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IBM Rumored to be Planning Unprecedented Offshoring Switch for 2007
It's Not a Rate Increase, It's a Reclassification
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Steve Hannaford Tells Us Why Chrysler is Dead
The US auto industry is in turmoil - rising gas prices, changing buyer
tastes, stiffer environmental laws, and massive labor costs, among
other things - have cost US automakers tens of billions in losses in
recent years. And now the pompous jackasses at Daimler-Benz have killed
Chrysler. It's bad enough that my beloved IBM ThinkPads have been sold
to Lenovo - I can't even imagine buying a Chinese-made Jeep! Chrysler
was in trouble when Daimler bought them in 1998, but the Germans were
supposed to make it better, not spend $40 billion to make it worse.
[More...]
Terry Frazier at 9:00 AM
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Thursday, May 10, 2007
IBM Rumored to be Planning Unprecedented Offshoring Switch for 2007
I worked for IBM from 1995 to 1998. During that time I met some great people and had the privilege of working on more than one world-class project. As part of the benefits package I was allowed to buy IBM stock at a discount, and I did so. A few years ago I sold the stock off, as it had stagnated for a while and my general fondness for the company had dwindled. I still have friends there, many of them working for IBM Global Services. Now Robert Cringely reports that Big Blue is planning to axe more than 100,000 people from IGS, moving all the work offshore:
I, Cringely:The Pulpit - Lean and Mean
[...]
The IBM project I am writing about is called LEAN and the first manifestation of LEAN was this week's 1,300 layoffs at Global Services, which generated almost no press. Thirteen hundred layoffs from a company with more than 350,000 workers is nothing, so the yawning press reaction is not unexpected. But this week's "job action," as they refer to it inside IBM management, was as much as anything a rehearsal for what I understand are another 100,000+ layoffs to follow, each dribbled out until some reporter (that would be me) notices the growing trend, then dumped en masse when the jig is up, but no later than the end of this year.[...]
This cannot be good. As Cringely notes, offshoring of this scale creates massive communication and support problems - at least if the customer is in the US. My experience with BellSouth's lame, dysfunctional, globalized tech support has been a disaster. Dell, same story. In fact, if you have ever had a good experience with offshore tech support I'd like to hear about it. But more importantly, if Cringely is right IBM management is going to axe 100,000 jobs knowing full well that it may cripple the company. I don't care if the stock price rockets upward for some brief period. I'm glad I no longer have any financial stake in Big Blue.
Terry Frazier at 10:17 PM
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Monday, May 7, 2007
It's Not a Rate Increase, It's a Reclassification
The new AT&T - "We're back. And it's just like nothing has changed."According to the article, no one regulates phone card rates. Not the state of MO, not the FCC, nobody.AT&T now charges eight minutes for one of these one-minute calls in Missouri
Jo Ann Weitkamp knew something was wrong. The minutes on her prepaid telephone calling card were disappearing faster than she was talking.
Weitkamp, 72, lives in an apartment for seniors in Warrenton. Every few months, she visits a Sam's Club store and pays about $28 to add 1,000 minutes to her calling card. She's found that an inexpensive way to keep in touch with family members.
Until now.
Since February, AT&T has been charging Missouri customers eight minutes on their prepaid calling cards for each minute they talk to someone in Missouri.
The charge formerly was one minute for each minute called.
[...]
"We're following the law, and this is something we're required to do by the FCC," said Amanda Ray, a spokeswoman in Dallas for AT&T.
She says the change is not a rate increase.
"It's a reclassification," Ray said. [...]
The problem here isn't the rate, it's the deception. AT&T wants to be allowed to change rates without state permission. Fine. Do that. But don't lie about it. Don't throw in some bogus multiplication factor when you agreed to provide per-minute charges.
There are two industries that deserve to be uttelry destroyed - the music industry and the telcos. They are both saturated with an entitlement mentality that defies description, and are populated by lying rat-bastards of the highest order. Good riddance to them both.
Terry Frazier at 11:10 AM
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