The group that supports our servers is 90% Indian now. The manager of that group is Indain so go figure.

Were native workers competently doing the same job so what's the incentive to hire so many foreign workers?

Are they paying the same taxes as native workers or are they getting some kind of under the table tax break? Something fishy is going on here.

 

The fantasy ends. No phone calls. no work emails, no fire drills for a whole week. It was blissful. Now my stomach id getting tied in knots knowing I rill need to face all of that crap.

I remember that feeling at the end of long holiday periods or following vacation time away from work. Hell, on Sunday afternoons I would start thinking about work and Monday mornings. I feel for you. That and considering I actually enjoyed my work and my job. It will be 5 years come 01 May 2018 since I walked out of the plant for the last time. I went out at 63 and have no regrets. Your day will come.

Ron

 

I remember that feeling at the end of long holiday periods or following vacation time away from work. Hell, on Sunday afternoons I would start thinking about work and Monday mornings. I feel for you. That and considering I actually enjoyed my work and my job. It will be 5 years come 01 May 2018 since I walked out of the plant for the last time. I went out at 63 and have no regrets. Your day will come.

Ron

The only thing bad about retirement is that it is yest another marker on your own mortality.


Well that and the fear of running out of money if you are a little less mortal than you thought you would be.

 

The only thing bad about retirement is that it is yest another marker on your own mortality.


Well that and the fear of running out of money if you are a little less mortal than you thought you would be.

Some of my relatives are over 90 and apparently in relatively good health for their age.

Hopefully, I can follow their path. However, there are other things that can seriously affect your health and life span such as car accidents, fires, earthquakes, floods, lightning, and violent crime.

 

Well that and the fear of running out of money if you are a little less mortal than you thought you would be.

That is why I chose to buy an annuity. They will pay me an inflation proofed sum for as long as I live.
My financial adviser clearly thought I should choose some sort of drawdown scheme and it may well be the case that I would end up better off that, but it is also possible that I could run out of money that way, so I chose certainty of income over maximising income.

[EDIT] I am in UK and I am aware that systems are going to be different in other countries.

 

Were native workers competently doing the same job so what's the incentive to hire so many foreign workers?

Are they paying the same taxes as native workers or are they getting some kind of under the table tax break? Something fishy is going on here.

It's because they have all the same credentials on paper but will work for half the salary.

 

It's because they have all the same credentials on paper but will work for half the salary.

If a company in sources from another country then they should pay 100% of their salary in taxes. If they outsource to another country and the company does not have an established business in that country then they pay the same 100%.

If it is true there is lack of qualified people in this country then the company should have no problem with paying to get the work done. Taxes could be used for training programs. Once we have a trained work force the taxes cold be relaxed. Just walk down any street of any city and you will see 100s if not thousands of people the would benefit from education.

 

It's because they have all the same credentials on paper but will work for half the salary.

Not to mention no benefits.

Often they show up to work in large groups. It would not surprise me if they did not all live together. This was going on some time back with the Russians. A company was caught paying them 50 cents an hour, cramming them all into one house.

 

The only thing bad about retirement is that it is yest another marker on your own mortality.


Well that and the fear of running out of money if you are a little less mortal than you thought you would be.

Yeah, that mortality thing figures in. Not much I can do about that part. Not too worried about outliving our money but if I do I will just show up on one of my children's doorstep.

Ron

 

It's because they have all the same credentials on paper but will work for half the salary.

I saw it all the time. They come in on work visas (which should be controlled). During the early 80s (my early DoD) days I watched a contract company populate Kuwait layoff half their American employees making about 50K to 60K at the time with labor imported from the Philippines who worked abroad for about 20K to 25K. They were harvested from a technical school in the Philippines at the time. This was a US based company and using the cheap labor made for much larger profit margins.

Ron

 

If a company in sources from another country then they should pay 100% of their salary in taxes. If they outsource to another country and the company does not have an established business in that country then they pay the same 100%.

If it is true there is lack of qualified people in this country then the company should have no problem with paying to get the work done. Taxes could be used for training programs. Once we have a trained work force the taxes cold be relaxed. Just walk down any street of any city and you will see 100s if not thousands of people the would benefit from education.

Other countries actually have this policy. I was part of the commssioning team of a Brazilian oil rig in Singapore, 2009. The Brazilian company requested me to provide "First Well Support" - i.e. meet the rig in Brazil and babysit it for the first few month of operation. My employer had to jump through lots of hoops to get me a Brazilian work visa. I was told that when I got to Brazil I would be assigned a local to follow me around and I was required (by the Brazilian government) to tell him in detail, every step of every task that I was doing, as I was doing it, and train him to do it. I had 1 year to train my replacement and then I was not allowed to remain in the country.

Brazil does not want highly skilled, highly paid people coming into their country and taking jobs that their citizens could be doing. They do jot want to be dependent on any other country. They want to be a proud country standing on their own 2 feet, and they want their taxes paid.

Note: due to a prolonged family emergency I was not able to go to Brazil. But I did get the visa.

 

Yeah, that mortality thing figures in. Not much I can do about that part. Not too worried about outliving our money but if I do I will just show up on one of my children's doorstep.

Ron

Yup but arrive in my motor home. That way I can winter in a moderate climate.

kv

 

Other countries actually have this policy. I was part of the commssioning team of a Brazilian oil rig in Singapore, 2009. The Brazilian company requested me to provide "First Well Support" - i.e. meet the rig in Brazil and babysit it for the first few month of operation. My employer had to jump through lots of hoops to get me a Brazilian work visa. I was told that when I got to Brazil I would be assigned a local to follow me around and I was required (by the Brazilian government) to tell him in detail, every step of every task that I was doing, as I was doing it, and train him to do it. I had 1 year to train my replacement and then I was not allowed to remain in the country.

Brazil does not want highly skilled, highly paid people coming into their country and taking jobs that their citizens could be doing. They do jot want to be dependent on any other country. They want to be a proud country standing on their own 2 feet, and they want their taxes paid.

Note: due to a prolonged family emergency I was not able to go to Brazil. But I did get the visa.

It is bad or at least use to be bad in Canada too. I had a customer at Montreal Bordeaux Prison (a number of related stores for another day ). When I would travel there, I was asked why I was there. I could not say vacation because I had tools and test equipment with me. I had to tell them it was for work. I would be put though the 3rd degree as to why a Canadian can't do the job. Once they kept me so long I almost missed my connection out of Hamilton. They had already closed the door and moved the stairs away. I came running across the tarmac and got them to push the stairs back and open the door. When I got on the plane, everyone was looking at me, I guess wondering who this really important person was.


But my guess is that even in Canada now the rules go out the door when it comes to cheap Indian labor.

The day of reckoning will come some day. Systems will crash and the veterans that could have fixed the problem in minutes will be long gone. The cheap temporary labor that the company hired will be gone too. Not that they could fix the problem if they were there.

 

• No more meetings
• No more schedules
• No more deadlines
• No more progress reports
• No more budgets
• No more ISO900x
• No more diversity seminars
• No more idiot bosses
• ...

The list could go on and on.

Life is good now. No more corporate BS. I love retirement!

In other words, boring in style?

 

It is a strange feeling to look forward losing your job but I understand. I also look forward to being laid off. My layoff ( actually the company is closing doors- I have it from a reliable source) is coming either this week or after the 1st quarter; 90% chance it's after the 1st quarter. I can't wait!

I have not been happy in my job for a long time now. I tried to leave 2 years ago and was paid handsomely to stay. Sold my soul and I'm looking forward to getting it back. It's not worth the money but I've become addicted to the money, and a layoff is exactly what I needed to get me out of this funk and back into a career that fulfills me.

I've started my own LLC and I'm currently working as a subcontractor through my new LLC on the side. I'm hoping that I get enough side work to force me to quit before I get laid off. It really NEEDs to happen that way, because if I get laid off tomorrow, I'll be making enough on the side to preclude me getting unemployment, but not enough to feed my family.

Are they those guys you were working for with a hard to solve problems under the water?

Being independent means two faces of the same coin to me: if things go bad (they did in the past, many many times and for long time) I have no one around to blame than myself but if things go well, I ow nothing to anyone either.

 

In other words, boring in style?

Boring? No way!! More like "low-key, mellow contentment."

I have my two brothers, my two sons, my two granddaughters, friends and former co-workers to keep things from being boring. I do occasional odd design jobs for my former employer, which keeps me occupied once in a while and intermittently challenged, as well as burnishing my bank account a bit. There's frequently something going on in town-- food festival, concert, antique car show, flea market, etc.-- just a few blocks away. And the never-ending freak show and clusterfark that is U.S. politics.

And then there's my hobby, with no end of widgets to build.

And finally, there's AAC. Drama! Excitement! Suspense! Conflict! All that, plus I learn stuff and occasionally get to help someone with a technical problem.

No, life is certainly not boring. Quiet and (relatively) stress-free, yes; but not boring.

 

Are they those guys you were working for with a hard to solve problems under the water?

Yes, those guys. Lately there have been very few underwater problems to solve, and when they come up, the decision is made a few levels above me, to contract the problem solving out to 3rd parties who sell us the most expensive and complicated solution possible. Instead of letting me do my job and solve these problems, I'm relegated to implementing someone else's fix, which I am fully qualified to deem "utterly ridiculous," while the people above me are not. They are technologically incompetent and only believe in solving problems by throwing the most money possible at a problem. Money that they don't have. Money that is supposed to pay my (and everyone else's) paycheck in the coming months/years. Hence why they are going out of business.

Being independent means two faces of the same coin to me: if things go bad (they did in the past, many many times and for long time) I have no one around to blame than myself but if things go well, I ow nothing to anyone either.

I fully agree. I like to be in control of my own destiny. This place I have worked for the past few years has reinforced to me that I do not have the ability to be "ok" with bad leadership. I have the mentality that everyone in a company is responsible for its success or failure. That anyone from the bottom to the top has the right, the duty, to speak up if something is wrong or if something could be done better.

This mentality, or rather my actions as a result of it; my constant identification of problems and suggestions for fixes, both technically (what I was hired to do LOL) and operationally, I think are what got me relegated to my current limited role. I think that every time I identified a deficiency in the design of our products and tried fix it, it was taken as an insult to the "design team" and the expectation was really for me to just "keep my mouth shut." I was given the friendly suggestion from everyone in the office, including my boss, on many occasions to "just let it go," and "just wait until it fails and then say 'told ya so'," and "just collect a paycheck and do whatever they tell you, no matter how stupid."

Well I'm not capable of that. I care about the reputation of the company I work for. I'm personally invested in it; I spend more waking hours at work than I do with my family. I want the company to be successful. I can't just make myself "ok" with sending a tool out on a $500k job that I'm fairly certain will be a reputation-marring disaster, just to preserve the ego of some primadonna half-ass engineer half way around the world that I barely even know.

I cannot emotionally disconnect myself from my work and just "collect a paycheck." I've been doing it for over a year now and it's sucking the soul out of me. I can't take much more of this.

The funny thing is, almost anybody would love to have my job. Good pay, very little responsibility, very little work load. I can't stand it. I can't stand not having a purpose. I welcome the responsibility of owning my own business. I would rather fail of my own mistakes than fail of the mistakes of blundering idiots that won't listen to me. Even more, I would rather succeed from the fruit of my own labor than trade my labor for money so that someone else can take credit for my success.

 

Not to mention no benefits.

Often they show up to work in large groups. It would not surprise me if they did not all live together. This was going on some time back with the Russians. A company was caught paying them 50 cents an hour, cramming them all into one house.

With all those people crammed into one house and flushing and showering, it's no wonder California has a chronic water shortage.

By the way, San Francisco is building lots of "micro apartments" and it's a sure bet they are intended to house all those H1-B visa workers