Outsourcing to a Managed Service Model: The Word is Given

So the Discovery Deadline came and went and in typical fashion for TopFive, the Higher_Ups hadn’t made a decision yet.  It came as no surprise because something of this magnitude and natural couldn’t be figured out in six weeks.  And honestly, the six weeks was never about figuring out the logistics of transition and knowledge transfer, it was about money.

For MSM to work, it has to be cheaper than what TopFive was spending now, but the new firm (let’s call them TopperTwins) had to make money too.  And all the people involved in this decision wanted their “I saved the company X dollars” bonuses.

We said keep the lights ON

 

During this time, we were in Keep The Lights On Mode.  No new projects were approved and with people leaving every day, it was like a ghost town at the office.

Eventually that all was hammered out and the word was given that we would move to this model.  No one was surprised by this.  They wouldn’t tell anyone exactly when their last day was but we were told the transition had to be completed by March 1.  They did promise that no one would come back from the holidays and be let go on Jan 1.  (Of course the calendar was such that the first day back was Jan 4.)

No one factored the holidays or vacations or the fact that the firm shuts down for the last two weeks of the year into this transition schedule.

They also announced that some people would be retained in the New World Order and that an additional 30 positions would be available to apply for them.  Translation: you get to apply for the job you are currently doing at the moment.  Finally, if you don’t find anything with the New order, you can apply for any of the open positions TopperTwins has at the weekly job fairs.

I personally knew that I was not to be part of any of that.  My skillset can be summed up as a Subject Matter Expert of a particular software.  It is used primarily by law firms but TopFive was one of the few corporations that utilized it.  But its use had dwindled in the time I was there and most of it had already been Sunsetted.

However, many of my colleges believed that given all the people who had departed, if they just hung around they would be hired on and have nothing to worry about.  Spoiler Alert: it didn’t happen that way.  Those 30 open positions?  25 of them were automatically filed before they were officially announced.  I was already looking for a new job, but this made me ratch it up a notch.

Stay Tuned….

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This post was drafted a year or so ago, as these events were occurring.  I waited to post this because I didn’t want to risk my job hunting efforts or reveal any information about my former company.  The purpose of these posts aren’t to bash my former employer but to share my experience and hopefully educate people on the perils of Corporate America.

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Is your company Outsourcing? Take the money and run

We got the news mid summer that TopFive was exploring moving to a Managed Services Model (MSM) and it was surprisingly, unsurprising.  By that I mean even obtuse moi had noticed the signs:

• Attrition Rate was usually high;
• Empty positions were not being replaced;
• I was on my 4th boss in a year;
• Older Partners and Senior Executives were being “coaxed” to retire;

They told us that the plan was to do Discovery until the end of August and make a yay or nay decision by September 1.  I have never been through anything like this myself, but many of my fellow IT colleagues had so they knew that not only was this an unrealistic timetable but also when the Higher-Ups said Exploring the options, they really meant this move was gonna happen we just need to figure out the money.

When a company laysoff outsources a large portion of their staff, it isn’t unusual to offer an Incentive Bonus to keep people around long enough to transfer their Native Knowledge.  This is supposed to lesson the blow of essentially training your replacement.  You have to really decide if sticking around is the right move for you.  Depending on the terms, you might risk missing out on another opportunity or you might lose out on the bonus due to some technicality that you didn’t realize.

It’s like trying to determine all the cards so that one can make the best choice possible.  Should I go with the safe Full House or do I try and get a Straight Flush?  The thing is, you cannot know that until you make a choice.  If you leave to take another position, it might not suck for six months but after that, you may be longing for the days of TopFive.

The Parking Lot was getting emptier and emptier

TopFive mentioned an Incentive Bonus during Discovery but no details were forthcoming.  All they would tell us on those All-Hands Calls was that the incentive bonus is based on individuals being with TopFive till August 31st and we would get details in the mail.  I believe the sent these priority mail letters out and given that they were delivered via the USPS not everyone got one at the same time.  So imagine walking into the office and finding out that everyone on your team got a letter but you.

This caused rumors to incubate very nicely.

I wish I could share the letter but I can tell you from my former life as a paralegal it looked like someone download Contracts for Dummies from the internet and tried to fill in the blanks.  It was apparent from the wording of the letter that they initially were going to try and give everyone a different amount based on some assessment of ones job function and need to keep them around long enough to transfer knowledge.   My guess is someone started doing it and figured out that 1) it’s too hard to do that with the Loosey-Goosey criteria they were probably given from Mickey Mouse Management and 2) if they didn’t offer enough money everyone who could was gonna walk.

Apparently the magic number, the sum of our worth, was $5000.

$5k is between Nothing-To-Sneeze-At and Not-Game-Changing, especially after taxes.  I started looking for a new job myself but I knew I wasn’t going to find anything immediately.  So I, like many others, wanted the incentive bonus because we were going to be here anyway.

Some people still left which did surprise me.  Why would you pass up $5k when all it would take was sticking around another month?  I get that some people probably started looking the day the news was announced but in Corporate America, they usually take two months to fill a position and want you to start at the beginning of a pay cycle so you’d have to be a really bad negotiator to not be able to say I couldn’t start until after Sept 1.

There was one person who quit on 8/26 which means he either had an offer that he couldn’t refuse or there some something suspicious about the incentive bonus.

 

Stay Tuned….

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This post was drafted a year or so ago, as these events were occurring.  I waited to post this because I didn’t want to risk my job hunting efforts or reveal any information about my former company.  The purpose of these posts aren’t to bash my former employer but to share my experience and hopefully educate people on the perils of Corporate America.

Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

 

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How years of rejection in the Dating World prepared me for losing my job

So the cat can now be let out of the bag.  My company TopFive has discovered that it is an accounting firm, not an IT firm and as such, it is strongly considering moving to a Managed Services model (read: outsourcing) and my job will soon be gone.

We are of course using the current buzz word “Managed Services” but it really  means TopFive has decided to explore Outsourcing the IT department. Every week we have a pointless all-hands conference call that created more questions than they answered.  And the information they do give us, they refuse to write down in an FAQ or follow up email.  They said it was to foster a discussion but there is only one reason you don’t put something in writing.

No I’m not looking at LinkedIn, why do you ask?

As you can imagine moral around the office is at an all time low.  The big surprise is that everyone has noticed that I am taking the news rather well and appear to be downright optimistic.

No one has ever accused me of being optimistic.  But I have to be honest, I am handling this news much better than many of my peers.

One thing I kinda know about some of my co-workers is they didn’t really date much before they settled down.  Some actually have arranged marriages, some simply married the first person they saw naked and some even went the mail order bride route.  I on the other hand was a regular Ted Mosby only without the sidekicks.  While I was never any Casanova, I did go on my fair share of dates, had a few serious girlfriends and even a fiance before meeting my wife.

What came with all of that, besides the usual roller coaster of good times and bad times, was a lot of rejection.  There were ladies who didn’t give me a chance at all, or one date and done.  A few dates that were obviously merely me underwriting their meal plan and a few short term relationships.

If there is anything good about rejection it is that it does build a sort of mental toughness over time.  If you are lucky and can learn to accept that rejections isn’t always about you as much as it is about the other person too.  I faceplanted a lot back in my dating days.  But it wasn’t always me.  Sometimes, just sometimes it was her.

And in that same manner, the move to outsourcing and eliminating my job has nothing to do with my value.  It’s a small group of Decisionmakers at TopFive who want to increase their already insane profit margin in the short term at the expense of quality service in the long run.  And still using that same analogy, heck let’s be honest, I’m beating that analogy to death, a bad relationship needs to end sooner, not later.  Sure you might be getting wild sex, but at the expense of your car windows getting bashed.  I think not.

Stay Tuned….

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This post was drafted a year or so ago, as these events were occurring.  I waited to post this because I didn’t want to risk my job hunting efforts or reveal any information about my former company.  The purpose of these posts aren’t to bash my former employer but to share my experience and hopefully educate people on the perils of Corporate America.

Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.