The photo of the last stand of doomed IT workers

[OhioChick]

Jan 29, 2016 8:28 AM PT



The IT employees at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut tried to save their jobs. The contacted local media, local politicians. They told anyone who would listen what was going on.

They were going to lose their jobs. It was a shock, not just for the IT workers, but for the state.

Northeast Utilities was a stable employer. Its customers were in the state. It couldn't move to China. It couldn't abandon the state. And so people thought.

But then Northeast Utilities merged with NStar, a Boston utility. (Now known as Eversource Energy).

Soon after the merger, the trouble started. The utilities leadership hired India-based IT outsourcing firms.

More: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3027611/it-industry/the-photo-of-the-last-stand-of-doomed-it-workers.html

[yourout]

1. This stuff really pisses me off.

[Xipe Totec]

2. The Last Great Act of Defiance

[LiberalArkie]

3. Our wonderful "D's" at work.

The utility employees left their jobs with a severance package that included this sentence: "Employee agrees that he/she shall make no statements to anyone, spoken or written, that would tend to disparage or discredit the Company or any of the Company's officers, directors, employees, or agents."

That clause has kept former Eversource employees from speaking out because of fears the utility will sue them if they say anything about their experience. The IT firms that Eversource uses, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, are major users of the H-1B visa.

But staying silent is difficult, especially after Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-sponsored legislation in January 2015 that would hike the 65,000 H-1B base cap hike to as high as 195,000. The measure, known as the I-Squared Act, left some of the former utility IT employees incredulous. They were far from alone.

The 200,000-member engineering association, IEEE-USA, said the I-Squared bill would "help destroy" the IT workforce with a flood of lower paid foreign workers.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3027640/it-outsourcing/laid-off-it-workers-muzzled-as-h-1b-debate-heats-up.html

[MH1]

7. It doesn't just destroy the current IT workforce.

It removes rungs from the ladder of opportunity for young and minority people in this country.

Fewer skilled, good-paying jobs to step up to, means fewer rungs opened up at lower skill levels for entry level and reskilled workers.

Makes it harder for people who are struggling to find a better life.

It sucks.

[LiberalArkie]

8. Yep.

And guess what "We can't find any U.S. workers who are qualified to do our work".

[newthinking]

11. It also actually **costs more** .

Outsourced IT has a basic conflict. Those IT workers from other countries wish to stay here (or if working remotely keep the position) and they need to keep those jobs tied to their contractor no matter what. This is one reason why outsourced development often turns into a nightmare and the costs skyrocket.

I have seen this again and again with outsourced development. The product ends up being extremely convoluted using very unusual approaches. Once development ends the costs are only beginning: as only those employees who created the application are able to update it and keep it running.

Management often has no clue and just assumes that this is just the cost of their grand application. Not to mention they have to protect it since they were in on the decision to use this method to create the application.

[abelenkpe]

4. K&R

[cloudbase]

5. This is where everybody has to stick together,

union or not, and tell the company that they won't be training their replacements and that they can shove their severance package up their asses.

[dreamnightwind]

6. And many here want to elect Hillary for more of this

She supports this, and jokingly called herself the Senator for Punjab.

Great info on this at this link (scroll down):
http://keepamericaatwork.com/hillary-clinton-who-is-the-co-chair-of-the-senate-india-caucus-has-drawn-criticism-from-anti-offshoring-groups-for-her-vocal-support-of-indian-business-and-unwillingness-to-protect-american-jobs/

Hillary Clinton, who is the co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, has drawn criticism from anti-offshoring groups for her vocal support of Indian business and unwillingness to protect American jobs.

[valerief]

9. India and China are where a lot of our IT jobs have been going for decades.

They were trained and brought the jobs back to India and China.

[OhioChick]

10. From 2014:

"Clinton also backed increasing the number of H-1B visas issued by the United States."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/08/hillary-clinton-on-2016-im-thinking-about-it/

[Skittles]

12. training them is the worst

seriously