MESSAGE
| DATE | 2015-05-28 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Fwd: privacy and data security
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Forwarded from a private email:
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I was thinking, more than a few years ago when I first started my
professional career in IT, I was working as a temp for CITIBANK at 120
Wall Street on the 22nd floor. I was about 33 years old at that point
and he was getting ready for retirement. The bank was doing nearly a
trillion dollars a day in funds transfer, that is the electronic ones.
Much of it was through Merrill Lynch and institutional customers, along
with TWIXT and Wire transfers etc.
Much of there business involved many predominantly West Indian employees
who would hand approve or transmit fund transfers and they were
incredibly efficient. They were great.
When I came on, the bank, once known as the First National City Bank of
New York, was moving the funds transfers department to other parts of
the world and the country. They wanted the lower labor costs, despite
the fact that these workers weren't paid that much to begin with. They
moved to Florida, Buffalo, Ireland and Philippines. But when the
results came back, productivity all these remove locations was less than
a quarter of our hungry immigrants here in NYC. THE for Christmas, The
Philippines and Ireland went on a month long vacation which drove
Citibank absolutely crazy.... But this is besides the point.
Peter Hewitt was the gentleman who hired me at the time. he was an
aging 65+ year old Irish man who returned from Korea to take a job at
First National City Bank when he was about 20 years old. He rose in the
banks ranks and by the time I had met him, he had reached being a Senior
Vice President, with a nice pension and a home in Gerritsen Beach, on
the south shore of Brooklyn. I was working overnight and he would sit
and talk to me...
He said that he was frustrated with the economy and how difficult it had
become for young people to establish themselves. This was BEFORE the
first dot.com bubble. It was very hard. In NYC, nobody was hiring any
longer and wages had, and still are, well below a living wage, pressing
both parents in a household into the job market. He specifically said
that he wished he could go back and alter the decisions that his
generation had made which undermined the opportunity and prosperity of
the then present.
He tearfully reminisced of the days he was young and how much demand
there was for workers. He answered an ad in the street for workers at
the Bank and between the banks offerings and the GI Bill, he educated
himself, without being loaded up with an "insane" amount of debt. He
recalled how CUNY was free and how he studied economics at Brooklyn
College and brought his first home with the GI bill.
and yet
THERE HE WAS, eliminating 1400 jobs in NYC to Ireland and the
Philippines, even though his NY staff was far more efficient and motivated.
I couldn't do this. I have a strong conscious about how we are
proceeding into our future. How are we going to protect our privacy,
our individuality and our economic well being going into the future.
And how are we going to educate the coming generation. It is a
generation so plugged in, so caught up in the marketing, and so SHORT on
historical insight, that it barely understands which way is up.
They are like leaves being tossed in a hurricane of exploitation. They
are so used to be numbered, processed, statistically categorized,
stamped, rolled over on, poked, liked, tweeted and texted, they don't
know if they are coming or they are going anymore. How are we going to
educate this coming generation of students, to cut through the noise, to
see establish facts, and to understand there historical importance. How
are we going to teach them __critical thinking__ and the difference
between marketing and real knowledge?
If they gain real knowledge, they have a change to be leaders of
importance. If not then they and we will just be mulch. Our students,
and the public deserve more than that.
Ruben
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