RBS is to lay off 92 UK techies and outsource jobs to India – reports The Royal Bank of Scotland is cutting 92 techies’ jobs in plans to outsource them to India, according to reports. The partially taxpayer-owned bank is slashing a total of 334 jobs, according to trade union Unite, while The Scotsman newspaper breaks that figure down as 154 contractors to be let go by the end of this year, with …
but no beancounters? Shurely shome mistake?
I live in the netherworld of "support functions", and I'd guess that the turds that manage RBS offshored as much as possible of their finance function years ago. Techies are not being discriminated against, they're just the same as any other "human resource": Something to be bought as cheaply as possible, and sod the consequences.
Personally, if elected god-emperor, I'd require that RBS re-list somewhere more to their liking, such as the Mumbai NSE. I suspect investors there wouldn't be as tolerant of the boardroom "generosity" as those in the Crooked Mile.
Considering that UK Gov is the majority shareholder, I'm surprised they didn't manage to any of that fabled "joined up thinking" they are famous for and consider the cost to the country as a whole of putting people out of work by off-shoring jobs. It's not as if the UK is short of people looking for work,
Several times in fact.
It didn't end well those previous times; there is no indication that it will do so now.
RBS management don't seem to have learnt their lesson; and it's highly unlikely that they will do so, until the day that they get penalised for making poor decisions. I'm not talking about a slap on the wrist paid for by the company, but rather something that comes out of their pay packets, to reimburse anyone that loses out because of a failed system.
A down vote I see. My immediate reaction to the article was to make some comment about at least being able to understand the call center after the move. I nearly said "funny comment" but quickly realised that I would just be relying on stereo types for a cheap laugh.
So I went with a historical comment. Frankly I expected more down votes.
In some industries, companies could rightly be criticised for offshoring on the grounds that, although they are exporting their own jobs, they are relying on other companies not doing the same so there's still someone left to buy their products in this country. However, the banks have worked out that this doesn't apply to them because even the unemployed need bank accounts these days.
And yes, I am currently an RBS customer, but not for much longer.
92 is a lot to fire by any standard. It sounds like they're getting rid of the entire tech workforce, or at least an entire department of it.
RBS are going to pay dearly for it, some day, some how.
Reminds me of this classic Gar1t sketch though.
Given all the problems RBS has had in the past, I'm amazed they have any account holders left now.
With this new announcement? Anyone who has a clue about IT and keeps their money in RBS - well, if you lose it all due to some "computer glitch," I don't think you should look for a lot of sympathy around here.
If RBS were the only bank around, I'd be getting a waterproof container and a shovel. At the interest rates banks pay these days, you almost might as well just bury your money, anyway.
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/17/05/09/2019222/only-36-percent-of-indian-engineers-can-write-compilable-code-says-study
This is actually quite high from my direct experience of developers in Chennai and Kolkata.
The don't have any initiative and need to be directed all the time.
If anyone from RBS is reading this, get out fast.
If you have an RBS account then move it ASAP.
This won't work out well.
When will the beancounters learn that sending jobs to India does not save money in the long run.
We tried it and gave it 18 months. Then brought it back home. Projects are now back on track and ironically on budget.
But just like everything else , you get what you pay for.
So if you outsource to an Indian code shop that will charge you £1 million for your project, you'll get a better quality product than an Indian code shop that will charge you £100 000.......
But then the beancounters will look at those 2 rates, choose the cheapest, then wonder why 16 million transactions have gone missing .....
@tfb.
It's only racist if it isn't true. Of course there is a mix of abilities in India just the same as elsewhere. However, from personal experience, I can tell you that it is heavily biased towards the bottom end. In the mainframe world, just look at the various mainframe forums and see who's asking the questions and who's answering them. Also, look at the questions being asked. Many barely make Janet and John standard.
So, yes, it's a generalisation as everything tends to be, but the average quality in India is definitely lower than here. It doesn't apply to mainframe either. The rubbish I've seen in almost every area defies belief.
Isn't one of the problems that if an Indian techie is any good he can earn relatively silly money in the US, UK or Yurrup. So all the good ones leave ... leaving the tat and the newly graduated. When the competent among the latter have gone and got some experience (ie made their mistakes and learnt from them) and got a decent cv they ... rinse and repeat.
Note to beancounters:
Pay peanuts - get monkeys.
"So all the good ones leave,..."
We lost one guy in a lunchtime. He nipped out to get some food, got talking to some guy in the queue, went back to work and cleared his desk. That rather scuppered the conf call we had scheduled for later that day.
But this was always our problem interfacing with offshore teams, the sheer amount of staff churn.
I'm in India managing a team that has been offshored here from Europe.
Staff churn is indeed an issue - I regularly see someone being offered 50 pounds/euros/dollars more PER YEAR to work for a competitor and they'll take it. Our own HR are stupid too though, we'll offer an engineer with 5 years of relevant experience, (and speaking 2 european languages) 15 grand equivalent a year (European counterpart getting 50k), having spent a load on a 3 month secondment to Europe, and then come pay review (when finally they're in a position to actually contribute useful work), they'll try to fob off the Indian with a 5% raise, even when wage inflation here is 10%+, as the "HR global maximum raise is 5%." We also "don't entertain requests for pay-rises outside annual pay-review." So we can't counter a 50 quid job offer with a 100 quid retention payment (which whilst would be taken as a huge insult in Europe, would be well recieved here).
I can't blame them, really. Simple, avoidable PHB management failure of cutting off your nose because corporate policy tells you to - one that RBS will undoubtably make too, given their track record.
Wow the conservative party is confident. A government owned bank making voters redundant, a couple of weeks before the election? They are getting a majority of 100 and they know it. Instead of leaflets, they could shit in each voter's letterbox, and they'd still romp in. Never seen an election like it.
"20 years ago it was Blair and Labour who were doing that."
Well, even 10 years ago they were doing that... At the time I wrote a letter to my MP about it, and got a response from Pat McFadden - then Minister of State for 'employee relations', and subsequently Minister of State for Business - who told me that offshoring jobs was a Good Thing as it enabled businesses to be competitive.
"Wow the conservative party is confident. A government owned bank making voters redundant, a couple of weeks before the election? "
Depends where the jobs are. If they are in Scotland I doubt it will have any affect at all on any constituency outcome. Heard the story from other news sources too, and few mentioned the Gov. 74% shareholding and those that did, didn't make it an issue.
This will not end well. The people who've decided on the reductions are, of course, just the sort of idiots who'd complain if any service they received wasn't top notch; yet somehow RBS employees, customers and shareholders are just expected to bend over and get ploughed.
If you have any sort of dealings with RBS, make 2017 your year not to.
So why the hand wringing? The whole point of contract positions is that they aren't permanent, so those contractors shouldn't assume that their contracts will be renewed indefinitely. Contracts are not "laid off", they are "not renewed". Big difference!
Now sure, customer service at RBS may get worse...though based on comments I see here and other places about them, it seems like that would take some doing!
Many of the comments above are critical of "offshoring" when the truth is that this announcement from RBS is not about offshoring roles.
It is about removing roles in the ultra-expensive London.
London staff cost 33% more than the rest of the UK, and that doesn't include the hidden costs of running offices in London. Salaried or day rate they are a premium price for the office location without any gain in skill, ability or dedication.
Yes, a small number of new roles are being created offshore as a result, as are some in Edinburgh, Manchester and Poland, but the overall loss is a tiny percentage of the thousands of IT staff already working for RBS (those affected have my sympathies, but ultimately the numbers will make no difference to RBS service and reliability).
A global bank operating in a developed country ends up paying around $100K for a fully loaded FTE. Place that same resource in an offshore environment and the cost comes down to $35K. With a robotic worker, that figure shrinks to just $15K. And when you take into account how the software robot is available 24x7—i.e. working 3 full shifts—and the fact that it operates between 2 and 5 times faster than a human, that $100K FTE is now down to the order of $1.5K.
The place I worked was a large-major bank in the US. It decided to outsource their IT to India about 20 years ago. Management did not have a clue as to the issues (laws, technical issues, cultural) about doing so the only refrain we heard was to save money.
After about 2 years of infighting and blaming the project was brought back to the US. I left before the fighting began. From what little I heard the contract was given to IBM. No idea what happened as a result.
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