I was a website developer for a small (<100 person) IT company in the Detroit area. We created web-based applications for <Giant Motor Corporation> Engineering.
When I was working in my department at <Giant Motor Corporation>, under the employment of a different contractor at the time, I found out how much money the people of the company-being-discussed were making. I jumped ship and signed up with said high-paying company. Many of the other contractors' employees were doing the same thing.
When I and a number of my colleagues went to work for the other company, we were surprised to find that the overwhelming majority of the employees were from southern India. We were told that we were to be employed as "managers" and that it was to give the company a nice "American" face. Within two years, we were all let go.
It seems that the Indian management wanted their Indian employees to learn business practices, ettiquete and culture from their "managers." The people who worked under us are now the US interface for large teams of super-cheap Indian IT employees living in southern India. The department we worked in is now impenetrable by US IT contractors because no one can compete with the super-cheap labor rates of a third-world country. They outbid everyone on every project.
I later found out from some friends inside <Giant Motor Corporation> that it was company policy to invite this sort of off-shore outsourcing. They encouraged it.
What is so gosh-darned ironic about this is that a very tight metaphore can be drawn between this situation and the plight of US auto manufacturers and their fickle customers who were turning to Honda and Toyota in the 80s. Back then, the auto industry wept blood over the fact that American consumers were disloyal and buying the products of foreign labor.
Now, in the new millenium, at least one of those same big three companies is behaving just like those disloyal American auto-consumers of the 80s. They're going for the short-term cost-cutting measure without looking at how it will affect the overall long term economic picture.
"And what about you?" you ask. I threw in the IT towel and went back to school to become an architect. There's something enormously satisfying about designing things that may very well outlive me, that aren't dependent on whatever shakey operating system is in vogue at the moment, and which no one ever complains about being buggy. Buildings are solid and real and not subject to the same kinds of scope creep that IT projects are. All in all it's a wonderful life.
So for me, being let-go was a good thing, but for the rest of you, watch your backs. You have no protections.
Has it ever occurred to anyone that this entire scenario of a leaked e-mail might be a set up?
It reminds me of guerrilla marketing tactics. Like the people who are paid to chat someone up in a bar and then drop the name of a movie. Some are paid simply to look good wearing something with a predominately placed logo while in public places A, B & C.
"Laurie" conveniently has a privacy leak consisting of an e-mail message that reads like editorial with several obvious political agenda and which is written in a style one might use when preaching to young children? Riiiiiight...
Who talks or writes like this?
Overall, here is what I learned about the state of our world:
Come on!
It basically runs down a list of stereotypical people and tells you how they think about a given issue.
Not surprisingly, the business community was in no mood to hear about
a war in Iraq. Except for diehard American Republicans, a few Brit
Tories and some Middle East folks the WEF was in a foul, angry
anti-American mood. The rich -- whether they are
French or Chinese or just about anybody -- are livid about the Iraq
crisis primarily because they believe it will sink their financial
fortunes.
The paragraph above would have us belive that, if you're in the business community, then you should be opposed to the current state of things in the "Iraq Crisis." This is because if you are not, and the author above makes this clear by implication, you must be some sort of diehard American Republican (read: fascist wacko), a Brit Tory (read: fascist wacko), or a Middle Eastern Person (read: someone with an overriding local agenda.) The author sums up the neat little paragraph with a reminder that if you're rich, regardless of your ethnic background, you should be against this war.
The whole e-mail goes on in this fashion, telling us how to think about various issues and giving straw men, ad populum fallacies and the like as support. It's like listening to a debate in which one person is on stage and the other is home with a cold.
The entire thing is just a little to convenient for me. Read it again and let me know what you think!
Re:Sorry, anybody know a good source...
on
Akira Re-Released
·
· Score: 1
When I purchased my copy from the local Media Play (their parent company also owns Sun Coast) they had a little thing behind the cash register. They just handed one to me. Hope that helps. I guess I'd just ask.
Slashdot Mirror
I was a website developer for a small (<100 person) IT company in the Detroit area. We created web-based applications for <Giant Motor Corporation> Engineering.
When I was working in my department at <Giant Motor Corporation>, under the employment of a different contractor at the time, I found out how much money the people of the company-being-discussed were making. I jumped ship and signed up with said high-paying company. Many of the other contractors' employees were doing the same thing.
When I and a number of my colleagues went to work for the other company, we were surprised to find that the overwhelming majority of the employees were from southern India. We were told that we were to be employed as "managers" and that it was to give the company a nice "American" face. Within two years, we were all let go.
It seems that the Indian management wanted their Indian employees to learn business practices, ettiquete and culture from their "managers." The people who worked under us are now the US interface for large teams of super-cheap Indian IT employees living in southern India. The department we worked in is now impenetrable by US IT contractors because no one can compete with the super-cheap labor rates of a third-world country. They outbid everyone on every project.
I later found out from some friends inside <Giant Motor Corporation> that it was company policy to invite this sort of off-shore outsourcing. They encouraged it.
What is so gosh-darned ironic about this is that a very tight metaphore can be drawn between this situation and the plight of US auto manufacturers and their fickle customers who were turning to Honda and Toyota in the 80s. Back then, the auto industry wept blood over the fact that American consumers were disloyal and buying the products of foreign labor.
Now, in the new millenium, at least one of those same big three companies is behaving just like those disloyal American auto-consumers of the 80s. They're going for the short-term cost-cutting measure without looking at how it will affect the overall long term economic picture.
"And what about you?" you ask. I threw in the IT towel and went back to school to become an architect. There's something enormously satisfying about designing things that may very well outlive me, that aren't dependent on whatever shakey operating system is in vogue at the moment, and which no one ever complains about being buggy. Buildings are solid and real and not subject to the same kinds of scope creep that IT projects are. All in all it's a wonderful life.
So for me, being let-go was a good thing, but for the rest of you, watch your backs. You have no protections.
Has it ever occurred to anyone that this entire scenario of a leaked e-mail might be a set up?
It reminds me of guerrilla marketing tactics. Like the people who are paid to chat someone up in a bar and then drop the name of a movie. Some are paid simply to look good wearing something with a predominately placed logo while in public places A, B & C.
"Laurie" conveniently has a privacy leak consisting of an e-mail message that reads like editorial with several obvious political agenda and which is written in a style one might use when preaching to young children? Riiiiiight...
Who talks or writes like this?
Come on!
It basically runs down a list of stereotypical people and tells you how they think about a given issue.
The paragraph above would have us belive that, if you're in the business community, then you should be opposed to the current state of things in the "Iraq Crisis." This is because if you are not, and the author above makes this clear by implication, you must be some sort of diehard American Republican (read: fascist wacko), a Brit Tory (read: fascist wacko), or a Middle Eastern Person (read: someone with an overriding local agenda.) The author sums up the neat little paragraph with a reminder that if you're rich, regardless of your ethnic background, you should be against this war.
The whole e-mail goes on in this fashion, telling us how to think about various issues and giving straw men, ad populum fallacies and the like as support. It's like listening to a debate in which one person is on stage and the other is home with a cold.
The entire thing is just a little to convenient for me. Read it again and let me know what you think!
When I purchased my copy from the local Media Play (their parent company also owns Sun Coast) they had a little thing behind the cash register. They just handed one to me. Hope that helps. I guess I'd just ask.