Author Topic: Got some money… Invest in Big Blue! (Read 869 times)

Zippatuh · « **on:** February 04, 2004, 09:50:05 AM »

Well the hammer drops. For anyone who is in the telecommunications industry is certainly familiar with the new push for outsourcing IT and operators. This morning they pulled the trigger on it.

IBM will now be doing all the prototyping, concept development, and testing for all PCS call centers. One long distance call center will be affected. Local is being left alone at the moment, probably because of the union implications. What this means to Sprint is a supposed savings of 2.5 billion over then next 5 years. What this means to IBM is an increased and broadened market.

IBM does back office work well and will now be doing front office work. Although they do not have a telephony lab it appears they will be making a big push to build one with the assistance of the group I currently work for. In exchange IBM will be moving some of their telephony business to Sprint and providing their equipment to Sprint at a greatly reduced price.

So, if you have some extra cash, buying IBM stock might not be a bad idea. If you currently work as an operator, I’d start looking at other career opportunities. It has nothing to do with working for Sprint or not. If you answer a phone in a customer service roll anywhere in the US, your job is leaving. It’s just a matter of time.

As for my job, they’ll probably keep me around just long enough to build their test lab. Then I’ll probably be thanked and then asked for my card key.

Oh, and I don’t have any extra cash for IBM stock. I’m sure the Sprint executives do though.

Start brushing up on your ability to communicate with someone who’s English is a second language. In a handful of years, that’s all you’re going to be talking to.

Wanker · « **Reply #1 on:** February 04, 2004, 10:12:16 AM »

IBM is by far the best employer I've ever had. The working conditions are great, the pay is great, the environment is stimulating.

And now they're going to be sending our jobs overseas to India and Asia. In fact, the local joke around here now is to call IBM "India Business Machines".

The only hope is that this becomes a big issue in the 2004 elections, big enough where it raises the awareness of the American public.

Even though I work in software development/testing, and not support.....who's to say that our jobs won't be sent overseas, too?

But please, by all means, keep buying IBM stock.

Westy · « **Reply #2 on:** February 04, 2004, 10:12:27 AM »

Most interesting Zipputah. I "work" in the telecom industry and I'm seeing old fashioned domestic operator services (411 and 555-1212 stuff) being set up to get routed overseas. Very soon now too (Phillipines for one) your call asking for the tele # for your local Papa Ginos may be answered in Manila.

I wonder if the US will be going full circle back towards being an agrarian society? Meaning the US has fallen from being an industrialised manufacturing giant down to a service industry. But even now that's changing and I wonder what's next.

(thanks Dowding

I know I should proof read before hitting the [enter] key a lot more than I do)

Dowding · « **Reply #3 on:** February 04, 2004, 10:14:29 AM »

"EManing"

A god awful term. Which bastard invented that one?

Zippatuh · « **Reply #4 on:** February 04, 2004, 10:46:30 AM »

banana, all the research that I’ve done and seen about IBM’s involvement in outsourcing is exactly that. Increase in pay and benefits, for about a year. Just long enough to teach someone else your job then see ya. Oh, and only being an employee for one year doesn’t give much of a severance package.

I just left a “software engineer” position that was code control and environment builds for test and development. They were starting talks with IBM and began to transition some people so I hit the door to get back on the hardware just to find that it’s followed me here as well. IT outsourcing is going to happen. We had experience with this during the Y2K debacle. Everything we got back from them had to be coded again to work properly.

It needs to be an issue in 2004 but unfortunately I don’t think it has reached the right people yet. Once a larger portion of the 40-75K work force gets affected, other than just being laid off, it might get a bigger voice. The writings on the wall but I don’t think people are wearing their glasses.

Westy, you couldn’t be more correct. Hell even as a service industry we’re still “outsourcing”. With the new legislation that Bush signed in for illegal aliens to gain legal work in the US is an excellent example. We as a society don’t want to clean, flip burgers, garden, factory work, or anything else that isn’t “good enough” for us.

It appears to me that we as a technological country, the people who are running it anyway, are being extremely short sided. In fact to me it appears that they have finally found a way to secure management’s employment and income by removing the employees from the business.

Even though it was a typo, Emaning will probably be the next buzz word, take credit

. It will be like “out of the box” and “closure”.

Personally, I think it will end up costing twice as much. In the end they’ll have to put control back in our hands for anything to be done quickly and accurately. I am working with a vendor who resells from another vendor. Now, I’ll have to talk to a vendor, IBM, who will talk to the other vendor, Viecore, who will then have to talk to another vendor, Edify. Yup, the product is going to work a lot better with the more middle men you put in place.

Dowding · « **Reply #5 on:** February 04, 2004, 10:58:27 AM »

I really did think it was some more management bull****.

"E-manning - the de-manning of domestic E-commerce jobs through overseas recruitment."

lol

Hawklore · « **Reply #6 on:** February 04, 2004, 11:45:16 AM »

Wooot!

gofaster · « **Reply #7 on:** February 04, 2004, 11:58:09 AM »

Local IBM here just announced that they were letting their Billing/Collections department go. The local IBM offices are all focused on content hosting services and such, so the billing function is most likely going to be transferred to another site to centralize the function for multiple IBM facilities. They still employ about 1,500 people here but that's still about 1/4 of what they had four or five years ago.

I read some time ago that Bush was looking at a measure that would mean that companies working on federal projects had to keep ops inside the US borders. I think the loophole was that the "substantial portion" had to be kept in US. Whether call centers qualify as "substantial" to the contract work was sort of nebulous.

Gunslinger · « **Reply #8 on:** February 04, 2004, 12:39:28 PM »

(just a rant)

I'm wondering if these companys realize that the jobs that they are going to eventually outsource their customers as well.

Just a thaought I had. If americans arent working doesnt the economy go into the crapper?

If the economy is in the crapper dont stock prices and revenues fall?

If they have lost revenue does that make up for the price in the cost savings of letting some kamasutra guru answer their phones?

Are these valid questions at all????? I just think that companies like wallmart that have tremendous buying power with their overseas suppliers outsell their own customer base out of work.

Scenerio: wallmart cuts prices on polo shirts. Competetive american plant can no longer make a profit. Plant closes 10,000 people are out of work. Since 10,000 low to middle income people no longer have paychecks they no longer shop like they used to at the place they get the greatest savings at....wall mart

Has anyone ever modled this as a theory or am I way off the mark here?

Zippatuh · « **Reply #9 on:** February 04, 2004, 12:41:48 PM »

What we’ve been told is that anything that has government data cannot be sent off shore. The first big push we had was to move some mainframe applications over but there was a government contract involved which killed the project.

I’m not sure what can be considered “government data” though. A handful of states welfare services are already being done oversees. Of course that’s personal data that the government is using, not their own.

We seem to be so worried about terrorist attacks yet we’re getting ready to open DS3’s from foreign, impoverished countries, directly into our business networks. Of course, as an ex director I had once said, seriously, in an all hands meeting, “don’t worry, the internet is secure and near impossible to pull pertinent information off of”. Yeah, I had to laugh; I guess she never heard of a sniffer before.

Hell, in this case, we’re talking about paving the highway, giving them a road map, and a brand new sports car to do with how they see fit.

Zippatuh · « **Reply #10 on:** February 04, 2004, 12:50:32 PM »

Nice scenario and no I’ve never heard anyone model that before.

As for revenue…

A good example is the dot com bubble. Marketing and sales pukes told the techies, “don’t worry about making a profit. You actually want to loose money. Get your name out and advertise and the money will come later.”

These are the same yahoo’s that are still running things. They’ve just moved onto another band wagon.

I’m all for greed and capitalism. If it wasn’t for greed there are a lot of neat toys we wouldn’t have but we were at least producing something. Now the focus is on not producing anything and increasing revenue at the same time.

It’s just another bubble that’s going to bust. I think the only question is how long and how bad the bust will be.

gofaster · « **Reply #11 on:** February 04, 2004, 12:58:19 PM »

The basic business attitude is to look out for the business and let the labor force settle their own employment problems.

Westy · « **Reply #12 on:** February 04, 2004, 01:06:22 PM »

Yeah. It's these same yahoo’s that have "golden parachutes" waiting for when thier turn comes around. Driven by self serving interests IMO they are more concerned with furthering thier own financial value via any means possible and at any cost.
But while they're Americans too these folks in charge are also of the "ME" generation. They honestly don't give two hoots about the average Jane and John Americanworker for these yahoos will make far more in a year than either Jane or John will in a lifetime. These yahoos willl be fine no matter what happens, with very few exeptions.

Pei · « **Reply #13 on:** February 04, 2004, 05:42:11 PM »

Lets face it, as long as companies in Europe and America can employ Indians for a fraction of the cost of their local equivalent outsourcing is going to happen. What will happen is that Indian wages will rise and ours will fall until a balance is reached. What that means for us is that we will have to accept a lower standard of living. Of course you can argue that lower production costs lead to lower prices but I've never really seen this happen: some cost reductions are are passed on but most are kept as profit (e.g. do your Nike shoes cost anyless now in real terms than they did 20 years ago?). Of course to make up the difference in income these companies can now start selling more of their products and services to the newer enriched markets in India.

One wonders when they will start outsourcing management functions? Surely Indian CEOs are cheaper to employ than US CEOs?

Ripsnort · « **Reply #14 on:** February 04, 2004, 05:46:31 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Zippatuh
What we’ve been told is that anything that has government data cannot be sent off shore.

http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=107068&referrerid=3203

Sorry to hear about your future Zipp, but after meeting you in person, I have no doubt you'll find work. You're pretty motivated.