Posted on 09/07/2015 11:07:16 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Edited on 09/07/2015 11:23:24 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
As a patriotic and proud citizen of the United States, I have a story to share that has not only impacted my family, hundreds of colleagues, but also current and future United States workers.
I used to have a dream career at one of Americas most iconic and admired companies. Twenty years of hard work, technical skill building, the fostering of relationships and a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology guided me to a coveted position as an Information Technology Engineer for Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
On a sunny Monday morning in late October of 2014 I drove down the interstate toward the huge 40 square mile Disney Orlando, Florida property to my office. Ten days earlier Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, had just announced that the company’s earnings were up well over 20 percent for the quarter and this was just one among a long series of record breaking financial results for the company. About six months earlier, a new CIO, Tilak Mandadi, was appointed for the Parks and Resorts Division of Disney, which would result in huge changes to our lives. Little did I know what was about to happen that very same day to me and hundreds of other fellow Disney Information Technology Cast Members.
snip
what secrets do you have to divulge?
did you sabotage the effort?
why not?
is there a back doot to shut the place down?
why not?
What is the IT honcho’s address?
Breitbart has become impossible to visit.
I’m in IT and have been for quite a while.
But I see our jobs going overseas.
The market is not what it once was in the States. Not by a long shot.
Did you take the time to read the article? I don’t think so. Read the article, not just a few lines. The writer is relating his experience that began last year in October when he, along with a bunch of his coworkers first found out that they would be losing their jobs. He tells about the months of training their replacements and the months of unemployment that have followed. If you have a follow up article showing that these people all got their jobs back, then please post it.
Disney doesn’t sanction “gay days”; a private travel agency does. Even then, I have been at Disney during the first week of June. The travel agency picks a park a day; go to a different park that day, and miss it altogether. What’s Disney supposed to do, turn away a few thousand customers and face a lawsuit? I challenge you to find the term, “Gay Days” in any Disney advertising. You won’t. They simply ignore it, which is the best they can legally do.
Here are things that Disney does officially sponsor, though:
Nights of Joy (Christian music)
Candlelight Processional
Osborne Family (Christmas) lights
Mickeys very Merry Christmas Party
Christmas decorations at Magic Kingdom and all resorts.
Disney has proudly embraced Christmas tradition for years. Not Happy Holidays; Merry Christmas.
Public sector management is an excellent example of the mindset - I have x in my budget, I need that to last for the year, and so I'm going to base purchasing decisions on that budget. Fine, I guess, after the rollout of a project, but not for the actual rollout. They were performing tasks based on a maintenance budget rather than on a deployment budget.
And morale was particularly low in the department, as they'd repair the same issues over and over and over again. Rather than solving a problem, they'd end up patching it so that the next shift could handle it all over again.
I realize this isn't the narrative that most want to hear, and it could have been solved by actually assigning management that was technology oriented, but it was viewed as a dead end position within the company - if you were a technology hotshot, would you rather work on rolling out MagicBands or ride engineering, or be in charge of making sure that automated security gates opened when a transponder vehicle arrived?
I get the mindset that caused these issues, and the solution, while it harmed some employees, ultimately helped the company.
By the way, one of the old IT employees who shifted to another position in the company now works over at Tri-Circle D ranch at Disneyworld, leading guest experiences on horseback or training horses. They are not only back up to the same salary they had in the IT department, but his pleasure is that every day he gets to see and interact with happy people.
He's one of the many former IT workers who have been posting on employee forums, attempting to fight the union propaganda of the IT department's demise.
Where are the country are you located?
The only reason I enhance my IT organization with offshore is because I could never find enough reasonably priced domestic folks to fill my ranks.
Yes, I qualified by saying, “Reasonably priced.” Do you know how many IT stooges send me their resume with little to no experience, but demand ludicrous salaries so they can bring their lack of experience into my organization and make a mess of everything? No thanks. I have enough issues even with the qualified people because of the speed at which my organization is forced to operate.
My favorites are the young guns who claim to be architects, but couldn’t architect a way for a team to finish a ham sandwich, let alone a complex IT project.
So you're going offshore to resist market forces domestically.
Perhaps if the jobs weren’t offshored, it would attract more capable programmers into IT, instead of them pursuing other careers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/us/in-turnabout-disney-cancels-tech-worker-layoffs.html?_r=0
Apparently Disney was set to play the same ruthless trick on IT employees in New York and California. But the stink they created after firing 250 workers at Disney World and replacing them with cheaper foreign workers was so bad that Disney, at least for now is letting the American workers in NY and California keep their jobs.
You'd think these managers never learned how to tell someone "no." All this is just another excuse to enhance ones business as the cost of the Country.
We were planning to take my daughter to Disney for the first time this fall.
Not anymore.
PR Spin from Disney
Read further (35 workers on a previous lay off for the same thing were saved). The 250 in the Breitbart article actually happened.
“It came in the midst of a furor over layoffs in January of 250 tech workers at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. People who lost jobs there said they had to sit with immigrants from India, some on temporary work visas known as H-1B, and teach them to perform their jobs as a condition for receiving severance.
But it remained unclear on Tuesday who had initiated the change of strategy at Disney/ABC or whether it was part of a larger change in direction, because Disney executives declined to discuss it.
Disney executives have said the reorganization that led to the Orlando layoffs had resulted in an overall increase of 70 (H1B non American technology jobs and the rehiring of some people (probably under 5 people never mind the other 245) who were laid off. Kim Prunty, a Disney spokeswoman, said outside contractors “are required to comply with all applicable employment laws.”
Your missing out then.
My daughter will have fun at Disney World this Christmas season. Christmas time at the World is a wonderful time.
Personally, I wouldn’t let union propaganda keep me from going to Disney World.
The bottom line is that Disney’s IT dept was dysfunctional. They were the IT laughing stock of Fortune 500. Those employees weren’t entitled to their jobs no matter how badly they sucked, I don’t care what the union says otherwise.
Disney’s IT dept needed pink slips, and lots of them.
Yeah. I saw that too. Sounds like spin to me as well. Throw in a few numbers. Say everything Disney did is legal. Kind of like Clinton and Gore talk. Nevermind what they actually did wrong.
That may well be, but when all the positions are filled by going overseas, some one is full of kaka.
1. Disney’s IT dept sucked. Big Time.
2. Disney replaced its IT dept by farming it out to a contractor that Disney was having IT success using.
3. That contractor, a huge area contractor, hired H1B employees to meet its growing demand.
4. The local union spiked the media with stories that Disney was replacing American workers with foreign workers (an alternative and just as accurate spin: Disney was replacing incompetent workers with a company that was proving its competence and fixing the problems of the recently and deservedly fired and departed).
5. Big media stink.
6. Disney backtracks.
Disney didn’t hire the H1Bs, it needed to fire the old IT staff, and they responded to public opinion. Anything else is union drivel.
I believe that’s what’s known as a “cutout.”
“Resist market forces domestically.” Ha. I see what you did there.
There is a market for labor. In IT, the market is now global. If you can’t compete in the global market, it’s probably because you suck.
Holy crap - he just said that! Yes he did.
Here’s the deal: A decent domestic IT employee is worth 3 offshore folks. We IT leaders KNOW that. But we also know that the offshore guy will cost me 1/3rd the cost. So, if you aren’t “decent,” then it’s probably better for me to go for 3 offshore instead. Get it? For permanent needs, I will hire domestic resources all day... IF they are decent. I will pass on resources that suck up until the point where I can’t afford to look any more, then I will just on-board some offshore guys. In an area like mine, where IT unemployment is around 1%, you have to give up finding decent people at some point if you ever want to get the job done. So after a few months of looking domestically, we’ll throw our hands up and just get more contractors.
So, in reality, you put the cart ahead of the horse: it’s not me that is resisting market forces. It’s the domestic resources who won’t bring up their game to compete with offshore. Or reduce their salary. The latter point is a big one. Time and time again we’ll say, “Hire and train,” if the resource isn’t quite up to snuff but their salary demands are reasonable.
I had one domestic guy, for example, who had “six years” of experience. Five of them were with his own “start up,” which had failed, and for which there was not a single artifact of code available to review. The other one year was through four 3 month contracts. (Which says, “I was a problem so that no one wanted to keep me around.” Trust me, companies keep and/or convert good contractors when able.) Do you know what this yahoo wanted? $165k base, plus 25% bonus, plus equity incentive.
Hit the road, Jack. I’ll take 4 humble offshore at that price.
Sorry, I just don’t buy into the proletariat being entitled to their jobs. That’s fairly worthless propaganda.
BTW, if you’re boycotting Disney for responding to its shareholders and customers by trying to improve its previous laughing stock of an IT dept, make sure you ban college ball in your house.
Disney owns ESPN/ABC and ESPN owns college ball coverage.
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