There's not really an overall point to this post, but this struck me as funny and I figured LBO was the only place that could appreciate it:
I just had a meeting at my current contract employer, a dotcom that was just acquired (who I won't name, although you can probably figure it it out if you want), about the implications for me of the aquisition.
Background: I'm a more-or-less independent network engineer, who picks up work at various places around SF and Silicon Valley. I'm technically an employee of a "passthru" firm, which bills the client and does all the paperwork, etc., and shields me from all sorts of nasty taxes in exchange for a small percentage. Because of this arrangement, I am technically both an employee of this company and my own manager. But that's just the first step in this weird discombobulated world...
The dotcom, was a travel outsourcer - it operates travel procurement and reservations for both corporate clients and, interestingly enough, airlines themselves. (I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to tell you that if you make a reservation on United's website, you actually go to this company's site.) They were bought out by <blank>, which was once upon a time a major airlines' reservation system. "Once upon a time", you ask? Of course - it was spun off into an independent entity last year. The airline, apparently, didn't see booking people on it's own planes as a "core competency", or some such.
So I outsource to my "employer", and in turn am outsourced (by? to? We need to settle on a lingo...) a company which in turn is an outsourcer (-ee?) So far, pretty normal. But this afternoon I was summoned to a meeting to tell me that <blank> has turned over the management of its outsourced employees to - yep, you guessed it - an outsourcer! This new company will now be paid for the hours I work, and in turn send the money (minus a modest fee, of course, which comes out of my pay) to my "employer", which will in turn send it to me. Included in this new deal is a neat little provisio that, should I be so good as to work more than 40 hours a week (something I'm not going to do under any circumstance, thank God), my hourly rate would reduced(!) by 5% (although on this last one they out-and-out admitted that they probably wouldn't able to really get away with it under CA law).
Now, don't cry for me - I'm absurdly overpaid anyway, and I've already told them to bump up my bill rate to make up for any losses to this new middleman. But I'm starting to wonder just how many layers of bullshit outsourcing corporate America is gonna build up before it realizes just how fucked it is...
Jim Baird
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