New Job in IT - onboarding from hell

[Donald]

To finish off my career I left my IT job at a hospitality company and took a new job in IT at a financial services company. I had worked for the hiring manager before so the job interview was a couple of texts. Basically hourly work 3-4 days a week. So less hours and weekly pay would be same or more.

Unfortunately since I was going to be hourly part-time I could not work for the financial services company directly but would need to work though one of their approved consulting companies. The hiring manager set things up and the Indian consulting company started the process.

The Indian consulting company and a company who required every company listed on application I had worked for since college. Including exact day,/month/year that I started and stopped. They also wanted a copy of my college diploma. I graduated in 1976. Eventually I found my diploma in a box.

At one point when the background check was done I was given a start date of the next Monday. Friday I was told they had forgotten about fingerprints.

I setup an appointment to get those done

They sent me a laptop that would not finish setup. Was told to contact their help desk. I called and got a phone call back but due to a crappy connection and his Indian accent I just could not understand what he was saying. He hung up. I guess they tried to call once or twice but I was not yet working for the company so not sitting and waiting for a call.

When the fingerprints were completed they said they had sent me forms to complete to my email address at their company. I did not know I had an email address. So back to getting the laptop to finish setup. Called back and opened another ticket and got a call back. Still hard to understand. He then got me on a Teams call where better and could understand. He told me the help desk people do not like to pick up these kind of tickets as they take awhile to fix. He reloaded all of Windows and got it to complete setup.

Finally got on the company email and found the additional documents I needed to sign. They would not let me print, sign, scan and return as an attachment. Had to be signed using Adobe software. No Adobe software on laptop. Sent to my other work email, signed them and the sent them back. They were not acceptable because I spelled the month vs using a numeric. No mention of any required date format. At this point. I had left my other company. So I contacted the help desk to get Adobe loaded on my laptop so I could sign the documents with a numeric month. That took another day or two.

By this time I had probably spent 20 hours on onboarding tasks and no one is paying me for any of that.

Finally everything was complete. They said they were required to verify I had left my old job before I could be given a start date. (Never had that happen in almost 50 years of working for large corporations). They do that via Equifax. Equifax has another division that handles payroll type of information from companies. Companies send them payroll info and then if you apply for a loan or job they can find out info about current or former employment. Not part of their credit reporting business. So they had to wait until their third party looked up my info in Equifax and it said I was no longer employed at former company. That can take 2 - 3 weeks. I went on Equifax website and looked up my own info and could see it indicated I had left former company. Yet the third party still could not see it. At one point the Indian company asked me for W2 to verify I had left former company. At that point I realized the Indian company had never onboarded a US citizen. W2 are sent out in January and do not indicate employment status.

So at that point I went to Europe on vacation for two weeks. Was going to anyway. Nice vacation in Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

Came back and finally started.

Started the onboarding process in June, started at new company in mid September.

I now record my time on one Indian company's tool, get it approved and send it to another Indian company who prepares my paycheck and then I get a check from Paychex. All the hours for the month submitted at end of the month. Get a paycheck on the 15th of the next month.

Someone gave this post a LIKE? Who could possibly like this ordeal?

 

[wavinwayne]

I worked as a design engineer for a small Indian owned & operated tech company for 2 years in the 2010s. Previously I had been on a govt contract that got axed and was desperate for work, so I took the low-paying job. Most of the employees were from India here on work visas, and were all wonderful people. The owner of the company and his vice president were the most awful human beings I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, and they treated the Indian employees like their personal slaves. I don't blame any of their terrible behavior on them being Indian, they were just a narcissistic psychopath and his accomplice who both happened to be Indian. To this day I have to remind myself that pretty much every Indian person I have ever met except those two have been wonderful people.

 

[Owen Lucas]

treated the Indian employees like their personal slaves. I don't blame any of their terrible behavior on them being Indian, they were just a narcissistic psychopath and his accomplice who both happened to be Indian.

There is a caste system in India, you were dealing with 2 different levels. This is supposedly an issue at a lot of tech companies where this caste system continues to cause harm:

https://www.reuters.com/business/su...confront-ancient-indian-hierarchy-2022-08-15/

 

[mdoan300]

My employer has been on the offshore bandwagon for a while now. What I have noticed:

1- we’re promised senior level resources, but we really get folks right off the street. Then when we’ve trained them, the professional services company requests a rate increase. We decline, they move the resource (trained on our time & dime) to a higher paying contract, and replace with someone new off the street. Lather, rinse, repeat. Like 50 First Dates.

2- live captioning helps tremendously in Teams.

3- execs look only at the cost savings, and not at things difficult to measure, eg, domain knowledge, tribal knowledge (because who has time documenting things when it’s already tight?), etc.

 

[Donald]

I should also add that since I an a contractor I am forced to use a VDI rather than a real laptop connected to the company's network. VDI is a virtual Windows environment you use from Citrix on your own laptop.

VDI sucks. They expire my VDI workspace every couple of weeks so I need to reinstall a bunch of applications on the new VDI workspace I get assigned.

Using Zoom on a VDI is beyond "sucks". Voices are garbled.

 

[dogememe]

I should also add that since I an a contractor I am forced to use a VDI rather than a real laptop connected to the company's network. VDI is a virtual Windows environment you use from Citrix on your own laptop.

VDI sucks. They expire my VDI workspace every couple of weeks so I need to reinstall a bunch of applications on the new VDI workspace I get assigned.

Using Zoom on a VDI is beyond "sucks". Voices are garbled.

I hate that kinda thing. Why not just a company computer and force you to use their VPN to access anything important?

 

[goblin]

I should also add that since I an a contractor I am forced to use a VDI rather than a real laptop connected to the company's network. VDI is a virtual Windows environment you use from Citrix on your own laptop.

VDI sucks. They expire my VDI workspace every couple of weeks so I need to reinstall a bunch of applications on the new VDI workspace I get assigned.

Using Zoom on a VDI is beyond "sucks". Voices are garbled.

They are just assigning you the minimum configuration that works, then tune it down a couple more levels.

 

[Donald]

I hate that kinda thing. Why not just a company computer and force you to use their VPN to access anything important?

I assume most contractors are in India and when the guy quits they don't want to track down a laptop somewhere in India. Or who knows. I was told VDI is actually more expensive than a laptop for the company.

I should mention I retired from previous employer in August as FTE. They have yet to send me a box to return laptop. But it was also deemed too old by them to upgrade to Windows 10, and had I stayed I would have gotten a new laptop with Windows 11 in Oct. That was not enough to get me to stay.

I say I retired as I resigned over the age of 65. Not sure what retirement means when there is no defined pension.

 

[Donald]

My employer has been on the offshore bandwagon for a while now. What I have noticed:

1- we’re promised senior level resources, but we really get folks right off the street. Then when we’ve trained them, the professional services company requests a rate increase. We decline, they move the resource (trained on our time & dime) to a higher paying contract, and replace with someone new off the street. Lather, rinse, repeat. Like 50 First Dates.

2- live captioning helps tremendously in Teams.

3- execs look only at the cost savings, and not at things difficult to measure, eg, domain knowledge, tribal knowledge (because who has time documenting things when it’s already tight?), etc.

Folks right out of college in India are called "freshers".

Typically the consulting company supplies one knowledgeable person and 10 freshers. And charges the experienced rate for them all.

 

[4wd]

I hate that kinda thing. Why not just a company computer and force you to use their VPN to access anything important?

Yeah - our consultants are issued the same laptop/software as me …
VPN is a given - Nobody shares a computer …

 

[Pew]

I hate that kinda thing. Why not just a company computer and force you to use their VPN to access anything important?

Easier to manage since there's no need to purchase machines, send, manage, and hope the users sends it back. Once the user's term is done they only have to archive and remove his access. In my experience the conditions that most users return their machines in is far less than ideal; crazy dirty, disgusting, stickers, coffee stains and skin cell build up, broken or greasy keys, cat pee, etc. I had a hard enough time trying to get 4 field workers to do the 2-hour upgrade from win10 to 11 until I cut their network access on the EOL day.

Most of the big engineering firms we deal with use the citrix workspace because they deal with a lot of short and long term contractors and sending out machines to each of them would be unviable.

Also easier and cheaper from a licensing standpoint because all major engineering programs went from a concurrent/floating licenses to named-users that have to have an email with the prime company. So when they put out a proposal, the prime does not have to pay a contractor extra to cover programs or wonder if the contractor's PC is subpar; they just give them CW access.

 

[MaximumMini]

Alex..I'll take "What is working for someone else?" for $500

 

[Donald]

To add to the saga I was assigned a temporary VDI workspace (virtual Windows). I install all the needed Windows applications. Then in 2 or 3 weeks it expires and I get another temporary one and install the needed applications again. They cannot seem to assign me a permanent one.

 

[Bailey28]

After reading through this it sounds like they will have enough of your personal information to steal your identity if they wanted to. Also how does Experian know if I am working or not? The extent of their knowledge should be if I pay my bills on time.

Some job applications require multiple pages of social security and other personally identifiable information plastered all over it just sitting around on desks waiting to float away into the hands of people with nefarious intent. I don't like it..

 

[SC Maintenance]

After reading through this it sounds like they will have enough of your personal information to steal your identity if they wanted to. Also how does Experian know if I am working or not? The extent of their knowledge should be if I pay my bills on time.

Some job applications require multiple pages of social security and other personally identifiable information plastered all over it just sitting around on desks waiting to float away into the hands of people with nefarious intent. I don't like it..

Experian has monetized your information. You are the product.

SSN were supposed to be an internal government number to track your payments into the SS system for future benefits. There now used as your personal identifier for industry, like the number branded on an animal before the glue factory.

 

[alarmguy]

After reading through this it sounds like they will have enough of your personal information to steal your identity if they wanted to. Also how does Experian know if I am working or not? The extent of their knowledge should be if I pay my bills on time.

Some job applications require multiple pages of social security and other personally identifiable information plastered all over it just sitting around on desks waiting to float away into the hands of people with nefarious intent. I don't like it..

Yeah, everyone's information is everywhere. There is one powerful tool to help prevent stealing your identity and its free.
Lock your credit accounts with the 3 major credit bureaus. You can also opt-out of them sharing some information.
There is another major business credit rating agency that you can freeze your information too.

 

[Bailey28]

'Lock your credit accounts with the 3 major credit bureaus.' Heck yeah, been done for years.

 

[goingplacesanddoingstuff]

I worked as a design engineer for a small Indian owned & operated tech company for 2 years in the 2010s. Previously I had been on a govt contract that got axed and was desperate for work, so I took the low-paying job. Most of the employees were from India here on work visas, and were all wonderful people. The owner of the company and his vice president were the most awful human beings I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, and they treated the Indian employees like their personal slaves. I don't blame any of their terrible behavior on them being Indian, they were just a narcissistic psychopath and his accomplice who both happened to be Indian. To this day I have to remind myself that pretty much every Indian person I have ever met except those two have been wonderful people.

I have seen similar behavior. It’s astonishing how poorly people can be treated and yet the perpetrators get away with it because the behavior is perceived as hard-charging.

In reality it’s due to incompetence. Truly well-led teams make little noise. They just work.

Sadly, the teams clambering and struggling along with a loud whip-cracking leader get more attention.

 

[SC Maintenance]

Yeah, everyone's information is everywhere. There is one powerful tool to help prevent stealing your identity and its free.
Lock your credit accounts with the 3 major credit bureaus. You can also opt-out of them sharing some information.
There is another major business credit rating agency that you can freeze your information too.

That keeps people from applying for credit on your behalf (which is good) but doesn't stop people from using your SSN for health insurance fraud, or Experien from selling your information / credit standing to other entities like insurance companies or any company trying to identify your likely net worth.

 

[rijndael]

Experian has monetized your information. You are the product.

Payroll companies do too. We're everyone's product.