Train Your Own Replacement

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo reports on how some employers are asking the workers they're laying off to train their foreign replacements - having them dig their own unemployment graves. 'Almost one in five information technology workers has lost a job or knows someone who lost a job after training a foreign worker, according to a new survey by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers.' It looks like a real dilemma where if you refuse to hire your replacement, you are fired without severance and are ineligible for unemployment benefits, and if you quit, you don't receive severance and are ineligible for unemployment."

Train My Replacement?

[ackthpt]

Train My Replacement?

Sorry, it's not in my job description.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Sorry, it's not in my job description.

Good advice. Someone please try it and report back. That is, if you can afford an internet connection after you are fired without severance or unemployment benefits.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[saden1]

Actually, I know of a contractor in our office that was asked to train an incoming contractor who was going to help him with the task assigned to him and he refused by saying "training is not in my job description." You know what management said? "Point well taken!" I realize that contractors are not the same as permanent employees but if you clearly express your unwillingness to fulfill the request in writing you are golden if you get fired or get nothing in return while others received severance packages.

It is perfectly normal to say it is not in my job description when indeed it is not. Organizing all your work and documents into a nice neat folder should be all you have to do. I personally would write a letter clearly expressing my dissatisfaction and say no and that If they wish, they can retain my services as a contractor after I leave.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[macdaddy357]

Train them incorrectly so they will break everything they touch. They will end up costing the blood-sucking bosses money. Either that, or go postal.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[BJZQ8]

An individual that I know that is retired from a factory did something similar; when the company wanted him to train some "temporary replacements" for a strike. He was a machinist and ran very expensive, very large machines. Among these was a Jig Bore, a very large machine something like a vertical mill. It had powered axes, but had been rigged by some electricians to have its vertical power axis control on the back of the panel. The original knob on the front was a "dummy" and not hooked to anything. This was fine, as he knew about it. He didn't tell his "replacement" about it, however, and when the strike ensued, he turned the machine off and put it on maximum down feed. When they came back from the prolonged strike, the machine had a huge chunk out of its bed...where someone had turned on the machine and watched helplessly as it rammed its cutter into the table.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Xaymot]

I'm sure that's the most awesome machinist joke ever.

God I wish I could get it.

This happens over and over

[Simonetta]

In the USA, where the managerial class seems to be specifically bred to be missing significant portions of their brains, it happens all the time that employees are ordered to train their replacements. Then they are fired or terminated for chickenshit and denied unemployment benefits.

This happened to me when I the small company that I was working for got taken over by its German parent company. The new six-foot eight-inch 30-year-old 'manager' came in and reassigned everyone to really stupid and degrading restructured positions. Then as they complained, each employee was fired.
Then the fuckhead went out of his way to ensure that the fired employees couldn't get unemployment benefits, even when it wouldn't cost the company anything (I looked into this and it was true) and the employees had been working profitably for as many as seven years. He said that Germany was ruined by socialists and now that he was in the US, he could run the place like a 'pure capitalist'. I considered reminding him that just firing people on a whim and then making sure that that couldn't get benefits was not such a good idea in a country where everybody had a gun collection, but I decided that I really didn't need the weird shit that would come from such a comment so easily misunderstood by a foreigner.
Sure enough the viruses, lawsuits, crank calls, and all sorts of nastiness started happening within a few weeks. Then the sales dropped off. Then the stock price went from 66 Euros to 1.5 Euros in a 12 month period (it's bounced back to 4.5 Euros).
Then it was my turn to jump into the tree chipper.

What a nightmare. No wonder people go postal!

Re:Train My Replacement?

[ackthpt]

How can you not be eligible for unemployment benefits? The US unemployment benefits scheme must be truly screwed up if you can be ineligible just for quitting a job, or refusing to do something degrading like training a replacement.

If you quit it is much harder to get unemp benefits. Better to be terminated if you figure you will be anyway. Pay for how much time do you expect to get? The prior poster seems to forget, when you are asked to train your replacement, because it's implied you will be replaced soon, you do need to question the employers loyalty to YOU and what carrot they plan to give you for your remaining loyalty.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[kcbrown]

remember: your boss bargains in good faith with his supplier because if he didn't they wouldn't do business with him. your boss bargains in good faith with his distributers because if he didn't they wouldn't do business with him either.

why does your boss think his labour is exempt from this common sense?

Because he has a lot more power over his labor than over his suppliers and distributors. This is especially true in an economy where jobs are scarce, like the current U.S. one.

Economic transactions are affected as much by the relative power of the actors as they are by the supply and demand situation. Corporations today have much more power than even a large group of individuals, since the corporations can affect the individuals either through the legal system (they can afford many more lawyers than individuals can) or through the government directly (I think it's accurate to say that corporations control most of what goes on in the U.S. government today, at least for those things that affect U.S. residents). Any economic model which doesn't account for power disparity is one that simply isn't going to be accurate.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Frymaster]

Any economic model which doesn't account for power disparity is one that simply isn't going to be accurate.

ergo: union. a union is about balancing the power between ownership/mgmt and labour. when you negotiate your contract - if you have one over and above the nda, that is - it's usually you versus the entire, organized, funded monolith of management. they hold all the power and the most you can do is threaten to walk.

with a union, you have the threat of the entire labour group's work to rule, slowdown or strike. it balances things out a bit.

programmers need to stop thinking about themselves as some sort of "upper" class. yes, we have some very specialized knowledge and create things that have great value... but so do carpenters and electricians.

we're tradespeople and we need a trade union. if you think otherwise, remember your hubris and vanity when you get the shaft from management.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[ChrisMaple]

Unions also use the threat of violence. Consider if you wish to be a member of a group that were it not called a "union", would be a criminal organization.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[crawling_chaos]

Unions also use the threat of violence.

And corporations don't? The only difference is that they're well funded enough to hire the police or the army to do their headbreaking.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[the_consumer]

Care to back that up with some evidence? Yeah, I thought not.

How is it 'violent' to call a strike? If anything, history has shown that violent means have been used much more frequently against union workers than by them.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[God! Awful 2]

programmers need to stop thinking about themselves as some sort of "upper" class. yes, we have some very specialized knowledge and create things that have great value... but so do carpenters and electricians.

I think the difference between electricians and programmers is that electricians don't give away their work for free.

-a

Re:Train My Replacement?

[jqh1]

I agree. A union could probably throw some great parties while employers set up contracts with overseas companies, but that's about it. How do you prevent them from just ignoring the union? Import/export controls? On software? Nobody wants that and it won't work very well anyway. We need only look to the tenets of free software/open source to see how an attempt to control the movement of software this way could backfire.

A professional association is a much better idea. I'm a member of my state bar association (IAAL), as well as being a developer, and there could be many parallels. Looking at the professional engineering scene is probably an even closer match.

States license Professional Engineers, and require their supervision/approval for all sorts of things like building bridges and buildings. The PEs run firms that employ young engineers who work under the supervision of the firm owners. Those young engineers eventually meet the qualifications for licensure themselves. Sure, certain PEs can farm out their work overseas, but most don't, recognizing that the long term survival of the *profession* requires that they pass on the knowledge and eventually the licensure locally.

Is the creation of software an activity that should be regulated in the same way that construction is? I think it's easy to say *yes*.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[iamhassi]

They tried to unionize at Convergys SBC DSL tech support and management fired 78 people and shifted calls to another call center while they hired new people. New employees are now showed a anti-union video made by Convergys the very first day of training and paid $9.25/hr with nickel raises every 6 months.

Re:Or you could quit your whining and get on with

[lyphorm]

How about s/he gain that knowledge the same way I did, through years of painfully prying it out of everyone else in the company. Or figuring it out myself.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Neil Blender]

How can you not be eligible for unemployment benefits? The US unemployment benefits scheme must be truly screwed up if you can be ineligible just for quitting a job, or refusing to do something degrading like training a replacement.

In most cases if you quit, you cannot get benefits. However, I quit once and received full benefits. The reason was because they wanted to cut my salary by 40% and wanted me to work russian time (midnight to 8am - they were outsourcing to Russia, this was in 2001.) I said I would not accept the changes and if they wouldn't keep my at my current salary and hours, I would quit. They said no, I quit immediately. I layed this out to the unemployment people and they said I was justified in quiting. I am not sure if 'not wanting to train a replacement' would go over quite the same.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The reason was because they wanted to cut my salary by 40% and wanted me to work russian time (midnight to 8am - they were outsourcing to Russia, this was in 2001.)

This could be construed as constructive dismissal - making unreasonable demands or not paying salary is usually the same as outright firing someone.

Exact rules for MN

[bluGill]

Minnesota rules [uimn.org] I'm unemployed right now, so I have to go through these... the relavant parts:

2. Partially or Totally Unemployed Through No Fault of Your Own Even with enough wages to qualify for unemployment benefits, the reason for your job separation could disqualify you from receiving benefits. Some reasons are:
Quit without a good reason caused by the employer - Leaving for personal reasons or circumstances, not because it was the employer's fault.
Discharged for misconduct - For actions such as continued, unexcused absences and/or tardiness; breaking company rules; neglect of duties; insubordination; being impaired by drugs or alcohol on the job; fighting; harassment.
Refused a job or failed to apply for a suitable job without "good cause"- For refusing work that was suitable for you based on your work history, training, skills, ability, the pay scale in the local labor market, the distance to the job, and how long you have been out of work.
On strike -When off work because you are a member of the striking union or are participating in the strike by honoring a picket line.
NOTE: If you were not laid off due to lack of work from your last job, a Customer Service Center representative will contact you and your last employer for additional information. If you are disqualified from benefits because of a job separation, you will be mailed a written determination explaining the reason.

I've also heard it from court papers that "if a reasonable person would quit in this situation" Thus you can quit if you are assigned a job that while you can do, is not safe. They might agree that being asked to train your replacement before you are laid off counts, or might not, hard to say. A reasonable person might not quit, but would agree that it is a reasonable thing to do, OTOH, it is a safe job that you are qualified to do. You better be able to prove they were intending to lay your off after this though.

I wouldn't expect unemployment offices to have much sympathy for a company moving your job offshore though. They have some ability to make life hard on companies, but I'm not sure how much (likely very little)

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Absolut Vodka corrupts absolutely.

And what's worse, Grey Goose evaporates! I can never keep a bottle around more than a day.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[LostCluster]

Train My Replacement?
Sorry, it's not in my job description.

Seriously, in most states a sudden take-it-or-leave-it change in your job requirements is a "just cause" to quit your job and still claim unemployment.

If you weren't in the business of training people in India... and you don't want to get into that business, you shouldn't have to.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Wylfing]

a "just cause" to quit your job and still claim unemployment

Or, if you live in Minnesota, there is no such thing as an unjust cause. At first I was puzzled by this "dilemma," because in the Socialist Upper Midwest about the only way you can mess up getting unemployment checks is to be working a job on the sly.

Thanks, Bush!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Thanks for having Elaine Chao and the U.S. Dept of Labor hold seminars for employers - how to lower their costs by moving production overseas.

Thank god I am safe at Vandelay Industries...

Re:Thanks, unions, government, and greedy employee

[kommakazi]

I know the parent was modded troll, but i'm biting regardless.
If minimum wage labor is worth so little, then explain why the giant corporations that are fueled by minimum wage labor as so goddamn rich, yet their minimum wage employees are still struggling from paycheck to paycheck...All while CEOs of such companies are practically swimming in cash. If there's any wage that's inflated, it has to be that of a CEO and other top level management positions. Not to mention the benefits these people get....yeah it must be a real killer to offer that dental plan to your employees when you are holding millions in stock options. Get a clue, man...

Re:Thanks, unions, government, and greedy employee

[Milo77]

Sure - let the CEOS rake it in as long as we the people can decide how much of their profits we can feed back in to the economy via government programs we deem worthwhile. The problem is, the CEOs continue to pay their salaries by finding ways to pay a lower and lower wage. At the same time, they are also politically controlling the tax rate so that the tax burden is shifting from them to the middle and lower classes. We're all going to quickly be in position where we're all making a lot less, and any relief we're receiving via entitlements is increasingly funded out of percentages of our own paychecks. As far as I can tell, the only real disagreeable part of all this is that we don't get a say - or at least no real say. Think of the peoples ability to raise taxes on the rich as a safety valve. When too much wealth begins to accumulate in the upper echelons, the people can adjust the tax rate to stimulate the circulation of the cash. As the wealth becomes more evenly dispersed, enough people will be happy with their wages and taxes will begin to adjust again. This is why capitalism requires democracy to work correctly. Unfortunatly, without campaign reform this safety valve is broken and the poor will keep getting poorer and the rich, richer. When democracy is broken, capitalism is broken...

Re:Thanks, unions, government, and greedy employee

[Milo77]

I have nothing to back this up with (but would be interested in seeing actual numbers) other than my experience, which tells me in some thirty years we've gone from a world of a handful of millionaires to a world with a handful of billionaires. People who made 100k thrity years ago are now making 1mil. I just don't see the same order of magnitude increases on the low end. It's the relative gap that I was refering to in the original post. Who cares if the poor make 15k a year now instead of 2 or 3k, when the wage of the wealthy is increasing 10x, 100x, or even 1000x times. At the same time poor went from paying 15 cents of tax per dollar (on average) to close to 20, and the wealthy went from paying around 30 to around 25 (I don't rememeber the exact numbers, but its the trend that's important anyway). As if the trends weren't sad enough, American's have been fooled into thinking that capitalism is simply working as designed and that the wealthy deserve everything they've earned. What we seem to forget is that we have a right to tax their earnings and disperse the wealth.

Re:Thanks, unions, government, and greedy employee

[plumby]

American businesses do find it difficult to employ Americans.

Like my company, that has just announced record profits, but is just about to lay off 20% of the IT dept, as a cost cutting excercise. Last year the CEO got paid over 10 times the amount that this excercise will save the company. My heart bleeds for these struggling corporations.

Re:Thanks, unions, government, and greedy employee

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

If you didn't have unions, the world would be stuck with the labor practices described by Charles Dickens, Upton Sinclair, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, John Steinbeck and company. You know: 80 hour work-weeks, in poisonous conditions for slave-wages owed to company stores - while your children die without health care.

Unions and Governments CREATED the middle-class as we know it.

You may prefer serfdom, and the "good old days". Usual liberatarian fantasy bullsh*t.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Lumpy]

no wrong attitude....

train him WRONG... fricking screw them as hard as they are screwing you.

sorry, but if your boss doenst know your job enough to train your replacement then, you will screw them nicely :-)

just like how I rot13 all the sourcecode I write every night....

it will take them decades to figure it out. espically when I tell them... "what??? It's psudeocode! you are tellimg me you hired someone so unskilled as they dont know what to do with a psudocode file?? I'll gladly help you as a contractor for $200.00 an hour, minimum 10 hour billing."

sorry... but if they want to screw you, feel free to return their favor.... just do it legally...

In my case, I was the local It that they decided that I could write apps, they never specified the language nor bought the tools... and yes I deleted all my self bought tools when I left... I dont want to violate any copyrights...

oh and be sure to call OSHA and BSA and tip them off to unsafe working conditions and suspected software piracy, that is always good for a payback to a company.

do I sound bitter? at least now I have a good job with a good company and they are smart enough to use CVS and buy the tools we need....

Re:Train My Replacement?

[jazman_777]

train him WRONG... fricking screw them as hard as they are screwing you.

Yes, and as Nixon said: "if two wrongs don't make a right, try three." No, he didn't really say that.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Brandybuck]

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit...

Me: "This is a partial specialization of a member template using RTTI to handle exceptions thrown by the descriptor class when it blocks on release."

Raj: "But I only know Java!"

Re:Train My Replacement?

[OrangeTide]

Invent your own forms and policies, create a complete and utter fantasy business and have you and a few other train all the new people against that.

Of course I'm not sure what sort of civil or criminal liabilities there are in sabotage...

The real solution here is to just do what you are told, train your replacement. And now that you have no job simply stop buying things. Once the economy crumbles and the US finds itself unable to compete in global economy you can move to India and get a job driving taxis.

Re:Train My Replacement?

[MikeDawg]

Please. . . Most, if not all job descriptions I have ever seen (most had to also be signed, with an extra copy I can have), have including these very valuable words at the end: "Any other assigned tasks".

Re:Train My Replacement?

[demachina]

Simple solution. Train them but train them badly, very badly. Train them with stuff that sounds plausible but is diametricly opposed to right. What are they going to do, fire you?

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Stopmotioncleaverman]

Train my replacement?

Do I look like a Sith lord?

Re:Train My Replacement?

[Glonoinha]

Bah!
Train him.
Become his best buddy. He is going to need a friend here as he is a stranger in a strange land.
Take him out to experience fine American food.
Introduce him to tequila. Lots and lots of tequila.
While the tequila is flowing teach him 'drinking games' and insure that he will blow a .20 BAC.
Make sure he gets home safe and sound by sitting in the passenger seat navigating while he drives home. Navigate him past all the friendly police officers.

Nothing says loving like a DWI. God forbid the cops find a baggie of mariwa... maryjuan... mauriwan... shit. God forbid the cops find cocaine in his jacket pocket when they pat him down. Those pesky foreigners and their drugs. Welcome to PMITA prison.

Only way to make it even funnier is you being totally sober at the time.

If you are going to dream, dream big.

If you are already laid off how can you be fired?

[Facekhan]

Personally I would consider the moment I was notified that I was being laid off as the time I was laid off. If they want me to continue my normal job for x amount of time then that is fine. If they want me to train a replacement then they can pay me consultant rates. Once you are notified that you are being laid off for no cause, how can you be fired for cause. You are not required to finish up your week or month or whatever, the employer and employee simply agree that is the case but they can't make you do it. As far as unemployment eligibility goes they can't very well fire you once for no cause and then for cause when you refuse to train a replacement. If they want you to train a replacement, tell them you want consultant rates or extended severance and benefits.

Train them poorly

[bihoy]

No sense in helping them to look good eh?

Re:Train them poorly

[falzer]

Yep. Get them started on reading Slashdot their first day.

Re:Train them poorly

[Razor Blades are Not]

Train your replacement well. Tell him you're well aware that he is going to replace you, and that the pitfalls in his (new) position will be the foolish managers who've hired him because he is cheaper than you are, but less skilled. Tell him that as soon as he has enough experience he should immediately look for a new job, as you are now, because ultimately, he (and you) are better off working for someone with some fore-sight.

You can sit together, looking at job sites all day looking for a new job. You will be seen as diligently performing this latest job function of "training". You might even earn some extra kudos from the PHB.

It will be a bonding experience. You'll wander onwards into the job market - and he'll climb the corporate ladder at your old job.

In a few years time, you'll have kept in touch, and can call him up to see if the company he's working at is hiring. He might even be your boss :)

Re:Train them poorly

[megazoid81]

Bollocks! Americans have as much of a right to work in India as Indians in the United States. You may think the U.S. offers free citizenship to several Indians and flies them over here at taxpayer's expense to work. Far from it, Indians, just like everybody else, have to go through an arduous process [state.gov] to get a work permit to work in the U.S.

Don't subject the rest of the Slashdot crowd to the talking out of your ass. Employment visas for India [indianembassy.org] are available to Americans as well. It's the companies who don't want to employ Americans in India because they sure as hell will end up raising the wages in India and reducing the cost advantage of offshoring jobs.

Re:Train them poorly

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

We spend millions bringing Indians to the US for IT education at our best (publicly funded) universities. We allow indians to move here.

The universities may be publicly funded, but the out-of-country tuitions are in no way subsidized by the American tax dollar, in fact they are a significant profit center for most universities.

Furthermore, I'll take a brain-drain from India to the USA over a job drain from the USA to India ANY DAY.

That's where Bush and the idiotic, anti-foreigner "security measures" have been cutting our economy off at the knees. Now the smart kids are staying home, and even the ones that have green cards are leaving and taking their knowledge with them.

Be careful

[hey!]

Think about the future.

Are you going to need anything from this employer?

For example, is it possible that you will be consulting and have a proposal in front of some of these people? That you might need a reference? That a prospective future employer might know your bosses professionally or socially?

Be careful of burning bridges, unless you are willing to get burnt (twice).

Alternatively, can you get something from your boss that will be useful to you? For example, maybe he will allow you to spend some time during the training period looking for a job with the resources you have at work. Or perhaps he'll help you network.

I'm not saying the boss is a nice guy or deserves your loyalty, but you may be able to get a quid pro quo, small as it may be, and that would be better than nothing. At very least look at your self interest in the situation as cold bloodedly as you can manage.

Information in parent is flawed

[deacon]

Let's get something straight from the start:

Companies do not "give you a reference"

Companies will confirm or deny your date of employment, that is it.

Why????

DEFAMATION LAWSUIT!!!!

How does this work?

Glad you asked!

You hire a law firm which specializes in defamation lawsuits. They hire a company which calls your old employer and asks them leading questions about you:

Was she a drunk? Lesbian? Stole pencils? Republican? etc. etc...

Then your lawyer files a defamation lawsuit based on the bullshit that your PHB spewed over the phone..

Result:

You get a few 10s or hundreds of K, your old PHB gets roasted with a blowtorch..

Win Win!

Remember, half the people on /. are like you, the other half are hired by your bosses to post misinformation to keep you in check and in line. These trolls can be recognized by post which say things like:

You are not eligible for unemployment if you do not kiss your companies ass...

The only people who decide what you are eligeble for are at the unemplyment office.

CALL THEM!!!!

God, If, when I was a dumb impressionable kid, I had a nickel for ever time I took some random persons (wrong!!) opinion as fact, rather than ACTUALLY CHECKING with the real authority involved, I'd have like 5 bucks of nickels, plus about 100K in real money.

The saddest part, I guess, is that it is almost impossible to get kids today (no offense meant, seriously, I was one myself once) to listen to advice which empowers them rather than making them whores and bitches of their employers.

Bah.

Then again, I [m-w.com] deserve it, cause I never listened to anyone older than me either.

A third option

[cpu_fusion]

It looks like a real dilemma where if you refuse to hire your replacement, you are fired without severance and are ineligible for unemployment benefits, and if you quit, you don't receive severance and are ineligible for unemployment.

I propose a third option:

Train them to do things the wrong way, reap maximum amusement out of your last days at the firm, and laugh as you walk out the door.

Re:A third option

[AbbyNormal]

Rules for my job.

1.) All code must be placed on a single line.
2.) No comments are necessary...they take up space.
3.) When in doubt, use a com object reptitively.
4.) When in doubt, abbreviate. getFormName, should be: getFormName.
5.) Safe threading is for cowards. Let the threads duke it out...Its the manly way.
6.) Try not to use "if" or "for" statements. They take too much time.

Re:A third option

[robi2106]

You don't understand the nightmare of a creation I have made. A 1600 line indows batch file that operates in both command line and prompted input modes which calls another 10 or so batch files (total of 5000 lines or so) to automate Visual Studio project builds.

I can GoTo like the day is long baby!

jason

Re:A third option - wait

[Tuna_Shooter]

Agreed This happened to me in 2001. The overseas "Consulting" outfit that was hired to replace me as an admin/dba received all the training i deemed appropriate. Needless to say after six months of unacceptable downtime on the servers- security breaches- software issues - and piss poor performance (although the stupid CFO and accountants were happy) i had sitting in my lap a very lucrative support contract. Same job - part time- twice the money. Go figure. The world is full of idiots and i'm starting to beleive they are ALL accountant types.

Re:A third option

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

In this job market? That's like being thrown out of the plane without a parachute, and failing to grab the "mixed drink umbrella" at the door.

There are those that will claim it's "better than nothing" and you shouldn't pass up the chance to grab one, but really, be honest. How much good can it possibly do you?

Re:A third option

[Nogami_Saeko]

"Good reference" being something along the lines of:

"Does an excellent job of training foreign replacement workers when about to be terminated - highly recommended! - until replaceable...".

I think you might be better-off without it...

N.

Re:A third option

[OneFix at Work]

Actually bad employer references are kind of a thing of the past. Most employers can only say 2 things if they are called about a former employee...

Yes they worked here and the dates they worked were from X to Y...

That's it. The problem is, employers are afraid of law suits from former employees that might get wind that they were the ones that cost them the job. A former employeer can't even tell them if you quit, were fired, laid off, etc...

Now, employers that know little about the law will probably continue to "spill the beans", and if you use a former manager as a reference, then things change...but that's obvious...

I write my own referances

[DABANSHEE]

Afterall who doesn't have old unused letterhead paper from their old employers lying arround? Not me I always make sure I have plenty.

One just signs it in the name of a manager that's no longer employed there, using a date when he was there. So on the infinitesimally small chance that they actually ring up & check, things will still appear above board.

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not in the computer industry, but I'm wondering how long it takes to train foreign workers? If your job is so valuable that it takes a few days to train someone to be as competent as you, then how does that reflect upon your job?

Imagine training a foreign physician in what you do. How long would that take? 7-12 years?

Re:But...

[Mantorp]

If your job is so valuable that it takes a few days to train someone to be as competent as you, then how does that reflect upon your job?

I was involved in managing an outsourcing project. Not in the computer industry either as it happens, it was back office accounting. The replacement workers spent 8 weeks or so on site here, 4 weeks documenting the living crap out of everything, 4 weeks doing the actual work with the soon to be replaced staff looking over their shoulders then 4 more once back in India with their work being checked from here.
Where I worked at the time we had other openings so no one directly lost their jobs because of this. The workers we got were generally overqualified for what they were asked to do and we paid them a fraction of what it would have cost to hire local staff. Think it turned out to be around $12000 per year per chartered accountant. That covered everything salary, overhead, insurance. Another benefit was that everything was now well documented and they constantly cross trained new employees to keep them from getting bored and to make sure we had replacments if someone over there quit.

Re:But...

[neurojab]

>If your job is so valuable that it takes a few days to train someone to be as competent as you, then how does that reflect upon your job?

The key phrase here is "as competent as you". If you're being outsourced, that's not the goal. It's a minor consideration. The company is not trying to buy competence... they've already got it (or one would hope). They're trying to buy a cheap warm body to make next year's balance sheets look a little better. Competence doesn't factor into the equation. The company hopes that eventually this new person will perform as well as the one they let go, but in the meantime they're quite happy to have significantly less productivity if it means they can pay them a small fraction of what they pay their current employee.

I'm a pornstar...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have to worry about 'training' my replacement.

Been there done that

[greywar]

And whats worse-in my case the employer lied. "Oh no we're not training them to replace you, we just expect that you will be busy with other projects..." Yeah other projects like looking for work. They paid for it in the end....HAH! And when they asked me back to help "save the company"....I didnt feel much desire to.

Re:Been there done that

[Fnkmaster]

My friend, you need to learn the way to get ahead in the world. When they ask you back, tell them you'll come back if you get your old boss' job. Or his boss' job. Seriously, that's what I'd do.

Then again, it can be satisfying to watch the people who fucked you over lose their jobs as a company fails. But there are usually nice people who don't deserve to lose their jobs who'll get screwed over in the process too. Revenge is sweet, but getting your old boss' job, saving a company's ass, then using this line item on the resume to get an even sweeter job is far, far better for you in the long run, and is really the best sort of revenge you can ask for (not to mention you can't put "they begged me to come back and I told them to bugger off" on your resume).

Re:Been there done that

[Sycraft-fu]

Or refuse to come back on as an employee, but offer to consult for an hourly fee that works out to something like 2-4x your old saliry. Just because it's a place that you don't want to come back to doesn't mean you can't milk them for a bit. Had a friend do that with great success. The company decided to replace him with someone that basically earned minimum wage and was fresh out of highschool. They called him up and told him they needed him to fix something, expecting it to be free, of course. He told them no, but he'd consult for them, I think $100/hour was what he decided on. He did, and fixed the problem his replacement had caused. He continued to get extra (and highly profitable) work in this fashion until the company finally went under.

Re:Been there done that

[jhoger]

That first line was a little over the top, but I was emulating the Ferengi, and they are nothing if not over the top when it comes to profit.

There is a kernel of truth though... you have to admit that there are plenty of beancounters stupid enough to think that they can magically switch without a *long* transition period (years) when moving to an outsourced engineering model when your business culture is an on-staff engineering team.

It happens over and over. When people say "I kind of feel bad charging so much money for such simple work after they laid me off" or "why should I help them, they're jerks, they laid me off" I say, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you're getting paid for doing work you would have been doing anyway just for a lot less money if you hadn't been laid off. They made the bad decision. You make the profit.

Train 'em

[AKAImBatman]

Let the employers make their mistakes. You're going to get laid off anyway, so you might as well use the time to start looking for a new job instead of whining about having to train your replacement. Unless you're extremely well organized, it's not like your replacement is going to get much out of your training.

BOFH

[AbbyNormal]

Cmon people...Start Training the BOFH way!

BOFH: "In order to make sure that your computer is operating at its full capacity, you must daily feed your monitor water whilst holding down the degauss button".

Trainee over phone:" Sir, this is no problem.." ***BZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzTTttttttttttttt***

BOFH: "Next trainee. I'm going to like being replaced".

Re:BOFH

[pla]

You forgot the most useful option...

"Okay, now, log in to our CVS archive server... Oh, you don't have an account yet? Well, just use root for now, with password blah".

Now, have them do some random crap until the right moment comes up (namely, a nearby coworker, while composing an email, missed a space between two words and didn't catch it).

"Okay, now very carefully follow my next few instructions, because you can do some serious damage on this machine... We need to clear out some junk on /tmp, so type 'r', 'm', 'space', 'slash' [pause here a moment, reach over to your coworker, point at their typo, and say...] 'SPACE' [pause another moment, then describe some harmless path off of /tmp]. Okay, now hit return. This might take a minute, the crap can really build up there..."

And, you can consider your replacement well trained, with plausible deniability that your trainee simply "misheard" you giving a suggestion to a coworker, and took it too literally.


Train my replacement... Yeah, right. Cold day in Hades I'll train my replacement!

This is pretty simple

[Bobdoer]

Step one: learn that you're being replaced.
Step two: train your trainee to be incompetent.
Step three: laugh at the karmic justice of them firing you for being expensive and getting a useless employee in return.
Step four: read the classified ads and fail to find a new job.

At least both you and the company are screwed.

My Stapler!...

[Himring]

Fine! But Rasheed is not getting my red stapler!...

just face it

[cloudless.net]

In my company I have to train my potential replacements every day. The company wants to have the ability to layoff anyone, anytime without worry. In fact they have a big layoff once every few months. I'm getting used to it.

Re:just face it

[NanoGator]

"The company wants to have the ability to layoff anyone, anytime without worry. In fact they have a big layoff once every few months. I'm getting used to it."

IBM? Heh.

The Ultimate Plan

[rckymntrider]

1) Start working on a business plan 2) Train your replacement as poorly as possible 3) Collect your severance pay, use it as an investment together with an SBA loan 4) Go into business for your self

Common practice

[NTworks]

This is common practice at my job... I work as a state-licensed privately-run datacenter, to which state gvt agencies outsource their mainframe and other large scale Unix processing.

When we sign a new contract for an agency, we send computer operators and other staff there for a week to get trained by the state employees that are about to get laid off

Unemployment

[zoomnmd]

Well, in Maryland at least, you do receive unemployment benefits if you are fired. Also, you can receive benefits when resigning in leui of being fired. A friend of mine just went through this.
He worked for Lockheed Martin and was going to be fired.
Instead, he resigned and received benefits. No severence though...

Sabotage would be awfully tempting!

[RealAlaskan]

How could you not keep some little, vital secrets? How could you not allow critical misconceptions to go uncorrected? In short, how could you resist the temptation to totally, subtly screw up the guy you're training? Make sure that you don't pass on any crucial contacts, ``accidently'' erase or corrupt vital documents on your last day, the possibilities seem endless.

Even if the guy you're training is well qualified, there is probably enough that is peculiar to your company and your job that you could do this. He might know that he's not getting the full story, but he won't know what you're leaving out.

It seems to me that this is really asking for trouble, particularly for higher level jobs where the work isn't easily supervised. The story suggests that there are no counter-incentives to this, and I'm not sure how you could build any in, at least under U.S. labor law.

Re:Sabotage would be awfully tempting!

[Monkelectric]

``accidently'' erase or corrupt vital documents on your last day, the possibilities seem endless

I have heard tales of great men, who made a cron job that would destroy their computer and source code at 10:00am every monday morning -- unless they were there to stop it.

Re:Sabotage would be awfully tempting!

[asreal]

Massive flamebait warning, but this is really what I think:

This kind of thinking is part of the reason why jobs are going overseas. Imagine yourself to be in charge of BigCorp Inc. If you can choose to give the job to someone overseas who is grateful just to have it or an American who feels that employment and benefits are owed to him/her, posts on Slashdot all day while they are employed and will cause damage to the company upon termination of employment, who gets the job?

how to train one's replacement

[0WaitState]

CVS? Nah, we tried that but it didn't work. We're using visual source safe now.

Ok, first you model everything down each class and method level in UML, then you apply the elaboration bongfizzle according to rational unified process...

We're targeting this release to run on the Longhorn codebase...

I'm sorry, but you must adhere to the *letter* of the EJB spec. That means you cannot use java.io.*, cannot have worker threads, no socket communication, scheduled events, or application lifecycle events.

You absolutely must check in everything before you go home at the end of the day. That way you don't lose anything if your workstation dies. Build failures? No problem, someone will fix it before you get in the next day.

You can start coding as soon as you acquire linux licenses from SCO...

It's only a matter of time before

[pair-a-noyd]

someone goes postal on this.
This is insanity and no one wants to lose their job. And to be forced to train your replacement? That's just flat out wrong..
There's a lot of unstable people out there, already under huge stress. Add this to the mix and you're asking for a body count....

It's sad, it's scary but it will happen. Count on it..

Employer taking the piss? right back at them!

[t_allardyce]

Remember the phrase 'slow learner'? well if your on the payroll to teach your replacement, and your worried that mis-training them will get you in to trouble, just remember the phrase 'slow teacher'! you could spend a whole year just teaching someone, very very very slowly and extra extra carefully, every single detail of your system until they kill themselves out of bordem. Then you can get started on the next one ;)

Re:Employer taking the piss? right back at them!

[nomadic]

"Well it's only been 7 weeks and we're done with the int variable. Tomorrow we'll start with float, that's going to take a little longer, it's a much more complicated subject. And don't forget to start Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica tonight, you'll definitely need the background."

Companies hurt themselves...

[corren]

Here's what I don't understand. The article states $136 billion dollars of salary (per year) will be moved outside the US in the next 15 years. Don't these businesses realize that when they stop paying the american people to build their products, that the american people they rely on to BUY their products wont have any money because they pushed all the jobs overseas? What will McDonalds do when McDonalds are all automated and nobody has any money to eat at McDonalds? When a company moves all its staff but executive off shore, aren't they removing that much money in the very market they want to compete in, therefore hurting themselves in the end?

Re:Companies hurt themselves...

[chris_mahan]

As long as it doesn't affect the next 2 quarters of revenue on The Street, they can cash in their options and retire to the house in Santa Barbara's Spanish Hills.

Short sighted? Yes. Welcome to Kapital-ism.

Re:Companies hurt themselves...

[whatnotever]

Think about a single company, one out of thousands. That one company has a choice to either send jobs overseas or not. If it does, then it saves money, and because it is just one company, the impact on the economy is negligible. So it will have higher profits if it sends the jobs overseas. From a simplified, purely financial point of view, the company clearly wants to outsource and make more money.

Now look at the collection of all companies in a country. As you noted, if they *all* outsource (not entirely possible, but let's go with it for the sake of argument), then they don't have local consumers for their products (also not quite right, because not all companies are consumer-oriented). So in fact they will all make *less* money, even though they are all pursuing an action that will maximize their profit...

So what if one company then realizes the error of its ways and transfers the jobs back from overseas? Then it will have higher costs, but as it is again only one company, it will not be able to have a big enough effect on the economy to raise its revenue. So outsourcing is *still* the optimal policy for any single company, even though outsourcing was the cause of their lowered profit!

The action of a single company sending jobs overseas will always make financial sense for that company. It's just the collective action of many pursuing their optimal policies that leads to low profit for all.

Now, clearly this is vastly oversimplified, but I think it is a useful way of looking at it. It's somewhat related to the Prisoner's Dilemma (something to look up if you're interested) and game theory in general...

Can techies become a force of change?

[LibrePensador]

Here's what will happen in reaction to this article.

A lot of people will respond and tell us how angered they are over the injustices that it is being done to their peers. Then, they will move on to the next story, because in America individuality reigns supreme and the media has twisted our common history to the extent that people do not realize that it was trade unions that made possible the establishment of fair labor standards, such as sick pay, vacation time, a 40-hour week, health standards in the workplace, age-limits to enter the workfoce and so forth.

People will complain about the raw deal that they get from corporations, yet fail to understand that they have been co-opted into thinking of trading unions as their enemy.

So long as trade unions are vilified in this country and workers continue to believe that they can beat the system individually if they just continue to make themselves more knowledgeable and their skills more marketeable -all good and lofty things but not the solution to this issue- I will remain unimpressed by these stories for two reasons:

1) They contain a pinch of xenophobia, at least most of them do.

2) People are not looking for root causes and fool themselves if they think that foreign workers are not also continuing to make themselves more knowledgeable and their skills more marketable.

It's time to collaborate with your peers with the same passion that you work on open source software: Union Makes Strength

For those of you that fail to understand that life is sacrosact and that profits are not everything,do not bother. History has proven you wrong. Only a short time ago, a worker could not hope to reach his thirty's because his working conditions were so inhumane and miserable.

Know your history, know your past. It will empower you to face the future.

It happened to me, twice...

[Naum]

First time was a crusher, guys sent from India, working for an offshore vendor - my primary task was to train them to take over for me, since I was terminated in lieu of them taking over systems support and development. Funny thing was my friend got me the gig there four years earlier but just about all of my training was of the OJT variety, though as a seasoned programmer, it doesn't take me too long to get the underpinnings of the system after I dig a bit. I got another offer, and even though it was for less pay and temporary, gladly took it to escape the burden. One of my team members trained a fellow for six months, thinking that the guy was going back to India. Then he suffered the ultimate insult as the individual got to relocate here and take his work from home position.

Second time I didn't have a job lined up and a team in Mexico took over my function. While I didn't train these folks in person, I was charged with preparing a comprehensive how-to guide that covered every facet of system support and development on that particular application domain. Knowledge transfer was conducted via email and my prepared HTML kit that covered everything from overviews to FAQ on the system. It was easier to stomach, minus the person to person mode.

You do it because as long as you're accepting a paycheck, you're obligated to serve as directed. At least that is the way I was brought up. A honest days work for an honest days pay and all that jazz.

Within a 45 minute drive of my house, I tally >5-10K jobs gone, either to India or handled by immigrant visa worker here in the states. By those numbers, you may be assured that these arn't rinky dink outfits, these are corporate giants in finance, defense industry, semiconductors, etc...

Maybe it's not come to your IT department yet. But the prospect will come soon to the executive management, unless you work for a very small shop, and they will consider it. I served a contract in the summer at a pharmaceutical company and the staff there boasted no way would offshoring and/or outsourcing pervade their organization. A few months into the assignment, senior management there announced a bold new initiative, a partnership with IBM that did indeed involve wholesale migration of their application and systems programming to Indian locales.

Here's a list of firms that have indeed embarked upon campaigns that involved US workers training foreign replacements:

• American Express
• Bank of America
• DHL
• Honeywell
• Intel
• Motorola

You can read about more companies here [rescueamericanjobs.com] that have ex-IT workers that can share the same stories. These arn't satellite systems out on the peripheral horizon, only impacting a small percentage. If anything, I'd say the numbers quoted in the story are way under the mark, given these are core systems like accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, financial capture, EDI, MRP, reservation scheduling, accounting, etc...

Yay globalism.

Do what autoworkers did

[SuperBanana]

I know most of us "white collar" folks despise unions, but look at what autoworkers did when Japan and Europe started taking US auto companies to the cleaners, and the Big Three started treating people like shit. They unionized. Then they striked. The motto was: we don't care if you can't do as well if you can't treat us like shit. You won't do business at ALL if you treat us like shit. Unless you want to close shop and go into making floral arrangements, you'll negotiate with us.

Honestly- what would happen if tomorrow, every IT worker simply got up from their keyboard at noon, turned off their cell phone/pager, and didn't come back for the rest of the day? We'd all be instantly fired in favor of people in India? Bullshit. Businesses are weak on the outsourcing front because they can't outsource everything. Strikes make it an all-or-nothing proposition, and contrary to popular belief, they can't just pick someone off the street; it still 'costs' quite a bit to hire someone. Unionizing doesn't make you the boss, but it does even the playing field, because as a single worker, you're rather powerless.

Today, despite HEAVY competition from Europe and Japan, UAW auto workers:

• Make $45k or more
• Have a health/benefits/retirement package second to none
• Have incredibly safe, well-lit, comfortable workplaces, with all the ergonomics they need.
• Never get bored; they don't spend years installing door panels. They get rotated, often on a weekly basis, among different tasks. Guess what? That includes the training to be able to do the new task.

Wouldn't you kill to be able to have most of that? I sure as hell would. Detroit is looking better by the second.

...and I have to say that as much as I have always despised the US auto industry for building incredible crap, they've gotten far better over the years. This is despite major manufacturers actually setting up plants here in the US, because it's cheaper! So much for the argument that worker-friendly policies make you unable to compete in the global market.

Bank of America/Fleet just announced they're laying off 12,500 people. According to a BoA rep, guess what department will be one of the hardest hit? You guessed it- infrastructure, aka, Information Technology. Even better, most layoffs will be in the Northeast, because down in Georgia, land of the 2-year-old-strip-malls, real estate(and workers) are dirt cheap.

Oh, you can also vote for politicians who support striking down at-will employment laws...

Re:Do what autoworkers did

[wintermute42]

I'm all for organizing. I'm a member of a union that is associated with the Communication Workers of America.

I would like to point out, however, that unfortunately there was a difference between the Japanese auto invasion and offshoring of US jobs.

In the case of Japanese imports, workers and the companies where on the same side. While workers were losing their jobs, the US auto companies were losing money and market share. The politicians listened to the combination of labor and corporations.

In this case labor (in our case, engineers and IT folk) are not on the same side as the companies. The companies profit by lowering the wages they have to pay. They get lower turnover among those they still employ in the US (since there are fewer jobs to skip to). So the employees lose, while the companies gain. And so far it is companies that are making political donations.

This does not mean that labor can't have an effect. But it is important to realize that it may not be as easy as it was for the United Auto Workers working to put tarrifs in place to protect the industry from the Japanese.

It is also worth remembering that the United Auto Workers were well established when the Japanese imports appeared. But it was not always that way. Ford, I think it was, tried to break strikes by hiring Pinkerton thugs, armed with ax handles. The unions are there because people worked to put them there. While it's true that many unions became corrupt and bureacratic many of them did not start out that way. They were built by their workers.

Organizing takes a lot of time. Many union groups are small. That means that there is no money to hire a professional staff. The work is done by union members who also work a full time job and have families. And while they are working in the union, they may face the danger of job retaliation.

So don't think that some union is going to come along and fix it for you. It can take a long time and it starts with you.

You IT guys....

[zogger]

... are missing it. Think about unionizing. And if you do, watch the union bosses and make sure they don't get blackmailed or bribed. That's it for advice. The two choices are watch jobs go away and paycheck shrink or vanish, or keep jobs, build better stuff, keep mo money for yourself and inside the nation where it recirculates and helps the economy as a whole.

You are one of only two or three professions who have the clout-if unionized-to shut the country down business-wise, a *pretty_dang_ snazzy* bargaining chip. And there ain't didlly squat uncle sam or any coalition of corporate bosses could do about it, because YOU CONTROL ALL THE STUFF AND THEY DON'T KNOW HOW.

You could force an end to outsourcing and H1B abuses, you could force "fair trade" over hideous and erroneously termed "free trade" scam billionaire's ripoffs with it's unequal excise taxes between nations (our exports are taxed a lot higher usually by other nations on most products), you could force "safe computing" as a standard on the manufacturers, you could actually stand a chance against the marketing weenies on important technical and engineering aspects..... you could make quality job 1 everywhere, and keep getting paid for it, instead of "ohh, it's shiny now, ship it out!" decisions...

buy a clue, look at the article again...

wall

handwriting

All you need is a union. If you wait, it'll be too late. Snooze ya lose....

I bet just over slashdot you could have several thousand people start a union within a few days....or hours really

In the US too...

[Spoing]

I've just completed a contract where I was given the task of documenting a system that had already been installed. No big deal; I expect to do it.

The first draft was 60+ pages, and along with describing how to maintain the sytem it also included notes on defects and poor practices that the sysadmins should address (there were quite a few ).

The target audience for the document was someone with roughly my own skills who simply did not have the program-specific knowledge that I have. The document even encouraged the reader to improvise and adapt the notes; this was only one set of examples of how to do things and surely not the best or only way.

Well, shortly before submitting the document I was given someone who not only wasn't my peer, they shouldn't have even had a job doing anything with computers at all. We're talking a programer who said...

"I use the mouse to copy text."

"What's Ctrl-C? Sounds like too much trouble."

"Notepad is a very good editor."

"It's not possible to compare 2 files".

...I could go on for hours, though I'll spare you any more brain dammage.

The new instruction was that I needed to make sure this person could use the document I was writing. We're talking "Take a finger, reach around, stop when it gets moist" simplicity here.

In the mean time, I was to also train this person to do exactly what I did -- in 1 month -- though it took me about 5 years to learn the basics myself (and I've been doing it for 15 years!).

I've encountered both unreasonable and impossible tasks before, so I attacked this one with the same vigor. I spent most of the month training -- smiling -- and going away as often as possible to jump up and down in deep frustration.

Because _this_person_ was my real audience, I threw out most of the original document, and re-wrote it with such gems as "here is how to create a desktop link" and "follow procedures, even if you think you don't have to" (this I've heard was ignored immediately -- 'too much trouble; I don't need to do all that').

The only thing this person had was an H1B visa...and I'm guessing that they were both cheap and loyal (due to the threat of being deported).

The best time to leave is now.

[djplurvert]

The best jobs are available to the best. Therefore, you will have the most choices when you are highly valued by your employer, ergo, the best time to leave your employer is exactly time that it hurts your employer the most.

Always look for new work, always prospect for a better job, and always take it at the moment you are essential to your current employer.

This generally won't happen right away so you don't have to worry about having too many jobs, but you should be planning this from day one of your hire on to any job.

Now you're on your way out, here's what to do:

First make sure your new employer knows that you absolutely cannot leave your current employer out on a limb. Now, take the normal range of notice given in your situation, let's say two weeks. Let your new employer know that you will be able to start at a date that is twice this interval, in this example one month. Further, let your new employer know that you might be able to start earlier if the transition goes well. This usually won't be a problem, the new employer wants you to get started solving his problems right away.

Now, you have two choices depending on how you expect your current employer will react:

1) Wait two weeks and give two weeks notice. If you are working for some seat of the pants operation they may react from emotion and tell you don't bother to come in on monday (see below). Start your new job tommorow.

2) If you are working in a somewhat more proffesional environment, give your employer two weeks notice but let them know you will do whatever it takes to train your replacement. They are now on the spot to hire someone quickly, trust me, it will take two weeks. Now every minute you give to them to train this guy is like a gift, you are doing them a favor, you are a great employeee. Make sure they know you are in transition and that staying this extra time is a compromise but that you are willing to go the extra mile because they have been such a great employer.

Bottom line, you control the situation, you leave on good terms, you have forced your employers hand.

Things to remember:

Employment is a two way street, if you aren't earning money for them (or earning indirectly by saving) then why are they hiring you? Thus, you don't owe your employer anything other than the services he contracted for. It's his problem if he can't make a profit. With that in mind, divorce emotions from your employment activity, if it looks better for you to move right now, then move right now, that's your employer's problem not yours.

Always give notice late on friday afternoon for the same reasons they always fire people late on friday afternoon. You want to give them time to think about any reaction and divorce themselves from any emotional response. Even if your "Employer" is not prone to such a reaction, your managers and coworkers, and you, might be. By giving notice on friday you will have a weekend to relax and reflect on your decision, as will they.

Not directly related, but remember at the exit interview, the correct answer to "Is there anything we cannot tell future employers" the correct response is "you may not tell them anything not allowed by law"

happy job hunting
plurvert

They don't always tell you that you're training

[hnjjz]

They don't always tell you that you're training your replacements.

A good friend of mine used to work as a IC designer for one of the large companies in Silicon Valley. Her group was given some ridiculous deadlines that were clearly impossible to meet. To "help" them speed up work on the project, the company brought in a bunch of engineers from one of its overseas sites. The foreign engineers spent several months here, working with my friend's group, getting up to speed on the project. My friends and her co-workers really went out of their way to help make these guys comfortable, taking them on shopping trips, inviting them over on holidays, etc. Little did they know they were training their own replacements. Shortly after the overseas engineers left, my friend's entire group was laid off and the project was moved to the overseas center.

Tricky Math

[Dr. Bent]

Almost one in five information technology workers has lost a job or knows someone who lost a job after training a foreign worker

Hmm...so lets see here. 1 in 5 people has either had this happen to them or knows of someone that it's happened to? So if I work in a company with 500 people and 3 of them wind up training thier own replacements (Which, of course, would be very well-known on the company grapevine), then I'm counted as one of the 1 in 5 who have had to "dig their own unemployment graves"? Theoretically, it could just be one really popular guy that was laid off like this and he was known by 1 in 5 IT workers.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but if surveys like this are the best argument that can be raised for how much this is damaging the US economy, then we've got a long way to.

OB Homer Quote

[cookie_cutter]

if you quit, you don't receive severance and are ineligible for unemployment

Homer: You don't quit your job because you don't like it, you just go in and do it really half-assed.

Plan now...

[BlackHawk]

Hey, you. Yes, you, reading Slashdot instead of working. C'mere.

I can understand why you're feeling the way you do. I understand why you come to an office you hate, perform meaningless little chores instead of getting your real work done, and ignore... or try to... that little pressure you're feeling in your chest. The one that spikes when you read another email from management that includes the words "sacrifice", "competition", and "tough decisions".

I know that you'd rather not think about it all. You'd rather just get back to doing what you were doing before the axes started dropping, and your division, your department, your team started getting thinned out, and their jobs transferred to the ones who were left. I know that you know what that feeling is, the one you don't think about too often... except in the middle of the night, after you've just had another "what if" discussion with your spouse about finances, trying not to think about the kids asleep down the hall.

I know you're on Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Dice... all of 'em. And I know you haven't had an interview in at least six months.

You have to get up, off of your ass, and make plans. Then COMMIT. Then execute. DO IT. Go out, get the training. If the money's not there to get it, join a LUG, or whatever. Actually make friends (!), network your skills. Learn from each other. Reconcile yourself to the fact that this is going to get worse before it gets better.

But it will get better. For some of us. The ones who planned, committed, executed. The rest are going to be sorry they waited. And don't crab about the Indians too much. Their time in the spotlight is going to be so damnably short, we're all going to be shocked... most of all, them.

And when it's all over, and it will be, in about 3 years, when the economy comes roaring back and suddenly we realize that we're on the verge of losing all the Boomers who made up the majority of the workforce, then they're going to be scrambling for skilled labor. Only there won't be any.

Or not much, that is. There will be the ones who planned...

Endlessly ratcheting up competition==ponzi scheme

[Cryofan]

Do you not see that? Telling everyone to continue to compete harder and harder and harder is a Ponzi Scheme?

What is EVERYONE works as hard as they possibly can? The bottom half stills gets cut off. That is a game that has no winners, in the end.

It's illegal.

[Baldrson]

The h-1b visa is not legally used to lower wages -- only to acquire unique talent that is not available in the domestic labor force. Therefore, if you are training your replacement and your replacement is here on an h-1b visa, you can take action against your employer.

sabotage training

[Doc Ruby]

Accept the suicide training mission. Train them wrong. Take the severance and your fellow axed coworkers, and compete with the outsourced losers.

it's not all that bad

[websensei]

I may get flamed and modded down for this but I'm going to put forth my honest opinion on this anyway. In my opinion, the shift to employing Indian and other offshore workers is not, in the grand scheme of things, as big a deal as some would have it.

I work at a smallish company (around 250 employees including our offshore team) comprised of an engineering group split roughly 50/50 between our Boston-area (Mass., USA) office and our offshore contractors in Bangalore, India. Over the course of the last 2 years we've struggled with, and eventually found, a working balance between onshore and offshore talent. A 50/50 split (for most teams -- some are mostly offshore, and for others we can't find any good candidates outside the states) seems to work out best. More of the seniors/principals/architect roles are onshore, but we have some very senior people from india as well. Some of them come onshore for months at a time. In general they're treated just like regular employees. (In my personal experience I've actually preferred the personalities, dedication and skills of these workers on at least an equal basis with their local counterparts.)

It is a model that does more than allow our young business to keep costs down. If we hadn't moved our callcenter offshore, the increase cost per customer care call might well have bankrupted us, or forced a major extra round of financing we might not have been able to obtain. The whole thing could have tanked and we'd all be out of a job. As it is now, we're enabling a booming middle class in a poverty-stricken 3rd-world country (which in the long view is a very good thing for the world), at the same time that we've gradually improved the quality of our average developer (and CSR rep) and found a stable, economically viable, harmonious balance.

I know this is not the same experience many bitter recently-laid-off engineers have gone through, but it is *my* experience, and a perspective that doesn't get heard much.

I honestly believe there will always be a market for onshore talent. startups will never be able to immediately get a whole operation offshore from the get-go. fledgeling companies will need local people on local hours able to meet face to face at any time. my take is, I'm going to continue to train both on and offshore developers, do the best damn job I can, keep honing my own skills the best I can, and it ALL improves my situation -- and my resume.

working with people all over the world is a phenomenon that's not going to go away. so to the posters who suggest mis-training their potential replacements, I ask, which would you rather be: a whining dishonest saboteur who left a shambles behind in their position? or someone with solid experience working with international teams to create good software? to me the choice is clear.
like anything in life, make the best of it, and of yourself.

ps perhaps in this case my .sig is actually somewhat relevant, at least to the angry majority. taken from dante, it translates: "The only road to paradise begins in hell." hope you're all on that road, headed in the right direction.

My "Train-my-replacement" story

[Punk Walrus]

This has nothing to do with outsourcing to India, but a retail company where I worked back in 1991, during the previous Bush recession...

Our company, which sold kitchen gadgets, had actually been doing well into the recession, and it surprised a lot of us. Stores in the mall all around us were closing down, and we were doing okay. Then, suddenly, we weren't. Our company tried franchising, and it was a DISASTER, and the owners lost a lot of money. We opened up two "mega-stores" which both flopped.

We had this guy, called a "district manager," which was weird because we only had one district. He was this gung-ho, send-'em-to-seminars kind of guy who was used to his big bonuses every year. Around when things got bad is when he taught himself spreadsheet software, and started whacking away at all costs the spreadsheet told him to without reguard to whther it was actually a good idea or not. He cut staff drastically. The management (including me) protested, and proved how this made a bad problem worse, but this only seemed to make him more determined, and he got sneaky.

He sent this "new guy" to my store, and asked me to train him to become an manager like myself. This guy was just awful. He was arrogant, didn't bathe, and right off the bat told me outright he would have my job. At first I thought, "Yeah, you won't last a week here." I was one of the top three salespeople in the chain as well as assistant manager. Two weeks later, I wrote him up because of some serious infraction, with the intent of letting him go, being the worst employee I had ever trained, but for some reason upper management wouldn't let me fire him. Even though a background check showed he was wanted in a nearby county for theft and appraisal fraud. You guys can see where this was going. Yeah, he WAS my replacement. Later I found out he was going to do my job for minimum wage, which was about half of what I made.

Then the company sent me to a "penalty store," which is a store that is in a terrible spot, doesn't do well, has serious building problems, etc... basically, it was an attempt to make me quit. But I was too stupid to see the writing on the wall, so I got "changed to hourly," which meant a pay cut, no commission, and suddenly my pay was determined by upper management. My hour allotment got smaller and smaller, until "they didn't have hours for me" for a whole month. So I filed unemployement.

The company denied I was laid off, and said I was only a contractor. The deputy who handled the case had them on speakerphone, and at some point they were stalling, she said, "Mr. Walrus, you'll get unemployment. I see this happen all the time, they just don't want to pay the taxes or unemployment." So I got my unemployment and a hard, stinging lesson.

Afterwards, they decided I made it too hard, so they fired all the rest of the staff one by one for the weirdest stuff. Like the top salesman in the chain was fired because a "surprise secret audit" showed the register was missing $10, and so they threatened to put him in jail if he ever tried to claim unemployment. He sued and won.

And the guy who replaced me? Tried to rob them blind. He stole account numbers from all the company's vendors, and made HUGE orders shipped to a Mailbox Etc address. Luckily for the company, one of the vendors tipped them off, and because of the amount of money involved, the police got involved, and set up a sting. He must have gotten wind of it, because before the shipments were sent, he fled town and was never seen again.

At another company, years later, I was at the receiving end. The first day of work was the day the girl I was replacing was told she was being fired in 2 weeks. That was pretty stressful.

I have seen stuff like this in the tech industry when I started in the mid 1990's, too. My second job I was at a QA company where they asked us to document everything we did when testing software. We did, and then they outsourced our jobs to Tucson, where people th

you need to be smarter than this ...

[sir_cello]

You should always have your eye on the horizon anyway: if you're asked to train up a new worker, just accept the mission and in the background, start looking for another job: if you find the other job before the training is complete, well that's a problem for your current employer, not for you: they set the wheels in motion.

To refuse to train someone else is really unprofessional: all of these comments about getting one over on the new guy, or refusing to do the job are just more reasons in the mind of your employer to get rid of uncooperative employees and replace them with more professional ones.

Knowing the bits about employment law that I do, I would say that even if it is not in your contract, you're obliged as a general condition of employment to transfer your job function to someone else if asked: that _doesn't_ mean you train someone in how to be a developer, or in a specific language, it just means that you impart the the tactical knowledge you have. In the same way that if your company is going through a quality process (ISO) you'll be asked to document the way you work. If you refuse, it really is grounds for dismissal.

Re:Ya, they'll have *real* incentive to do so

[LostCluster]

You're exactly right on.

In most cases, when your job has no training responsiblity and suddenly gets that resposibility, it's a leverage with which to demand a pay raise or a contract that makes a comittment to keep you around. If they don't give that to you, then you haven't been fired... your old job has ceased to exist and you declined the new one they tried to offer you because it's an unacceptable offer. That's the difference between a logic that disqualifies you from unemployment to one that qualifies you.

I think they're relying on the fear of workers not familiar with the local unemployment laws to not see that they can get their unemployment benefits even if they refuse to train their replacements, and if everybody on a staff refuses to be the trainer than the "send the jobs overseas" plan suddenly gets a whole lot more expensive to the point it tips over...

Re:Bad Training = Lawsuit?

[borgheron]

Not remotely possible for them to sue. The best they can say is "you didn't do your job when you trained this guy". Then again... if the guy doesn't speak good english or there is another language barrier, then how can you be expected to *force* them to understand what you're saying.

Also, it's very difficult to prove someone was trained "badly". How much the person picks up is entirely up to them. If the person is so daft and just doesn't "get it" in the time allotted, oh well... what's a guy to do?? ;)

Also, if you're training your replacement, your co-workers will likely being doing the same thing soon, so there's no worry about "sabotaging" them, since they'll be joining you shortly in the unemployment line. :)

GJC