Corporate America Doesn't Learn

[Route 45]

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

Everything? Jesus, the hyperbole.

Some people aren't happy unless their world is on fire all the time, I suppose.

 

[Ingomike]

Everything? Jesus, the hyperbole.

Some people aren't happy unless their world is on fire all the time, I suppose.

I am not happy with this fu**ing world now. But those that are ruining it are happy when folks don't notice.

TPTB also tell us there is no inflation, but even Greenspan says that is lies and needs investigation...

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Everything? Jesus, the hyperbole.

Some people aren't happy unless their world is on fire all the time, I suppose.

 

[Leo]

I really don't understand WFH. When I managed jobs in 5 states, I traveled to five states. When I was adjunct at Navaro College, I did some work at home, but mostly on location.

I DO get that some jobs are better out of the office. At the Torrance Ave Westinghouse office our top salesman was hardly ever in the office. I talked to him at length 3 or 4 times a week, as he was smart enough to consult the shop and contour the contracts for all around profit, not just his commission, and fat commissions they were. Lots of repeat orders too.

Then we got a new manager. He was the moron brother in law to a hot shot in the Corp office. New manager mandated that ALL salesmen had to spend a minimum of two days in the office, answering phones and doing busy work. Our top salesman set another record the next year,...... for Honeywell.

 

[Route 45]

I am not happy with this fu**ing world now. But those that are ruining it are happy when folks don't notice.

What a miserable way to live.

 

[Ingomike]

What a miserable way to live.

I'm likely far happier than most, I also have high standards for life. But I can call a spade a spade, not mince words, rather than bury my head in the sand to the reality of what is happening...

 

[Leo]

It seems like we do lead the world in printing. We seem to keep printing money and giving it away every day.

 

[actaeon277]

View attachment 160362

Where did you get a copy of my work badge?

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Not really. Outsourcing accounts for about 300,000 jobs lost a year.

Outsourcing is just one aspect of it. How many jobs were just never created domestically? NAFTA gave companies a massive incentive to move factories to Mexico. They did. Factories closing do not just cost factory worker jobs because once they lose their job they either move elsewhere to chase work or they have less income to spend at local restaurants and shops. It decimated small town America.

 

[wtburnette]

I really don't understand WFH. When I managed jobs in 5 states, I traveled to five states. When I was adjunct at Navaro College, I did some work at home, but mostly on location.

I DO get that some jobs are better out of the office. At the Torrance Ave Westinghouse office our top salesman was hardly ever in the office. I talked to him at length 3 or 4 times a week, as he was smart enough to consult the shop and contour the contracts for all around profit, not just his commission, and fat commissions they were. Lots of repeat orders too.

Then we got a new manager. He was the moron brother in law to a hot shot in the Corp office. New manager mandated that ALL salesmen had to spend a minimum of two days in the office, answering phones and doing busy work. Our top salesman set another record the next year,...... for Honeywell.

Makes a ton of sense for my line of work. I analyze security documents and review vendor risk assessments and create reports based on what I find. My life is on email, MS Teams and our internal ticketing system. Any contact can be done via those systems. I get more work done when I'm at home then in the office. Never made sense to me that they never let us (prior to COVID) work from home more than 2 days a week. Then we had a CIO take over and he said only 1 day a week. Thank God he F'd himself and got fired before COVID. Once COVID hit I think our management was shocked to discover that we not only did well, we did better than we did when working in the office. As I've said, it's not for everyone and not for every position, but for those people and positions that fit, let it be. As your example shows, there are companies who do understand, to the detriment of those who do not.

 

[Ark]

WFH-ers are digging their own graves in the long term. Anything you can do from a computer, someone else somewhere else can do from a computer cheaper. Everyone seems to think it will be Bay Area salaries forever while they live like a king in rural Colorado or wherever. Nope, they'll get replaced by someone who will do the job for $40k because they live in Kansas, and then that person will be replaced by someone who will do the job for $25k because they live in Mumbai.

Making yourself dispensable by a mouse click is a fool's game.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Everyone seems to think it will be Bay Area salaries forever while they live like a king in rural Colorado or wherever.

Why would I think that? I live and work in Indianapolis. I never was making a Bay Area salary?

 

[Leo]

Outsourcing is just one aspect of it. How many jobs were just never created domestically? NAFTA gave companies a massive incentive to move factories to Mexico. They did. Factories closing do not just cost factory worker jobs because once they lose their job they either move elsewhere to chase work or they have less income to spend at local restaurants and shops. It decimated small town America.

In the 70's I started traveling by motorcycle. I wanted to see America, not the interstate system, so I traveled the old roads. Even back then, a lot of smaller communities looked like they were out of money. The towns where things looked ok had a manufacturing facility. I have also re traveled some of those roads after the plants closed. Places like Crete had the American lock company plant. High schools started buying chinese, they are gone.. In Macomb, they made Thermos bottles. not much else, plant is gone. town is broke. Even bigger cities, Like Harvey, IL, Wyman Gordon closed the foundry that made camshafts for domestic auto, that area of town is rapidly decaying.

There are only so many jobs for people to get paperwork, do something with it, and send it on. There are only so many grants for research. etc. No mater how sophisticated you can build a workforce, stuff, real stuff you can see and hold in your hand, is needed. The West Lafayette school Cafeteria had a news bit they are having trouble getting groceries. We need that kind of factory too.

People need jobs, and value added is from manufacturing. Without it, we will be like old east germany, poverty stricken masses and government tyrants and border guards.

 

[wtburnette]

WFH-ers are digging their own graves in the long term. Anything you can do from a computer, someone else somewhere else can do from a computer cheaper. Everyone seems to think it will be Bay Area salaries forever while they live like a king in rural Colorado or wherever. Nope, they'll get replaced by someone who will do the job for $40k because they live in Kansas, and then that person will be replaced by someone who will do the job for $25k because they live in Mumbai.

Making yourself dispensable by a mouse click is a fool's game.

Yes and no and like many things, depends on the role. Information Security is something that can't be (or damn well shouldn't be) outsourced. Kinda hard to have the security for your company in someone else's hands, especially in another country.

 

[Tombs]

WFH-ers are digging their own graves in the long term. Anything you can do from a computer, someone else somewhere else can do from a computer cheaper. Everyone seems to think it will be Bay Area salaries forever while they live like a king in rural Colorado or wherever. Nope, they'll get replaced by someone who will do the job for $40k because they live in Kansas, and then that person will be replaced by someone who will do the job for $25k because they live in Mumbai.

Making yourself dispensable by a mouse click is a fool's game.

That will happen regardless just due to it being demonstrated as possible.

Whether you want to WFH or not is largely irrelevant to whether your job will be outsourced in the future.

 

[Leo]

I would love to WFH but that is mostly outside of my skill set. The things that I can do from home, however helpful they may be, do not pay very much.

Like my friend above showed, his profession is really adaptable to it. A friend's wife handles rejected insurance claims for a hospital from home, that seems to work fine. I once dated a Registered Dietician that worked from home about 1/2 the time with a couple of computer terminals and a couple of fax machines. It has to be a pretty small percentage that can do that.

 

[wtburnette]

I would love to WFH but that is mostly outside of my skill set. The things that I can do from home, however helpful they may be, do not pay very much.

Like my friend above showed, his profession is really adaptable to it. A friend's wife handles rejected insurance claims for a hospital from home, that seems to work fine. I once dated a Registered Dietician that worked from home about 1/2 the time with a couple of computer terminals and a couple of fax machines. It has to be a pretty small percentage that can do that.

Yep, really depends on the type of company. Computer support, factory work, warehouse work, manufacturing and many customer facing jobs pretty much have to be done in the office (or warehouse, or factory). Almost anything where you sit in a cubicle all day entering/processing/analyzing or coding information can be done from home. The two biggest challenges are employees who are disciplined enough to work from home and actually get the work done and having good managers. Workers need to actually get the work done and managers need to know how much the worker should be doing and ensuring they do that. My experience in the corporate world leads me to believe that there are plenty of the former and nowhere near enough of the latter. A good manager should have a good idea of what each worker should be able to accomplish, what their workload is most of the time, who does and doesn't have additional capacity to handle new work and who has what experience and capabilities. If you have that kind of manager, it shouldn't matter if the members of the team are onsite or offsite. Bad managers don't know this stuff and constantly have to check in with their team members to see that they're looking busy. The "butts in seats" philosophy comes from this, as you have to constantly walk around to "make sure people are working". Hard to do that when you have remote workers. Those types of managers hate remote workers because they have no idea who is doing what and if there are productivity issues, they don't know how to fix it other then to "bring people back to the office where someone can keep an eye on them".

 

[Twangbanger]

Yes and no and like many things, depends on the role. Information Security is something that can't be (or damn well shouldn't be) outsourced. Kinda hard to have the security for your company in someone else's hands, especially in another country.

It doesn't have to be outsourced in the "pure" sense of giving it to another company, to affect your job. When I worked in the Auto industry, we quickly realized our real competitors weren't other companies - they were people wearing the same-logo shirt as us, same name on the company badge...but in Mexico. Same company, but they were our "production partners." Our job was to develop and launch business and hand it off to them. Gradually, they got to the point they could develop their own business.

Not in manufacturing? It could simply be your company realizing that Kansas has X% lower labor rates than Indianapolis. Knowing that those savings will essentially be permanent, can justify setting up a facility - just a matter of doing the math. I don't know your specific situation, but you get the idea. The less investment the company has in things like physical manufacturing assets, the easier it is to cost-justify the move.

About 10 years ago, my wife had to make a minor "re-careering" shift, because a private equity firm bought up all her company's locations (technical service industry), closed them, and sent all the work contracts to its mega-facility in North Carolina where rates were cheaper. You mentioned information security being critical; my wife was overseeing medical tests that literally determined if someone was going to live or die. The private-equity people at my wife's company were not dummies; they were intelligent fast-learners with advanced degrees and backgrounds in the technical field my wife worked in, plus finance and law and all the rest. They came in, learned everything about the job, talked a great game about investing "new money to grow the business," new technology, new customers, you get the drill. It was all pre-ordained. The employees found the business plan publicly-posted in a company report on the internet (if you can imagine that), including the names of the "key player" top company execs my wife worked with who were telling the employees not to worry, but had been given buy-outs and were secretly participating in selling the company off in a plan that had been decided way in advance. Their jobs were going to be gone a year into the future at the time they read the document. The few of them who found out quietly started looking for other jobs.

All that - justified simply by the wage differential between Indiana and North Carolina.

There is absolutely no doubt that WFH is a great boon to people like you and me, 1) meaning "us" specifically, and 2) right at this point in time. We are mature-in-career professionals, and we can probably do much of our jobs without leaving our beds if it came right down to it (as long as my charger cable works). I really only need to go in to have classified discussions, which are rare. I choose to go in many days because our company is being sold to (drumroll...) a private equity company HQ'ed in the deep south where wages are much lower than ours, my people are pretty uneasy about it, and they need to see me there because they have a lot of questions.

But I will tell you this: prior to the sale, our company had been looking at WFH arrangements in *exacting* detail. They set up data-collection to monitor how many days each person actually went in vs. remote during the Plandemic, and they hatched a major plan to classify everyone's job-type in terms of whether it can be done remotely, implemented standard-work studies for technical jobs to identify the actual work-content, started harmonizing job codes across the company, and then they actually began pushing people towards WFH if at all possible. (They _want_ us out of the office, because they want to shut down and/or sell as much corporate space as possible). During the Covid-Zoom era they learned that much of our engineering work can be done from anywhere that a sufficiently-educated American citizen is willing to live. To make the Bold New World even more threatening, we discovered in a company earnings-call that our parent company now has an engineering office in a caribbean nation where the residents enjoy U.S. Citizenship (that should narrow it down a little), meaning they can legally be given access to and work on sensitive ITAR-controlled U.S. military technical data, and the company is pushing us to move work packages there (engineering design work).

Still think your IT job will always pay you Indianapolis wages? How would you know? Sure, right now it's a sellers' market. But what about after 5 more years of repeated Plandemic Scares, supply chain disruptions, and maybe a large real-estate meltdown in China that gives the Global Capital guys a headache similar to how the U.S. Subprime dumpster fire did 12 years ago?

I assure you - companies are learning. And although WFH is personally great for us in this moment in time, we are being ushered along into a future where the boundaries are not determined yet. And when the companies finally do set down the boundary lines of our "new normal," it will have been done after tremendous study, and it's not going to be done primarily for our benefit. So enjoy it, but just don't forget who is ultimately running the casino. Because it's good for the two of us, right now, doesn't mean it's going to be good for everyone, for all time (or even for us).

 

[wtburnette]

Yep, absolutely might be problematic long term. Thankfully there are a number of things I can do from a career perspective should any of that come to fruition. If all the jobs go elsewhere with lower wages, not much I could have done anyway, right? Not sure how enjoying the benefits I have now change anything in the long run. My guess is that instead of so many jobs shifting away, there might be shifts in wages. Mass layoffs and when you find a new job, the wages will be x% lower to match the areas where the work could go. Dunno, will have to wait and see I guess...

 

[Nazgul]

Not as much detail as you guys are posting but I take a very expensive med for arthritis. It is shipped from a warehouse about 15 miles from my house. Every month I call to refill it and arrange delivery and talk to someone in India. Who I may or may not be able to understand. Thanks to Uncle Sam my hearing is shot...literally. If it is too frustrating trying to understand them I tell them to get me an American to talk to. They can connect me to them and the issue gets resolved.

Find it frustrating to be charged $1500/week and not be able to speak to someone I can understand.

Insurance and copay assistance picks up the cost so I actually pay very little for the med.

Don