An Offshore Outsourcing ELE: IBM to layoff 150K American workers

IBM Global Services plans to lay off half its US workforce by year end, which could be 150K employees. Simultaneously, they're hiring in China & India.

I hate that I was prophetic about offshore outsourcing. In 2003 I wondered about the damage of a huge American employer outsourcing a big bulk of their jobs. Many people I talked to thought I was overstating the problem. Unfortunately, I was Nostradamus-like on this one.

I can't wait to see the "free trade" PhDees (eg academic dee dee dees) try to defend this action as "benefiting the US economy".

I should start a firm which outsources "free trade" PhDee apologists. My staff would not have PhDs, or wouldn't be as bereft of common sense & real-life experience as PhDees, but could do the work at 10% of the cost of existing PhDees

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Check out this insightful comment someone posted (anonymous | May 04, 2007 | 7:40PM). Real effed up, but I can't say that for many US companies that this is not true:

The crazy thing is, when a corporation cuts way back on employment, the top-level people think they are getting rid of the fat and retaining the lean, but it always turns out just the opposite.

This is why. Most employees fall into one of two classes. The first is competetent, hard working techies. The second is political types who don't really know how to perform their job, and spend their time plotting and scheming, and tricking the higher-ups.

When a corporation sets on a course of massive layoffs, the competent techies set about trying to do their jobs better, and also looking for jobs elsewhere. On the other hand, the imcompetent political types organize together in a giant scheme to trick the higher-ups to fire the techies and keep the political types on their jobs. One way they do this by persuading them that the competent techies are actually incompetent, while they themselves are competent.

This is sort of trickery is what the political types are good at, so they succeed, and the result is the average employee competence level drops precipitiously. Believe me, I have seen this happen in one case after another.

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edup | May 10, 2007 | 12:19AM

The CEO Creed:

I pledge allegiance, to the DOLLAR,
and all the perks for which it stands:
1 vision, which makes me God,
Untouchable, with liberty and justice for nobody but ME.

I think they start each board meeting with this prayer. Since they ARE deeply religious people, followers of the worlds third major religion.
1) Chrisianity
2) Islam
3) Money

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