8 ms·

Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

114 points by tiff_seattle 2y ago

pylua 2y ago
Paywall, but it is clear that companies are literally starving for cheap labor. They are willing to do anything, including bringing over workers on potentially inappropriate visas ( I am not a lawyer, just what I have seen). Honestly I am surprised that they didn’t just hire directly in India.
- com2kid 2y ago
  Hot take, solving housing prices on the west coast would provide a huge boost to the US economy. The nightmare that city councils in the Bay Area and the Seattle metro have caused are detrimental to America as a whole.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    The US simply has massive unmet demand for agglomeration and nowhere is providing it
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  If the people predicting re-onshoring of production are correct (same people are predicting generally the collapse of China from demographics, which is a tad dramatic), companies need to get used to paying more for labor. Globalization is coming to an end. An unparalleled period of worldwide navigational stability and political stability enabled indirect access to labor markets of a vastly larger size. Why is that? Because the USA is increasingly not seeing value as the world's police, because increasing totalitarian aggression from China/Russia, from inevitable stress due to climate change. There was also demographic bulges from the boomers in this period, compounded with both-parents/partners work that also increased the labor supply. Re-onshoring manufacturing, combined with the demographic bombs in China, Korea, Germany, Russia and the lesser demographic shrinks virtually everywhere else will mean that labor supply will decrease, and companies better get used to paying the worker bees more and the financial wizard CEOs less. You know, unless AI and Robotics waves their magic wand, but even then ... things are going to change.
  - lizardking 2y ago
    Found Peter Zeihan’s burner account ;)
    - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
      It definitely is a lot of Zeihan in there, but a lot of what he says is compelling. I don't necessarily buy the "pirates are coming" because the US abandons patrolling the high seas. I think China can replace its demographic losses in the cities by pulling from the rural areas. But... with the end of oil as a paramount geopolitical concern due to our domestic production and EVs/alt energy ... why would we keep 13 carrier groups around? WHy are we doing all this "free defense"? Why are we essentially allowing China to own our production and give them a massive technology transfer? And China is definitely turning totalitarian and incompetent and there are real signs of distress coming out of the country. Zeihan used to be mocked, but then we signed the chips-in-the-USA and batteries-in-the-USA and more "moving production to Mexico" stories in the news. So there is definitely some re-onshoring happening. Zeihan also poo-poos alt energy and EVs, he doesn't seem to understand the economics of alt energy in LCOE terms or the recent developments in battery chemistry that free us from nickel/cobalt constraints. Do you listen to anyone else interesting?
      - slim 2y ago
        WHy are we doing all this "free defense"? Why are we essentially allowing China to own our production you have it backwards. china is not owning your production, you are exploiting chinese labor. and it's not "free defense" you are bullying sovereign states with your army to extract submission to your exploitative economics
        AtlasBarfed 2y ago
        That s the balance sheet bargain: cheap labor. However, politically China owns your physical factories, and switching production if there's a war over Taiwan is not a two week sprint / 5 point ticket.
- throwaway5959 2y ago
  They’re starving so badly for cheap talent that they’re taking in record profits.
  - pylua 2y ago
    That seems like the only lever these companies have to pull to increase the stock price.
ushtaritk421 2y ago
I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. If anything, we should change the law to encourage much more high-skill immigration
- engineer_22 2y ago
  H1B means that there are no Americans capable of doing the job
  - salawat 2y ago
    Actually, as a hiring manager, you can't discriminate between whether someone is a U.S. Citizen or an H1B. So in reality, you're going through a stack of applicants in order. If your HR group puts a bunch of H1B's in front of a citizen candidate, that's it. So no, your assertion that there is an implicit "there is no American we can hire to fill this" is false. We can't even consider that.
    - anakaine 2y ago
      Sounds crap. Also, what hiring manager is letting HR decide in what order their candidate pool is meritorious? HR can barely judge a local talent contest let alone someone's ability to undertake skilled work. If I say to my HR that a candidate needs to know Python with environmental experience I'm just as likely to have a candidate put forward who was a wildlife carer 20 years ago since they handled pythons as I am to find someone who can script and understands climate data. They will probably also give me someone who is good with Java, since it's all just computer programming.
      - nobodyandproud 2y ago
        Not just crap. It’s misinformation—whether direct or indirect—motivated by those who’d benefit from believing this.
      - salawat 2y ago
        Look, like it or not, we all have to work with our HR apparatus. If I have the choice between running their department and keeping mine functional, I have to accept that they at some level know what they are doing. Not to mention, when your HR head has the JD, and you don't, what you think you know is outweighed by their credential. Now, was I misinformec by an HR person during my time as a hiring manager? Maybe. But guess what, I didn't control their pipeline, and I had work to make sure got done. I'll definitely be adding HR people to my list of groups to talk to when interviewing companies interested in hiring for a hiring manager position though, because the sheer amount of hell that experience came with was beyond unreasonable.
Rinzler89 2y ago
>The American workers say that India’s Tata Consultancy Services illegally discriminated against them based on their race and age, firing them Question to the Americans: if in the US you don't need a reason to fire someone, how can you prove the company was discriminating you when they fired you if they didn't give a reason.
- mjh2539 2y ago
  Because there usually is in fact a reason and just because they did not disclose it to you does not mean the reason does not exist and it does not mean that it won't/can't be found via subpoena/deposition.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Ok, but if there's no reason? Or what do you do when the reason is something somewhat objective like "performance" because you didn't meet your deadlines or something. Can you claim discrimination then? Otherwise what's stopping everyone from claiming discrimination every time they get laid off?
    - lolinder 2y ago
      > Ok, but what do you do when the reason is something somewhat objective like "performance" because you didn't meet your deadlines or something. Can you claim discrimination then? Usually if that's the reason the company will go to great pains to document it and fire you properly, for cause. This is where PIPs (performance improvement plans) come in—they document the specific areas where performance is lacking, set specific targets for improvement, show that those targets were not met in the time allotted, and then fire you. If a company doesn't do that then yeah, they're leaving themselves open to a discrimination suit. It doesn't usually happen because lawsuits are expensive and unemployed people tend to not have the resources to fight back, but larger companies will usually take pains to be sure they're covered.
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      > Ok, but if there's no reason? If there is no reason, why were you fired? You can easily google/ask chatgpt the answer to your questions - the answer is that some companies are nowadays very risk averse in laying people off precisely because they are afraid of discrimination lawsuits, which is why they generally have very solid documentation of performance problems (hence the reason for the modern Performance Improvement Plan as a papertrail)
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Actual article: https://www.wsj.com/business/fired-americans-say-indian-firm-gave-their-jobs-to-h-1b-visa-holders-6da7cf26 https://www.wsj.com/business/fired-americans-say-indian-firm... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39861345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39861345)
- CharlesW 2y ago
  https://archive.is/JeF2D https://archive.is/JeF2D
iorrus 2y ago
Maybe the company simply prefers to hire Indians better cultural fit etc. this is one of the main things considered when making a hiring decision. Will this person get on well with the team, be productive etc.
- ametrau 2y ago
  Yes I’ve seen this. It becomes a take over. And soon, yeah, the only people that fit are other Indians.
- bastawhiz 2y ago
  > Maybe the company simply prefers to hire Indians better That completely ignored the fact that they went out of their way to fire the American employees. If what you're saying was a reasonable answer they wouldn't have hired Americans in the first place.
  - iorrus 2y ago
    TCS is a very Indian organisation, it would make sense for them to hire Indians in the US. The reason this lawsuit is proceeding at all is because a senior exec said exactly this, they want to have more Indians working for TCS in the US. There is no evidence they were fired because they were American they’re just latching onto this throwaway comment which was stupid but at the same time completely understandable. TSMC wants more Taiwanese working on its semi plants in US for similar reasons, but at least their executive team is a bit more diplomatic in how they say these things.
ein0p 2y ago
Indians prefer to hire their own, this is very well known. And because this can’t even be discussed honestly, US corporations are powerless against this preferential treatment.
- feyman_r 2y ago
  Any sources, data etc. to back that up? Is it also for other ethnicities? How many of the top Indian CEO directs are Indian?
  - basicallybones 2y ago
    I am an anecdote, but this is true.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - smilekzs 2y ago
    Also perhaps indirectly, H-1B LCA filings are public. TCS et al are consistently on top over many years.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    This is just a guess, but I think the problem appears more among low-level employees and managers. Maybe CEOs look the other way but I doubt they have anything real to gain by referring strangers who only look like them.
- bcheung 2y ago
  ...seems even hirer with marriage. I've worked at Silicon Valley startups that were that way. I remember thinking this is really odd how high the concentration was (probably about 70% Indian). Didn't really bother me because it was a great team and honestly one of the best companies I worked at. It didn't really seem like they discriminated in hiring and I never felt discriminated against at work. It was just that coworkers referred people they already knew.
  - 2y ago
bastawhiz 2y ago
I'm genuinely curious why a company would go out of their way to fire Americans in America...to hire folks on temporary visas. If you're going to do the first part, why not just hire people in the countries they are from? I understand the article says the folks on the visas are able to be paid less, but isn't the H1-B process long, complicated, expensive, and somewhat unpredictable? Surely it's cheaper to just outsource the work. Hell, it's probably cheaper to outsource the work and fly the folks to America for a few days every now and then to meet with clients. I don't have strong feelings about what they should do, it just seems like what they're doing isn't really in anyone's interest. What am I missing?
- throwaway1o24 2y ago
  You've a lot less negotiation power as your visa is tied to your job, so you get paid less. You have to leave the country after 30 days if you loose your job and don't get another one. So if you're keen to move up the US, H1B sounds amazing but then you are in quite a vulnerable position.
- rqtwteye 2y ago
  Outsourcing especially to different timezones is hard to manage. It's easier to have people in house.
- basicallybones 2y ago
  It is about control. I worked with India-based engineers writing IoT C++ on deadline (alongside a US team) at 5 PM ET. They had already put in 8 hours by the time I woke up. Total madness and abuse, in my opinion. I left because the management team clearly valued control over competence. Every person in management either was a (white) connected executive salesperson or a member of the CEO's family.
- bluedino 2y ago
  Saves money. Why pay someone $130k when you can pay an H1B half? Plus if you're hiring them as a contractor you can get rid of them whenever you want. Where I work about half of our contractors come in through TCS.
- 2y ago
m1117 2y ago
Indians on H1B are the most loyal. They have to wait for their greencards for like 3 billion years, thanks to very fair american immigration system.
- sumedh 2y ago
  > thanks to very fair american immigration system. Probably an Industry lobbyist came up with that rule so that employees have to depend on the company.
renewiltord 2y ago
If they discriminated based on age and race, that's problematic, but if they selected on some other justifiable measure and it created this result then it's no different from any company having fewer women engineers than engineers who are men.

114 points by tiff_seattle 2y ago

Paywall, but it is clear that companies are literally starving for cheap labor. They are willing to do anything, including bringing over workers on potentially inappropriate visas ( I am not a lawyer, just what I have seen). Honestly I am surprised that they didn’t just hire directly in India.

com2kid 2y ago
Hot take, solving housing prices on the west coast would provide a huge boost to the US economy. The nightmare that city councils in the Bay Area and the Seattle metro have caused are detrimental to America as a whole.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  The US simply has massive unmet demand for agglomeration and nowhere is providing it
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
If the people predicting re-onshoring of production are correct (same people are predicting generally the collapse of China from demographics, which is a tad dramatic), companies need to get used to paying more for labor. Globalization is coming to an end. An unparalleled period of worldwide navigational stability and political stability enabled indirect access to labor markets of a vastly larger size. Why is that? Because the USA is increasingly not seeing value as the world's police, because increasing totalitarian aggression from China/Russia, from inevitable stress due to climate change. There was also demographic bulges from the boomers in this period, compounded with both-parents/partners work that also increased the labor supply. Re-onshoring manufacturing, combined with the demographic bombs in China, Korea, Germany, Russia and the lesser demographic shrinks virtually everywhere else will mean that labor supply will decrease, and companies better get used to paying the worker bees more and the financial wizard CEOs less. You know, unless AI and Robotics waves their magic wand, but even then ... things are going to change.
- lizardking 2y ago
  Found Peter Zeihan’s burner account ;)
  - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
    It definitely is a lot of Zeihan in there, but a lot of what he says is compelling. I don't necessarily buy the "pirates are coming" because the US abandons patrolling the high seas. I think China can replace its demographic losses in the cities by pulling from the rural areas. But... with the end of oil as a paramount geopolitical concern due to our domestic production and EVs/alt energy ... why would we keep 13 carrier groups around? WHy are we doing all this "free defense"? Why are we essentially allowing China to own our production and give them a massive technology transfer? And China is definitely turning totalitarian and incompetent and there are real signs of distress coming out of the country. Zeihan used to be mocked, but then we signed the chips-in-the-USA and batteries-in-the-USA and more "moving production to Mexico" stories in the news. So there is definitely some re-onshoring happening. Zeihan also poo-poos alt energy and EVs, he doesn't seem to understand the economics of alt energy in LCOE terms or the recent developments in battery chemistry that free us from nickel/cobalt constraints. Do you listen to anyone else interesting?
    - slim 2y ago
      WHy are we doing all this "free defense"? Why are we essentially allowing China to own our production you have it backwards. china is not owning your production, you are exploiting chinese labor. and it's not "free defense" you are bullying sovereign states with your army to extract submission to your exploitative economics
      - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
        That s the balance sheet bargain: cheap labor. However, politically China owns your physical factories, and switching production if there's a war over Taiwan is not a two week sprint / 5 point ticket.
throwaway5959 2y ago
They’re starving so badly for cheap talent that they’re taking in record profits.
- pylua 2y ago
  That seems like the only lever these companies have to pull to increase the stock price.

ushtaritk421 2y ago

I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. If anything, we should change the law to encourage much more high-skill immigration

engineer_22 2y ago
H1B means that there are no Americans capable of doing the job
- salawat 2y ago
  Actually, as a hiring manager, you can't discriminate between whether someone is a U.S. Citizen or an H1B. So in reality, you're going through a stack of applicants in order. If your HR group puts a bunch of H1B's in front of a citizen candidate, that's it. So no, your assertion that there is an implicit "there is no American we can hire to fill this" is false. We can't even consider that.
  - anakaine 2y ago
    Sounds crap. Also, what hiring manager is letting HR decide in what order their candidate pool is meritorious? HR can barely judge a local talent contest let alone someone's ability to undertake skilled work. If I say to my HR that a candidate needs to know Python with environmental experience I'm just as likely to have a candidate put forward who was a wildlife carer 20 years ago since they handled pythons as I am to find someone who can script and understands climate data. They will probably also give me someone who is good with Java, since it's all just computer programming.
    - nobodyandproud 2y ago
      Not just crap. It’s misinformation—whether direct or indirect—motivated by those who’d benefit from believing this.
    - salawat 2y ago
      Look, like it or not, we all have to work with our HR apparatus. If I have the choice between running their department and keeping mine functional, I have to accept that they at some level know what they are doing. Not to mention, when your HR head has the JD, and you don't, what you think you know is outweighed by their credential. Now, was I misinformec by an HR person during my time as a hiring manager? Maybe. But guess what, I didn't control their pipeline, and I had work to make sure got done. I'll definitely be adding HR people to my list of groups to talk to when interviewing companies interested in hiring for a hiring manager position though, because the sheer amount of hell that experience came with was beyond unreasonable.

Rinzler89 2y ago

>The American workers say that India’s Tata Consultancy Services illegally discriminated against them based on their race and age, firing them Question to the Americans: if in the US you don't need a reason to fire someone, how can you prove the company was discriminating you when they fired you if they didn't give a reason.

mjh2539 2y ago
Because there usually is in fact a reason and just because they did not disclose it to you does not mean the reason does not exist and it does not mean that it won't/can't be found via subpoena/deposition.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Ok, but if there's no reason? Or what do you do when the reason is something somewhat objective like "performance" because you didn't meet your deadlines or something. Can you claim discrimination then? Otherwise what's stopping everyone from claiming discrimination every time they get laid off?
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > Ok, but what do you do when the reason is something somewhat objective like "performance" because you didn't meet your deadlines or something. Can you claim discrimination then? Usually if that's the reason the company will go to great pains to document it and fire you properly, for cause. This is where PIPs (performance improvement plans) come in—they document the specific areas where performance is lacking, set specific targets for improvement, show that those targets were not met in the time allotted, and then fire you. If a company doesn't do that then yeah, they're leaving themselves open to a discrimination suit. It doesn't usually happen because lawsuits are expensive and unemployed people tend to not have the resources to fight back, but larger companies will usually take pains to be sure they're covered.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    > Ok, but if there's no reason? If there is no reason, why were you fired? You can easily google/ask chatgpt the answer to your questions - the answer is that some companies are nowadays very risk averse in laying people off precisely because they are afraid of discrimination lawsuits, which is why they generally have very solid documentation of performance problems (hence the reason for the modern Performance Improvement Plan as a papertrail)

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Actual article: https://www.wsj.com/business/fired-americans-say-indian-firm-gave-their-jobs-to-h-1b-visa-holders-6da7cf26 https://www.wsj.com/business/fired-americans-say-indian-firm... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39861345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39861345)

CharlesW 2y ago
https://archive.is/JeF2D https://archive.is/JeF2D

iorrus 2y ago

Maybe the company simply prefers to hire Indians better cultural fit etc. this is one of the main things considered when making a hiring decision. Will this person get on well with the team, be productive etc.

ametrau 2y ago
Yes I’ve seen this. It becomes a take over. And soon, yeah, the only people that fit are other Indians.
bastawhiz 2y ago
> Maybe the company simply prefers to hire Indians better That completely ignored the fact that they went out of their way to fire the American employees. If what you're saying was a reasonable answer they wouldn't have hired Americans in the first place.
- iorrus 2y ago
  TCS is a very Indian organisation, it would make sense for them to hire Indians in the US. The reason this lawsuit is proceeding at all is because a senior exec said exactly this, they want to have more Indians working for TCS in the US. There is no evidence they were fired because they were American they’re just latching onto this throwaway comment which was stupid but at the same time completely understandable. TSMC wants more Taiwanese working on its semi plants in US for similar reasons, but at least their executive team is a bit more diplomatic in how they say these things.

ein0p 2y ago

Indians prefer to hire their own, this is very well known. And because this can’t even be discussed honestly, US corporations are powerless against this preferential treatment.

feyman_r 2y ago
Any sources, data etc. to back that up? Is it also for other ethnicities? How many of the top Indian CEO directs are Indian?
- basicallybones 2y ago
  I am an anecdote, but this is true.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- smilekzs 2y ago
  Also perhaps indirectly, H-1B LCA filings are public. TCS et al are consistently on top over many years.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  This is just a guess, but I think the problem appears more among low-level employees and managers. Maybe CEOs look the other way but I doubt they have anything real to gain by referring strangers who only look like them.
bcheung 2y ago
...seems even hirer with marriage. I've worked at Silicon Valley startups that were that way. I remember thinking this is really odd how high the concentration was (probably about 70% Indian). Didn't really bother me because it was a great team and honestly one of the best companies I worked at. It didn't really seem like they discriminated in hiring and I never felt discriminated against at work. It was just that coworkers referred people they already knew.
- 2y ago

bastawhiz 2y ago

I'm genuinely curious why a company would go out of their way to fire Americans in America...to hire folks on temporary visas. If you're going to do the first part, why not just hire people in the countries they are from? I understand the article says the folks on the visas are able to be paid less, but isn't the H1-B process long, complicated, expensive, and somewhat unpredictable? Surely it's cheaper to just outsource the work. Hell, it's probably cheaper to outsource the work and fly the folks to America for a few days every now and then to meet with clients. I don't have strong feelings about what they should do, it just seems like what they're doing isn't really in anyone's interest. What am I missing?

throwaway1o24 2y ago
You've a lot less negotiation power as your visa is tied to your job, so you get paid less. You have to leave the country after 30 days if you loose your job and don't get another one. So if you're keen to move up the US, H1B sounds amazing but then you are in quite a vulnerable position.
rqtwteye 2y ago
Outsourcing especially to different timezones is hard to manage. It's easier to have people in house.
basicallybones 2y ago
It is about control. I worked with India-based engineers writing IoT C++ on deadline (alongside a US team) at 5 PM ET. They had already put in 8 hours by the time I woke up. Total madness and abuse, in my opinion. I left because the management team clearly valued control over competence. Every person in management either was a (white) connected executive salesperson or a member of the CEO's family.
bluedino 2y ago
Saves money. Why pay someone $130k when you can pay an H1B half? Plus if you're hiring them as a contractor you can get rid of them whenever you want. Where I work about half of our contractors come in through TCS.
2y ago

m1117 2y ago

Indians on H1B are the most loyal. They have to wait for their greencards for like 3 billion years, thanks to very fair american immigration system.

sumedh 2y ago
> thanks to very fair american immigration system. Probably an Industry lobbyist came up with that rule so that employees have to depend on the company.

renewiltord 2y ago

If they discriminated based on age and race, that's problematic, but if they selected on some other justifiable measure and it created this result then it's no different from any company having fewer women engineers than engineers who are men.