DXC: Slashing costs affects ability to attract, develop and retain staff? Who'd have thunk it! Efforts to lure, evolve and hold on to staff are proving quite troublesome for DXC Technology's Security practice as the beleaguered outsourcing biz continues to wage war on its cost base. biz bod calculates - seems upset by answer DXC Security exec: Yes, I'd have thought we'd spend more on certs and laptop kit for staff, too …
> the advice to staff from management was to push any feelings of vulnerability to the back of their minds, and "keep on jobbing"
That rather than continuing to put all their efforts into an insecure and potentially increasingly stressful role, the employees might be better served looking for alternative employment elsewhere...
I used to work for CSC until I made the mistake of telling my line manager exactly what I thought of Corporate's persuading the client to move from a "cost per computer per year" contract to a "cost per Helldesk call" contract and then telling the Desktop Support team to close calls even if we used a temporary bodge whilst trying to find a proper fix - the client could always log another chargeable call (and another, and another) until we got around to actually fixing the problem properly (and we were discouraged from finding proper fixes if we could bodge it instead - and to keep this going as long as we could).
Having been promised world-wide opportunities and as much Vendor-supplied training as we could possibly want or need, the reality of working for Cowboys Selling Computers was considerably different to the motivational posters they spaffed a fortune on to show what a Caring Sharing Company they supposedly were...
And now I see what a monumental charlie-foxtrot they've made of the merger with Hugely Puked-up, I am glad I'm not there any more.
> Completely Shafting Colleagues, Comprehensively Screwing Customers
This is the problem I've found going from internal HP IT to being an external IT service provider. At HP, your goal is to provide the best service as possible to the company. As an external IT provider, your role isn't to provide the best service to the client, it's to bill the client as much as possible.
If I wanted to screw people over, I'd have gone into sales. I went into IT to build and fix things. I will be moving back to an internal IT position ASAP.
That was pretty much my experience with CSC as well. I worked for a government aerospace contractor and when I got there the staff and local management had been working on this contract for years and acted as if they were employees looking out for the clients best interest. The year before I left new management came in from Corporate and the entire dynamic changed to squeezing every last penny out of the client. They lost the contract to IBM who came in and were even worse about screwing their client. The client cancelled the contract early and decided to bring IT back in house. It's not the quality of the workers that make outsourcing such a bad idea, it's the contract company management. How can they provide the same level of service and make a profit for less than it costs to run in house?
This guy will not be at DXC for long. His "openness" and implied criticisms are tantamount to saying "no" to Mikey.
Mikey does not like "no" and people who say it swiftly "depart".
But should you really be boasting that you were also on the call? It's bad enough from DXC mgt perspective that the content of these calls gets leaked, but if they believe employees are sitting with El Reg journos on their calls, they'll end up only being accessible from DXC office numbers (not that they have the technical capabity or competence to arrange that, in all probablilty).
Correct about saying "no".
Also that our new friend here and Mark Hughes still have the optimism in them based on that they were told they were being hired to turn DXC Security around and make a difference.
They are still imagining a world where they think that all they have to do is have some ideas and apply logic to it... you know, like in the rest of the world.
However THIS IS DXC! (said in a Gerard Butler way) and nothing makes sense.
These people have no control at all. Everything comes down from the top and not discussion can be had about it.
As such, these managers will only be around for the length of time it takes them to realise that. Maybe we can call that the "stupidometer" or something and we can rank them all using it.
We cannot even start recruiting staff until we have a signed purchase order from a customer.
The recruitment process takes about 3-4 months to get to the point of making an offer - assuming it's not arbitrarily cancelled in a round of cost-cutting - and then we have to wait for notice periods and onboarding so figure on 6 months before you have effective resource available.
This is also replicated for every dependent line of service too, and for the support teams as well. So I can be left with a customer successfully onboarded, but waiting for the support teams to complete their recruitment to be able to take on support. Which means using expensive project consultants for routine 1st line support, futher reducing my capability to staff up project work. Cos of course support contracts are only signed once development and migration are nearly complete and we're able to confirm the go-live date.
Yes, amazingly we are still taking on new customers somehow.
AC, never underestimate the ignorance and stupidity of the PHB classes. A few good meals and tickets to whatever expensive wastes of time and they sign anything. Most of us have had the external process consultants arrive with their checklists, fresh out of uni and and unclued. A firm beginning with A in the past was a master of this. Often we had to hand hold the helpless "consultants" who were supposed to be telling us how to do our jobs so their tickbox sheets were filled in. Cost a fortune, achieved waste of time and money but E suite seemed happy.
Those that use the revolving door of fat golden handshakes and even fatter golden goodbyes that is DXC these days have a very different view of those at the coal face than those workers do.
Given the almost constant headcount reductions/downsizing/rightsizing that has gone on since the mid 1990's it amazes me that there is anyone left at the coal face that is any good at all. They got me in 1999 and TBH, I thank them for deciding that my very profitable (to them) work was surplus to requirements. I left and took the top half dozen of my best customers with me. That kept me gainfully employed until 2003.
I have to guess that a lot of the grunt work is now done from India.
Who's next to exit with a nice payoff eh?
when hosting a conference call with his 5,000-or-so-strong workforce
At this, I couldn't stop myself visualising a small counter in the corner of the WebEx-or-whatever screen: 5000... 4999... 4995... 4900...
"Attract, develop and retain (ARD) activities.."
Well there's your problem right there, you muppet. You can't even spell your acronyms in the correct order.
Read between the lines. This exec has admitted addressing diversity via hire and fire policy.
Laying off people based on gender/age/ethnicity and then replacing for same roles based on a different gender or age or ethnicity or combination thereof. This in order to appear as a better employer for PR and marketing purposes? Discrimination is discrimination and there's nothing positive about it.
Is this policy illegal ? Combine that with forcing people out but then dressing it up as voluntary with a slight uplift, so they can hire much much cheaper labour for the exact same roles. Is this also not legal?
I currently work for DXC leaving very soon thankfully but they are doing the usual in not recruiting just piling extra work on an already overworked severly under paid team, the upper echelons of the company are completely clueless about how utter demoralised the workforce is, there are not many decent folk left at the company and not one of those are happy to be there and are actively looking elsewhere, DXC looks like it's trying to kill itself experienced staff leaving and replaced by grads or apprentices on the cheap I wonder if any of the customers know they are getting the cheapest staff possible?, dont get me wrong the grads are great but they finish the grad program and immediately leave for other better run better paying companies, I feel sorry for any of the guys still working for this utter shambles
They are recruiting in the UK. I got a nice phone call from a recruiter who said they wanted "Solution Directors" to run a "load of large accounts" in the UK. Packages starting at >£300k/pa. Great to see large salaries are being offered when thousands and thousands of good people are being left to rot.. NOT.
I've experience of the sham practices DXC provide from the client side, leading a very large account. Utter disgrace. I've met Mikey and his Chief of Staff/girlfriend before quite a few times - a good book - 'Snakes in Suits' sums that pair up nicely.
Needless to say I pointed her in another direction and said I wouldn't entertain working for/with DXC now or at any time in the future.
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