Bank of America: Train your replacement, or no severance pay for you

Bank of America: Train your replacement, or no severance pay for you

Bank of America has been steadily moving thousands of tech jobs to India.
The latest to go are about 100 positions that handle BofA's internal tech
support.

While many of the bank's Bay Area techies accept the inevitability of their
jobs heading abroad, what rankles them is the fact that, in many cases,
they're being told they have to first train the Indians who are getting
their gigs.

"If people want their severance packages, they have to train their
replacements," a senior engineer at one of BofA's Bay Area facilities told
me. "There's nothing in writing that says this -- the bank's been careful
about that. But it's made clear at meetings what we're supposed to do."

Shirley Norton, a BofA spokeswoman, confirmed that while workers aren't
being explicitly told they have to train their replacements or risk losing
severance pay, they are being instructed that severance pay is contingent on
satisfactorily completing their jobs.
...

Harry Thompson...

Last place I worked before retirement, people were being downsized all over.
In fact I had replaced a downsized programmer. There was no reason for me to
get the job except that I cost less. There was initial resentment of me that
I had to overcome.

A year into the job there was a new hire, an Indian. "Oh, gawd" I thought,
"here's my replacement." So what should I do, snub him or help him learn my
job?

When we were introduced I found I couldn't be mean. On impulse, I put my
hands together Indian style, and greeted him in Hindi, "Nameste." Don't ask
me where I learned that from, somehow I knew it. "Nameste" he replied.

We became friendly, often taking lunch together. I had read the Mahabharata,
and was curious about Nitin's (that was his name) beliefs. Poltically, he
supported the BJP, the nationalist party in India whose leader had recently
become prime minister (I read the NY Times then too). Yes, he believed
literally that a Hindu prince Arjuna was the god Krishna's personal friend.

He told me he wrenched his back returning my original greeting. It is
extremely offensive not to return it, (I didn't know that) but it was so
totally unexpected from me.

It turned out he wasn't hired for my job after all. He became a manager, and
was too conscientious for his own good. Dharma, I suppose. Anyhow,
management told him to give nobody a good review so that they could be laid
off without problems. He refused, and they fired him.

Jim Higgins...

Nitin was an honorable man, while B of A was really cold. These companies
demand loyalty from the bottom up but are shocked when the grunts want to
see it from the top down. Problem today is that there seems to be a
fundamental change in the US in the way business is done. We (American
workers) now are supposed to compete against the lowest cost denominator on
the planet. Major corporations should have "fun" trying to sell their "all
the market will bear" products to Americans who don't make enough to buy
them. Not yet has this come but maybe soon-trying to compete against the
lowest wage on the planet has already arrived.