CSC: Brits, say hi to your new UK boss – say bye to 750 coworkers

On the day stumbling US giant CSC named the latest person to sit in its UK hot seat, it also told 750 of its workers in Blighty they are at risk of redundancy, The Channel can reveal. The mega-integrator, which presided over a good chunk of the bungled £10.1bn NHS National Programme for IT, confirmed former Cognizant senior …

[Anonymous Coward]

There are almost no onshore staff left as it is. The CSC top brass will cut the company to death, replacing all the staff with offshore idiots who can barely speak English. Then they will cash in their stock options, take their bonuses and retire or move on before the walking corpse falls apart.

[wolfetone]

Will you be voting UKIP then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you be voting UKIP then?

Eh?

[HollyHopDrive]

@wolf - just because somebody complains of off shoring doesn't make them some kind of closet racest.

I had my entire team off shored. I personally found some of the replacements difficult to work with partly because of the language barrier partly because of ability. I know I'm asking them to speak their non native language so I'm not criticising them in that respect but it does mean the finer detail in what you were asking was often lost even when written down. Also after questioning I find out most of the new team have less than 2 years real work experience which were replacing my guys with 10-20 years.

I also found the outsource company forced them to work as fast as possible and on multiple projects so their attention to detail left a lot to be desired. Also they move on quickly only being required to give 2 days notice before you are given another person to [try to] fill the void.

This left me with many problems

- 5 hour time difference

- lack of experience because of a constantly changing team

- poor quality of work

- terrible stakeholder skills

Still, it was all hailed a massive success because it saved about half a million quid. I was finally let go to pick up another failing project.

What's interesting is that its now all gone to shit. Nothing is being delivered and there is now a 3 month backlog of deliverables. The whole thing has got choked up by a lack of experience.

So....offshoring is shit. Plain and simple. But the bean counters love it because delivering fuck all is hell of a lot cheaper than deliving something that the bigwigs never see.

<\rant>

[wolfetone]

@HollyHopDrive I was referring to current advertising UKIP are running at the moment.

[HollyHopDrive]

@wolf - my apologies for the misjudgement - I've been lucky enough to not have been subjected to the drivel of UKIP marketing machine.

I stand by the rest of my rant though.

[WookieBill]

have to agree with the AC

As an ex CSC'er I'm afraid to say that I have to agree with the AC about the quality of some (not all) our offshore staff. It isn't that they were all unskilled technically, partly it is a cultural issue of getting them to take ownership and think outside the box, but a lot of it is a problem of experience.

I am told by people over there that in the same business park as our office in Noida is IBM, what used to happen (when I was with CSC) is that (being cheap) we would hire people out of Uni and the onshore component would start to train them up, they would get a few years experiance (normally they have a fixed term contract of serveral years meaning they couldn't leave) as soon as that was up they would walk across the the business park to Big Blue and get a large pay raise.

You can't blame them and I was always really pleased when one of the good offshore guys got a new job, because frankly working for CSC is soul destroying, unfortunatly what happened is that anyone with anything about them offshore leaves for better pastures and there is an inevitable drop in quality.

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason is direct bribery to the client AFAIK and IME. No-one ever gets pulled up for it after the inevitable train wreck because of the client losing face. There are some Westerners who work as agents for the process and make a whole career out of it, they usually arrive as outside "experienced change managers" and get a nice fat contract for about a year before leaving just as it all hits the fan.

[Anonymous Coward]

El Reg, you want to know what happened to Lizzy?

What do you *think* happened to Lizzy...

They've not put her out to pasture, she's been sent to the abattoir...

[AMBxx]

Improving customer service

By reducing the number of people providing customer service.

Dilbert has become real.

[Nick Davey]

Any money that...

It's the little people at the sharp end that are getting the axe, not the endless legions of useless Project Managers that are too expensive to make redundant despite them being just that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any fool can save money by making workers redundant.

It's not a plan that you can sustain for very long though.

[nastybarsteward]

@Hollyhopdrive

Re: "@wolf - just because somebody complains of off shoring doesn't make them some kind of closet racest" (sic)

1) The word is Racist

2) Just because someone votes UKIP does not make them some kind of closet Racist

[Christopher E. Stith]

They didn't say yet which staff they are cutting. As a US company I think someone else in the organization may have a basic grasp of the language. With a shortage of IT staff in the UK and a lot of CSC's work being in security and mercenary services I'd think letting other companies have a shot at a hot commodity might be welcome.

[Nelbert Noggins]

With a shortage of highly skilled IT staff willing to work for peanuts, but no shortage of cheap labour

FTFY...

With so many cookie-cutter, chop-shop, battery farms in the world... the decision makers often don't see the difference between staff because sometimes nobody explains it to them, so the out-source battery farms look cheaper than keeping a team of highly skilled staff. It also allows for staff to become a project cost instead of part of the staff payroll overhead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Last hatchet wielder now replaced by another

Well no real difference for UK & I staff and cuts, 2012 600+, 2013 700+ and 2014 700+. The un-incredible shrinking company.

The same old joke being used again - "... all of whom will be supported professionally, compassionately and with assistance, where necessary, in their transition from CSC." it's a load of rubbish.

Hopefully LB gets the email with the happy smiley Gossain PR face when she gets the chop, like we got from her saying 'Sorry'.

[Anonymous Coward]

"nimble, accountable, efficient organisation ... service"

They've heard of those things ?!?

Ha ha ha.

[TitterYeNot]

Faulty Translation

"We estimate that up to 750 employees will be impacted in the UK, all of whom will be supported professionally, compassionately and with assistance, where necessary, in their transition from CSC"

I think my babel fish needs some adjustment - when I read the above phrase out loud, it keeps translating it from HR speak to English as 'Pah, minions! Sod you and your jobs - have some peanuts and fuck off...'

[Agrajag]

The rise and fall of CSC

I didn't join CSC by choice. Like many others I was transitioned into the fold and felt none too happy about it. At the time though, CSC were a hugely dynamic company with a sense of unstoppable enthusiasm about everything they did. In a short time I was "one of the gang" helping others with their transitions and seeing the doubt turn to enthusiasm at the opportunities that come with working for a massive IT company, with a big budget and on the leading edge of technology.

Time has moved on and CSC hasn't. No longer are we a leading edge IT company, we're now living in the shadow of the big boys and outsourcing our people assets to them; seemingly in the belief that people are a financial burden rather than the company's finest asset. I find myself tendering to put CSC services into the Amazon Cloud when we should be the Amazon Cloud. CSC was a leading technology company when Amazon was a bookshop!

CSC today is like watching a beautiful woman dying of cancer. What must our customers think of us when they see year upon year of redundancy rounds and off-shoring of their services to the sweatshops of the IT industry? CSC's cancer lies in its depressing, risk-averse management, yet it will be 750 enthusiastic technical experts who take the fall on their behalf. CSC will stop the spread of cancer by cutting off its limbs. AT&T are probably already bidding for its slippers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The rise and fall of CSC

If only someone took notice of your excellent post there Agrajag - you are totally spot on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go again, its like Groundhog day at CSC

As a former employee of CSC it pains me to see what was a good, fun place to work (when I started way back when) has been turned into a festering shite pile prob getting ready to be sold off for £1 in some sort of rescue bid!!

This all started back in the day with Wendy "The hatchet" goldstraw cutting people and getting a big pat on the back for saving the company money, seems like every UK boss since has read the play book and copied it!! I feel very sorry for most of my former colleagues and wish them all the best in finding a job worthy of having them.. On another note, as mentioned here there were quite a few good guys in offshore teams who knew their stuff, but the company never got close to paying them enough so they went to IBM or any other employer..