Corporate America Doesn't Learn

[AtTheMurph]

Gonna be great until said corporations figure out a WFH in India or China is a third the cost or less. I see this as no different than the cashiers that are happy their workload was reduced by self checkout and cannot see how easily they are replaced.

If those workers in India were any good then they would have been hired already. Problem is that those Indians or Chinese really aren't that great for the most part.

Most of the best and brightest have moved here.

 

[hoosierdaddy1976]

OP, you misspelled "care."

 

[1nderbeard]

Outsourcing fears are overblown in my opinion. People are far more likely to lose a position to advances in technology. Whether that be automation or looking down the road, AI.

Yeah. Either way, if you don't have an economic reason to keep your job you'd better be working on one.

 

[wtburnette]

I assure you, corporate America is learning. They're just waiting to deploy the lessons when it benefits their needs, not yours. Currently WFH mostly benefits people established in their careers, with skill sets fully perfected. So far they've been able to keep their money while staying home, because it's a sellers' market, so they get the best of both.

The big problem for companies is hiring/developing/retaining early-in-career talent. Although WFH is a draw for young folks, the problem for companies is how do you onboard these folks and get them mentored up to a level of _effectiveness_, when the rest of your team wants to stay home? MS Teams sucks, and everybody knows it.

WFH may be boffo for you. But, even in a sellers' market, it isn't all about you.

I understand that, but there is a definite intersection between the needs of the company and the needs of the workforce. You make a good point about training people remotely. It's not easy, but we've done it. Right before COVID hit and we went to permanent WFH, we onboarded two new people. I trained them not only in the duties of the job, but there intricacies of working from home. We had one young lady who had been with us for a year who struggled. We identified her issues and worked with her to bring her around to being productive. She will end up being a hybrid employee who'll go into the office 2 - 3 times a week. There are definitely challenges, different ones that for working in the office and the staff and management both have to recognize this and be able to work together to address those issues.

I worked from home before it was cool. Have been teleworking full time since 2014. As long as I have my current job, I would not consider any job where I have to leave my house unless the pay was damn near double what I make now, and maybe a business vehicle provided. I feel bad for those who still have to drive back and forth to work, only to have to deal with actual people in person.

I can see where it would be hard to get any work done if one was prone to being distracted, but that's thankfully not the case for me. And my schedule is flexible enough to split my day, if I need to mow the yard or run to the store in the morning or afternoon.

Me, go back to the office?

View attachment 160290

On that, you and I agree. I haven't worked completely from home that long, but started doing the 2 days a week working from home thing back in 2012. In 2015 I had 6 months where I worked completely from home due to back problems. I realized at that point that there was no need whatsoever in my role to go into the office. The only thing that came out of this whole COVID nonsense was companies realizing, at least temporarily, that certain positions are viable for permanent WFH.

Same here, although I usually don't leave to go to the store (unless it's just up to the corner to get some smokes). If things are slow at work though, or if I'm running jobs that take some time to complete, I've mowed my yard while I'm working. I just do a couple of laps, check email, etc., do a couple more laps, etc. until I'm done.

And before someone wants to get on me about doing that on "company time", I typically start an hour early (off the clock) so that I make sure they're getting a full day's work for a full day's pay. I also typically check in from time to time on my days off and work (off the clock) if needed. Just keeps my conscience clear.

I'll be honest, I don't even do that. My job is flexible enough that I can do whatever I want, as long as I'm attending any meetings that are on my schedule. I'll often run a couple hours of errands in the middle of the day. I don't have to focus on hours spent working, but on the work being done. If the work I have for any given day only takes me 4 hours, then that's all I have to work. Conversely, if my work demands 9 hours I have to do that, though that's rare. I have a wonderful manager that says that we're salaried employees, which means we're not tied to a clock. As long as the work is done and we attend any meetings scheduled, she's happy. Have I mentioned I love my job?

Outsourcing fears are overblown in my opinion. People are far more likely to lose a position to advances in technology. Whether that be automation or looking down the road, AI.

Depends on the company and the position. I know some companies where the fear is very real.

OP, you misspelled "care."

Yeah, that's part of the problem isn't it?

 

[BehindBlueI's]

If those workers in India were any good then they would have been hired already. Problem is that those Indians or Chinese really aren't that great for the most part.

Most of the best and brightest have moved here.

Most jobs are for the average, though. I'm sure it's industry dependent, but IT sure got hammered by the Indian J3 invasion, and then with high speed data making remote working even easier a lot of programming jobs moved abroad. A lot of programming is basically a commodity and doesn't require the best and brightest. I watched salaries plummet in the post dot com bust, and while that was an especially rough time and salaries did recover some the role of both outsourcing and tech visas kept the salaries lower then they otherwise would have been.

Sure, the best and brightest can still write their own tickets but that's not most of us by definition.

 

[gregkl]

The big problem for companies is hiring/developing/retaining early-in-career talent. it.

Agree for most positions. But in traveling sales(my profession for 30+ years until recently), I got hired on completely green. A weeks orientation at the office and then out in the field. Did some travel with other reps, but basically we learned by immersion.

 

[gregkl]

I worked from home for the first 12 months or so until I was accused of working ON my home, not FROM my home, lol. So I went back in the office full time in mid June.

Up until this job, I didn't exactly WFH, but I had an office out of my home and a sales territory that was at least 3 states and once swelled to 13 so my job was being a road warrior.

The company I work for now is Japanese owned they don't believe in WFH so I imagine eventually they will have everyone back in the office full time. Right now, for the others, it's in the office Tuesday's/Friday's, home the other days.

Though I did like WFH, it's not a huge deal for me. We do have several people that refuse to answer emails, texts and phone calls so I was struggling to get some stuff done. Now I can walk over to their desk and they can't ignore me. It has helped me get responses better.

Some departments because of their duties have to be in the office full time so they never did WFH. One of those is who told the president I was working on my home.

Plus, when I accepted this job, I knew if would mean working in a cube. I wasn't crazy about it, but it obviously wasn't a deal breaker.

What I don't like it that they aren't let me travel to see customers which is what I do. If I can find another employer that will let me act more like a sales guy than a data entry/put out fires guy, I'll change jobs.

 

[Ingomike]

Outsourcing fears are overblown in my opinion. People are far more likely to lose a position to advances in technology. Whether that be automation or looking down the road, AI.

Probably because you don't see it. It would be rare for it to be overt, guy goes to work and is told he is fired and a guy in India is doing his job. It is done subtilely, all the sudden you look around and go, weren't all those buildings Woods Wire? Yep! Employees all gone, quietly downsized while all the extension cords are made in China. Automation is taking some jobs but overseas is getting way more...

 

[wtburnette]

Here's a quick example of what happens with offshoring that I'll share. I used to work for a huge company that is getting into offshoring very heavily, with an Indian company called Legato (not sure of the spelling). They have a huge contract with them to provide certain work being done remotely with certain controls in place. The execs supporting this stuff are extremely like Progressives (they probably are Progressives, so that probably explains at least some of that). By that I mean, they support this due to huge incentives for them and then they bury any issues that arise that don't meet the narrative they desire. I have friends who still work for this company. They report that very little of what Legato was hired to do gets done. They circumvent the controls put in place for security reasons and lie to the company to enrich themselves. An example of that is the company in question is supposed to interview all candidates that are allowed to work on the contract. What Legato does is find fantastic people who meet all of the criteria who interview for the position. Once approved, Legato pulls in another, underqualified and underpaid individual to do the work. The person who did the interview goes on to work on other contracts, for other companies, or just keeps working as a professional interviewer to keep the same scam going. It's well known in the organization that Legato is not meeting it's quota for work done, in addition to a lot of other issues, but the execs benefiting from the contract squash all of the information and prevent Legal from following up with contract breaches. This is the only way offshoring works for certain companies in that the supposed benefits are crafted to look like they're being met by people who have a vested interest in it looking like it's successful.

 

[CallSign Snafu]

Probably because you don't see it. It would be rare for it to be overt, guy goes to work and is told he is fired and a guy in India is doing his job. It is done subtilely, all the sudden you look around and go, weren't all those buildings Woods Wire? Yep! Employees all gone, quietly downsized while all the extension cords are made in China. Automation is taking some jobs but overseas is getting way more...

Not really. Outsourcing accounts for about 300,000 jobs lost a year. The U.S. Economy adds far, far more jobs than that each year. Also, it's not a problem if extension cords to use your example are made somewhere else. Simple goods made in labor markets where the cost of labor is lower is not a bad thing, it's a good thing for most people in fact. Now, this has been annoying for certain component manufacturers including some auto parts components. It's not always good when some things leave our shores, but it's not always bad either.

 

[wtburnette]

Not really. Outsourcing accounts for about 300,000 jobs lost a year. The U.S. Economy adds far, far more jobs than that each year. Also, it's not a problem if extension cords to use your example are made somewhere else. Simple goods made in labor markets where the cost of labor is lower is not a bad thing, it's a good thing for most people in fact. Now, this has been annoying for certain component manufacturers including some auto parts components. It's not always good when some things leave our shores, but it's not always bad either.

Sometimes, or sometimes it leads to huge issues, like the current chip shortage, the lack of PPE gear when the scamdemic kicked off, etc.

 

[CallSign Snafu]

Sometimes, or sometimes it leads to huge issues, like the current chip shortage, the lack of PPE gear when the scamdemic kicked off, etc.

A lot of the PPE issues were also related various ratings and approvals the government concocted over the years that slowed down import of perfectly good stuff. It would be nice if more chips were made in North America.

 

[KLB]

Probably because you don't see it. It would be rare for it to be overt, guy goes to work and is told he is fired and a guy in India is doing his job. It is done subtilely, all the sudden you look around and go, weren't all those buildings Woods Wire? Yep! Employees all gone, quietly downsized while all the extension cords are made in China. Automation is taking some jobs but overseas is getting way more...

I have never seen nor heard of this scenario playing out. Outsourcing/Offshoring is done by department or job function. My company did it for accounts payable, help desk, off hour server and database support, and application testing. The only one of those that involved people losing their jobs was the accounting jobs. A lot of companies don't have their own helpdesks, as it doesn't pay to staff one for 24x7x365 coverage. The other functions were to supplement the staff so that they were not having to work in the middle of the night.

Like a lot of companies, mine is struggling with the WFH dilemma. After doing it for 18 months, it is hard to tell people they cannot. Some of our management still thinks it is necessary to try to force people into the office at least part of the week.

For my part, I've been WFH part time since 2009. I've already been told I won't have to return to the office. I believe a lot to most of IT won't have to, unless they choose to.

 

[Ingomike]

Not really. Outsourcing accounts for about 300,000 jobs lost a year. The U.S. Economy adds far, far more jobs than that each year. Also, it's not a problem if extension cords to use your example are made somewhere else. Simple goods made in labor markets where the cost of labor is lower is not a bad thing, it's a good thing for most people in fact. Now, this has been annoying for certain component manufacturers including some auto parts components. It's not always good when some things leave our shores, but it's not always bad either.

A country that makes nothing has nothing and cannot stand. Our entire economy is based on busy work, smoke and mirrors, very few of us do anything really productive. If our country were attacked what good would most folks jobs be to the war effort? Little to none.

We are like that joke about the ditch digging company that had 11 employees but all were some kind of management except the one excavator, then they found out they had to cut one job so they cut the excavator...

Is that not where we are? Got a bunch of management circle jerking while the actual work is done in another country...

 

[CallSign Snafu]

A country that makes nothing has nothing and cannot stand. Our entire economy is based on busy work, smoke and mirrors, very few of us do anything really productive. If our country were attacked what good would most folks jobs be to the war effort? Little to none.

We are like that joke about the ditch digging company that had 11 employees but all were some kind of management except the one excavator, then they found out they had to cut one job so they cut the excavator...

Is that not where we are? Got a bunch of management circle jerking while the actual work is done in another country...

While I think this does exist to some extent, just not nearly to the extent you are purporting it to be.

 

[wtburnette]

I have never seen nor heard of this scenario playing out. Outsourcing/Offshoring is done by department or job function. My company did it for accounts payable, help desk, off hour server and database support, and application testing. The only one of those that involved people losing their jobs was the accounting jobs. A lot of companies don't have their own helpdesks, as it doesn't pay to staff one for 24x7x365 coverage. The other functions were to supplement the staff so that they were not having to work in the middle of the night.

Like a lot of companies, mine is struggling with the WFH dilemma. After doing it for 18 months, it is hard to tell people they cannot. Some of our management still thinks it is necessary to try to force people into the office at least part of the week.

For my part, I've been WFH part time since 2009. I've already been told I won't have to return to the office. I believe a lot to most of IT won't have to, unless they choose to.

I'm thankful my company, or at least my team has learned the lesson and taken it to heart. I know of many other companies, like in the video in the OP, which haven't and will experience serious employee churn over it.

Oh and one comment on the helpdesk example mentioned. The problem with this is that companies don't value such positions as they should. When I worked helpdesk/desktop support in the past, we had extremely high standards that got people onboarded smoothly and quickly, got issues resolved quickly and lead to fantastic customer satisfaction. Management loved that, but hated that they actually had to pay the techs a decent wage. Now, working in a different type of position that is reliant on either outsourced support, or clueless, poorly trained techs, we refer to the helpdesk as the helpless-desk. Putting in a ticket is a crapshoot as to whether anything will get done or not, or if the ticket will just get closed. When we onboard employees, it takes over a week from the start date, quite often, before the employee has everything they need to be productive. No one supports your company and does as good a job as internal people who are treated as beneficial and valued employees.

 

[JTScribe]

I did WFH for five years and switched back to the office six months before covid. There’s something to be said for getting out of the house. I’ll WFH if a kid is sick or I’m sick, but I prefer going in.

 

[wtburnette]

I can imagine working from home with kids would be challenging. Thankfully I'm past such considerations.

 

[Route 45]

Our entire economy is based on busy work, smoke and mirrors, very few of us do anything really productive.

Oh no, we're only number 2 in the world for manufacturing output. We're doomed.

Top 10 Manufacturing Countries in the World | Global Upside

Manufacturing is a critical component for many product-focused businesses around the world. This list of the top 10 manufacturing countries

globalupside.com

 

[Ingomike]

View attachment 160361

Oh no, we're only number 2 in the world for manufacturing output. We're doomed.

Top 10 Manufacturing Countries in the World | Global Upside

Manufacturing is a critical component for many product-focused businesses around the world. This list of the top 10 manufacturing countries

globalupside.com

Really? Then why does everything one wants to buy come from another country? Just try and buy US made products...