Corporate Happenings

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Bob Vila

ɐןıʌ qoq
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As most of you know, I work for a fortune 500 company, Hartford Financial Services (The Hartford). Now, my company, has been in business for close to 200 years. They have been stable throughout and in all honesty are one of the employee friendly corporate structures in the USA today. We have close to 30,000 employees with 13,000 of them residing in Connecticut (Headquarters).

With the new structure of outsourcing, the company, stood off as long as possible on delegating this to outside vendors. This week, my company had a small layoff of IT professionals (146 people) only to be replaced by outsourced individuals. Now what gets me is that the folks that were effected by this layoff have 60 days to secure a job within the company or else their serverance package starts (2 weeks for every year with the company). Now within the 60 days, they have to TRAIN the newly hired outsourced individual on what they did each and everyday. Most of these people have been here for 20-30 years and were maintenance for our legacy policy writing systems. Now out of the 146 people that were laid off, only 2 remain that were not managers, 40 more of people whom were managers are still managers, meaning, they still have their job. So currently, we have 2 people doing 146 peoples job, and those two people have a management staff that they report up to at 40.

I guess what I am trying to get at is that I understand that outsourcing is how the IT industry is going, however, the way that it is implemented certainly doesn't make any sense. I was not effected by this as my project would have erased half of these jobs anyways since the maintence of the system we are releasing over the next 5 years is vendor maintained, however, it impedes on our CBA and takes funding away from my project. It also could have alleviated this mass layoff for this specific area for another few years and we could have had the opportunity to communicate this to those that were effected in a more professional manor.

Just ranting about being involved in corporate life. Thankfully, my experience is with both Business and IT, as I am an IT Project Manager communicating on the Business Side of the project.

Cheers to job security (at least for another 5 years).

:(
 
I hear ya man....

today, we got notice that our office is going to be moving to business dress only. While not a big deal by any means, a LOT of people are up in arms about it. We're all used to wearing jeans, nice t-shirts, and shorts from memorial day to labor day if we want.
now, its going to be khakis and polos or better.

While its not a big deal, i don't see the point.
we have NO clients come here-- and when they do, we get an email a couple days in advance telling us that X day is dress-up.

Mind you, a lot of people here simply don't have the wardrobe to pull this off. and they tell us this today, and want to start monday.

So, basically, you HAVE to go shopping over the weekend.

for me, its no big deal. I have a shit load of khakis and nice shirts...
but for other people who have been here for 5 or more years, simply don't have more than one or two outifts that are considered biz casual.
and they expect it by monday.

WTF?

who comes up with ideas like this?

Job security is out the window. I'm safe, as I'm in a position where they need me more than i need them (and if they were to lay me off, they would probably loose some clients and void some contracts, resulting in some lawsuits. NO ONE else does what i do... and even if they were to hire someone else to replace me, it would take them a LONG time to pick up where i left off. I have 4 or 5 live projects running, daily client outputs of the previous days data, maintinging and creating of the reports for ineternal usage, recording vs data look-up for QA purposes and so on... The list of what i do is huge.... and my direct bosses know this. In fact, i think they are sometimes nicer to me than others. Like, I jokingly said "thats it, i'm quitting" one day... and they were like, no you're not...you're staying right there lol)

but its only so much that people can take.

i browse monster just about every day, and get a daily email digest of jobs for some key words... and there's really nothing else better for me that i've come across lately. If i were to leave, i think i would be less happy... even if the money was better.
plus, i have a 3 mile commute, i'm rarely on-time.... but no one cares because i stay late every day (most of my stuff happens at the end of the day... 4-6 or so) and there's not too much going on at 8am. i'm usually here around 8:45... and rarely leave before 6, most the time between 6 and 630... and sometimes till 7 or 8.

and i still only get paid for 8 hours.

but ya know what, it beats landscaping.
 
Landscapers with 2 years' experience are better paid than me.

:(
 
I have noticed somthing strange since I started working for Safeway throwing freight. It seems to me that the really low end guys like me dont really have to worry about losing our jobs unless we really mess up but the middle managment try and dick everyone over to get to a spot where they wont get outed. Maybe its just because I work at a grocery store, probly alot diffrent at a huge company. But I have a question for you guys.

Like I stated above I dont yet have a career. I am however trying to look to the feature so I got a few questions. When you guys got into your job did you bust your ass hard enough where you are in pretty deep on many diffrent things and they cant really afford to let you go? It seems like thats what you did B? I get my AA next year and I am looking for some ideas on what I need to do to get in good with a company.
 
i am a master of none, but have a working knowledge of many.

thats the key to success.


i came into my job not knowing a line of asp. but, i had plenty of exposure to programming, and php in particular from building this site.

slowly, i became fluent in asp... and then in sql... and then in everything else.

that, and i have a background of schooling in networking.

so basically, if it came down to it, i could "fuge" together to get by just about ANYTHING.

would it be pretty, no...

but not to many web developers out there can configure a cisco router, telnet into it, and set up a pix, while running a 5 table left outer join and creating a usable web interface :p

master of none...
 
B, companies are still hiring at a good rate here in the Bay Area. Convert to Cali? :p

We have an offshore team for VeriSign in India, but they have not taken away any jobs. Our project has just grown so fast we needed more people very quick. As far as dress goes, I don't think there is a dress code here. Everyone wears what they want. Its a building full of engineers so there is really no point in dressing up. I'm with you on this one B.
 
Originally posted by B16@Aug 19 2005, 02:35 PM
B, companies are still hiring at a good rate here in the Bay Area. Convert to Cali? :p
[post=542496]Quoted post[/post]​


The only way i'd move to cali would be:
300k min startnig salary
paid re-location
stock options
my own personal secritary that I get to hire. :)
 
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