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Facing Layoff, An IT Employee Makes A Bold Counteroffer (computerworld.com)
ComputerWorld reports:
In early December, Carnival Corp. told about 200 IT employees that the company was transferring their work to Capgemini, a large IT outsourcing firm. The employees had a choice: Either agree to take a job with the contractor or leave without severance. The employees had until the week before Christmas to make a decision about their future with the cruise line. By agreeing to a job with Paris-based Capgemini, employees are guaranteed employment for six months, said Roger Frizzell, a Carnival spokesman. "Our expectation is that many will continue to work on our account or placed into other open positions within Capgemini" that go well beyond the six-month period, he said in an email.
Senior IT engineer Matthew Culver told CBS that the requested "knowledge transfer activities" just meant training their own replacements, and "he isn't buying any of it," writes Slashdot reader dcblogs. "After receiving his offer letter from Capgemini, he sent a counteroffer. It asked for $500,000...and apology letters to all the affected families," signed by the company's CEO. In addition, the letter also demanded a $100,000 donation to any charity that provides services to unemployed American workers. "I appreciate your time and attention to this matter, and I sincerely hope that you can fulfill these terms."
And he's also working directly with a lawyer for an advocacy group that aims to "stop the abuse of H-1B and other foreign worker programs."
Senior IT engineer Matthew Culver told CBS that the requested "knowledge transfer activities" just meant training their own replacements, and "he isn't buying any of it," writes Slashdot reader dcblogs. "After receiving his offer letter from Capgemini, he sent a counteroffer. It asked for $500,000...and apology letters to all the affected families," signed by the company's CEO. In addition, the letter also demanded a $100,000 donation to any charity that provides services to unemployed American workers. "I appreciate your time and attention to this matter, and I sincerely hope that you can fulfill these terms."
And he's also working directly with a lawyer for an advocacy group that aims to "stop the abuse of H-1B and other foreign worker programs."
Dear Matthew,
No.
Roger Frizzell
CEO, Carnival Corp.
Meanwhile Trump employs TFW's at Mar'a'Largo because he can't find Americans to work at his crazy low wage offer. Labour is a market. TFW's should not be allowed for low paid and seasonal jobs. Employers should be required to raise benefits and wages until they can fill all the spots with local workers. No TFW's to begin with.
Yes it is hard to find people willing to work for $10/hour for 6 months of the year. Because
a) $10/hour is not really a liveable wage to begin with
b) what are they going to live off for the rest of they year?
The result is seasonal positions should pay more than full time positions as seasonal positions require a person to be available for the seasonal work someone how and live for the full year.
Also in general outsourcing is a nice bean counter solution but generally leads to more headaches and inefficiencies that don't show up on the bean counter spread sheets.
This is awesome. Hey Trump, you've talked a pretty big game, here is a chance to walk the walk. Accept this dudes contract on behalf of Capgemini and be the champ you promised to be.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
If you want better workplace conditions, better wages, and better treatment then the best way to get it is to unionize. It puts you in a stronger bargaining position so you have more leverage against ultimatums like "either agree to take a job with the contractor or leave without severance".
Carnival IT maintains systems, they don't innovate. Naturally the bean counters figure they're prime to get replaced by cheap workers.
Will Trump stop this? I doubt it. Get a job where you can't hand someone an instruction manual.
Alternatively, if the IT staff would all say "No, we aren't training anyone", Carnival might be fucked. But there's always enough people living check to check that they'll train their replacements.
What leverage does this guy have? He hasn't threatened to sue. You need to back up your 'offer' with something substantial.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They could spin off their own outsourcing IT company and ask Carnival to hire them as consultants.
That's just an an entirely reasonable demand. Guess whose fiscal year ends 12/31? I'm willing to bet theirs does. Fuck the families right?
Dave Moss: I don't gotta sit here and listen to this shit.
Blake: You certainly don't pal, 'cause the good news is - you're fired. The bad news is - you've got, all of you've got just one week to regain your jobs starting with tonight. Starting with tonight's sit. Oh? Have I got your attention now? Good. "Cause we're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. Get the picture? You laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money, get their names to sell them, you can't close the leads you're given you can't close shit. You ARE shit. Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it 'cause you are going OUT.
Shelley: The leads are weak.
Blake: The leads are weak? Fucking leads are weak. You're weak. I've been in this business 15 years...
Dave: What's your name?
Blake: Fuck you. That's my name. You know why, mister? You drove a Hyundai to get here. I drove an eighty-thousand dollar BMW. THAT'S my name. And your name is you're wanting. You can't play in the man's game, you can't close them - go home and tell your wife your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this life: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me, you fucking faggots? A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing. ALWAYS BE CLOSING.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Not entitlement, incentive.
There was a time that working toward making a company successful was an incentive as it ensured further employment. Not anymore.
Unless you're crying about all the unemployed farriers out there, hush.
Because they likely already PAID Capgemini to hire the workers therefore Carnival is absolved from liability for dumping them. Capgemini will likely retain those employees until those funds run out.
Maybe just avoid companies which persue such practices. FOr me, Carnival Corp would keep my feet off any Carnival cruise ship. Yes these are strong forces of globalization but the least they could have done is would be to give the employees a decent severance package and some time regardless whether they train their cheaper replacements. Such stories do good to motivate kids to pursue any STEM area.
You have to try to stand up.
The easiest thing for the ultrawealthy is to make you think you're powerless and to admit defeat without a battle.
The best thing to do is to not train the replacements.
The best thing to do is to fight it, even if it turns out ugly.
"After receiving his offer letter from Capgemini, he sent a counteroffer. It asked for $500,000...and apology letters to all the affected families," This part is puzzling to me. Why did he ask for $500k? What was the message he was trying to convey with that? In my opinion, no one is obligated to give him jack shit. In Florida the employer has every right to fire anyone for any reason at-will.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-elect-trump-hold-public-events-election-win/story?id=43896199
That's what Carnival/Cap seem to have factored in. Which is why they are offering their IT staff the chance to join Capgemini. I'd say that's a lot better than what Disney or other companies have done in the recent past: firing the workers and offering them severance only if they train their replacements.
I think the workers should take this, and then look out at the competitors - Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, et al. It has the potential of making them more portable employees in the market
How do you solve the problem of seniority in a democratic state? You use legal means of breaking seniority. And why were these passed as law in the first place? Because democracy, as it is implemented, is nothing more than a technocratic elite making decisions for everyone, i.e. for themselves. How can you allow staffers to replace permanent workers with the sole purpose of the company remaining profitable for the owners? Or in other words, how can you allow small-time individuals' long-term plans to be destroyed immediately just because the top guys need a new summer house. Capitalism has triumphed in ways everyone else predicted but nobody cared about - an american dream of sorts, but really ubiquitous, even in Europe. "I would rather be exploited my entire life than be denied the chance to exploit everyone else to be uber rich". We allowed such things and we are reaping what those before us seow. Never before has the People been so powerless against established governing bodies as today, not even in the Ancient Egypt - you have a vote all right, but there are those who play dirty with the votes of everyone else. Control of statistics, the media and even of communication platforms have become much more powerful than a royal bloodline as a claim for power. Lobbying is a tool made for companies, and the individual rights have eroded deeper than the Grand Canyon. In the US people will claim they still got the 2nd. Tell that to the Malheur guys. Or better - they're en route to being dominated by one of the greatest capitalists there is, who is seriously gonna ignore all individual rights for the needy, and I see no militia forming in any way.
This guy's letter - nothing but a swan song to a time where the human being took precedence over inhuman greed.
That's just an an entirely reasonable demand. Guess whose fiscal year ends 12/31? I'm willing to bet theirs does. Fuck the families right?
That's Capitalism. And many times individuals and their families get hurt for the good of the economy.
We have this social group-think-myth-religion that it's all get rich if you work hard enough but the fact is, some take it in the ass regardless of how hard they work or how creative they are.
Creative destruction sounds great on paper but when you're on the receiving end of the destruction, it's not so good. And when you're told to get "retraining" when you're middle aged well, that's just a trite piece of bullshit. (No one hires a middle-aged entry level person)
We do not have the flexible economic system that we all think we do. We are as rigid as the old English Class system. I am living it.
Get that burger flipping job to make ends meet while you look for that next development job to make the mortgage payment ? Well, guess what, you are now a burger flipper and your development career is over. You are your last job.
Go and take out a student loan(s) to get a masters? Well, you went to school because you couldn't get a job - NOT that you wanted to better yourself.
Employers are just retarded. They blame the EEOC, ADA and other regulations,but they are full of shit. All they have to do is just say "you don't have the skills" and it's a get out of a lawsuit free card. And IF you do sue, you are black balled forever and IF you win, you get a years salary less lawyers fees - IOWs, it's not worth suing. So all of you managers who are afraid of being sued under the ADA, EEOC or whatever, you are idiots.
Summary of slightly Christmas drunken rant: The job market is dysfunctional.
That hasn't changed. If you have specialized skills that are important to a company, they'll keep you. IT services don't fall into that category.
I guess Russians never saw Glengarry Glen Ross.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You guys who keep pushing the union thing are like a broken record. It worked really well for Detroit, right?
The big unions really only made the mob rich and empowered corrupt and self-serving union bosses.
Just look at that vile union boss at the Carrier plant. Faced with the loss of ALL the Carrier plant jobs, Obama and Hillary said nothing could be done. Trump said he'd fight to stop those job losses. Obama actually made fun of this and exclaimed that Trump could do nothing and asked if Trump had a magic wand! Even before taking office, Trump cuts a deal to save most of those jobs, and within HOURS the scummy union boss goes on national TV and whines that Trump did not save EVERY job and calls Trump names. Just what was that union boss's heap of insults toward Hillary and Obama for never even trying to save even ONE job????? CRICKETS!
Union bosses are in it for themselves. The UAW bosses did quite nicely for themselves as the auto industry fled Detroit. Trumpka and his buddies have been doing just FINE as he travels to foreign countries speaking in favor of open borders (which push down wages and benefits for his American workers), global socialism, and more imported immigrant labor (which would compete directly with his current members, but which he sees as HIS personal future since it's the agenda of HIS political allies).
Unions are NOT the solution, an end to global corporations pushing open borders, global "free trade", and treaties like TPP (which gives almost unlimited power to corporations and frees them from oversight/limitation by nations) are what is needed. Global mega corps and billionaires running communications companies like Google and Facebook are the problem; they want a world where they can move themselves, their money, and their labor anywhere at any time to maximize their profits and their leverage over the lowly workers while dodging any oversight or laws imposed by any pesky sovereign nation. They want a world where only the super-rich can compete because only the super rich have the money to relocate as needed to maximize profits and any little upstart can never gain traction - GLOBAL cronyism on steroids. In that environment, unions are a JOKE and the union bosses only end up pretending to fight for their members while actually aligning with those very super-rich forces.
Human nature does not change just because some dude is a union boss and claims to be "for the workers". If you have a skeptical view of corporate barons (as you should), then you should also have a skeptical eye towards politicians and union bosses; they're all human, fallible, corruptible, and not to be trusted with too much power.
That seems to something for the company board of directors to decide.
He's not - he's entitled to the cheapest he can get hold of for the required skill level.
IF they did they should of learned not to F* with the IT staff.
At Christmas with the $2000 VISA bill coming due "the company" has the "at will employees" over a barrel since this information was not known prior.
It is time for IT to unionize. It is time for IT-USA to setup a trust-fund so that when this kind of misbehavior happens, the entire IT organization can walk and have a buffer to negotiate with "the company" or find new jobs.
With IT, it is symbiotic relationship between "the company" and the IT workers. Today data is the company and IT needs to make that data flow. If all of IT quits or bands together en mass in a work stoppage, the data will only flow for so long. The senior managers in the company are typically clueless as to how things operate at a day-to-day level.
So let's look at this and see what it would cost.
200 employees at $1000/week as stay afloat money = $200,000/week
So, if a fund existed with approximately $1,000,000 it could easily provide a buffer for either severance or negotiation. In order for this to work all the employees would have to band together and sign an agreement to quit and not offer any assistance to the company until they negotiated an offer that the majority of the employees agreed upon. At-will employment goes both ways.
The company would probably try to offer key players large sums to return and maintain operations but everyone would have to stand together.
Could this work if this fund existed or would it denigrate into "Lord of the Flies?"
On a side note, it is an overall longterm benefit to the USA, USA economy, and "the company" not to do things like this. The quarter-to-quarter "create shareholder value" mantra drives these myopic decisions. Sure would could continue to destroy every job and breakup and sell off parts of every company for a short-term profit, but long term it hurts all the players in an economy. How do we handle this?
Do we let the invisible hand of the market work?
Actually, scratch that, the invisible hand is dead as we saw in the financial crisis. The invisible hand was poised to wipe out most of the banking/mortgage industry and the government stopped the invisible hand by giving it piles and piles of cash.
So what is the new system?
How do we build a nation that has sustainability and offers good jobs?
IF the offer isn't acceptable, the CEO can just go find another job. That's what you expect the workers to do, isn't it? So what happens when there's a counter offer and the CEO doesn't like it? CEOs don't produce anything, so he needs workers, and he isn't much of a CEO with no workers to be executive over. So rather redundant.
But, hey, he can just continue with the current contract.
First off the CEO is only accountable to the board of directors. Not to tech workers. No IT labor? Great that is what the CEO wants and India is here to give them what they want. IF they walk out then Phnjaab flies on a plane to quickly take the lead and get his team in Bangalore up to speed within a day or 2.
Everything will be back to normal and the IT guys forgotten either way.
How can you bargain when someone else is ready to jump right in for pennies on the dollar ready to tackle where your team has left off? The board of directors only cares about raising the share price for the next quarter so they can get their bonuses. This means cutting costs while increasing revenue from people going on cruises. Not from overpaying guys to do tape backups and fixing pcs.
http://saveie6.com/
capgemini, accenture etc etc all have a similar outdated business model. They offer to replace a $100k first world engineer with a third world engineer for $50k. In the short term this looks good for the CEO - he's a bottom-line hero, just saved the company $50k x # engineers per year.
Long term, it's a mess.
The outsourcing company only pays the third world engineer $10k and pockets the $40k. This was fine a few years ago as there was a huge number of talented engineers in eg India, Philippines etc who really could do the job. Today it's not so easy. The cream of them have already emigrated to the first world on the back of their talents. The local job market has risen so that really talented people can't be found for $10k any more, so the bottoms landing on the empty chairs are attached to increasingly mediocre talent. The better ones move on quickly.
Add to that the difficulties of working with the time zone difference, the language problems, the cultural disconnect and the profound impossibility of communicating the intricacies of a mature IT infrastructure - and you get a project that is quickly going nowhere.
My direct experience of these changes (I've seen a few) is that the organisation keeps going on momentum alone for a few years - the existing old IT systems soldier on with only minor maintenance work being done, just enough to lurch from week to week.
No major development is possible because the talent that put the system together has been sacrificed - so the company fails to respond to new challenges and does not innovate. Unless the enterprise's business is completely unchanging, it's a slow glide path to oblivion - but the ground is just as hard for all that.
Now the really important thing is that by the time the shareholders realise the dirty deed they've been dealt, the genius CEO who gave them that short term gain has moved on to more triumphs elsewhere, no doubt at ever higher remunerations.
Worse, not only will you be fired but sued for destroying company assets. You'll send you life savings on lawyers to defend yourself. There might even be a criminal case too if the company decides to file a criminal complaint.
CapGemini would be in a world of shit. Think about it...They were/are banking on a majority of the existing IT workers to do "knowledge transfer" in order to be successful in fulfilling their contract. If the existing IT workers COLLECTIVELY said NO, there is no way that CG could assume the contract and not get sued for utter failure. No KT, no success. Together, we can win - separately, we are at their mercy (of which they demonstrably have none).
That seems to something for the company board of directors to decide.
I guess that decision has already been made. In all my years in the workforce, I have never worked for a company, directly or otherwise whose board has ever opposed or overturned a significant decision by the CEO.
I suppose it does happen but not in my experience.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
it would take capital. And where are a bunch of guys who just lost their jobs going to get that. 3 decades of bad tech economy don't lend themselves to wealth building...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
$500, 000 in small unmarked bills
apology letter to these families affected.
Gold plated iphone case (Trump image optional)
On second thought, just the $500,000 and I'll go quietly.
Your ex-employee
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
You can't compete with cheaper countries! They have weak regulations, poor enforcement, LOWER wages, exchange rates, desperate workers, and more factors which are all in their favor! You have to lower the US further towards 3rd world status in order to compete.... or start using TARIFFS again. You know, a trade related tax which USED to be employed patriotically before propaganda and corruption removed that protection and re-framing it from the multinational corporation's perspective.
The holiday season is when Americans run up their most debt for the year. It completely makes sense to offer money to help the man who screwed you over; since their whole scheme is to find workers they can exploit more because they have even less power. Exploitation is the main goal taught to MBAs... it's euphemistically called "cost externalization."
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Carnival gets protection of safe sea passage ensured by the security maintained by the US Navy. Its customers are largely US residents. Why shouldn't they be charged a tariff to recoup the costs of benefiting from the US protection? Why shouldn't the US citizens taking Carnival cruises pay an extra fee (in the form of a tariff) to benefit from the international protections which they receive due to the dominance of US Navy overseas?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
No one seems to have asked the obvious question: Did this guy vote for Trump? Did he buy the promise "Vote for me and I'll solve ALL your problems"? Hey, the scam might work if Trump wants to try to play the same game with EVERY company that can be bribed with a bit of tax money.
Reminds me of a funny story about so-called Republican politics. I was working for AMD in 1988 and the owner was a good buddy of Poppy Bush. Lots of rumors flying around that the company was in trouble, but they kept telling us not to worry. After the election, it turned out the rumors were true and the layoffs were announced. The owner didn't want to make Bush look bad before the election.
Anyway, your AC comment about unions was insightful enough to get modded to visibility. Of course the real insight is that you were too afraid to put your name on it. These days everyone knows unions are totally communist, socialist, liberal, and they cause bad breath, too.
Inhuman companies are not assured of profits by becoming evil. However being a nice company has become a guarantee of failure. I'm still fishing for good examples beyond NetScape, Palm, Sun, and Nokia.
Of course my main disappointment is the lack of funny comments. Only one so modded so far, and it wasn't so much.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
First off the CEO is only accountable to the board of directors. Not to tech workers. No IT labor?
Hmm. A cruise ship company constantly relies on the blanket protection of the US coastal guard and the US Navy. They want to move US jobs overseas and keep selling their products in the US (the tickets to their cruises is their products)? Well, according to Trump's plan that would mean they have to pay a 35% tariff. Those naval boats cost money, too, you know.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Then why doesn't he find someone capable of doing his job for less?
Zing!
AC comments get piped to
It's interesting that on Slashdot, when it's anyone else's non-IT job getting outsourced or automated, there is a lot of chortling and discussion of buggy whip manufacturers and how non-IT workers should just suck it up. There was a story about automated truck drivers in the last month that was full of comments denigrating these workers and that it was good for society that their job would soon be done by a robot. When it's an IT job getting outsourced, "IT'S AN OUTRAGE!!!!!" Doesn't take much insight to realize why this issue will never get political traction. Who wants to stick up for the IT people when the IT people just offered snark for everyone else that was automated/outsourced before them?
You're right: such special job protections are like an extra tariff. Now think about what happens with that money. Tax payers pay for the protection, but the benefits from that protection go to a small group of already highly paid employees. Thanks for illustrating government corruption and special interest lobbying so nicely.
Find some provision that allows the US to make it a royal PITA for sea-going firms like Carnival to operate. Time it in the middle of hurricane season so that an exodus of vessels is unsafe and impractical. If they want Coast Guard protection, they pay for it.
Then offer an olive branch if they commit to remaining in the US, IT and all. Bonus points if they deliver the apology.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
So what I have done in the past is to offer my training hourly rate (which is about 4x my regular hourly rate), as the knowledge and skillset to teach someone else and the value of the transfer to the incoming low wage employee is much greater than my regular working rate. Some companies go for that, others do not. On the companies that don't go for it, they are in for a bumpy ride, because on paper cheap employees look cheaper, but if they don't have a clue how to do the work that can get expensive quite fast. I have had about a 50% rate on employers take me up on training a replacement, and about half of those who turn it down come back later and ask for my help, either to teach the incompetent how to do my job, or to do it myself. This is working as an independent contractor in technology, not IT, so YMMV.
If I were this guy specifically, I would also remind this CEO that Trump is coming, so bend over if anything is the slightest bit off the letter of the law regarding H1B workers. By all accounts other than the koolaid drinking progressives, the abuse of the H1B program is ending on January 20.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I can see why they want to move IT out of house
seriously it was like a time capsule to 2001, hardly anything modern worked as it should, and the "senior IT" lol "engineer" wants a half a mil + apology letters? WTF are you 17?
The squeaky wheel gets replaced, the sore spot gets mended, take a hint dude
In what way is he entitled to this job?
Why is Carnival entitled to offshore without consequences? If anything, this is a case where the business has an unchecked entitlement mentality.
Time for them to be offered a deal they can't refuse - including the apology. Remind them that the American (US) way of life is nonnegotiable. Remind them that we can always just look the other way when their ships get the Somalia treatment.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I worked with them for two years. I was one of the permanent employees who had to work with their contractors. They leave a lot to be desired. Substandard coding and refusal to honor the warranty period.
My organization had a bad experience with them - 2/5 stars
Do you want a list?
This one at least gets started on a few important bits:
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth....
He doesn't fit, but Trump's enemies sure do.
Disagreement is treason:
From silencing conservative opinions on Twitter and Reddit to assaults and threats against Trump supporters, this one fits the left like a glove.
Fear of difference:
If you're not expressing the correct virtue signals, you're targeted and destroyed.
The cult of tradition:
The left achieves this by replacing old traditions with their own.
The cult of action for action’s sake:
Virtue signalling fits here.
Life is permanent warfare:
This sounds like the continuous revolution of the left.
The obsession with a plot, possibly an international one:
Claims of patriarchy & "good old boys club" fit.
Machismo:
Third wave feminism/alphabet soup virtue signalling fits.
The rejection of modernism:
This is where the left fits the opposite - where they reject traditions, values, absolute morals, and Natural Law.
Popular elitism:
Easily explained by group dynamics - especially In-group/Out-group. The left thinks that it's more "civilized" for silencing dissent.
The appeal to a frustrated middle class:
Given that many revolutionaries of the left come from the middle, they definitely fit.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
For years, the company where I work had an automation product which terrified everybody at the firm. We'd had no training on it. An Executive dropped a lot of money on it before anyone could even see if it would work for us, and directly, it didn't.
But we had it and had some incentive to use it. And I spent a couple years learning it on my own and mastered that goddamn thing where I could make it do anything I wanted. I was a wizard and magician and chef and used that product to DO the very automation project they said could not be done, which terrified far more talented people than me. I was soo good at it, my team was eliminated except for me. We didn't need all those people because the automation project worked.
The software was still scary and dangerous to touch but I knew it inside and out. It did not scare me. Among the dangers was that you could right click in the wrong spot and be presented with two different 'delete' options, one of which wiped the entire database rather than just the item you were looking at. The software was apparently designed by an idiot. But I mastered it all anyway. I made that damn thing sing barbershop quartet and fly rings around the moon.
So all was well until they decided to get rid of me, which was not a surprise to me.
What they did was hire a woman from Mexico, apparently off the street. I don't know what her skillset was but it wasn't like mine. And they had me do a few hours of instruction over the phone and webex and boom she took over running this program that had slain experienced people before me.
And that was that. My understanding is that they had a critical issue the next week and they were forbidden from calling me for help. I am sure it went to pieces. It took expertise to run. They hired cheap to replace me, not smart.
18 months later I am still out of work because a LOT of the comparable IT work has already been outsourced or automated. I failed to pay my rent this month and bills are stacking up For the first time in my life, I am facing no future. Can't find work, I'm broke, and there is no hope. But I automated something that was supposed to be impossible. I will go down in flames proud of what i did.
Sig for hire.
Really? Then by your logic, I'm guessing that Carnival doesn't really need him, or the whole IT department, to transfer his/their knowledge then. But since Carnival does, so I guess knowledge of existing infrastructure/software/practices/setup is pretty much a "specialized skill."
I'm sure there are some very talented executives in India, Southeast Asia and elsewhere who could do great work for a tiny fraction of what current corporate executives make.
Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
Well, you're thinking along the correct lines: Culver has certain skills and knowledge, and that is of a certain value to Carnival. You can tell how much by looking at how much they offered him, which is not much.
(I would guess that they have made much more attractive offers to a few other employees; they don't need many in order to ensure that "knowledge of the existing infrastructure/software/practices/setup" is not lost.)
Which crime do you believe Carnival is committing?
Then by your logic, I'm guessing that Carnival doesn't really need him, or the whole IT department, to transfer his/their knowledge then.
Needing something, and being more efficient with something are two different things. If there was no knowledge transfer then a company with a good system in place should be fine. A company who keeps their knowledge in the heads of the employees is utterly stupid anyway.
Defend your company against employees being hit by busses.
As I see they are a travel agency not developers so probably there are only sysadmins there
So they don't use financial systems to track forecasts, budgets, cash and to prepare the financial reports?
They don't have a payroll system?
They don't use HR systems to recruit, train and support managing employees?
They don't have any systems for things like legal, facilities, compliance or an intranet?
Of course, being a travel company they wouldn't have a website, a booking system or any complex logistics systems tracking the myriad of consumables, maintenance and fuel used by their ships.
Nope, not at all. Just sysadmins.
Except that calling, say iOS sales 'generated overseas' when the software was written in the US, using US infrastructure, etc
I don't know which would be the most appropriate answer in this thread :
- "I didn't know that New Delhi has been accepted as the 51st state"
- "And China should ask all the taxes of Cuppertino, and Apple Ireland, on the grounds that the hardware is build in China, using China infrastructues, etc."
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
US engineers got fucked dry by US universities with ridiculous tuitions, and now they're trying to recoup their losses with big salaries industry-wide. But in the meantime engineers in Europe do the same job for half the price, and those in Asia will take even less. Why should US CEOs and the US economy as a whole enable the racket?
So long as the minions that keep posting above abuse you for taking a stance (and, exhibit their essential ignorance of negotiating strategies), corporations will keep using current employees "at will," and then abuse them, "at will." You have taken a bold stance, and while I doubt you'll completely succeed, you may be the "Rosa Parks" of employee rights.
Salaries need to be negotiated, and if you possess unique skills that are of value to the employer, they should be compensated equitably. While I am retired, I can tell you that as a self-employed consultant for over three decades, my ultimate income was over $1,000/day (in 1990's) because of the VALUE I delivered. If the corporation wanted that value, they expected to pay for the price. But, the return they got was, for example, with one large chemical company, over $400 Million in the first year.
What US employees have to do is to show their employers (or clients) how much VALUE they create...when you do that, each client is happy to share their success with other potential clients looking for similar value. So long as you "occupy a chair" for a modest salary, you have no-doubt signed an "at will" employment clause that grants the employer all the rights in your relationship.
Matthew Culver: You are challenging that perverse relationship, and I applaud the attempt. As Inequality.org points out, "...the 1 percent has 35.6 percent of all private wealth, more than the bottom 95 percent combined." And sacking the people that actually CREATED that value, because labor costs can be reduced, producing more margin for the 1% to harvest, is one of the ways they do it. And, even it you don't win, you can be proud of initiating a movement of other employees engaging attorneys seeking out such cases with ever-evolving innovative arguments. And, if that process fails, we all may as well admit we've reintroduced slavery back into Western cultures.
H1B abuse is a bad thing but you really do need to better identify when it's actually happening. Not all outsourcing counts.
They're just trying to whitewash Carnival by pawning off the worst of it to Capgemini.
It's going to happen.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When they make an AI that can clutch at it's pearls about the coming AI revolution...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yes and since the CEO is on the board of directors for their companies, they all cover each others backs.
Many of the CEO's and board members went to private school together since they were toddlers.
How on earth do you think they are going to be impartial when it's in their self interest to protect each other before the corporation?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Exactly...
So it is up to the rest of society to keep CEO's and Boards honest with proper laws, audits, restrictions, and so on.
I'm atheist but part of the problem is the loss of shame and kindness associated with religion becoming entangled with politics and the decline of religion in our society generally.
Doing whats "fair and reasonable" has been replaced with doing "what's legal- even if it's harsh, cruel, and destructive."
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Bullshit. There are plenty of IT jobs that require specialised skills - and more importantly knowledge - the gotchya is that management rarely recognises them until they fire the wrong person and then shit blows up.
In cases like this the skills/knowledge are obviously somewhat important, otherwise what it there to teach your "replacement" or offer in the "contact firm"
I think you're assuming that management always know who's the best at what, and their offers reflect that. In reality, their accuracy is hit or miss. And given it's Carnival, I'd be much more willing to place my bets on "miss."
I think it's pretty safe to assume that these companies have non-trivial amounts of IT infrastructure (that needs maintenance, migrations, upgrades, etc...). Any such system that doesn't require knowledge transfer must satisfy at least one of the below:
1) You have an oracle stashed somewhere.
2) You have volumes of documentation.
3) Retaining key people that actually do know the system.
4) You don't ever plan on upgrading/migrating and are content with the current system for perpetuity (I'll even throw in that it's trivial to re-image a computer when its predecessor breaks down).
We know 1 doesn't exist, or at least, no offshore company has one that they can assign to Carnival.
2 requires a team of engineers that pore over those volumes of documentation, make sense of it all, not fuck up any future plans with their 0 experience of the Carnival systems, all the while sticking around long enough such that said team can maintain the system, return a profit for the IT company for real services rendered, and learn enough to plan out/implement whatever upgrades/roadmap they decide to do.
Good luck with 3. I rarely see management being able to retain the right talent, even when it's not pressured by offshoring schedule and with relevant leads still in place. That and human nature to retain your friends.
So that leaves us with what? 2. Which means Carnival will never improve, and for sure I won't want to go on their cruise now. Or maybe you can come up with 5/6/7 etc..., which I'm all ears.
No number 2 does not require anything of the sort. It should exist and get created as people work as a matter of course. If it doesn't already exist maybe the best thing for the company is to get rid of all the people in IT, and their management and processes at the same time and we can replace them with someone competent.
Carnival probably offered high retention offers to a few key employees. For the rest, like this guy, they couldn't care less whether he stays, which is why they didn't make him a big offer.
No, I'm merely assuming that it is the responsibility of management to determine how much employee retention is worth to the company. They may get it wrong, but it's still their choice to make.
I really don't see that. Historically, the worst excesses of capitalism happened when Christianity was much more influential than it is today. I can find you any number of Christian politicians and aristocrats who did horrible things. Politicians and business leaders have normally had religious beliefs that allowed them to do whatever they decided.
Don't confuse being Christian with trying to emulate Jesus, or indeed paying any attention to what he said. I do know Christians who are legitimately trying to live Christ-like lives, and I admire them. Not nearly all Christians do that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You can bet carnival long ago outsourced their reservation and ticketing system to one of the majors, just to make the flight connections easy.
The rest is typical hotel supply chain management. So they likely own a SAP pigfuck (or worse, Oracle apps), but it too, could already be outsourced.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I've worked for companies whose core business was not IT, and also for the service providers who "service" businesses who outsource their IT. The one thing I can definitely see happening long term to companies that kill their IT departments is a loss of creative solutions to unique in-house problems. Here's why:
IT services companies don't care about the business. - I say this as someone who works for one. It's almost impossible to get an employee of a third party to put in more than the minimum required to keep the contract and their jobs. The only ones who seem to succeed in this are services companies that sign long term contracts, keep local people and keep working conditions good enough that people don't quit.
Services companies will only do standard things, absent minimum 6 figure change orders - An IT services company's goal is to keep the cost of delivering the service as low as possible, otherwise they don't make money. The ways they do that is offshoring of tasks (as we see in this and many other cases,) or charging the customer for every microsecond of effort expended that isn't explicitly spelled out in the contract. Remember, the services company has to come in cheaper than the existing IT department (on paper) and has to generate enough money to pay a lot of non-technical management salaries such as multiple layers of account executives, project managers, change managers, etc. You can't offshore reliably unless the task can be boiled down to a single non-changing script that executes with very little technical staff involvement. This is where we get stuff like ITIL, a weeks-long change management process, etc.
Everything is slooooowwww. - Any company that outsources their IT can no longer go down the hall and ask someone to help them. Anecdote: The specialized IT services company I work for offshored their tech support but kept some application support guys local. I needed to get access to an internal application controlled by these guys, and was told by the outsourcer they'd be fired if they helped me without a ticket. I actually had to go back to my desk, file a ticket, and show them that it was in the system on the way to them. The change was done right away, but the ticket bounced from a technical router in India to a first level helpdesk in Costa Rica, to the application support guys...it took over a day for that to happen. Forget about actually getting something changed in production -- it takes weeks in the worst organizations I've seen.
Nothing new or innovative will come out of IT again. - This is actually what worries me the most. IT services companies doing the lowest common denominator work are not going to come up with any brilliant cost-saving strategies other than "buy more services from us" or "buy our Cloud." Companies that do IT right actually do gain benefits from IT proportional to their cost. Over time, relying too hard on offshore IT that can't do anything beyond the basics makes it harder to convince CIOs that they should consider bringing it back in-house.
Think about it -- ITIL is actively designed to prevent changes to systems. Agile, JIRA and full reliance on frameworks on the dev side is designed to reduce the required skill level of developers. Both of these are championed by offshoring firms because they make it easier to break up the work and send it to the cheapest possible location.
"Many of the CEO's and board members went to private school together since they were toddlers."
Are you implying they are loyal to each other because they were in the 3rd grade together?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
I want my display to be a dumb panel. Nothing good has ever come from combining two unrelated items into one package. Buy a printer/scanner/fax? Now you can't scan if you're out of toner. Good tools do one thing and do it well.
We bought a nice Vizio with a good display. I played with the builtin apps long enough to verify that they were ancient junk that would never not suck. About that time it came out that Vizio was monitoring your content for advertising purposes so that completely ended the experiment. Fun fact, though: there's no way in the Vizio UI to disable a wireless network! I could give it an unroutable static IP, but didn't trust their code not to say "that's not working - let's try DHCP instead!" I ended up setting up my Wi-Fi router's guest network with a weird, random SSID and associating the TV with it. Then I removed the guest network, so the TV is now trying to find an SSID that will never again exist. I don't think it's smart enough to figure its way out of that one.
BTW, we use Apple TV instead of the weird built-in apps. It was either that or Chromecast, but Google sells you TV boxes cheaply so they can monitor your habits. Apple sells you devices at full price and then doesn't monitor them. I went with the less creepy option.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It seems to me that things were horrible pre world war 2. Not so bad from about 1960 to 1984ish and then they've gone downhill since then. When I try to make arguments for the common good the most frequent response is that businesses should do whatever they want regardless of how badly it hurts society because it's legal and their only duty is to maximize shareholder return on investment.
As if the rest of society didn't educate employees, provide police, roads, electricity, standards, etc. etc. etc.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.