Analogue Kid
5th by West-Northwest
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alexs wrote >>
Intrusion - I can tell you that Sarbanes-Oxley is hated with a PASSION in the business world.
And I can tell you it's absolutely necessary if we want to preserve trust in the marketplace.
The government absolutely has a role to play as referee in my opinion. Keep the playing field level and make sure everyone is being honest. While that may be a "burden", imagine the chaos if all private citizen investors pulled out of the market because it had become a sham.
alexs
Limestone bluffs of the Scioto
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Sarbanes was intended primarily for financial purposes, but it states that a publicly-held company has to be able to show a set of "internal controls" and that extended to things like having published policies. To be honest, it was (is) a huge amount of administrative thrashing.
somertimeoh
Harrison West
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Yeah, there's a lot more to SOX than just financials. It makes me want to bash my head in everyday. Everyone at the manufacturing level is now so OVERLY sensitive it makes it hard to get things started when your customer wants the finished product 5 minutes ago.
I wonder if Mary Jo Kilroy has already started writing her nasty letter to Nationwide.
10sun
Columbus, OH
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myliftkk wrote >>
alexs wrote >>
Intrusion - I can tell you that Sarbanes-Oxley is hated with a PASSION in the business world.Would that be because they can no longer use Random Financial Statement Generator software that worked so well in the past?
Frankly, it's inevitable that most businesses don't, or shouldn't, have a need for inhouse software shops (unfortunately including tehcnical writers). Inhouse development, when not a core business function, almost certainly costs vastly more than custom-tweaked off- the-shelf software. And for most of the user community, it's what they need, even though it may not be what they want.
I'll second that. I had to co-develop a capstone application for my old job to pull data from a bunch of different sources (MySQL database, Oracle, Apache, SAP, custom Excel spreadsheets, etc) and view them via an Access table. It wasn't the most high tech, nor was it pretty. However in the end it provided the end users a one stop location where they could get any data they needed; it covered inventory levels, shipping container information, daily sales data (volume + price point), warehouse capacity levels, palletization schematics (each pallet had to be built a specific way out of the containers), SKU dimensions, and a lot more data that each department within the operation could utilize (we had a full divisional setup for Philips in house, we were the last to eventually be outsourced to Ryder Logistics).
We had tried off the shelf products, however in each situation it failed in several areas that were critical to the overall health of our company and ended up leading to confusion for the less tech savvy employees. It was part of our effort to maintain SOx compliance and to streamline the business as well as lighten server loads in addition to dropping our licensing fees down. In the end, by putting about three hundred hours into the project @ $25 an hour we were able to increase operational efficiency (being able to record actual metrics is awesome), pinpoint chokepoints in the production cycle, and save the company over ten times what it cost a year.
We all still lost our jobs when we were outsourced.
GW_Justice
Grandview Hts.
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For those free market enthusiasts who don't want the government involved in a corporation's choice to outsource jobs - can you tell me where the jobs are going to come from to replace these lost positions?
Because between outsourcing and high tech manufacturing that uses only a fraction of the workers it used in the past, many jobs are gone for good. Seriously - what are people who have no work and no place to move to find work (because it is tough all over) supposed to do?
Tenzo
Chicago Lakeshore
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GW_Justice wrote >>
For those free market enthusiasts who don't want the government involved in a corporation's choice to outsource jobs - can you tell me where the jobs are going to come from to replace these lost positions?
You have it backwards
The government is currently giving tax breaks to companies that outsource their jobs overseas.
I used to be a manager at Chase. We were given directives to have X% of a group's jobs outsourced overseas.
Never mind that the work ethic blows or that the time difference means a guy will stop work until the next day if he runs into a problem. We were able to document that the cost/benefit of an outsourced guy to Bangalore favored having a local person.
But the government incentives favored having outsourced jobs.
alexs
Limestone bluffs of the Scioto
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Another thing about being on a temp assignment for a specific project is, the vitality of your position depends on the vitality of the project, instead of the other way around.
In the old model some project would stop for whatever reason and your job would be to go on to other, or the next, tasks. In the new model your job goes *poof* (that's what happened to the bluebagged guy above) if the project stops, or even stalls, for any reason, or if its resources are re-allocated.
Roland
Clintonville
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The days of having a job long term have been over for some time now. I think it's every individuals responsibility to adjust their mindsets, and skillsets, to be able to thrive in such an environment.
I feel badly for anyone getting laid off but you just gotta get back up on your feet and think proactively.
JonMyers
HCMC ✈
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Roland wrote >>
The days of having a job long term have been over for some time now. I think it's every individuals responsibility to adjust their mindsets, and skillsets, to be able to thrive in such an environment.
I feel badly for anyone getting laid off but you just gotta get back up on your feet and think proactively.
I agree. That employment paradigm has been dead for a decade and it's been dying for the last thirty years.
Any job that can be digitized will be done by software or outsourced. If you're not creating value in your job you should be worried.
This kind of sentiment is the same sentiment you hear when people speak about keeping manufacturing jobs stateside. Yet, people continue to want gobs of cheap shit made in China where they're "taking our jobs".
It's been time for a reality check for a long time. There will be many more reality checks to come. The quicker this state gets in check, the more competitive we will be.
greenhouse1014
Columbus
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It's harsh to say it, but the responsibility for the outsourcing of jobs lies in ourselves. Why do you think jobs are outsourced? Not because execs LIKE India. They can find tons of people who will do the same job for cheaper. If Americans are going to keep these kinds of jobs, they will have to adjust their costs of living and realize that they're going to have to do the work a lot cheaper.
rave_til_dawn
Dennison Place
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greenhouse1014 wrote >>
It's harsh to say it, but the responsibility for the outsourcing of jobs lies in ourselves. Why do you think jobs are outsourced? Not because execs LIKE India. They can find tons of people who will do the same job for cheaper. If Americans are going to keep these kinds of jobs, they will have to adjust their costs of living and realize that they're going to have to do the work a lot cheaper.
Agreed. I think people don't realize that shipping jobs overseas, also saves jobs here. Send 5 jobs to India, or lose 10-15 jobs here. Which do you think makes more sense? The cost between a contractor in India and a contractor in the US is pretty big.
kcrissinger
Brookshire
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rave_til_dawn wrote >>
greenhouse1014 wrote >>
It's harsh to say it, but the responsibility for the outsourcing of jobs lies in ourselves. Why do you think jobs are outsourced? Not because execs LIKE India. They can find tons of people who will do the same job for cheaper. If Americans are going to keep these kinds of jobs, they will have to adjust their costs of living and realize that they're going to have to do the work a lot cheaper.Agreed. I think people don't realize that shipping jobs overseas, also saves jobs here. Send 5 jobs to India, or lose 10-15 jobs here. Which do you think makes more sense? The cost between a contractor in India and a contractor in the US is pretty big.
How does outsourcing save jobs here? Qwest openly said that for every US job lost, the person would be replaced by two employees from Qwest Bangalore. That's saving lots of US jobs.
rave_til_dawn
Dennison Place
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The money you save by offshoring some jobs/functions, prevents you from having to layoff more people onshore, therefore saving jobs.
However, if a company moves all jobs offshore, then obviously nothing is saved.
Chimera
I get around
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Roland wrote >>
The days of having a job long term have been over for some time now. I think it's every individuals responsibility to adjust their mindsets, and skillsets, to be able to thrive in such an environment.
I feel badly for anyone getting laid off but you just gotta get back up on your feet and think proactively.
+1
It's a person's responsibility to stay up on his or her certifications/education/skill set and to be aware of the trends in the job market.
GW_Justice
Grandview Hts.
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greenhouse1014 wrote >>
If Americans are going to keep these kinds of jobs, they will have to adjust their costs of living and realize that they're going to have to do the work a lot cheaper.
LOL. OK, you first! You want to convince me outsourcing is good, I want to see you live the rest of your life at Indian wage levels.
Then when the Indian companies cut wages to compete, you follow them down the rathole.
When did "America is the best employer with the highest standard of living in the world" become "be glad you have a shitty job and look forward to getting paid less every year?".
Core_Models
Columbus
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Maybe America stopped being the best employer with the highest standard of living in the world around the same time its employees stopped being the best in the world. I have a feeling that happened around the same time people started feeling entitled to a job and that they should be able to force American companies to hire them.
cr0m
"Lower" Hilliard
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Core_Models wrote >>
Maybe America stopped being the best employer with the highest standard of living in the world around the same time its employees stopped being the best in the world. I have a feeling that happened around the same time people started feeling entitled to a job and that they should be able to force American companies to hire them.
Very well put...
greenhouse1014
Columbus
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GW_Justice wrote >>
greenhouse1014 wrote >>
If Americans are going to keep these kinds of jobs, they will have to adjust their costs of living and realize that they're going to have to do the work a lot cheaper.LOL. OK, you first! You want to convince me outsourcing is good, I want to see you live the rest of your life at Indian wage levels.
Then when the Indian companies cut wages to compete, you follow them down the rathole.
When did "America is the best employer with the highest standard of living in the world" become "be glad you have a shitty job and look forward to getting paid less every year?".
It turned into that the same time American companies started to realize savings by outsourcing jobs to other, highly competent individuals who didn't demand as much money for doing the same job. My own profession, graphic design, is only mildly effected by outsourcing. True, there are outsources for design, but most clients want to talk and yell face to face for that. As soon as that hurdle gets knocked down by someone in another country, I'll worry. Already, fees and wages for my profession have started to come down, but that's mostly from freelancers driving down the market by charging a pittance for things like logo design, etc.
Roland
Clintonville
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GW_Justice wrote >>
When did "America is the best employer with the highest standard of living in the world" become "be glad you have a shitty job and look forward to getting paid less every year?".
Perhaps when the rest of the world achieved and surpassed the ability to produce goods at the same level of quality as the US?
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