Outsourced

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, June 17, 2004

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – The global economy finally caught up with Cliff Cotterill.

On a recent Friday, the software engineer drove his pickup truck to Agilent Technologies Inc. in Santa Clara. He made his way through the warren of partitions to his cubicle. Then he turned in his laptop computer and employee badge and said goodbye to 25 years of his life.

There were no parting ceremonies, no official farewells. His department hosted a big lunch in August, when he and others were scheduled for termination. Cotterill got a brief extension.

But on this day, when he was only 11 weeks away from being eligible for early retirement, the ax finally fell. Cotterill, 54, joined the growing ranks of computer professionals who recently occupied a prized position in the U.S. economy but are now seeing their jobs disappear – many outsourced to foreigners.

In the months leading up to his layoff, Cotterill was assigned to work alongside programmers from India who are taking over tasks formerly done by Americans, a process his company calls knowledge transfer.

Just a few years ago, his profession was at its peak in the United States. An increasing reliance on computers, the takeoff of the Internet and the Y2K reprogramming boom put U.S. software specialists such as Cotterill in high demand. Their pay and prestige rose commensurately.

His fate is emblematic of what has happened to many in his profession. With the crash of the technology sector and overseas outsourcing, thousands of U.S. jobs are disappearing, and salaries are under pressure.

Experts disagree over how much of the job loss and salary slippage can be attributed to outsourcing, but most say it has clearly been a factor.

“It is unprecedented, the turn of fortune that has occurred in the high-tech industry,” said Marcus Courtney, president of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers in Seattle. “Less than five years ago, we were talking of adding hundreds of thousands of new employees every year in this industry. … We’ve gone from that to widespread job losses and stagnant wages and benefits.

“The reason it’s happening is companies are exporting jobs overseas to increase their profits and not creating jobs here in the U.S.”

The practice of requiring U.S. workers to train their replacements has become a flashpoint in the intensifying debate over “offshoring” jobs to other countries and the use of temporary visas by foreign nationals who come to the United States to learn their employers’ systems.

Critics have denounced the process as inhumane, and some members of Congress are trying to curtail it.

Agilent executives declined to discuss the specifics of Cotterill’s termination. They sympathize with employees who lose their jobs, they said, and do their best to ease the transition by providing competitive severance packages.

“It’s been very, very difficult for everyone at Agilent to see friends and colleagues leave the company,” said Jan Copes, spokeswoman for the company’s information technology department, where Cotterill worked on in-house projects to support Agilent’s infrastructure.

For Cotterill, who worked as an art critic and aerial photographer before getting in on the ground floor of the technology boom, the politics of globalization have become personal.

“I guess I wasn’t paying attention when it was affecting other trades or professions,” he said. “It’s probably been going on for manufacturing and electronics and cars and steel all along. But it’s not until it hits home that you really pay attention.”

Cotterill received the standard package for long-term employees: six months’ severance pay plus another two months’ wages if he signed an agreement not to sue the company. He also could not participate in the early retirement program, which would have provided slightly better benefits.

For months, Cotterill watched as foreign personnel began occupying cubicles in his work area. They were employees of Satyam Computer Services Ltd., the Indian company hired to take over most of Agilent’s information technology operations. Some stayed in Santa Clara, and some went back to India to oversee the work of other programmers. A Satyam executive declined to discuss the company’s work at Agilent.

In April, Cotterill received a memo informing him he would be taking part in the knowledge transfer process. “Hello All,” it began. “Attached is the first draft of the training calendar for the KT. If you are being sent this message, you are one of the trainers.”

Cotterill said he blames Agilent’s U.S. managers, not the Indian programmers, for what he regards as a betrayal of American workers.

“Twenty years ago, they said there were all these white-collar jobs and that if you got your training, you’d be OK. Then they outsourced that,” he said. “It’s not good for the country. I’ve occasionally thought they should reopen the House Un-American Activities Committee and bring all the CEOs up to Congress.”

Los Angeles Times

Cliff Cotterill cleans out his workspace at the Agilent Technologies Inc. office in Santa Clara, Calif.

Cotterill says outsourcing “is not good for the country. I’ve occasionally thought they should reopen the House Un-American Activities Committee and bring all the CEOs up to Congress.”