Thursday, March 29, 2007
Friday, March 23, 2007
Mumbai or Bust...
So I've slipped into a once-a-month pattern for this blog thing. Couldn't say why. It could be that I am now no longer working from home so I can't waste time to blog while I should be working. As it so happens I get a ton more work done now that I don't have the option of surfing the web all day long.
It could also be that every other weekend for the last month I've been spending my time in the wonderful little town of Black Diamond, Washington. There isn't fuck-all going on in this hick-a-palooza town except for the studio we spend our time at recording the forthcoming Skeletons EP. We don't have a title yet so suggestions are welcome... we won't use any of them but I like to hear your attempts at comedy, so suggest away!
But here we are, bloggin' once more. So here's what I want to talk about... outsourcing. My job is going to be outsourced in the next 6 months or so to this company in India. (Note that their name is Tata Consulting, the irony is certainly not lost on me.) I'm certainly not married to this job but it's still sort of disheartening to hear that it doesn't really matter how good a job you might be doing as an employee/ team/ department, there are people who can be paid $7 an hour with no benefits to do the same thing in another country. Our company had record profits last year... they said so themselves. But still, every department is being looked into for outsourcing and my guess is most of the ones that don't involve working face-to-face or over the phone with the customer will be moved to somewhere in the eastern or possibly southern hemisphere. We've had plenty of meetings, bulletins, etc. keeping us informed of how well the team working on putting us out of our jobs is doing. Lots of harmless sounding acronyms are being thrown around (BPO, FTE), pleasant words are being said about how this "doesn't have anything to do with what a great job you're doing", and all the while we collectively moo as we are herded to the slaughterhouse. I say this as if there was much we could do at this point. There isn't... they said so themselves. I have only been with the company a little while. I can't imagine how betrayed the people who have worked there for a long time feel. Some people are retiring and this might be a blessing in disguise, but most aren't
I don't really have a long rant about this. I could. But I won't. What I will say is this... this is where capitalism fails. In a global economy where everyone is working to help their bottom line, it would be almost stupid to not outsource. That is, of course, unless you take a little less short sighted view of economic stability in this country (something capitalism generally isn't too keen on.) Who in country is going to buy these products and services when less and less of us have decent paying jobs?
Anyway, I'm hoping to make it big (or at least big enough to quit my day job) as a musician, so what do I care.
