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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.
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".
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?
Not entitlement, incentive.
There was a time that working toward making a company successful was an incentive as it ensured further employment. Not anymore.
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.
"I'm saving my condescending remarks for about 3 years from now when nothing's changed"
While I did win several bets that Trump would beat Clinton - I'll be enjoying free lunches at the expense of several colleagues for all of January 2017 - I don't claim to have a crystal ball on how this will play out, but nothing I'm hearing or seeing from Trump so far fills me with hope.
That said, I'll be very surprised if you have to wait 3 years and even more shocked if it's "nothing's changed"; I expect things to be worse overall but it's not something I'm wishing for.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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 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.
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.
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.
Democrats had two years to do stuff effectively, during which they did, in fact, do some things. After that, the Republicans had the house. Two years ago, they got the senate as well.
It's not reasonable to hold up the lack of change as something that is just Obama's fault- the voters stopped him by putting in a conservative house, and later a conservative senate. Elections have consequences, as Obama himself said. And he mostly acted in accordance with this belief.
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).
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.
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?
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
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.