Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge The Future is Uncertain

Well yesterday we got word that we lost a major MAJOR contract with the State of Montana, our primary client. This marks a sea change in how they deal with us and it's not good. It sets us up to lose a lot of work in the future. Add on to that, the winning bidder is, IIRC, using offshore "talent" AND they came in $6-16 million over our bid AND the client's budget.

For the nerds:

Much of our business has been supporting the health and human services division with mainframe applications in RDMS and COBOL (two things I know little about-I'm on the web application design side of things) for the past 18 years. These systems involved Medicaid eligibility and child support enforcement, primarily. The state is starting to move these systems off the mainframe and onto Oracle backed web-based applications. The first of which launched in the past month, a new Medicaid eligibility system. This system is going to be the basis for converting all new systems under a common Enterprise Service Bus (think of it as an IT umbrella and each of these systems as a module plugged into that architecture). This latest contract that we lost was to convert the food stamps system and one other system to this new architecture, as well as build the ESB for future systems.

By losing the ESB work especially, it will be much harder to win the bids on converting those few remaining systems over. Once support for those legacy systems is no longer required, we're done.

For the normals:

So, in a nutshell: We're screwed. I'm not losing my job, at least not right away. I have an interesting niche in my office. I am the only one who does several functions in the office, and one of two that do another. It will likely be a long slow death of attrition, as the winning vendor raids our office for developers and project managers for the local development activities, then if we don't step up the new business in other areas, they'll have to start "shedding" employees. I don't know where I rank in that process. The winning vendor likely won't come knocking on my door, as I see it, even though I designed the interface for that system that just went live.

I won't go work for the state, even if there wasn't a hiring freeze. But I do have another out. One of my current jobs is administrator for our requirements management software, by IBM. There's a good chance that knowledge could land me a job with IBM in some sort of training or support capacity, but I haven't pursued it.

ouch...sorry to hear that.

Everytime I hear of cutbacks and people losing jobs, I'm grateful that I work in the tunneling industry. As the economy gets worse, we get more and more work since the federal gov't tends to foot the bill for most city and state tunnel jobs as public works.

We had layoffs in 2003 and it wasn't fun. Years later I found out that we were supposed to shed more people during that round and if my then boss and our then site director hadn't "fudged the numbers" (and basically lied to corporate) I likely would've been one of the "extra" people that was supposed to be gone. Yikes. I guess I've been living on borrowed time. Hey, that sounds like a song...

Maybe you should look into radio announcing after all.

Sorry to hear that that thing is now somewhat final there, John.

However, I'll keep my fingers crossed for ya down here for that IBM job you were talkin' about there.

I think you'd be GREAT as a trainer, ol' buddy!!!

('cuz TRUST ME...with your personality NOBODY'S gonna fall asleep in class, dude!!!)

Sorry to hear of your news, I feel for you, my daughter was "let go" this very week so understand what your thinking.. aint nice,

it appears to be a worldwide thing, no help I know...

Fingers crossed,

TrOjAn

Good luck up there.
I've worked for homebuilders for about 30 years. I survived 3 rounds of layoffs with this last employer. Had a chance to work for local county housing department and took it. The day I quit, they laid all the remaining field personnel off. Now for the zinger; as soon as I started here, they cut our funding to zero. People here are scrambling to find other funding sources.
This economy is no fun.

The problem with radio announcing, at least around here, is that there's very little on air talent being employed. Most stations have automated music or syndicated programming most of the time. And when they do voice overs for ads and such, it's usually a freebie thrown in with a certain amount of air time purchased.

good thing you make extra money for being a mod around here, right?

Hey, my brother is the network administrator for Gallitan (SP?) County. He lives in Boseman. If you do want to pursue County, let me know. Can't promise anything, but I can inquire.

Well if the caca hits the fan I'll take any lead I can get. Thanks.

I don't pretend to understand the cyber-world, but I'd still wager everything turns out alright.

jh

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Add on to that, the winning bidder is, IIRC, using offshore "talent" AND they came in $6-16 million over our bid AND the client's budget.

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I'll never understand why things like this happen, unless "over" was a typo.

Good luck to you John.

That's no typo, it's a space station.

Oh, wait...

Yes. The budget was $20mil. We managed to bid just under that. The next highest bidder bid $26mil. The highest bidder bid $36mil. Not sure what the second highest bidder bid.

And we lost.

John, sorry to hear that. I'm sure your managers are reviewing the evaluation factors, scores and justification for award. Protest is always a option.

Protesting is possible but in my experience my company treads lightly in this area.

Of course it's not over. I'm sure steps are being taken by people far above my pay grade. Many people closer to my pay grade are furiously writing letters to the editor of the local paper. I've limited it to typing snarky comments on Facebook on the Helena Montana Group page.

Update. One of my co-workers put together this fact sheet taken directly from publicly-available documentation.

http://twitpic.com/mnk6s

Sorry for the small type.

Nope, can't read that one and either can a lot of the old fart members here (or as you so quaintly put it... GEEZERS!).

On another note here John... best to ya man. It ALWAYS works out ya know. I mean you made it THIS far didn't ya?

Accenture is a bunch of tards! They are like a bad disease...You cant get rid of em once you have em.
They have so many departments its like trying to navigate the Russian mob...impossible!

I know we do two completely seperate jobs but my company has accenture contracts and well...I think my comments are clear.

There is a sliver of hope for this project. Our site director Michael addressed us all today and said the deal with Deloitte still has to be approved by the head of DPHHS and the governor. He said our US Congressional members have all been made aware of the situation and state reps and senators are starting to freak out about it. Probably won't change anything but you never know.

I'll keep a good thought for you John, that if change comes, it's for the better.

Job hunting sure can make for frustration. I've been sending in weekly applications to the Playboy dynasty for Hugh Hefner's job, but the old f'er just won't retire! Can't allow as how I blame him though, what with Viagra and all.

Thanks. The fat lady hasn't sung yet (which is good because it would probably have to be me in a dress and NOBODY wants to see that), but people are still a little on edge around here.

John,still coming to Vegas next week?

Yessir. We'll be there Friday evening. Staying at the Luxor. Family crap Friday night, wedding (not mine!) Saturday afternoon, reception Saturday evening, leaving Sunday mid-day. Told Mike I can probably meet yous guys for lunch Saturday or breakfast Sunday.

I'm not real clear on the specific schedule for all the family crap, but that's the high-level view.

Nil Illigitimus Carbrundum! Mate.

We too started outsourcing to India, I survived first round of redundancies. God knows whats going to happen next (I hope) because nobody else does. I now have a new manager who hates me - a baby manager who has to prove hes better than us. Apparently I know nothing so shouldnt be listened to and do nothing because I prioritise customers above his whims. He is bringing in new young asians who have no experience but do as their told, right or wrong. He is trying to performance manage me out, he cant do it, he's up against an old soldier, but hes making my life ******. Then ANZ bought the company out and everythings getting shaken up again.

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The future is uncertain

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You betcha

Fun init

That makes a good t-shirt:

http://www.zazzle.com/non_illigitamus_carborundum_tshirt-235345034952366647

Are you sure?

What?

Just so you know, that last little comment was placed there as a bit of comic relief... no disrespect intended.

Well it happened, sorta.

Got called into the Site Director's office this morning and told I was on 30-day furlough (with 9 others, I gather from the invite for the meeting that happened before I arrived). Furlough is a LOT like being laid off, except you get to keep your benefits if you pay the portion that is normally taken out of your check and you get to put off cleaning out your desk. This is a direct result of losing that big proposal last week. It's strictly business.

I've got about 37.9 hours of vacation accrued so I'm getting paid through next Monday (I worked over the weekend which counts for today). But I'll be at zero balance if/when I return.

One of our big systems is starting Phase 2 in a month and ostensibly that's what they will bring me back for, as a business analyst, gathering requirements. It's mostly guaranteed to happen but that client has been a bit unreliable lately (maybe they'll ship that off to India, too). After that part of that project is done, who knows? Maybe I'll be cut loose for good or maybe they'll have other work for me to do.

This is like a slow death. I don't know what to do. I'd rather not leave this company if I can avoid it. Great benefits and retirement. I have a great boss and lots of friends there. But if they're going to string me along like this maybe I need to look elsewhere. But looking elsewhere basically means pulling up stakes, selling my house and moving (unless I can find suitable telecommuting work), because there's nothing else for me in this town that will pay anything like what I'm making now. Graphic and Web Designers tend to make ****** here. The State is the closest, and they're in a hiring freeze last I heard.

whoof, sorry to hear it happened john.

Yeah, that sucks man, sorry to hear it.

I'm compiling a list of spare (and not so spare) parts to sell. Stay tuned.

The local paper has latched onto this, finally.

http://www.helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/article_b6d89a1e-c2ba-11de-8a38-001cc4c002e0.html