What happened at Friends Provident?

[Doom]

I think they outsourced to IBM.

What percentage of people were made redundant and how long did this happen after the outsource?

When did people start moving offsite and to where?

Did the people who were made redundant get a reasonable redundancy payout?

[Scratch and sniff]

Lets be clear. IBM was chosen some time ago, anyone else were just for show.

FP?
"What percentage of people were made redundant and how long did this happen after the outsource?"
Your looking at about 70% eventually. Take a look at your job honestly. Do IBM have a dept that do that already (DBA's, SYSTEMS, Change Man, Prob Man, Poject Man, Ops, H/desk-Desktop etc, etc). Local knowledge is nothing anymore.

"When did people start moving offsite and to where?"
Probably got until the end of year and as for where, It's a global business. Could be anywhere, but most eventually to the third world.

"Did the people who were made redundant get a reasonable redundancy payout?"
Resonable? Maybe. Your full entitlement? Absolutely not. Be aware- IBM have done this hundreds of times before, they know their way around these payouts. Don't be fooled by loyalty bonus either. Get out asap. Don't slit your throat, but look after yourself first. Market is still poor but there are jobs about.

Good luck

[Oracle]

I am not an IBMer, but it's a firm that I have a lot of time for. If you were job hunting, would you consider IBM, yes of course.

Unless you really want to take the money and run (but to where?) then why not see how it pans out. IBM run a lot of sites locally, FP & RSA to name but two (and they have kept the RSA IT site as an IBM location).

Not really funny, but a team of capacity planners left IBM (RSA) to join FP and then were outsourced for a second time to IBM (FP) ....

[excontractor]

In 10 years time there will be no UK IT industry, why, well because we have become too expensive. And we have become too expensive because the Welfare State is massively costly, and has to be paid for. Indian workers do not have to support other people's children, those too lazy or uneducated to work, or various crazy schemes designed to keep politicians in power. So they are cheaper. There will never be a level playing field, so the inevitable complete loss of UK IT is only a question of when, not if. When I was contracting, company after company offshored, until I got fed up with it all and got out. I suggest that any move within IT, to IBM or anywhere else, will only stopgap your eventual move to another industry, or early retirement.

[Anon]

Aug 1, 2010 9:34:43 GMT @excontractor said:

In 10 years time there will be no UK IT industry, why, well because we have become too expensive. And we have become too expensive because the Welfare State is massively costly, and has to be paid for. Indian workers do not have to support other people's children, those too lazy or uneducated to work, or various crazy schemes designed to keep politicians in power. So they are cheaper. There will never be a level playing field, so the inevitable complete loss of UK IT is only a question of when, not if. When I was contracting, company after company offshored, until I got fed up with it all and got out. I suggest that any move within IT, to IBM or anywhere else, will only stopgap your eventual move to another industry, or early retirement.

i have to respond to this pile of poorly thought out nonsense.

if you are trying to work out where we will be in 10 years time, then perhaps having a quick look at the indian inflation rate might help. running at well over 10% at the moment. want to project that forward 10 years and see what that does to their competitive advantage?

you might also want to think about an example closer to home. remember cardiff? remember everyone heading down there because the staff were so much cheaper? remember the massive turnover of staff, and extremely high local salary increases, as everybody competed for the available resources? pushed up local property prices too. today, most of the original advantages of moving down there are gone. india will go the same way, it may take longer but it will happen.

using what is happening as an end result of the welfare state is frankly ridiculous. it is actually the end result of india not yet having a welfare state, or more accurately a strong union presence. at the moment the bosses there hold most of the cards, and they treat the workers like rubbish because they can. history teaches us that in most civilised countries, that wont stand, and eventually the workforce will get organised, and start to stand up for themselves. again that will see us and them moving closer again.

where we will be in 10 years time is difficult to say; we might be experiencing the same issue with china, or other far eastern countries. indian IT workers might be suffering the same fate that we are today. even after what has happened, i would still have a great deal of sympathy for them if they do.

[excontractor]

So you appear to be agreeing with me....you say that when (if) India gets a Welfare State of its own, then a level playing field will once again exist. I agree. Meanwhile, the playing field is anything but level, which is why they are cheaper. Inflation may play a part over time, but it is likely that inflation in the UK and Europe will pick up, as it must after so much money has been printed over the last 18 months. Inflation runs in cycles, the existance or not of a Welfare State is, for now, a constant.
Cardiff is not good example because it is, and was, part of the Welfare State.
As for this being poorly thought out, I own up to it being not entirely my own thoughts. The UN and World Bank have both studied the impact of the introduction of Welfareism throghout Europe following, and largely as a result of, World War 2. Their conclusion, much shortened, is that this has only been possible due to cheap oil, now coming rapidly to an end.

[Oracle]

If your hope is that Indian costs will rise to meet ours, then you need to take a trip to India. They are so far away from a (bloated) welfare state like ours that it would take a century to catch up.

However we will be on a rapid downward path so we might meet in the middle but our standard of living will then be comparable to Romania.

Raising the 1 Billion people of India to Western levels of affluence would also consume a vast amount of enerygy resources.

The only way to maintain a differential is to keep some sort of barrier in place against unlimited immigration and offshoring.

The problem is that government are influenced by CEOs, who are influenced mainly by their massive share options and want to get rich now. No matter what the long term effect is on the "little people" like us.

[shaft]

Nov 18, 2010 7:08:19 GMT @Oracle said:

CEOs, who are influenced mainly by their massive share options and want to get rich now.

Do you mean the kind of people who sell Mortgage cover who sat and watched a housing bubble inflate and said nothing? Why should they? They can sit there sucking in all the new premiums and when the bubble bursts make 15% of the staff redundant.

[skipper]

Hello everyone, all I can say is I reiterate my good will message to Tiny Tim of last year and I hope he has a miserable Christmas and catches something prefferably fatal swine flu in the new year.

However, a very Merry Christmas to everyone else out there in the IT world of redundant ex L&G./TATA staff.

[SE Asonogoodwill]

Not forgeting the great Caledonian ar5e, his toothy side-kick and that hatchet-faced HR woman whose name escapes me...

[HR rabbit shell]

Dec 27, 2010 13:04:41 GMT @SE Asonogoodwill said:

Not forgeting the great Caledonian ar5e, his toothy side-kick and that hatchet-faced HR woman whose name escapes me...

i dunno mate, not sure that the tata lot are as bad as the l&g lot who joined up with tata, they are the real scumbags. a lot of bad things are happening such as the theft from l&g and the offshoring disaster have been the doing of the senior managers that were at l&g before going to tata.

this thing still has a bad stench and it wont surprise any of us here if it comes alive soon. i hear that a certain mr. chan from l&g's HQ got a bunch of calls from folks about this already and they will look foolish if they continue to pretend that tata is not robbing us blind.

that fat toad and his indian sidekick can keep up the bullshit all they like but i think our lot here won't carry them much longer if the smell gets too much. obviously the fsa regulates l&g, but does anyone here know who regulates tata because their phones and emails are going to be flooded like!