Agilent now dumping its U.S. employees -- I'm going to boycott them

Ah, yeah, but it took Americans to force it on the rest of the world. Where's Steve Walz when you need him then?

--
Clint Sharp

How would you feel if Agilent were closing a plant near Silicon valley and moving it to Mississippi? Same pricipal, just different boarders. What about the auto industry that makes a lot of American cars in Canada and parts from all over the place?

I think you are overreacting to an event that hits a little too close to home while this has been impacting a lot of US workers for the last fourty years.

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Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave                               301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX

In the short term, it's very profitable for corporate management, since they get paid and bonused to meet certain metrics. In the short term it may also be somewhat profitable for shareholders, though none of these companies have had any drastic increases in dividends, afaik. It may be quite profitable for stock speculators, again in the short term.

The long term effects are another matter. Outsourcing to the lowest bidder may be good long term strategy for some businesses, but I'm quite sure that it's a bad long term strategy for many. Of course, the folks who do profit greatly will be long gone by then, doing the same thing somewhere else.

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Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

Your real life, perhaps, not mine. I have a Hewlett Packard LaserJet

1. It has served me faithfully for 11 years and many cases of paper, at the cost of replacing the toner cartridge twice. How many printers will you go through in the next 11 years? How much will you spend for ink?

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Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

Most of the complaints I hear come from those who no longer have jobs. I don't know what you mean by "don't want to better themselves." Ambition and goals really have nothing to do with it, on an individual basis. Highly competent, eager people who would like nothing more than to "better themselves" find themselves walking the street trying to find a job not better, but not too much worse than what they had. Blaming the problems on the workers affected is not productive.

Huh? It was the dot coms that brought the trash into the tech sector.

--
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

world,

who

(just an

Exactly. I have a IIIP that is about 14 years old. It's getting ready for it's third or fourth cartridge, I'm not sure. It will cost me about $50 and will be good to go for at least another 4 years. Oh, I did replace the fuser bulb once, that cost a whole $15 and took less than 30 minutes. Those days of HP making quality printers are long gone. They are good at making crappy printers that come complete with drivers embedded containing ad/spyware and that swamp even a powerful computer.

less

Houston. There are virtually no embedded jobs available, at least that are advertised the conventional way (computerjobs.com/hotjobs/monster etc) unless you have a top-secret clearance and wish to work for a military contractor temporarily. I suppose that if you know somebody, that might be helpful in obtaining employment. Dallas and Austin OTOH do have a few jobs available, but I don't happen to live there.

Although it's flimsy (I broke a snap installing expansion RAM, and I'm by no means ham-fisted), I'm more than pleased with my HP1200, which looks identical to the current model HP1300 laser. It's compact enough to keep right at hand on the desk, completely quiet when not printing, super quick starting, produces perfect prints every time until the cartridge needs to be replaced ($75 or $80 US- no advance warning, but I don't use the HP monitor program if there is one). Both the HP and Postscript modes work nicely. If the paper has ever jammed, I can't remember when.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

"Sacre Vert" escribió en el mensaje news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

well, well, it seems that now you're beggining to think that capitalism is not the right answer (extremes never are...)?!?! this outsourcing, globalisation or whatever you want to call it, has been going on for several years now, havent you seen Michael Moore's films? maybe that's another "good and hidden" reason to stole the oil from iraq, as china and india will be needing a lot of it. i wonder how long will it take for this to stop, i mean, i've this thought that economy works a bit like thermodynamics, the bigger the temperature difference (gradient) the more efficient the machine is (if i recall well, because it's been a long time), but the problem is that this cant go on forever, entropy increases and both temperatures levels up. So what'd happen when there wont be no more "cheap" places to outsouce to?

But most shareholders also also employees of some company as well. I'm a shareholder, but when I get a proxy form it's never much more than "vote for our favorite picks, or write in your own candidate". There's no practical way for the average shareholder to tell a company's leadership that you're will to put up with smaller profits in exchange for better behavior.

--
Darin Johnson
    Support your right to own gnus.

Hi all,

- I'am living in Switzerland -

Concerning what is happening at the moment in the US, it happens in Europe as well. However as it always has been, that the growth in the industry is not as strong as it is in the US, the downside - loosing jobs - is not going as fast as it seems it is in the US. What is really bad all over the world is, that well educated professionals with many man years of experience are loosing their jobs.

What is interesting to see, is that in ASIA for example they absoltutely don't care about this. If - today - you want to export or to sell something in this area, you have to give away part of your knowledge. Next time the engineers in ASIS build it your product without you ...

As you can see what is Europe and will Europe be all about?

It's about having a big local market, like the US one, and for this market you will see sooner or later the 'door' for much cheaper products from the far east being 'closed', in order to save working places here ...

I don't know if that is good or bad in the longterme, however it's understandable ...

And this will happen anyway completely independent of any WTO ... or whatever laws... at some point people don't care anymore ..

Best Regards Markus Meng (Switzerland)

And possibly better trained, have more experience, and are better at innovation and quality. But this isn't what companies want. They want cheap quality at a cheap cost. Management has long believed that tech workers are just interchangeable components, and that anyone can be an engineer, and this is just more evidence of that.

Of course, I don't want there to always be a rich country versus poor country world. But does it have to happen overnight by selling out the workers that created the wealth in the first place? The way things appear to be headed, we're only going to increase the divide, with the wealthy in the US becoming even more wealthy. Why not raise up the poorer countries instead of returning to the era of robber barons? Why not encourage labor safety laws in the countries we export work to, and discourage child labor and sweatshops? You don't have to push everyone down to create an equal level, you can raise everyone up instead.

--
Darin Johnson
    "You used to be big."
    "I am big.  It's the pictures that got small."

Maybe he's just finally reacting to an event that's been ignored for the last forty years? Yes, people shouldn't wait until they're directly impacted before noticing something stinks, but that doesn't mean the stink doesn't exist.

--
Darin Johnson
    Laziness is the father of invention

As long as we are trashing HP, I'll second that vote. I bought an 1100A for $500 and found that within a year it was starting to misfeed the paper. I thought it was the paper picking up humidity. Later it got worse and I had to start hand feeding the paper one sheet at a time. Turns out HP made a design defect on that model that fails right around the 1 year mark at the end of warranty. So by the time it was bad enough for me to recognize it as a printer problem, they wouldn't do anything about it. There ended up being a class action suit and everyone registered got $75 worth of discounts on new HP equipment, but no repairs. Like I'm going to buy more HP stuff... :-P

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave                               301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX

catching

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about

I just have a few questions:

1) Would your country allow corporations to force employees to work 60-80 hours/week without compensation for the overtime? 2) How much annual paid vacation is typical of an employee just starting with a corporation in your country? 3) Would your country allow a corporation to dictate that half of your annual vacation time will be taken on their schedule thru annual plant shutdowns? 4) Does your country allow illegal immigrants to displace nationals? Do they forgive them when caught, or are they deported?

close to

Here here, a man after my own heart. It really bothers me that so many Americans don't care what happens, as long as they are not directly affected. It always occurs that as soon as they are personally affected, they act as though they were caught by surprise and had no way to know about it. I may be bitching about something that does affect me, but it doesn't mean that I don't bitch about wrongdoings that occur to others. Sadly, I seem to be in the minority.

I have a friend that's a very specialized Cobol programmer making way too much money. Incredibly ripe for being outsourced. He thinks I'm a nut for complaining about outsourcing. Of course by this time next year he will be whining again that "I should have listened to you".

ready

about

than 30

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computer.

1100A

around

You don't think that was intentional, do you?

but

You could get an ink cartridge, and print 65 more pages before the blue runs out. I tell customers (in my panhandling job) to buy the cheapest printer available and then when the ink runs out, just buy another one. I wish more people would do this out of protest. It would only cost slightly more, but it sure would make the printer makers take notice quickly. The inkjet printer market is the biggest scam going now, with printers being sold for a net loss so that they can rape the consumer on ink refills. The manufacturer won't even include a lousy USB cable with many of them, too expensive.

I also paid $300 for an HP 315 digital camera for wife a couple of years ago for Christmas. It absolutely sucks in photo quality. You'd think a company that makes it's name in printing and imaging could do better. They could, but why bother when they can make money just on the brand name.

Too bad that engineers aren't allowed to run their companies any more. Now the likes of used car salesmen are at the helm, and it really shows in the end products.

Spoken like someone that has YET to be affected by outsourcing. Just wait a while and I'll bet you change your opinion.

How do you feel about corporations that use prison labor that is way below open market cost?