Well. Cost cutting.
The company I work for (big American company called AT&T, you may have heard of them) is closing the EMEA global networking 3rd line tech support desk in Holland and an existing team based in Britain is taking over the role.......my last day is the 17th of October and I'm job hunting. See, right now I'm a contractor, been here 5 years doing the same job.
The problem is......this team in Britain has no skills whatsoever in the job. They've had an overview from a Cloggie trainer which left many scratching heads. Then they had two weeks technical training from my team leader, which left them still scratching heads and all of a sudden this afternoon my manager calls me into his office and asks me if I'd be interested in a contract extension until the end of the year to go to Britain and train up the new team. I said yes, I'm interested, make me an offer.
So.......bout 30 mins later my slavetrader (read: contracting agent) calls me up and says AT&T will pay for accommodation in Britain and in return there will be a 10% drop in the contract rate.
I told him to stick it where the sun does not shine.
*Then* I had another meeting with the boss and here's what I told him: Paul (cos that's his name), if I said to you that I want you to spend two months in a hotel in Portsmouth (and if I know AT&T, it'll be a
real cheap hotel), away from your wife and kids, all food bills will be yours to handle and keep in mind a hotel won't have an oven or fridge/freezer in the room so you'll be eating out every night, if you want to fly home for a weekend to see your wife then it's at your own expense, at the end of it you're out of a job AND I want you take a pay cut, what would you say?
When I said make me an offer I really didn't expected the offer to be a pay cut.
......he's getting back to me on monday.
The situation is: Someone in Britain has realised that in a months time AT&T is gonna be paying out thousands in broken SLAs to customers cos the new team is about as clued up as a....not very clued up thing. I know this from various sources in the new team (what management seem to forget is that the peasants sometimes talk to each other), I also know that various strongly worded requests for some 'bloody help here' has originated from the new team. I
also know that the situation has been brought to the attention of the VP in charge of everything (um....by a mate of mine) and that he ain't happy.
What I don't know is why anyone in their right mind would think I'd accept an offer like that when they know that I know that they're waaaaay up that creek and haven't seen a paddle in weeks. And the boat's leaking.
On the other hand.......like, crap man, I'm out of a job!
