#RANT
Posted by Kensarim@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 56 comments
This is a rant of where I have completely lost the will to live. Company was purchased by a PE and ops was outsourced across to India (around 100 people redundant across the world).. Its been about 18 months and its a absolute shit show. Problems everywhere, clearly untrained, uncapable staff. Management know it, but wont admit to the shit show that it is.
I don't understand how companies continue to operate? Projects are drawn out by probably 30% if not more due to the delays of the outsourced team not having a clue what they are doing. Internal staff regularly pick up the slack and have to implement it outside what is classed as their core roles.
The most frustrating thing is there is no repercussions on this fucktards. They literally break shit, deploy licensed software across the ENTIRE company, accidently turn cloud services on and leave them running till the budget alerts sky rocket and then turn them off. If this was internal staff there would be serious questions asked.
This has now progressed to looking at using 3rd party service providers to implement instead of the mouth breathers, those are also proving to based offshore once you get past the tech leads and the circle reoccurs.
I'm looking for another job, but the market is quite tough at the moment (4 days remote, good salary and benefits is proving difficult to contest against without travel into the local big city). The roles i am getting traction on end up resulting in a paycut i just cannot afford to take as a parent of 2 kids in childcare..
Not looking for any answers, just looking to vent before I go back to mopping up.
Fluffy-Queequeg@reddit
You just have to learn to not give a f&&k.
I only have so many f&&ks to give, and I am not wasting them on outsourced staff.
If they screw something up, I am not paid to give a f&&k about it, so I don’t. I switch off at the end of the day and go home.
xxFrenchToastxx@reddit
Let the apathy consume you
beardedfancyman@reddit
This. I did it years ago, and it is soooo liberating...
Fluffy-Queequeg@reddit
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Subtle_Art_of_Not_Giving_a_F*ck
mercurygreen@reddit
And the sequel:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Is_F*cked
dizzley@reddit
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
gothicel@reddit
Unfortunately at some point it will become your circus, in this case just be ready to jump ship, because it's systemic at this point and it's just a matter of time before the sh*t hits the fan.
One_Economist_3761@reddit
Appropriate song
TotallyNotIT@reddit
I knew before clicking that it was Thomas Benjamin Wild. That guy's excellent.
Another appropriate song
StraightAct4448@reddit
fReE tRaDe mAkEs eVeRyOnE rICheR
Fuck off with that shit. No, it doesn't. Offshoring is a despicable practice that destroys lives, businesses, communities, and so on.
Anyone curious about why Trump won: that's a big part of it.
Cyrus-II@reddit
Diversity Inclusivity Equity…you need more DIE in your life. ;-)
jason3448@reddit
"I don't understand how companies continue to operate? "
"The most frustrating thing is there is no repercussions on this fucktards."
"Internal staff regularly pick up the slack and have to implement it outside what is classed as their core roles."
youre third comment answers the first comment. its the same with layoffs, people that are still there pick up the slack, and the company got what they wanted, more work out of you, less people to pay.
the answer is, stop picking up the slack.
dizzley@reddit
I cherish this advice from my old department head, "the way to fix this for good is to let it break".
mercurygreen@reddit
The problem isn't that the system is broken - it's that the system isn't broken ENOUGH.
BrainWaveCC@reddit
Absolutely. If you keep showing up like Batman, Gotham will never even try to handle its own business...
JakobSejer@reddit
The old 'Performance Penalty' A 'good job' is rewarded with more work.
pier4r@reddit
I've noticed that many outsourced companies, often based in India or other developing countries, seem to have untrained staff. It's not that India lacks talent; in fact, they have many top-notch universities and a lot of motivated people aiming to succeed. However, I often read that some outsourcing companies perform poorly.
Are these companies choosing less qualified candidates instead of the best?
Is there an explanation for this?
Pliqui@reddit
A friend of mine used to work for a major hardware store in our country. He was in procurement and he once explained me this when I was complaining about quality of Chinese products.
He said that the issue was cost and how much companies are willing to pay. His example used was something along the line of when we ask for an order for any tool, let's say a hammer, the cost range goes from $1 to $30, $1 is the cheapest and after nailing 100 nails will brake. $30 is the exact mold and material that big brand companies use Black&Decker. Is not about that all chinese made things are bad, people choose not to pay for quality.
All that to say that extrapolate to IT. I was in a company that outsourced Sysadmin related tasks to a big 3 letters (they are the magic) consulting company and I later found out that my very big company choose the cheapest option. We got what we paid for. Young professionals wasn't seasoend enough to handle things at that scale. Specially when the same guys were doing multiple clients at the same time.
I changed jobs and become a DevOps guy, I went to a company were a friend was the team lead and he knew I wasn't up-to-date with DevOps thing but we worked together and he knew I was a good Sysadmin. When I join, another guy was introducing me to kubernetes and explaining their setup. I started to ask a shit tons of question and at some point he stopped me and said "I'm here to explain you our infrastructure and how we deploy and manage kubernetes, I'm not here to explain how it's work, they hired you, you should now that" and he got me death to rights.
I really appreciated that and now if I ever will need to work with outsourced guys. That is one of the two things I would say.
1.- You got admin credentials, clean up after yourself.
2.- I'm not here to explain you how this technology works, I'm here to explain you how we implemented it an use it.
NDaveT@reddit
From what I hear the motivated people who went to those top-notch universities get better jobs; they don't work at those outsourcing companies, at least not in the trenches.
QuantumWarrior@reddit
Good talent is expensive, it's really as simple as that. Outsourcing companies would hardly turn a profit if they were selling high quality engineers at prices comparable to what you'd get just hiring locally.
The good talent in India end up in the government, local corporations, or qualify for foreign visas to work in well-paying countries.
Poopmin@reddit
Yeah dude. They're literally paying low level people like 4k per year per head. The cost of real talent over there is like 10x that. Adds up fast. They need big numbers to prove outsourcing is the way. So they stuff you with shit talent and glow about how many heads you're getting for the price.
Kensarim@reddit (OP)
It is this.
The decent guys know their worth and they go off and work for companies directly and earn decent money.
We actually found our outsource company advertising for a role, i think the salary was about £6k per annum. The best thing about it was in the job description it was asking for a CCNA. Only they had copied CCNA from google: Coca-Cola North America
I'm sure i still have the screenshot somewhere....
RiceeeChrispies@reddit
The geniuses don't last long at the service providers, why would they? They have the ability to move on and earn proper money, they jump at the opportunity to move away from that hellscape.
pdp10@reddit
India has plenty of geniuses and engineering talents.
But if you assume you're hiring any of them when you contract to some undifferentiated codehouse on the outskirts of Chennai, then you're huffing your own snake oil. Salesmen make the best marks, they say.
largos7289@reddit
LOL honestly this is why i got out of the corp sector. At least in public sector i know it's a shit show from go. Plus i'll be honest i kind thrive in the chaos sometimes. An old manager described me as, i can drop Largos in a shit show and in about 2-3 days he'll have some sense made out of it.
NDaveT@reddit
I'm working as a contractor for a state agency right now. I don't live in the state, which is good because I have a pretty good idea how much money they're wasting on the bloated software project we're working on.
BloodyIron@reddit
Remindmewhen1234@reddit
Usually IT hiring picks up in January.
I wanted to switch back in the summer, it took me 4 months to get a good offer.
DeadFyre@reddit
Let me explain how Private Equity happens: Your company was already dying before it got snapped up by the vultures. That's why the Private Equity company was able to aquire it off the public market; nobody else wanted it. Private equity is an exit strategy for the ownership of a failing company to foist it off on an institution which specializes in making money off the "last puff" of the company's existence.
So, not to be grim or anything, but don't expect any improvement, expect worse, because your employer is in the corporate equivalent of hospice. Get your resume in order, and start beating the boards. A pay cut might not be attractive, but rest assured, it's better than zero.
knifebork@reddit
Not necessarily. PE will also buy companies that are successful. The company can be profitable, positive cash flow, and growing. PE will try to make even more profitable. Some of the tactics are fairly normal, like fresh eyes identifying unprofitable products or money wasting practices. This is what PE companies like to claim they're doing -- using better management to turn a company around. However, this is hard to do and requires very smart people.
Other tactics are outsourcing, offshoring, financial games like moving things between owning, leasing, & cloud. (Many in the financial world live by EBITDA, where shifting things around makes the numbers appear much better.) Some tactics include heavily squeezing customers with price increases, squeezing employees pushing for for even faster, more, and cheaper, delaying spending on infrastructure, and enshittification. This is what they often do. These tactics can improve profits for a couple of years, but aren't usually sustainable.
A biggie though is that PE will be willing for a portfolio company to take on higher risk by being highly leveraged. High risk means high rewards. If you have a few good years, you make a LOT of money. But if a highly leveraged company has a bad year, it could destroy it, while one one so leveraged might have been able to ride it out. This is probably the easiest thing for them to do, and this is why you hear of so many PE owned companies die.
malikto44@reddit
After decades of this stuff, only thing I can really add is that this should be considered par for the course as a sysadmin, especially in bad economic times.
BlackSquirrel05@reddit
We stared outsourcing in good economic times...
Problem is "always must be growing." So even if shit is great... It still needs to hit margin of X... Well if sales aren't growing... How else do we make up for that?
Bad times just means we increase it... or level it off.
fahque@reddit
We aren't in bad economic times.
asedlfkh20h38fhl2k3f@reddit
Private equity is ruining EVERYTHING about the world, and IT is on the list. Their monetary pursuits are completely agnostic to good and proper IT. They are completely out of touch, and their goal is to 1) put their dirty money somewhere inflation won't hurt it, and 2) hold their money there JUST long enough to sell for a profit in a couple years. Rich dudes are doing this all across the US - buying up property, single family homes, graphics cards, IT companies - it's all the same thing. It's scalping, and it's the new meta thing to do. A few millionaires can get together, throw a few bucks at some lawyers and seasoned consultants, and BOOM they can make everyone's life a living hell all for an easy buck.
And just like it always happens - way more of these idiots will attempt to get a piece of the pie than ought to, further making matters worse for everyone, themselves included.
Idk what advice to give you OP other than know your worth and value, keep good records of the work you've done, understand your projects well enough to talk through them in an interview. Good experienced IT people with good personalities are rare.
vc3ozNzmL7upbSVZ@reddit
Stop caring so much.
blk55@reddit
Par for course. Only do what you're paid to do and only work the time required. It's not your business, so let them squirm from THEIR poor decisions. To add: agreed with the job situation, currently working 4 days and WFH, never want to go back to an office full time!
wivaca@reddit
Do you ever wonder why the job market is tough, then remember what you're seeing is happening all over and causing companies to go out of business, eliminating jobs?
umlcat@reddit
welcome to the third world ...
third world does has some competent people, but hires cheap, naive, people instead ...
michaelpaoli@reddit
That would be for a different subreddit.
reddit_username2021@reddit
Once I find a new job, I will post all the $hit I had to face for the current employee. It is literally the worst company I have ever worked for, and I have worked for some really terrible ones in the past.
EEU884@reddit
work to rule and let it burn
sync-centre@reddit
Install some java and call oracle.
Different-Hyena-8724@reddit
So just document the shit out of your work and processes and pretend to be a happy mentor in the meantime. When something does come up, happily bow out but don't let it mess up your after 5pm.
theoriginalzads@reddit
I used to document the failures of outsourcing in a spreadsheet with examples and send it monthly to the managers who didn’t give a shit. Kept the list expanding.
When I left the company I forwarded the emails and spreadsheet on to the executive team and watched the whole department burn.
2 years later that company tried recruiting me again because my work ethic was well regarded. I thought it was a joke.
bilingual-german@reddit
Here is why you rant. Don't do that. Quit.
SmithBurger@reddit
If you compensation is good just chill and go with the flow. If issues at work are not your fault don't take them personally. As long as your check clears who gives a shit.
kerosene31@reddit
"The most frustrating thing is there is no repercussions"
That's the problem. Big money only cares about short term gain. They'll be on to the next thing by the time the big problems really hit. The higher ups cut costs and will eb rewarded while everyone else suffers.
PE will move on to the next, sell them snakeoil, rinse, repeat. It will never stop.
The thing is, they don't care about the long term health of the company, and neither should you. Unless your company is about to cure cancer or something, who cares?
This is what they want.
Collect your paycheck and your benefits and do the bare minimum. Keep looking and always be ready to jump, but look after your own mental health first and foremost. The people behind private equity only care about one thing, and you should too.
CaptainZippi@reddit
I realised a few years ago that IT projects success was a political measurement and had nothing to do with the actual results of the implementations.
Doesn’t make it easier to cope with though.
pdp10@reddit
There are valid metrics of legitimate success in projects.
It's just that the parties declaring success have usually decided for propaganda before truth. They probably only know the truth half of the time themselves.
pdp10@reddit
Management may tend to believe they're entitled to having their direct reports make all their decisions into the correct decisions.
This has more implications than are apparent at first glance. One team manager had reports who could do no wrong, and ones who could do no right. The former were all engineers that he had hired, and the latter were all "legacy" that he inherited.
nikon8user@reddit
You have to let it break. Then management will feel the pain. Right now they know you guys will pick up the slack
ScriptThat@reddit
I've kinda been there myself, and the best advice I can give is to make sure your canoe is feces-tight and let the current take you downstream.
What I'm trying to say is that you should Cover Your Ass with plenty of "This is a bad idea" mails so bad decisions don't become your fault, and then just keep your head down and try to survive. It'll be a few years until things get bad enough for management to take action, but after that things should get better.
pier4r@reddit
Slightly out of the loop here. How come that many of those outsourced companies (in India or other developed countries) seems to have untrained stuff?
It is not that India is bad at all, they have a lot of top notch universities and lots of motivated people to do well. Somehow here I read that the outsourcing company is terrible.
Do those companies they pick the bottom of the barrel rather than then best?
Is there an explanation about this?
dustojnikhummer@reddit
They are alive because you are feeding them.
noOneCaresOnTheWeb@reddit
You might be surprised.
yankdevil@reddit
"I don't understand how companies continue operate?"
"Not looking for any answers, just looking to vent before go back to mopping up."
I think the latter answers former.