Responsiveness

Working this holiday was interminable. A few VPN calls throughout the day but otherwise slow and boring. At least I brought a book to read.

But here's some old news that I had heard rumors about at the time but only just learned the details of: the Corporate Overlords announced back in November that they are "offering more than 300 of its outsourced information technology workers raises of $1 to $3 per hour in exchange for a termination of all benefits except participation in the company's 401(k) retirement plan."

"Customers are looking for non-benefited solutions," the CFO was quoted as saying. "We're trying to be responsive."

No. Customers are looking for cheap solutions, they don't care whether benefits are involved or not, they just want it to cost less money. And the Corporate Overlords have been delivering on that by underbidding themselves. They have been providing product and services at a price below what it costs them to produce, ensuring that their balance sheets end up in the red. I imagine they believe that doing this for their current clients will allow them to land new clients but, when a new client came along, they underbid that as well. The Corporate Overlords are hemorrhaging money and expecting the employees to take up the slack. It's no wonder The Corporation's stock has lost over a third of its value.

Of course, I hadn't heard about this because I was not on the list of privileged employees to whom this offer would be made. I'm on the list of employees that haven't gotten a raise in four years and will probably never get any sort of offer that involves an increase in pay.

I have an interview on Friday and a fellow Geocacher says that his company is going to need to fill some slots because of retirements. Perhaps the tide is finally turning.