[p_l]

the WITCH playbook is to parade a competent team in front of the executive signing the deal then replace them with untrained people seduced into their sweatshops with promises of riches (but ending up in sweatshop).

Local teams hired or acquired are also part of the dog&pony show, H-1B and similar visa deals are used to keep some of the "middle" and up workers on a leash.

[bravetraveler]

To those confused, the acronym is like FAANG; companies involved.

The playbook is so prevalent I'd argue it extends to anything publicly traded.

[p_l]

There's general publicly traded shittery, and then there's WITCH (for reference, WiPro, Infosys, Tata, Cognizant, HCL).

I've seen shitty expense cutting in many publicly traded companies, but there's like this chasm between the norm and industrial grade bullshit.

Usually outside of WITCH or directly WITCH-influenced places (because let's be honest, nobody works in isolation, so the same managerial styles percolate as people move through companies), you don't see being sent people that leave you with feeling that the only qualification they had was that they should speak english according to census data. Even the one polish company that is infamous for trying to repeat similar "success" at least churns and burns mostly CS students (its late founder had a saying that you can replace any specialist with bounded count of undergrads, and that the number is usually 1).

And I don't say it to be mean about the people - they might be highly skilled in other areas, it's that the company has policy of not training them nor supporting them while they churn through them at lowest possible cost, below what I'd call the thermocline of disbelief and shame - disbelief that other company sent someone so unprepared, and shame of the managers who run operations like that.

It's one thing for your typical consulting public company to promise the stars then non deliver, hell I have heard first hand from Accenture exec about problems at intersection of sales, being able to tell customer no, and what is actually deliverable.

But there's a definite difference in degree when the "team" that you supposedly paid for is swapped the instant the ink is dry, only when contract is at risk of dissolution for bad performane slipping in someone who does not require being sent a document that has every mouse click one after another documented in screenshots.

[bravetraveler]

I think it's a bit silly to act as if the divides are so clear, as if industries don't become a soup-of-shit. Everyone learns these things from somewhere, trade shows have many attendees, etc. Players larger than any of these make several identical plays at once. They specialize while others build empires.

All of my recent experience has been SRE work - in these businesses, it's just as you describe. Bait/switch opportunities abound with operations work. Even non-tech companies require this kind of 'help'

It's industrialized, become a product itself. Insidious. Going to a vendor to help you do something you already have the staff for, yet putting gloves on everyone involved. It's endlessly frustrating!

+100, none of this is with malice to the individuals. Just... systems thinking, is all. Terrible feedback loops all around :/

There is a meme that the people you want in DCOPs are the exact types you lament RE: qualifications. Their wet dream is a warm body. Language isn't a requirement; we can translate (or even mechanically rehearse) the runbooks.

[p_l]

That's why I went for the term "thermocline", because it's not so much a hard divide, as more a moving, floating border at certain point in the spectrum where it seems the signs flip on certain values.

The thing is, turning a warm body into useful employee is, depending on task, not hard. But the experience dealing with WiPro, TCS, Infosys, and experience of others with Cognizant and HCL added to that, suggests that they don't even try, put KPIs that are in opposition with "useful service", and then lie to everyone including the employee. Like, at least someone employed to tell you why it doesn't matter you paid for your policy for years, it's not going to pay out, at least knows they are there to screw customers.

I can get useful junior data center operator out of a reasonably healthy warm body that I can communicate with (and there's at least one memorable time where we achieved success in remote hands case without mutually intelligible communications while over the phone), but that's like few levels above what I expect from WITCH and their ilk (because yes, other companies in areas dominated by them will end up hiring people from them with certain set behaviours who will then manage their groups in same way...)

[bravetraveler]

Fair point RE: "thermocline", though despite the rest... I find little distinction. It's there. Just little.

The body is regularly an 'accountability sink' (forgive likely abuse of the term). Sure, they can be made to do the job. They often don't [prepare or participate]. Hell, they have a robot to meet the requirement of posting a reply within a certain timeframe. It's a charade

I guess, most simply, I don't find them considerably worse as consultants than those who they consult for. I have yet to find a job where people - or whole departments/subsidiaries - don't behave as you describe. Truly constant.

Anyone who works for a company being acquired by EIG knows what's about to happen: set phasers to 'screw customers'. Along the lines of "Sorry, your shared hosting account includes five processes. Googlebot keeps you suspended by trying for 100." This stuff is commonplace/systemic, available to be seen by those so inclined.

Considering the gaps between knowing, admitting, or simply perpetuating... I don't think it's worth figuring out to such detail.