While the U.S. Government has been remarkably opaque about the recently discovered security breach at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), we know that personal information on at least 21.5 million present, former, and prospective federal employees was lost. The Feds claim Chinese hackers are at the bottom of it, which is disputed by the Chinese government. This, to me, raises a number of questions, especially about the possible role of IT outsourcing firms and implications for organizations beyond OPM. Does IT outsourcing make your data more vulnerable? Yes, I believe it does.
It’s easy to blame the Office of Personnel Management for its own troubles. Oversight was lax. The agency failed a security audit and didn’t seem to do much in response. When shit hit the fan and it became clear that the identity of almost every living person associated in any way with Federal employment had been compromised, the agency lamely offered 18 months of identity theft screening but then didn’t have the money to pay for it. Pathetic. Both the Obama Administration and Congress are to blame, the former for mismanagement and the latter for “starving the beast” by limiting the OPM budget, pushing the agency toward cost-saving decisions that at least to some extent led to the current crisis.
And a crisis it is. The scope of this hack is mind-boggling. There are 4.5 million Federal employees yet the identities of at least 21.5 million people are involved. How can that be? Well just to give one example, every person with a federal security clearance has to file annually (this seems to vary from agency to agency — see comments below) a 120-page Standard Form 86 updating information about their every social and business contact. All of those Standard Form 86s — millions of them — were stolen. Given that we live in a world of Big Data and six degrees of separation, it’s logical to assume that with some effort nearly every U.S. adult has been compromised in some way by this theft, whether or not you know that Uncle Jim used to be a courier for the CIA.
This is way worse than Target or Home Depot, yet those stories lingered in the press for months while OPM seems already to have disappeared.
IT outsourcing comes into this story in a way that I think was for the most part missed by the press that have now moved on from the story. Root access to OPM databases was held by consultants working from China and Argentina. That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. And as I wrote at the top, who is your IT outsourcing firm working for? Probably less for you than you think.
Two problems here come down to culture and loyalty. Say you are a U.S.-based senior employee of a large American defense contractor and you detect a security problem that looks like it might lead — or has already led — to a loss of secret data, what do you do? You raise hell of course. You sound the alarm, get everyone out of bed, and start working on a solution. Contrast this with a similar situation where instead of a senior U.S.-based employee finding the breach, it is a junior consultant working from Bangalore or Beijing? They report their findings, sure, but will they raise a ruckus? Do they even know how to raise a ruckus? And what if the person they are informing is a dolt and doesn’t understand the implications of the report? After all, the recently-departed director of OPM appears to have had no technical qualifications at all. Unsurprisingly neither did the preceding director, whose past experience included being director of the National Zoo.
I worked a few years go with a very smart engineer from India who had a successful career at Intel. This is one of those stories some will view as culturally insensitive but I don’t give a damn because it is the truth. My friend said he had worked at Intel for 18 months before he realized it was in his interest to tell the truth in meetings. I am not making this up. In India, which in this case could be a straw man for many foreign tech centers, it was viewed as smarter to tell the boss what he wanted to hear, not the truth.
Who, again, in China or Argentina, was going to sound the alarm with OPM and stake their career on it? Who in power at OPM even knew the implications of such a breach? From the early press statements by the OPM director, she didn’t appear to see the significance.
And my second point is even more important: know the allegiance of your outsourcer. The key issue with outsourcing IT is this — who does your IT staff work FOR?
Let’s look at some bad examples. In the case of Best Buy, for a long time over 99 percent of their IT department was contractors. No one looked out for the best interests of Best Buy. As a result, Best Buy didn’t adapt to changes brought by the Internet. While they like to blame Amazon it was Best Buy’s own neglect that led to their problems. Today, if it wasn’t for cell phones, Best Buy would be in serious trouble. Isn’t that where Radio Shack was a few years ago — their only money maker was cell phones? Best Buy’s inventory management, merchandising, supply chain costs, etc. are still years behind the norm. This isn’t Amazon’s fault. It is IT’s fault and happened in part because Best Buy’s IT wasn’t working for Best Buy.
In the case of Target, their intrusion was detected. An offshore team spotted the problem and reported it to Minneapolis. The folks at HQ did nothing with the information and a few weeks later Target had a crippling problem that ended up costing the company more than $1 billion.
If the IT department actually worked for you and spotted a serious problem, they wouldn’t just report the problem then forget about it. If there was no response from HQ, people in the IT department would have been calling Target’s leadership — at home, in the middle of the night, if necessary.
In other cyber thefts there were indications of pending problems weeks beforehand. New code was running on systems, large amounts of data was being copied and moved, etc. When an IT department works for your company, they usually take their jobs and responsibilities seriously. They look at the system reports. They may notice something that’s not right. They take the initiative to investigate. When your IT department does not work for you, they may be content with just issuing a report. Or they may not have the skill or experience with your applications to even spot problems. They may not have the time or permissions to investigate. They only do what they are told.
The driving force behind outsourcing and offshoring is to find the cheapest IT talent on the planet. The people hired to do this work usually do not have a college education. They are young and have no experience. They are paid $7 to $15 an hour. The background and qualification checks are superficial at best. They have some IT training, but most of what they know is taught on the job. Now imagine how easy it would be for a cyber criminal to insert himself (or herself) into an outsourcing firm. Imagine how easy it would be to bribe and compromise a worker for an outsourcing firm. Since no one at the outsourcing firm works for your business it is very easy for cyber criminals to operate unnoticed. Edward Snowden used other people’s ID’s to access and copy data. Most cyber criminals these days are smart enough to cover their tracks. Given the weak management at many outsourcing firms, if they detected a problem they’d probably fire the innocent and completely miss what was really going on.
The outsourcing and offshoring of IT makes cyber crime a lot easier.
Another aspect of this problem is that IT not really a profession. There are no educational requirements. They’ll let anyone work in the field, or manage it. To make matters worse corporations have been working hard for years to dumb down IT even more. They have been moving the work to the cheapest labor markets in the world.
Clearly most corporations don’t respect IT and don’t know the risk to their business of doing it poorly. Just as clearly many government departments know very little about IT. Anywhere these conditions exist right now, the cyber criminals are or will soon be in their systems and stealing their data.
And we appear not to care. The US government has decided shipping USA jobs offshore is okay. Corporations have decided paying less for substandard IT help is acceptable.
I can see only one solution to this problem, which is to call in the lawyers. The outsourcing companies seem so far to have evaded any responsibility for these hacks. For that matter we hardly know who they even are. What companies employed those OPM database administrators working from Argentina and China? For that matter, what outsourcing firm, if any, was working for Anthem when 80 million health records were lost? After the 2008 financial crisis, big-eight Big Four accounting firms paid billions in fines for not doing their jobs. Maybe it’s time for the outsourcers to do the same. It might make them take their work more seriously.
” Does IT outsourcing make your data more vulnerable? Yes, I believe it does.”
Edward Snowden (who can never come home because of the damage he did, which was extensive) was a contractor. He worked for Booz Allen Hamilton. Did Booz lose any contracts after he absconded with the data? Not that I heard of. Did anyone at Booz responsible for managing him get fired? Nope. Did Booz suffer any damage at all? Nope.
By the way, the SF-86 is only filled out every 5 years, not every year. Since it takes about 6 months for a fairly vanilla TS reinvestigation doing it every year would basically be impossible.
The really scary thing about the OPM hack is the level of access. Did the hackers have write access to the system? Because if they did, they could create fully-cleared individuals out of thin air, which would give any intelligence operative an orgasm…
Snowden only worked for Booz Hamilton for a few months, previously he worked for Dell.
Some contractor’s employees were found to have illegally accessed then-candidate Obama’s passport files. Was the contractor fired? No. Instead the head of the company received a prestige spot in the Obama Administration.
” Did the hackers have write access to the system? Because if they did, they could create fully-cleared individuals out of thin air, which would give any intelligence operative an orgasm…”
Now we know how Jason Bourne got all those passports.
As usual Cringe writes garbage. This problem has nothing to do with outsourcing vs in-house IT.
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In large organizations, the problem is nobody is ever responsible. When something out of the ordinary happens, you can’t find anyone with a job description that matches it. So somebody finds a potential data breach and reports it to his manager. They both go home. And it sits. Forever.
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The little people who do the work are anonymous cogs to the big VP. The VP only cares about cost cutting because that’s what drives his bonus. This is why nothing ever gets fixed. Innovation dies. Eventually nobody gives a crap. Collect your paycheck and don’t make waves. He who sticks his neck out gets it chopped off.
Re: “In large organizations, the problem is nobody is ever responsible.” I’d agree if you change it to “some large organizations” If no one were responsible, we couldn’t enjoy our American standard of living. Sometimes problems don’t get addressed until they are obviously serious enough. The only profession I can think of that attempts to solve all problems in advance of them impacting anyone’s life is that of mathematician.
I believe that many engineers would also fit this category.
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I mean the ones who test and design things, not the ones who operate railroad trains.
I have to update my SF-86 every year. The investigation is every 5 years.
Weird. I’ve never heard of anyone having to fill out the SF-86 yearly before. Just every 5 years when we get reinvestigated.
The frequency of SF-86 updates to the form is totally dependent on the sponsoring organization, the nature of the work and the characteristics and level of the security clearance that has been authorized for the individual.
Note that despite the OPM breach, at least one organization, the Central Intelligence Agency (really its security arm CSS) did not opt (and this was politically very controversial at the time but they stood their ground and won – thank God) to have their SF-86 forms stored at OPM facilities. Unfortunately, individuals in the CIA who were either hired from a job elsewhere that required an SF-86 before transfer into a CIA position or a CIA employee who then transferred to a position in organization that required another SF-86 filled out which was then stored at OPM has had their personal information exposed. That includes National Clandestine Service employees who moved to an OPM stored SF-86 where multiple SSN’s are routinely given to individuals and routinely described in the SF-86.
It’s an unholy mess, folks. The exposure centralized of what should have been compartmentalized information has created a disaster much worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
Like you, Bob, I ask…Where are the pink slips? Where are the contracts terminated? Where are the handcuffs?
Bob, this could be one of your most important columns. Thank you. As I read it I thought of two favorite political words “plausible deniability.” When things go wrong in IT or there is a security breach, outsourcing gives leadership someone else to blame. It allows them to claim they didn’t know there was a problem. Leadership gets the credit for the cost savings and deniability for the problems that result.
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Since, as you mentioned this whole situation acceptable to the USA government and corporate leadership, no amount of complaining is likely to change things. This is probably why IBM continues to turn a deft ear to you, its employees, its customers, … They want the cost savings and don’t care how much damage it really causes.
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Yes, you are right. The only remedy is for this to go to the lawyers and courts. For my part since the Schnucks credit card theft in 2012 to 2013 I have received 3 to 5 new sets of credit cards and debit card each year. After Schnucks came Target, then Michaels, then Home Depot, then … my poor bank found it easier just to cancel ALL of their customers accounts and issue new cards. Our ID information was used to file fraudulent tax returns. We’ve probably spent 150 hours working with the IRS on that problem. I am now receiving emails impersonating my doctors, hospital, pharmacist telling where I can buy super cheap medications on the Internet. They know my families medical history and are offering the medications by name we are using. (Thank you Anthem) They have all of our phone numbers now. The telemarketing calls are hitting all our cell phones. Every day there are several attempts by someone to commit fraud against us. If any of them would be successful, our local law enforcement would be powerless to stop them. Its time to take this to a court.
One item I ought to point out is that even if the outsourcing firm does it’s job, finds problems, and wants to patch them, they are often at the mercy of their customer to arrange those fixes. And if the customer chooses to ignore their warnings, the outsourcing firm is often held responsible anyway if something happens.
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That’s pretty much a lose-lose scenario for an outsourcing firm.
Technically the fear of loss of business is supposed to motivate the consulting company to police itself. In reality it is really hard to fire an outsourcing/offshoring partner. Companies have mainly replaced their onsite staff with offshore labor, so if you fire their consulting company where are you left? The labor arbitrage however has always outweighed the risk. It is afterall all about margin and ROI.
Remember Enron. Their auditors from Arthur Andersen understood what Enron was doing. Do they speak up and risk losing the Enron account? Arthur Andersen’s management should have looked at the Enron account, realized the severity of the problem, and seriously considered dumping Enron as a client. Arthur Andersen was happy to take Enron’s money. When Enron went down it took most of Arthur Andersen with it.
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Very few businesses will walk away from a bad customer.
While we’re remembering Enron and Arthur Anderson, it’s important to also remember what happened to Arthur Anderson: Death by government indictment and public shaming by the financial and mainstream media – despite their name change they “never returned as a viable business” (maybe Accenture is some sort of synonym for centure?).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen#Demise
Please do NOT take the impression that I’m a fan of Anderson. I managed marketing for a company all but destroyed by Anderson Consulting. We were way too small for their abjectly useless and sometimes bizarre advice and the company is now a mere shell of its former self. As an example of their arrogance, the CEO finally had to insist that the lead consultant stop parking his shiny new Porsche 911 Turbo in the visitor space by the front door; the employee and customer complaining got too loud.
You make some good points. The sad part is that poor leadership/management is the root cause. Especially in your examples outsources may report it but at the leader/manager you have to pay attention and hold them accountable. Contracts (if you choose to make them) must have stiff penalties for failure, an organization must hire (at least one) full time contract manager.
I have seen repeatedly, outsourcing companies take/ hire current/former employees. So your point about loyalty is right on. The performance of once excellent employees drops to at most equivalent to the rest of the offshore team. (Companies wonder why) This is understandable. Anyone who spends even a small amount of time thinking about “employee engagement” will know why.
The long and short of it is that you get what you pay for and have to manage/lead if you want to be successful. Why do most American products compare to other countries now (rather than provide superior quality) this is one (only one part) of that reason. You have to care if you want to be better!
Nothing will change until outsourcing destroys a huge corporate entity in an unmistakeable fashion. Difficult to be complacent about a smoking hole in the ground.
but if the company burning at the bottom of the deep, smoking hole is the government… it’s been proven outrage and badmouthing isn’t effective. ask any TEA Party member. if they will admit it.
I wonder if it will be a car manufacturer… given that everyday people might actually die on the roads from the actions of a hacker on the other side of the planet.
Anyone else find it odd that hackers can take control remotely whereas Chrysler requires a recall to do an update? Think they planned ahead.. or will the next update require a recall as well…
sorry.. a bit off topic I know… not IT per se… but definitely related.
If something goes wrong during patching you’d rather be certain the car is parked rather than moving. The hackers aren’t as concerned with liability as Chrysler, for some reason.
Good point. Reminds me of Microsoft with their forced updates for Windows 10. What could go wrong? 🙂
[…] I, Cringely – Who is your IT outsourcing firm working for? […]
It’s incompetence at a staggering level to outsource the government – but as other posters have pointed out, there’s no real risk in this … as in nobody gets fired.
You notice how organizations always outsource the lower level jobs, never the upper level jobs? They outsource the day to day IT work to young lads like Snowden but never outsource the management.
Yet looking at the pay-scales – and the utter incompetence at the top levels of management – it would make a lot more sense to outsource the corporate management – let’s replace the Booz Allen Hamilton management with some graduates from China.
@You notice how organizations always outsource the lower level jobs, never the upper level jobs?
“hi, i’m president chip from bangalore.”
couldn’t be any worse than the incompetent currently occupying the white house.
You could do a full article in the HBR on Best Buy vs. Amazon as an IT failure. Companies who make the IT and systems a first class priority are winning.
Apple has stores, they do fine because they don’t sit on old infrastructure. Walmart is a high tech power house when it comes to IT, data tracking, ERP, and supplier management. They make money out the wazoo.
The real takeaway every C level executive needs to finally get into their head OUTSOURCING == LOSE_MONEY. It is penny wise and pound foolish.
Bob did a column on Best Buy. See: https://www.cringely.com/2013/05/02/amazon-com-isnt-killing-best-buy-blame-best-buy-it/
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I got my new cell phone (Samsung’s latest) from Best Buy a few months ago. The cost of a case for my phone was outrageous. I decided to wait. I went shopping for a case last weekend. I started with Best Buy. They had exactly 4 cases for my new, latest model Samsung phone. The cheapest was $35. I went to WalMart. They had about a dozen cases with prices from $17 up. I went to Amazon, found a case for $18 that sold at Best Buy for $41. It was a really good case. I bought it.
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Best Buy sells lots of TV’s. Need an extra HDMI cable? You won’t want to get it from Best Buy.
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If I worked at Best Buy I’d be embarrassed. The items the store carries, keeps in stock, and the prices are off base.
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My case from Amazon arrived THE NEXT DAY!!! Free shipping. I’ve made Internet purchases with BestBuy that took 4 to 6 weeks. They sold me items for Christmas gifts they didn’t have in stock, and didn’t tell me until after Christmas.
What surprised me is that OfficeMax has similar ridiculous prices. $30 for a USB cable or an HDMI cable
Office Max and Best Buy and Staples and the rest can charge a ridiculous premium because some days you can’t wait even one day for Amazon. If you need it for a presentation this morning it’ll cost you. Those are situations that keep brick and mortar locations open.
Cell phone cases: I bought a Nexus 4, and bought a TPU case for it on amazon. Including shipping it was around $2.50.
Everyone is price-sensitive to some extent since no one wants to be knowingly ripped off. Spending time in front of the computer is the only way to find the lowest price: Google the item, look at all the top-listed websites (below the ads, of course), figure the final price delivered. It could be Amazon, Walmart, Drugstore.com, or some site you never heard of. Keep an open mind, the expense of running local stores has to be covered by the customers.
http://keepamericaatwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/vjb_va_conclusion.png
The full report can be read via this link:
http://keepamericaatwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/VAOIG-13-01730-159.pdf
Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that Cerner, Leidos and Accenture won a 4.5 billion contract to develop a new medical system with employees in America and offshore.
Spreadsheets showing how many temporary workers on temporary nonimmigrant visas have been requested in 2015 can be found via the following link:
http://keepamericaatwork.com/for-those-excellent-reporters-that-are-wondering-how-many-temporary-workers-will-build-the-governments-latest-medical-software-package/
ugh. accenture in healthcare. no.
[…] https://www.cringely.com/2015/07/30/who-is-your-it-outsourcing-firm-working-for/ […]
Random thought: how about a law that says if a company loses any personal information, their charter is null and void? I know there’s all kinds of negative implications to that, but the point is, there doesn’t seem to be a big enough incentive to cause organizations to adequately protect privacy. E.g., data breach costs you $10, but outsourcing saves you $12, you’re still ahead.
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I work for a proprietary trading firm (proprietary means no customers—we trade with the owners’ capital). So while we don’t have customer information to safeguard, we have a huge amount of intellectual property to protect. I think it’s a similar problem to protecting the privacy of individuals. A lot of our policies feel heavy-handed, but we’ve had people try to take IP out of the company. It’s a real and constant threat.
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What I’ve found is that a lot of software just isn’t built with security controls in mind. I’ve gone to sites like ServerFault to ask for help securing our information. Half my questions go unanswered, and virtually all receive comments like, “Why would you ever do that? Your boss is paranoid, find a new job.” I don’t disagree with anything Cringely is saying, but my observation is that there is a pervasive lack of data security concern in IT in general (assuming sites such as ServerFault are representative of the tech community at large). Outsourcing of course makes it worse, but if you insource with the people making snarky comments on supposed expert sites, I don’t think you’re doing much better. If you’re going to have a lousy security policy, might as well do it on the cheap.
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I’ll add that these problems are hard, and it’s a constant balancing act between letting people do their job efficiently and keeping data secure. For example: we give everyone two PCs, one that has internet access, and one that has internal network access. The two PCs are on completely separate networks (separate switches even), and regularly checked to make sure they can’t talk to each other. The PC domain policy disables USB mass storage, optical drives, firewire, eSATA, etc. The PC registries are modified with the same settings (deliberate redundancy). Both PCs are kept in a locked steel cage. Access to the internal network is protected by 802.1x (certificate + password). This is just an example, and is only the tip of the iceberg. This is a huge amount of overhead, and it’s costly. I have probably twice the staff I need, just to keep admin access segregated.
Companies aren’t “chartered” in the USA like they are in Britain or some other places; typically you just buy a business license, which is primarily a tax document, and an employer license if needed, for the same reason.
As for security… I have a client who operates similar to your, though they’re probably much smaller – each employee who needs internet access has a second system on their desk; monitor, keyboard, and all. Separate networks, and a cron script on each side pinging the other every minute, set to sound an alarm if someone plugs a cable into the wrong switch or hub. No wireless enabled on anything.
I always thought that being incorporated in the US was similar to being chartered in other countries.
Obama fully supports giving jobs to Hindus instead of Americans as American corporations tell him to do
Security in the U.S. is only so government can watch you and give your job to a Hindu
Security in America does not protect from importing Hindus that take American jobs and put security at risk since they end up with Hindu only companies and facilities
The security is not so Americans can control government or corporations but so corporations can control government and Americans and import Hindu labour as they please irregardless of any threats to jobs, standard of living, national security or indeed public health
There is no acountability by corporations or government to Americans
There is no labour regulation, no labour protection
Clearly Obama and indeed all the politicians support the corporations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_CMXLBd17k&sns=em
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csg5nVo3TDU&sns=em
Hindus and Americans are not mutually exclusive.
Wanting to give American jobs to Hindus instead of Americans goes all the way to the top
So that corporations may have cheap labour and salaries and jobs may be depressed
Every other consideration is sacrificed
https://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72185.html
President Barack Obama on Monday made his first foray into Google Plus, trying to stay on message during the social media session as he faced an unexpected twist from a woman with an out-of-work engineer husband.
Obama began answering a jobs question from Jennifer Wedel, of Fort Worth, Texas, with a stock answer, telling her, “I don’t know your husband’s specialty, but there’s a huge demand around the country for engineers,” especially in high-tech fields. But Wedel persisted, telling Obama that her husband is a semiconductor engineer.
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“I meant what I said, if you send me your husband’s resume, I’d be interested in finding out exactly what’s happening right there,” Obama responded, saying it seems to him based on industry reports that Wedel’s husband “should be able to find something right away.”
“I’ll have to take you up on that,” Wedel said of the president’s offer to help her husband, Darin, who lost his job at Texas Instruments three years ago.
Later, Wedel told POLITICO that she and the president had a “pretty crazy interaction” that she hadn’t expected when she asked about the federal government granting H-1B visas to skilled foreign workers while U.S. citizens such as her husband are out of work.
“I don’t think he was trying to be condescending or anything,” said Wedel, who never completed college and was a stay-at-home mom before her husband was laid off, but now has a full-time job at State Farm to help make ends meet. “I just think I stumped him a little and he wanted me to hush about it.”
“I think he knows pretty well that the H-1B is an issue because — it’s kind of like the Occupy movement — big corporations are putting up the money to get the visas” and choosing lower-paid foreign workers over domestic ones, Wedel said. “I don’t think what he was telling me was true, and I think he knew it, and that’s why he offered to take my husband’s resume,” she said, adding that her husband has kept it updated.
The Republican National Committee quickly seized on Obama’s response, sending multiple email messages about the incident to its mailing lists, including one with a note from communications director Kirsten Kukowski: “A little out of touch?”
Wedel said that she sees Obama as a bit disconnected from economic realities, but he’s not the only one. “The reality is we’re still having a crisis — it’s not over — but the Republicans don’t realize that either,” she said. A longtime Republican who did not vote for Obama in 2008, Wedel said she and her husband for “the first time ever don’t feel like we’re Republicans or Democrats because of the economy.”
She said she’s not drawn to any of the Republicans in the presidential race and might vote for Obama because at least she knows how he’ll handle the presidency. Wedel said she’d be more inclined to vote for him if the White House helps her husband get a job.
During the 45-minute interactive video session, Obama also fielded questions from a homeless veteran skeptical of foreign aid and an Obama impersonator curious to know what the president thinks of the parodies of him.
Though Obama described Google Plus — the medium he used to chat while viewers watched on the White House website and YouTube — as “some newfangled thing,” this was not his first foray into online question-and-answer sessions. In 2011, he participated in conversations with users of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72185.html#ixzz3hOBkxLXw
Wait, she’s saying she’d vote for him in the next eleciion? Um… he’s not running! Perhaps the article is old?
If Obama and the rest of the American politicians have no answer as to why America imports Hindus to replace Americans why would they have an answer to compromising national security with Hindus, this is bigger than Snowden
https://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/obama-was-stumped-by-engineering-jobs-query-questioner-112879.html
Obama was ‘stumped’ by engineering jobs query, questioner Jennifer Wedel says
Comments (8)
By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 1/30/12 10:42 PM EST
The woman who on Monday told President Obama about her engineer husband’s trouble finding a job said she thinks she “stumped” the president with her question.
“I don’t think he was trying to be condescending or anything,” Jennifer Wedel, of Fort Worth, Texas, told POLITICO. “I just think I stumped him a little and he wanted me to hush about it.”
Wedel said in a phone interview Monday night that she and Obama had a “pretty crazy interaction” that she hadn’t expected when she asked about the federal government granting H-1B visas to skilled foreign workers while U.S. citizens such as her husband are out of work.
The decisions that have led us to outsourcing and offshoring started in the Bush-I administration. Presidents from both parties have signed legislation from congresses when both parties were in the majority. Blaming a single president or group for this is not fair. All of our elected leaders for the last 20 years have sold us down the river.
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The next problem is we need to fix the problem, not the symptom. The symptom is jobs going off shore. The problem is US labor is too expensive. There are MANY things contributing to the cost of labor. One of them is health care costs. The ACA doesn’t reduce health care costs, abolishing it doesn’t reduce health care costs. These are all political “positions” that have no real connection with fact or reality.
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I have a kid in college studying engineering. When he was in high school we visited several engineering schools. Without exception EVERY DEAN of every school told us a large (about 40%) percentage of their graduates were having problems finding work. We put money into STEM programs. We claim we don’t have enough STEM graduates. We demand to increase visa quota’s because we can’t get enough STEM workers. The simple truth is we’re not hiring our own college graduates and we have a large pool of under employed STEM workers who were laid off from their STEM jobs. (I am one of them)
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I am glad someone spoke out to the president on this. I have personally shared this story with both my US Senators and my congressional representative. I mention by name the deans of the 4 engineering programs in our state. My comments went in one ear and popped out the other. Two of them said the solution is to increase visa quotas, one said putting a steep carbon tax on our coal powered electric power plants would fix the problem. They all assumed their “political positions” would solve any and all problems, and they had no idea of or connection with fact or reality.
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This is why we need writers like Bob to get to the heart of the matter. We need to help get his message out to a much larger group. IBM did our country a great disservice by quieting Bob on Forbes. They are after all the poster child of reprehensible corporate behavior.
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There is an entertaining series of movies called “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” Large shopping malls have security workers. They walk around and watch things. If something happens, they really can’t do anything. All they can do is call the real police. This is what outsourcing of IT is doing for data security. We have “Mall Cops” watching our networks and systems. The reason we have “Mall Cops” is because our corporate and government leaders want the deniability and the cost savings. They’d rather put our personal data at risk and save the money, than do the job right.
About 20 years ago I worked at a fairly large company. They outsourced cabling, desktop maintenance, and user support, then PBX administration. They were in the process of outsourcing the server admins when I left.
From reports later, in a year or so there was the Director, the Assistant Director, their two “personal assistants”, a secretary, and a gofer. Pretty much an ideal situation by 21st century standards…
“American labor is too expensive”? It’s only too expensive if you don’t care enough about your company and product/service to pay what it costs to do it really well.
I did marketing for a India-based IT services outsourcing firm about 5 years ago. 90% of the company was in India and turn-over was 40%-50% annually so institutional and operational process knowledge was constantly minimal. And no one there ever said ‘No’. They always said ‘sure’ even when the request wasn’t possible, reasonable, or intelligent. After awhile we would double and triple question them as to the reality of getting things done. And problems arose, getting a straight answer was impossible or way later than it should have been. And the company founders constantly changed strategy (weekly!) so services would change and customers had to adapt.
People look at the ‘cost savings’ of ‘going to the cloud’ but they forget that they have lost control over their data. Its no longer theirs. they may have created it but its not theirs…. it really belongs to the vendor holding it…
Going to The Cloud for services promotes a fundamental decrease in accountability, and with it quality, because these parameters can’t be measured in $ and man-hours, these being the only metrics most management cultures seem to understand.
Rupe
I am Indian, spent a decade in the US getting a PhD in CS, then worked for a couple of years, and moved to India, and have been working for a big American MNC. I have no doubt what you say is representative of a number of IT outsourcing scenarios, but in my (limited) experience, folks in the US who are formulating goals and monitoring progress are no more eager to hear accurate status reports than craven managers in India are to provide them. Regardless of what the cogs (e.g., me) say, these mules often don’t understand what it takes to develop software and force aggressive (or impossible) deadlines. Our local managers (the ones who are responsible) do try to help, but the power hierarchy is crystal clear; we are supposed to do what they ask for, common sense be damned.
So it’s not always the foreign IT workers who are to blame. And just in case you wondered, there’s little chance of my impressions being colored by cultural misunderstanding. I spent a decade in the US, am very familiar with the culture (societal and work), and am as frank in my dealings as any American. America has its share of yes-men and dissemblers. The problems Mr. Cringely points out are real, but I believe they are a function of company size as well as geographical dispersion. If work outsourced from Bangalore were moved to, say Birmingham (AL), you would likely observe a similar level of IT incompetence leading to security breaches.
From an Indian perspective reality is; may be main culprits are not the end clients like JP Morgan, At &T etc, they pay but there are lot of middle men who sponsor H1B visa, these are small companies in New Jersey and they contract there employee to another middle men, this chain moves on till Prime vendor who deals with end client. These middle men never push resume of local American due to few technical reasons which nobody dares to right in media 1. All Middle men are Indians sitting in India using Magic Jack etc, it is easy to exploit immigrants from India rather then Americans who are in habit of suing or taking to courts over wrong doing, also local Americans work in process and don’t sleep in office because some Indian manager wants employee to do it 2. Regional mafia, technical reason is you are not qualified or are not fit for job but real reason is lot of these middle men have people from there own states in India (primarily South India, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Naidu) and these people prefer people from there region, under hand dealings are done where contractor pays $5 to $10 per hour to these Managers to survive in jobs 3 It is easy to threaten Indian by other Indian, you need to understand cultural dynamics to understand this, to some extent same goes for Chinese. (These contracts are not cheap for end clients which they don’t understand, only benefit goes to these big Indian companies with strong lobbies and don’t forget L1 visa, I have lived with 22 people in one Apartment in New Jersey in some of the most horrible conditions on H1B.)
That is why Americans have only one way, get into top university like MIT or Stanford, focus on campus placement where facebook or some other picks you up directly, if you want to get job through online portals or middle men you are wasting your time, I am seeing this for 15 yrs and no journalist or American will tell u these 3 real reasons
You don’t need to go to MIT to figure out how to craft intelligible sentences and coherent paragraphs. You don’t need to go to Stanford to learn how to lucidly express ideas, instead of muddle. Drop your obsession with “the Hindus” and pick up a grammar primer.
Finally, someone said it. Thank you.
@Bob: a quick nit: the SF86 is filled out regularly, not annually. Secret is every 7-10 years, TS and above is something like every 3-5. Your security person is kept in the loop on any “important” information, like foreign travel. For instance, I had to tell them when I went to Japan.
If I had to fill out the SF86 *every year* I would have quit a long, long time ago. It’s torture to fill that sucker out …
How often your SF-86 needs to be updated depends on the nature of the work the individual is performing and the requirements of the organization where you are employed. Some sensitive jobs require updates every 6 months to precede by 60 days or so any lie detector screening or any other vetting and analysis methods used by human or electronic counter-intelligence.
There used to be a “update and clarifications” form at one time for those who had to do it very frequently, but that form’s been gone for years now.
Timely, as United Airlines has been breached, allegedly by the same group who breached OPM. Will heads roll at United? There’s little chance of that. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-29/china-tied-hackers-that-hit-u-s-said-to-breach-united-airlines
The outsourcer doesn’t just handle your servers, they handle dozens of other clients as well, so you don’t even necessarily have dedicated support. The offshore component is tagging out even more frequently than the onshore people, so there is a constant stream of new faces coming in, all minimally trained (despite claiming to have a BS or BS and MCSE). There is nobody to step back and review the architecture to see where things could be improved or upgraded, it’s just maintenance. Oh, and we have a generic admin account on all of your servers as a backdoor, too.
I’ve worked for 40 years for US organizations considered enlightened by many standards, and I too subscribe to the belief that you’ll most often do best by telling the boss what s/he wants to hear than the truth. And when you try to tell the truth, the boss often hears what s/he wants to hear anyway. Any culture that supports hierarchies and rewards social equilibrium – and are there any that don’t? – is probably duly implicated.
Hipaa doesn’t prevent IT outsourcing, companies have just learned that. Insurance companies like Kaiser have allowed ibm to move it to India
This article hits the nail on the head. I used to work at Sun Microsystems and heard the same thing from an Indian worker about telling the truth in meetings. It took him about a year to figure it out. (And for another horror story on Indian workers and truthfulness, google: india pharmaceuticals quality control)
Another issue with Indian culture is that it is one where major life decisions are often made by parents, including who you marry, and what profession you pursue. So just because an Indian in is the IT business, does not mean he even has any interest in it. It may well be his/her parents thought that would be a lucrative profession.
I came into Sun *after* all the idiotic outsourcing had started. A coworker told me of seeing the sudden difference immediately after it began; Prior to that, people would stay as late as necessary to make sure things got done. Afterward, the people who had been badge-flipped to an outsourcer, would leave at 5pm regardless of what was unfinished.
“After the 2008 financial crisis, big-eight accounting firms paid billions in fines for not doing their jobs.” They’ve been the “big-four” since 2002 after Arthur Andersen imploded.
Corrected… by a guy who once worked for Ernst and Ernst (they fired me).
One other important thing that gets overlooked a lot with outsourcing/offshoring companies: they are all growth-driven. Not even before the ink has dried and the bits settled, their sales people are off trying to grab the next big contract. Good luck even getting the time of day any more.
As any physicist can tell you, it’s impossible to grow continuously. At some point resources will be exhausted. When will companies realize that? Oh, wait, MBAs are being force-fed GROWTH! GROWTH! GROWTH! MAKES PROFITS! from the HBS and its ilk.
Why were utilities popular in the 1960s? Because they didn’t grow, they provided consistent dividends based on demand for their product. They knew that they couldn’t grow fast and quick, so they took the income they got, invested wisely into the company, and leftovers were then handed back as dividends. Today, with the “how much profit did you make last quarter” mentality, even utilities suckle at the teat of cost-cutting…which is why utility IT network infrastructure is now just as vunerable.
In reference to the point of “Clearly most corporations don’t respect IT and don’t know the risk to their business of doing it poorly.” I was just explaining to my son yesterday that automobile companies don’t know it yet, but they are going to become primarily software companies. Contrasting what google is doing with automated driving vs what Toyota is going through with unintended acceleration because of bad software, I was explaining that the quality of the software determines who lives and dies, more so than the quality of physical car, since all manufacturers can produce physical cars of the same quality. Thinking of the programming in the car as extra, or something that is insignificant is clearly a mistake.
Regarding something like the OPM, people think that the employees using the IT tools are the ones that matter, when really it would make more sense to outsource the paper pushing and have as direct employees the people who are building and managing the IT system.
It’s the same kind of mistake that people make when they think the code is the most precious resource, when actually it’s the data that is most valuable.
Yet another good reason to drive a stick…
I wonder if driving a stick guarantees that the gas pedal and brake directly control the mechanical parts without electronic intervention, or perhaps the word “stick” will simply become short for “joy stick”.
No, it but it does give you a direct way of disengaging the engine from the drive train. The parking brake is similarly designed for direct mechanical control since it has to remain set even if the car is completely disabled electrically.
Sadly, many car makers now have electronic push-button parking brakes. Luckily, all of my family’s cars have good old-fashioned levers that pull cables.
I think everyone keeps thinking that there is some easy fix, and that is not going to happen. This mess we live in today in IT and frankly in any large organization has been in the making for at least 40 years. If you read the Cringely articles over the last few weeks in total you get a real good flavor for the problem. Saying that though the problem is deeper and more endemic I think than most people acknowledge. It starts with business schools teaching management theory about how to manage. In those classes and quite a bit of media, Tom Friedman springs to mind, look at the great companies and how did they get so rich and influential? And they harp on communication. That gets boiled down to a simple action express managements desires well enough and in a way that makes it sound like the employee is important, and they will do it! Mind you ignoring that in those other great companies, everyone actually cared about the success of the company! Along the way some of thee ideas turned into, you don’t have to know a thing about the product, you manage people so if you are a good communicator, you are a good manager, and doesn’t matter that you have never seen a widget in your entire life. Is it surprising that they can’t mind the IT outsource?
Next in this mess is a paper that was written in the 70s I believe and I have a reference to it, but don’t have it handy. The economist or business analyst, what ever, hypothesized that CEOs and Boards were not responsive to share holders needs. He said since the only thing that is actually solid is ever increasing owner value and equity, and making CEOs compensations based on how well they did? Translation, anything to make the stock price better was good, anything that detracted from that was bad, all based on the last quarter. That set the stage for outsourcing. Shave 1% of the IT department and that means a healthy return for the CEO. Up and up went their salaries to now they are making hundred of times more than their workers. Productivity has tapered off, no investment in anything that increases productivity because that is always long range.
You combine these two ideas and put them on our current situation in IT and you wonder how to reverse the tide? I think some can be regulation, some can be eliminating and actually adding to the tax burden when companies act the fool. But unless people become heads of companies, top executives and actually know the business they do, and care about what happens……….
One more thing. I bet every single outsource provider that in our opinion didn’t do their do dilligence, I bet legally they met the letter of their contract? I bet the had documentation out the tookus proving it. I have at times worked for a contractor, and the flood of paperwork that needs to be completed is staggering, most to do absolutely nothing but CYA.
The obsession with “shareholder value” is at the heart of this, far more than any management failure or fad.
A recent Cringely post may cover the same paper from the ’70s that you refer to: https://www.cringely.com/2015/06/24/the-u-s-computer-industry-is-dying-and-ill-tell-you-exactly-who-is-killing-it-and-why/
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See also: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/06/cringley-on-how-bogus-shareholder-value-theory-is-wrecking-the-computer-industry-and-america-generally.html
The stuff about private sector US firms, Indians, and H1-Bs is well documented on this site and others. Federal contracting is even more outrageous. All the recruiters, even for clearance jobs, are Indian. All the contracting companies are what are called “8(a)” companies which are women/minority set-asides, which means the titular head of the company is a woman or a minority, but her white husband really runs the place. Or it is an Alaskan Native corporation which means they have their titular main office in an igloo somewhere while maintaining a multi-story office building in Reston. In any case they have your SF-86 on file in Bethel or Bangalore and they keep 1/2 of your bill rate.
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The 8(a) contractors do all the work while the Federal civil service employees sleep or do crossword puzzles all day. Nice work if you can get it, but this is the origin of Snowden and other contracting clusterfoulups.
It’s the 70’th anniversary of the holocaust
When Jews and French were being killed in Europe neither Obama nor Kerry showed up
Kerry was too preoccupied with India importing Hindus, and shortly after Obama was preoccupied with the same thing
So it’s clear the priorities of the U.S. government and foreign policy is Hindus for corporations
Not security, not solidarity with the victims of terrorism
How clear does it have to be as to what the American leadership cares about and who it caters to and what it’s priorities are
They have no shame no solidarity, it’s about labour for corporations, and destroying the tax base, standard of living and healthcare
The message is clear from the actions
I have said before your use of Hindu in the way you do is frankly bigoted. It is offensive to any true American. And this last post of yours is not only offensive in the extreme but stupid. For crying out loud you moron, neither President Obama( the proper way to refer to the President of the United States of America) or John Kerry were even born when the Holocaust took place. If you have nothing to add that is reasoned and informed why don’t you find another place to be a TROLL?
What is offensive is replacing Americans with Indians at the rate of 70 to 90%,or more by breaking the law lying and cheating saying you can’t find Americans
Not only is it offensive it’s criminal
The Department of Homeland Security isn’t capable of enforcing the labor laws it’s investigating Disney, Southern California Edison and others for violating, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Tuesday.
DHS is working with the Department of Labor to investigate alleged abuses of the H-1b visa program, including at Southern California Edison and Disney, where hundreds of American workers were reportedly laid off and made to train their foreign replacements holding H-1b visas. (RELATED: Feds Expand H-1b Abuses As Calls For Action Intensify)
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/15/jeh-johnson-dhs-lacks-legal-tools-to-enforce-h-1b-laws/#ixzz3hT90XZgh
M. Gamble is right. You’re an idiot. And an obsessed, incoherent one at that.
His recent posts have switched to the “I” word from the “H” word. English is not his native language, but we get the gist of it. He has that excuse for grammar, spelling, and punctuation problems, but there is no excuse for name calling. That said, I understand your frustration, since he didn’t respond soon enough.
He’s a troll, just ignore him. Mr. Cringely, it’s great that you allow open commenting, but moderation would help improve the quality of this comments section.
I have trouble respecting corporate tools such as Obama Kerry who would rather lower salaries of Americans and exploit Indians / Hindus
The extent of the HinduGate conspiracy can be seen in this exchange
Obama is super nervous, if you watch the video, he knows he’s lying
So forgive me if I have trouble believing our leaders, as they are not serious people, and they should be called on the carpet for it
You have a long list of testimonials on this blog post too, so this is not an isolated incidence
Transcript of Conversation between Jennifer Wedel and President Barack Obama…
Wedel: My husband has an engineering degree with over 10 years of experience and he was laid off three years ago and has yet to find a permanent job in his field. My question to you is why does the government continue to issue and extend H-1b visas when there are tons of Americans just like my husband with no job?
Obama: Well, Jennifer, I don’t know your husband’s specialty but I can tell you that there is a huge demand around the country for engineers. Now, obviously, there are different kinds of engineers, so a civil engineer, for example, right now may not be getting as much work because we’re not building our infrastructure as much as we should. Which is part of the reason why in the State of the Union I said let’s put folks to work — not just construction workers, but also engineers and architects — rebuilding our schools and roads and our bridges and so on. Where you are see seeing a lot of specialized demand is in engineering that’s related to the high-tech industries. Now what industry tells me is that they don’t have enough highly skilled engineers. If your husband is in that field, then we should get his resume and I’ll forward it to some of these companies that are telling me they can’t find enough engineers in this field. So it’s going to vary, but as a basic matter there is a huge demand for engineers around the country right now …
Wedel: (breaking in) I understand that, but how, I mean, given the list that you’re getting, we’re not getting that. You said in the State of the Union address for business leaders to ask themselves what can they do to bring jobs back to America. But why do you think that the H-1b program is so popular with the corporations?
Obama: Jennifer, can I ask you what kind of engineer your husband is?
Wedel: He is a semiconductor engineer.
Obama: The, see, it is interesting to me, and I meant what I said if you send me your husband’s resume I’d be interested in finding out exactly what’s happening right there because the word we’re getting is that somebody in that kind of high-tech field, that kind of engineer, should be able to find something right away. And the H-1bs should be reserved only for those companies who say they cannot find somebody in that particular field. So that wouldn’t necessarily apply if in fact there are a lot of highly skilled American engineers in that position. I’d be interested in … I will follow up on this because I’m interested in finding out and maybe we can get some information as to why your husband has been having trouble getting placed. We want to encourage more American engineers to be placed and that’s part of the reason why it’s so important for us to boost American manufacturing.
Wedel: I appreciate your response, Mr. President. I’ll have to take you up on that. Thank you.
(Transcript from ComputerWorld)
According to this part “I will follow up on this because I’m interested in finding out and maybe we can get some information as to why your husband has been having trouble getting placed.” there is no IndiGate. It will be interesting to see the follow up.
This is a very old story (2012), and based on what I read, Wedel was flooded with offers after his wife had a chat with Obama, but rejected the offers because they required him to relocate (link). He lives (lived?) in North Texas, not exactly a hub of software jobs, so I’m not exactly sure what he expects from a prospective employer. That they will allow him to work remotely, or create a small office in his area on the off chance they will get other employees there?
I wonder how many of these stories that decry the H-1B visa (and immigrant workers in general) are similar to the Wedel case. Why do the guest workers get all this opprobrium heaped on them when locals won’t (or can’t) relocate for employment? Not that the H-1B visa is perfect, or used perfectly (far from it), but the story just might be more mixed than journalists who report on this (like Cringely or Thibodeau) let on.
Thanks, Kris. A custody agreement is no excuse, unless he agreed to not move away under any circumstances. It’s their choice that the wife supports the family and he works locally, when he can. His daughter would appreciate it more if he moved to get a much better job that would pay her bills as far into the future as possible. Of course, moving is a huge inconvenience, so many factors, of which we are not aware, must be considered.
Obama says white males dominate IT and that he will use an executive order to correct the problem
Obama also says he does not want American MIT graduates that they are too good and he rather have third world ones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaylQmnXztU&t=1126s
Here’s a classic instance of poor tech support by an outside entity: https://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/satyam-and-its-8-year-ban-from-world-bank/d/d-id/1075471
Square peg, round hole. The evidence of outsourcing’s being responsible in these hacks is not there. Just that it ‘coulda happened!’ Indeed you blame outsourcing when they are the ones who saw something was up and notified Target, just because they didn’t follow through.
You ridicule the idea of a Chinese hack, right before you tell us that Chinese had access to passwords.
I see no mention of Hillary Clinton as a possible source of the hack, with her e-mail server that was undoubtedly hacked, and probably opened avenues for hacking the State Department.
Do we have any evidence that Hillary’s email was hacked? Not just conjecture about settings, but actual hacks.
The State Department’s emails were definitely hacked, and that’s when they weren’t being leaked by insiders. I haven’t seen any evidence that State Department secrets were less safe in Clinton’s house.
Jeh Johnson: DHS Lacks Legal Tools To Enforce H-1B Laws
Photo of Rachel Stoltzfoos
RACHEL STOLTZFOOS
Reporter
3:17 PM 07/15/2015
0
The Department of Homeland Security isn’t capable of enforcing the labor laws it’s investigating Disney, Southern California Edison and others for violating, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Tuesday.
DHS is working with the Department of Labor to investigate alleged abuses of the H-1b visa program, including at Southern California Edison and Disney, where hundreds of American workers were reportedly laid off and made to train their foreign replacements holding H-1b visas. (RELATED: Feds Expand H-1b Abuses As Calls For Action Intensify)
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/15/jeh-johnson-dhs-lacks-legal-tools-to-enforce-h-1b-laws/#ixzz3hTArTgYJ
Machiavelli’s Dictum: Don’t use mercenaries. If they are lousy they will lose your country for you, if they are good, they will take it away from you.
Dean’s Corollary: Outsourcing is just the same and ensures the downfall of your enterprise.
Oh…I was at IBM ’85 to ’99 and worked at the birth of Watson…couldn’t keep my mouth shut and was booted. Did AIX admin for a small liberal arts college for 13 years thereafter; AIX’s US-based support was peerless…but the outsource of C for AIX support to India was a disaster.
outsourcing
v. An activity triggered when the CIO runs out of people to blame.
(source : https://www.isham-research.co.uk/dd.html)
[…] Who is your IT outsourcing firm working for? […]
Not only do they have access to steal data, they also work for tech firms and have access to modify the code in Oracle or Windows or SAP. Instead of getting your social security number or your credit card number, a coordinated attack could shut down the United States…airlines grounded, manufacturing stopped, logistics halted. It’s more than lost data, it’s a threat to the safety and security of the country.
[…] And my second point is even more important: know the allegiance of your outsourcer. The key issue wi… […]
[…] farewell to old Boston (excellent; on the failed 2024 Olympics bid) Who is your IT outsourcing firm working for? (important; probably relevant to anyone whose job is dependent on IT) Does Zimbabwe Really Need […]
From what it appears, H1B employees are indeed paid rather well according to data put out by the government: http://salarytalk.org
It’s possible the majority of those jobs are close to $20K; the chart has a slider at the top so you can set it for say, 20K to 30K, but after moving it, I can’t get it to refresh the list of 1.6 million jobs to the smaller sub set. Does it work for anyone else? I’m using Win8/IE10. Also, it doesn’t say anything about H1b, so it may include all types of employees.
Cringely, I swear you’re like a modern day Rip Van Winkle. You are only about 20 years to late on the H1B stories and now this one. Indian outsourcing forms have been stealing peoples PII for years as well corporate IP and trade secrets.
I have to agree with you on that one
But even 20 years latter opposition is still very strong against any H1B visa criticism
@ lolzcat Although you know, Bob’s point is that even today:
“most corporations don’t respect IT and don’t know the risk to their business of doing it poorly. Just as clearly many government departments know very little about IT…And we appear not to care.”
I’m reminded my my favorite Dilbert strip. The company had just picked up a new contract, which turned out to be… their own project, which had been outsourced to a foreign company, who had outsourced it again…
[…] I, Cringely: Who is your IT outsourcing firm working for? […]
We currently have the problem that “experts” want an enormous payment for their work, a payment that not every company can afford – and outsourcing is just so good. I mean it saves time, money and capacity that you can use for different stages.
More and more persons in “poor” countries become experts in their fields and are way more payable than the “IT Rockstars” from Europe or America.
From my point of view – source out if you need it or become so good that noone wants to outsource you.
Sort of like “professional” vs. amateur hair transplants. 🙂
How much you’re willing to pay your IT staff (including rockstars) says a lot about the value you place on your business and how important it is to you that it run smoothly. Obsessing about cost gets your workers worried about the wrong things and will ultimately cost your business a lot more in low morale and low quality work than you “saved” by going offshore in the first place.
If you own or run a business, you want employees whose first loyalty is to *your* business. If you outsource, there is no way those outsourced workers can deliver that no matter how they answer the phone. Their first loyalty is to the company that cuts their paycheck.
thanks for this useful article
The State Department’s emails were definitely hacked, and that’s when they weren’t being leaked by insiders. I haven’t seen any evidence that State Department secrets were less safe in Clinton’s house.
Thank you.
[…] Robert Cringely, published July 30, […]
And they harp on communication. That gets boiled down to a simple action express managements desires well enough and in a way that makes it sound like the employee is important, and they will do it! Mind you ignoring that in those other great companies, everyone actually cared about the success of the company! Along the way some of thee ideas turned into, you don’t have to know a thing about the product, you manage people so if you are a good communicator, you are a good manager, and doesn’t matter that you have never seen a widget in your entire life. Is it surprising that they can’t mind the IT outsource? Web sitemize bekleriz. Google seo optimizasyon .www.birseo.com
[…] to a CNBC story about the loss of fingerprint records in the Office of Personnel Management hack I have written about before. It’s just one more nail in the coffin of a doltish bureaucracy that — you know […]
The long and short it is that you get what you pay for and have to manage/lead if you want to be successful. Why do most American products compare to other countries now (rather than provide superior quality) this is one (only one part) of that reason. You have to care if you want to be better!
Along the way some of thee ideas turned into, you don’t have to know a thing about the product, you manage people so if you are a good communicator, you are a good manager, and doesn’t matter that you have never seen a widget in your entire life. Is it surprising that they can’t mind the IT outsource?
If you own or run a business, you want employees whose first loyalty is to *your* business. If you outsource, there is no way those outsourced workers can deliver that no matter how they answer the phone. Their first loyalty is to the company that cuts their paycheck.
If you own or run a business, you want employees whose first loyalty is to *your* business. If you outsource, there is no way those outsourced workers can deliver that no matter how they answer the phone. https://www.umredefark.com
I haven’t seen any evidence that State Department secrets were less safe in Clinton’s house. https://www.pashasaat.com/
Instead of getting your social security number or your credit card number, a coordinated attack could shut down the United States…airlines grounded, manufacturing stopped, logistics halted. It’s more than lost data, it’s a threat to the safety and security of the country. https://www.kadimosgb.com/
I haven’t seen any evidence that State Department secrets were less safe in Clinton’s house. https://www.ferahdizayn.com/
Not only do they have access to steal data, they also work for tech firms and have access to modify the code in Oracle or Windows or SAP. https://www.oto-eskpertizi.com/
t’s more than lost data, it’s a threat to the safety and security of the country.Not only do they have access to steal data, they also work for tech firms and have access to modify the code in Oracle or Windows or SAP. https://www.oto-ekspertizi.com/
Re-visiting an Old Joke … and we had even past the good days of TOYOTA for sure …A Japanese coampny ( Toyota ) and an American coampny (Ford) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting coampny and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing. Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents, and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the ‘Rowing Team Quality First Program,’ with meetings, dinners, and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes, and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses. The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year’s racing team was out-sourced to India. Sadly, The End. Here’s something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US, claiming they can’t make money paying American wages. TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The last quarter’s results: TOYOTA makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses. Ford folks are still scratching their heads. IF THIS WEREN’T TRUE, IT MIGHT BE FUNNY. ….. And we had past the good TOYOTA days for sure …..
Her zaman temiz ve rahat ortam sağladığımız butik otelimizi ziyaret edebilir harika vakit geçirebilirsiniz. https://www.candemirbeykonagi.com/
2016 yılına girmemize bir hafta kaldı yeni yılın ilk şansını biz taksim resim kursu ile yaşamaya ne dersiniz ?
2016 yılına girmeden yapacağınız kayıtlarda %40 indirim fırsatı sizleri bekliyor. Sizde sanat eserlerin doğuşuna eşlik eden taksim, istiklal caddesindeki şubemiz ile eğitimlerinizi alarak kişisel gelişiminizi tamamlayabilirsiniz.
Güzel sanatlara hazırlık ta en doğru adres için bizi seçiniz.
https://www.arkhesanat.com/
Sinamayı evinize getirmeye ne dersiniz ? Vodafone filbox tv ile yüzlerce hd film ve belgesel size özel fırsatlarla …
Tek yapmanız gereken web sitemizdeki formu doldurup sizi aramamızı veya bizi arayıp sizleri bilgilendirmemiz.
Evdeki huzuru ve mutluluğu başka hiç bir yerde bulamıyorsanız sizin için evinizde bir sinamadan daha güzeli olamaz.
Vodafone televizyonlu internet seçeneklerini inceleyerek dilediğiniz avantajlardan yararlanma fırsatını yakalayabilirsiniz.
Taksim güzel sanatlara hazırlık kursu olarak eğitmenlerimiz sektörün en prestijli sanatçıları olmakla beraber kurumunuz güzel sanatlara hazırlık söz konusu olduğunda öğrencilerinin %100 başarı elde etmesi bir tesadüf değildir.
Taksim Resim Kursu ile Güzel sanatlara hazırlık alanında kendinizi geliştirebilir. Düşlemiş olduğunuz sanat eserlerini somutlaştırarak kağıtlara , tablolara kısacası hayata sunabilirsiniz.
3 şubemiz ile Türkiye geneline hizmet vermekle birlikte eğitmen kadromuz Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Fakültesinden mezun ve gören almaktadırlar.
Sizde kalite arıyorsanız bunun içinse ayrıcalıklar istiyorsanız bizi tercih etmenizi öneririz…
Sanat eserleri üretmeniz için taksim resim kursu ile eşsiz eserler üretebilirsiniz. Zafer GAZİOĞLU ve mimar sinan üniversitesi öğrencilerimizin stajerliği ile eğitimlerimiz devam etmektedir. Eserlerinizi bizimle geliştirerek hayalerinizi gerçekleştirebilirsiniz.
Her türlü çalışma stili ve çalışma alanları için istenilen tarzda ve ve şekilde eşsiz sanat eserleri üretmek istiyorsanız ve üst düzey bir eser yaratmak için en ideal adresi arıyorsanız bakırköy güzel sanatlara hazırlık kursları arasında en ideal seçim olarak ruyaavcısı ve ekibinin çalışmalarını önermenizi tavsiye ediyoruz.
bakırköy resim kursu olarak sizleri eşsiz sanat eserleri ile büyülemekteyiz.
Sanatın her alanında faaliyet gösteren taksim resim kursu sizlerin geleceğe daha iyi hazırlanmanız için üstün başarı ve tecrübeleri ile sizleri başarıya daha kolay ve emin adımlar ile taşıyacaktır. Toplu ulaşım araçlarına yürüme mesefesinde olmamız ve eğitmenlerimizin Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi mezunlarından oluşmuş olması sizlere katkı sağlayacaktır.
https://www.arkhesanat.com/
Bakırköy resim kursu olarak kişisel gelişiminizi tamamlamak için bizi tercih ediniz. Güzel sanatlara hazırlık alanında kendinizi geliştirmek istiyorsanız bizi tercih ediniz.
Sanat alanında somut, soyut alanlarda kişisel gelişiminizi güzel sanatlara hazırlık alanında tamamlayarak resim alanında yeteneğinizi gösterebilirsiniz.
Yağlı boyu, kuru boya, duvar çizimleri gibi bir çok alanda eserler ile gelişiminize tardımcı olmaktayız.
https://www.arkhesanat.com/
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