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India’s TCS Faces U.S. Trial in Anti-American Bias Case
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoSimple rule: At least 50% of your domestic workers need to be citizens or green card holders.
- ardit33 9y agoMake that 75%..... Sort by the highest salaries, give the visa to the actual employee so they are not tied to a employer..etc... Little things that can make the program better, and avoid the current abuse from some the bodyshops, and make it work for actual real talent/great engineers
- surferbayarea 9y agowon't you want to factor by cost of living/geography/state taxes etc? 100k in Austin is very different from 100k in SF. It is quite hard to come up with an actual mathematical formula that can be used. I can sympathize with the law makers who are in charge of actually coming up with a concrete real formula.
- tomschlick 9y agoMake is simple... Who ever pays the most money gets the H1B. That would force companies to decide if they really need that foreign worker over a US Citizen. If they do because the person is an expert in their field they will pony up the money for the visa.
- surferbayarea 9y agoPerfect. The best case outcome for your proposed solution is a reduction of 1% in US unemployment rate. (65k H1b/year vs 6.6million unemployed in the US)
- Annatar 9y agoHave to start somewhere and go from there. At least it would be a start; it could be refined over time.
- surferbayarea 9y agoGot it. So if you were given the job to fix US unemployment of 6.6 million(likely more since this is just reported numbers), you would begin by focusing on the 1% bucket and then continue to refine the solution within that bucket.
- Annatar 9y agoI would at least fix that bucket rather than endlessly discussing hypothetical fixes and get nothing done. Perhaps I would gain some insights on how to fix the rest, too. A one-size-fits-all solution might very well not exist.
- phonon 9y agoWell, arguably the total number of working H-1B visas (including extensions while waiting for a green card) (and working H-4 dependents) is the more relevant metric. That number is not tracked directly, but it's about a million or so, all at significantly higher wages than the median US personal income of $31,099/y. https://qz.com/949589/the-h-1b-visa-cap-tells-you-very-little-about-how-many-h-1b-visas-there-are/ https://qz.com/949589/the-h-1b-visa-cap-tells-you-very-littl...
- cthalupa 9y agoBefore we do that we need a visa to keep the kids we're educating in schools here in the country after they get their bachelor's or master's degrees. Right now to go to work full time they have to get an H1B, which means they'll get screwed over if it becomes a matter of who pays the most. The US loses if we educate kids on things, and then they move back to whatever country they came from. I mean, it's good for the country they go back to, but if we're looking at this in a self-interested "Good of the US" standpoint (Which we must be, if we're having this discussion at all), we want to keep them here.
- walshemj 9y agoI take the point but why? Oversees students are a revenue stream for universities as they can charge more and subsidise locals or pay the hug wages bursars get. And is it fair to steal the best and brightest from third world countries?
- cthalupa 9y ago>I take the point but why? Because we are spending resources teaching them things, and not reaping the real reward of that effort. Being attractive to the best and brightest is a way to keep innovation and progress going. >And is it fair to steal the best and brightest from third world countries? Is it fair for them to be forced to live someplace with a lower quality of life just because they were born there? To deal with the lack of infrastructure? etc. If they feel a moral obligation to go back to their home and try to improve that, that's great for them - but it shouldn't be an obligation we've forced upon them because we decided that immigrants are icky and all we want from them is their money for 4-6 years. There's absolutely no reason we shouldn't make it easy for students educated in the US to stay in the US, especially if they work in STEM or any other research heavy field.
- surferbayarea 9y agoYeah I have been waiting for green card for 15 years. US Masters degree in CS from top-10 university, 6 publications, 100+ citations. Senior staff engineer in top valley company for 6 years, got multiple awards/always top performer. Then started own company(multi-million$ revenue) and created ~10 high-paying jobs in the valley. With the new proposed H1 changes, I will have to leave since H1 extensions are being revoked. Not that I mind, getting bored of the valley - Europe is definitely better in terms of diversity. Also I have seen that the advantage of being physically in the valley is no longer what it was. Everything happens remotely - yes even sales.
- vostok 9y agoWhy should a company be forced to hire subpar employees? If jobs are the issue then we can just have a jobs program run by the government. Let's let businesses do what they're good at. Unless the visa cap changes, we should just give visas to the 65k most highly paid workers. If you're in those top 65k then the US probably really needs you. Don't tie the visa to a particular employer and give people time to find a new job. Location and industry are irrelevant. If you're providing enough value to a company that they're willing to pay you that much then who cares if you're in San Francisco or Detroit. If you're providing enough value that a company is willing to pay you that much then who cares if you're a manager, a software developer, or a sales person. If nobody is willing to pay you that much then the market has spoken. We can have other visa programs for artists and other people whose work might not be as valuable.
- sytelus 9y agoSelecting highest paid H1Bs is actually not a good idea. Assume you ar doing startup for 3D printer and you found this genius young guy in UK who knows how to write firmwares for it. Being a startup you can't pay a lot of base salary and this is a rare skill to find good people in this area. Even though talent is right in front of you which can make or break your startup, your hands will be tied up by the law. Hope you get the idea... Sorting applications by pay will mean that only top 5-10 companies will benefit from global pool of talent and that would put their competitors even further out from competing.
- lovich 9y agoIsn't price the signal the market uses to tell what is more valuable? If another company is offering more for their candidate than your startup, then that means the other candidate has more value to the countries economy. If you aren't going by price and are going to pick by some nebulous value, like innovation, when it comes to visas then the government is going to be picking and choosing winners. I'm playing devil's advocate here a bit as I am not against government intervention, but it's a question that needs to be asked and answered
- vostok 9y ago
- jitix 9y agoI disagree. Simple rule: Don’t allow visas for client projects. If companies need people let them hire directly at market rates. It’s weird that you work with organization A and your paycheck comes from organization B.
- tootie 9y agoIt still boils down to cost. Recruitment and retention costs money. There are plenty of companies out there whose sole business is managing a rolodex of freelancers and sponsoring visas where necessary. They wouldn't exist if companies wanted to do this themselves.
- sage76 9y agoOr, just pass HR 392, which will lift country caps for green cards. That ends the endless green card wait, and people get job mobility.
- knowThySelfx 9y agoIt's really simple, these companies are using cheap labour while making a huge profit in dollars. They can under quote other companies because of this. Taking in natives mean pay has to be high.
- murukesh_s 9y agoNot just the pay, H1b employees need to stick around as it's difficult to shift to another company, especially if they are processing green card. Also they tend to work longer hours, as I have seen personally, though that doesn't necessarily produce more quality, but most of the corporates who hire from TCS or other outsourcing firms want 24/7 routine jobs like production support, junior developers or testing. Even for development they use the same stack for decades so there is pretty much nothing more to build or learn, but minor patches and fixes here and there, which is barely interesting for anyone other than who want to stick around for the lack of other opportunities.. p.s. I am from India and have worked in U.S for couple of months for a large bank.
- knowThySelfx 9y agoYeah, its like a glorified sweatshop. Is it any wonder that these companies don't get any respect.
- ajmurmann 9y agoI think the H1B restrictions you touch on are a big part of the problem. If it was easy for H1B holders to change employers the market would be allowed to correct this. The H1B holders could demand market rate and proper treatment. Right now it's completely distorted.
- garyfirestorm 9y agoUnfortunately lot of people fail to see H1B's outside of silicon valley and H1Bs = cheap (indian) IT labor = bodyshops... Many fields demand multidisciplinary knowledge (for eg. automotive) we need people who understand physics (mechanical engineering), signal processing, algorithms, data analysis, programming etc. There's a huge shortage of people who are willing to dabble in multidisciplinary fields. Step into any automotive company and ask the engineers if they know how to code or use large amounts of data effectively. You will be surprised. I have seen H1B folks overcome tough challenges and put huge amount of effort in making amazing products. Generalizing and bashing H1B's is not fair, neither is making regulations from SV point of view. p.s. I work in one of the big 3's. I am on H1B and I have never accepted bare minimum salary. I am not an IT guy.
- djsumdog 9y agoI had a short TCS contract once. I remember the background on my badge was green to indicate I was a US citizen. It was for an ITAR regulated project, so we were only allowed to talk about it with other US citizens. It was also just a software licensing server, which shows just how stupid ITAR is.
- raverbashing 9y agoAnd 5 technical people, 2 projects managers and 6 digits to install a server that could be done in 30min by someone in house?
- surferbayarea 9y agoCompanies like Google, Microsoft, Apple have thousands of job openings and are desperate to hire more talent. They will happily interview anyone(from US, India, China, heck Syria) if the person is qualified. So this is just xenophobia(surprising to see such thinking in comments here on HN). The effect though is that top valley companies have already instituted a policy to stop hiring fresh-grad H1bs to avoid risk. While so far, places like silicon valley have been unique in being centers of innovation, this will change. Till just a couple decades ago, you literally had to be physically in the office to work on a database server etc. Within a generation or so, the advantage of physically being in silicon valley will be immaterial.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoGoogle, Microsoft, Apple aren’t Indian body shops. Not many of us think the former are abusing H1Bs like the latter.
- surferbayarea 9y agoIn that case the solution would have been simple - just ban the top-10 in this list that are in consulting: https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.asp... Unfortunately, this is a political issue. Eq the changes proposed in http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article192336839.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-ho... will affect more than 10% of current employees at Google, Apple, Microsoft. Note - you cannot just fire these 10% employees and replace them with another warm body. I agree with you that the abuse is being done by a few companies(some of which are Indian - Infosys/TCS, others American - eq IBM/Accenture, French - Capgemini). However, the "solutions" that have already been executed by the current administration are aimed at appeasing the economically disadvantaged section of American society. The reason for rising unemployment is not foreigners stealing American jobs, it is driven by economic disparity and in some ways an artifact of how technology innovation disproportionately benefits the few. Throw out all 100% H1bs and other foreign workers and it will not move the unemployment index at all. PS: Reflect on the bias underlying your comment re:Indians. If you actually look at the data, you will see the companies abusing the system are not just Indian, but American, French, European as well.
- whack 9y ago"Buchanan claims that at a job fair organized for the employees losing their jobs, the South Asian TCS regional manager was dismissive of his interest in a position." "TCS argued Buchanan ... didn’t attend any of the town hall meetings he was invited to during the Edison transition to learn about open positions with TCS and how to apply for them -- and he didn’t apply for a specific job" I have no experience whatsoever with TCS, so I have no idea if there's any merit to these accusations. But guy-at-job-fair-was-not-nice-to-me hardly makes for a compelling discrimination argument. I've heard far worse stories from women and people-of-color interviewing at most American companies.
- sremani 9y agoThe point is, part of the deal was that worthy individual would have a shot at being recruited instead of completely let go and TCS did not make a good faith effort as part of the deal, and the deal was for the optics. This is not a white or black thing as you are trying to interject race into this. Its more like, if I hire from India I do not have to pay "premium", that is the part of the discrimination. Even if Mr.Buchanan was Black Transgender Women with two kittens, he would not have a shot, the point is the he never had a shot at being re-employed under the new structure.
- tejaswiy 9y agoYour argument would be correct if no American from the company was re-hired by TCS which I don't think is the case. Outsourcing efforts at companies usually start with part of the workforce / couple of projects outsourced to a major outsourcer. This gives them partial insider information on the competence / political scenario / compensation in the company. I wouldn't be surprised if TCS worked with company management to figure out who would be retained based on these 3 variables and let others go without their fair shot even if they were qualified. While this sucks for a candidate, I don't think you can allege discrimination based on this.
- sremani 9y agoMy point is there was no good faith effort to retain, the dye has been cast long before and promises were made for optics. You can nitpick this, but that is my larger point, which you seem to validate in your "explanation". I am not fool enough to think a cost-arbitrage company would hire an American as their first second or third option. Its a given that its only last resort for most cases and that too, it skews to the extremes of competence or keeping the politics stable.
- sidcool 9y agoThis is pretty bad for Indian IT Industry. I would want companies like Flipkart etc. to represent the tech industry in India rather than TCS and Infosys. Having said this, the American companies are equally at fault to exploit the system. There are a lot of complicit parties to this dysfunctional system.
- unmole 9y agoBy companies like Flipkart, do you mean companies which have never turned a profit and are unlikely to do so anytime soon?
- surferbayarea 9y agohttps://a16z.com/2014/09/05/why-amazon-has-no-profits-and-why-it-works/ https://a16z.com/2014/09/05/why-amazon-has-no-profits-and-wh...
- madeofpalk 9y agoYes, just like all the other US tech startups/companies
- sidcool 9y agoLike Amazon? Or Uber? Or many others?
- known 9y agoNepotism runs strong in India. Nearly 85% of the country’s businesses are family-run, and Bollywood is dominated by just a few families. Even job-seekers with impressive resumes have to fall back on personal connections to find work. https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-indians-to-hire-others-indians-and-its-killing-diversity/ https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-indi...
- Annatar 9y agoStrongly reminds me of another country in central Europe. And not incidentally, that country is one of the poorest and least developed EU countries, where young qualified people are emigrating in droves. Nepotism is an extremely destructive toxin to a country and her people.
- hbarka 9y agoIt’s too late. Been going on for the last 15 years and the ladder is already stacked with nepotism.
- throwaway-h1b 9y agoI've been in the US since 2008, and am still waiting for my green card because, well, I'm from India and on EB2. I wonder (perhaps due to my not understanding some aspect of all of this) why there isn't a distinction between H1Bs sponsored by companies that take on outsourced work and others. The Microsofts and Googles aren't the ones meeting out "sweatshop" treatment to its employees. Couldn't this problem be trivially solved by either denying or having a limit on the ability to sponsor H1B visas only for companies that take on outsourced work, or is "outsourced work" not a well defined thing?
- happy-go-lucky 9y ago> TCS, Asia’s largest software maker, I'm wondering if that's a fact or just part of the news article.
- sidcool 9y agoFrom a headcount and revenue perspective, it's true.
- happy-go-lucky 9y agoOK, thank you for the enlightenment :)
- fortythirteen 9y agoThere was a thread on reddit a little while back where a guy who claimed to be an American working for Infosys said he was often subjected to discriminatory talk, out in the open, by the majority of his coworkers. As in they would openly discuss such things in meetings. It's human nature to group up by any perceivable similarity and view oneself as superior to those who are dissimilar. Add in the fact that these companies have a much higher margin with non-American employees and it's not hard to see the plaintiff's claims as plausible.
- princetman 9y ago“It's human nature to group up by any perceivable similarity and view oneself as superior to those who are dissimilar.” Oh the irony here. On this particular topic, HN is an echo chamber.
- rainhacker 9y agoWhy is the lawsuit against the outsourcing companies? American companies took decision to replace their employees with wokers from outsourcing firms. Companies like TCS and Infosys provide a service at a cost. They don't and can't dictate American firms to fire their people and use it's service.