Journal turgid's Journal: Being Sold for Outsourcing 4
I'm British, working in the UK for a large American company. I've been with them for four years now and survived the annual Reductions in Force so far. However, this year, the company has decided to sell several hundred Engineers (mostly in Software) to an Indian outsourcing company. They're trying to call it a "partnership" and they tell us that there will be fabulous new opportunities for us to develop our skills and work on exciting new projects in the future. Mainly, this exercise is to do more engineering with less cost by "leveraging" the skills base/talent pool of the outsourcing company. They have tens of thousands of young, eager Engineers in India who cost a tenth of what we do to employ.
I'm trying to keep the names of the companies quiet just now since I don't want to cause any undue trouble or ruin the deal etc.
I'd be very interested to hear anyone's experiences of such deals. In the UK our employment terms and conditions are protected by a law called TUPE. However, this doesn't guarantee any length of employment term following the transfer, only that you get the same pay and conditions when you're there.
The new employer has told us that it will be monitoring and assessing everyone for the first 2-3 months to figure out what we all do, and it will be looking to offshore as much work as possible to take the cost out of the site.
I'm not really sure how this deal is going to work. There are so many unanswered questions.
Sorry, friend (Score:2)
Dust off the resume. You're going to be working harder, getting paid less with fewer benefits and ultimately let go.
Those laws to protect jobs are in danger from the Cameron government. Without a major political change, you'll be unemployed within 18 months.
Re: (Score:2)
Dust off the resume.
Heh :-) I had mine out on monster.com the night before they came to our site to announce that the deal was in the offing. That's the trouble with having several sites across the world in different time zones, and 2 PHBs operating as a pair to deliver the wonderful news.
I've already had one interview (a phone interview followed by an assessment day with 3 interviews and a group programming exercise). They didn't offer me the job, but I didn't like them after the presentation they gave
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Never admit to anything that could be considered a weakness in an interview. If they're the sort of company that asks you what your weaknesses are, they're the sort of company I don't want to work for (this may or may not apply to you, but I suspect it applies to most geeks).
FWIW, I went through the whole TUPE mess some y
Re: (Score:2)
I seem to recall there was a minimum period that they had to keep you on for after the transfer. IIRC, something like 6-12 months.
I've heard that too, but not officially. I used to work in the Public Sector many years ago and I joined a union for engineers and managers which later amalgamated with some other unions. Although they can't represent me officially, they have been able to give some general advice although I need to prod them again.
It's a mess, all right... and a disaster waiting to happen.
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