4 ms·

I am having trouble understanding your point and hoping you can clarify it. Disney contracted with this company to perform this action. Isn't Disney responsibl

by pgrote 11y ago

I am having trouble understanding your point and hoping you can clarify it. Disney contracted with this company to perform this action. Isn't Disney responsible for accepting these actions?

Balgair 11y ago
So Disney contracts out the work to these body shops. The H1-B guy is an employee of the contracted-to firm, not of Disney. Disney is simply contracting out the work to a cheaper company. The contracted-to company says they can't find the workers, has enough lawyers to actually prove it, hires H1-Bs, and then contracts them to Disney.
exelius 11y ago
Disney doesn't ask questions about how people are procured. From Disney's perspective, they're just hiring a company to take over technical operations and support. Technology is honestly not Disney's core competency, so it makes sense to outsource to someone who can do the same work with a lower cost base because it IS their core competency. They just have to sign a contract with Cognizant/Wipro/Infosys/etc that says they will provide managed services covering X, Y and Z products for $X million per year. Managed services contracts allow a contractor to have near complete control over personnel decisions; the client doesn't ask questions about how they can do it so cheap because they have no say in the matter anyway. Managed services contracts are managed against SLAs, so as long as you meet your SLAs, you get paid.
- talmand 11y ago
  I would somewhat disagree with the thought that technology is not Disney's core competency. Technology is a really, really big deal for Disney and has been for a long time. It is a major part of their day-to-day across the entire company and they are quite competent at it. They didn't hand these tasks over to someone else because they were somehow better at it or Disney's people were incompetent. I simply cannot believe that.
  - exelius 11y ago
    Technology is not their core competency, marketing is. All of their technology would be far less valuable without Mickey, Elsa and Cinderella plastered all over it. Their C-suite may have decided that their technology department was too expensive and the needs of the business could be adequately served by an outside firm. Quality likely didn't factor in to the decision; so long as it was good enough to not be a roadblock for their marketing teams.
    - talmand 11y ago
      But what are they marketing? It isn't just their characters and movies. Disney is huge and the majority of it heavily relies on technology of many types, including their marketing. I would say they don't have a single core competency, it is a multi-faceted company.
  - prostoalex 11y ago
    This is the entity that controls Disney entertainment parks. I can see how in-house software engineering is important for some of their entities like Pixar, for Disneyland/Disneyworld it's hardly core competence.
    - talmand 11y ago
      Except that almost the entirety of the theme parks are run by technology to rival any other part of the company.
- bpyne 11y ago
  I was drawing up a reply that makes an analogy to home contractors using undocumented labor. (I won't entertain far-below-market bids because those contractors are certainly using undocumented labor.) But, then I realized that I eat in restaurants that most likely use undocumented labor, so I have no moral high ground on this issue. (sigh...) Moving away from analogy to Disney contracting with an IT firm like Cognizant, just to draw a name from the list you provided. Cognizant is perfectly well documenting the labor, but they are stretching beyond recognition job definitions to get around the "spirit" of the H1B law. It would be interesting for the US legal system to have an "...in the spirit of..." requirement in determining violation in these matters rather than strictly a "...conforms to the written letter of..." requirement. It might prevent some of this cat-and-mouse bs.
dspillett 11y ago
All Disney have done from their "you can't prove anything else" point of view is cut costs by finding a cheaper source of local labour through a 3rd party. They have no control over how said 3rd party arranges for the cheaper labour to be made available, or at least no control that can be proven beyond doubt. In fact they probably have no interest at all in how the people get to them - it is none of their business and something to concern the 3rd party only. At least that is my reading of the situation.
- jonlucc 11y ago
  In fact, if Disney had control over hiring decisions by the contractor, they'd open themselves up to co-employment issues.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- sremani 11y ago
  Anyone who contracts work to Cognizant knows the composition of the labor-pool. To play ignorant is beyond hilarious, esp. when your CTO is named Tilak Mandadi.
hibikir 11y ago
It's the same as any consulting arrangement, common in big companies. My current contracting client has about 20% of their IT staff in house, and the rest is consultants like me. This is done often for accounting reasons: The employee is an expense, accounting-wise. I am paid out of a project, and employed only while the projects is there, so my salary is considered a capital investment. In my specific case, I am far more expensive than their employees, but accounting wise, my expense is far more convenient. I do not work for my contracting client: I work for an intermediate company. How I get paid, what is my visa status... it's all none of their business. The same thing happens here. No company is laying off Americans to hire H1-Bs. One company hires H1-Bs, another lays off Americans/Green card holders, and the companies just contract a price for the work. Disney can say they have no idea whatsoever of the immigration status of their contacted workforce. Is it shady? Absolutely. Do I like it? Not a bit. But it's not against the law. If there's anyone you could claim might end up in legal trouble at some point, it's the contracting firm, not Disney. But even then, I doubt it: Body shops don't hire a citizen or permanent resident that is any good, because anyone that is good will get better money and working conditions elsewhere. They really don't get applicants.
yourapostasy 11y ago
No. Standard indemnity clauses in contracts, plus realities of current mass communications, judicial, regulatory and political practices, combine to let the abuse transpire as the normal course for a plurality of the visas. HCL/Cognizant/Wipro/Tata/etc.: We offer an awesome IT work force for cheap. Disney/American-company: Great. Of course, by this contract you accept full responsibility for making sure everything you do is legal. HCL/Cognizant/Wipro/Tata/etc.: Naturally. Reality steps in at this point. Various visas can be abused in the transaction. Unless there is national media attention like in this case, there is no pressure on the transaction to curb the abuses. The body shops don't care if one or a handful of citizens successfully complain and overturn their individual positions; these outsourcing+offshoring contracts are typically huge, and a few positions out of hundreds will not tank the deal. Even if abuse is uncovered (and lacking specific facts in even Disney's case, there is no telling if what happened actually would run afoul of any regulations), there are no interested parties with sufficiently deep pockets to judicially prosecute. Even if it was successfully prosecuted judicially, the fines are a slap on the wrist for the big body shops. Even if the case is big enough that the judiciary kicks over the case to the relevant executive agency(ies) for follow up, there is no incentive for the agency to enforce the regulations; the body shops are their biggest "customers". Diminishing volume by banning or restricting to a "sit up and take notice" level like 5% of historical grants, increases the agency's work load per granted visa. It is less effort for the agency to process fewer grants of big blocks of visas, so the big body shops are attractive grant targets for the federal agency's management. Even if the agency's management makes an exception to make its life harder for itself and decides to take action, its life doesn't just become operationally more difficult, but also politically, which can result in budget cuts in retaliation and rebound into more operational challenges. The incentives are quite stacked against individual American workers without access to equivalent collectivized resources that corporations and syndicates have. This won't change until the cost of living in the US comes way down. The low-hanging fruit for US cost of living is real estate (not the buildings, the dirt), as that comprises a minimum of 30% of wages, and in expensive tech metro areas, closer to 50% of wages. That isn't likely to happen short of massive macroeconomic changes, so that is why I don't think this situation will change in the near to mid-term (4-5 decades) future, if ever. I wonder if a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)-based reciprocal visa exchange might help ameliorate the situation, at least for citizens who can work remotely. For X visas granted to a nation, that nation immediately grants X * PPP-factor resident visas with the same duration to a random lottery of Americans who sign up for it, with Americans displaced by an H1-B receiving priority. Make the identification of displaced workers by time not by job, to avoid companies gaming the system. If a company lays off a citizen within X time, and hires an H1-B into any position within the same time period, regardless of the H1-B's job position or geographic location, then that citizen is counted as displaced. If by PPP the median wage in the US is 10X over India, then for each H1-B granted India opens up 10 visas of the same duration for Americans by lottery (or give first dibs to anyone who is replaced by an H1-B). I don't see this really helping older American workers closer to retirement, but for the subset of the HN crowd who see a streamlined visa process to live in India while building out their MVP and getting revenue traction, taking the "living day-to-day" expenses portion of their seed funding and expanding it out 5-10X could be very attractive.

by pgrote 11y ago

I am having trouble understanding your point and hoping you can clarify it. Disney contracted with this company to perform this action. Isn't Disney responsible for accepting these actions?

Balgair 11y ago

So Disney contracts out the work to these body shops. The H1-B guy is an employee of the contracted-to firm, not of Disney. Disney is simply contracting out the work to a cheaper company. The contracted-to company says they can't find the workers, has enough lawyers to actually prove it, hires H1-Bs, and then contracts them to Disney.

exelius 11y ago

Disney doesn't ask questions about how people are procured. From Disney's perspective, they're just hiring a company to take over technical operations and support. Technology is honestly not Disney's core competency, so it makes sense to outsource to someone who can do the same work with a lower cost base because it IS their core competency. They just have to sign a contract with Cognizant/Wipro/Infosys/etc that says they will provide managed services covering X, Y and Z products for $X million per year. Managed services contracts allow a contractor to have near complete control over personnel decisions; the client doesn't ask questions about how they can do it so cheap because they have no say in the matter anyway. Managed services contracts are managed against SLAs, so as long as you meet your SLAs, you get paid.

talmand 11y ago
I would somewhat disagree with the thought that technology is not Disney's core competency. Technology is a really, really big deal for Disney and has been for a long time. It is a major part of their day-to-day across the entire company and they are quite competent at it. They didn't hand these tasks over to someone else because they were somehow better at it or Disney's people were incompetent. I simply cannot believe that.
- exelius 11y ago
  Technology is not their core competency, marketing is. All of their technology would be far less valuable without Mickey, Elsa and Cinderella plastered all over it. Their C-suite may have decided that their technology department was too expensive and the needs of the business could be adequately served by an outside firm. Quality likely didn't factor in to the decision; so long as it was good enough to not be a roadblock for their marketing teams.
  - talmand 11y ago
    But what are they marketing? It isn't just their characters and movies. Disney is huge and the majority of it heavily relies on technology of many types, including their marketing. I would say they don't have a single core competency, it is a multi-faceted company.
- prostoalex 11y ago
  This is the entity that controls Disney entertainment parks. I can see how in-house software engineering is important for some of their entities like Pixar, for Disneyland/Disneyworld it's hardly core competence.
  - talmand 11y ago
    Except that almost the entirety of the theme parks are run by technology to rival any other part of the company.
bpyne 11y ago
I was drawing up a reply that makes an analogy to home contractors using undocumented labor. (I won't entertain far-below-market bids because those contractors are certainly using undocumented labor.) But, then I realized that I eat in restaurants that most likely use undocumented labor, so I have no moral high ground on this issue. (sigh...) Moving away from analogy to Disney contracting with an IT firm like Cognizant, just to draw a name from the list you provided. Cognizant is perfectly well documenting the labor, but they are stretching beyond recognition job definitions to get around the "spirit" of the H1B law. It would be interesting for the US legal system to have an "...in the spirit of..." requirement in determining violation in these matters rather than strictly a "...conforms to the written letter of..." requirement. It might prevent some of this cat-and-mouse bs.

dspillett 11y ago

All Disney have done from their "you can't prove anything else" point of view is cut costs by finding a cheaper source of local labour through a 3rd party. They have no control over how said 3rd party arranges for the cheaper labour to be made available, or at least no control that can be proven beyond doubt. In fact they probably have no interest at all in how the people get to them - it is none of their business and something to concern the 3rd party only. At least that is my reading of the situation.

jonlucc 11y ago
In fact, if Disney had control over hiring decisions by the contractor, they'd open themselves up to co-employment issues.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sremani 11y ago
Anyone who contracts work to Cognizant knows the composition of the labor-pool. To play ignorant is beyond hilarious, esp. when your CTO is named Tilak Mandadi.

hibikir 11y ago

It's the same as any consulting arrangement, common in big companies. My current contracting client has about 20% of their IT staff in house, and the rest is consultants like me. This is done often for accounting reasons: The employee is an expense, accounting-wise. I am paid out of a project, and employed only while the projects is there, so my salary is considered a capital investment. In my specific case, I am far more expensive than their employees, but accounting wise, my expense is far more convenient. I do not work for my contracting client: I work for an intermediate company. How I get paid, what is my visa status... it's all none of their business. The same thing happens here. No company is laying off Americans to hire H1-Bs. One company hires H1-Bs, another lays off Americans/Green card holders, and the companies just contract a price for the work. Disney can say they have no idea whatsoever of the immigration status of their contacted workforce. Is it shady? Absolutely. Do I like it? Not a bit. But it's not against the law. If there's anyone you could claim might end up in legal trouble at some point, it's the contracting firm, not Disney. But even then, I doubt it: Body shops don't hire a citizen or permanent resident that is any good, because anyone that is good will get better money and working conditions elsewhere. They really don't get applicants.

yourapostasy 11y ago

No. Standard indemnity clauses in contracts, plus realities of current mass communications, judicial, regulatory and political practices, combine to let the abuse transpire as the normal course for a plurality of the visas. HCL/Cognizant/Wipro/Tata/etc.: We offer an awesome IT work force for cheap. Disney/American-company: Great. Of course, by this contract you accept full responsibility for making sure everything you do is legal. HCL/Cognizant/Wipro/Tata/etc.: Naturally. Reality steps in at this point. Various visas can be abused in the transaction. Unless there is national media attention like in this case, there is no pressure on the transaction to curb the abuses. The body shops don't care if one or a handful of citizens successfully complain and overturn their individual positions; these outsourcing+offshoring contracts are typically huge, and a few positions out of hundreds will not tank the deal. Even if abuse is uncovered (and lacking specific facts in even Disney's case, there is no telling if what happened actually would run afoul of any regulations), there are no interested parties with sufficiently deep pockets to judicially prosecute. Even if it was successfully prosecuted judicially, the fines are a slap on the wrist for the big body shops. Even if the case is big enough that the judiciary kicks over the case to the relevant executive agency(ies) for follow up, there is no incentive for the agency to enforce the regulations; the body shops are their biggest "customers". Diminishing volume by banning or restricting to a "sit up and take notice" level like 5% of historical grants, increases the agency's work load per granted visa. It is less effort for the agency to process fewer grants of big blocks of visas, so the big body shops are attractive grant targets for the federal agency's management. Even if the agency's management makes an exception to make its life harder for itself and decides to take action, its life doesn't just become operationally more difficult, but also politically, which can result in budget cuts in retaliation and rebound into more operational challenges. The incentives are quite stacked against individual American workers without access to equivalent collectivized resources that corporations and syndicates have. This won't change until the cost of living in the US comes way down. The low-hanging fruit for US cost of living is real estate (not the buildings, the dirt), as that comprises a minimum of 30% of wages, and in expensive tech metro areas, closer to 50% of wages. That isn't likely to happen short of massive macroeconomic changes, so that is why I don't think this situation will change in the near to mid-term (4-5 decades) future, if ever. I wonder if a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)-based reciprocal visa exchange might help ameliorate the situation, at least for citizens who can work remotely. For X visas granted to a nation, that nation immediately grants X * PPP-factor resident visas with the same duration to a random lottery of Americans who sign up for it, with Americans displaced by an H1-B receiving priority. Make the identification of displaced workers by time not by job, to avoid companies gaming the system. If a company lays off a citizen within X time, and hires an H1-B into any position within the same time period, regardless of the H1-B's job position or geographic location, then that citizen is counted as displaced. If by PPP the median wage in the US is 10X over India, then for each H1-B granted India opens up 10 visas of the same duration for Americans by lottery (or give first dibs to anyone who is replaced by an H1-B). I don't see this really helping older American workers closer to retirement, but for the subset of the HN crowd who see a streamlined visa process to live in India while building out their MVP and getting revenue traction, taking the "living day-to-day" expenses portion of their seed funding and expanding it out 5-10X could be very attractive.