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Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

david.newgas.net

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Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#91

Post by jayd16 »

post-it wrote: post #66
talon8635 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay… do you not feel culpable at some point? Do you feel no obligation to expose these various individuals fleecing the tax payers? Your boss, the academics, and everyone else who participated or knows and remains silent. Obviously, you are now in the later group. Yes I know it’s not all that rare, BECAUSE people can’t be bothered to blow the whistle.

Now that you know, do you feel culpable?

I'm supposed to dox this person or something? What are you asking exactly?

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#92

Post by chiph »

etothepii wrote: post #25

As a junior software engineer, I worked at a large UK bank. Senior management routinely seem baffled that they could announce redundancies or hiring freezes, yet technology costs would continue to rise. One pattern I saw repeatedly was a contractor being let go, only to return via a large outsourcing provider. The provider must have added a substantial markup despite supplying the same engineer back to the same team,…

That's because the bankers didn't realize they're not in the banking business anymore - they're in the IT business (which has a focus on tracking money).

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#93

Post by sekh60 »

shoo wrote: post #75
etothepii wrote: post #25

As a junior software engineer, I worked at a large UK bank. Senior management routinely seem baffled that they could announce redundancies or hiring freezes, yet technology costs would continue to rise. One pattern I saw repeatedly was a contractor being let go, only to return via a large outsourcing provider. The provider must have added a substantial markup despite supplying the same engineer back to the same team,…

when i worked for an australian bank, one co-worker in a nearby team had been working on the the banks systems as a sysadmin for over a decade. the bank would go through cycles of "we need to reduce our headcount and outsource everything" and then 4 years later "we need to reduce spend on contractors and retain more knowledge and expertise in house". he'd survived multiple waves of it, switching back and forth betwee…

I hope he was able to get a paybump each switch!

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#94

Post by shoo »

jojobas wrote: post #55
etothepii wrote: post #25

As a junior software engineer, I worked at a large UK bank. Senior management routinely seem baffled that they could announce redundancies or hiring freezes, yet technology costs would continue to rise. One pattern I saw repeatedly was a contractor being let go, only to return via a large outsourcing provider. The provider must have added a substantial markup despite supplying the same engineer back to the same team,…

This doesn't seem to answer why an engineer is let go and gets rehired through an outsourcer.

In some cases it could be driven by the shape of the work & where the funding is allocated:

If there isn't enough guaranteed recurring work, it might not make sense to have a full time position, particularly in a country where its difficult to lay people off & if employees have additional overhead (pensions, employer funded heathcare or insurance, etc) vs contractors.

But, if there's funding allocated for some key project that's framed as a 6-12 month project, there might be a good business case to hire a contractor. Maybe the funding comes out of the project bucket, not the core funding for legacy product X bucket.

If the contractor is someone who was recently let go & has a good reputation within the company as someone who gets stuff done and is easy to work with, it's probably a no-brainer to re-engage them as a contractor vs rolling the dice on an unknown quantity.

Whoever is managing the budget of their old team gets a win as they were able to reduce headcount to fit in their budget

Whoever is managing the new project gets a win as they find a great contractor for their key project

The former employee returning as a contractor probably gets a win, as they get paid at a better daily rate while the project is rolling, provided they're able to line up more projects or land a new permie job once the project is completed.

If there's an outsourcer involved, they win by taking a cut. The former employee might also win by having the outsourcer involved if the company has some baroque process for engaging contractors with many compliance hoops to jump through -- in extreme cases (think banks, or public companies that need to demonstrate they don't do business with suppliers engaged in slavery, or so on) it could save the worker months of paperwork and tens of thousands in legal expenses to set up their own one-person agency and go through the compliance process to be able to work for their former employer, so they might not be able to win the contract work without piggybacking on an outsourcer who already has the contracts & compliance stuff sorted out.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#95

Post by inigyou »

adastra22 wrote: post #73
sokoloff wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Worldcom got a modest amount of press coverage at the time but probably would have gotten a lot more if it hadn’t been front-run by the Enron scandal.

Why are these always one letter off from what they actually are? Worldcom-> World-con. Madoff -> Made-off

Scam Bankrun-Fraud

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#96

Post by derektank »

trollbridge wrote: post #88
LPisGood wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t those uniformed maintainers get reassigned to other military jobs or are they allowed to work as a contractor while being active military?

They're dismissed due to a reduction in force.

That’s pretty rare in the USAF. Most servicemembers will be sent to be retrained on a different airframe or even into a different career field unless their date of separation doesn’t make it worth it. Voluntary separation programs do sometimes pop up but they’re not that common.

It is common to have people separating and coming back immediately as contractors into basically the same job, but that’s usually because there is already a contracted workforce in place and they made connections while serving.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#97

Post by selcuka »

OptionOfT wrote: post #49
etothepii wrote: post #25

As a junior software engineer, I worked at a large UK bank. Senior management routinely seem baffled that they could announce redundancies or hiring freezes, yet technology costs would continue to rise. One pattern I saw repeatedly was a contractor being let go, only to return via a large outsourcing provider. The provider must have added a substantial markup despite supplying the same engineer back to the same team,…

I've seen that in a large management consultancy company. Part of their risk management procedures (both for the company and in terms of some EU law) meant they couldn't keep contractors for longer than x years. They'd have to convert to employee or separate for 12 months. Bit that doesn't really work in knowledge systems. Even with the best documentation people will build up knowledge that no one has, and their depa…

> Even with the best documentation people will build up knowledge that no one has

I think that's the part management teams are missing. They assume that employees are just human resources and they can replace a senior engineer with a 100% equivalent one when needed.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#98

Post by nostrademons »

etothepii wrote: post #25

As a junior software engineer, I worked at a large UK bank. Senior management routinely seem baffled that they could announce redundancies or hiring freezes, yet technology costs would continue to rise. One pattern I saw repeatedly was a contractor being let go, only to return via a large outsourcing provider. The provider must have added a substantial markup despite supplying the same engineer back to the same team,…

I have a friend who left BigCo and then rejoined it as a contractor, plus some additional employees that he manages now. He cynically says "My job is to convert OpEx to CapEx when the finance department tells some director they can't have more headcount."

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#99

Post by derektank »

dfedbeef wrote: post #81
comrade1234 wrote: post #4

I was on a government project where I found out I was being fraudulently billed on my hours. It was towards the end of the year and my manager was trying to use up the budget of the client. Although this is normal in the private sector I told him from the beginning that you can't do this on a government project. The project was $1M+ which was enough for prison time. He had gone into our billing software and edited my…

Someone hasn't heard of qui tam

Qui tam (and the federal false claims act) are brilliant, such an elegant solution to a classic problem in government (corruption).

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#100

Post by rayiner »

talon8635 wrote: post #36
comrade1234 wrote: post #4

I was on a government project where I found out I was being fraudulently billed on my hours. It was towards the end of the year and my manager was trying to use up the budget of the client. Although this is normal in the private sector I told him from the beginning that you can't do this on a government project. The project was $1M+ which was enough for prison time. He had gone into our billing software and edited my…

Okay… do you not feel culpable at some point? Do you feel no obligation to expose these various individuals fleecing the tax payers? Your boss, the academics, and everyone else who participated or knows and remains silent. Obviously, you are now in the later group. Yes I know it’s not all that rare, BECAUSE people can’t be bothered to blow the whistle.

If you don’t have a duty to report, you don’t have a duty to report. You can’t predict what government prosecutors will do. If they start investigating and it turns out for whatever reason they can’t pin it on the boss, they could have pinned if on OP.

Think about it logically. If you’re the prosecutor, the guy whose time is fraudulent is presumptively the criminal. It could very well be that he was actually the one who was engaged in the fraud, but went to the authorities to protect himself by making it look like his boss did it.

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