"Fury rises at Disney over use of foreign workers"

[cranbiz]

People DO mind losing their jobs to outsourcing. Doesn't matter if they hired a service company or bring in foreign workers.

I know I did when one of my former companies contracted out all of our in house It to ServiceNow. We didn't even have a chance to apply with them for a job.

In hindsight, it was the best thing that ever happened to me but there was 4 years of h3ll while retraining for a new IT disipline.

 

[Castle2Castle]

People DO mind losing their jobs to outsourcing. Doesn't matter if they hired a service company or bring in foreign workers.

Apologies for any confusion, but I didn't have a sarcasm font for my previous post. While quoting you, I did take you out as I was hoping to speak more generally to the idea of outsourcing in general vs outsourcing to foreigners as the subject and several posts have seemed to take particular issue to the new workers being foreigners.

 

[cranbiz]

All is OK.

I agree that hiring H1b workers outright to replace the existing workers is a practice that needs to stop. I also don't think the gov has any right to interfere with how a business is run. If a business wants to replace it's in house staff, it is the right of the business. At that point the business either lives or dies with it's decision. If the gov made it easy to use lower paid, foreign workers by circumventing the legal process of entering the country and becoming a citizen, that's a problem.

 

[jlewisinsyr]

IMO, a company like Disney should focus on its core businesses and strengths, IT is not one of them so it should shed the business to an outsourcing firm (on-shore or off-shore). Of course this sucks for employees impacted, but it benefits the company overall. Focus on your core and you are much stronger than if you try to focus on everything with the same limited resources.

 

[Planogirl]

Apologies for any confusion, but I didn't have a sarcasm font for my previous post. While quoting you, I did take you out as I was hoping to speak more generally to the idea of outsourcing in general vs outsourcing to foreigners as the subject and several posts have seemed to take particular issue to the new workers being foreigners.

My big issue is with CHEAPER (i.e. less costly) foreigners since that tends to be true. Half of my family is foreigners so no insult meant. Truthfully, outsourcing of any kind just to save a buck is disturbing.

Our economy does need local people working too but that's another issue really.

 

[Suger Mag]

Until people vote with their wallet, nothing will change. Personally I am willing to pay more for American made goods and services, I drive American and look for the "Made in the USA" tag whenever possible But we are moving more and more towards a global economy, where borders are not so solid, especially with the Internet. So to a certain extent I don't think the door will ever get shut on the barn and that horse will continue to run free... or at least run to China and India for the next decade or two.

 

[pachelbel9]

A lot of Disney IT is outsourced to 3rd party companies like Xerox and has been for a long time. I know several of the storage admins at Xerox who are working at WDW.

In the new IT world, Support as a Service, Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, etc is an extension of cloud computing. Instead of building it and maintaining it yourself, companies are contracting it out to the major IT service companies.

2.5 years ago my company announced they were outsourcing IT to Dell. They laid off pretty much everyone but a dozen software developers (but half of those left anyway). I was one of the 6 that stayed. Within 6 months it was acknowledged as a complete disaster. The company seriously could have imploaded, and without the 6 of us and our business knowledge it most certainly would have. Companies are so short sighted about this. We ended up paying 7 figures to dump Dell, and IT was back in house the same year. The only upside is that we trimmed all the fat and now we're twice the IT dept we were before in terms of quality. We do contract with Xerox as well, but just for mailroom tasks which don't scale well onsite.

The real kicker is that we weren't even saving much with Dell in practice. I guess the promised savings never materialized. I wonder if the same goes for Disney and the like.

 

[rwdavis2]

2.5 years ago my company announced they were outsourcing IT to Dell. They laid off pretty much everyone but a dozen software developers (but half of those left anyway). I was one of the 6 that stayed. Within 6 months it was acknowledged as a complete disaster. The company seriously could have imploaded, and without the 6 of us and our business knowledge it most certainly would have. Companies are so short sighted about this. We ended up paying 7 figures to dump Dell, and IT was back in house the same year. The only upside is that we trimmed all the fat and now we're twice the IT dept we were before in terms of quality. We do contract with Xerox as well, but just for mailroom tasks which don't scale well onsite.

The real kicker is that we weren't even saving much with Dell in practice. I guess the promised savings never materialized. I wonder if the same goes for Disney and the like.

Agreed. I've been writing software for 35 years. It's been my experience that upper levels of management do not understand software: how it works, why it's important, and how to develop it. This is from someone where there is an entire branch of the company that does nothing but software. Management just thinks, "it's just software". Tell them that when they need a software fix to a hardware problem in a spacecraft several hundred million miles away.

 

[ParrotBill]

To outsource successfully, you have to have all operations rigorously defined and documented and live within the defined service levels. Anything outside of that inflates the costs... a lot if the IT operations are a mess to start, or if the company does not have the discipline to say no to things out of scope.

The kicker is that a lot of places in the world with so-called cheaper labor are becoming more expensive very fast - they are growing and costs are rising for them too now. Outsourced offshore labor is not as much a deal as it once was. Outsourced labor not offshore is a fallacy - the provider has to make a profit and they will. I don't ever see it saving money over a well-run operation.

If a company is convinced they can save money they will try - to get a better bottom line for the owners or investors. When it fails to do so nobody will want to take the blame, they will have a reason that costs went up.