Training in India

[surfer]

And don't forget - you're training yourself out of a contract.

Whether you go or not, don't expect to be there in 6 months time...

You're probably right. Mind you I didn't expect to be there in 6 months for the last 5 years.

Retirement beckons ....

[surfer]

I wouldn't do it, certainly not the way you feel about it anyway.

If they need to train Bob, get him to come to the Belgium office.

Otherwise as an independent contractor, you have the right to choose and you can say No and see where that takes you. No one can force you to go on a long haul flight to a 3rd world country to train inexperienced staff to replace your line of work. Where's the benefit to you?

I think I'll just tell him I don't do longhaul international anymore - worried about deep vein thrombosis since my Dad had a stroke last year. And even if I would give a local course I'm not sure if he could afford the rates I charge for developing a course and giving it (plus the cost of shipping Bob to Europe).

That should sort it ...

[ChimpMaster]

I wouldn't do it, certainly not the way you feel about it anyway.

If they need to train Bob, get him to come to the Belgium office.

Otherwise as an independent contractor, you have the right to choose and you can say No and see where that takes you. No one can force you to go on a long haul flight to a 3rd world country to train inexperienced staff to replace your line of work. Where's the benefit to you?

Furthermore at 7 years I would go so far as to say that you have been there too long. Yes you've done well from a business point of view but I think you're too comfortable and need to get a reality check, i.e. wake up and start looking at the world around you - it's changing and you are going to have to get up and make sure you are still marketable, or can make yourself marketable.

This might sounds harsh but I went through the same cack a few years ago. After 7 years at a client I was comfortable and never felt at risk, until the offshoring came into play and suddenly I was training a 22 offshore bod who could barely spell the name of the product. I did the best damn work for those 7 years and yes I carried that through until I had trained the crap out of this guy. But I was OK - I knew I had lined up another contract.

Be professional, but more importantly be happy and look after yourself.

[stek]

Lesson 1

Log on to production

Tell 1st BOB to type in

Delete * from master_file

After he hits enter

Say you said select * from master_file

And wave hands in the air

End of training session

I had one Bob type the command to move a Solaris Cluster resource group over and he refused to press enter because he was 'scared'.

I had to log in and do it, he'd been on Sun Cluster training, I'd just done on the job!

[TheFaQQer]

Lesson 1

Log on to production

Tell 1st BOB to type in

Delete * from master_file

After he hits enter

Say you said select * from master_file

And wave hands in the air

End of training session

That would be easy to spot and easy to correct, though.

1) Connect sys/change_on_install@production
2) Insert into dual values (2);
3) commit;

Watch lots of PL/SQL fail with new errors because no-one ever checks for there being multiple rows in DUAL. Charge a fortune in out of hours support to "fix" this.

[tarbera]

Lesson 1

Log on to production

Tell 1st BOB to type in

Delete * from master_file

After he hits enter

Say you said select * from master_file

And wave hands in the air

End of training session

[cojak]

And don't forget - you're training yourself out of a contract.

Whether you go or not, don't expect to be there in 6 months time...

[TheFaQQer]

Any advice for a/ avoiding it completely (gracefully) or b/ making it extremely lucrative. Knowing our company b/ may well lead to a/

a) "I'm not a professional trainer, so I don't think I'd feel comfortable doing this"
a) "it's one thing being a developer, but they might miss something important because training isn't really my skillset"

b) "I'll need some time to prepare slides etc before I can train them. I'm best off doing that at home for a couple of weeks"
b) "I'll need business class flights, five star hotels, all expenses paid, and travel time paying as well"
b) "My day rate for being overseas is higher than my normal day rate"

HTH

[Batcher]

Nothing in contract about training or knowledge transfer. And para 2 about summs it up. I'm hoping there may be a better way to handle it than telling the Global Support head to go and do one.

Has EBOLA reached India yet?

Just tell him in a nice way that you aren't there to train people and they would be better sending them on proper training courses at Oracle or whoever.

I told one clientco once that I would need to renegotiate my contract if they wanted me to train people up on the software rather than send them on accredited courses. My fee as a trainer would be in the region of £2k per day. They didn't take it any further, funnily enough.

[surfer]

Does your contract say you should train people up? Sometimes they will have knowledge transfer as part of the job spec but I treat that as being company/business knowledge and not skills.

There's no way I would train any of them up as I'd be cutting my own throat and have refused to do it in the past as my contract didn't cover training up people in skills.
.

Nothing in contract about training or knowledge transfer. And para 2 about summs it up. I'm hoping there may be a better way to handle it than telling the Global Support head to go and do one.

Has EBOLA reached India yet?

[Batcher]

Does your contract say you should train people up? Sometimes they will have knowledge transfer as part of the job spec but I treat that as being company/business knowledge and not skills.

A third party piece of software I specialise in has all but been offshored by most financial houses to the point I can hardly get any work with it now. I've been on an email list since the early days and have met most of the high flying gurus from the States. Most of the group back then would ask questions about a tricky situation that cropped up that would have us all trying to figure out a solution.

The past couple of years the group has been taken over by Bobs asking the most basic of questions and none of us can be bothered to answer because we've all been hit by the cheap offshoring to our businesses. There's no way I would train any of them up as I'd be cutting my own throat and have refused to do it in the past as my contract didn't cover training up people in skills.

Most of the Bobs use yahoo or google Indian email addresses but you'd be amazed at how many use company email addresses and they are mainly UK companies.

[surfer]

What does your contract say? Does it state a specific location

It says
Services: Product Support for <Company>
...
Contractor location: <Building name>, <Street and number>, <Town>, Belgium

I have travelled in Europe for them UK, France, Germany, Poland on the odd occasion to perform onsite support work. Once or twice to give a specialised training to a customer.

But India is a different ballgame for me. I'd go elsewhere but in spite of what the contract says about "Contractor Location =" the line manager at the client let's me telework 95% of the time

[SimonMac]

I work in support (contract) in Belgium for some client/server sw with oracle backend. Just been asked by Global Support Mgr to give him dates when I am available to go to India to train the offshored support team in PL/SQL and scripting. "to elevate the team's knowledge to be more independent and escalate less." I see a lot of those escalations, I think its more about company culture than skills (don't take risks, just play email pingpong all day andd you won't get hurt).

It's really not my dream thing at all, even just for a week. I really don't want to become the goto for training especially when longhaul travel is involved. Plus I expect I will be training them so they can undercut my market.

Any advice for a/ avoiding it completely (gracefully) or b/ making it extremely lucrative. Knowing our company b/ may well lead to a/

Renewal is due in April, it's an easy gig and I've been comfortable here for 7 years.

What does your contract say? Does it state a specific location

[surfer]

I work in support (contract) in Belgium for some client/server sw with oracle backend. Just been asked by Global Support Mgr to give him dates when I am available to go to India to train the offshored support team in PL/SQL and scripting. "to elevate the team's knowledge to be more independent and escalate less." I see a lot of those escalations, I think its more about company culture than skills (don't take risks, just play email pingpong all day andd you won't get hurt).

It's really not my dream thing at all, even just for a week. I really don't want to become the goto for training especially when longhaul travel is involved. Plus I expect I will be training them so they can undercut my market.

Any advice for a/ avoiding it completely (gracefully) or b/ making it extremely lucrative. Knowing our company b/ may well lead to a/

Renewal is due in April, it's an easy gig and I've been comfortable here for 7 years.