Hi there everyone.
Rarely do I find myself in the Pit actually starting a thread. I’ll chime in occasionally and I think I’ve started one Pit thread. This is mainly because I am pretty easygoing guy to whom if something bad happens, I deal with it and move on. I can hold a grudge but I generally don’t go postal without good cause.
Well today, I have good cause.
I work in IT for a very, very large Telecommunications corporation in Australia and have done so for over 10 years. I’ve actually been in IT for over 16 years, but 10 or so of those have been with my current employer.
Actually, no, that’s not quite right.
I worked in IT for a very, very large Telecommunications corporation in Australia and did so for over 10 years. I’ve actually been in IT for over 16 years, but 10 or so of those have been with my now former employer.
Yes, I have been retrenched, made redundant, no longer required, right-sized, down-sized, externally relocated, counselled out, involuntarily separated, outplaced.
I wasn’t sacked or terminated. I didn’t do anything wrong, it just seems that I’m in excess to their ‘resource’ requirements.
Which is really quite funny in itself.
You see, about 5 years ago my former employer went through an IT outsourcing process where we shipped off some 70% of our IT to an outsourcer. This was all driven by reducing costs.
2 years ago, my former employer decided that that was working so well, they decided to ship off the remaining 30% to a different outsourcer. Again, to reduce costs.
We now have two outsourcers and to put it simply, they generally do a pretty good job.
The problem is that my former employer simply didn’t retain any IT skills at all in house, and this included the skills that were required to translate the business requirements into IT speak. Doh!
You see, we didn’t actually outsource all of out IT, we only outsourced from construction through to implementation, so concept, tech design and detailed design were still part of our in-house function, but we didn’t keep people who could take the users requirements, create the detailed and tech designs and provide them to the outsourcers to construct. Dumb!
I was one of the very few people who were left after the outsourcing had completed, one of the few people that could speak business and could speak IT at the same time, thus enabling the outsourcers to understand our business requirements and enabling me to translate their IT speak back to our business users.
Recently (around 4 weeks ago), our department decided that we should seek to save more money through our outsourcing, by requiring them to cut their cost by 50%. In Australia, this was going to be very, very hard to do, so my former employer decided that some major chunks of our outsourced work would be shipped off to India, where the promise of 50% reduction in cost was made.
At the same time, they also decided that we should restructure ourselves to ensure that we retained or re-instated the ability to translate between business requirements and IT speak and to better manage the outsourcers.
As a person who had been doing that type of work for many, many years I applied for one of the roles.
I was, it seems, not quite the calibre they were looking for, despite the fact that I had been doing that job (and doing it pretty darn well according to my previous performance reports) for many years.
So, after two weeks of interviews I found myself in the office of my manager (who by the way, was appointed to be my manager over 8 months ago, refused to answer any emails from me, worked across the city and I couldn’t get into his diary and this was only the 2nd time I had met him).
Together with his ER advisor, they handed me a lovely looking package and brochure that should have been (IMHO) titled, ‘So We’ve Decided to Can Your Arse’ and basically told me (without going into the elaborate details of exactly what they did say), told me to fuck off.
Now, I understand that I may have been the dead wood that they were clearing, but frankly, I would find that quite staggering, in fact (well in my opinion actually), I think I wasn’t even in the running, despite the management lines that some of us were being fed.
The two managers I interviewed with had never head of me before. They were 15 minutes late for the interview. They cut short most of my responses to questions they asked. They cut the interview short by 15 minutes. I am pretty certain one of them had not read my CV (as he asked direct questions that were clear in my CV). I got the feeling they were going through the motions.
They made the announcements today about who did get the roles that I applied for.
To my shock and horror, the brown-tongue gang, the personal slaves, the toadies, the arse lickers, the bitches, the yes men, the cheapest to keep employed and the ones who had personal friends on the selection panel, pretty much all would up with the jobs.
So, I may be dead wood, or I may not have sucked enough cock, swallowed enough jizz or licked enough shit-stained arse to deserve a continuing role.
Given the direction that I think this company is going to head, I think this may be well and good.
I could complain through the Fair Treatment Process, I could contest this through my union, I could possibly make a decent case in the popular press about the deal to go to India, but I won’t.
You see, I wouldn’t want to work in any place that wouldn’t have me as an employee and even if I did contest the process and won, I wouldn’t want to be employed there any more.
Now, you shouldn’t all go getting all sad for me (even if you knew who I was), you see, in Australia, we have a thing called a retrenchment package, where if you are retrenched or declared redundant, you get money. So in the nice package they gave me, they also gave me enough money to keep me in beer and skittles for a while, so I’m not going to get kicked out of my home or have to sell the kids to a slave trader or trade in one my kidneys. We’re very lucky in that way.
It’s more that I actually feel sad for the many millions of customers we had that will feel the squeeze of the dollars, the ineptitude of some of those recently appointed and their impact on the IT systems and knowing that I could have done the job, but wouldn’t lick enough clit, felch enough goats, run my tongue around their rings or lick enough cum of the faces of those in the group wank to warrant inclusion in their selection process.
Upon previewing, I also feel that I haven’t been vitriolic enough, so here goes:
Goddamn mother fucker, arse-licking, cunt-poking, fish-felching nut-sack-slurping cock-suckers! Too-many-hyphens shit-swizzlers! Toilet-bowl-licking, goat-felching, fire-ant-loving, sewerage-outflow-sniffers! Molesters-of-Koalas and eaters-of-the-regurgitated-remains-of-road-kill. Smegma-sniffers! Hypocritical-cancers-of-my-arse! Putrid eaters of liquid-kitten-waste! Lickers of their own arses! Felchers of camels and other camel-related animals. Lovers and swallowers of their own bodily by products! 2am-car-door-slamming, radio-blaring, large-exhaust-pipe-owning sons of English Pig-Dogs!
There, I think that covers the mandatory requirements of the Pit.
I have also have to change my nick from Caught@Work, to Staying@Home, and that’s something I’ll take under advisement, especially if Mangetout has any good suggestions up his sleeve.
PS. If anyone needs an IT Project Manager with 16 years IT experience, in Melbourne, email me. I work cheap.
Regards.
Caught@Work.