the slimy ooze of MegaCorp

[albireo13]

I've noticed over the years at my MegaCorp of the trend towards outsourcing project work to sister groups in Asia.  This is clearly done to cut cost, as the average wages are so much lower there (India, Singapore, etc).  What this has done is create a logistical nightmare for running a project.  Collaboration with other engineers in totally different time zones, etc.  It takes a day+ to resolve a question where it used to take a walk down the hall to talk with another engineer.

  Also, it creates a palpable drop in efficiency and increase in paperwork.  It has led to the increased pressure of extracting more work hours out of you.
Staying late for conf-call meetings, scheduling call-in meetings late at night just before bedtime, etc.
Also, I notice the trend to schedule meetings during lunch break time, which was never a practice years ago. At our noon-1 meetings, half the people are wolfing down lunches, burping, and spilling food on their laps.  LOL     It's almost laughable.

  While this is ok for dealing with crises or important problems, it is now becoming the standard "way of working" at MegaCorp!  Basic document review meetings are scheduled during lunch break time. 

  Pretty soon I predict there will be swing-down laptops installed in the bathroom stalls so you can stay "productive" while taking care of business! 
After all, that's the company time you're using !!!!

   I guess I shouldn't complain so much but, as I get older, I just have less tolerance for nonsense.

[gooki]

This is my life right now (except for the lunch time meetings). If that became regular, I'd be marking all future lunch times as appointments in my Outlook calendar.

It's painful right now as development is in India, and the client is in the UK, while I'm in NZ. I've had worse. UK dev, USA management, called for some very early morning meetings.

[mozar]

That sucks. Our boss sent us an email earlier this week saying its OK for us to take 10 minute breaks but otherwise we should be at our desks at all times. This is for white collar work.

[albireo13]

I've been blowing off meetings that I don't feel like going to.

[MayDay]

That sucks. Our boss sent us an email earlier this week saying its OK for us to take 10 minute breaks but otherwise we should be at our desks at all times. This is for white collar work.

I would be job hunting.

Or taking ten minute breaks constantly whole job hunting.

[JG in Hangzhou]

I'm not sure anything has changed.
15 years ago at I-just-bought-you Corp. I went from a few meetings a week, to being quadruple booked three or four times a day.  Of course, all were 'manditory' meetings, which I would have to send other people to, since I couldn't go to them all, keeping my group from actually doing any work. 
Then one VP declared, no manditory meetings before 9 am, afterwhich, my 30 minute lunch break was triple booked. 

Memories, so as you can see, insanity has been here all along, and you are just lucky enough to have avoided one aspect of it until now...

[Capt j-rod]

This is why I always tell people that the workforce is forever changed. There is no loyalty towards employers and no loyalty to employees. We have all become mercenaries for hire. Employees will now only do enough not to get fired. Employers will only pay enough to keep you from quitting. The health of the economy decides who has the upper hand. Lots of jobs? Better wages and work conditions. Fewer jobs? Worse conditions at work. This is how I came to grow a mustache. Dependency on a paycheck due to debt and bad financial decisions makes you a slave to your job. If you are financially secure then the meetings and demands are a joke. If you are broke and in debt then you will be waxing your bosses car during that 10 minute break. Employers love fiscally stupid employees. New car? Harley Davidson? Pair of jet skis? Vacations on credit? Bigger house? Divorce? All of these items describe an employee that will do "whatever it takes" to keep their job. Bottom line? MegaCorp hates a healthy Mustache.

[ooeei]

I've noticed over the years at my MegaCorp of the trend towards outsourcing project work to sister groups in Asia.  This is clearly done to cut cost, as the average wages are so much lower there (India, Singapore, etc).  What this has done is create a logistical nightmare for running a project.  Collaboration with other engineers in totally different time zones, etc.  It takes a day+ to resolve a question where it used to take a walk down the hall to talk with another engineer.

  Also, it creates a palpable drop in efficiency and increase in paperwork.  It has led to the increased pressure of extracting more work hours out of you.
Staying late for conf-call meetings, scheduling call-in meetings late at night just before bedtime, etc.
Also, I notice the trend to schedule meetings during lunch break time, which was never a practice years ago. At our noon-1 meetings, half the people are wolfing down lunches, burping, and spilling food on their laps.  LOL     It's almost laughable.

  While this is ok for dealing with crises or important problems, it is now becoming the standard "way of working" at MegaCorp!  Basic document review meetings are scheduled during lunch break time. 

  Pretty soon I predict there will be swing-down laptops installed in the bathroom stalls so you can stay "productive" while taking care of business! 
After all, that's the company time you're using !!!!

   I guess I shouldn't complain so much but, as I get older, I just have less tolerance for nonsense.

Obviously it depends on the company, but lots of the time this is a cyclical change.

1. Company is spending too much, someone has the bright idea to outsource.

2. Local employees make due while outsourced employees "learn" what's going on just barely enough to slightly help the local employees.

3. Local employees who were fixing all of the outsourced employee screw ups quit, and new people with no knowledge of the product are hired.

4. The product suffers because the local employees are new and don't know anything, and the outsourced employees rely on the local employees to catch all their mistakes.

5. A big client has a major screw up on their product. Then another one.

6. Company focuses money on high quality local employees to triage the product. Costs go up, eventually so does quality.

7. See step 1.

[Linea_Norway]

I am currently reading about the subject of outsourcing (amongst others) in this book:

https://ieet.org/archive/LIGHTSTUNNEL.PDF

According to the writer, outsourcing is done because an Indian version of a highly paid western expert costs approx 10% of the cost of a western salary. Therefore is pays off to invest in outsourcing. The other thing the writer says is that outsourcing is the first sign that the job eventually will be replaced by automation.

I started a subject about this book in the book club forum:
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mustachian-book-club/the-lights-in-the-tunnel-by-martin-ford/
Please join the thread if you'd like to discuss the book.

I have also worked in a company that had 4 different scrum teams of developers/testers in eastern Europe. At least they had more or less the same time zone as we had. But the local Norwegian developers were changed into "architects", specifying what the foreign teams had to implement. They missed doing the actual coding. We also had a lot of people there working as scrum masters and following up the foreign teams. It was very chaotic.

We currently work with a supplier in Spain and one in the US, but I don't think outsourcing was the main reason for that. But for our new project to build, they have a goal of developing it totally in Spain, maybe to ditch our own software development department (where I work). Not nice for us. The cooperation with the foreigners requires a lot of travel for many people. Many of my colleagues travel very often for a week at the time and ever so often often the foreigners come to us for weeks at the time. I don't think that is very positive for any of them in the long run, especially for those who have a family at home.

[ooeei]

This is why I always tell people that the workforce is forever changed. There is no loyalty towards employers and no loyalty to employees. We have all become mercenaries for hire. Employees will now only do enough not to get fired. Employers will only pay enough to keep you from quitting. The health of the economy decides who has the upper hand. Lots of jobs? Better wages and work conditions. Fewer jobs? Worse conditions at work. This is how I came to grow a mustache. Dependency on a paycheck due to debt and bad financial decisions makes you a slave to your job. If you are financially secure then the meetings and demands are a joke. If you are broke and in debt then you will be waxing your bosses car during that 10 minute break. Employers love fiscally stupid employees. New car? Harley Davidson? Pair of jet skis? Vacations on credit? Bigger house? Divorce? All of these items describe an employee that will do "whatever it takes" to keep their job. Bottom line? MegaCorp hates a healthy Mustache.

This isn't a new thing. The reason we have so many worker protection laws is because employers used to do things like have people stick their hands in machinery, then fire them when their hand got cut off. Do you think companies 50 years ago paid people a ton of extra money out of the kindness of their hearts?

It all depends on the particular company, there are plenty of smaller companies out there that really do value loyalty. I'm sure there are a few bigger ones as well, lots of employee stock plans and vesting 401ks show that to be the case. The main difference now is that finding jobs and finding employees is a faster process due to the internet, but the basic strategy isn't all that different.