Hahahaha at natwest trying to blame a indian worker!!

Debt_Free_Chick

sirmarcus wrote: »

Even if this is true, RBS should have fully tested the restore on a live-alike test environment so I don't see how they will get this to court when their processes appear to be totally inadequate.

Fair point - but I can't believe they didn't. The problem with a live-alike test environment is that you can not predict exactly what the live system is going to be doing at precisely the time that you deploy the upgrade. You can test - but the result is "provided the live system is in this situation, then it'll be OK".

Hopefully, with the FSA insisting on full disclosure from RBS, all will be revealed ... ultimately.

innovate

Mandelbrot wrote: »

The information from certain posters (admittedly anonymous - for obvious reasons) sounds fully plausible

Admittedly, I have not read all the posts on The Register's forum, but I spent a good couple of hours sifting through the forum. With regards to the direct cause of the mayhem, none of the posts that I have read sound "fully plausible" to me.

Whilst some of the posters sound convincingly like current RBS employees, none of them did strike me as having been close enough to the centre of the crisis to categorically state what happened and when. E.g. there is disagreement over whether the error happened in the UK or in India - - you would expect a true insider to know such basics. There are also various theories, some sounding more convincing than others, but most of the posts are just that - theories. A large number of posts are comments / opinions from disgruntled former or current employees, and yet other posts are comments / opinions from people who very clearly are not current or former employees. Again, nothing 'fully plausible' with regards to the actual cause.

The fact that RBS officially doesn't deny any of the theories doesn't, IMO, confirm that the resulting speculation is correct. We'll just have to wait and hope that the FSA will publish their findings in due course. Since the taxpayer owns 80% of RBS, I would hope that we won't be denied the full truth. But who knows, banks seem to get away with murder.

Debt_Free_Chick

innovate wrote: »

Admittedly, I have not read all the posts on The Register's forum, but I spent a good couple of hours sifting through the forum. With regards to the direct cause of the mayhem, none of the posts that I have read sound "fully plausible" to me.

Whilst some of the posters sound convincingly like current RBS employees, none of them did strike me as having been close enough to the centre of the crisis to categorically state what happened and when. E.g. there is disagreement over whether the error happened in the UK or in India - - you would expect a true insider to know such basics.

There are a number of different threads on The Register. Have you seen this comment?

"Don't believe everything you read I have seen the incident record from when this started (17/6) and it isn't an Indian name on the ticket for the backout procedure (not until the job got handed over at any rate).


An upgrade from v11.1 to v11.3 of the CA7 software went wrong though, that much is clear."


on page 4 of this thread posted at 1300hrs on 26 June

There are also various theories, some sounding more convincing than others, but most of the posts are just that - theories. A large number of posts are comments / opinions from disgruntled former or current employees, and yet other posts are comments / opinions from people who very clearly are not current or former employees. Again, nothing 'fully plausible' with regards to the actual cause.

I was persuaded by the comments from another poster, on a completely different forum, which I posted last night at 9.16pm.

The fact that RBS officially doesn't deny any of the theories doesn't, IMO, confirm that the resulting speculation is correct. We'll just have to wait and hope that the FSA will publish their findings in due course. Since the taxpayer owns 80% of RBS, I would hope that we won't be denied the full truth. But who knows, banks seem to get away with murder.

I, too, will be interested to see the full report, although I wonder if it will be up to the FSA to decide whether to make it public?

callum9999

thelawnet wrote: »

BTW in response to the OP I think you'll find Natwest/RBS are trying very hard NOT to blame an Indian worker, because it was their policy to sack tens of thousands of UK staff and replace them with Indians, and it makes management look incompetent if this management decision is to blame for the crisis.

If it was a UK worker who made a mistake, the management wouldn't be personally responsible for hiring them - why would they be personally responsible for each person they employ in India? Or are you implying Indians are inherently more likely to make catastrophic mistakes than the British? In which case, presumably RBS should refuse to employ anyone in the UK with an Indian background as well?

Mandelbrot

callum9999 wrote: »

If it was a UK worker who made a mistake, the management wouldn't be personally responsible for hiring them - why would they be personally responsible for each person they employ in India? Or are you implying Indians are inherently more likely to make catastrophic mistakes than the British? In which case, presumably RBS should refuse to employ anyone in the UK with an Indian background as well?

The point is, it really wasn't just one mistake.
And the main problem seems to be one of IT management and resources.

Mistakes happen from time to time in IT. (More than is usually admitted.) The trick is to contain them so that they are not serious, and to be able to put them right as soon as possible. That often needs experience.

It has been a policy of RBS management to ditch experience as a way of saving costs. Fine if you are operating modern systems that the new young (cheaper) staff have grown up around. Not fine if you are expecting those staff to operate systems they last saw in their local science museum. :eek:
Crazy if the proper working of those systems is vital to your company's existence.

It isn't essentially about whether staff are Indian or British (though there are some problems in that area) or whether you have staff based in one country operating systems in another (another set of problems).
It is whether the staff you now have to maintain your core infrastructure are up to the job. And if not, why not? And whose decision was that?

Top Indian IT staff are paid top rates (and deserve it). Many of them work in the US, UK, and all around the world. That type of worker doesn't cut your costs, though. Cheap, inexperienced staff cut your costs - whether they be in India or in Edinburgh.

RBS management seem to be bending over backwards to avoid the mud from this fiasco sticking to them (where it belongs). As others have said, we await a full and open investigation by the BoE / FSA / Select Committee ....

http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/politics/king-calls-for-fsa-inquiry-into-rbs-debacle/1053596.article

http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/politics/tyrie-demands-answers-over-rbs-it-meltdown/1053715.article

benjus

thelawnet wrote: »

So this is completely unconnected then?




Closer to a tenth of the salary than a half.

Really? The salary on offer in that ad is £9k-£11k - I can't imagine that people doing similar (i.e. mid-level IT admin) jobs in the UK are on £90k+, even if they are working in the investment banking sector in London.

darkvader

Wanted to give my 2 cents to the whole outsourcing discussion to India

Firstly, thats one the silliest job adverts I have seen - it is equivalent to someone picking an unprofessional IT ad from gumtree and posting it on here - so take this as a serious advert (gmail as the id shows its from a hard-working agent no name agent putting the advert from his bedroom )

Next on the pay, the comparison is WAY off the mark. Do you know that for about £50000, a person in India can get a flat double the size of that out here? And that for £80k property is twice the size we get over here

And then, a mid level support/operations role in the UK, on average, pays from £22k to about £30k and, equivalent to India, Rs 8L to 10L, is a LOT more

Finally, this one is going to bite me, I know and understand about all the talk around losing 'our' jobs and sending to some unknown corner of a developing country like India but that is way off mark. If we as British, were allowed to buy cheap properties in Spain, if we can go to places like Dubai and get paid tax free cash, if we can invest in all countries to get more than the measly 3% our lovely banks bless us with, then there is nothing wrong for an organisation to go where labour is cheaper in £££ terms, and in most cases, get hard working and dedicated professionals. This is how the world works - we dont think twice when we make money out of it - but when it comes to outsourcing we all are up shouting how they can take our jobs away!

I know this because I work with many Asians and also had the chance to work in India many years back. Most of them are great and really make an effort to succeed so are as good as us on all counts and sometimes better - it's a lot different from what we read in papers here and made to believe about their accent on the Customer Service calls. I find their English better than some European nations!

My 2 cents and rant over - sometimes the comments on here really surprise me and I hope this puts a few things into context

DV

darkvader

sirmarcus wrote: »

Agreed. I have worked within the Banking IT industry for many years and have first hand experience of working with off-shore staff; including India. You just make sure that you focus them on simple and non-complex tasks; for example 1st-level help desk IT support. You shouldn't give them access to complex and/or business-critical IT systems without having skilled and experienced onshore staff to monitor them.

Sorry but this is just one point of view. I know of many more examples where outsourced staff have improved efficiency and turn around times - there must be some truth and factual numbers on why billions of outsourcing deals are agreed to offshore critical work. This is just one incident and it could one of us in the UK who did the blunder!

And your comment on not handing out 'complex' work to offshore staff - not good at all and quite ill placed if you consider the entire work force. It is very true for the younger less experienced employee but way off the mark for some truly amazing guys who are in charge is multi million dollar set ups. There is a clear org structure and list of responsibilities on who can do what level of work. Some of their best talent earn so much that it will put us to shame here - trust me, its not a meat shop these guys run

DV

antrobus

preable wrote: »

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/money/4396776/NatWest-chaos-blamed-on-fat-fingered-newbie.html

Hahahaha made me laugh! Thoughts please! :rotfl:

Private Eye made the same joke last week. At least it drew the connection between RBS's outsourcing of IT to India and it's recent IT problems.

InsideInsurance

For both people who claim to have worked in IT for years and for websites claiming to have "insider information" it is amazing that all don't know the difference between outsourcing and offshoring.

The RBS Indian Development Centre is an offshoring exercise not outsourcing because it is not outside of the company. All the staff there are on RBS contracts.

As it is an RBS centre the same standards are applied irrespective of where in the world the centre is or where the workers happen to come from and been raised. That is not to say the standards are particularly high or low, thats another question, but the geographical location is irrelevant. It is evidently just plain racism to say that the error has happened simply because a coder or sys support person is of a certain race.