Actually, a lot has happened since I stopped talking about work and started ranting about political issues. I'm witnessing the ugly side of laissez faire capitalism that is known as outsourcing. Essentially, the entire department in which I work is being contracted out to IBM, and so every tech person has to reapply to work for IBM, with about 1 in 3 odds of getting a job. This is harsh. I think people are going to have me read and edit their resumes, since I'm good at documentation and have a lot of spare time on my hands.
Outsourcing is a messy project, as necessary or unnecessary as it may be. The higher-ups said it had to be done because IBM can be more efficient due to economies of scale. However, it is pretty well recognized that Shared Services had really bad processes that had been mandated by those very same higher-ups. Plus, the head of Shared Services stands to gain a lot by coordinating the outsourcing. Even though her department is disappearing, female VPs are always in demand. And rumor has it that a VP that coordinates an outsourcing pretty much immediately doubles his or her salary.
Finally, there are a bunch of messy office politics regarding who gets to keep their job. There will be a group of about 30 people who will manage the contract with IBM who are guaranteed job security. These yet to be named people have already been dubbed the "chosen 30" around the water cooler, and the battle over who fills these is going to be a bloody mess.
All of this eschews the fact that productivity has essentially gone in the toilet since they announced outsourcing last Thursday. Most of the best people saw this coming, and already had new jobs lined up. So as the summer progresses, the best permenant employees will leave. This will leave behind temps and contractors, along with people who couldn't find other jobs. My boss applied for seven jobs on Thursday night. My aunt says she is going to wait and see if they will pay her a bonus to hang on 'till the bitter end, which apparently outsourcing companies are wont to do.
Without any motivation, and with everyone looking for a new job, it's clear that the remaining employees and contractors are not doing as much work as they once did. Apparently web surfing has doubled since Thursday, and they had to upgrade the bandwith to accomodate it because the systems were crawling to a halt. They haven't been checking what people are doing on the web, because they haven't installed the capturing software. But who cares: everyone's on Monster and Hotjobs, and there's nothing the higher-ups can (or should) do about it.
Well, I've got to go. I've got a resume to edit.
2 Kommentare:
wow thats pretty crazy. You have a job for like 2 months and already it's outsourced. It's kind of scary in a way. Well, they cant outsource lawyers. . .yet? It's like thomas friedman said in a collumn a while ago: he heard from his parents that he should finish his dinner b/c people in india and china were starving, but now he tells his kids to do their homework b/c people in india and china are starving for their jobs. I think thats more true than I'd like to admit.
Yeah, fortunately they're letting me stick around 'till the end of the summer. Most of the jobs are being sent to Colorado, although the finance side is being partially sent to Bangalore.
If lawyers could be outsourced, wouldn't other countries outsource law jobs to the US, where we have the best law schools and legal system etc? We'll be a country that can sue anybody, but can't do science to save our lives.
Kommentar veröffentlichen