U.S. Tech Workers Bear Brunt of Immigration Policy

In April, 2003, Kevin Flanagan, a computer programmer with Bank of America (search), was fired from his job after being forced to train his replacement, an Indian worker who was taking over Flanagan's job as part of Bank of America's effort to replace its American workforce with foreign labor.

A year later, it's no surprise that the impact of foreign labor (search) on American workers has become a potent political issue this campaign season. What Americans need to understand is how complicit the U.S. government has been in helping large corporations secure cheap foreign labor, and the impact that has had not just on American workers, but on the foreign laborers doing their jobs for a fraction of their wages.

Yes -- the idea that any organization would allow itself to get to the point where it is held hostage by one individual is truly mismanagement. There should be rigorous procedures in place and documentation standards and policies to ensure continuity. What if your "hero" won the lottery? The affect on the enterprise would be the same

G-D!!!,,,

You gotta love it...a Hornhair that thinks that ALL THE DOCUMENTATION IN THE WORLD would replace the Human Element...

Well, a couple of decades ago, I was a 'green and wet behind the ears'...programmer hired during a hostile takeover of a NYC Bank [Hint: during the Panic of 1837, only GOLD, SILVER, and the Banknotes with this peculiar CHEMICAL smell were accepted as Legal Tender by ANYONE in New York!!! ].

The takeover was attempted by a Wall Street Darling...who at the end held a Press Conference declaring..."I always knew there was an Establishment, but until today, I thought I was part of it!"

OK, this little company, bought by the Bank to MONKEYWRENCH the takeover [Hint: The Bank Holding Company Act], now had to perform on its own.

A Young Lady was promised a Severence Package to train me in the FORD MOTOR Account...Three rooms full of Excruciating Detailed DOCUMENTATION!!!

She refused...and wished me luck :-(

figuring it ALL out!!!

Eventually, the Bank...'Old Bullion" [from 1837 Panic], Liquidated the company!!!

ROOMSFULL of Documentation is NO SUBSTITUTE for Institutional Memory!!!

BTW, ALL the Software Company's Big Wigs, transfered to the Bank with the CHEMICAL SMELL...were S**t Canned in less than a Year!!!

A Young Lady was promised a Severence Package to train me in the FORD MOTOR Account...Three rooms full of Excruciating Detailed DOCUMENTATION!!!

Interesting rant although it completely misses the point. You need systems in place to ensure effective management of any operation. Part of that is documentation -- but that documentation only can be used within a context (which clearly was not available to you).

Is this how you work? Is this your expectation? This is the kind of discipline I expect from a grad student or an intern.

You left open the most important part -- what if your friend won the lottery? According to you, the company would fall into an abyss of mass confusion (that is your report on what happened). That is on the company for tolerating such a condition and on your friend for playing the old "keep the info in my head for job security" game -- usually the game I see in government. Like I said, I delight in firing (or arranging for the firing) of people who play that game.

So many people confuse skill -- they can do things --with ability -- delivering value.

I am in the IT profession and I am in great demand. There is 0% probability of my job being outsourced because I bring to the table the experience and understannd of what IT is supposed to do -- and the ability to communcate that and provide context. I am a consultant for a very large company and am constantly turning down work.

Any hack can program -- that is why it is eminently outsourcable. The ability to commmuinicate and make complex technical concepts clear to non-technical decision makers and clients -- how to use IT to solve real life everyday problems, how to differentiate strategic versus tactical plans -- these are the things that cannot be outsourced.

Who was held hostage? He was perfectly willing to document the software for the $30,000 and be done with it (he was actually in a $75k+ yearly position with another company by that point), but they decided that it was in their best interests to rehire him and keep their IT in-house.

And, IMO, if the company is so worried about portability, they should have probably freed up some budget to have a professional consulting firm put together their global network rather than having their internal IT department, with no previous experience doing this sort of thing, put it together for them. As I said in the first post, these guys started out with a single ancient IBM mainframe and grew it into a global network, and they did so using only their internal resources because management didn't want to spend the money on people with experience doing this sort of thing. When you ask an amateur to design a global network, you get an amateurish global network.

I fault the management, not the programmers.

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