Saving money by getting rid of Swiss employees, especially senior ones

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
1
I just asked Google how I could save money in my IT department [even if I don't have one] and this the top article.

How can information technology reduce costs?

12 ways to reduce your IT costs

1.Reducing personnel costs .

2.Replace turnover with lower level employees.

3.Hire new college graduates every year.

4.Manage your contractors.

5.Use offshore resources less than you do now.

6.Reduce staff turnover.

7.Reducing non-personnel costs.

8.Virtualize servers by using containers.

Which I find a staggering answer, all of the suggestions are about people, let's rephrase it in less politically correct language. Yes, you may noticed there are just 8 ways here. I clicked on the link and it said, not found... so this is answer

1. Get rid of people.

2. Replace senior staff with keen juniors.

3. Replace juniors with students

4. Get rid of contractors.

5. Use cheap overseas labour.

6. Value your current hires, unless they are seniors/contractors or locals.

7. Reduce Administration staff

8. Use the cloud, cause it will lightly be hosted overseas, staffed by monkeys and really cheap.

No wonder the industry is going to hell.

2
I think you might have rephrased these incorrectly.

5 - Use your new in house cheap graduate labour.

7 - Encourage work from home but provide no resources.

3
The article is correct, those are ways to reduce your costs.

Those are also ways to make sure in the long run you suffer professionally and have worse overall results.

...except for the cloud stuff, which I have not found to reduce costs much, but do have other benefits. And in cases of moving to the cloud I've preferred retraining my server folks in the Way of the Cloud over letting them go.

4
#8 is not that bad.

I was talking to the IT guys earlier this week. There was a time when companies had their own email servers. I remembered, I was in bachelor studies at the time, those were the times when accidental REPLY ALL clicks could knock-down the university email system

These days email and other dumb stuff is outsourced to Microsoft. One invoice based on employee number per year and less worries. Or what, should company email still be done in house on year 2022?

Other more serious IT things I should not disclose ( ) are outsourced within the EU boundaries.

Continuing with #8, I've worked in the virtualization of old database servers. But, they're not in the "cloud overseas" but in a safe place here in CH. The change was from a dozen old computers to a single more powerful one hosting several MySQL instances. The oldest service sticker I saw in the boxes was from 2004.

Sincerely yours,

Just another corporate drone.

5
I had to smile a little when I read this..because its the unimportant stuff that they seem to dig up in court cases all over the world, emails.

6
Yeah.. but pay peanuts get monkeys. And then your IT system fails. And then your business fails.

Plenty of evidence over the years that underfunded IT will lead to uncompetitive performance. For me the problem isn't 'saving costs' it's what happens when the budget holder has no clue about IT and believes everything the first low balling sales rep tells them

7
It's a known fact that Swiss companies are reticent to hire more mature staff because of the high contributions that are then required for pension funds.

8
How old is that article? Large companies have been following most steps in that model for decades.

The only exception I have seen is number 5. Offshoring still seems to be incredibly popular.

I do find the competing interests in some of those steps to be a little ironic.

9
On my side of the business... being one of the ‘creatives’..my revered employers have discovered a new found enthusiasm for employing as many ‘interns’ as possible.

Intern: Translation D/E

Young person, maximum qualifications to work like a rented mule for unlimited hours for expenses/travel costs.

Opportunity to advance career by worshiping at the feet of the great master.

10
There is still a lot of work running email services for a company, there are still plenty of employees in Switzerland whose job function is the messaging service.

I don’t think it’s quite so gloomy as people paint. There are still job openings for people at a more senior age. Yes the pension contribution goes up but this is a small increase in cost against the full employee cost. Of course the preference for any organisation would be to run everything directly from an offshore centre but it remains in many organisations that the primary lead positions - design, architecture, project lead for example - run from Switzerland because there are good skilled people here and their experience counts.

Lower tiers I agree, they are gone to nearshore or offshore, but there are vacancies here in ch for senior positions.

11
Yea ... which is really frustrating if you happen to be a junior manager when all of this offshoring started. I'm worried I will be battling for roles the entire remainder of my career and I will never receive the bump I deserved because I never received the opportunity for proper career growth.

12
Thing is, no-one here complained when jobs were given to other foreigners imported rather than off-shored. (well, locals did, of course). We are now at the next stage.

13
It's great, until:

- you need to file a lawsuit against Microsoft (or one of their subsidiaries - maybe they acquired a supplier of you that you are in the process of suing?)

- until Microsoft refuses to do business with you because of....whatever reason - could be a client of yours, could just be a mix-up, or something else

- regulatory requirements prohibit it

- a client does not want his emails to you to fall under US jurisdiction

If MSFT want to run the world's email, that's fine with me - but then they should really be an entity with strong government-oversight, really, like the post-office (AFAIK, they can't deny you sending a letter for example - not sure if post finance must provide banking-services to you).

If these companies want to be too-big-to-fail (which they are already acting like they are), they should be regulated as such.

It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.

14
And then, if finally employed, starting at the very bottom meaning you need to spend 10 years, or so, clawing back to the level your new hire colleagues are brought in at.

15
That is where I am now / have been for 2.5 years. I was told I was "overqualified" - and I had to explain to them I was in need of work and willing to claw my way back. I realized the first day it was a mistake, but it is what it is & I'm not sure I would do anything differently.

I've interviewed for multiple roles since & made it to the final round of a great local job where they decided to hire in Germany instead - for obvious reasons.

16
I am not sure how old you are, but if you are Ü50 you can be really grateful to have gotten any kind of job at all.

17
Of course, when I conspire for money laundering, my preferred communication tool is the corporate email account

This is an interesting point. But, the US government is already ahead of Microsoft on this. There's a list of countries/companies with business ban. I already sign docs or reply emails confirming I won't use X software tool for business with Y or distribute the tool to Z. Same for receiving payments.

I guess there are ways to create sandboxes, but I know nothing about that, I AM AN IDIOT

Well, in general no one should have the entitlement of being imprescindible for business. I forgot who mentioned this in the forum but all the certainty we have is 3 months notice.....well, 2 months for me since I've been not working that long.

This is the curious part, the UDC/SVP has the same idea:

https://www.udc.ch/parti/positions/t...des-etrangers/

Economical pressures force a choice between: 1) outsourcing the job around the world, 2) hire workers from around the world in CH. It all depends on the business. We are part of option 2 and a menace to senior workers.

18
We too will be one day "senior workers".

19
So, enjoy the ride while it lasts. And, prepare a plan when the inevitable comes.

20
Been there done that, don't have a t-shirt. I'm now over 65