I've found out in the last 24 hours that despite working in a sector that is relatively secure in the current times, and despite working for a company that turned a good profit last year, it doesn't make you immune to being made redundant.

And so it was, yesterday afternoon, without any prior indication or warning that the department I work in was told that 2/3's of the staff in the department will be made redundant in the coming months and the duties of these positions will be re-allocated to staff working in Romania and the Philippines. Welcome to the world-wide economy.

You see, I work for a company that is one of a group of companies owned by a bigger, parent company. As a group of companies there are offiices and staff in numerous locations across Europe including Bucharest in Romania through to the Czech Republic, Poland and west ward to the UK, Ireland and Spain, as well as offices in the USA and the Philippines.

Since we were taken over by this parent company a couple of years ago, we have been allowed to run as a separate company, but now, all of a sudden, they seem to be content with ripping the technical support departments to shreds in the name of saving money (or more likely to maximize their profit margins). This is a clear and blatant attempt to do this as they have the audacity to openly confirm that they are taking these duties and giving them to staff in Romania and the Philippines, areas of the world that I would image are not as well paid as here in the UK.

This does a disservice to our customers as support is effectively being out-sourced to a foreign country. I guess the parent company (which is German) didn't see the uproar in this country a few years ago when the banks out-sourced their customer support to foreign countries (which is why UK Banks make such a point now about the fact that their call centres are UK based) and this does a disservice to us, their staff, by basically saying that we don't care how much hard work you have done for us, thanks, but goodbye.

Still there is a 1/3 chance that I will keep my job, but if I'm as fortunate in this as I am in my poker playing at the moment, then a suppose I need to get my CV updated :-(