ServiceMaster IT job fair
My recent series of columns on troubles at IBM brought me many sad stories from customers burned by Big Blue. I could write column after column just on that, but it wouldn’t be any fun so I haven’t. Only now a truly teachable lesson has emerged from a couple of these horror tales and it has to do with U.S. IT labor economics and immigration policy. In short the IT service sector has been shoveling a lot of horse shit about H1B visas.
The story about H1B visas is simple. H1B’s are given for foreign workers to fill U.S. positions that can’t be filled with qualified U.S. citizens or by permanent U.S. residents who hold green cards. H1Bs came into existence because there weren’t enough green cards and now we’re told there aren’t enough H1B’s, either. So there’s a move right now in Washington to increase the H1B limit above the current level of approximately 65,000 because we are told the alternative is IT paralysis without more foreign workers.
Says who?
Who says there will be chaos without more foreign IT workers and are they correct?
Cynics like me point out that foreign workers are paid less and — more importantly — place much less of a total financial burden on employers because they get few, if any, long term benefits. I tend to think the issue isn’t finding good workers it’s finding cheap workers. But the H1B program isn’t supposed to be about saving money, so that argument can’t be used by organizations pushing for higher visa limits. All they can claim is a labor shortage that can only be corrected by issuing more H1Bs.
To test this theory let’s look at Memphis, TN, where IBM has recently lost two big customers. One of them — Hilton Hotels — dumped IBM only this week. The other company is ServiceMaster.
Hilton just announced they are canceling almost all of their contracts with IBM less than two years into a five-year contract. This includes global IT helpdesk, all data centers, and support of “global web” (hilton.com and all related systems).
According to my sources at Hilton, the IBM contract was a nightmare. IBM couldn’t keep Hilton’s Exchange servers running. The SAN in the Raleigh data center hasn’t worked right since it supposedly came up in January, with some SAN outages lasting more than a day. IBM couldn’t monitor Hilton’s servers in the IBM data center. Hilton had to tell IBM when the servers were running low on disk space, for example.
Now IBM is gone, replaced by Dell, and Hilton has a new CIO.
If there’s one point I’d like you to keep in mind about this Hilton story it’s IBM’s apparent inability to monitor the Hilton servers. More about that below.
ServiceMaster is the other former IBM customer I know about in Memphis. Among its many beefs with IBM, ServiceMaster also had a server monitoring issue. In this case it was the company’s main database that was going unmonitored. IBM was supposed to be monitoring the servers, they were paid for monitoring the servers, but in fact IBM didn’t really monitor anything and instead relied on help desk trouble tickets to tell it when there was a problem. If you think about it this is exactly the way IBM was handling server problems at Hilton, too.
Now to the part about labor economics.
When ServiceMaster announced its decision to cancel its contract with IBM and to in-source a new IT team, the company had to find 200 solid IT people immediately. Memphis is a small community and there can’t be that many skilled IT workers there, right? ServiceMaster held a job fair one Saturday and over 1000 people attended. They talked to them all, invited the best back for second interviews, and two weeks later ServiceMaster had a new IT department. The company is reportedly happy with the new department whose workers are probably more skilled and more experienced than the IBMers they are replacing.
Where, again, is that IT labor shortage? Apparently not in Memphis.
About that database monitoring problem, ServiceMaster hired DBADirect to provide their database support from that high tech hotbed, Florence, KY. The first thing DBADirect did was to install monitoring tools. Remember IBM didn’t have any monitoring running on the ServiceMaster database.
How can a company 1/100,000th the size of IBM afford to have monitoring? Well, it seems DBADirect has its own monitoring tools and they are included as part of their service. It allows them to do a consistently good job with less labor. DBADirect does not need to use the cheapest offshore labor to be competitive. They’ve done what manufacturing companies have been doing for 100+ years — automating!
Even today IBM is still in its billable hours mindset. The more bodies it takes to do a job the better. It views monitoring and automation tools as being a value added, extra cost option. It has not occurred to them you could create a better, more profitable service with more tools and fewer people. When you have good tools, the cost of the labor becomes less important.
Which brings us back to the H1B visa issue. Is there an IT labor shortage in the USA that can only be solved with more H1B visas? Not in Memphis and probably not anywhere else, either.
There’s certainly a shortage of imagination, absolutely a shortage of integrity, and neither shortage is saving anyone money.
Excellent article. It is truly sad to hear about IBM’s inability to do something as simple as monitoring. I can only wonder what those in charge are thinking. Do you have any input as to why IBM chooses to operate the way they do?
Is “More cheap imports=obscene executive compensation” the first lesson taught in all American business schools?
Amen to that. many aspects of American corporate mentality spread to the UK several years ago. It’s not all bad of course but the revolting spectacle of executive mega-greed, golden handshakes, golden handcuffs, golden parachutes, gardening leave, and stupefying rewards for failure are well and truly entrenched. At last, however, and within the last month, a small number of large UK corporations have seen the advice of their executive remuneration committees voted down by their own shareholders. Bring it on!
I used to work on a lot of outsourcing jobs for IBM, particularly in server and storage management. Although the “billable hours” mindset and foreign labor issues are important, the more immediate issue is having a competent staff in the first place.
Although IBM has a lot of warm bodies, the simple fact of the matter is that IBM does not have enough competent staff to deliver on all its outsourcing contracts. When I left the company a few years ago, there were just a handful of people (I was one) that were capable of implementing, configuring and troubleshooting a SAN. Most people within the company at the time had no idea what a SAN was, and probably still wouldn’t know today.
Server and database management is in a similar position. In order to adequately monitor a database, you need to know what parts of the database to monitor, how to set it all up, and an action plan when the monitoring detects a problem. IBM has the tools, but it does not have the depth within its outsourcing staff to adequately implement and utilize them. The needed skills in database and systems management are simply not there in sufficient quantity.
In most companies, this level of competency is ingrained in its employees using formal training classes, plus supplemental learning in test labs as well as on-the-job training.
At the time I left the company, the only training that IBM was offering to the outsourcing staff were basic project management courses. The test labs were being disbanded, with equipment (servers, workstations, etc.) either being sent to India or sold on the open market. Some items like SAN switches and storage devices never really existed in quantity — the management didn’t want to spend the money.
To add insult to injury, IBM outsourcing employees no longer had access to IBM’s software collection. Software products like AIX, DB2, Tivoli and Websphere were once easily downloadable by employees for internal use. At the time I left, this access was disabled. In order to get this software, you had to requisition the software via official requisition channels, and provide a funding source. That’s right — IBM outsourcing employees had to BUY the software just like any customer.
So when I hear about customers dumping IBM for stuff like not monitoring the servers or performing the backups properly, I’m utterly saddened but not a bit surprised. This outcome was baked into the cake long ago. Although it’s tempting to blame the problems on H1Bs or laying off workers or whatever, the customers are leaving for a much simpler reason. All too often, IBM is proving itself to be incompetent to perform the work for which it has signed up.
They have the tools, but they lack the talent.
Still the stock market keeps rewarding IBM for their financial performance. The question you need to ask is when will all this catch up with them in the market? Only then will executives have incentive to re-engineer the company.
HP is a good example of what you are talking about. Everything is starting to catch up to them.
“… basic project management courses… ” – That says it all about most IT management mentality today.
“Most people within the company at the time had no idea what a SAN was, and probably still wouldn’t know today.”
The above statement is truly sad. As a software consultant who doesn’t work with SANs, I could at least figure out what it was if I was thrown into the situation.
As Cringely says, there’s a lack of imagination to some degree. I’m not a DBA, but if a database needs to be monitored, even just of the fact it is down, then I know what my goal is and I can find the tool(s) needed to monitor that event. It isn’t rocket science. Yes, SANs are more entailed, but technical guys have to have some imagination, creativity, and resourcefulness to figure out the basics.
In the examples mentioned, IBM didn’t even implement monitoring 🙂
You are missing the point: out-sourcing and in-sourcing are used by IBM to try to compete with the Indian software out-sourcing houses which have access to a greater pool of cheap labor in India. H1Bs are a real big part of the problem as are the visa abuses of these Indian software outsourcing outfits. They compete with IBM at a much lower cost basis and have led IBM to shift its labor to H1B and to India.
H1B visa needs to be eliminated and a more sane visa system which only fills true shortages needs to be implemented. THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF WORKERS IN SOFTWARE IN THE US. IT IS A LIE FABRICATED BY INDUSTRY TO LOWER WAGES HERE IN THE US.
As much as I hate what IBM is doing to stay in business, we have to realize the word “shortage” is meaningless without adding “at this price”. Under communism in the USSR, there was a “shortage” of toilet paper to the point it had to be rationed. That’s because no one would produce it at the government mandated price. There is a real shortage of American workers willing to work at the rate of many foreign workers. If you want Protectionism you should call it that. Under Protectionism, international companies would simply charge a higher price to service the US (if there are any buyers) or compete with support provided by the same foreign workers stationed in their native land using the Internet.
Are you ever going to add new audio recordings of your blog to your iTunes feed?
This article is full of the kind of good sense I love to read here! 😀 Great post.
“There’s certainly a shortage of imagination, absolutely a shortage of integrity…”
Maybe they can use some of these H1Bs to find managers with these traits.
I left IBM not long ago for a much better opportunity. I was in the technical ranks during my entire tenure with the company and I witnessed first hand the diminishing skills across the organization.
In the end, my summation was pretty simple: the executive leadership within IBM, and therefore the culture itself, always looked down on the technical side of the equation, often referring to those folks as ‘the techies’ in quite derogatory tones. Since the exec ranks had absolutely NO understanding of how important technical skills and expertise were to any I/T deal, they diminished their importance, falsely thinking that ‘anyone could do the technicals’, heck we could just pull them off the streets of Bangalore, or Pune, or Buenos Aires, or Sao Paulo and turn them loose on a Client system. They don’t need any training or mentoring, we don’t need to spend any money on test systems and tools.
The thought was (and still is) to throw any cheap technical skill at the job and then surely our stellar leadership can project manage any issues that come up. But in the end, without adequate technical ‘expertise’ it becomes a moot point.
When I came into IBM quite a while ago, it was a classy organization with good people and competent leadership. In the end, it was a cesspool being run by a bunch of profit pirate goons. Welcome to the new IBM.
Warren Buffett’s 10 billion dollar investment in IBM may not look that smart then?
Best post yet, Bob.
As a programmer, I’m always trying to automate tasks, otherwise I get bored. In the end, I get more done and/or have more time to slack off. 🙂
I’m with Brian. As a performance analysis guy in IBM for 20+ years, I tried to automate myself out of a job for the same reasons. Cobbling together a monitoring program that would catch a problem at least as quickly a user could see it was my holy grail. For many years, I’ve lamented the fact that for all the billions spent on software, we (IBM) relied on the user to tell us when it wasn’t working.
Simple rule to fix H1Bs: the wage paid to directly to them (not some 3rd party placement firm) must be more than the average the business sector and more than the average within the company including all benefits. If there is truly a shortage then employers should be willing to pay above average rates,right?
Much much simpler way to fix H1-b issues – give the visa to the individual, *not* the company. Allow the individuals to freely move from company to company based on pay.
The 21st century’s version of an indentured servant.
No one ever got fired for buying IBM. Wait, wut?
Bob:
Thought-provoking article, as usual.
Your definition of IT Worker sounds a lot like System Admin & System Engineer roles, and certainly these are included in the H1b visas. But, H1b job categories go well beyond this, and include roles such as Software Developer, Software Architect, etc., etc. And, given my experiences in recruiting for Software Developers, there IS a shortage of these folks in the U.S., in part because the skills in using the languages is only earned in time, and through use in a ‘commercial environment’. How do I know there’s a shortage? Because of salary increases for these roles over the last 24 months, an increase which has not been shared by the more traditional IT roles mentioned earlier.
I’m not certain how we solve this problem, and it’s certainly pretty danged big, but whoever does it should certainly have a tiger by the tail!
My company brought on board 2 financial analysts ( one from India, one from Hong Kong ). This was for entry level jobs.
/H1-b – not just for IT!
Why does there need to be a solution to higher wages? Higher wages is not a problem.
When you consider your employees to be an expense rather than a resource, higher wages are a problem.
When you consider your employees to be a resource, and when the compensation system is working properly, higher wages are a good thing, because they indicate that your resources are generating good returns on your investment.
T.J. Watson, Jr. used to be firmly in the latter camp:
1 – Take care of your customers.
2 – Take care of your employees.
3 – The profits will take care of themselves.
Developers are no different from the rest of IT types. You can claim it because you know that subject better, but good DBAs need to learn on the job, and good data modellers need to learn on the job, and SAN technicians need to learn on the job, and on and on.
The real problem is that companies have enjoyed a huge surplus of labor since the IT market collapsed and they don’t want to be bothered to either pay for talent or train up their own. I notice that you didn’t say you couldn’t find people, just that they were getting more expensive. There is only a shortage of cheap labor, and hiring companies don’t like it. As an employee who has been getting beat up in this labor market I can only say Too Bad.
If a 1000 IT workers can show up for a job fair in Memphis and a company can find enough good people to staff an entire IT department, then we don’t have a skill shortage. Do we even need H1B anymore?
No, we don’t. It’s merely an excuse to keep wages low.
What about the IBM tools like WebSphere? How does the errosion of IBM services affect the sales of such highend software products?
I’m asking because I don’t know, not for any other insight!
Dr John –
Keep in mind that Websphere is developed by Software Group, an entirely different entity within IBM from Global Services (the outsourcing division). In some ways it’s an entirely different company. What might change is that the L1 support might be less-skilled than before, but for the most part they read off of a script anyway (“Have you tried rebooting?”). If you can escalate to L2 or L3 support quickly, you can usually get someone who knows what they’re talking about.
There certainly is a shortage of imagination at IBM. But imagine if DBADirect were doing what it does but employing workers who don’t require long-term benefits. They’d be able to save their customers even more money. The point about the lack of imagination at IBM doesn’t negate the point that it’s more cost-effective to hire foreigners than it is to hire Americans.
Here’s a wild idea: how about if the government just lets Amercians decide whether they want to demand long-term benefits or not? That would remove the competitive advantage of the foreign workers, thus creating more jobs for Americans.
How about you go live in Thunderdome, and the rest of us will pass, OK?
they have. you do NOT have to move to a high-paying city, seek a high-paying type of job, or even attempt to do anything.
your commensurate level of interest in no-rewards menial labor will be rewarded someplace like Rusty Barbwire, AL.
just don’t try and hitchhike up the road to Huntsville, they need skilled people there.
Isn’t that already happening slowly? Social security, I think, is the only long-term benefit mandated by government. But it’s always been just an excuse to raise taxes and increase total government revenue. As time goes on, the cost of benefits exceed the income from the social security tax, thus providing the government another reason to raise taxes across the board or cut the real value of the so-called benefits.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
AKA
History always repeats itself because nobody listened the first (or second or third…) time.
The point about the lack of imagination at IBM doesn’t negate the point that it’s more cost-effective to hire foreigners than it is to hire Americans.
Government is setting this price point, and they can set it at a different point.
I’m sure it’s more “cost effective to hire foreigners” in every walk of life, but for some reason we don’t allow it in every walk of life. You can’t get a law degree in Bangalore and come work as a lawyer in the US.
How far away is Memphis from Oak Ridge, which is a big tech center courtesy of the US Nuclear Program?
Florence is just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, and there are plenty of IT workers for the taking in all of Southwest Ohio. Over the past ten years, some Cincinnati companies have been shedding IT workers (such as P&G and Kroger and GE), so finding personnel isn’t an issue.
In fact, it never has been an issue finding IT workers; it’s all about the money companies want to pay them.
Bob, you’re absolutely spot on in your assessment that companies look at H1B visa workers as cheap labor: no social security, no retirement benefits, and if you’re a lucky corporation, minimal health care too. Of course, if we simply stopped H1B visas, the big companies will simply move their IT divisions overseas. Oh wait, they already did that….
Yep. I company for which I worked as a systems administrator about 10 years ago did that, and was ahead of its time. The owner (it was a sole proprietorship) sent all the development work to Ukraine. What we got back from them was unvarnished junk – I didn’t think software could cause a server to erupt in black smoke. I got a misdirected email from the owner one time, which said, as best as I can remember, he didn’t care if 80% of what the overseas workers did was crap, it only cost him $8 per hour.
I am an early middle-aged former software developer (VC++,Winforms C#) who now finds himself unemployable – ironically teaching English to software developers in Ukraine! The rate of $8/hr is about right. (I make double that teaching English!)
And that is why American businesses not named Apple are struggling. You bid a project cheap, you build it cheap, and then people are shocked that crap blows up? Oh hell no.
I remember when quality used to be something other than an entry in Buzzword Bingo.
Memphis is about 400 miles from Oak Ridge
People forget that Tennessee is the really really long state.
So there isn’t any bleedover from Oak Ridge, then. It’s all internal to Memphis.
I’m pretty sure that employers have to pay FICA for H1B’s too. It is just that if the guy leaves the country, instead of permanently immigrating, he doesn’t get SSA benefits and the money paid in gets used for everybody else. Eitherway, it is the same financial burden on the employer side.
H1-b’s are eligible to receive Social Security benefits.
Totalization Agreements
https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/handbook/handbook.01/handbook-0107.html
…”What are “totalization agreements”?
The Social Security Act allows the President to enter into international agreements to coordinate the U.S. social security programs with the social security programs of other countries. These agreements are known as “totalization agreements.”
With what countries does the U.S. have totalization agreements?
The United States currently has Social Security agreements in effect with 21 countries – Australia (2002), Austria (1991), Belgium (1984), Canada (1984), Chile (2001), Germany (1979), Finland (1992), France (1988), Greece (1994), Ireland (1993), Italy (1978), Japan (2005), Luxembourg (1993), the Netherlands (1990), Norway (1984), Portugal (1989), South Korea (2001), Spain (1988), Sweden (1987), Switzerland (1980), and the United Kingdom (1985).
What are the purposes of totalization agreements?
Totalization agreements have three main purposes:
1. To eliminate dual social security coverage and taxation. This situation occurs when a person from one country works in the other country and is required to pay social security taxes to both countries for the same work;
2. To avoid situations in which workers lose benefit rights because they have divided their careers between two countries. Under an agreement, such workers may qualify for partial U.S. or foreign benefits based on combined work credits from both countries.
3. To increase benefit portability by guaranteeing that neither country will impose restrictions on benefit payments based solely on residence or presence in the other country.
Ah, so it works both ways! Thanks, dude! (I hear Ireland is a great place to retire …)
There are legitimate uses for H1-B — it is just that in IT, those needs are a small fraction of the applications. My suggestion: If we need an H1-B, it is because the US economy needs the skills, and the workers should *NOT* be tied to the employer that sponsored them. If they *do* choose to leave, that should be taken as an indication that the wages were too low after all, and the original employer should have to pay a higher fee for any future H1-B applications.
I love that idea. That will make a lot of these companies think twice about using H1B labor.
The problem with the H1B program is that you get stuck at your company. You’re being sponsored, so you can’t grab a better opportunity when it comes. This is one reason why H1B salaries are lower than non-H1B. My company knows I’ll pick up and leave if I’m unhappy and someone offers me a better opportunity. Someone with an H1B can’t move. It’s why they can be paid less and get fewer benefits.
I work with a wide variety of people with H1Bs and I divide them into two classes:
* The competent: I rather we give these people H1Bs, bring them to the U.S., and pay them the $125,000 to $200,000 per year. In their native country, they’d be making 1/4 of that. If I have to compete against these people for employment, I’d rather they get paid what they’re worth. It’s hard to compete against someone with your skill set and gets 1/4 the salary.
* The dregs: These are people who aren’t worth the salary they were getting in their home country. I’d rather they stay there. I have to work with enough home grown American idiots. I don’t need the global supply chain providing me with more. I bet this was the group IBM brought over.
I really don’t have problems with non-American workers. The biggest issue is that the H1B program prevent them from doing what we Americans can do: Get the best opportunity according to our skills. That’s the real problem. I want $150,000 per year,. If some H1B can be brought over, chained to their desk and do the same for $100,000 because they didn’t know the pay scale, I have to compete against that.
Let this H1B look for other opportunities once they realize what the market really pays. Then, they’ll also be making $150,000 per year, and I’ll be happy to compete against them for the same job.
Jobs are not a zero sum game. If a competent staff helps a company to grow, there are more jobs. The more people we bring into the U.S. market, and let them compete, the more jobs we have. I am secure enough in my skill set that a little competition doesn’t scare me.
Nor should it scare you. I think your solution is a good one.
The more people we bring into the U.S. market, and let them compete, the more jobs we have.
Talk about “voodoo economics”!
For some mysterious reason we have fewer jobs now than we used to, even though we have more people.I’d say “check your reasoning”, but you have not employed any. Perhaps “check your magic” would be better advice.
Voodoo at the individual level. Truth at the national level. If we bring in workers at fair salaries they act as consumers within the US economy and the US economy grows, even if it causes individual wage depression.
But we’re suffering individual wage depression anyway because of the competition from these workers in their native lands, so that’s a moot point.
On the third hand, with business booming in Asia, the main real selling point the US has left is political freedom more than economic opportunity. But we’re blowing that away with the post-9/11 surveillance state.
So I predict the H1B problem will solve itself in due time: those underpaid workers from India will end up earning less back at home, but won’t have to deal with all the US immigration BS. Except possibly for the ones who are so incompetent that they end up costing more than their US counterparts.
The problem is that companies don’t want to spend their time training their people anymore. There are tons of people who will be more than willing to learn and adapt to a working environment, however most of the companies are looking for short term benefits and that means hire H1B works with few years of experience. In the end, they are weakening the talent pool in US even further, by taking away incentives for training / education resources.
—
SJ
But the great Sammy Palmisano said that the American workforce is not retrainable, and that’s why IBM has to seek employees outside the US!
Bob,
Remember that America is a land of immigrants and used to welcome them. There was that song dedicated to John Lennon in the seventies “there was a time when strangers were welcome here”. The number of immigrants coming in on work visas is not so high and immigrants in moderation can really enrich a country, particularly if they are young and well educated.
Arthur,
Sorry but America has a long colorful history of hating immigrants. Whether they be the German immigrants disparaged by Benjamin Franklin, the Irish, Italians, Asian, or Hispanic the idea that America has welcomed immigrants with open arms is largely fiction.
That being said, the real issue as others have pointed out is companies use H1-Bs as a way to reduce wages. According to the law companies sponsoring an H1-B are supposed to pay the prevailing wage. Clearly this is not happening. Simply requiring that companies pay a wage with a 20% to 30% premium over the standard wage. Although companies would still try to game the system, gaming the system would be more difficult and many companies would probably choose to higher locals instead.
Those companies willing to pay a premium for a foreign worker, might actually have a specific skill that is in short supply.
Regards,
Joe Dokes
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
America now only welcomes those that can make the almighty buck for corporate America.
Arthur, The problem is that H1B people are not *immigrants*, they are guest workers. I’d feel better if they were immigrants…in this case they’d be making a permanent contribution to our society, would pay property taxes, educate their children here, and so on. But they’re not immigrants, they’re guest workers. They have to go home when their H1B visa expires. (Admittedly, a few do go on to get a green card and ultimately citizenship, but this is rare.)
Guest workers drive down wages for permanent residents and citizens. And, the fact that the H1B visa is tied to a company means that H1B guest workers don’t have the ability to compete for better jobs elsewhere in the U.S.
I’m reminded of two things:
1) Most Americans don’t seem to know the difference between “value” and “cost”; MBA’s without any experience in the real field only know the numbers — they can’t tell what “value” is. See pretty much any of Bob’s articles on the old HP. Ironically enough, the government now does Value Based Acquisition; but business do not.
2) Regarding why the Stock for IBM is so high, I’m reminded of why Damordan (professor at NYU, one of the best Stock Valuation experts in the country) finally sold his Apple Stock. He bought at something like $2 per share, and sold right before it went wonky (at right around it’s peak). The reason he sold:
“I didn’t like who was investing in Apple now.”
Very mature. Many of us have friends who have lost their jobs. We work hard to help them find jobs. At the core of the problem are misguided government and corporate policies and priorities that are hurting 100,000’s of people. The only way things will get better is through an honest debate of the issues and constructive new ideas. This column, this columnist is one of the best advocates for professionals working in the technology industry.
Consider,if only for a minute, that there is only governing principle in the United States: Free Contract.
That means, of course, bargaining power is everything. What you earn is a function of your bargaining power. Everything that goes on around us, be it personal grooming habits, advertising on tv, or the machinations in Washington and on Wall Street – is all about one thing, and one thing only: invididuals, or groups of individuals, trying to enhance their bargaining power.
Now consider another thing: The Solidarity of the CEOs – manifested organizationally in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Perhaps you don’t think this exist.
Then ask your self this – why, even though health care insurance was GMs biggest biggest supplier – did GM executives never pursue single payer health care to get them out of the business of providing this expense benefit altogether?
Despite the obvious advantages to GM, the corporation, their CEOs never pursued this angle. They didn’t want to lose their membership in the CEO brotherhood.
One final fundamental: the historical rate of return on investments is 4%.
That’s all thats necessary for an enterprise to be viable.
All return to a firm above 4% is called an “economic rent”. The big question, then, in any large and succesful corporation is, “who will get what portion of the ‘economic rents’ that are up for grabs?” amongst the investors, the workers and the executives?
In the last 50 years, who do you think has been prevailing in this struggle?
In the 1980s when down sizing of American manufacturing gathered steam, the CEO’s all told the American work force to “go back to school,and get retrained in Computer’s. Many did.
Why did the CEOs tell workers to do this? Because Information Systems was the single biggest cost center inside of most large corporations. More people in that field might drive down wages.
Meanwhile, throughout the 1980s, many, many, large corporations attempted to adjust to this phenomina by turning their IS cost centers into profit centers. Just about every large corporation tried to form an IT consulting business. McDonnell Douglas was early into this with “McAuto”, but Boeing and Lockheed did the same, and most famously, General Motors bought EDS out right in an attempt to do this wholesale.
By the mid 1990s it became clear that this strategy was not working. Furthermore, despite the flood of workers into I.S,. wages were still going going up. Nothing irritates executives more than paying a high hourly wage to what they see as nothing more than laborers.
Never mind that CEOs, themselves are hired hands.
Its all about bargaining power.
Throughout the entire administration of George W. Bush, he never denighed Corporate America (the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) anything. One of the things he did was periodically increase the number of H1B visas. This undemined many IT workers bargaining power, which it was designed to do.
In 2000, I left my IS career to get a Law degree (I had a specific curiosity I was pursuing). I graduated in 2003, too late to take a bar exam – so I picked up a very short term consulting gig (about a month at $50 an hour). I month later I got a job righting contracts and IP agreements for a corporation. I was locked up in a closet with white walls and flourescent lights reading/writing contracts all day and filing papers. Decent pay, I was bored to tears. In April 2005 I quit to study for a bar exam, with the intent, if I couldn’t pass the bar exam and find more interesting work, to go back into IS consulting. Something that I was certain I was good at, and was more interesting to me. Keep in mind 2005 was the best year, economically of the Bush Administration.
I made this move for strategic reasons. In law school I took a History of Property rights class from a Nobel Laureate. I learned that concentration of wealth caused the collapse of the Roman Empire (6 senators owned half of North Africa, ordinary people were pushed into serfdom destroying the cash economy, the wealthy and powerful used their influence to avoid paying taxes, and so the Roman Empire lacked the funds to field a large enough army to control their borders, despite the fact that Rome controlled ALL the resources of Western Civilization when that civilization still included, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Egypt, all of North Africa and the better half of Europe.
Then I took a class on Japanese law. I learned the same thing happened to Medieval Japan. Then I saw a documentary on Ancient Egypt that explained the fall of one of its Kingdomes (either Middle, or New). I read a chapter in a book on Byzantium that basically said the same for it (around 1071). Then I remembered my high school classes on the waining of Hapsburgh Spain, collapse of Bourbon France and Romanov Russia. I had an historical atlas that claimed concentrated wealth in the US caused the great Depression.
So there I was in early 2005, in a mundane job that I didn’t like and was reading in different places that wealth concentration had already reached approached the same proportion as 1929. I felt that I had to get out of where I was at, and get into something I liked that I was good at, before the big collapse came.
Big Mistake. Turned out, the big collapse was probably already underway.
I had turned 45 that year. I couldn’t find work. What used to take three calls turned into issuing over 970 resumes, and getting back almost no interest at all.
Meanwhile, many of my friends working in the local market place were telling me how their work place was filled with Russians, Asians and East Asians.(If they were female and married, they told me they were usually pregnant). At one work place, Citicorp, the CIO bragged that he would soon push the per hour labor cost in IS below $25! At no point was I allowed to even compete against these folks.
I lost everything. In desperation I took a teaching job in Korea – training more Asians English so they can take more American jobs. I now work at a call center,making $10 an hour, 30 hours a week, but I managed to have passed a bar exam, and am looking for work in law again.
This ‘bargaining power’ approach to IS labor markets is part of a much bigger systemic problem in America going way back.
In 1860 the U.S. had the most dynamic economy in the world, AND the broadest distribution of wealth in history – despite the fact that 10% (3 million) of us were held as slaves in the South. In 1861 we went to war to fix the problem of that 10%. Yet, 25 years after a successful out come to that war, wealth concentration in the United States was greater than ever.
Why?
The invention of the modern limited liability corporation in 1862 (some argue as early as 1855) is why.
Why did corporations destroy the broad distribution of wealth?
The reason is because Corporations are ‘ownership collectives’. This gives them immense bargaining power advantages over workers.
In the 1937 this problem was addressed with the legalization of collective bargaining rights for unions.
The Union’s bargaining power advantage was that they were bigger than the corporations. As big as GM was, the UAW controlled labor for ALL corporations. This caused oligarchical behavior to set in. In the Steel Industry the entire industry bargained collectively with the union at one time. This meant that there was no competition between the firms and industry lost its ability to respond and compete internationally. Because CEOs have only a 4 year tenure, they don’t think long term. CEOs gave in to unions to the point of undermining their future competitiveness – never mind, that’s Future-CEOs problem.
This created the opportunity for the CEO class to blame unions for the lack of competitiveness of American industry – never mind the fact that Europeans and the Japanese all had unions.
In the case of Germany the Unions sat on the board of directors. In the case of Japan the workers had life time tenure (something that CEOs said would never last). But in 2009, it was 2/3rds of the American auto industry that went bankrupt, not Japans.
And here is what the American CEOs don’t want you to know: Japan’s model is better than ours.
In Japan, because of Tenure, corporations are run with employee primacy. Employee’s interest is long term market share. Turns out, that’s the long term shareholders interest too. Why? Because stock markets value market share. So Japanese corporations plan and invest for the long term. In the 1990s, despite low gas prices, Japanese car companies kept working on hybrid engine technology. Why? Because fuel efficiency is sometimes market drivers, and they can’t afford to not have a position in them if it comes about. What were American car companies doing at the time? Taking profits with gas guzzlers. Which strategy was more risky? Which made the CEOs richer?
By the way, when I was in Korea, I saw a J.P. Morgan rep on cnbc bad mouthing the Japanese system of employee primacy.
In both Japan and the U.S. shareholder primacy is the ostensive rule – but in Japan employee primacy wins out in practice. How about the U.S. ? CEO primacy wins out.
The Solidarity of the CEOs is undermining U.S. economy. Note, they didn’t try to fix the American system to something like Japan’s or Germany’s. Instead they have always been out to break the backs of American labor’s bargaining power. They shipped every possible job they could overseas to do that. They even shipped millions of jobs to a Chinese Communist dictatorship. They rather break the back of American workers than worry about the Comintern International.
It’s all about bargaining power.
The founders understood this too, but they didn’t anticipate the modern limited liability Corporation. But they did give us democracy (political socialism 1 man:1vote) which could work to level the playing field – which it did beginning in 1933, but the process took a decade and a half, with the help of a world war to inflate the bargaining power of workers. They also gave us the bill of rights and the common law (two other legs). Now corporations have so much money they own the Supreme Court undermining both those protections for ordinary people.
There are some businesses that don’t resent their workers, that have a long term view, that have good management. These will survive. IBM? Not so much.
actually, the CEOs of GM and Chrysler in the early years of the Bush 41 presidency begged the government to enact national single-payer healthcare. reason being, as they espoused, that health care was costing them and only the US automakers $5000 to $7000 (varied with the date of the statement, probably with higher costs from the insurance companies) per car on average, and the foreign competition paid none of it, as their governments carried that cost in single-payer.
decried as heretics, they crashed and burned. the ol’boys network said “let ’em fail,” even though without that order book, the manufacturing infrastructure of the US would be gutted like a fish, and we’d be a full-fledged economic colony of China.
>” in any large and succesful corporation is, “who will get what portion of the ‘economic rents’ that are up for grabs?” amongst the investors, the workers and the executives?”
The banking system functioned better before Wall street went public. Management claims all the rent – but sometime I forget – Gwen Ifill asked this question last week:
JPMorgan didn’t lose taxpayers’, depositors’ or shareholders’ money.
Why are the 7 Billion losses any of the government’s business?
Functioning democracies don’t rely on comedians to shine light on this orgy:
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-stewart-mocks-senates-kiddie-glove-treatment-of-jp-morgan-head-jamie-dimon/
“I month later I got a job righting contracts and IP agreements for a corporation.”
Tim, how did you get two degrees with spelling like this?
To those who think my question troll-ish, I’m 54, I =CAN= spell well, but my programming skills are gone. Spent too much time in project management before realizing that I was too hands-on to ever be a good one. :/
I used spell check. I also wasn’t in a rush when I wrote. I got an “A” on every paper but the last one, including the one with the Nobel Laureate. Plus, I know I have a spellling problem, made worse by rushing things, especially with hominyms. If I’m writing fast I might right one, won, or one time when I was very tired I even wrote juan.
If you are interested in the subject, might I suggest you take a look at Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory – none of us are good at everything. Usually we are all close to average in most things, but above average in two or three. An idiot savant is below average in many things, but then will have a huge spike in one specific thing. Good spellers are generally speaking, people with strong inductive logic skills which is very valuable. Deductive minds, not so much.
Project management is easy: 1) make a list of to do items and order 2) call a meeting of team members and solicit their views on the list (tapping into their expertise, some things will be added, some will be subtracted, and the order will change. 3) Ask who will do what and how long will it take them. The key here is not to have sled dogs chasing rabbits and beagles pulling sleds. Fortunately the beagles will always volunteer to chase rabbits and the sled dogs will always volunteer to chase sleds. People generally gravitate to what they are good at. Generally they’ll be optimistic on their completion dates too, so if they tell you two weeks, you have to budget more because they aren’t anticipating the snags they’ll run into, one method is to turn that into 80 hours, then figure 5 productive hours per day, that’s really 16 days, so convert into weeks, always rounding up, and there you have 4 weeks – don’t tell the team mate that, tell management that, and use that in your plans. Most task can be handled that way, but some, those on the critical path, are subject to dead lines imposed on them. So then you have to ask the team, collectively, or the individual charged with the task, while in a team meeting “can we get it done by Oct. 10th.” When you do that, every member of the teams mind will immediately begin spinning their wheels to figure out if it can be done. If its do able, they’ll alway rise to the challenge. At that point you have their buy in and pretty much their devotion for the rest of the project. You don’t have to do anything, but get out of their way and empower them. Also, make it extremely easy for them to approach you when they confront a problem. Let them see you making mistakes and fixing them, so they know its okay to make them as long as they get on with the fixing part. Tolerate, even coddle, the eccentric personality – if an eccentric person can thrive on your team then every team member KNOWS they can be themselves while on their project… the more relaxed they are the better the work they do, the more they know they can be themselves the better their work… quite likely it may be the first time they’ve ever felt that in their working lives. If you do these things, you will have given your team mates immense traction over the lions share of their own lives. You can never underestimate what this means to them. Gaining traction over the human condition is the prime direction for all people. At that point, without asking, these people will work like dogs for you, they are totally dialed in. Initially protect them from the outside world (management) imposing on their productivity. You go to the higher level meeting, they stay and do the work. Never, ever, ever, directly go negative on a person if their dates are slipping. Instead, tell them if the dates keep slipping you will have to bring them to the higher level management meetings to explain why the dates are slipping. I can guarantee you they will not want to do that, that’s a no win situation for them, that way you appear to always be by their side, and that the evil doer is from outside the team. If you allow your team room to thrive, you will thrive. I can remember flying home on the weekends while my team mates called me late on a saturday afternoon with a problem… I had no idea that they were even working – I hadn’t asked them too. I was later told that one guy worked 18 hours a day, he was so dialed in on his task. At the end of one particular project, I had one team mate come up to me and say, I have never worked harder on a project in my entire life than this, … pregnant pause… nor had more fun. We got that project done in a third of the time most take to do similar projects. At no time had moral broken down despite immense pressure and threadbare budgets. And I, I did very little. I kept the plan. The hardest part is finding a resource for a to do item that no one can do. Also, you do a lot of the stuff no one wants to do. That’s it. There really is nothing to project management. My weakness has always been office politics, which is why I prefer consulting. When I was young I managed a project well and got stabbed in the back after it was done when I went on vacation. Never really knew how to handle that stuff. But projects are easy and I do miss managing them. Deep down, I like people.
“I might right one, won,” Interesting that you tried to defend yourself instead of learn from the comment. Spell check is only the beginning of the “making it understandable” process. Yes, we all gravitate toward that which we do best. Education is about learning to do what’s important whether it comes naturally or not.
What was I to learn from the comment? That I wasn’t a good speller? That it gets worse when I’m rushed or am tired, or don’t have a lot of time available.
I learned those a long time ago. I got “As” from all my papers in law school, even from a nobel laureate. So apparently I learned that lesson some time ago, and made the adjustments when it counted. Also, look at the time I posted.
I learned another thing along the way, to not see the forest because a tree was in the way.
By the way, I wasn’t choosing to defend myself.
I’m good at somethings, bad at others.
He asked a question – and I answered it.
Funny how you chose to see that as my defending myself instead of answering his questions.
It says more about you than it does about me. Especially as you are chiming in as a third party. As I said above, it is evident to me that we all seek a sense of traction. “The tree” of your statement says “I enjoy being a jerk to other people.” “The forests” of your statement says “that’s how I get my sense of traction.” Pity.
Great summary of PM. A nice combination of Deming and DeMarco. If, instead of dogs, you are managing cats, don’t attempt herding. Restate the problem so that it looks like a mouse.
As a technology worker that is getting valued less as I am getting older, I deplore the H1B Visa program. There are many jobs I might have had and could have done very well in a tighter labor market. I’ve survived, I’ve moved around, I’ve revamped my skills fairly often, but it’s all harder than it should be.
There are also side effects to a large H1B Visa program, I’ve seen foreign workers brought in on tourist visas to work 90 days, return home for a week, then come back to the US. Theoretically the H1B program is supposed to be the outlet for these situations, but in reality since H1B visas take longer to obtain, this doesn’t happent.
In this age of globalization with such great communication technologies we should be encouraging off-shore collaboration between non-co-located teams, not looking for every legal loophole to mash people physically together.
Too many businesses assume that by outsourcing and paying a bundle that the company doing the actual work actually cares and is competent, neither of which is usually true. You don’t get what you pay for and being able to fire them doesn’t undo the damage done.
Hi Shouter
I am quite sure Bob will be quite happy to make a public apology for saying that he said IBM’s clients are leaving because IBM was unable to fulfill their commitments to the clients contracts.
Seriously it is very obvious that there are deficiencies in the current IBM operation, you can either choose to be part of the solution or go back to hiding under your rock and pretend it will all go away
So…have both Hilton and Servicemaster migrated from mainframes in the past decade or more? I’ll bet they have. In addition to the obvious lack of qualified staff, both companies at some point probably fell victim to the “dump your mainframe and move all our stuff to thousands of servers” mentality.
Much fewer competent mainframe people, who yes will demand proper compensation, could run both companies’ infrastructure on the latest z/Architecture systems – and not big ones, either – than the thousands of servers I’m sure both companies have. And you don’t even need to use IGS, either; Memphis is a hot spot of mainframe talent.
For years, vegetable and fruit growers and their politician friends have claimed that they have to hire migrant workers and even illegal aliens because Americans won’t do the work, when the truth is that Americans would gladly do the work if it paid competitive wages. Americans would fight over those jobs for $20/hour, but they want to pay $5.
Now we have companies like IBM and Microsoft, and their politician friends, claiming that we need more IT guest workers because Americans can’t/won’t do the work. Again, the truth is that Americans would gladly learn the skills and do those jobs, but they expect to be paid better than the foreign workers companies would like to bring in.
The only difference between Bill “H1B” Gates and a sweatshop owner is that Gates wants to pay $20 instead of $80, while the sweatshop owner wants to pay $2 instead of $8.
“Now we have companies like IBM and Microsoft, and their politician friends, claiming that we need more IT guest workers because Americans can’t/won’t do the work. Again, the truth is that Americans would gladly learn the skills and do those jobs, but they expect to be paid better than the foreign workers companies would like to bring in.”
I think a lot of people are missing the point. We need to focus on automation and other manufacturing-type processes so there is less reliance on foreign workers. Let’s take programming for example. Often times business applications aren’t rocket science, but the programming tools require people to do low level coding. Why don’t we have prevalent higher level programming tools so techno-functional people (or even techies w/ business knowledge) can build and design enterprise class applications (for web, rich gui, and mobile)? Do we need more workers (domestic and foreign) to do mundane for loops?
We need to be able to do more with the people we have here (both citizen and non-citizen) and not harp on trying to bring in more people.
I can’t tell you the number of times I head a new developement environment that is “so easy, you don’t need a programmer”.
Mostly, icon driven, just drag the loop icon, branch icon, etc… The proglem is with most of them is that they make it very every easy to do basic programs, but when things get complicated, they become almost impossible to use.
You might have to drag 50 icons onto a screen, when 5 lines of well written code would do, and be easier to read and understand as well.
The company I worked for outsourced all programming to IBM who used programmers in India. Over half of our very large IT department was terminated including all programmers, DBA’s, computer operations, much of security and network support.
H1B workers were then brought in from India to do the work of the Americans that had been fired. This type of action is destroying the American dream.
The American Dream is to become rich.
Sometimes I think has become something other than what you state:
The American Dream is to become richer. If you’re not rich already, you need not apply.
The system is skewed against ordinary people bettering themselves through hard work, education, etc. At the same time, “they” hold up a few “one in a million” success stories as proof that the existing system is OK.
Sometimes I think that the only way to become rich is to break the system, whereupon the system is fixed to prevent that from ever happening again. The next one to get rich has to find a different way to break the system.
I’m one of the many IT people Hilton fired when they were entering the contracts with IBM and other outsourcing companies. I have 30+ years of IT experience, and I assure you I could have managed any project they needed managed. I really hate to say it, but I’m glad to hear they are paying a price for their blatant disregard for people. The really disgusting thing is that the man that made all of those decisions just left, I’m sure to move to another company and do the same thing. He made millions of dollars to create the mess he has left behind, and will continue to do the same elsewhere. Why are these seemingly smart people so short-sighted? How did they think they could improve service levels by diismissing their intellectual assets? Thousands of years of knowledge walked out of those doors, and there is no way it could be replaced by IBM or anyone else. DUH! Maybe they will learn fr this experience…one can only hope!
Never underestimate the ability of salesmen to ply CIO’s with trinkets and gifts and broken promises to win business.
I think a bigger, more interesting question is how do the senior management people who screw up so badly continue to get hired.
How did Carly Fiorina wind up at HP, after her debacle at Lucent?
How was Darl McBride given the opportunity to kill SCO after his disaster at IKON?
Here’s how foreign worker visas work in Australia. Our 457 visa is similar to the H1-B visa.
First the company has to apply for sponsorship. In order to get this, they need to demonstrate that they are spending at least 1% of their total payroll (including non-Australians) on training their Australian employees. That 1% cannot include training which was only given to company principals — it has to genuinely be employees. If you can’t do that, then you pay 2% to an industry training fund or equivalent.
Once you have a sponsorship, you can then nominate some job roles. You have to show that the salary that you are offering (including all benefits) is at least the same as what you are offering an equivalent Australian in the same job. If there is no Australian in the same job, then you have to explain how you came up with that salary, and it will be checked against industry data collected by the federal government.
Then the foreign worker applies for their visa. Once they start working, they are free to look for other jobs in Australia, but of course the other employer would have to have the sponsorship and nomination in place.
There are (as far as I know) no limitations on the number of nominations a company can apply for, but there are limitations on the number of 457 visas.
yeah we have the same issue in Australia,accept the problem of flooding the market with visa workers is actually making the problem worse
more very experienced I.T workers are leaving the industry and less experienced visa workers are taking over the service is appallingly bad this is from system
engineer perspective written and verbal are so bad the staff just wont report an issue at all
Great article,
I have to ask the question where was the upper managers for the two companies. If i pay someone to perform a job for me usually i stay on top of things.
Its amazing that IBM did not perform their job that they were paid for, But at the same time who was running the day-to-day business for Hilton and ServiceMaster.
This is complete break down of the system, and please don’t even get me started on H1B visas that have no clue what is going on.
I would start with the management team at the two companies and ask them what were they doing when the service level agreements were missed, or the same problem would happen to the new team.
Just my 2 cent.
If there are no H1 visas lots of companies will just hire in India and China directly. Yea, things will be more complicated, but why does DB monitoring have to happen in Kentucky and not another country?
LOL!
Don’t blame IBM completely. They were just the vulture, they didn’t create the carcass! Blackstone bought Hilton then started firing everybody. If I recall correctly, in the first big meeting with their new CIO, IT staff were shown a PowerPoint slide labeled something like “outsourcing schedule” and the career path was basically “if you don’t like the plan then leave.” With continuous layoffs and morale in the toilet, by the time IBM got there, most of the people who knew anything were already fired or making plans to leave. IBM was crippled from the start with bad information. I don’t know why they signed a contract without a good idea of how these systems worked and no one left to tell them. One employee I know of got a support call escalated to his cellphone about a month after being laid off. People who still work there tell me critical systems such as reservations have had multiple outages, and trying to get a problem fixed nowdays involves painful calls with multiple vendors.
Memphis is an interesting place to work in IT. There are only a few major employers (FedEx, International Paper, St Jude) and plenty of job seekers due to layoffs at Hilton and other places. The Memphis IT community (or should I say the _competent_ Memphis IT community) is very very small. We all know each other and most of us have a bunch of side consulting going on. If you’re good, word will get around and you can make it as a consultant. I read somewhere on a blog comment that as the economy improves and people have more choices “… years of treating good employees as resources will come home to roost” and I expect to be reading more articles about Hilton soon!
Unfortunately things aren’t any better at IBM. Same continuous layoffs and morale is in the toilet.
100% correct. Blackstone’s transition of Hilton IT to vendors couldn’t have been worse.
They got rid of 80% of our developers before they had the vendors selected. Knowledge transfer really never happened because there was little knowledge left.
That new hilton website was supposed to be finished years ago.
I’m sure Blackstone was only doing the true “American” thing by squeezing millions out of the company for their executives. I only experienced the Hilton account after the damage was already done.
I will say that this was not an isolated account issue. The last few years I spent at IBM we had several teams of red blooded Americans traveling the country attempting to recover some part of the “troubled” accounts. It seemed like the same core group of people as well, because we all knew each other.
My point I guess is that IBM lost their ability to do the one thing that made them great “Listen to the Customer”
To those who decried H1B visas in the comments: an average American does *not* desire highly paid IT workers; he desires affordable IT. We should not be asking 300 million Americans to pay for more expensive products so that a small minority of us, IT workers, can have highly paid jobs.
Disclosure: I started my software developer career on H1B and worked my way to citizenship. My employers always paid the same benefits for me as for American-born employees. I believe I was paid as well as American developers would have been paid in my positions. If I had the freedom to change jobs however, I would have found better paid jobs.
Would you take the same attitude toward your DOCTOR MD. When you have a medical issue?
Would you hire the cheapest lowest bid on your house foundation ?
You get what you pay for.
Interesting point. So now, we see that it is possible to outsource medicine. Would you prefer to pay $1500 to have a CAT Scan or $800 because the hospital can at nighttime have it read by doctors in India?
Good point, just like their tech schools that they pay 200.00 $ to get a certificate to have access to your data, and 50$ to another company that gives them a carrier history for 2 years, I would rather stay and take my chances with board certified local doctors to support my local community.
Lets think about the post and what the content of the post is all about, “Lesson learned”. Two companies that taught that they could achieve the same results by outsourcing now they are in a middle of another change to another vendor or their own data processing. I suppose 3rd time is a charm?
Think about it if they had invested all that time and money in making their original centers work more efficient and used technology the way they would have liked it, maybe their bottom line profit margin that dictates all the outsourcing would show real profit from the business and not lay offs. Maybe a lot of folks would still had jobs that allowed them to pay for that cheap doctor in India.
Do you support your local community?
The post is about IBM management which is failing. There are lots of companies that are succeeding with H1B visas.
I’d rather try and lower health care costs, yes it’s true.
Zoran, the short answer is that you weren’t paid as much as equivalent American workers. An employer who says otherwise is hiding either your true competence by putting you at a lower staffing level –identifying you as a Software Developer than a Senior Software Developer, for example– or using your presence to deny raises to your fellow American workers.
I think you’ve missed the point entirely.
It’s not the case that competent IT admins/developers (who are absolutely worth their higher salaries) are being replaced by competent H1-B / outsourced employee’s. They’re being replaced by people pretending to have the same skills being offered for a fraction of the cost.
Pay peanuts, get monkeys. It’s that simple.
Is there an official announcement about the Hilton deal ending? Don’t see it anywhere?
I think it interesting that a blog post on why/whether IBM global services is going down the pan has attracted so many negative comments on immigrants. The mistakes of the thirties where an economic shock led to protectionism and nativism must not be repeated. BTW the IBM brand still has some lustre for me. I think they do good fundamental technical work in developing advanced process technology for chip fabrication and I think Samsung and Global Foundries would agree.
My beef is not with immigrants themselves. The H1B visa program is, at it’s heart, not about immigration at all; it’s about cost reduction. All of the talk about “competitiveness” and “openness” is a smoke screen designed to obscure the desire of some MBAs to attain a cheap labor force that is somehow as competent as the highly skilled work force it replaces.
Speaking of the unique nature of the US and the current crop of CEOs, I have a few comments. The immigrants (ignoring the native population) came here for freedom. Freedom from religious domination, freedom from the class system, freedom from the dictates of royalty, and freedom from having to pursue the same livihood as your parents. At the time, these were revolutionary concepts.
However, human nature being what it is, the achievers in any society have a tendency to look down upon the under achievers and to cnsider themselves superior and thus deserving of all that is available from society.
Also, when a society becomes wealthy, the government tends to become controlled by the rich and powerful and to provide gifts to the multitude to stay in power. The middle class end up getting screwed. That being the case, we are merely reaping the ills of human nature and the wealth derived from natural resources and technology. Here’s hoping that wealth continues. Any basic improvements in the status quo may have to wait for improvements in human nature.
All civilizations that have come before us have collapsed from similiar problems — the ills of human nature and/or the failures of natural resources or technology.
I’d give that one a 5/10.
You have to work harder, maybe use a few “!!1!!!!1!!” in there, and maybe even use a few IBM boardmembers in your post.
Cringely definitely needs to get his facts right. I do not know if he stumbled upon some job seeking
candidate who may have been laid off who passed on all this bogus information to him.
I think it would have been in better taste if he had spoken to ServiceMaster & DBA Direct management and got those facts in here before wasting his time penning this article. And the rest of us speculating and mud slinging comments on Companies which are actually providing jobs & paying their taxes and not filing for bankruptcy like other companies.
The truth be told. H1B visas are given primarily cause the adequate talent pool is not available in the US & this is a fact and reality however bitter it may sound.
I’m sure it was not a very easy decision for the company to take back from IBM its IT Infrastructure. Not sure if the company was even ready to
take over the same. Its going to be an uphill task from the customer to get its IT infrastructure in place. And most definitely having its business talking to its IT infrastructure.
Most companies fail as sometimes they take on things that they are not either completely skilled to do or rather the primary business back ground is non- IT related. That’s the reason you have companies like IBM to support IT infrastructure for companies that need to focus on their business while IT companies look after the IT infrastructure. It wont be long when you see the very same companies looking out for companies like IBM or other IT companies to look after their infrastructure as their business would start getting impacted.
And believe it or not Hilton & ServiceMaster will be having their own set of H1B visa holders.
Gary wrote:
“H1B visas are given primarily cause the adequate talent pool is not available in the US”
Fixing the wrong symptom. The inadequate talent is in management.
The projects I’ve been on with the most H1Bs were projects where the customer didn’t really know what they needed, and screened resumes by keywords. (Well, buzzwords, really, since even keyword screening would have been better if they had used more relevant keywords.)
The (rational) response of the contract firms was to offer many H1Bs without wasting any effort on screening them. Normally a few would be good enough to carry the others, and those few couldn’t leave (since the company owned the visa), so there was no business value in worrying about which ones they were.
Obviously, that isn’t a recipe for quality products, and it probably isn’t sustainable — but it is temporarily profitable for the outsourcer.
“The truth be told. H1B visas are given primarily cause the adequate talent pool is not available in the US & this is a fact and reality however bitter it may sound.”
Ha!
I’ve worked with them, and they were just stuffed in seats along the regular guys whenever market rates went above what the company wanted to pay. Float a position on monster, no takers for a developer job at at $40k, call the bodyshop. Some of these guys were solid, some were frauds, but you can’t tell me that they were special in any way beyond a willingness to take that check. Don’t pretend it’s more than that.
I found this post on itbusinessedge.com
The guy was right, it just took 2 1/2 years.
Add a comment Leave a comment on this blog post.
Sep 6, 2009 11:07 AM Guest Marc Murphy says:
The next big IBM outsourcing deal that will go bad is the one they negotiated and signed up with ServiceMaster Inc. in Dec/08.
Great Article, Bob. The bitter truth about internal management and downfall of IBM is visible on the horizon. Well, to some that is.
With an unemployment rate of beyond 10% in the USA, there is not one reason for a single H1B visa…
Bob,
You’ve got to love it. The ad I’m seeing at the top of this page is for DoubleTree (a Hilton company). This clickthrough’s on me.
I’m a former IBMer and was actually on the ServiceMaster project for a short time. One thing you got wrong, Bob, was the idea that the project was staffed by H1B visas. As has become common in recent years, IBM relies much less on H1B visas in favor of L1 visas. L-1A visas are for executives and managers, and L-1B are for workers with “specialized knowledge.” (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-1_visa).
What IBM does is to bring people from IBM India to work on projects in the U.S. (Keep in mind that the employee population of IBM India is *significantly* larger than that of IBM U.S.) I can attest that not only were the “worker-bees” at ServiceMaster IBM India employees, nearly all of the management staff was, too. You had to get to a third-line manager to get an IBM U.S. manager on the project, and none of them were on-site at ServiceMaster full time.
Furthermore, the bulk of the support work was done by employees in India. The group in Memphis was a small front group that worked with the much larger India-based team.
I was on the engagement a long time ago, but even then it was evident that the ServiceMaster “business people” hated IBM, and that they were constantly being stonewalled. Of course, part of the problem was probably the contract…IBM’s attitude was that it would provide service to the letter of the law, and no more. ServiceMaster, when they had their own I.T. shop were accustomed to having their I.T. people go beyond the call of duty.
By the way, none of the L1 IBM India employees had “specialized knowledge.” The work they were doing had been done in the past by ServiceMaster employees. These were not high-level I.T. jobs.
I should add that an advantage (to corporate America, not to its workers) to the L1 visa is that there are no limits on how many are issued, unlike the H1-B visa.
Has IBM created a new and useful Business Machine in the last decade or two? It’s amazing that they are still in business at all.
It’s completely true about automation – IBM doesn’t automate anything. They pride themselves in being a 100 yr old company and they function like they live in a world a hundred years ago . The executive management is a recycled bunch of folks who have been with the company so long and forever. They have never seen the world outside IBM and dont have a clue about the fact that the world outside IBM is more technogically advanced. Management is absolutely technologically ignorant. IBM is where Idiots Become Managers who think IBM is where It’s Better Manual.
This retired ex-Intel employee has been hearing for years from tech leaders and the business press that we just HAVE to hire H1-B’s because half the students in US graduate STEM programs are foreign students. What I NEVER hear brought up is the question why young American talent is so disinterested in pursuing graduate STEM education. Perhaps it’s because green cards areof the compensation package for many postgrad STEM employees the actual financial compensation has been reduced to where it’s really not cost-effective for citizens to pursue tech grad degrees.
When my nephews were starting college, I told them to NOT go into comp sci or anything IT related. And this was right before the dot com bubble popped in 2000, too, because I could see the outsourcing wave coming. Why try to get a job in that mess when you could get a job in another field that wasn’t targeted by the MBAs?
As someone that interfaced directly with the Hilton account I can verify that IBM treats their outsourcing customers like trash. IBM has moved most of the system administration duties in the data centers to India, and has done this without the approval of the customers. The English language skills and the technical abilities of these “administrators” is abominable. Calling these problems to IBM management fell on deaf ears, the bottom line was always cited as the reason why IBM would never bring back these jobs to the U.S. Management basically told us here in the data centers to just shut up and live with it. Anyone that worked in the data centers knew that this was just a disaster waiting to happen and now it appears that this is just the tip of the failure iceberg. A while back IBM lost the VF account for this same reason.
Lost the VF Account??? HA! Guess what…after moving from IBM to CSC as their IT provider, VF realized how much better IBM was – and they resigned for 5 years, kicking CSC to the curb.
Yep, you’re right “Still Here”. They are insourcing again with a SaaS cloud emphasis after booting IBM then CSC. VF figured out that it’s better and cheaper than any outsourcing solution.
You can’t get spell check to work either?
If a city like Memphis, a region with an overabundance of low-skilled individuals can pull a 1000 or so folks in for a job fair like this, other cities with more skilled population should provide better results. The H1B is a scam to drive down salaries and change the demographics of certain industries.
There is a hospital here in Memphis with more foreign-born doctors than native born (their office listing board resembles a UN General Assembly roll call). My brother-in-law is a practicing surgeon there and he claims they are here on work visas and, most make less than US doctors did in the 1980’s.
Why do people assume Memphis is low-skilled? This is is part of the “blame America first” tone that is prevalent in these immigration debates.
Here is Wikipedia on Memphis:
Memphis is the home of three Fortune 500 companies: FedEx Corporation, AutoZone Incorporated, and International Paper.[26] In addition, Memphis is home to the pharmaceutical/healthcare firm Schering-Plough Corporation, serving as the company’s research and development center. In 2006, a fourth Fortune 500 company, ServiceMaster, announced it was moving its corporate headquarters from Downers Grove, Illinois, to Memphis. In 2007, ServiceMaster became a private company. Other major corporations based in Memphis include Medtronic Sofamor Danek, First Horizon National Corporation, Pinnacle Airlines, Thomas and Betts Corporation, Mueller Industries, Fred’s, Verso Paper, Allenberg Cotton Co., Dunavant Enterprises, Accredo Health Group, GE Capital Aviation Services, Baptist Memorial Hospital, Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare, and Baker Donelson, among others. Corporations with major operations based in the Memphis area include Hilton Worldwide, Technicolor Home Entertainment Services, Smith & Nephew, Sharp Manufacturing, Brother International, and Caesars Entertainment Corporation.
Yeah, sounds like a real talent wasteland.
He is right, to a degree. Some of the higher-end or more specialized positions, like experienced UNIX, SAN and Cisco engineers, are extremely hard to fill in Memphis. I know of one open position at a major company for a UNIX/Linux Engineer that’s been unfilled for almost a year. The Windows market is different, but people to fill those positions are dime a dozen anywhere.
Being friends with some IT recruiters, I also know that Memphis has a very, very tough time attracting people from outside the market to move in for a job. Mainly because of a poor reputation on crime. People would much rather live in Nashville or Knoxville. When a recruiter calls someone from Atlanta or St. Louis about the possibility of moving to Memphis for a pretty high-paying job, they sometimes get laughed at over the phone.
Fellow Readers
As owner of a thinkpad notebook I am a bit dis-heartened to hear all this about IBM. Lest us not forget this is a prestigeous institution. Let us not forget they beat Grandmasters at chess!
Lastly, if there were no visas so readily available – how am I able to apply for any openings at job fairs being a foreign citizen. Is that not such a bad thing?
ChiuPei, IBM does NOT own the think pad brand….it was sold to a Chinese company-Lenovo a few years ago…..interesting, huh:-.)
Some random observations:
– In my previous job at a huge manufacturing company, I know one of the motivations for hiring H1B was to support the company’s goal of “increasing diversity”.
– Dunno how true this is, but I’ve heard that the lack of domestic IT talent is driven by a negative-feedback loop. People say, “all IT jobs are going offshore or being filled by H1B,” so college students respond by pursuing fewer and fewer technology degrees. That results in a smaller domestic talent pool, so employers increasingly look to H1B, offshoring, etc.
– In my current position, at a small high-frequency trading firm, it could be just selection bias, but we see very few domestic candidates for the positions we need to fill (which are all technical and/or quantitative). The candidates with the highest GPAs, the ones who interview the best, the ones with the most demonstrable, useful technical skills are overwhelmingly non-Americans. (I represent a very small sample, just pointing out what I’ve seen.)
– Some of the comments above to me feel like whining, almost to the point of “they’re taking our jobs”. At least here in Chicago, the electronic trading industry is constantly looking for high-quality technical people. It also happens to be one of the highest-paying industries. At the risk of sounding arrogant or elitist, you do have to be good (deep understanding of OS internals, low-level interfaces, how the hardware works, complex systems/problems, write bug-free, maintainable, high-performance code, etc).
– In my overall experience, a very small percentage of technical people (at least programmers, that’s the vocation I know best) are actually good. This holds for foreign AND domestic people. The overwhelming majority are just mediocre (again, regardless of nationality).
– Virtually all jobs these days face wage pressure from globalization. This is fact of life. Consider that, as a whole, people in the USA are “The 1%” to the rest of the world. Even *poor* people in the USA and other 1st world countries have a significantly higher standard of living than the rest of the world’s population.
– To expect that, by virtue of being a natural-born US citizen with a degree, you should immediately have an abundance of high-paying jobs from which you can choose is simply arrogant. It’s indicative of an entitlement mentality.
– Here’s your competition: the H1B candidate who is willing to work 10-12 hours/day for 65% of what you make. He’ll live in a tiny apartment (quite possibly with roommates), probably not have a car, and work weekends when needed. You say, “that’s unfair, I can’t be expected to live like that.” But consider that my hypothetical H1B, even working like this, is probably still much better off than he was in his native land. And can you blame the business for wanting someone like this? This H1B is better for the immigrant, better for the business, and possibly better for the business’s customers. At the end of the day, it’s better *value* overall. It only sucks for those people who think that they are entitled to own a suburban mansion, with two or more new cars, big screen TVs, and all the other trimmings for only 40 hours a week.
– I’m not supporting the H1B system. But I think that, at the end of the day, if you are good at what you do, and can demonstrably provide value for your customers, clients and/or employer, then the jobs will come to you. It may require you to retrain and/or relocate. Or, you may come to the realization that, relative to the *global* talent pool, your skills maybe aren’t consistent with your expected pay.
– A final anecdote for “thought food”: in college, my wife was originally going to be a bio-medical engineer. She got good grades (mostly As, some Bs). But she changed to a non-technical degree because she realized that, despite her natural aptitude for math and science, her heart wasn’t in it. In her engineering program, she looked around, and saw that people not only did their homework, but they took on related projects in their spare time—for fun. The CS students wrote programs beyond what was required for class; the EEs built circuits and analyzed them with scopes; the MEs built robots; etc. But her involvement in that stuff ended with class. She new she’d never be able to compete with people who “lived” their vocation, when all she had was the grades.
Ever serve in the military, Matt? Think twice before you call your fellow citizens whiners for wanting a better life than a poor peasant in India.
“I’m not supporting the H1B system. But I think that, at the end of the day, if you are good at what you do, and can demonstrably provide value for your customers, clients and/or employer, then the jobs will come to you. It may require you to retrain and/or relocate. Or, you may come to the realization that, relative to the *global* talent pool, your skills maybe aren’t consistent with your expected pay.”
Matt, the jobs will not continue to come to you if the labor market is Walmarted through misuse of the H1B system. It doesn’t matter if I’m good or not if the prevailing wages are destroyed by cheap imitation IT. Tried to shop in small town America in the past ten years? You take what you can find or you go to Amazon.com (which I guess is off-shoring in this metaphor.)
By reigning in H1B and L1 visas and pushing foreign workers in IT to follow the same rules as others without special skills, you give them more rights (they can change jobs and negotiate fair pay) and you don’t eviscerate the domestic IT labor market. We don’t have to be fatalistic or protectionist about this, we just have to make IT follow the same rules as other industries.
During my time at IBM (eight years) one of the issues I noted was that the company had fallen prey to the mindset that “Process Is Everything”. There is a management philosophy at IBM (and many other companies) that if your processes are air-tight, you can practically get away with monkeys running them.
Whether we’re discussing IBM’s World-Wide Project Management Method (WWPMM) and its myriad work patterns and processes, the Delivery Excellence (DE) group, Buy On Demand (IBM’s internal sourcing tool), or the system of annual performance appraisals, everything at IBM is about the “process”. When DE was starting up, it was in the interest of avoiding the need for heroics to “save” a project (failed projects can cost IBM billions of dollars). While that made sense at the time, the pendulum swung too far and now it’s used as a substitute for having sufficiently skilled project and technical resources. To add insult to injury, processes have become over-engineered to the point of being cumbersome, inflexible and inhibiting the success of the very things they were meant to liberate.
Nearly everywhere you look in IBM now, it’s a mess. The chickens have come home to roost.
[…] an article on this topic this week, entitled “An IT labor economics lesson from Memphis for IBM“. How can a company 1/100,000th the size of IBM afford to have monitoring? Well, it seems […]
A few years ago I won a corporate level award at IBM. About 100 IBM technical people shared about $1,000,000 in awards that year at a corporate event. These were the top technical people in the whole company. Giving away the awards at the event was one of the vice presidents of IBM, who that year alone had collected over $3,000,000 in stock option profits. Then it hit me, no way could he be worth that kind of money.
Last time I checked nobody was sued for telling the truth. I recently left IBM after a 16 year career that saw this coming. I supported the Hilton account. I made a lot of friends there. Hilton was not happy because IBM never followed through with any of their commitments.
Maybe H1B visas are a relic? Ten or fifteen years ago it seemed there genuinely was a shortage of home grown IT workers, but things have changed, haven’t they, but the H1B visa program is still here filling the status quo. Are hiring managers just out of touch? Or maybe they’re shell-shocked…
IBM is not a friend of America !
You are correct, they are friends to no one. IBM senior leadership doesn’t care about their employees or their customers. They only care about money and more importantly, their own personal compensation. I know, because I worked there for over 25 years and watched until it made me sick.
Shocking – IBM can’t even afford to supply its employees with apostrophes any more. That’s the only logical explanation I can see for your repeated omission of that particular punctuation mark, in words like “don’t”, “we’re”, and “you’re”.
Well, either that or you’re a particularly illiterate troll. Your choice.
There are many notes in this string of comments regarding STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathmatics) education, and the benefits and risks of pursuing that path. I see comparatively few comments in any discussion, relating to literacy and literary education. Essential to advancing any body of knowledge, including information technology, is the ability to describe, preserve, and teach the principles. Part of that literacy skill is the ability to participate in a discussion with civility and logic (and even better, with verified facts).
Bless the student who achieves both the technical skills, and the ability to explain and teach those skills.
What if there were more English majors in information technology?
jc
[…] from his last job as CIO at HP and GM’s largest outsourcer is EDS, now part of HP. Or there is ServiceMaster and its insourcing from IBM. You could argue those are exceptions, but I started hearing from […]
H-1B is just International Socialism. Giving away what Americans created to lazy countries that didn’t.
Giving a socialist a job is different from socialism. But it’s true that giving foreigners our know-how may make them more competitive against us, lowering the standard of living of those Americans who compete with them, while lowering the cost of some products Americans conusme.
Stupid post. Actually it would be socialism if the H1B program were banned!
Its funny , so many comments and evryone has missed one point. the reality !
its time americans wake up to the FLAT WORLD.u r no more shielded by deceptive international trade practices followed by ur govt. ur govt freed up the tiger called world trade , no borders trade and global supply chains , now evry1 has to ride it , some fall down and get killed , but its not ur mistake , u r part of a larger game , u r just a pawn , the KINGs themselves r busy taming the tiger and ur programming skill or pleasure seeking attitude is not enuf. welcome to the new world where u dont get a 1st class life just bcoz u r a citizen of an imperialist power.Internationalism is the new Nationalism , if u think H1B is helping peasants in india , u r wrong , India and China are paying their own price for all this shit , in this new world of apple and ibm and big screen tvs and fast cars, u dont care abt ur neighbour , y do u expect ur CEO to worry abt u , we r seeing , in all this damage , a magnified reflection of our individual behaviours , of insensitivity , of lack of trust , of infidelity , of greed , of a demonic feeling to acquire more than what is required , like the worms which fly towards the bulb and die , we r running towards our end , its simple , some die now , some die later , no one is spared
[…] already wrote a column about the experience of former IBM customers Hilton Hotels and ServiceMaster having no trouble […]
Bob, great work but surprised by your naivete on H1B’s.
Do more research, there’s a whole industry involved in this scam, “how to prove you can’t find workers” etc. Every large company is crawling with them.
The issue is strategic as well, it’s JOBS and Security/Privacy.
And, we are not building US technical capability, we are training it and shipping it back overseas with access to critical data and infrastructure!
Please keep going, you are onto a huge issue.
test
[…] may recall a recent column here where the IT community in Memphis, TN proved there was no labor shortage in that technology […]
[…] may recall a recent column where the IT community in Memphis, TN proved there was no labor shortage in that technology […]
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[…]An IT labor economics lesson from Memphis for IBM[…]…
In reading this article I find it almost odd that dbaDirect is being praised while IBM is being bashed. I am currently a DBA at dbaDirect. We have had a variety of customers taken from us by IBM. While I agree my interaction with IBM’s DBA’s has been less than favorable. I also know dbaDirect from the inside and customer are mislead there just the same as anywhere else.
In reading this article I find it almost odd that dbaDirect is being praised while IBM is being bashed. I am currently a DBA at dbaDirect. We have had a variety of customers taken from us by IBM. While I agree my interaction with IBM’s DBA’s has been less than favorable. I also know dbaDirect from the inside and customer are mislead there just the same as anywhere else.
The whole misleading thing which I agree goes on all over the place starting with salespeoples’ low ball bids and clueless beancounters masquerading as CIOs will only stop, company by company, when the commpany as a whole starts regarding their IT operation as strategic instead of an expense. As for the H1Bs they are truly toxic. They have so degraded expectations and lowered costs that no American kid wants to know about getting into IT unless he is a true geek. What is the point? 100K in college debt then be barely in the middle class and have to compete with Indian H1Bs who are preferred by Indian hiring managerr and agents as well as the likes of Microsoft whose hypocritical founder decries the lack of STEM skills in US workers when he and his pals have been busy firing them all.
Disgusting situation and the Pols of both stripes are being paid off to comply.
You forgot a very important part of the equation. Preferred vendor’s lists to keep out talented independent small shops. You, Jane Blow, cannot work on a project unless your pimp represents you to the client. You might be the sexist girl doing the hottest shit in town, but if you want to preform, you got to pay Guido.
“According to my sources at Hilton, the IBM contract was a nightmare. IBM couldn’t keep Hilton’s Exchange servers running. The SAN in the Raleigh data center hasn’t worked right since it supposedly came up in January, with some SAN outages lasting more than a day. IBM couldn’t monitor Hilton’s servers in the IBM data center. Hilton had to tell IBM when the servers were running low on disk space, for example.”
Just found this series of articles and this post in particular and I have to agree that these practices still continue on both sides of the 49th parallel. I am in Canada, working for a large Oil & Gas company which has contracted IBM Global to do IT work. They pay IBM good money and all IBM does is sit back in their chairs and do nothing until something falls over. Then they’re running around with their heads cut off trying to fix it. Half the time client-side managers ask IBM why something went down or failed and they cannot explain why. Root cause analysis is beyond painful.
Great analogy that explain this perfectly: You bought a brand new house. You decide that you are going to hire a team of guys to maintain the home – top to bottom, inside and out. You pay them a princely sum annually to do this – to come by every week and make sure everything is taken care of and to handle any concerns that come up. The team drives by your place (doesn’t stop – they literally drive by) each week. The two times they enter in the house each year they’re walking through the house but not inspecting or checking anything — just having a look around. And so after five years of them offering this ‘service’, you run into an issue where your not getting any heat in the middle of winter. Team shows up and notes there’s a problem with your furnace. It needs to be replaced. They’ll need to spin up several projects, $10,000 each to ensure that the furnace gets replaced, ducts are cleaned, checks on natural gas line, etc. But the only thing wrong was that the furnace filter was never changed.
IBM doesn’t monitor; IBM doesn’t believe in proactive or potential problem analysis because if they did that they wouldn’t make extra money. If it breaks they can charge more.
I worked for 5 years at IBM after being outsourced by Merrill Lynch in my previous 5 years with them. I was not allowed to leave as I would sacrifice my severance package (which disappeared anyways in the end). We were whittled from 130 down to less than 15 when I got my “Resource Action” in March of 2009. A manager I never see, only speak to for my review yearly, shows up in the office the day after IBM announces they are laying off 10% of their work force. I guess it just happened like that as they would like to tell you. I got cut because of my salary (which isn’t that great) but more than IBM would like to pay. I hadn’t received a raise in 9 years at this point, so I was falling behind on living wages to be honest. I was getting by, but it was tighter and tighter. all the while with promises of raises and improvements to come. I feel sorry for EVERY IBM employee who actually has to do the work. They are normally competent people who are setup to fail by poor management and leadership. Wall Street is shit. Any company that can reward and cheer a company for moving business outside the US and laying off US workers should be shunned, not rewarded. I watched Stan O’Neil negotiate a 160 million dollar parachute deal and walk out the doors of Merrill Lynch, while sinking 80% of the company who did work there. I watched them build a new Wine Cellar on the 33rd floor and stock it with 100’s of thousands of dollars of wine. All on the company, meanwhile preaching no raises to the masses. The only thing IBM used to say is do the minimum, and anything that is not written verbatim in the contract, we bill for. We were pitched about opportunity and career at IBM, all of us were Resourced over 5 years so that their margins could grow. They even had plans to lay everyone off in 3, 6, and 12 month intervals from the signing of the contract. Luckily, they were told if they did that, the contract would be pulled. Thanks for nothing Steve Norman and Merrill Lynch. I agree with some of the posters, how do these asshats who throw everything under the bus for money this quarter, but losses going forward keep getting hired? I hope IBM goes to hell, here’s to a shake-up so Global Services can be worth something again. These corporations and politicians are KILLING the opportunity for people who work for a living.
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What I find funny, reading this over a year later, is that ServiceMaster went from going strictly in-house to using ATOS (Siemens) to run their helpdesk and a good portion of their desk side support staff. Some companies will never learn.
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By doing so, you might be reinforcing that negativity and attracting to yourself MORE.
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[…] may recall a recent column here where the IT community in Memphis, TN proved there was no labor shortage in that technology […]
I support the H1B program because it represents the best principles of the USA – a free market economy that yields the highest return.
If you are against the H1B program then you must be all for affirmative action because that’s what a ban would mean. I love it when white guys LOVE free market economics UNTIL they start feeling some heat. First they hate the government and pray christ for zero government. As soon as companies want to expand the H1B program they BEG the very government that they hate so much, to step in and regulate the market in their favor.
For all who are against the H1B program – is it OK to pay black men more for a job that a white person can do for less money? If it’s Not ok to pay black men more money then why is it ok to pay whites more for a job that Indians and other Asians are willing to do for less money???
Pure hypocritical BS.
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good articles