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I've been programming since the early 90's, and back then pretty much all my coworkers were other US citizens. I started to notice a shift toward the mid 90's
by commandlinefan 2y ago
I've been programming since the early 90's, and back then pretty much all my coworkers were other US citizens. I started to notice a shift toward the mid 90's and then, by the late 90's, they were practically all Indians on H1B visas. Nobody from Russia, China, El Salvador, Brazil, Japan, Botswana, Ethiopia or even Bangladesh or Pakistan - virtually every programmer I met was an Indian citizen in the US on an H1B visa. I saw this across ten employers in two different states. Every tech conference I went to, regardless of city, was full of Indian citizens with heavy accents, and me.
There's a prevailing belief that US employers prefer H1B visa holders because they'll work cheaper and not complain about poor working conditions but if that's true... why computer programmers, specifically? Why are there _any_ Americans in the organization? Surely the product owners, project managers, scrum masters, HR staff, janitors, facilities maintenance, receptionists, directors, VPs and CEOs could be filled cheaper and less complainier by an H1B visa holder too?
I have yet to find a plausible explanation why specifically computer programming (and no other career) is dominated specifically by Indian citizens (and no other nationality).
- ahi 2y ago1. India has ~130 million English speakers, second only to United States. 2. IIT. 3. Culture matters, both on the recruitment side and demand side. Indian outsourcing built a pipeline decades ago so it's now a well understood career path in India. 4. Non-technical positions tend to require greater social competencies in the hiring/customer culture. US programmers already complain about the cultural tendencies of their Indian colleagues. The social and political aspects of other careers are less amenable to dropping in a rando with limited understanding of the culture.
- codingwagie 2y agoComputer programming is easily verifiable, the code works or it doesnt. so you dont need good english, and your education doesnt really matter since either you write working code or you dont. its also a massive cost on businesses. theres like a thousand reasons