Coronavirus

yup, even IT jobs are being outsourced to russia and india, mainly testing and some development work. They will still keep teams in the UK but they won't need the teams as big as you can hire 3 or 4 people for the price you pay for 1 person in the uk.

The work is generally more buggy and you have be crystal clear on requirements but heads of companies think why employ 1 when you can have 4 or 5

 

This

****ed innit.

 

I think there's a real opportunity to rethink and evolve our working practises, if there's some organised, well thought out approach to it. Not all businesses can work from home and nor should they BUT the more considered approach is for every business or profession to now think about which parts of their business can work from home. E.g. a corporate bakery - the front end staff need to be in direct customer contact but how many of their purchasing department, their accounts department, their middle management need to be sat in an office. That's the way to evolve imo. And it can apply equally to both the private and public sector.

 

Yup, the conversation will go something like, how would you like a nice little trip out to India Bobby? All expenses paid, stay out there on us, for a couple of months, bit of nice little holiday for you....actually take your mate you work with to as a buddy.

Ok boss, what do you want us to do, oh nothing much, just help get all this gear set up out there, train a few people, nothing much. Probably make some friends out there, so if they have any problems when you come home, they can get you on the phone.

Six months later back in the UK....

Ok, you lot are redundant, we've set up a new team in India, Bobby sneaks out the door sheepishly

 

lol, i do know of some people who they said their outsourcing their job out to russia and then they had to go over and train them up.

I think i'm fortunate enough that i'm not in the IT side where my source can be outsourced so easily and requires specialist knowledge.

If i was just a code monkey then yeah potentially i code lose my job. Saying that, there will always be a team locally (saying that i've only worked at medium to big companies) as they will want some local people to sort out the bigger issues/liaise with the customer facing side

 

You know Bobby, you clearly know. Happening all over the shop and as you rightly say they will always keep some local jobs, because they know that customers don't take kindly to talking to offshore call centres. Always makes me laugh when words such as offshore are used....so you mean India!?....I think they know there is cultural differences that could be construed towards conscious or unconscious bias, or even racism when you mention another country by name, so they prefer the corporate terms to be used.

Edit: When I say cultural differences, I'm referring to that English may not be their first spoken language.

 

Office based corporate/ admin and services sector office workers can work from home no problem. All of the technological infrastructure is there for them to do it based at home. Add to this, The High St is ****ed, big shops like Debenhams, M&S, John Lewis etc aren't making any money from the High St as folk buy it online, and they are looking to get rid of as much of their physical premises as they can. The result of far fewer people in the towns and cities means that loads of hospitality, food and drink businesses suffer.

It means our towns and cities and our ways of working need a whole new rethink.

 

A lot of these problems were already there before Covid so it's a rethink which would've been needed anyway.

Personally I think there's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that whilst shops in city centres will continue to suffer, the local town hospitality and service industry shops will benefit from people working from home because even during a working week they'll be popping out more to their local towns.

 

The future of town and city centres is about the experience rather than going to traditional high st shops. It needs to become more event led and focused on the family day out. In this scenario, small and independent businesses that offer bespoke and creative services and products will thrive

 

Oh, and yes indeed they were.

 

I thought they all supplemented their wages by smuggling rum and plundering shipwrecks.

 

On the subject of office workers, perhaps the key point is that, whereas key workers from binmen to supermarket staff to bus drivers, and of course NHS staff, kept the country going all year, it turns out we never really needed the armies of overpaid briefcase ****ers schlepping in to the City every day?

 

And remember chaps...

 

We should be able to sack off a load of the transport workers as well if the trend to home working continues.

Sat through a 2hr long webinar yesterday on the impact of COVID on oil & gas demand and price (we get our priorities right in this business!) and the transition to new fuel types. They are building into their models a trend towards home working, the lack of air travel etc and the trend towards renewable energy supplies, plus electric vehicles, particularly in developed countries, and its depressing news for my business but good for the climate. Don't know whether anyone has noticed how the major energy companies have responded - they are buying up renewables firms and getting into wind farms, selling off oil assets all in a rush, with expansive plans to be carbon neutral within 10-30years.

While COVID may have had a profound effect on the world it could be the kick it needed to sort out climate change.

Bad news from the modelling work was that:

1. The worst of COVID is yet to come globally, with November/December going to see a major spike in global cases and deaths
2. Air travel is not going to be back to normal until 2022 so forget holidays in exotic places for the next year and half

 

Every cloud and all that. It appears Covid May be accelerating some necessary changes to the way we live and work.

Bit alarming to me as a transport worker, but the daily commute appears to be finished. Now all we need is a UBI and some of us can forget about work altogether.

Perhaps we could all retire at 40 (obviously won’t happen in places where people keep voting Tory).

 

Get retrained in building offshore wind turbines or working on energy storage projects - growth areas. It can't be that much different to driving a train.

 

Only on Tuesdays mate. Local bylaw or something.

 

You mean for the people who can't afford cheap holidays or no planes will be flying there whatsoever?

 

if that happens i'm going to be a professional gamer with no fans and sit in my pants all day