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CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

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Re: CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

#81

Post by marcusverus »

hunglee2 wrote: post #43

Revenue maximisation is an 'embedded imperative' of companies a capitalist system, so of course these jobs will be migrated to where they can be done most productively; they will then be automated as soon as the roles become simplified and the AI becomes more advanced. This is neither 'right', not 'wrong' much less shameful; it is simply the logical extension of the socio-economic system we all willingly subscribe to…

> This is neither 'right', not 'wrong' much less shameful

First, CBA lied. They said the workers were "redundant" when they were actually being replaced with cheap offshore labor. They lied because their actions were shameful and they were rightfully ashamed.

Second, capitalism is an economic system, not a moral code. If you discover that your rich neighbor's car dealership has a policy of hard selling expensive cars to vulnerable old ladies, would you think "welp, I can't hold that against him, because capitalism incentivizes maximalizing profits"? Obviously not.

Re: CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

#82

Post by skeeter2020 »

roenxi wrote: post #71
rayiner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“In The Culture Transplant, Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government—that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth. And the cultural traits…

True enough but probably not relevant to anything. Every society is already a patchwork of families with different beliefs that date back centuries. So noting that immigrants will form a complicated tapestry of new beliefs doesn't really bring much to the conversation - there wasn't subgroup of the host nation were they meant to assimilate with in an alternative scenario. The hypothetical culture that countries tell…

>> dump them in the middle of nowhere and hope they turn out well

A big part of the problem seems to be the opposite: Canada has dense cultural centers of specific immigrants, and not suprisingly new people from the same origins want to land there too. The challenge is this doesn't necessarily match with where people are needed the most.

Re: CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

#83

Post by modo_mario »

komali2 wrote: post #64
Veen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resistance to free market economics is not necessarily Marxist. Old-fashioned one-nation conservatives also find offshoring of this sort objectionable. If you consider the job of the state to be to cultivate a stable, cohesive society, you're going to favour regulation of actions that undermine that objective, including business strategies that erode the local skill base and economy.

But, that's not free market economics then.

Yes, that's what he said.

Re: CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

#84

Post by stockresearcher »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #79
guiriduro wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the problem is the MBAs and letting them run your company? Surely AI could do a better job than most MBAs? The knowledge requirement is lower, the reasoning and analytical capability lower, just learn a few frameworks and glib vacuous McKinsey-speak, have an AI produce those meaningless powerpoints instead of expensive suits if the C-suite really needs to see it (also candidates for replacement), then instead i…

>Maybe the problem is the MBAs and letting them run your company? The vast majority of companies in the world are run by MBAs. Welcome to the club. SV companies were an exception to this rule for a short time in history since tech moved faster than the dinosaurs in suits could comprehend or regulate, so it made sense to put engineers in charge to innovate quickly. Having zero interest rate money also helped a lot. Bu…

HP became the company that everyone admired and played a significant role in shaping SV by hiring fresh engineering grads from around the country and then paying for them to take nights and weekends MBA classes at Stanford while they worked during the day (you can read about it in Dave Packard’s autobiography).

It was then torn apart and turned into a joke by a different set of MBAs. So… perhaps it is a little more complicated than just having an MBA

Re: CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

#85

Post by bananapub »

wat10000 wrote: post #70
fennecbutt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it would still not be great. Local options should always be preferred to protect local job markets. Any company only exists because they can do business locally, so they should support local or be burnt to the ground. I now live in the UK, when I got hired here they had to advertise my position to see if they could fill it locally before they could grant me a visa for it - this is the way.

Was there literally nobody in the country capable of doing what you do? Or were they just not willing to pay enough?

it is extremely routine for big companies to do this - all the fangs, big banks, etc, hire everyone they can in Britain on very pleasant pay packages and then hire overseas and pay immigrants the same amount.

Re: CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

#86

Post by hombre_fatal »

fennecbutt wrote: post #29
monkeycantype wrote: post #24

I worked for a company that was bought by CBA, and this was happening while I was there. This would be great if: Indian workers were hired on equivalent terms, in Australia, on visas that give them a clear path to citizenship. If they were hired as individuals and not via contracing companies that force them to sign separate secret contracts that prevent them from pushing for their full legal rights under Australian…

No, it would still not be great. Local options should always be preferred to protect local job markets. Any company only exists because they can do business locally, so they should support local or be burnt to the ground. I now live in the UK, when I got hired here they had to advertise my position to see if they could fill it locally before they could grant me a visa for it - this is the way.

Many years ago I was hired by {tech company} in {European country} (I'm from the US).

Once I worked there for a month and befriended my team, one of them showed me how they posted a fake job listing with exactly my experience, and we all laughed about it.

All of the implementations of this legislation seem trivial to rig. Even though it feels good to assume you outcompeted everyone in the UK with your leet skills and they had no option to import the heavy guns.

Re: CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

#87

Post by joules77 »

guiriduro wrote: post #53
RachelF wrote: post #31

Sadly Western IT workers are too expensive for the MBAs running modern corporations. Just before their last big US layoffs, Microsoft announced: "Microsoft is expanding our presence in India with a $3 billion investment"

Maybe the problem is the MBAs and letting them run your company? Surely AI could do a better job than most MBAs? The knowledge requirement is lower, the reasoning and analytical capability lower, just learn a few frameworks and glib vacuous McKinsey-speak, have an AI produce those meaningless powerpoints instead of expensive suits if the C-suite really needs to see it (also candidates for replacement), then instead i…

MBAs or AI would make the same decisions as these are SYSTEMIC issues, which means its not up to individuals or orgs, but the entire system across the board has to change for fairer solutions to work.

Why? Cuz this is not just about cross border diff in labor rates but also in interest rates, real estate/rent, corporate tax rates, forex rates, regulations, govt subsidies, energy costs etc etc.

Sum it all up and the cost differential can't be swept under the carpet.

MBAs getting drilled to focus on the short term / maximize shareholder value which has created all kinds of issues. But that is not hard to change. Lot of schools exist that don't focus only on that. What's hard to change is the underlying calculus without global coordination.

Re: CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

#88

Post by Der_Einzige »

komali2 wrote: post #54
kypro wrote: post #5

Isn't this good? I thought outsourcing meant we get cheaper goods like iPhones and laptops. Now we can outsource middle-class service jobs for cheaper services?

The thread you kicked off with this comment is one of my favorite I've read on HN in a while because it seems you've somehow gotten people to accidentally spout Marxist ideologies in the comments in their attempts to reconcile their belief in free market economics with the natural result of free market economics.

It also shows that the median HN member is extremely racist against indians and believes in the great replacement!

Re: CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

#89

Post by FirmwareBurner »

stockresearcher wrote: post #84
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe the problem is the MBAs and letting them run your company? The vast majority of companies in the world are run by MBAs. Welcome to the club. SV companies were an exception to this rule for a short time in history since tech moved faster than the dinosaurs in suits could comprehend or regulate, so it made sense to put engineers in charge to innovate quickly. Having zero interest rate money also helped a lot. Bu…

HP became the company that everyone admired and played a significant role in shaping SV by hiring fresh engineering grads from around the country and then paying for them to take nights and weekends MBA classes at Stanford while they worked during the day (you can read about it in Dave Packard’s autobiography). It was then torn apart and turned into a joke by a different set of MBAs. So… perhaps it is a little more c…

You answered your own question. HP took engineers and taught them how to be MBAs, while companies are ruined by career MBAs who were never engineers and were taught in school to see engineering as a cost center that must always be reduced to the lowest bidder.

Re: CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians

#90

Post by tornikeo »

kannanvijayan wrote: post #80
geraldwhen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on immigration rates and birth rates, Canada will be mostly Indian at some point in the future. The “future Canadian worker” is Indian.

When I was a fresh immigrant child comments like these used to make me feel more uncomfortable than they do now. How I perceive these comments has changed over time. What I want to address about this comment is the implicit identity associations involved. It's clear that you're drawing an identity distinction between "Canadian" and "Indian". One of the things I've noticed about my own personal associations is that my…

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