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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.
They could spin off their own outsourcing IT company and ask Carnival to hire them as consultants.
Not entitlement, incentive.
There was a time that working toward making a company successful was an incentive as it ensured further employment. Not anymore.
Sure it does. From the article:
"This business model requires employees to train foreign replacements for it to be successful," she said.
There's your leverage. If only one or two employees argue against it, the argument is ineffectual and their bargaining power is weak. If, however, there's an organized, unified position against it from all employees then you've got some clout. Once you're organized you've got a stronger bargaining position and can get better outcomes.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.