont you fuckers form Unions? This shit is exactly why other trades formed unions. Follow the Electrician Union model and all of it will be fixed almost overnight.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.)
Physical beatings are so 20th Century. 21st Century pressure is exerted by cyberstalking.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ordinarily, quitting a job can affect your eligibility for employment insurance, but quitting would not affect your eligibility for EI in these circumstances, and although quitting would lead to you not getting any severance, any severance package you *did* receive would only delay when you started receiving those benefits by whatever duration the size of your severance is equivalent to based on your normal rate of pay. The *ONLY* way that severance packages are worthwhile when you are going on EI is when you will find a job so quickly after losing the previous one that you wouldn't have even started to receive EI benefits in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This trend started in the 1990s and has only gathered steam. I positioned myself in an industry mostly immune to outsourcing (for now): local government.
There are enormous pressures on for-profit IT firms, whether it's hardware, software, or services. The requirement for increasing profit works against long term employment and high wages. Let's face it, IT has an issue with older workers. I am 52, but transitioned to local government about 15 years ago where they actually pay attention to age discrimination laws. Also, there is no profit motive (just a balanced budget motive), and you don't have to make sales for revenue. All of these things make for a more sustainable career, especially over 40. The combined pay/benefit/work-life balance is better than most for-profit companies. These jobs are a tiny oasis of stability. Stories like HCSC make me angry and there has been a steady stream of them the last few years. I hate to see the IT work force gutted by greed and multi-national trade agreements.
The jobs that would be moved to an outsourcer include monitoring and incident resolution, helpdesk support, and problem and patch management. Other areas would be partially outsourced, such as infrastructure product development, cloud and automation. HCSC will retain governance and planning. The outsourcing vendor has not been named, the employees said.
Who the hell does these kind of jobs in the US today? Those things have been automated or outsourced for the last 8-10 years. Who the hell banks on having a career on any of these fields? Monitoring? Helpdesk support? Patch management?
That was fine 15 years ago. And with the rise of DevOps and sophisticated virtualization/cloud infrastructure and automation, you truly do not need people in the US to do all the other things mentioned in the article.
That's like being surprised that Xmas decorations are manufactured in China and not in some town in the Rust Belt.
I'm not trying to be mean. People are going to be affected by this... but this aren't surprising news. It has been done for the last 8-10 years, and the transition has been mostly complete.
Keep your pulse on shit so that you do not get blindsided by paradigm shifts.
I would LOVE to have a H1B to train. 80% of my job is stuff I'm tired of doing and trying to automate but still needs to be done. The other 20% is the fun stuff.
It's how I've had to work for the last decade: The 20% becomes the 80%, the 80% becomes automated and I get to work on a new fun 20%. I have peers that are doing things verbatim the way they did it a decade ago. I would love a H1B (or high school student) to train on stuff I've got mostly scripted but still needed an intelligent monkey to run.
because those same baby boomers that are being laid off also voted to gut the government's regulatory powers in the name of freedom, small government and low taxes. That plus regulatory capture and a health dose of wedge issues to divide the working class means any attempt to address age discrimination will go precisely nowhere. BAU/Functioning as Designed.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
and the UK. And Australia. And any one of a number of first world countries. Hell, they're having trouble competing with _me_ because my pay and benefits suck.
I can't compete with the second world. I can't compete with a country like India with a massive and largely abandoned underclass and lax environmental laws (and we're not talkin' the feel good "save the whales" kind, we're talking the "no cancer villages" kind).
Competition is only beneficial when there's an even playing field and the rewards are something better than enough food and shelter to survive. Otherwise it's the same bullshit race to the bottom humanity as suffered for thousands of years.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
During the training of replacements, just let it slip that your data centers are all powered with rendered cow and pig fat. Just like the cartridges for British Enfields.
Have gnu, will travel.
U.S. born engineers have been very successful and innovative. Foreign workers come from different educational backgrounds and experiences. As anyone who was worked besides them learns this gives them different attitudes and propensities. That make them counterfeits not plug-compatible with more experienced workers. When you factor in the costs of projects that eventually collapse or fail to gain traction with users, the ultimate cost of H1b Workers may be higher. Or if you are unwise... One of the many disastrous offshoring attempts may be very harmful to you own career.
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
If you're in this industry and can't manage "work optional" by 45-50, you're doing it wrong. The answer is to GFTO before you get pushed out.
ERROR: Null
I originally submitted this last week, not because I'm afraid of my job now, but because I'm worried what the future holds for our jobs in general.
For me personally, I've been incredibly lucky to work at an IT services company that's basically let me choose assignments and gain tons of broad experience. If I want to learn a skill, I try to work on a project that needs it, or introduce it to one I'm working on. I'm 40 and it's tougher keeping up the fast pace of re-learning newer buzzwords for older technologies with a family, but I do it because the only other way to go is IT project management or middle management in general -- something I'd love to avoid if possible. Problem is, with people like the CEO of HCSC basically saying they're actively discriminating against experienced employees, how long will it be until every single US or European executive thinks the same way she does? I know the company I work for will dump US workers in a heartbeat if the MBAs get around to telling the executives to do so -- development is already mostly offshore.
I've been through numerous offshorings and reshorings -- the long game seems to favor timing the market -- bail when the offshoring starts, and find a company 180 degrees out of phase who is now reshoring a mess of an IT group. I worry that (a) there will be fewer companies not willing to put up with expensive garbage service providers, and (b) if they do, not having an entry level to the IT profession onshore will ensure that they're stuck with their providers. My earlier career is chock full of entry level jobs -- helpdesk, desktop support tech, extremely junior data center monkey, sysadmin, engineer, and finally where I am now. Each of those jobs gave me an opportunity to correctly learn the skills needed to move to the next level. If I didn't have that, where would I start? Extend that out to tons of new IT people -- they won't have the ability to grow and learn in a job their skillset can handle. Not everyone is a Red Bull-swilling JavaScript coder working 14 hour days at some startup -- there are tons of companies using IT systems to get real work done, and those companies need support even though they've been told they don't. When there are no entry level IT folks left, then the H-1B proponents will win because their argument will be true.
How to fix it? I say running a trade guild-style organization is the way to go. Have members buy Congress the same way businesses do -- it's naïve to think you can get something done in Congress without paying for it. At the same time, have apprenticeship-style training where new entrants actually learn core skills instead of glossing over things in some vendor certification course. I can't tell you how many very senior IT people I've met who just don't have the troubleshooting skills and ability to learn new stuff quickly...having some sort of career progression not managed by employers could fix that.
The cluelessness of the Slashdot community never ceases to amaze me.
Some years ago, the Slashdot crowd never stopped giving examples of ideological purity: they were for immigration, globalization, trade deals, political correctness, the whole thing. They were exquisitely progressive, not like those red-neck morons who were losers and racists and who couldn't understand sophisticated aspects such as globalization.
Every person who disagreed about this topic was answered by a crowd of self-righteous self-important know-it-alls giving lessons from the imaginary platform they thought they were standing on. They thought it would never be their turn. Now that you are biten by your own self-destructive ideology that only benefits the elite, how does it feel to be on your own? Enjoy the consequences of the ideas that you have supported so much. The word "useful idiot" comes to mind.
Once upon a time you coded so fine
Threw the outsourced red necks a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People call say 'beware troll, you're bound to fall'
You thought they were all kidding you
You used to laugh about
Every job that was exported out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be doubting your next meal
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be in risk of losing your job
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
Next time they tell you you can't have time off, remember their decision not to hire you a PFY.
Take the time anyhow, fuck them.
I'll believe their is a genuine talent shortage when I'm given a team 'assistant' just to run for team members (explicitly including 'personal errands'), when middle managers stop wasting everybody's time with useless endless meetings and when actually making a schedule is more important than protecting higher management egos. I don't expect to ever believe their is a talent shortage.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"Hey, Scab. That's a nice credit rating you have. Be a shame if something were to happen to it..."
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.
It also gives them plausible deniability.
"Yes, health records are supposed to be protected. And we told our contractor just that. See? Here's the memo! So the fact that the health records for half-a-million people were released isn't our fault. We shouldn't have to pay a fine or anything because we told them they should be protected! I mean, what are we supposed to do, protect them ourselves? That'd be expensive! Dear God, won't somebody think of our profit margins?"
Huh. I admit, I never considered that angle. This may go some way to explaining the seemingly self-destructive behavior of CIO's who insist on hiring marginally competent Indian hackers.
Still... not quite convinced. I'm no legal expert, nor do I wish to be, but I do believe a company would be held responsible for whatever fuckups its contractors make. The data still belong to the company, and are its responsibility, after all.
Might makes right irrelevant.
I honestly think, having talked to so many IT folks about this, that everyone thinks their job is safe and will always be safe. Not trying to get political, but lots of people in IT lean Libertarian and are basically out for themselves and favor almost no regulation on businesses, This is why a traditional union would never work. Lots of people think their skills are far and away better than the average worker, so why would they ever accept concessions to make things better for others? They don't see the labor/management divide as adversarial, because most companies have been very careful to craft a "collaborative culture" that makes people think management cares about labor's needs.
The truth is that IT really does have a range of skill sets. Some people are amazing, and smart companies do everything to hang onto these. Others need training but don't feel they need training, for example. I think a trade group, and guild/apprenticeship system would work wonders for this mainly because I directly benefited from informal mentoring by senior folks in my previous jobs to get where I am now.
A union would mean people standing up for members of their group when they face an issue, and I honestly don't think that is how most IT people are wired. Organized labor is different -- a timely example is a construction project down the road from us. The company erecting the beams for the building isn't using union ironworkers -- and let's just say trucks delivering equipment are being delayed by both the menacing ironworkers out front and the Teamsters driving them. Could you imagine telling an IT person they need to go help their union brothers on a picket line across town?
It will be a lower tally than the number of red herrings in your post.
Right, because blue collar workers forced Wal-Mart to lobby for NAFTA and ruthlessly cut costs to increase their corporate profits.
Or something.
Right. Just like if you open your own business, it means you'd have to sexually harass your secretary while embezzling funds and dumping toxic waste in the river.
No, because too many of them grew up reading Atlas Wanked and have adopted pro-capitalist and anti-worker attitudes. Even if it means cutting off their own noses to spite their faces, all to benefit a club they will never get into.
If you choose to buy things made in China when there is a made in America option, you are a part of the problem you lament if that problem is "why aren't things made here anymore" or "why aren't there jobs for making things here anymore".
Then you've spent decades ignoring news stories on unions accepting pay and benefit cuts to keep their jobs. You also don't see unions giving themselves 300% raises and stock options in the face of declining profits, the way you do with the executive class.
Yes, because you can kneel down and pray at your alter to Ayn Rand, and materialize an equivalent job through sheer force of will.
I just retired after 42 years as a system programmer, the last 33 of them in the same company...now I get up around 10:30 or so and work on whatever hobby project I like....it's...nice. Very nice.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
There was a stock holders meeting where there was talk of "high cost geographies" and there is a push for "early career" hires. That is what a strong dollar will get you.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I think a trade group, and guild/apprenticeship system would work wonders for this mainly because I directly benefited from informal mentoring by senior folks in my previous jobs to get where I am now.
I like the idea of an apprenticeship/mentoring system. I'd also like Congress to give a tax break to American companies, for each student intern or entry-level IT employee who is a US citizen.
There aren't many entry-level IT jobs for Americans. We should help beginners get their foot in the door.
Boy, if I were in charge, I'd ship 99% of these H1B visa people BACK! Listen, I'm a conservative, believe in capitalism, but, THIS IS A LOAD OF CRAP! These companies using H1B visa's as a way to make more profit, at the expense of the American workers, SHOULD STOP!
FTA:
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."
Openly admitting to age discrimination on paper by the CEO? Holy Wow!
We all know it is practiced far and wide, but to put it in writing is beyond stupid. . . and a great thing for any scientist, engineer, or computer expert who suffers from the age-ism treatment that we over 40 get. This will become a class action, which will hopefully be the clarion call to arms, and will produce a judgement that goes on the record – not a settlement – so that we can finally have a fair system age-wise.
Oh, who am I kidding? I can hope. Those in the class will get little, but if they are pissed-off enough to push this thing through, and not settle out-of-court, then the real purpose of a class action lawsuit will be realized – a deterrent to those who might do so in the future, or who have done it lately.
There should be a system in place such that business leaders or politicians get awarded only long term benefits. Obviously, laying off a lot of people or stop investing in development gives a short term boost and savings but destroys the company or country in the long term. Unfortunately, today, the CEOs or presidents have not to pay for actions which hurt in the long term but are evaluated on short term profit. In this case, the morale in the IT part of that health care service provider will take a huge hit. It happened to many technology firms. As a customer there, I would be worried, whether my health information will be safe in the future. And its questionable whether they will ever be able to acquire really good new talent.
Perhaps you should know what terms are before you try and use them to mean what you think they do.
If you agree to work for me for $X per hour doing Y, that agreement itself constitutes a verbally agreed-upon employment contract. It's not as formal as a written contract of employment, but that doesn't mean it's not an employment contract at all.
But that's beside the point.
In some jurisdictions, quitting a job will typically affect one's eligibility to receive EI benefits afterwards, but if they quit for what EI terms "just cause", then it does not affect their eligibility to receive EI benefits at all. As it happens, "significant changes to one's job duties or responsibilities" is very much considered "just cause", and so people who are being suddenly asked to train their replacement would have entirely justified cause to quit without penalty with respect to EI (although they would still be forgoing any severance package that the employer might have otherwise given them).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Maybe that came off a bit strong, but seriously, is the sort of place where only key employees know complete lockdown passwords the sort of place that is just going to outsource those positions and lose access? The sort of management that want to go all James Bond with a fluffy cat that way want to know those passwords themselves, or have it stored securely somewhere, in case their key employee gets hit by a bus or something.
If they are not the company is probably effectively going to be roadkill soon in many ways since if they are putting in deliberate points of failure in one place they probably have them in many.
What companies have been seriously punished for such breaches?
So they'll lay off their workers, after having them document and train foreigners. Retain a few staff, and contract out. Then claim they can't find anyone and hire H1B holders.
Obviously, the CEO should have chosen her words a little more carefully, but this is standard business practice. There is not a single for-profit company out there that exists for the benefit of employees. The purpose of a company is to maximize profits and return peak value into the pockets of shareholders and reward top-level leadership (ie. CEO and other officers). Everyone else is expendable and in essence a liability because they are consuming revenue from the bottom line with salary, rising health care costs, and 401k contribution matching as examples. The above reason is why it so very important to *save* as much money as you can while you can before the ruthless company leadership crushes you!
The problem is that trade unionism is basically founded on the principle that everyone is an indistinguishable, interchangeable worker-unit. Promotion is a rigid matter of seniority, and rigid "job descriptions" so you have to call a Union Electrician to move your desk lamp and plug it on on the other side of your desk. Anyone excelling is bashed for "making the rest of us look bad", very much like the despot showing how he ruled the peasants by knocking off the heads of any stalks of wheat which stuck up higher than the others, only in trade unionism, it'd be the other stalks of wheat doing the head-knocking-off.
Make membership in the ... call it a professional association, rather than a union ... entirely voluntary, and I'm fine with it. It's the "Nice job you have there... it'd be a shame if we signed a contract with the company requiring you pay us money or be fired" thing that gives me my profoundly negative view of unions.
I'm not worried personally. I'm sufficiently old and have sufficient resources to have a good retirement if I'm laid off tomorrow. I'm working partly to get an even nicer retirement.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Back when Sam Walton was still running Wal-Mart, he was happy to carry "Made in the USA" labels in his store - as long as they were the same price or less as Chinese imports. A nickle more, and you were out the door. You're also ignoring the fact that the poor - who now make up most of this country - don't have the luxury of choosing to buy the more expensive option. If going to Wal-Mart and buying clothing made in China means that all three of your kids can wear shoes without getting blisters, then you buy the damn shoes at Wal-Mart.
You're making great efforts to hop over capitalist mountain ranges to hysterically point fingers at a capitalist molehill. It's wrong, obnoxious and insulting.
Except you don't have to shop at Wal-Mart at all. If you are so poor that you can only afford shoes made in China from Wal-Mart, you can shop at Goodwill instead.
Fuck you! Boss!
I will not train my replacement who you're scaring up from Timbuk-fore to replace me at 1/10th of my American standard wages.