So You Went To School For an IT Degree, Eh? « The Burning Platform

So You Went To School For an IT Degree, Eh? « The Burning Platform

Guest Post by Karl Denninger

It used to be that if you had a desire to learn how to code, or admin systems, or simply work with computers in some way you had a decent job.  Maybe you weren’t a rock star, but you didn’t need to be — just competent was good enough. That wasn’t necessarily a path to riches, but it was a path to a reasonable middle-class living.

Not any more.

SunTrust Banks in Atlanta is laying off about 100 IT employees as it moves work offshore. But this layoff is unusual for what the employer is asking of its soon-to-be displaced workers: SunTrust’s severance agreement requires terminated employees to remain available for two years to provide help if needed, including in-person assistance, and to do so without compensation.

Got it folks?  They’re moving the work offshore, you know, to India? Yeah. And the cute part is that not only are they requiring the workers to train their replacements (very common) or be fired on the spot, but to get severance you have to be willing to agree to help them for the next two years without being paid.

Now that, by the way, is probably illegal and thus unenforceable; federal wage and hour laws override any such agreement and I suspect there’s not a prayer in Hell that this would stand up in court.  But it’s in there, and the bank is trying it.

Not that you should simply crap all over SunTrust (although you should); rather, your ire should be directed at both parties in Washington DC who have enabled the destruction of your job irrespective of the fact that it’s in a good, intellectually-challenging field.

See, there are people in India who literally don’t have a crapper.  I’m not kidding; outside of the major cities people take a crap outdoors.  This is the standard of living you, as an American, are competing with when your job gets “outsourced” to these nations.

When are you going to get mad enough to put a stop to this crap America?  If you think it can’t happen to you think again — it has, is, and will continue because you continue to tolerate it — all the way to the poor house.