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Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers
- bpodgursky 10y agoInfosys sees the writing on the wall for their H1B game. It's one of the few reforms which absolutely is going to happen -- nobody on any side has any pity for Infosys. Better get started with US workers now, before someone cuts in first.
- Clownshoesms 10y agoI guess we saw the same in Australia with the 457 visa, and our Prime Minister abolishing it now. The act is peppered with phrases like "Preferring local workers etc" but we know how that turned out (and why it was so easy to ignore the spirit of the act). It raises revenue for the government, and cuts costs for the "poor old companies" at the expense of local workers. Shame on anyone that abused this. http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1314/QG/Subclass457Visa http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departm...
- zxcvb 10y agoThis is a sham. There are so many people that are suffering because of this. Really good project managers that now have a very tough road to PR, even the role of CIO has been removed from the list of PR eligible occupations that companies can sponsor you under. Why on earth should you only hire tech talent from your own country? I get the idea of supporting local workers but surely if you want a vibrant tech sector, you should be able to hire the best globally; a fair few people I know at tech firms are now looking at not getting PR or it taking much longer and being far harder. I realise that the abuse needed to be stopped but the changes were too blunt.
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- jpatokal 10y agoThe 457 is not even close to "abolished", they're just rolling out a rebranded version of it. From the Australian equivalent of the Onion: http://www.betootaadvocate.com/entertainment/turnbull-solves-457-visa-problem-turning-off/ http://www.betootaadvocate.com/entertainment/turnbull-solves...
- flukus 10y agoThe "not a path to full citizen" changes might break it. The only carrot left is money, which most of the abusers of the program don't want to pay.
- Clownshoesms 10y agoYes that might change things, but I doubt it. As another poster mentioned, this seems like sleight of hand more than anything.
- Clownshoesms 10y agoI'd heard it was just as easy to work around it now, but many voters would be enarmored of Mr $$$ taking a stand now. I didn't realize that site was satire at first: "It is no longer an issue. In one foul swoop, I’ve managed to appease the bible-thumpers and racists by scrapping the 457 visa and I’ve also got the unions pissing in my pocket. I’m a genius. All I did was turn it off and on again." Hehe.
- sjg007 10y agoHopefully with decent working conditions
- giis 10y agoThats a good point but I doubt they can change their working environment. If they are capable of change they would have done it years back. I assume they want to continue with current way of doing things, which worked for them for 3+ decades.
- calvinbhai 10y agoIt will be better conditions than those offered to the Indians, because American worker is not shackled to Infosys: 1) with a H1b visa that'll be renewed only for the duration of contract (sometimes renewed only for 6 months, but regularly) 2) with a greencard application, which means no need to obey orders of thy master / manager and nor work like a slave, just to ensure the green card application is not in jeopardy. 3) with excruciatingly long wait of greencard (for those born in India it'll soon be > 20 years wait) 4) because switching to an another employer is just as simple as signing an offer letter and filling I-9. Another company wont go through the painful H1b process These reasons, are applicable to non-Americans too, as long as they are not born in India or China. So, Infosys hiring Americans will definitely turn the tables against India based outsourcing companies like Infy and TCS. But this still doesn't solve the "stealing of jobs" problem from outsourcing companies that are based in US, but have huge operations in India (HP, IBM, Accenture, EDS etc).
- virmundi 10y agoWhy would they seek to employ such dumb people [1]? 1 - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/indian-it-firm-accused-of-discrimination-against-stupid-americans/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/india...
- Sunset 10y agoNo respect for the profession?
- olivermarks 10y agoThe bigger question is what ethnicity these Americans are going to be...if they are all Indian Infosys are going to enrage both employees on the Indian subcontinent and run the risk of alienating US business buyers also. Infy's best hope is to become a global offshore entity, but the greatest challenge of all is going to be evolving a legacy IT services and support outfit into a credible AI development house, two fundamentally different entities. I doubt it is possible
- olivermarks 10y agohttp://www.livemint.com/Industry/Y9OnR44QmD3txzGNXlDBVO/H1B-visa-reforms-effect-Infosys-to-hire-10000-US-workers.html http://www.livemint.com/Industry/Y9OnR44QmD3txzGNXlDBVO/H1B-... Indian perspective
- dominotw 10y agoWhere are these people going to materialise from, weren't they saying for decades that Americans are not interested in STEM.
- partycoder 10y agoYou can try to work there, but I am certain you will not enjoy the work culture much. While there's a lot of talented people, rather than promoting them, they just drain them. The ones that get promoted are the ones better at draining people.
- MS_Buys_Upvotes 10y agoPR bullshit to counter-act visa abuse.
- hackuser 10y agoMany on HN seem to dislike Infosys, but let's not let that cloud larger, far more important issues: Most importantly, it sets very dangerous precedents of U.S. federal government interference in the free market and in business decisions, and of economic nationalism worldwide: * Today you might like who the federal government is picking on and threatening; tomorrow you might not. Do we want politicians making decisions for businesses and controlling the free market? We can count on the politicians making political, not economic decisions. It's like the worst of over-regulation, but with no legal framework or process to restrain it. * Americans like it when jobs come to the U.S., but the U.S. long has been the standard-bearer of international free trade. If the U.S. stops promoting it, others likely will backslide quickly. Why shouldn't India demand the same of U.S. companies? (If your argument is fairness and how bad Infosys is, then you looking at factors that don't determine international trade practices.) When they demand that U.S. jobs move to their countries, will there even be a net gain in jobs? All that will result is moving jobs back and forth not to increase productivity and find market efficiencies, but for political reasons. It will create market inefficiencies, which could (for example) raise costs for Infosys customers (including U.S. customers), reduce Infosys' overall employment, reduce profit for Infosys shareholders, and reduce overall productivity for the economies involved. It's surprising how quickly the terms "free market" and "free trade" have disappeared from HN.
- specialp 10y agoPoliticians made a decision to help the "free market" by making an exception to immigration rules with H1B visas. H1B visas were intended to address a shortage of highly skilled tech workers. They were not intended to supplant US workers, nor provide a readily accessible pool of low wage IT workers. H1B abusers like Infosys use H1B to hire 90% of their staff. They then undercut US workers and cause them to be laid off while their cheaper H1B visa foreigners took jobs on US soil. Pretty much every government in the world regulates immigration. And if you ask a business which country has less favorable business rules, that would be India which is amongst the worst in the world.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> H1B visas were intended to address a shortage of highly skilled tech workers. They were not intended to supplant US workers, nor provide a readily accessible pool of low wage IT workers. Yes, they were. In a market, a "shortage" is meaningless without reference to a price level, and the only way to address a shortage at any given price level is to add additional supply from sellers willing to sell below what the necessary price would otherwise be for the final quantity traded. Adding more workers at the "prevailing wage" means increasing the quantity traded without increasing price, which inherently favors the buyers of the good (labor, here) over sellers. Structurally, the "abuse" by Infosys, et al., and the suppression of wage growth for highly-skilled labor is exactly what H-1B is designed to support, not just a loophole in the design but the fundamental, basic, high-level structure of the program.
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- suyash 10y agoWhat does American worker mean, I doubt it means 'US Citizens'.
- nine_k 10y agoSupposedly someone authorized to live and work in the US, that is, citizens and permanent residents.
- tn135 10y agoComplete PR BS. Infy yearly profits are 2B. Assuming an average US worker costs $100K a year it is going to cost them $1B + additional expenses not to mention it totally defeats their core skill of using cheaper human capital from India. Infy is playing a long game where it will employ F1 visa students on OPT and perhaps get better chances of H1B lottery + targeting H4 EAD. It is pointless to hire American. It defeats the whole purpose of geting things done cheaply.
- godzillabrennus 10y agoHire American project managers and have them manage teams in India. Makes for good PR and hedges against the H1B visa program getting the axe during the Trump era. Seems like good business sense to me.
- jsudhams 10y agoHmmm now americans are going to suffer, infosys hired bright indian kids and made them do CRUD apps and Managers. If this trend continues this is going to be more exploitation of US Citizens and very bad for the IT industry in US.
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- mundanevoice 10y agoTrue fact: Most people who go to Infosys in India are usually not the brightest but mostly those people who don't get into other big companies. We call them "Mass Recruiters" because they hire a whole bunch of people without looking at the skills or if they are a fit.
- piyush_soni 10y agoI keep on seeing this time and again on HN that "H-1B workers are cheap workers" (mostly with disdain, completely disregarding the fact that they might also be technically 'better'), but is there any data to support those claims? Because if that's the case, that clearly warrants a few lawsuits about wage discrimination in American companies.
- denzil_correa 10y ago> Because if that's the case, that clearly warrants a few lawsuits about wage discrimination in American companies. Interesting. Could you detail out this a bit more, legally? I'd like to know the specific law which makes this "discrimination" illegal.
- piyush_soni 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 ? So if in the same company an American is getting more salary for the same kind of work than an Indian counterpart on H-1B visa, that's clear discrimination on race or national origin, both outlawed by the above mentioned act.
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- denzil_correa 10y agoI think the more pertinent law would be "The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA)" - interesting! It seems that in order to solve the discriminatory pay problem one needs to just enforce the existing laws and do their job. https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/nationalorigin.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/nationalorigin.cfm
- jimmywanger 10y agohttps://stoph1bvisafraud.org/2015/05/30/2015-h1b-visa-rank-and-the-average-salary-battle/ https://stoph1bvisafraud.org/2015/05/30/2015-h1b-visa-rank-a... Google is your friend. Indian body shops pay far less and apply for far more visas.
- blockonomics_co 10y agoThe faster body shopping of indian workers to US stops the better. Sadly, due to NRI worship culture many Indians are becoming second rated citizens in their own country. NRIs are wooed by the goverment and get visa free access and many other rights like NRI bank accounts and have rights to buy property. They live eating noodles in US and come back to India to buy few apartments. Due to this local citizens themselves are unable to buy property in their own country and have to then resort to send their kids abroad.
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- sureshn 10y agoFor decades many american companies have engaged Indian IT Services companies like Infosys to save on software maintenance costs. Now that there is a wave of economic protectionism across the globe,, many Indian companies have to rethink their strategy. Now is the most opportune moment for Indian IT companies to prove that they are genuinely world class and that they have upped their game in terms of delivering with high quality and skill with a hugely diverse multi cultural, multi national workforce.
- pferde 10y agoInfosys? High quality? Skill? Don't make me laugh, we have so much problems with their "consultants" not knowing almost anything useful and constantly making up excuses and preposterous (both technically and humanly) claims. They would claim that water rains from the ground towards the sky if it meant they do not have to admit a mistake and shift the blame towards someone else.
- thiri 10y agoIndian IT companies have already proven they are world class. All you have to do is walk into their endless campuses and see the clients they are handling. People are living in a dream state if they think the next generation of Indian software tech is going to stay forever behind the west.
- jimmywanger 10y ago> Indian IT companies have already proven they are world class. > People are living in a dream state if they think the next generation of Indian software tech is going to stay forever behind the west. Pick one.
- peteretep 10y agoOooh, offshore standards of excellence at American developer prices! EDIT: India's a huge place, and there must therefore be some exceptionally strong developers there. My experience of dealing with Wipro, TCS, etc, tells me that these companies are very effective at either filtering out any engineering talent, or alternatively simply crushing the talent of those who they employ.
- thiri 10y agoSo why are they a 150 Billion dollar industry? They must be doing something right.
- peteretep 10y agoWhat they're doing right is providing minimum viable technical ability at bargain basement prices. One wonders how that's going to work in a situation where their costs are dramatically higher because they're hiring Americans.
- thiri 10y agoMaybe the cost of an American has come down. Maybe Americans are willing to work at the rates Indians have been quietly working at. As Jack Ma would say if the damn phone costs 50 bucks to make why should an American business think it can forever keep selling it for 600 bucks. Things rebalance all the time.
- peteretep 10y ago> Maybe the cost of an American has > come down. Maybe Americans are willing > to work at the rates Indians have been > quietly working at. They haven't, and they're not.
- thiri 10y agoI beg to differ. We are seeing a rebalancing. American's don't need to be paid their 100k a year to live a middle class life style if a Chinese and Indian worker is able to live a middle class life style cheaper.
- blizkreeg 10y agoIf they do end up following through on this, they will actually be successful in hiring American (local) workers, because I doubt any Indians in the US would want to work for Infosys. Also, it's kind of counter-productive to hire Indians in the US anyway since they would need an H-1B visa to work for them, so funnily a bit of a reverse discrimination might happen. The whole thing is a bit meta.
- impish19 10y agoThe apparent breakthrough isn't that they're going to hire Americans, but that they're planning to setup US centers.
- shhdkx 10y agoSeems very much a PR stunt. If you watched Bill Bye Saves the World lately, they had a pretty much full episode advertisement for Infosys going (The population control/gender equality episode). Complete with monologues while panning around their campus and positive name dropping thoughout the episode. Sneaky PR things like this leave a bad taste in my mouth.
- thisisit 10y agoThis is as always a divisive topic. In most cases, people fail to see both side of the arguments. Working conditions and pay in Infosys are not great for sure. There is a reason how this has come about - companies trying to do their best to cut IT costs. One of my friends working in a billion dollar IT product company says the company is fine with in-house teams for the product teams but everything auxiliary like Finance systems etc they want to sub-contract to Infy and the likes. They have much larger budget for contracting than they do for in-house hires. The reason is in the managements mind that is a high short term cost with immediate removals, whereas full time employees need to be maintained well. Now the company hasn't done well in the past 2 years and there has been pressure on the company to trim more costs. How are they going to achieve it without compromising on their core products? Hire cheaper developers for everything they can think of. So there are market forces in play and if it wasn't an "Indian" IT there will be a "Philippines" or "Mexico" IT company. There is pressure for cutting labor costs and it has to go somewhere. Sure people can unionize (or protectionism which is happening now) but that hasn't boded well for other industries. Then there is a question of whether US workers are ready to work on the reduced pay and work culture? It has nothing to do with talent rather the grind. My guess is people don't want to work on the reduced pay and work timings. It is a complex problem to solve but this is similar to people asking for US made iPhones. Sure the intellect required for R&D might not be found in China but then the mass production with 24*7 cheap production lines is not something feasible in US. If the government goes after China you can be sure companies (maybe even Chinese one) finding the next "best" alternative - Mexico, Africa etc.
- denzil_correa 10y agoI suspect you are describing "Opportunity Costs". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
- sidcool 10y agoThe biggest complain devs in Infosys have is how the incompetent managers call the shots and kill a metric driven Engineering culture.