My name is Chris, and live in Australia's 2nd biggest city Melbourne.  I've been a UNIX sysadmin specialising namely in Solaris Admin work all my working life of 17 years, and have been in constant employment.  I've worked at vendors, and at customer sites so have experience in both camps, as well as working on salary and contract.

Late last year at my then current place of employment we were told that the bank I worked for ( which last year made a  6 Billion dollar profit ) decided that they were going to form a "strategic alliance" ( otherwise known as outsourcing - although we cant refer to this is outsourcing ! ) with a company based in India.  This company was going to do the work of many people more efficiently and we were even told by senior management its because Australia hasn't got the skill sets to complete the work in a timely fashion and that our "strategic partner" were going to achieve this.  Naturally, as workers we all knew what this meant despite the bank trying to convince us otherwise.

A few months went past wondering when we would get that tap on the shoulder to say thanks for your efforts, but now its time to get the "strategic partner" with all the skills missing in Australia to come in, and show us how to deliver on time !  Well....This happened to me a few weeks ago.  Despite many and ongoing efforts by the project/people I worked with to keep me there was no such joy. We/they were told "it's a numbers game, No need to keep us anymore, our "strategic partner" will provide everything and even more" Heck, they have the skills right ?

This is not a story about corporate greed, although could be interpreted as that, it's a story of a 42 year old family man with a wife and two young kids documenting a journey a finding a job in I.T to suit my skill sets.

Hey, I've got free time on my hands so I may as well blog right..

Just saying...