Who moved his cheese?

I received an email from a disgruntled co-worker. He is a Canadian engineer and has been laid off recently.

This is what he wrote to the boss and the whole department.

"Dear boss,
You asked about how to get children interested in science and engineering…..
Well you could improve your chances by not laying off their parents.

Seriously, I think my children will be better off if they chose law, medicine, or business and not engineering.

I am not bitter, as the company has been very generous with their severance, and I have been lucky enough to find alternate employment. But this process has affected my children’s perceptions of what they aspire to do in the future."

His job has been realign and move elsewhere. I guess his job has been move to Penang. We can replace one Canadian Engineer with three in Penang.

I have been in this industry long enough to witness all those realign exercises. At one instance, the whole department was moved from London to Ireland. The reason is simple: Ireland offers an attractive tax incentive. The company tax rate for Ireland is 12% (It is 28% in Malaysia). That is why big name like Intel and Dell setting up their European office in Ireland.

A friend relates to me that his company name and ownership changed three times in five years (from HP to Agilent, then later to Avago) and yet he is still sitting in the same cubicle.

The classical example is Digital Equipment Corp (DEC). I took care of DEC machines in my first job. Compaq acquired DEC in 1997. Later, Hewlett-Packard merged with Compaq. Now, DEC engineers are part of HP.

Please read the book "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. The book gives you a good perspective of what happening in the global labour market. Most importantly, we have to make ourselves "untouchable" which is the highest level in the hierarchy of lifetime employability (not lifetime employment).

If you have reached that level, nobody can move your job elsewhere. Then, you can continue enjoying your cheese.