Posted on 11/10/2015 6:35:42 AM PST by Utilizer
The IT workers at Cengage Learning in the company's Mason, Ohio offices learned of their fates game-show style. First, they were told to gather in a large conference room. There were vague remarks from an IT executive about a "transition." Slides were shown that listed employee names, directing them to one of three rooms where they would be told specifically what was happening to them. Some employees were cold with worry.
The biggest group, those getting pink slips, were told to remain in the large conference room. Workers directed to go through what we'll call Door No. 2, were offered employment with IT offshore outsourcing firm Cognizant. That was the smallest group. And those sent through Door No. 3 remained employed in Cengage's IT department. This happened in mid-October.
"I was so furious," said one of the IT workers over what happened. It seemed "surreal," said another. There was disbelief, but little surprise. Cengage, a major producer of educational content and services, had outsourced accounting services earlier in the year. The IT workers rightly believed they were next.
The employees were warned that speaking to the news media meant loss of severance. Despite their fears, they want their story told. They want people to know what's happening to IT jobs in the heartland. They don't want the offshoring of their livelihoods to pass in silence.
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
Issue for Trump
Thanks to the Chamber of Commerce and all their paid for whores in DC.
Worth repeating...IN CAPS!
THANKS TO THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND ALL THEIR PAID FOR WHORES IN DC.
Well a company's only loyalty lies with maximizing profit for their stockholders. Reducing personnel costs is one way to do that. American workers must compete for jobs/wages with the rest of the world. Is that not economic freedom? The only problem is that the global economy is destroying the social structure (the middle class) that made America great. Which leads to the question: can America unplug from the global economy, and if so, is it even desirable to do so?
I have been in IT for almost 30 years. Seen this happen at least a dozen times. Once a system is in steady state, there is no longer a need for high end IT people except in an advisory role. Projects are one time shots and once the project concludes, teams are released.
What I have found from speaking with several IT managers is they would rather off-shore IT, do it wrong 5 times and mitigate the risk financially than keep high paying people around and do it once or twice. Also, what needs to be taken into account are things like shared services.
Ten years ago my IT department had close to a dozen Windows and Linux admins. Today three admins manage the same infrastructure which has doubled in size. I constantly tell my staff to get educated, get their certs and keep their resumes updated. The ones who fail to do this are the ones usually left in the big conference room.
Or, the IT workers need to transition to jobs that require customer interaction, as a foreign employee is unable to do that.
Good post but you lost me with one bit. How is the global economy destroying the social structure? I see that as a faith issue which tends to be inversely proportional to wealth.
Exactly-- make Americans compete with Third World labor and we'll live in a Third World country, not just economically but politically.
As in, "Would you like fries with that burger?" or "Welcome to Walmart."
We shouldn't be surprised then if more and more people just vote to take someone else's money if that's their only opportunity.
“Well a company’s only loyalty lies with maximizing profit for their stockholders.”
At first glance that seems like an argument for outside restraint by citizens with pitchforks, tar and feathers, or by labor or government.
Interesting point and I agree with you. However, automation is starting to take even those traditional service jobs away. Banks without bricks. Restaurants with order/payment tablets at the table. Doctor's offices without clerks. Even the job I retired from as a financial analyst has been replaced by a series of algorithms. There simply are not enough jobs at Walmart to accommodate everybody. I have no solution to address this brave new economic world.
I refer you to this thread, “The Zombie Programmers Awaken ... and they’re pretty tetchy [SunTrust]”:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3351520/posts
Quite a few notable comments there.
“Well a company’s only loyalty lies with maximizing profit for their stockholders. Reducing personnel costs is one way to do that. American workers must compete for jobs/wages with the rest of the world.”
I agree with you completely. But American workers have a hard time competing when foreign workers can be imported here and hired because they can be paid less, don’t have to be under Obamacare regs, etc. That’s not competition on a level playing field.
I don’t know about that. I’ve called for customer service with several companies and sometimes I could not understand anything the person said because of such a heavy accent.
My thinking (as misguided as it may be) is that as wages are depressed and job opportunities become scarcer due to global competition, more and more Americans will become dependent on the government to survive. Hope and work ethic disappear. Society declines. Wealth is transferred to the Third World. Yes workers can retrain and gain more education for skills in demand. Technology may open new avenues to generate wealth. My problem is that I am stuck in the world with an Ozzie and Harriet mindset. I cannot imagine an America without a strong, traditional middle class.
I watched an outsourcing pilot fail miserably only to be called a resounding success. (The company essentially had to pay for it to be developed twice, once by the outsourcers and the second time by in-house programmers.
Management intentionally and fraudulently hid the redevelopment. During this time they had the outsourcing company come in and school us on the proper way to do development (repeating what was in our college textbooks 20 years ago), then fired us all and went with the outsourcing company.
I laughed at them and told them they couldn’t manage a software project in the same building, how were they going to do it on the other side of the world in a different time zone, language, and culture?
I was laid off on Friday, A week from the following Monday I was showing up at a new job.
Some companies have real leaders and develop actual products. Others are just playing financial shell games and ripping off their customers.
I thought you were going that way. As I ponder the countries leftward slide I was thinking of the excesses of Sodom and how decadence destroys the faith of a city or nation. We are spoiled and Christians never read their bibles. Christianity is so weak it has almost no testimony left. Technology allows a small number of people to produce so much "stuff" that fewer and fewer people have to work to survive. The government just divides up the excess.
H1B ping
Companies have no loyalty to to their employees. Employees are lower on the totem pole than machines.
Marxists are right about companies exploiting their employees.
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