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\u201cYour job has been outsourced to India.\u201d I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised \u2014 though a week earlier, at our insurance company\u2019s Holiday Concert Celebration, the CEO had trumpeted our \u201cthree-times-the-industry growth rate\u201d over hot hors d\u2019oeuvres and good tidings.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh steel. New England textiles. American information technology. Is the last going the way of the others \u2014 overseas? Apparently. The communications revolution could mean another surge of job losses in the coming decades \u2014 maybe 40 million \u2014 according to former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder. Is it too late to stem the tide? It is for me.<\/p>\n
After the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, I scratched my way back into IT as a contractor. Then, on Feb. 20, 2006, I landed a full-time position. Terra firma, I thought. But signs of trouble came in May when my boss breezily mentioned the new \u201coff-shoring\u201d initiative. It was a good thing, he said, that would rid us of \u201crepetitive\u201d functions and free us to \u201cstrut our stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon after, the CIO had his quarterly meet-and-greet with new hires. It was a feel-good fest, so I felt like the skunk at a garden party by mentioning the off-shoring. One woman mentioned breathlessly that she\u2019d never worked at a company where everyone held doors open for each other. Yes, everyone agreed, it was so!<\/p>\n
So we embraced the off-shoring. What choice was there? Soon we were meeting regularly with our Indian partners in \u201chand-off\u201d sessions. We (the \u201cnative team\u201d) demonstrated, step-by-step, the \u201cWave 1\u201d tasks, those to be transitioned first.<\/p>\n
I worked with Praveen. Though I was leery of the off-shoring process (the condo hunt was on hold), I couldn\u2019t help but like him. He managed to use my first name in every sentence in an unaffected way. \u201cYes, I understand, Bob!\u201d It was like sitting with Dale Carnegie, who noted that \u201ca man\u2019s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound.\u201d Akhilesh and Pavan spoke the same.<\/p>\n
One day, Praveen proudly clicked up a Web site showing HITEC City, the self-contained technology city in Hyderabad, India, to which Praveen would soon be returning \u2014 after absorbing the \u201cWave 2\u201d tasks. And it was breathtaking, rising like Emerald City out of Oz. The first structure at HITEC city was the 10-story Cyber Towers about a decade ago. Then came Cyber Gateway and Cyber Pearl. Now there are 29 IT parks at HITEC City.<\/p>\n
As I feverishly trained Praveen and Akhilesh to meet tight turnover deadlines, they in turn passed my \u201cbrain dumps,\u201d bucket-brigade style, across two oceans to Maitreyee back in Hyderabad. Things moved swiftly, and soon I was tapped dry. The day Praveen flew home was awkward. \u201cGoodbye, Bob.\u201d<\/p>\n
A week after the Holiday Celebration at Mechanics Hall in Worcester \u2014 built in 1857 to support manufacturing workers \u2014 the CIO gathered us to review the budget. It was true, he said, it\u2019s been a \u201cterrific year.\u201d Fourth quarter is looking good. ROI is double-digit. We are exceeding plan, he said.<\/p>\n
But the company was moving into \u201csofter\u201d markets. A lot of business is in slumping Michigan, and we over-invested in technology in 2006.\u00a0Storm clouds are gathering. Yes, he admitted, the timing could have been better on last week\u2019s $2 million corporate gift to restore the downtown theater, but we\u2019re \u201ccommitted to the community.\u201d His voice choked when he announced 53 layoffs, more than 10 percent of the American IT staff.<\/p>\n
Back at our desks, everyone was white-knuckling it. When my phone rang, I was directed up the escalator into a plush office and the door was shut. \u201cIs this for my new promotion?\u201d I joked lamely. No one laughed.<\/p>\n
What happened next was a blur. Outsourcing. Changing directions. Not performance related. My manager didn\u2019t use the word \u201cexpendable,\u201d but it\u2019s all I could think of.<\/p>\n
The sharply dressed woman from the Office of Talent Management went over the \u201cSeparation Agreement,\u201d typed on letterhead, addressed personally (\u201cDear Robert\u201d), and listing 22 bulleted items. As she moved down the list, my throat caught momentarily. Just then, pugilist-philosopher Mike Tyson\u2019s words after his last bout raced through my head. \u201cI\u2019ll take my beating like a man.\u201d I didn\u2019t want them to see me cry.<\/p>\n
Oh, they held the door open for me on the way out.<\/p>\n
Bob Muldoon lives in Andover, Mass.<\/em><\/p>\n The magazine’s personal-essay column, featured on the last page of each issue, provides a space for alumni, students, faculty, staff and others who have a Bates College connection.<\/p>\n We welcome your idea, by means of a one-paragraph synopsis. E-mail proposals to Bates Magazine<\/a>. For more information, go to the FMI page<\/a> at\u00a0Bates Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cYour job has been outsourced to India.\u201d I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":455,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-493","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10791,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/493\/revisions\/10791"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Your Page<\/h3>\n