Could this be why the Disney computer systems have been so bad recently?

[miTnosnhoJ]

The New York Times is reporting that the American workers who ran Disney's reservation systems were laid off and replaced by H1B Visa Workers from India.


Here is the link to NYTimes

 

[suebeelin]

No... It's been bad for years-- the h1b situation is recent. Probably won't make the site any better or worse.

 

[disneyberry]

This is old news. And yes, the site has always been very behind the times compared to other big hospitality companies.

 

[bumbershoot]

This article is a lot of theory.

And it's old. Talks about the people who "monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby" being told October 30 about the layoff, and how the last day of work was January 30. (a VERY decent amount of time to look for a job, in our experience, by the way)


Why does this article keep popping up? It's relatively ancient, and doesn't address the actual IT people and does little more than hint at who replaced people.

 

[supersnoop]

They seem to be rolling out an entirely new site. My guess is someone's been performance testing in the production environment.

 

[OKW Lover]

Why does this article keep popping up? It's relatively ancient, and doesn't address the actual IT people and does little more than hint at who replaced people.

I was wondering that myself. Perhaps labor negotiations are on the horizon?

 

[OrangeCountyCommuter]

So what was the excuse last year? IF the thing had EVER been any good maybe the current change would be a good excuse but Disney's IT has sucked for YEARS! This is not a new problem LOL!

 

[LisaS]

While there have been problems in the past, this time around it's different. The past few months I've had much more serious problems than I've ever had in the past. The worst was when it kept kicking me out every time I tried to make a reservation. Lately the site has been taking 90 seconds to allow me to log in or reporting 500 errors once I do get in. The RAT is flakey at times too. The site used to work fairly well for me but not any more.

 

[dinolounger]

This article is a lot of theory.

So much for your "theory." The layoffs are real, as is the fact many of the laid off U.S. workers had to train their Indian replacements:

http://www.computerworld.com/articl...es-at-disney-over-use-of-foreign-workers.html

And if you think the furor over the very real abuses of the H-1B visa program is a minor thing that will get quickly swept under the rug, you and any others with that mindset will be in for a very rude surprise as we head into the 2016 election year (making a note to remind you of that then).

 

[conandrob240]

Well, I agree that it has always been bad. But the last few weeks have been horrible even by Disneys ridiculously low standards. Sites are down more than they are up. It never ceases to amaze me that a company so grounded in customer service and innovation could fail so miserably with every on- line tool the offer the public.

 

[disneynutz]

IMO DVC has always been at the bottom of the barrel as far as Disney is concerned. No urgency to fix DVC system issues if there are other Disney issues to fix. DVC info doesn't interface well with other Disney IT products and our user numbers are so small in their minds they might get to us someday.

Bill

 

[pangyal]

But the dining reservation system is completely unusable for a large percentage of us as well in recent months, so it's more pervasive than just DVC.

 

[crisi]

It sounds to me like its performance and capacity issues - bugs in code don't generally appear because you switched your staff. Slow performance, flakiness, non-responsiveness - that often has more to do with capacity. Which could be code not written to handle the load, or could be hardware insufficient to handle the load, or could be a software release that's having unintended consequences. But changing your IT staff does not suddenly cause performance issues.

 

[kamik86]

It sounds to me like its performance and capacity issues - bugs in code don't generally appear because you switched your staff. Slow performance, flakiness, non-responsiveness - that often has more to do with capacity. Which could be code not written to handle the load, or could be hardware insufficient to handle the load, or could be a software release that's having unintended consequences. But changing your IT staff does not suddenly cause performance issues.

The only way it could is if you have a few members of the IT staff that are bitter and set the servers to do some stupid task at a higher priority or even just change around the priorities of the tasks that are already in the system.

 

[disneynutz]

From what I read, Disney outsourced the MB project, hardware and software. Imaginers fought to keep involved but Disney looked at costs and the contractor won. Some Disney software folks were used to help with the tie in between existing systems and new but were laid off a few months ago and all of the software went to outside contractors overseas and some here with imported workers.

When software and hardware issues start costing Disney business they will start spending money to fix things. For DVC the hardware and software problems will never cost them to lose DVC business so we will be stuck playing their stupid game for who knows how long.

Bill

 

[crisi]

The only way it could is if you have a few members of the IT staff that are bitter and set the servers to do some stupid task at a higher priority or even just change around the priorities of the tasks that are already in the system.

That would take even the stupidest Wipro consultant a few hours to fix. More likely its either coding inefficiencies (too many calls or convoluted programming) or too little hardware.

 

[3DisneyFanz]

I think this keeps coming up because there are rumblings of a congressional inquiry into Disney's overall staffing practices but this situation specifically.

This also isn't new as Disney has done this in the past with their IT and isn't exclusive to Disney either.

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

The New York Times is reporting that the American workers who ran Disney's reservation systems were laid off and replaced by H1B Visa Workers from India.


Here is the link to NYTimes

I hope this is resolved before it's time to make dining reservations July 1! I was on dvcmember.com yesterday and got kicked off twice while in final stages of booking. So frustrating

 

[conandrob240]

The cruise portal has been awful,past week or so too. Half the time it is down.

 

[suebeelin]

Just read an article that purports the laid off workers are blacklisted from being hired by contractors who work for Disney for a year.

That's just not cool.

The sites are awful and have always been . But it's been more awful recently. I haven't been able to log on the dvc site these last few days

http://mobile.wnd.com/2015/06/disney-blacklisted-displaced-american-employees/