What's Happening As The University of California Tries To Outsource IT Jobs To India (pressreader.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader Nova Express shares an epic column by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik. It details what's happening now as the University of California tries to outsources dozens of IT jobs -- about 20% of their IT workforce -- by February 28th. Some of the highlights:

• The CEO of UCSF's Medical Center says he expects their security to be at least as good as it is now, but acknowledges "there are no guarantees."
• Nine workers have filed a complaint with the state's Department of Fair Employment and Housing arguing they're facing discrimination.
• California Senator Feinstein is already complaining that the university is tapping $8.5 billion in federal funding "to replace Californian IT workers with foreign workers or labor performed abroad."
• Representative Zoe Lofgren (from a district in Silicon Valley) is arguing that the university "is training software engineers at the same time they're outsourcing their own software engineers. What message are they sending their own students?"
• 57-year-old sys-admin Kurt Ho says his replacement spent just two days with him, then "told me he would go back to India and train his team, and would be sending me emails with questions."
• The university's actions will ultimately lower their annual $5.83 billion budget by just 0.1%.

Comments

This is a surprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Universities have never been more than a bottom-line for-profit business that uses cult-like recruiting tactics and has absolutely no shame or loyalty to anything or anyone but themselves.

I hope this is becoming a bit clearer to everyone now, as in the past I've been ridiculed for blasting universities as money-driven cults.

They provide very little value in the modern world and should be used sparingly.

Re:This is a surprise?

[sabri]

Universities have never been more than a bottom-line for-profit business that uses cult-like recruiting tactics and has absolutely no shame or loyalty to anything or anyone but themselves.

Just like the folks in Washington, representing this government funded university. Read this article to see how Feinstein responded to pleas for help from affected workers.

A University of California IT employee whose job is being outsourced to India recently wrote Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for help. Feinstein's office sent back a letter ... and offered the worker no assistance.

Re:This is a surprise?

[gumbright]

This is likely the dumbest thing I will read today. Assuming, of course, that you aren't going to post a followup.

Re:This is a surprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Universities == hedge funds with huge tax cuts.

Re:This is a surprise?

[__aaclcg7560]

A University of California IT employee whose job is being outsourced to India recently wrote Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for help. Feinstein's office sent back a letter ... and offered the worker no assistance.

If you send a letter to the Washington, D.C., office, you will get back a form letter. If you send a letter to the local or state office, you will get personal response (most of the time). If you want to be effective in politics, it starts at the grassroots.

Re:This is a surprise?

[Goldsmith]

I wouldn't be as... caustic in my critique of universities as the OP, but I can definitely understand the sentiment.

I think the problem is that many people think that universities should all act like non-profit educational institutions. In reality, the "best" universities act like (for-profit) partnerships performing professional research services, and they are very, very good at this. Certainly, this is where the majority of UC funding comes from.

If you paid for an undergrad degree at a research institution, and didn't understand that you should have been working in some famous professor's lab to actually get your education, you're going to be pretty upset when you get out.

Re:This is a surprise?

[saloomy]

The university's actions will ultimately lower their annual $5.83 billion budget by just 0.1%.

But the bonuses and profits of the outsourcing operation and the key stakeholders in the universities will enjoy their kickbacks and high end dinners.

Re:This is a surprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, it's dumb, so it should be easy to debunk. For example, why do universities push EE so hard?

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/archit...

Universities, if they were honest, would scale down their EE departments and relax on the hype and nonsense "careers" they promise prospective students, right?

Because they're not about profit, right?

Re:This is a surprise?

[SpaghettiPattern]

...and the key stakeholders in the universities will enjoy their kickbacks and high end dinners.

With corruption the return of invested capital is humongous. Corrupt idiots selling out for a diner and the feeling of being privileged.

Re:This is a surprise?

[ShanghaiBill]

This is likely the dumbest thing I will read today.

I have read something dumber: TFA. The headline and the very first sentence contradict each other. The headline says the jobs are going TO India. The first sentence says they are going to immigrants FROM India. Which is it? TFA is obviously biased smear journalism, but geez, at least the basic facts should be clearly stated.

Re:This is a surprise?

[FatdogHaiku]

Universities have never been more than a bottom-line for-profit business that uses cult-like recruiting tactics and has absolutely no shame or loyalty to anything or anyone but themselves.

I hope this is becoming a bit clearer to everyone now, as in the past I've been ridiculed for blasting universities as money-driven cults.

They provide very little value in the modern world and should be used sparingly.

In your above comment I agree and frankly I'm a bit shocked that you did not suggest finding the ass-hat that gets a bonus for this grand money making scheme. Since, as the illustrious Senator pointed out, there are federal tax dollars involved, it would be nice to know if a company of foreign origin has imparted any finders fee, gift, promise of future employment, etc. to an ass-hat currently working for the Great State of California, or a contractor thereof...

Sorry we pile on so often, but you must admit the name Anonymous Coward frequently has a certain barnyard perfume associated with it...
Happy to see you with FP so we get a reminder that you sometimes seem to be someone else completely. You nailed this one.

Re:This is a surprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is UC a state university, though? State universities absolutely should act like non-profit educational institutions. Otherwise what is the public interest in being involved?

Re:This is a surprise?

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

That's part of the shuffle going on here. First, they bring in the immigrants to train in California. Some might stay. The University is still tweaking the plan IRT. Some Indians are going back to India to train "their own teams". Some might stay here. So, it's both. No one seemed to notice that it's ONE GUY in the US, and will become a WHOLE TEAM in India.

This is going to be a disaster. You can't learn a system in two days. Even with perfect documentation, you need way more time. This isn't some coding project. The sys admin mention probably manages dozens of undocumented systems. Stuff will work for a while, but after the first power outage, time change, etc...someone4 is going to be calling these guys up constantly getting information from them for the rest of their lives.

Re:This is a surprise?

[jIyajbe]

"...but I was dashed if I could see why he couldn't do it with a bright and cheerful smile."

(Nice to encounter another Bertie Wooster fan!)

Re:This is a surprise?

[Bongo]

If you paid for an undergrad degree at a research institution, and didn't understand that you should have been working in some famous professor's lab to actually get your education, you're going to be pretty upset when you get out.

And didn't understand... because someone should have taught you that when you were 14, so this basically blames the schools for not properly educating kids about the ways of the world. Fair enough.

I'd suggest it goes a little further though. The left has a bias or belief that problems are the fault of society, whereas the right tends to bias to the belief that problems are the fault of the individual. Now, the problem is that, the left tends to be more associated with education (because if society and its institutions are the problem, then those are the institutions which need to be improved, and education needs to be improved). So the left is more idealistic about the role of education. See it is implicit. But what you're saying is, from more of a right wing point of view, hey nobody should be an idiot, or ignorant, to the fact that the world is competitive and selfish place, and that individuals have to learn to handle this, mostly via self control and character building and smarts (so don't come crying when you become a victim).

And that, I think, is fair enough, as there is no real difference between the "individual" and "society", as ideological categories, because we are always both, we are all individuals and we all live in society and are part of social institutions. Individuals have agency. Groups have communion. And we always act and function in both. So the problems are often found in both places. (A way forward for politics is to become both left and right wing).

So I would just add that, I agree in the sense that, our society needs to spend more time acclimatising kids to "how the world works", as by nature, humans are both competitive and cooperative. And we need to be educated to understand when and where each one is the dominant driver. So I do agree, it is right to tell people that they need to wise up about American universities. But I wouldn't blame kids for not knowing that already, if they haven't been taught.

Re:This is a surprise?

[execthis]

Universities have never been more than a bottom-line for-profit business that uses cult-like recruiting tactics and has absolutely no shame or loyalty to anything or anyone but themselves.

Not all. I take courses at an urban community college and these classes are inexpensive and high quality. The college offers 2-year associate degrees to many people who would otherwise find it difficult to get any degree, as well as offering numerous certificates and types of training, not to mention cultural and artistic enrichment which are also very important.

They are always struggling financially but they serve a vital function in the community.

Re:This is a surprise?

[Applehu Akbar]

"The first sentence says they are going to immigrants FROM India."

The headline does not contradict the article. These people are not immigrants in the conventional sense, who come to the US to acculturate and become a part of our society. H-1B is a special peonage deal for chintzy employers, by which the worker gets a temporary visa, good only for a specific employer, and then must return home. India gets a trained IT worker while California's own workers, immigrant and otherwise, get unemployment.

Re:This is a surprise?

[rfengr]

I dunno. My yearly salary as an EE is 3x what my entire undergrad education cost; grad school was free. I know this is anecdotal, and I graduated 20 years ago, but it has certainly been a worthwhile investment.

Re:This is a surprise?

[conquistadorst]

If you paid for an undergrad degree at a research institution, and didn't understand that you should have been working in some famous professor's lab to actually get your education, you're going to be pretty upset when you get out.

And didn't understand... because someone should have taught you that when you were 14, so this basically blames the schools for not properly educating kids about the ways of the world. Fair enough.

I'd suggest it goes a little further though. The left has a bias or belief that problems are the fault of society, whereas the right tends to bias to the belief that problems are the fault of the individual. Now, the problem is that, the left tends to be more associated with education (because if society and its institutions are the problem, then those are the institutions which need to be improved, and education needs to be improved). So the left is more idealistic about the role of education. See it is implicit. But what you're saying is, from more of a right wing point of view, hey nobody should be an idiot, or ignorant, to the fact that the world is competitive and selfish place, and that individuals have to learn to handle this, mostly via self control and character building and smarts (so don't come crying when you become a victim).

And that, I think, is fair enough, as there is no real difference between the "individual" and "society", as ideological categories, because we are always both, we are all individuals and we all live in society and are part of social institutions. Individuals have agency. Groups have communion. And we always act and function in both. So the problems are often found in both places. (A way forward for politics is to become both left and right wing).

So I would just add that, I agree in the sense that, our society needs to spend more time acclimatising kids to "how the world works", as by nature, humans are both competitive and cooperative. And we need to be educated to understand when and where each one is the dominant driver. So I do agree, it is right to tell people that they need to wise up about American universities. But I wouldn't blame kids for not knowing that already, if they haven't been taught.

Sure sounds like someone advocating the smart middle instead of ideological lefts and rights. Yay!

Re:This is a surprise?

[mwvdlee]

...And nobody will be able to blame the Indians, because their contract will clearly outline and limit their responsibilities to only those things known to the signees at the time. I have yet to meet an Indian IT person who thinks for himself.

Re:This is a surprise?

[hawkinspeter]

Why SHOULD they think for themselves? They're explicitly paid to perform a specified job, so if they start questioning it, they'll just get replaced with someone who will just shut up and get on with it.

After all, they get paid to write code and then get paid to write the code that should have been specified in the first place.

Don't blame them for poorly/short-sighted written contracts.

Re:This is a surprise?

[bluefoxlucid]

Put another way, saving the cost of $5.8 million is like saving the cost of 355 minimum-wage jobs. In the span of 1-3 years, the labor force will shift around--early retirement, longer time spent in school, less immigration for H1B work due to less demand for workers--and the job losses will be buffed out; meanwhile, across 2-10 years, the span of $5.8 million annually that Americans spend on going to this school will instead be spent on shoes, phones, hamburgers, and other things.

In other words: the end result is a null impact on American employment rate and an increase in the wealth of individual Americans--particularly, in the wealth of those Americans who buy some sort of service from this school (I assume tuition).

Re:This is a surprise?

[PrimaryConsult]

In many states government employees are not allowed to receive "gifts" (including meals) from outside vendors unless it's of negligible value, or something offered to any customer. To that end as far as lavish meals are concerned the most the vendors can provide is maybe two mozzarella sticks off a shared appetizer plate, unless literally every customer of the company had been invited to that specific meal.

Re:This is a surprise?

[budgenator]

Bahahahaha, they thought Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), was going to effectively intercede with Janet Napolitano to help rich American white guys keep their jobs, from being outsourced to poor brown guys, due to financial realities of the reduced care reimbursements to providers under Obamacare and increased demand from illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities!

Those IT guys should get the buttercup award for being a special kind of snowflake!

Re:This is a surprise?

[mwvdlee]

The problem is that the only way for Indians to produce the code you need is to specify it to the point where you've just written the entire code yourself.

I've seen this numerous times; their inability to think of reality is insane. I've once been asked to produce a mock object for a simple currency converter so they could test their components. The mock converter just had a list of static conversion rates for each currency. The code they returned (the code that was supposed to use the real currency converter) relied on the currency converter always returning the same conversion rates. Turns out they were using a substring()-like function to extract the rates from an XML message, so if the rate had a different number of digits or the XML was different in any insignificant and perfectly valid way, it would fail hard. Since their code handled no exceptions at all, failing meant exiting the entire application.

Re:This is a surprise?

[sycodon]

A-Fucking-Men.

These universities are ultimately under the control of the Legislature. The CA Government is swarming with Democrats, yet none of them seem to give a fuck about good jobs being sent out of the country. Why is that?

Seriously...it wasn't all that long ago they'd be all over this like bees on an open soda can.

Re:This is a surprise?

[geekmux]

Universities have never been more than a bottom-line for-profit business that uses cult-like recruiting tactics and has absolutely no shame or loyalty to anything or anyone but themselves.

I hope this is becoming a bit clearer to everyone now, as in the past I've been ridiculed for blasting universities as money-driven cults.

They provide very little value in the modern world and should be used sparingly.

Perhaps the cult will realize what they've done when they find enrollment in the highly-profitable CS curriculum is reduced to damn near zero.

In fact, sounds like a solid justification for a boycott towards any University that pulls this shit.

Re:This is a surprise?

[Sir Realist]

Well, if you refuse to sufficiently fund your state schools then it turns out they start acting like for-profit enterprises...

Re: This is a surprise?

[SQLGuru]

If they work in India, they aren't H1Bs. It's a true offshoring effort. H1B only applies to workers brought over to the states to replace you.

Re:This is a surprise?

[myrdos2]

If their entire budget is 5.83 billion, how can they be "tapping $8.5 billion in federal funding" as per the summary?

Re:This is a surprise?

[Comrade Ogilvy]

They can't win. At this point, no matter what they do, some people will say they are corrupt for not acting like a proper non-profit, and some people will say they are idiots for not acting like a grown up business. With feedback like that, the only rational choice is to do what their "boss" wants -- in this case the CA legislature cares more about shaving costs than a few local jobs.

Re:This is a surprise?

[tibit]

The system of education in India works, at the lowest level, to install rote learning. There's no room for imagination or real problem solving of any sort in that system. In fact, stepping "out of line" is dealt with swiftly. And trying to think of the bigger picture is very much stepping out of line in their educational system. That's the source of the problem. It is, in effect, an insurmountable cultural gap. It's the same thing that Feynman observed in Brazil.

Re: This is a surprise?

[mrchew1982]

You make it sound like our taxes are going down so we'll have more disposable income, this is not the case. The school will stay at the same funding level (probably get an annual increase even), and will still charge the same rediculous rates for tuition. The only place this money will go is to the deans paycheck or a bonus for one of their lackeys. When I left DADDY (another worthless california state school) they had just hired a new Dean at 3.5 million dollars per year.

Re: This is a surprise?

[Raseri]

we don't want those shitty work

Found the Indian.

Re: This is a surprise?

[bluefoxlucid]

You make it sound like our taxes are going down so we'll have more disposable income

Oh, no, you'll still pay the same taxes.

The school will simply not grow its prices as rapidly, as its costs won't escalate as fast to shave down its profit margins below what they'll tolerate (which, barring brutal competition, is going to be at least slightly higher than what's required to buffer against risks--and will be a point value dependent on the time and circumstances).

What do you think would happen if that school had $683 billion of operating expenses? Do you think they'd take a $100 billion loss every year charging the current tuition? Of course not; they'd raise prices, and then either fold due to sheer incompetence (everyone else operates at a lower cost per student-hour, why can't they?) or continue to compete in a market that just is (everyone else's operating expenses are also 17% higher, so they haven't lost any competitive advantage).

This is the opposite effect. It's slower; the pressure mounts over time--they'll try to not lower their margins as long as they can, but even an extra 0.1% of profit over what they'd normally make can't endure for more than a few years, assuming it can make it out a few months. For a school selling services on the order of months and years, it probably can endure for a year or two.

This is why, for example, food was 40% of median-income-household consumer expenses in 1900, 33% in 1950, and about 12% today: it got cheaper to make, and it's basically impossible to keep enormous margins. Farmers complain because they believe they should have a 20% profit margin, and instead operate in 8%-10% because market forces kick them in the balls repeatedly if they try to charge more. (An enormous amount of the price of goods comes from domestic shipping; even importing e.g. pants from China costs 6 cents per pair in trans-Atlantic shipping, while getting them from the pier to WalMart is half the price of the damned pants).

That is how the past 6,000 years of history has operated--as in, the past 6,000 years right up to today, now, currently. That's not a projection from ancient history ending a hundred years ago, or from some trend that we have data on for a 40-year window of history; it's how every economy has always behaved. These basic economic behaviors can abstract even to biology and describe higher evolution, although that gets into loopy land (mind you, explaining how dogs and humans co-evolved for maximal economy is often fun, because dogs are awesome).

Re:This is a surprise?

[NCamero]

Universities have never been more than a bottom-line for-profit business that uses cult-like recruiting tactics and has absolutely no shame or loyalty to anything or anyone but themselves.

I hope this is becoming a bit clearer to everyone now, as in the past I've been ridiculed for blasting universities as money-driven cults.

They provide very little value in the modern world and should be used sparingly.

Mod parent anon coward down.

Dude, I am a professional engineer. It is a requirement to have an engineering degree. I believe doctors, accountants, business men like Trump Inc, even lawyers, are useful. And I am biased to thinking engineers are useful.

Re:This is a surprise?

[budgenator]

>help rich American white guys keep their jobs

> sys-admin Kurt Ho

Is Kurt Ho a white american?

Touch`e, the only thing worst than a rich American white guy, a successful self-sufficient minority guy!

Re:This is a surprise?

[execthis]

Lower class people like myself who struggle to survive cannot even imagine many of the warped ways the entitled classes waste their money. But it doesn't surprise me. America is mostly fucked and getting worse.

Re:This is a surprise?

[AK Marc]

Also, starting at the federal level is the wrong level. The fed Senator can, at best, work to change H1-B practices (slow and lower probability). A state Senator can, at best, cut funding to the state school if they outsource work (more likely, and faster to do), effectively forcing the schools to hire locally.

Asking the wrong person the wrong question will get you the wrong answer 100% of the time.

Re:This is a surprise?

[AK Marc]

The left has a bias or belief that problems are the fault of society, whereas the right tends to bias to the belief that problems are the fault of the individual.

That's what the right says. But tell me again how the right assigns terrorism to the individual criminals, and not the entire Islamic population? Broad religious and racial blame is laid by the right all the time. Personal responsibility is fine, so long as you don't have to take personal responsibility for improperly storing guns, or spewing pollutants, or anything like that.

The libertarian right believes in dictatorships as the only valid government. Every landowner is a dictator on their land, and there should be no "public" land. Though, they recognize the need for government, in that local people will work together to build roads and collectively pay for them (regardless of whether they are individually or collectively owned), but refuse to recognize this congress of people forming rules to be a government.

So I would just add that, I agree in the sense that, our society needs to spend more time acclimatising kids to "how the world works", as by nature, humans are both competitive and cooperative.

The biggest disconnect is that "how the world should work" and "how the world does work" are vastly different, and there's nobody trying to bring them together. Playing on the differences is why there is so much divisiveness in politics.

Re:This is a surprise?

[SpaghettiPattern]

What ho!

Awesome

[barrywalker]

Now your IT department will be trying to fleece the faculty and students with scam phone calls about how their computers are infected with viruses.

Bravo, nitwits.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

They are just doing the needful on priority and at the earliest. They will revert when complete.

Re:Awesome

[swb]

What happens when Indian IT people in the US get scam computer virus calls from India? Does it create some kind of singularity that causes both of them to move to another dimension?

Or is it more like:

"I am calling from the Microsoft support center and I wish to tell you your computer has a virus"

"Nilesh? What are you doing? I thought you were going to work in the civil service section your family controls."

"Premal, since Modi has withdrawn the large rupee notes my uncle can no longer give me a job in the civil service and I must work at the call center and to tell you your computer has a virus."

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure that command would do much on all the Windows servers the Pajeets will be inheriting.

Re:Awesome

[ghoul]

Scams were not invented in India. In fact scam calling is just another form of outsourcing where US based criminals use low paid foreign workers to do the grunt work. So if no singularity happened when Americans were scamming Americans none will happen when Indians scam Indians.

Re: Awesome

[saloomy]

The time when we were your bosses has come and gone. We replaced you guys with shell scripts and automation ages ago.

Re:Awesome

[Joe_Dragon]

why go to that when you have students with unlimited loans you get for that and more.

Re: Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your Boss, I am the highly paid consultant who comes in and recommends you can be replaced by a chimpanzee. I stay at your company for 6 months make 4 times what you do, fix what you've screwed up and then move on leaving your boss and your wife wanting more...

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone realizes that, but we were laughing at the joke.

Re:Awesome

[Applehu Akbar]

I'm not sure that command would do much on all the Windows servers the Pajeets will be inheriting.

That's even better. Gazing into my Mumbai Trading Company Finest Kind Translucent Sphere, I see a giant hack in UC's future.

Re:Awesome

[F.Ultra]

I have always wondered if the individuals (aka the Indians) who call from "Windows" and so on actually know that they are taking part in a scam or not. I hope they do considering the amount of verbal abuse I give them every time they try to call but still I do wonder because it would be quite easy to just post job offers to unemployed people and tell them to call these numbers and say these things without ever explaining exactly what they are doing.

Re:Awesome

[mwvdlee]

Are you telling me... Southpark already did it? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsons_Already_Did_It)

Re:Awesome

[F.Ultra]

Thanks for the info. One other thing that I wonder is why Microsoft is not doing more about this, not that I think that they have a responsibility to do it but that it would be in their best interest to not tarnish their company name. Since they have a large pool of employees in India as well one would think that they would also have some leverage with politicians and law enforcement (prejudice tells me that corruption is wide spread in India which should work in Microsoft:s favor).

Re:Awesome

[meta-monkey]

When I was a grad student I was sysadmin for my high-performance computing research lab. Every few months we were adding more nodes to our cluster, so I'd be assembling, say, 32 new servers, and invariably we'd get a bad motherboard or something in the mix. Since I've got the guts of 32 identical machines in front of me, it's pretty easy to troubleshoot and figure out what the problem is, but when calling for an RMA you'd still always have to work through the whole tech support script. Thankfully a few of my lab mates were Indian.

Intel: (in heavy Indian accent) "Hello, thank you for calling Intel, this is Josh, how may I help you?"

Me: "Hi, Josh, is it? Please speak to my friend Rajagopal."

And then Raj would rapid fire something in Hindi at "Josh" and we'd get our RMA without the 30 minutes of plodding through the troubleshooting script.

Re:Awesome

[budgenator]

There was a guy I was yacking with who refused to admit he was calling from India, about some kind of support issue; until I made some obtuse comment about a championship cricket match between India and Australia that lasted for three days, then the floodgates burst.

Re:Awesome

[jedidiah]

If you're planning ahead, thinking in terms of WHEN that next disaster is going to happen rather than IF, then you won't have that problem.

The unemployment line is really for ditch diggers who can't help living pay check to pay check.

Re:Awesome

[SharpFang]

For these, a mass delete would be too gentle and too easy. Admins should instead open up the firewalls and disable antiviruses. Fate worse than death.

Automatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't be any discussion about this. If a UNIVERSITY is outsourcing. They should instantly lose all federal and state funding.

Wanna behave like a private company? Get treated like one. No taxpayer soup for you.

Re:Automatic.

[AuMatar]

More than that- this is a state university. Not a private one like Harvard. Its basically owned by the government. So its the government outsourcing these jobs.

Re: Automatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you get for making the university politically independent. Suddenly they start having ideas.

Then you cut off their revenue stream, and then they just spend millions on a football team instead of education.

Ps, what's with the forward to http://you-gift-cards.pw/? Does Slashdot not care?

Re:Automatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be an H1B, and this is indeed inexcusable. It's not even just about jobs lost, but what happened to matters such as national pride and the associated symbolism? If the universities of the country - the institutions that educate and train workers for its industries - are refusing to hire those very workers to perform jobs that the universities need, that says a lot about either the usefulness of the degrees that they teach, or the quality of their education. If they're claiming that Indian workers (with Indian degrees) are really "good enough", why even bother with expensive American education? And make no mistake, it's not just a message for the citizens; people abroad will notice as well.

Re:Automatic.

[ghoul]

So you want public money to be used to overpay govt employees instead of getting the best value for the money by using the lower cost private sector provider. No wonder taxes are so high in California.

Re:Automatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have never worked IT at a large uni like UCB with tens of thousands of employees.

They have more employees than Google, do you think google doesn't need IT? The engineers can just do it.

Right?

Re:Automatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean do I want American tax payer dollars recycled back into the US economy and not send to India?

Yes.

Re:Automatic.

[EmeraldBot]

So you want public money to be used to overpay govt employees instead of getting the best value for the money by using the lower cost private sector provider. No wonder taxes are so high in California.

That's also why California has beautiful national parks, expansive and well maintained roads, and is the center of no less than three major industries. Oklahoma has low taxes, and that's about all it has. What good is cheap if it's absolutely worthless?

Re:Automatic.

[rossz]

well maintained roads

What the hell have you been smoking?

Re:Automatic.

[EmeraldBot]

well maintained roads

What the hell have you been smoking?

If you think California's roads are bad, I advise you to try New Hampshire's sometime. So granite is the state that we still use gravel and dirt roads, and when there's any asphalt to be seen, it's 35 years old and has fissures the size of the Grand Canyon. And yes, I've lived in both of these states. I think it's fair to say that California has a well maintained road network for its size, and if we're talking about a low tax state like New Hampshire or Indiana, you'd realize the difference almost immediately.

Re:Automatic.

[Khyber]

"expansive and well maintained roads"

Non-Californian detected!

Re:Automatic.

[Khyber]

The roads are maintained by prison labor in California.

I doubt NH has any sort of sizable prison population to make such an endeavor possible.

Re:Automatic.

[sysrammer]

But that, of course, is the debate. Is it really "the best value for the money"? I call your homily with a truism "you get what you pay for".

Re:Automatic.

[EmeraldBot]

"expansive and well maintained roads"

Non-Californian detected!

I assure you, I have lived in Cali for several continuous years, and I have the Soup Plantation receipts to prove it. California's road system is pretty decent, and when you look at its size, it's impressive. Even on the death hills by my house, there are railguards at the edges, no cracks in the roads, and they actually repair roads from wear and tear. Trying to navigate a mountain in New Hampshire is a nightmare, as is trying to get almost anywhere else; Californians are a lucky people (well, admittedly more so if the trees weren't dying, I suppose).

Re:Automatic.

[afmstuff]

Irrespective of the present issue, please know that the fraction of funding derived from state sources is 11%. [1]
The fraction of government funding has ramped down over the years, and as of now is 89% private, 11% public. It is notable that there is debate within UC whether or not the remaining 11% is worth the associated restrictions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: Automatic.

[CGordy]

Coming from a country where university teams are barely funded and play in the local leagues, I had always found the level funding of college sport in the US bizarre.
Thank you for explaining it to me.

Re:Automatic.

[phantomfive]

Losing jobs in America for essentially zero benefit. That's basically why.

Re:Automatic.

[BlueStrat]

What do you think republican tax cuts are all about? Giving tax payer money to businesses.

This is so hilariously bass-ackwards I have to wonder if this was satire.

The government not confiscating under threat of deadly force wealth it did not earn, in the form of taxes, from those who created said wealth is *not* giving that wealth away to anyone as it was never government's wealth in the first place. A tax cut is not a 'subsidy' as so many seem to want to (deliberately) misconstrue it. A mugger that lets you keep some of your money is not subsidizing you by the amount he left you.

Strat

Re:Automatic.

[stealth_finger]

Can you explain to me why they shouldn't they move the jobs abroad?

Because you come back with fucking shit like you just posted.

Re:Automatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they are a fucking publically funded school and sending jobs overseas has exactly zero benifit - and in most cases negatives?

Re:Automatic.

[Afty0r]

If a UNIVERSITY is outsourcing. They should instantly lose all federal and state funding.

What about if they buy a microscope that was made in China instead of the USA?
What about if they buy paper to print on that came from logs in South America instead of the USA?

Re:Automatic.

[orlanz]

As you can see from the responses you have gotten, most people can't explain it. Even if it is "obvious" to them, they should be adult enough to realize that there might be many visitors to this site that seriously have your question even if they believe you don't. They could have used this as an opportunity to explain their side, but instead did such a huge disservice by their replies.

Anyway, I personally don't have anything against hiring the most cost effective solution. Although I doubt it will be as good or ok as the business case suggests. In the end, the university will survive and move on.

What I DO have a problem with is the abuse of the H1-B system. A system that was designed to allow our companies to hire abroad when they can't find the talent locally. It isn't a system designed to drive costs down. I have rarely seen H1-B positions that I felt didn't have local talent. Probably 1/5. In this case, clearly, if the current employees have to train their replacements, then there is no question that there is a more suitable local talent than foreign.

If I had it my way, I wouldn't tie the H1-B visa to the company. 2 years in, the H1-B should belong to the employee to go where ever he feels his talent is most appreciated. If the company fires him after 11 months, the visa still belongs to them. The US could still limit the number of visas issued, and actively maintained. The employee would still need to maintain their visa by having employment 6 out of the last 12 months. I also don't think the permanent residency process be tied to the company. Companies shouldn't be allowed to petition that. Only the individual with backing from a US citizen should be able to.

Fix the H1-B system and we can talk about a fair playing field. Thou, I doubt many companies would be as enthusiastic about it.

Re:Automatic.

[tburkhol]

A university should be working at the cutting edge. In the 60s, they were there inventing networking and email, but those are well established technologies now. There's no reason of a university to spend its resources on routine infrastructure when corporate entities can do it cheaper. Look at the prevalence of Microsoft, Google, and Oracle in the daily operations of any major university. If foreign corps can out-compete the domestic corps, why should the government subsidize an uncompetitive business?

Keep in mind that a lot of those Indian workers will have US degrees - US universities have been admitting more and more, partly to make up for declining state support. Many of those students come to the US hoping to turn a student visa into a green card, but most of them end up back home.

Re:Automatic.

[swb]

From a capitalist perspective, they are selling a product ("an education") in which the very promise is vocational advancement. Yet their own actions demonstrate they are selling a product which doesn't actually do what it claims.

State Universities also exist outside the realm of profit and loss and were established to accomplish a specific social goal -- advancing the practical arts and sciences outside the realm of the traditional liberal arts education. By pushing their own jobs overseas they seem to be undermining that as well.

If they need to save money to meet their operating costs and income, then why not cut costs elsewhere? So many have huge investments in athletics which kind of appear to be paid for by a handful of top tier revenue sports, but at my local University the athletics facilities (a block-sized tennis facility) seem to exceed what could be considered reasonable spending associated with those sports and also fails to take into account for most state Universities' ability to use their quasi-government status for bonding to obtain money for athletic facilities average students will never use.

Plus you can't tell me that any state University in the US couldn't cut a whole laundry list of internal "programs" that mostly exist to create internal empires. And that's without even asking many political questions as to which of these programs are really advocacy programs designed to push ideological agendas.

Re:Automatic.

[bogeuh]

businesses are part of society, they have to contribute to the society and not leech as much as they can and let the working class foot the bill for maintaining said society if you are right, that "creator of wealth" should be able do to the same anywhere...

Re:Automatic.

[MightyYar]

My wife went to UCSF. It's a medical college - there are, to my knowledge, no other majors there and they run a major medical center. They do not teach IT, and IT is not their core competency. I think in this case, they are trying to fulfill their mission to train medical personnel and the question of who is doing their IT is (no offense meant) only technically different then what company comes to pick up their trash. I don't really know if outsourcing makes sense from a political standpoint, but from the narrow perspective of maximizing your education dollars used to fulfill your stated mission, it is completely rational. If we as a society want to force all government agencies to use only domestic labor and services, that's a reasonable thing. I will point out that most of their computer equipment likely comes from East Asia, all built by East Asians - so drawing the line at services seems somewhat arbitrary.

Re:Automatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Professor here. Universities also create those internal empires for business reasons: there surely is a lot of ideology in universities, but never underestimate the almighty dollar's ability to trump ideology. The biggest internal empires, and not coincidentally some of the biggest money-makers, are the housing and food domains. These are areas that most governments tend not to tread, but universities often require students to buy food and shelter from them for at least one year: the university, like a totalitarian state, creeps into every aspect of a student's life. The revenue from housing and food (both are now often outsourced to private dorm and catering companies) supposedly pays into the university's general funds. They also provide employment to students (RAs, cashiers, etc), as do many of the other internal empires (secretary in the office of multicultural baskwetweaving, etc), which satisfies a requirement that students work in order to receive tuition reduction. Hospitals are another major internal empire for big schools, and they are ginormous money-makers whose budget offices have, between the cushions of their waiting room couches, multiples of the funds available to the academic wing of the university. Finally, you have empires that exist to employ former students who got their PhDs and never got real jobs in academia or outside: here you have the Diversity Officers and Campus Liaison Officers and other vague titles that cover up how worthless some degrees are, because a bunch of unemployed basketweavers would look bad and reduce applications, which might hurt revenue. Law schools are getting famous for this - it's hard to make it in the world with a law degree nowadays, so some schools are hiring their graduates to avoid having to admit how few of them get real jobs. In the end, somewhere in all that, there are a few professors still, although mostly replaced by non-tenured, lower-paid adjuncts who make less money than an elementary school teacher despite being far more qualified and often teaching more students. The most obvious cost-cutting measure in place is the elimination of actual professorships by attrition - a retiring professor will be replaced by an adjunct with no hope of ever achieving the same pay rate. It's all about the money.

Re:Automatic.

[nehumanuscrede]

This is also why California is currently $452 Billion in debt vs Oklahoma's $18 Billion :|
( Pssst: Quit spending what you don't have )

Re:Automatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

How's this for a good reason? Because the university pays for this with public tax dollars. Public tax dollars should be spent on the US since it came from the US with the express purpose of making the US a better place to live. Instead, they're taking public tax dollars and sending them overseas. Toss in that these sorts of moves typically cost more in the long run, and it also becomes a waste of public tax dollars.

Re:Automatic.

[silentcoder]

>Wanna behave like a private company? Get treated like one. No taxpayer soup for you.

This is America, they are more likely to get INCREASED taxpayer soup by acting like a private company - considering vast chunk of America's taxes that get used to pay favours to big corporations. BP and Wallmart get far more of your taxes than their welfare dependent workers ever did.

Re:Automatic.

[silentcoder]

Actually - I would add - that getting to pay workers so little that they need welfare to eat AFTER earning a paycheck - is itself another form of corporate welfare. It's allowing the wallmarts' of America to outsource a huge chunk of their wagebill to taxpayers. Which raises valid questions about whether they are really cheaper - considering that you're paying a chunk of the price difference in taxes so the people who work there can eat.

No wonder so few businesses can compete with them - the other businesses have to pay their workers a living wage in order to have workers, they don't get to make you pay their wages for them like wallmart does.

Re:Automatic.

[Trailer Trash]

This stuff is so clueless. I live in the very low tax state of Tennessee, and our roads are at least as good as California's. Indiana and New Hampshire have horrible freeze/thaw cycles all winter long (I spent my first 30 years living in Indiana) that destroys asphalt. We don't have this here or in CA, and road maintenance is simple in comparison.

Our sales tax is about what CA's sales tax is but we have no income tax. With proper spending it can work.

Re:Automatic.

[Khyber]

"I assure you, I have lived in Cali for several continuous years, and I have the Soup Plantation receipts to prove it."

Souplantation is an Irvine-area chain restaurant. Now go out into the Inland Empire, away from the beach areas, and tell me the same thing about the roads once you pass the I-10/91/215 junction.

Several years seems to pale in comparison to my decade+ of life here, and I've driven it all, from San Bernardino down to Imperial county, and everything west.

Re:Automatic.

[twotacocombo]

I think it's fair to say that California has a well maintained road network for its size,

The interstates are generally well maintained. The freeways in and around the LA/OC area are a fucking travesty. Potholes everywhere. Some roads are crumbling and coming apart in chunks. They only fix the worst of the worst, and it takes them several years to get to it. I work in the north SFV area, and I've only seen them repave 4 streets in the ~5 miles around my office in the last decade, and only just recently. Meanwhile, the freeways are constantly "under construction" but you rarely see them working on them, even late at night. They like to start 15 projects, tear everything to shit, then spend the next 6 years slowly putting one of them back together. For such a car-centric metro area, our roads are in a totally unacceptable level of disrepair. This isn't New Hampshire, this is Car City USA. Fix the fucking roads. And don't even get me started on the sidewalks.

Re:Automatic.

[budgenator]

The President of UC that came up with this idea is Janet Napolitano and is hardly a member of team Trump.

Re:Automatic.

[gumbi west]

Does it? Depends on what the laid off people do.

Re:Automatic.

[gumbi west]

Hi, I've asked about H1-B issues before and gotten a similarly low quality of responses. I appreciate your taking the time to give me a thoughtful response on a question I have had. I like your policy proposals as well.

Re:Automatic.

[gumbi west]

hmm, I'm not seeing it.

I don't get the scam thing. I'd say a system that relies on employing your own students is far more of a scam. I'd love to see universities employ the best person for the job, regardless of nation of origin.

If their students don't get hired, I'd say it is on the prospective students to notice that. No, I'd support helping them see that, but that's where I think you're most likely to see a good response to low employment outcomes.

As for cost cutting, as a student or parent I appreciate a university trying to recuse its costs--they cost way too much. If there are other opportunities, they should take advantage of all of them. But athletics are a huge revenue source for universities. It's the #1 source for my state's biggest university, ahead of the state itself.

I don't get your internal empire comment. Are you saying that they lose money on them? Because I highly doubt that but I'd be open to seeing information about that. If they make money on them, then, presumably, you see that they would have less money after cutting them.

Re:Automatic.

[DarthVain]

While I have driven in NH roads and not Cali, a small point to make. Cali is huge, while NH is tiny. I would expect the northern portion of Cali roads to be worse than the south part, just like NH is far north of most of Cali. Frost and frost heave destroy roads, particularly those without enough gravel base. It is the gravel base that prevents the asphalt from flexing too much and breaking apart. Up here in Canada, a lot of gravel base needs to be used otherwise the lifespan of a highway won't be very long. I've seen examples in Cali that use almost none, though I expect that is in the south. It is so long N/S that they probably have to use graduated standards from top to bottom so to speak. As a whole all NH roads would be subject to much more severe winter weather than Cali. Anyway to quote that song from a few years ago from Megan Trainor, its all about the base.

Re:Automatic.

[budgenator]

Wow, just wow, he said "institutional knowledge" in a thread about in house IT, with considerable institutional history getting replaced by H1B!

With students you wind up with a significant amount of churn and lose said knowledge.

as opposed to temporary H1B's that are issued 3 years at a shot?

Re:Automatic.

[budgenator]

Oklahoma has low taxes, and that's about all it has. What good is cheap if it's absolutely worthless?

No most Cali expats in IT move to Austin TX Area.

Re:Automatic.

[WDot]

Maybe undergrads (there are undergraduate IT workers in my school), but I doubt grad students. Grad students' measure of success is their publications, and you don't get many publications through systems administration.

Re:Automatic.

[swb]

This isn't about the University not wanting to hire its own graduates, its about the University wanting to hire cheap foreigners for careers it trains students in.

Prospective students already have spoken about low employment outcomes, and flocked to high wage education tracks like business, law and engineering. This is why the entire liberal arts faculty shares the 2 oldest and worst buildings on campus and business, law and engineering have giant, new buildings.

I would question just how profitable "college" athletics actually is if it took into account hidden subsidies from the rest of the University, like security, sub-rate bonding authority, management and so on. I think college athletics economics are funny money, structured to show a "profit" by showing lots of high-profile income while masking quiet subsidies they obtain from the larger institution in the form of facilities, utilities and other ancillary services they obtain at discounts that only exist because they're necessary for the operation of the larger entity.

The internal empire refers to the internal administrators. How is a University administrator judged? Ultimately by the size of the departments, programs and staff they manage. They have an incentive to grow the areas and budgets which they manage as it increases their apparent abilities and responsibilities. None of these areas they control show profit-loss. And this same perverse motivation works up and down the staff.

The person hired to administer a specific program may have been hired to administer the program as the sole employee responsible. Well, they decide they could administer it better if they had a student worker. So their budget is increased to accommodate a student worker. Now their work space is too small, so they gain additional budget to take over adjacent office space. They find they could be even more efficient with a full-time employee rather than a cyclical student employee, but since student employment is considered a good, they get a FTE and a student employee. Now they have excess labor, so they sell their boss on expanding their program to include more services, presumably because it will provide better service to under-served segments. In the next budget cycle they petition for more office equipment or office space to perform the task more efficiently. Soon they find that they need more labor.

Ad nauseum, until they now control an empire, an entity with a substantial budget, office space, equipment and broad multi-service program (and likely ill-defined and overlapping with another empire, elsewhere on campus) that begins to be taken for granted. Nobody really questions what its purpose is anymore, and like any good bureaucracy, it's growth is beneficial to the people up the ladder who get to count ALL the budgets, facilities and employees as part of THEIR administration. Nobody loses by growing, everybody wins, and there is no financial accountability.

Re:Automatic.

[psmoot]

For fun, I looked up the UC budget. Something like 10-15% comes direct from the state (10% state general funds, 4% UC general funds, whatever that is). Tuition is around 11%.

Most of the money comes from "Medical Centers" and "Other sales and services", that's a hair north of 40%.

I had absolutely no idea. I thought state general funding would be over 50% of the budget. You learn something new every day.

http://www.ucop.edu/operating-...

Re:Automatic.

[gumbi west]

Who says they failed? Maybe their grads have better options.

Re:Automatic.

[gumbi west]

I don't get it. Do universities have accountant geniuses who can hide a huge loss as a huge gain for athletics or are they total morons and can't figure out that some dean is building an empire of ditch diggers / fillers in?

Re:Automatic.

[gumbi west]

but, my original question was, "Can you explain to me why they shouldn't they move the jobs abroad?" and you said, "... they are selling a product ("an education") in which the very promise is vocational advancement. Yet their own actions demonstrate they are selling a product which doesn't actually do what it claims." I replied, "I don't get the scam thing. I'd say a system that relies on employing your own students is far more of a scam. I'd love to see universities employ the best person for the job, regardless of nation of origin." and you came back with "This isn't about the University not wanting to hire its own graduates, its about the University wanting to hire cheap foreigners for careers it trains students in." Would this be just as scandalous if Stanford hired MIT grads? What is wrong with foreigners wanting to have a job?

Re:Automatic.

[gumbi west]

In my view society includes foreigners and we are all one people.

Re:Automatic.

[gumbi west]

Is that a terrible thing to be?

surprise surprise

[supernova87a]

My surprise is that anyone is still surprised. Since the dawn of any kind of technology, people you didn't expect have taken it for the purpose of achieving the same thing that you have achieve - financial gain and security. Whether it's a person, company, university, or country. Is it really surprising that all of our innovations around knowledge work, IT, etc are being consumed by other more eager people to find jobs that they can fill for lower cost than we desire?? If anything, the new part of it is the kind of jobs that are at stake, but even that's not worth reacting to.

Re:surprise surprise

[coofercat]

I am surprised by this, actually.

I'm not American, but I'm wondering what sort of University is this? Does it not have any students that need jobs to pay for their excessive drinking? Do none of them want a few hours a week working on the support desk or fixing up desktops? It may just be something that happens in other countries, but learning some related-but-not-exactly-what-you-want-to-do-with-your-life skills can be useful (and probably more useful than learning how to flip burgers or tend a bar), even if you're not getting paid what you would when you graduate.

As for everything else, I realise Unis aren't charities, but as they get some/all of their money from the government, they should probably be following the intent of the government. As I understand it, your new government is trying to stop outsourcing being quite so cheap/easy, so I wonder if this decision will be reversed in the coming weeks after some PR work by the uni involved...?

Re:surprise surprise

[budgenator]

The President of the university is Janet Napoliano, the former US Attorney General under President Obama, she's probably not to concerned with Trump's agenda other than to oppose in anyway she can. Strangely her salary as President of UC is larger than Obama's or Trump's as President of the US.

Senator Feinstein

[Anonymous Coward]

Senator Feinstein heal thyself! H1-B increase after H1-B increase.

"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[Nutria]

Working in IT, I'm not too thrilled by this, but that one statement shows a complete lack of thought.

To paraphrase not-Everett Dirksen, "A tenth of a percent here, a tenth of a percent there, pretty soon you're talking real savings."

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[Steffan]

Until you realize that 0.1% on $5.83 billion is $58.3 million. That's not chump change.

0.1% of $5.83 Billion is actually $5.83 Million. Closer to chump change in a nearly-$6 Billion budget.

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

0.1% of $5.83 Billion is actually $5.83 Million. Closer to chump change in a nearly-$6 Billion budget.

It's barely even a rounding error, but look at how many American workers will bite the dust for this shameless bullshit. It's an epic fuck-up by the university on every level.

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[ghoul]

Most times outsourcing is not done for saving costs (that just the excuse). its done because the current team has become too set in its ways and pissed off one too many administrator.

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[__aaclcg7560]

Working in IT, I'm not too thrilled by this, but that one statement shows a complete lack of thought.

That's nothing. I worked for a Fortune 500 company that demanded that the help desk providers provide twice the performance for half the cost. When a provider couldn't deliver, they gave the contract to a different provider. Each time the help desk staff got smaller and smaller. When I checked several years ago, they still haven't achieved twice the performance for half the cost after turning over providers three or four times.

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[Nutria]

It's barely a rounding error in the nearly-$6bn budget, but individual departments don't care about the nearly-$6bn budget. They care about their own little budget.

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[sysrammer]

"All other things being equal enough". Who gets to decide?

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[dbIII]

its done because the current team has become too set in its ways and pissed off one too many administrator.

That's typically the bullshit excuse used to implement a fad read about in Forbes and outsource to a bunch feeding off that fad.
If it really is the case that the management thinks the current team is too set in its ways then either whoever leads or manages the team is given instructions to change or is replaced by someone who will implement changes.
A radical move just because "one too many administrator is pissed off" is a sign of poor management and that administrator is doomed to be very frequently pissed off.

I'm not speaking from ignorance, I've been part of a team that came in after the "new broom" went through a few times because a contracting company I worked for did that kind of stuff. It's wasteful and expensive and typically could be done with just a few key staff along with nearly all of the old bunch instead of a group of expensive contractors. Why pay hundreds per hour for something the original bunch could be doing while the contractors are doing the new stuff? After I'd changed a few systems, added some more and devised new workflows the bunch that was brought in to keep things running after the "cleanout" may as well have been the old bunch as far as their qualifications and capabilities went. All they really needed were some contractors to come in for a couple of months to set up what was missing and show them how to use it.


If you think a team is crap you get a new coach.

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[dbIII]

BTW weren't you claiming to work for an Australian Coal mine

Resource exploration including coal - something that requires a shitload of computing power.
Why the fuck are you following me around? What is your problem and why and you using me as your scratching post today?

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[sexconker]

As an impartial observer, you do appear to be correct in calling dbill out on his bullshit.
And no, it's not stalking or bullying to recall some bullshit someone posted when you see their username come up again.

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[LunaticTippy]

The floggings will continue until morale improves.

Re:"lower their annual ... budget by just 0.1%"

[__aaclcg7560]

The correct response is not "We can't deliver", it's "You are a fucking moron, and I will inform your stakeholders as much."

The stakeholders were the ones who were driving this nonsense.

Will lower their budget? Nope

[maugle]

The university's actions will ultimately lower their annual $5.83 billion budget by just 0.1%.

It doesn't take a fortune teller to see how this will end. Anyone with experience with low-cost offshore replacements knows that after the painful transition and a slow degradation of IT performance (with all the slowness, bugs, and embarrassing security breaches that come with it), the fallout of the university's decision will ultimately cost a hell of a lot more to fix than what is saved up front.

Re:Will lower their budget? Nope

[iggymanz]

you left out the best part, where identity information from the University systems are sold to scammers, spammers, etc.

Re:Will lower their budget? Nope

[Cyberpunk Reality]

By which time the people who made the decision will have used it's short-term side effects as proof of their "skill", and moved on to higher-paying jobs. Patterns like this occur again and again and again across the US, because our culture and laws are broken. The warpage is so entrenched that it won't change until the whole thing collapses.

Re:Will lower their budget? Nope

[93 Escort Wagon]

In our department - fortunately somewhat north of California - the vast majority of the total salary expenses (95% when I last checked a couple years ago) go towards faculty salaries. But those are basically sacrosanct... so trying to save even a small percentage of the overall salary budget requires significant cuts to staff levels.

Re:Will lower their budget? Nope

[L4m3rthanyou]

Admittedly, this is still an improvement over the current state of affairs, in which identity information of University students/faculty/staff is somewhat regularly distributed to scammers and spammers free of charge.

Re:Will lower their budget? Nope

[Higaran]

You forget that someone at the university will probably get the exact same amount saved, as their, or added to their bonus next year.

Re:Will lower their budget? Nope

[nehumanuscrede]

If I worked in that IT department, I would make sure they knew I would be willing to come back and fix things as a contractor @ $250 / hour. :D

I'm no fan

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no fan of Donald Trump, but I wonder if anyone has gotten this on the president elect's radar. With all the noise he has been making about saving jobs being shipped over sears, maybe he would apply some pressure to the situation.

Re:I'm no fan

[sysrammer]

For California? A blue state? The Donald has a well-known penchant for vengeance. I expect that any benefits for Cal. will be a side-effect of policies benefiting one of his or his crony's businesses.

Napolitano is the UC President?

[aaronb1138]

Color me shocked! Shocked I say. It blows my mind she has an entire history built around how amazing she is to hold so many high positions as a woman, but it doesn't take much work to see, it's a history of failures and exceptional levels of mediocrity. I don't know why the democratic party an their insiders keep backing her and getting her jobs.

Re:Napolitano is the UC President?

[bluegutang]

For the same reason they backed Hillary, who also had a history of failures.

(Tokenism)

What about globalism?

[Okian Warrior]

Shouldn't be any discussion about this. If a UNIVERSITY is outsourcing. They should instantly lose all federal and state funding.

Wanna behave like a private company? Get treated like one. No taxpayer soup for you.

It's a fine position, but how about the rest of the debate?

California was four-square against the recent election outcome, which was in large part *against* globalism. Lots and lots of supporters here and in the MSM were arguing the benefits of this sort of thing from every viewpoint. Some people lose their jobs, but the economy prospers overall. Those jobs are never coming back. We'll be losing all of them to AI anyway.

California is so much against the populist uprising that they are implementing sanctuary cities (and sanctuary universities), giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses and the ability to vote, and generally planning to oppose any new federal mandates and changes (such as deportation of illegals).

And yes, it's the California cities which are [politically] deep blue, while the rest is generally red.

So how does this position fit into the rest of the debate? How can one show outrage over this situation and still support the [generally accepted as] liberal Californian viewpoint which embraces globalism?

Re: What about globalism?

[Anonymous Coward]

I encourage everybody to move out of California. And people are moving out. It will be interesting to see what tax base they will use to pay all their retired overpaid state workers.

Re:What about globalism?

[dbIII]

giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses and the ability to vote

Just like the old days when your grandpa came over, only he wouldn't have been called illegal unless he was Chinese.
California can't stop them and the Feds are not even trying so why not accept reality instead of fucking about. Those cut-price illegal workers the Republicans love to have babysitting their kids need to drive to do their below minimum wage work so they are allowed licences no matter who is Governor of the state. Decades of government constipation on the issue has just resulted in millions of quasi-citizens who have neither been turned back or made citizens. It's been going on for so long that they are citizens in all but name, plus California used to be part of Mexico FFS so what the fuck is the problem?

Re:What about globalism?

[Grishnakh]

plus California used to be part of Mexico FFS so what the fuck is the problem?

This part of your rant is irrelevant. People don't get to automatically become citizens just because their home nation used to own some land, centuries ago, that is now owned by some other nation. I'm pretty sure citizens of Belgium do not get to automatically become citizens of the Netherlands if they wish it, just because Belgium used to be part of the Netherlands centuries ago. Citizens of Italy sure as hell don't get to automatically become citizens of England just because the Roman Empire used to own Britain 2000 years ago.

The people who lived in California at the time the US took it over from Mexico became US citizens at that time. Anyone else, from parts of Mexico much farther south, ~175 years later, are not part of that deal.

Your other points make some sense, but this one is just dumb. The only thing that's relevant is modern borders, not borders from centuries ago. Mexico used to be the property of Spain. Should Spanish citizens get automatic Mexican citizenship if they decide to move there? Or should Spanish citizens get automatic US citizenship if they move to New Orleans?

Re:What about globalism?

[dbIII]

This part of your rant is irrelevant.

So ignore it. It's a throwaway line about things changing over time and nothing more.

Re:What about globalism?

[Highdude702]

I thought I was the only person that called it that. I also use communist news network

Re:What about globalism?

[Crashmarik]

giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses and the ability to vote

Just like the old days when your grandpa came over, only he wouldn't have been called illegal unless he was Chinese.
California can't stop them and the Feds are not even trying so why not accept reality instead of fucking about. Those cut-price illegal workers the Republicans love to have babysitting their kids need to drive to do their below minimum wage work so they are allowed licences no matter who is Governor of the state. Decades of government constipation on the issue has just resulted in millions of quasi-citizens who have neither been turned back or made citizens. It's been going on for so long that they are citizens in all but name, plus California used to be part of Mexico FFS so what the fuck is the problem?

It's really amazing just how much talking out your ass in this thread are you going to do ? First I see you making crap up about a fmr sec def's academics now I just see you pulling crap out of your ass completely. But lets look at it, if you came here in the 1800s and were Irish you got your citizenship more likely than not by fighting in the Civil War. If you came here in the early 20th century you had to go through naturalization.

In either case you didn't get welfare benefits or the right to vote without actually becoming a citizen.

So as I read down am I going to find more of you pulling shit out your ass ?

Re:What about globalism?

[JabrTheHut]

If you can convince the Israelis of that you could win the Nobel Peace Prize...

Re:What about globalism?

[Highdude702]

Apparently you're not allowed to read comments on articles he posts senseless shit on from what I see

Re:What about globalism?

[nehumanuscrede]

The easy fix for California's arrogance is this:

Turn off Federal Funding for the entire State until they decide to play ball.
If not, they can fund their little Utopia on their own.

They'll defiantly hold out until the next disaster shows up, then they'll be
begging for Federal Aid and blame everyone else when no Federal Funds
are dumped on them.

To be honest, that fix works for ANY State that decides not to play the
game according to the rules. Only those States that have a budget surplus
and don't require Federal Funding are immune to it. ( Which are few, if any )

Re:What about globalism?

[Grishnakh]

That's more complicated than that. They basically bought up some land after WWI, and also were given some (as I understand), by the British, who had won control of all of that area formerly owned by the Ottoman Empire which lost the war to them. They didn't just move into some place and then demand citizenship from the nation currently governing it; they took it over through various legal means. That's not *that* different from how the US took over California: it won a war against Mexico, and also I believe paid them out a lot as part of the terms of the treaty ending the war.

Like it or not, but winning land in a war and also buying it are valid ways of acquiring territory that other people are already living on. If you disagree, look at Crimea and the world's (non-)response to its recent takeover by Russia. And takeovers which happened generations ago are done now; if you want to question them now, after so long, then almost every spot on Earth is now able to be contested, because it was previously owned by someone else.

Re:What about globalism?

[Grishnakh]

That's fine if two nations want to negotiate such a deal on their own. EU member have negotiated a less drastic deal wherein any EU citizen is able to go work in any other EU nation without having to be a citizen or apply for a visa or anything like that, like normal immigrants would. But no person can *expect* this of a nation which hasn't already agreed to such a deal.

Re:What about globalism?

[Ol Olsoc]

When given a slim chance of improvement vs no chance, I'll go for slim every time.

Thou hath been useful peasant, now get thee back to thine hovel.

Re:What about globalism?

[Ol Olsoc]

Get a room, you two.

Re:What about globalism?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

That's been recently changed to Comedy News Network after the lefts tantrum over Trump.

Re:What about globalism?

[budgenator]

I thought I was the only person that called it that. I also use communist news network

No all the False News Site followers I know call it that. His point might have been more impressive if he went over to Fox and cherry-picked something Geraldo said though.

Re:What about globalism?

[budgenator]

Or should Spanish citizens get automatic US citizenship if they move to New Orleans?

I think that French should be there, not Spanish.

Re:What about globalism?

[Grishnakh]

No, Spanish is correct, though putting French in here would also be correct. The French founded the city in 1718, but it went to Spain in 1763, then back to France very briefly in 1803 until Napoleon sold it to the US as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:What about globalism?

[Whorhay]

I was just reading an article that seemed to show that California is a net contributor to the federal budget. So your plan would backfire here in that they would be better off keeping the money and either reducing their taxes or increasing the amount they can spend. The additional danger of your suggestion is that it could result in individual states sorting themselves out and taking the additional steps to secede from the union. I mean if you've already cut them out of the union fiscally how do you expect to retain their loyalty?

Schools are corporations too...

[__aaclcg7560]

Representative Zoe Lofgren (from a district in Silicon Valley) is arguing that the university "is training software engineers at the same time they're outsourcing their own software engineers. What message are they sending their own students?"

Same message as the law schools: "We're happy to take your money. If you can't find a job after you graduate, tough shit. You should have thought carefully about your major's future potential before taking on $100K in student loans."

Re:Schools are corporations too...

[bhiestand]

Representative Zoe Lofgren (from a district in Silicon Valley) is arguing that the university "is training software engineers at the same time they're outsourcing their own software engineers. What message are they sending their own students?"

Same message as the law schools: "We're happy to take your money. If you can't find a job after you graduate, tough shit. You should have thought carefully about your major's future potential before taking on $100K in student loans."

To be really clear, though, this is only UCSF, not the entire UC system. UCSF does not train software engineers--UCSF is a medical school. They only trains doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and dentists.

Re:Schools are corporations too...

[ram.loss]

A valid point, but you have to think carefully before taking a $100K loan for anything, especially if you don't have a good plan for paying it.

Re:Schools are corporations too...

[__aaclcg7560]

A valid point, but you have to think carefully before taking a $100K loan for anything, especially if you don't have a good plan for paying it.

The problem is that people don't think.

Re:Schools are corporations too...

[psmoot]

I've been emailing the author. I still can't figure out why anyone cares what Rep. Lorgren thinks about this. It isn't in her district and it isn't a federal issue. Her opinion is about as useful as mine. Ditto Senator Feinstein.

TFA mentioned Rep. Nancy Pelosi but at least this is happening in her district.

Re:Schools are corporations too...

[__aaclcg7560]

I still can't figure out why anyone cares what Rep. Lorgren thinks about this. It isn't in her district and it isn't a federal issue.

Lorgren sits on the House subcommittees for intellectual properties and immigration enforcement. Immigration in general, and enforcement in particular, is considered to be a federal issue.

Ditto Senator Feinstein.

Feinstein also sits on Senate subcommittees for technology and immigration.

Re:Schools are corporations too...

[psmoot]

Ah, thanks for the context.

Lorgren sits on the House subcommittees for intellectual properties and immigration enforcement. Immigration in general, and enforcement in particular, is considered to be a federal issue.

So what's weird is her quote has nothing to do with the immigration issue. It has everything to do with the perceived messages of UCSF outsourcing jobs. If she thought that was illegal in some form, isn't that what she should be quoted on?

Feinstein also sits on Senate subcommittees for technology and immigration.

Similarly, Senator Feinstein's letter was all about UC's civic responsibilities and the wisdom of outsourcing jobs. That's not really about technology or immigration, it's a labor issue more than anything else. As such, I don't see why I would consider her opinion any more important than mine. Remember, we live in a federal republic. California and UC can do whatever it wants. Until it crosses a state border, the feds have no say in the matter. As such, I'd prefer the honorables restrict their comments to the immigration issues, which I understand is questionable.

Here's the thing: opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one. I've got an opinion on this, DiFi has, Zoe has, you have, everyone has. As a UC parent and taxpayer, I think my opinion matters at least a little but not all that much. I don't think Lofgrin's or Feinstein's opinions matter any more than mine (maybe less, do they have kids at UC?) I think the opinion of the director of IT at UC matters a lot. I think the opinions of the IT people being outsourced matters quite a bit, at least in terms of whether this is a feasible activity (but they'd have to be saints not to be biased against it).

Does that make sense?

So much Wrong with This

[wisnoskij]

Why is their budget bigger than most countries?
They will save 60 million dollars by outsourced 20% of the workforce? I have worked in IT in one of the highest internationally acclaimed universities, it was just 2 full time guys with 2 student helpers for 1/5th of the university. I really doubt that the total yearly salaries exceeded 200K.

Keeping a few thousand computers and a few server rooms running is really not that big of a job.

Re:So much Wrong with This

[Anonymous Coward]

Something's fishy here. Did you also have a helpdesk? Did you respond to user requests like data recovery, programming help, custom computer build requests, and so forth? Did you set up, maintain, and fix printers and copiers? What about software licensing administration and deployment? What about responding to custom programming requests? What about implementing CMS, or were you also the webmasters? What about user training for things like productivity software, website design or CMS use, homework systems, and grade submission systems? What about setting up and maintaining the homework and grading systems used for classes? What about network engineering and wiring? What about ISP contracts and maintenance? What about local and remote backup systems? What about e-mail systems or contracts? What about wireless network design, deployment, and maintenance? What about A/V conference rooms? What about multimedia classroom installation and daily problem response? What about conference and event A/V set up and tear-down? What about responding to security problems?

I strongly suspect that, either there was actually alot more "IT" going on than just you maintaining computers (in house or outsourced, it's still being done) or most of the university was totally left on their own in a big way, to make their own IT work.

Re:So much Wrong with This

[wisnoskij]

> Did you also have a helpdesk? YES
> Did you respond to user requests like data recovery, programming help, custom computer build requests, and so forth? YES
> Did you set up, maintain, and fix printers and copiers? YES
> What about software licensing administration and deployment? YES
> What about responding to custom programming requests? YES
> What about implementing CMS, or were you also the webmasters?
Read the summery on Wikipedia, still not sure exactly what this is. The head honcho did a lot of web stuff, and managed a lot of web resources, like the system that allowed profs to post web surveys, but I am not sure if the actual web servers were under his control or not, I suspect that was managed centrally.
> What about user training for things like productivity software, website design or CMS use, homework systems, and grade submission systems? YES
Anything that the thousands of users had trouble with, they brought us in. At no time while I was employed their did they get some new software system, and set out to teach everyone how to use it. But, any trouble anyone had any trouble with software, programming, computers sent for us (for example: "I am writing HTML and I cannot get the '%' symbol to appear").
> What about setting up and maintaining the homework and grading systems used for classes?
Probably managed centrally.
> What about network engineering and wiring? YES
> What about ISP contracts and maintenance?
Probably managed centrally.
> What about local and remote backup systems?
This might of been managed centrally. We managed the battery backups that every single computer had.
> What about e-mail systems or contracts?
Probably managed centrally.
> What about wireless network design, deployment, and maintenance?
I never worked with any of that, Not sure if we even had a department wireless, or how much the departments would be in charge of their slice of the campus wireless network.
> What about A/V conference rooms? YES
> What about multimedia classroom installation and daily problem response? YES
> What about conference and event A/V set up and tear-down? YES
> What about responding to security problems?
No idea.

A lot of things were heavily automated. Most of the job was running shell scripts to automagically solve your problem. And it seemed like the boss had had a long time to educate users to be self sufficient, there were not a lot of requests for help. There was this one instance, where some proffs had hired this student to setup a survey for them, he had no idea what he was doing and tried to get us to do everything. The boss made sure that that was not likely to happen again before we did it for them.

Re:So much Wrong with This

[wisnoskij]

Yes, the teachers/researchers were responsible for designing their own stuff, we were there to help, and troubleshoot; not as their personal assistants. They could not put in a request to have an IT guy go work with them 9-5 for the semester.

Re:So much Wrong with This

[andydouble07]

0.1% of 6 billion is 6 million, not 60 million. I'd guess their IT dept was probably in the 100 person range, sounds like you worked for a very small one or had a limited view of what "IT" encompasses.

Re:So much Wrong with This

[budgenator]

This maybe a little bigger than that, from what I know of Wayne State/Detroit Medical Center, they now have 3 campuses, one of which contains 4 hospitals, the other two have two hospitals, each hospital has hospital networks for accounting, patient care, medical equipment, administration, academics and research. Lots of things were probably jerry-riggered in the heat of battle with intentions of going back later to apply permanent fixes that never happened and were never documented.
  Makes you wonder how many Windows servers are running on developer licenses waiting to expire in 4 to 6 months.

Re:So much Wrong with This

[AK Marc]

When I went to Texas A&M, your entire IT department in a university you refuse to name was smaller than the IT department in a single computer lab. There were multiple people in the lab to deal with the constant problems with the computers. One full-time person per printer was not uncommon, though the belt-fed dot matrix printers were prone to jamming, and required a human to separate the printouts, and sort and deliver them. And that was on of a number of labs, and doesn't include the actual IT department, just counts what ends up being an extension of the help desk. Unless your IT department was highly automated, and does no project work, I find your assessment to be dubious.

Re:Not by insults

[PopeRatzo]

Us Alt-Right nut faces don't generally insult the other side of the debate.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/...

Re:Maybe Peter Thiel Was Right

[MightyMartian]

And where will all the engineers and researchers come from if there aren't people going into higher education? Guys like Thiel and Trump may be able to amass large amounts of capital, but without the academic, science and technical expertise working for them, they'd be nothing.

Re:Not by insults

[__aaclcg7560]

Us Alt-Right nut faces don't generally insult the other side of the debate.

Who else would use the word "libtard" in political comments?

Re:Maybe Peter Thiel Was Right

[__aaclcg7560]

And where will all the engineers and researchers come from if there aren't people going into higher education?

Those are the workers who aren't smart enough to own the corporate ladder. They're happy to climb the corporate ladder, pay the highest tax rates and make someone else rich.

UCSF != UC

[unixisc]

The headline makes it look like the entire University of California is outsourcing their IT to India. Everyone - San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Riverside, Irvine, San Diego, Davis, LA, et al

Is that really the case? I was under the impression that the only people doing that was UCSF. It also brings to mind one question - why can't UCSF outsource that job to UCB, which is just across the Bay Bridge? Let the descendants of the BSD inventors manage their IT

Re:UCSF != UC

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that UCSF is indeed just the start:

"According to notes from an Aug. 5 meeting of UC's IT Architecture Committee, chief information officers at other campuses are happy to let UCSF act as a guinea pig and will "wait for a year before jumping in with HCL" in order to gauge UCSF's experience.

https://www.pressreader.com/

Re:Poorly Managed UC IT

[__aaclcg7560]

Most UC campuses have decentralized, highly inefficient IT, some supporting administrative staff, some supporting faculty, and some supporting research.

Stanford University has a central IT department to set the university-wide standard, but each school has a dedicated IT team. I did four or five interviews at different schools a few years ago. A very different experience than interviewing at a Fortune 500 company.

No way security is as good

[SuperKendall]

How can they say with a straight face that security will be "as good as it is now" when they have just introduced a massive attack vector into the system?

Along with the factor of "Oh network traffic from India is just fine, let that all pass right on through".

Glad I"m not on their payroll or enrolled as a student (to be more specific glad they don't have my SSN).

Re:No way security is as good

[sysrammer]

I'll qft you here: "How can they say with a straight face that security will be "as good as it is now" when they have just introduced a massive attack vector into the system?"

Re:No way security is as good

[dbIII]

Along with the factor of "Oh network traffic from India is just fine, let that all pass right on through".

Did you hear about the Australian online census failure?

One of the long string of fuckups as a consequence of going for a bargain basement IBM service was that the computer was administered from China and logs were sent to the US for performance analysis. Of course they didn't tell their customer this.
The system crumbled under the load of millions of people logging in at once (due to the advertising of "census night" instead of any time over a few weeks, which is how estimated load had been calculated), IBM were not answering the calls at night so the spooks were called in to see if that site hired by the government was being hacked. The spooks found a bit of traffic from China (the system administrators at work on other virtual machines on the same host - discount plan remember) and a continuous stream of data going to the USA (performance logging). GeoIP blocking was put in place which locked the sysadmins out, the thing fell over completely under the load and the final consequence was the site being down for well over a week. Officials went on TV saying it was hacked by Chinese and US hackers but that was bullshit, they had just fucked up and didn't put a system in place that could cope with the load.

The point? Currently the situation is network traffic from China, from people working from home, is seen to be fine in a lot of cases let alone traffic from India.
Those massive attack vectors are already there and that's part of the reason we are neck deep in a malware swamp.
Adding to it is of course as stupid as you suggest.

Re:No way security is as good

[Crashmarik]

Please reputable sources or it didn't happen.

Re:No way security is as good

[dbIII]

Why the fuck are you posting irrelevant shit on all my recent posts on different topics?

Re:No way security is as good

[Crashmarik]

Why the fuck are you posting irrelevant shit on all my recent posts on different topics?

the spooks found a bit of traffic from China

Shit you're posting tinfoil hat crap without anything to back it and you call the question irrelevant.

Re:No way security is as good

[dbIII]

Defence Signals Directorate = Spooks in a short description.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/hacking/who-is-the-mysterious-signals-directorate-tasked-with-investigating-the-census-fail/news-story/4d9def0f4ab2eac4269aae196c464f36

Re:No way security is as good

[Crashmarik]

LOL that doesn't say what you think it does. More tinfoil.

Re:No way security is as good

[dbIII]

Tell me then. What do I think it does say in your opinion?
How is the an intelligence agency not an intelligence agency?

Re:No way security is as good

[Crashmarik]

What it doesn't say is none of this

, IBM were not answering the calls at night so the spooks were called in to see if that site hired by the government was being hacked. The spooks found a bit of traffic from China (the system administrators at work on other virtual machines on the same host - discount plan remember) and a continuous stream of data going to the USA (performance logging). GeoIP blocking was put in place which locked the sysadmins out, the thing fell over completely under the load and the final consequence was the site being down for well over a week. Officials went on TV saying it was hacked by Chinese and US hackers but that was bullshit, they had just fucked up and didn't put a system in place that could cope with the load.

What it does say is the Signals directorate looked into it thought it was one thing, then said it was another.

So who is it you're out to smear here ? The signals directorate, IBM, or both ?

Re:No way security is as good

[sexconker]

He's looking to smear is personal brand of BS all over /., apparently. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy doing the same.

Re:No way security is as good

[dbIII]

I'm not smearing any of the two, as you would know if you had read and comprehended what I wrote before posting.
IBM had outsourced to China and nobody told the DSD. The DSD saw traffic bound for China. The ABS people panicked and the Minister said something stupid to the press.

Change of wording

[SuperKendall]

Instead of the old standby "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" IT support can now come back with "Have you tried reincarnating the OS instance?"

Re:Change of wording

[SuperKendall]

"Unfortunately sir, your O.S. seems to have come back as Windows Vista. You must have done something especially bad with your laptop last night.".

Re:Change of wording

[Bob the Super Hamste]

How do you know my porn preferences?

America isn't the only place that this is going on

[Neo-Rio-101]

I lost my last job due to lack of University funding.
Big middle finger to everyone involved.

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-n...

Pot Outsource Kettle

[orin]

Slashdot on manufacturing jobs being sent offshore: "Suck it up and smell the future. You are just like the buggy whip manufacturers!"
Slashdot on IT jobs being sent offshore: "This Is An Outrage!!!!!"

Re:Pot Outsource Kettle

[Crashmarik]

Indeed - the "libertarian" mindset of "I've got mine - fuck you" is strong here.
Maybe I'd be one of those fucked up people too if I didn't work in manufacturing before IT.

You have to come back chief to explain how a government run university paid for with tax dollars and guaranteed loans exporting jobs has anything to do with libertarians ? Or is just more of you making things up ?

I do have to thank you I thought this thread wasn't going to be interesting but fisking is always enjoyable.

Re:Pot Outsource Kettle

[dbIII]

If you had read the post I replied to before posting you wouldn't have written something that sounds so idiotic.
What I wrote obviously had nothing at all to do with "a government run university paid for with tax dollars and guaranteed loans exporting jobs" but only to do with the post I replied to.

Re:Pot Outsource Kettle

[houghi]

First they came for the manufacturing jobs, but I did not say anything, because ...
OTOH many people keep saying that Capitalism will sort it out. Hint: it won't.

Re:Pot Outsource Kettle

[budgenator]

So the outsourcing of IT jobs to a foreign business using the misapplication of Federal Government legislated H1B visa program from a State Government Land Grant Public University receiving government funds from multiple State and Federal agencies is somehow a failure of Capitalism, that's your story?

Re:Pot Outsource Kettle

[dbIII]

It's the thread topic. Please try to keep up instead of senselessly spamming every post with my name on it Pogo.

Re:Pot Outsource Kettle

[Crashmarik]

Oh so you just decided to attack libertarians to be off topic

it's the thread topic. Please try to keep up instead of senselessly spamming every post with my name on it Pogo.

What's Happening As The University of California Tries To Outsource IT Jobs To India

I only fisk truly outlandish shit. Seems you managed to concentrate lots of bs in a thread

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Everyone loses except bosses bonus

[Anonymous Coward]

With personal experience outsourcing IT teams let me explain how it works.

1. - C-levels (CEO, CFO, CIO, etc..) and upper management look to outsource IT teams as on paper they appear to save up to 10%-30% that year. As most C-levels and upper management are rewarded only from year to year, this is a good way to get a good bonus for one year. But after the first year, the costs increase so long term it costs more.
2. - India's outsourcing teams purposely offer services significantly (and sometimes at a "loss") cheaper to get your business. As they know once they have your business it is hard to change and any future changes they will be able to charge at full price.
3. - India's outsourcing teams use your staff to train their team, then once they are trained, they actually replace their skilled/trained staff with cheap indian "freshmen" so they always maximise their profits even if they provide poor service.
4. - The outsourcers know they have you once you are signed up and will find ways and tricks to increase prices each year, that you end up paying the same amount or more before you outsourced
5. - The risk of the information in overseas hands is actually greater than, not outsourcing. So incidents increase, insurance costs increase more than the actual savings. Most organisations find the risk buffer money (money put aside for risks), increases so much it costs more than the money they save from outsourcing.
6. - You are taking money directly from the country / market that gives you money, so you actually reduce the amount of income your business receives
7. - Between handovers information is lost and productivity is reduced. Did you know many offshore outsources still use small 15" and 17" monitors which are substantially less productive then larger screens. Also there are some that quote 50% of information is lost between each handover. This is very true with offshore outsourcing.
8. - They make it sound like providing more people for a cheaper price which sounds like it will improve productivity, but the truth is it is less productive because the people they provide are unskilled.
9. - Digital disruption is real. Every business is dependant on IT. Leading companies use IT to take their business forward (e.g. google, amazon). Yet, many companies continue to offshore their IT capabilities and reduce productivity and then wonder why they lose market share and aren't as competitive.

We need to look past the short term savings, and look at the long term costs and business benefit. If your IT team isn't bringing in the business, maybe you need new management rather than outsource IT.

Re:Not by insults

[sysrammer]

"You pedantic twit!"

Move to India

[sinc7]

So.. are their students supposed to move to India after graduation to get a job? Not sure what kind of marketing strategy this is. While you ask someone to pay you to train him on a job, you show him that there is no request for the position here.

Re:Not by insults

[dbIII]

Fuck - a United States where people who push shit like that are running the place. It makes Rumsfeld look like an intellectual in comparison.
Maybe it's time to start learning Mandarin.

OT - Re:Schools are corporations too...

[grep -v '.*' *]

It's over. Mr. Trump is someone else's POTUS. But not mine.

Sorry to inform you, if you're a citizen of the US, then he's gong to be your president unless something extraordinary happens. Period, full stop, the end. You might not have voted for him, you might hate his guts and politics and wish him ill, and until he takes to oath of office he ISN'T your president -- but once he does, he is.

*I* didn't vote for Obama and didn't like a lot of things that he did (and didn't do.) But looks like his hopey changie thing is finally working itself out.

Then again, if you really don't want him to be your president, you can always renounce your U.S. citizenship and pick exactly who you'd like. Once, anyway. I suggest you move to Canada like these people AREN'T. Or you could join Cher, I'm sure she's going to be lonely on (in?) Jupiter.

And by the way, I'm curious: are you on either coast? I'm in flyover country. (Well actually not, I'm not even that close to the aerial lanes.)

Re:OT - Re:Schools are corporations too...

[__aaclcg7560]

It's over. Mr. Trump is someone else's POTUS. But not mine.

Your comment on my signature block is off-topic for this discussion. But you already know that.

Sorry to inform you, if you're a citizen of the US, then he's gong to be your president unless something extraordinary happens. Period, full stop, the end. You might not have voted for him, you might hate his guts and politics and wish him ill, and until he takes to oath of office he ISN'T your president -- but once he does, he is.

I'm giving Mr. Trump the same level of respect that the Republicans gave President Obama for eight years.

Then again, if you really don't want him to be your president, you can always renounce your U.S. citizenship and pick exactly who you'd like.

I'm still waiting for Rush Limbaugh to move to Costa Rica after ObamaCare became law.

http://www.politicususa.com/2010/03/22/limbaugh-costa-rica.html

And by the way, I'm curious: are you on either coast? I'm in flyover country.

I'm a moderate conservative in California. Yes, I voted for Hillary. At least she was the real deal. I still don't under how the Republicans nominated someone who was neither a conservative nor a Republican, and, until a few short years ago, was a Clinton Democrat.

Re:OT - Re:Schools are corporations too...

[__aaclcg7560]

Don't want to discuss it, don't post it.

You don't like it, don't comment on it.

Proof that the Republicans said Obama was not president of the USA or GTFO.

The right-wing echo chamber for the last eight years.

You're working on joining them by lying about who is your president.

No, I'm joining the resistance against The Friends of Putin Club.

Re:OT - Re:Schools are corporations too...

[__aaclcg7560]

So you looked at the worst people on the other side of the aisle and said:

"That is what I want to be!"

Nope. I'm not advocating that Mr. Trump be lynched from a tree.

Re:OT - Re:Schools are corporations too...

[__aaclcg7560]

HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Remember that Trump is neither a conservative nor a Republican, and, just a few short years ago, a Clinton Democrat. If you're going to put a Clinton Democrat in the White House, it should be Hillary.

Re:OT - Re:Schools are corporations too...

[swillden]

I'm giving Mr. Trump the same level of respect that the Republicans gave President Obama for eight years.

I often told my right-wing friends who said the same thing about Obama that they were wrong, and that left-wingers might be elitists but they at least recognized that their president was their president whether they liked him or not. But your comment is one (of many!) examples that the left is no more rational or measured than the right.

Post-rational, post-truth politics, that's what we've got. On both sides.

As my mom taught me: "Two wrongs don't make a right!"

Re:OT - Re:Schools are corporations too...

[__aaclcg7560]

But your comment is one (of many!) examples that the left is no more rational or measured than the right.

I'm a moderate conservative and I don't represent the left. I find it interesting that the Republicans who derided Obama all these years are hyperventilating that Trump will get the same treatment by the Democrats.

As my mom taught me: "Two wrongs don't make a right!"

As my father taught me: "What goes around comes around."

Re:OT - Re:Schools are corporations too...

[swillden]

But your comment is one (of many!) examples that the left is no more rational or measured than the right.

I'm a moderate conservative and I don't represent the left.

Interesting. Either your comments on /. disagree with your self-perspective or I'm confusing you with someone else (the latter is not at all unlikely; I'm bad with names).

I find it interesting that the Republicans who derided Obama all these years are hyperventilating that Trump will get the same treatment by the Democrats.

I haven't seen that dynamic. I have seen many on the left refusing to admit that Trump will be the nation's president. I haven't yet seen anything equivalent to the "birther" crap, but I won't be surprised if it arises. The closest I've seen so far is Democrats decrying the electoral college for "not doing its job", which they think is to refuse to elect a manifestly bad candidate.

I certainly understand their emotional position. I'm fairly terrified of President Trump myself. Not so much his domestic agenda (though I expect the result to be bad insofar as he follows through with his campaign promises, especially his protectionism), but as commander in chief and the man in position to push The Button. I'm also concerned with the likelihood that his election will exacerbate racial and ethnic tensions, though I suspect he's already done all the damage that he's going to do in that respect.

But, regardless of my fears, Trump will be the president, and I will respect the office, though not the man in it. That doesn't mean I'll hesitate to cricitize, or to outright oppose any illegal actions he might take.

As my mom taught me: "Two wrongs don't make a right!"

As my father taught me: "What goes around comes around."

Yeah, because cycles of vengeance end well.

Re:OT - Re:Schools are corporations too...

[__aaclcg7560]

I haven't yet seen anything equivalent to the "birther" crap, but I won't be surprised if it arises.

I call it The Friends of Putin Club. Until Trump releases his tax returns, we don't know how much money he owes the Russian. The only person Trump ever talks about with admiration and respect is former KGB agent Putin. I grew up in the Cold War. Kissing Putin's ass makes me suspicious about what's really going on with Trump.

There is always more to this than meet the eyes.

[pjv936]

A lot of this outsourcing is not just about cutting cost. Some of it is driven by kickback money provided by the outsourcing firms. Most of these outsourcing firms don't have a problem bribing IT executives.

Re:Not by insults

[dbIII]

A wrestling scholarship - you lose.

Re:Not by insults

[Crashmarik]

A wrestling scholarship - you lose. -DBIII

Sorry he won, and you lost before you even started playing the game

Rumsfeld attended Baker Demonstration School,[11] and later graduated[12] from New Trier High School. He attended Princeton University on academic and NROTC partial scholarships*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And from his book

https://books.google.com/books...

Why is it every time I run into you on this site you're making stuff up ?

*NROTC = is the naval reserve officer program not national wRestling something or other

Re:Not by insults

[Anonymous Coward]

Us Alt-Right nut faces don't generally insult the other side of the debate.

Who else would use the word "libtard" in political comments?

Anyone with experience of the extreme left ?

Re:boo hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

poor displaced Americans

Enjoy your next president. He's the consequence of throwing your working class under the bus.

Re:Not by insults

[stealth_finger]

Us Alt-Right nut faces don't generally insult the other side of the debate.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/...

That has to be a pisstake article! God I hope so.

Re:Not by insults

[Crashmarik]

So I was wrong about the wrestling,

the AC said Rumsfeld was better than all of us here academically.

vs

Fuck - a United States where people who push shit like that are running the place. It makes Rumsfeld look like an intellectual in comparison.
Maybe it's time to start learning Mandarin..

Yeah he's the guy who brought Rumsfeld up and didn't know what he was talking about not you.

They voted for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single one of those IT workers who vote for Democrats have been voting for this shit. This is what 'globalization' means - a handful of Democrat elites get to have high paying jobs while everyone else's wages and standard of living race to the bottom to compete with third world nations.

It's not the Democrats talking about cutting back on H1B visas and preventing US companies from moving jobs outside the US.

Re:They voted for this

[wyHunter]

I am HARDLY a Democrat. But it is ALSO true that Republicans have been voting for this shit, too.

Re:Not by insults

[RabidReindeer]

Rumsfeld is an intellectual.

That's what made him so dangerous. He developed intellectual theories (e. g., "Shock and Awe") and some fool was idiot enough to allow him to run experiments on them. And that's a large part of why Iraq is the mess it is today and why it has been fertile ground for ISIS.

And, if I'm not mistaken, he retired to become a university professor.

Fair enough. Though not necessarily fault, overcom

[raymorris]

> The left has a bias or belief that problems are the fault of society, whereas the right tends to bias to the belief that problems are the fault of the individual.

That's reasonably fair and I realize this is a bit of a tangent to your main point, but I don't know that "fault" is necessarily the right word. I believe that my daughter, who is black and of course female, can become a supreme court justice, president, or chairwoman of the joint chiefs DESPITE whatever is wrong with society, and that it's easier for her to change her own actions than to change all of society. I'm sure Colin Powell encountered some racism; he went right ahead and became Secretary of State *anyway*. He was then in a position to affect society. He didn't whine about the problems in society, he overcame them.

The #1 reason I think this is a dumb move:

[sabbede]

It's a university. If they want cheap labor, they have it right there in the dorms. The only jobs that would make any sense to outsource are in support, and I know from personal experience that students will do those jobs for very little. Hell, pick a job and there are going to be dozens of students that would leap at the chance for some real-worldish experience.

Outsourcing IT jobs is going to reduce opportunities for financial aid and job training for the students; undermining the basic mission of universities. Dumb move UC.

0 sympathy

[XSportSeeker]

Dunno how to say this, but I have no sympathy for the companies and people involved.... been saying for the longest time that all this IoT crap are not only security and privacy nightmares, they also only make stuff needlessly more complicated and prone to errors and glitches.
Guess you get what you deserve. Too bad.

Re: 0 sympathy

[XSportSeeker]

Duh, this went to the wrong post, sorry.

I decided to take an outsourced job, then...

[cj9er]

I ended up working for a place that wins these contracts for IT services. A group of around 400 of us had to make the decision to go or not, pretty standard. What we didn't know in the next 12-18 months was that they were moving most of those jobs to offshore locations like Brazil, Argentina, India. I was asked to go to one of these countries to train the team there, said no and started looking for another job. They were going to be laying of most of the outsourced team in the US it turned out and leave 1-2 people in the US to oversee them. Fast-forward 5 years later and that same shop did not re-sign that contract and brought everything back in-house. It would appear that the typical offshore/outsource scenario happened - they move the work to offshore, those people implement a few changes, a mistake is made, they get their ass handed to them over a few conference calls, they stop making ANY changes and call the 1-2 people still in the US non-stop 24/7/365 to have THEM make the changes or berate them into doing it until those people burn out and leave thus rendering the offshore/outsourcer useless because they won't do anything. The original outsourced company doesn't care because they have made their nut and know that if said company cancels the contract, the outsourcer reaps a fat termination fee. The tact of most outsourcing companies is to undercut everyone else's bid, make sure the company doing the outsourcing doesn't add a provision into their contract that all jobs must be kept in the US or Canada (which is a valid provision and costs more) and then offshore it all as fast as possible without trying to piss off the company that just signed the contract to get past any cancellation period then bam, they have them. This same scenario continues to play out until these companies wise up and see that outsourcing ends up costing them more in the long-run as they burn up their own employees that oversee either the outsourced contract, admins or both.

Re:Not by insults

[pellik]

I wonder how many people will miss the irony of your global anti-left insult following a statement about not generally insulting the other side and instead take you at face value.

the component is not the system

[Geoffrey.landis]

And that, I think, is fair enough, as there is no real difference between the "individual" and "society", as ideological categories, because we are always both, we are all individuals and we all live in society and are part of social institutions.

And there's no real difference between a "spark plug" and an "automobile," because a spark plug is part of both, it is an individual spark plug and it also lives in an automobile and is part of automobile systems.

A society is composed of individuals, but a society and an individual are not the same thing.

Great Business move

[jethr0211]

> The university's actions will ultimately lower their annual $5.83 billion budget by just 0.1%. well, I can certainly see why they would risk the unavoidable disruptions, loss of direct control, loss of continuity, loss of institutional knowledge, etc

Medical University

[WDot]

So, while I don't agree with this offshoring plan, people should keep in mind UCSF only offers degrees in various medical fields. They don't have an Engineering, CS, or IT college. So while this might screw over other IT workers out of jobs, it doesn't screw over UCSF alumni and students specifically.

Re:Medical University

[CaseCrash]

Thank you for explaining this. This one fact invalidates like 95% of the posts on this story.

Re:Obamacare killed US IT

[budgenator]

Don't buy it, they are a non-profit, the entire system is designed to lose money or more accurately look like they are losing money. Losing money is you know how they stay non-profit. The real question isn't "Do you lose 40 cents of every dollars providing treatment?" but is "How much of that 40 cents would you save by not providing treatment?"; the answer is likely none to even more.

Hospitals really like those medicaid patients, there is usually nothing really wrong with them, at least nothing urgent, you can let them sit and wait until your waiting room clears of Patients with better insurance, them call them in to give your staff something to do besides sitting around telling stories. Then you're getting a little bit of something instead of all of nothing.

say it. SAY IT. SAY IT!

[Texmaize]

Funny, many on slashdot have reflexively ridiculed Trump. Instead of listening to ideas and discussing around merit, there as been a tendency for people to fall into the Republican Bad, Democrat good mantra. So, when he runs a campaign and starts making initial policies that emphasize protecting U.S. workers and economy, the stupidly smug among us decried it as unworthy and juvenile. But, oh, the very moment when YOUR jobs are being thoughtlessly removed for short term gain by the company/University, suddenly you are crying for the very protections and actions that Trump was espousing.

Both sides have their share of good and bad ideas. Don't you think it past time to grow up get over the childish notion that politics is a team sport? You can agree with an idea, even if it is from "the other side" if it is a good one. It's ok. Honest. You can even agree with a leader sometimes, and then disagree on another issue later. If you can achieve this one simple idea, the country will improve immensely.

So, take your first bold step. So far on this thread, no one else seemed to link this issue to Trump's platform in a positive way. Yet, nearly every post has unwittingly agreed with him. Now, take a deep breath and say it.

"On this issue, Trump was right, we should find ways to work with him to protect our workers"
Say it.
SAY IT
SAYYYYYY ITTT!!!!!!

Re:say it. SAY IT. SAY IT!

[losfromla]

I hate tRumpf as much as anyone else but I have always felt that on this issue he was right. The problem with tRumpf is that, given his cabinet choices, taking care of the USian worker without turning him/her/it into a pauper isn't really a priority. I have never been a free-tradist and the best decades for this country where in an era of protectionism, like what China and the EU practice. This is why I was never enthusiastic about Shillary and didn't really care that she lost, for me the battle ended when Bernie threw in the towel.

FTFY

[Qbertino]

US Universities have never been more than a bottom-line for-profit business that uses cult-like recruiting tactics and has absolutely no shame or loyalty to anything or anyone but themselves.

FTFY.

MLK, Phd titled his speech "We shall overcome"

[raymorris]

Like Colin Powell, Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr first overcame racism is own life, achieving personal success in the face of these challenges, in order to put him in a position to affect societal change. He didn't whine, he earned two bachelor degrees and a phd before becoming president of the the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Here's what Doctor King had to say about whether you should overcome whatever challenges you encounter:
--
We shall overcome. We shall overcome. Deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome. And I believe it because somehow the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

We shall overcome because Carlisle is right; no lie can live forever.

We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right; truth crushed to earth will rise again.

We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right:

Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown
Stands God, within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own.
--
From Doctor King's speech "We Shall Overcome".

Embarrassed

[losfromla]

Having graduated UCLA, I am embarrassed about this behavior. l agree entirely with the summary, what message are they sending their students?

Re:boo hoo

[losfromla]

And me without mod points. Troll.

Re:Obamacare killed US IT

[jedidiah]

Medicaid most certainly does suck if you are a provider. They don't pay squat. They tend to pay about 25% - 33% of what real "healthcare" would pay.

Too much of this kind of stuff will KILL an independent hospital. It will just fold and close.

Re:Fair enough. Though not necessarily fault, over

[thomn8r]

Every inch of progress that has been made over the decades has been from people who do exactly that. Who forge ahead regardless of the difficulties, blazing a new path forward for others.

While the Conservatives on the Right have fought them every single step of the way.

Sends a message

[DigiAngel69]

"Come to UCSF to get an education to get a great job that will be outsourced anyway"

Re:'Diversity'

[budgenator]

No, that's the beauty of it, once the diversity dept has driven out all of the white people to increase diversity, they can bring them back in to further increase diversity.

Re:Not by insults

[skam240]

The Alt-Right doesnt insult the other side in a debate? Please.

How many Alt-Righters have I seen parrot in mongoloid fashion "snowflake" for those who disagree with them. It's practically a mantra.