Friday, July 01, 2005

taking sides (part 2)

i was talking to a colleague from our US office and he just mentioned about the reduction in workforce that had started there at his office on that day...
i knew that it was a very sensitive matter and i just didn't know how to react, what to say. i did tell him that in my personal opinion it is very unfair and it should not be the way things should be going. i couldn't say anything more than that but i couldn't stop thinking about that.

after this, i was discussing with a couple of people here at my office as well.
this business model is not good at all. i think it is the problem with most of the well established MNCs who had already grown to a great extent and then started outsourcing their jobs. they hadn't planned for globalization when they started and they didn't plan for it when they were growing. now, they are left with no choice but to layoff. this kind of a set up would disturb the relationship between the two teams working for the same project at different locations. i don't understand how a business can grow if these two teams compete with each other rather than working in collaboration.

however, this is not the case with the MNCs that are startups as they would have planned for globalization from day one, would hire appropriate number of people at different locations and wouldn't get into a situation where in they have to reduce their workforce at one parlicular location to cut the costs. i think this business model is quite fair when compared to the earlier one.

also there is another model where in the company would be registered at a particular location and the marketing happens from there but the development would take place at different location to cut the costs again. i don't really think i am in favor of this one as well.

7 comments:

Jagadish said...

I completely disagree with this school of thought. Yes, it is a difficult time for those loosing jobs, and one might feel that companies are the ones to be blamed.

Hey but look at it from the comapany's perspective. Outsourcing was always there. Japanese and chinese goods have been flooding the market since ages. Manufacturing bases in china and japan have traditionally stolen 1000's of jobs from US and Europeans. So why is there so much hoopla now for IT jobs ? it is simply because of the reach job losers in IT have to convey their distress.

Today it is India, tommorrow it will be phillipines and brazil taking away our jobs. Companies will still try and outsource stuff. It would be foolish on our part to believe that we would be indispensible, same thing applies to those who have lost their jobs.

tradionally, dollar economies made big bucks by buying cheap goods from 3rd world countries, read nike, louie phillipe, and sold them for dollar rates in US. while their economy was booming, technology came to the fore, and Companies suddenly found themselves in need for technology enabled services.

Enter programmers, blue collar workers, difficult to find, and costly to employ...but business was booming, so they hired them nonetheless...paid them hugely, and pampered them.

3rd world countries caught up much faster than expected, and suddenly the money churning market started feeling the pinch .... so they sent the jobs offshore..sound economic sense...play by the rules..

why is everyone making such a noise about it ? jobs are not their birth right , are they ? yes, if the company uses resources in a given country, it has to employ people from there and not get people from outside, but if the company is a global one, having loactions across the world, nobody can question the company as to why they are recruiting more people in a given location. It is like telling the consumer to buy goods only from somalia, because apparantly he is from somalia !..

Free market does not work that way, and there is no need to be sympathetic about such stuff.

tommorrow a day will come when i might lose my job, that would not be becasue of my foolishness, but if i cannot plan for it and think of other sources of livelihood, then i am foolish.

Corporations are but a manifestation of the human persona !

Jagadish said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Jagadish said...

oh !! sorry !, posted it twice :)

Anonymous said...

O yeah. That is what my team lead in the US is worried about.He thinks we will ask him to do low end job like documentation and static verification.As he says this we are already making him to it :))

Anonymous said...

If you dont know who I am .. well guess. Hints available on request.

ashwini bharadwaj said...

i was out of town for around 21 days, got to see this comment only now and i think i need some hints to guess.

Vijay Radhakrishnan said...

The problem pointed by ashwini is that these companies should be clear about their stance at the time of offer to the employee about the Business model and what kind of jobs they can offer to employees , which they are not in most places especially reputed MNC's. The Companies dont want to call themselves OutSourced Low call Centers (How many would want to) if they call themselves that way What will be image projected ?

So they promise Development work and Hi-Fundu stuff which is a pure exagerration hoping mean time they will be able to get something ...

And the employee has high hopes abt the nature of job and finally feels defeated.....

A lot of Managers have a disease of "PROJECTING things" rather than expressing as they are ....thats why they are called PROJECT managers i guess.

If i as a job seeker knew it is doing some junk work , i will not seek that and look for soemthing else which i m interested in . Brazil and phillipines outsourcing never comes into picture in this context of the argument....