A missing layoff survival guide: Learn from us experts that have already gone through what Seagate is putting you guys through as it gradually replaces each of you domestic counterparts with cheaper offshore workers. 1. Don't write any code comments, or if you do, don't explain how things work 2. Create silos of local work groups and work face to face.. No email on how/what you've done. 3. If overseas teams ask you how to do things, give a broad brush overview, no details. 4. Write more complicated code that is more difficult to understand, provided it does not affect the underlying performance/reliability. 5. Don't write complete design documents. IF you write design documents, write enough to get management to think it's done, but not enough for engineers offshore to do anything useful with it. 6. Occasionally, take a vacation day off on short notice, and let things just "blow up" after you hand off your work to offshore teams. When you come back and things are completely not working, send lots of email about what a terrible job people have done... 7. Always blame problems on offshore teams, no matter how small. 8. Always blame the reason why you problems can't be fixed earlier is because there is a 15+hour timezone difference between headquarters and those remote offices. 9. Hold meetings at times that is convenient for you but in the middle of the night for those offshore teams. 10. Make sure your meetings you conduct locally are as efficient as possible and make your local U.S. totally in sync and ahead of the work schedule before you even meet with the offshore team. That way, it makes them look incompetent. 11. The best meetings are the ones held at 5:00pm PST on Friday, since that will be Saturday overseas, so the ones that most won't show up.And the ones that do show up, end up having to take time off their personal schedule to do it...Make sure this is a reoccurring weekly meeting... 12. At the last minute, reschedule those meetings for the next week (but continue to meet locally and carry on your business). 13. Make sure you send out a meeting notes to senior management, indicating who attended and more importantly, who didn't attend... 14. When someone screws up overseas, always make sure you take the initiative to fix the problem, and make sure you send out 5+ emails telling management how you fixed the problem, describing in extreme detail how things got so screwed up and how you fixed it. And most importantly, if you're going down, you might as well create as much havoc internally inside the company as possible. Nothing is worse more than a company has so much internal conflict that efficiency and productivity comes to a halt..It's 10x worse than any sort of external competition....And that's the predicament corporations and will put the company in when it starts trying to just save on "cost" by offshoring.... TAGS: (document, layoff, outsourcing, documentation, process)
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So... I luckily wasn't axed but this does have me very largely alarmed. Go the best job ever; loved it then Seagate started doing wonky stuff; took away healthcare and only provided a terrible HDHP (for factory workers not Engineers). Then in the flip side; they state "everything is going great" and then axe people and make no statement about why...? Then the reality sets in that the company wasn't doing great (as per their consistent lies) and they're getting rid of people of key talent across the board (to cut costs) but losing a lot of skilled experts (what's worse; this includes people who moved up the ladder/chain from where I'm at now).
All in all; both my motivation and morale was shot, grounded into the dirt and the dust was swiped into incinerator. And this is for Evault. Is the future looking good? (not likely). Overall; the only safe thing to do; is to never bank on a company EVER. Only bank on yourself and keep your certs, resume and credentials updated at all times as things can change and get rid of people quickly and easily (they don't care about customer support -> it's all about only money for those at top). The second you're content in your job; don't keep up certifications or your own credentials is the second they will ax you off... = (
@anonymous149704
there is WAY more offshore work than you are aware of -- the headcount is not visible, it is contract work farmed out to agencies. in total there are @ 3k in india. and more being prospected for as we speak. much of the development for "cloud software" and eVault will now be produced there :(
We do not do much offshore work, I do not think this is a big issue for us right now
:D
hahaha, good one - so true