Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Michael S Czeiszperger <czei AT webperformanceinc.com>]

On Tuesday 06 March 2001 21:49, you wrote:
>  From Internet World New: Wednesday, March 7, 2001  · Vol. 3, Issue 44
>
> Former Employees May Be Untapped Resource
> By Ruhan Memishi
>

In my opinion there's no such thing as an employee anymore, and the faster 
workers wise up to the fact the faster companies will stop pretending there 
is such a thing as a permanent job.

In my opinion, if one has a permanent job with a company in a technological 
capacity, that means when one project or product is finished, and they no 
longer need so many programmers/designers/etc, those people are moved to 
another project. In my experience at least, this has never happened. Once a 
project is finished, everyone not needed to maintain the project is laid off, 
and if a new project is to be started within a few months, the manager of the 
new project goes out and hires new people.  In some cases the entire 
development team is canned, and the maintenance is outsourced.

The excuses for this range from not being able to make payroll, to a new 
project having different technological challenges, and thus requiring 
different people. This neatly sidesteps the fact that the whole concept of 
being an employee is based on having some sort of longjevity with a company 
beyond this quarter's bottom line. What companies are actually doing is 
hiring people who can be hired, fired, and rehired in a period of months. 
Some of those people are called "contractors" and receive extra salary to 
compensate for the uncertainty, and others are called "employees", who 
believe they are trading a lower salary in return for benefits and job 
security.

In my experience what actually happens is companies hire and fire employees 
without any regard to any implied job security, making the value of benefits 
such as life insurance and retirement nearly zero, and as an added incentive, 
get to pay employees less. When the time comes to reduce headcount, do you 
really think a manager is going to let a contractor who is critical to a 
project go over an employee is perceived as being expendable?

>
> Many employees understand that today's economic realities are forcing
> executives to lay off workers. Letting them use computers, phones, and
> faxes for their job search also will go a long way in making sure the
> relationship ends on a more positive note.
>

What I understand is companies will do anything to react to a drop in their 
stock price, regardless of the actually long term (say over 2 years) impact 
on the bottom line. As the pointy-head boss says in the famous Dilbert 
cartoon "Our employees are our greatest asset. Every time we lay them off our 
stock price goes up." For people who are laid off, there's not much value in 
using the companies computers, phones and faxes, since most employees have 
phones, a home computer, and can buy a fax machine or fax modem for under 
$100.

In the end, there's only a few companies where its worth joining as an 
employee. Unfortunately, the companies that don't lay off 20% of their 
workforce at the first sign of trouble are few and far between right now.

-- 
Michael S Czeiszperger | czei AT webperformanceinc.com
Web Performance Inc.   | http://www.webperfcenter.com