India’s TCS Faces U.S. Trial in Anti-American Bias Case
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
"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.
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.
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.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cast
As someone who's switched jobs on an H1 twice, I can tell you it's simply not true. It's a common misconception because earlier you couldn't change jobs on an H1 but the law around that was changed almost 10 years ago. If you have in-demand skills in 2018 Silicon Valley (JS, Java, Python, anything ML, big data, distributed systems or data science will work a treat) you're going to have recruiters contacting you regardless of your visa status.
From my limited knowledge of consulting companies (spent 8 months at the beginning of my career at one), a lot of their employees get very job-specific training in older technologies, understandably because that's the stuff being outsourced. That may be why they felt unable to move - their skills weren't in-demand anywhere else.
see: "If Employer A is unwilling to go through with the employment offer, the case ends. In that event, the I-485 case cannot proceed, as there is no intent to employ the sponsored worker. The same would be true if the sponsored worker is unwilling or unable to work for the sponsoring employer and wants to stay with the new employer, in this example, Employer B."
My friends from India have been waiting 8 years, paid hundreds of thousands in US taxes and are still years away from getting their GC. So I can say with complete certainty that this figure is incorrect. I wish it weren't. But we have an obligation to understand the law and the situation as it exists rather than as we wish it did. These are real people with families, houses, etc. who are afraid every day that by the whim of their employer they'd have to pack up their whole lives and leave at the drop of a hat. No one deserves that.
Your Indian friends have been waiting 8 years because their turn in line hasn't come yet. The place in line refers to the date of the most recent application that was granted a green card - the date your GC application was filed is known as a "priority date".
For Indian and Chinese nationals with Master's degrees, applications with a priority date of around 2009 are only now receiving green cards. This is the "8 year wait" that your friends are referring to.*
If someone with a priority date circa 2012 were to change their job right now you are correct that they would need to "restart the green card process" at their new job. A new green card application takes between 1 and 2 years. But it doesn't matter because their priority date is at least 3 years away anyway. And the new green card application at their new job can re-use the same 2012 priority date from the old GC application by the previous employer - so they'll receive their green card at the same time as they would by staying at their old employer.
*The only reason this line exists for Indians and Chinese is because green cards are apportioned by the applicants' country of birth, without regard to the population of that country. Since India and China are by far the largest countries in the world, they simply have more applicants than anyone else. Put another way, a Master's degree holder from the Seychelles could get a green card in the same amount of time as a Canadian or an Eritrean or Italian or Brazilian - between 1 and 2 years. I think this whole country of origin business is silly, and not just because it affects me personally. There is a rule change proposed in Congress to address this issue: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392
I am not judging. I understand why people make this choice - Better life in US. Unfortunately, this comes at a price which no one is liking.
p.s. I am from India and have worked in U.S for couple of months for a large bank.
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.
That aside, nobody so far has been bashing H1B’s, on the contrary: all the comments so far are for H1B liberalization (H1B’s should’t be tied to a particular employer) so that the loan dumping could stop and so that competition could take place based on experience and competence.
The problem is greedy managers going after “shareholder value” (their bonuses and promotions) and corrupt politicians who knew the situation and yet didn’t step in.
read this article - https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/harman-wants-quiet-ride-u...
skills required - fundamentals of acoustics, vibrations, signal processing, algorithms, coding, managing huge amounts of data, optimization, controls etc.....
this is just one technology. there are many more things that go in a car and are way more complex than active noise cancellation.
More than pay, it is the "culture fit" that these companies seem to care more for.
The business model of these companies involve getting most of the work done in India. For that to work, one needs phone calls at odd hours. An Indian employee will be more willing to accommodate these demands to attend work-related calls at odd hours.
As regulation around H-1B and similar work visas tighten, Indian outsourcers are trying to hire people of Indian origin who have green cards or are American citizens. I know from a handful of acquaintances that these employees are paid well - hence my thesis that it really isn't about the money.
I agree, there could be a cultural angle. But I don't think that is the main reason.
The savings from the salaries of few US employees does not change "the equation", as you put it, for global outsourcing companies - Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, IBM GS, Capgemini, Accenture etc - who make tens of billions per year, and employ hundreds of thousand people.
> 5%-10% are employed in US, while the rest is outsources, such models with few employees onsite just helps to outsource more.
My point, precisely. These companies would not mind paying good salaries to their employees on H-1B, or hire local employees, if they can keep the outsourcing business humming along.
> Employing a few citizens/green card holders, doesn't mean it's not about money
Well, it is about the money as in every business is about that. But these companies hire H-1Bs not to save money primarily. It is not clear to me from your comment wether you are agreeing or disagreeing with that.
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.
https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-indi...
Nepotism is an extremely destructive toxin to a country and her people.
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.
Oh the irony here. On this particular topic, HN is an echo chamber.
I'm wondering if that's a fact or just part of the news article.
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
A one-size-fits-all solution might very well not exist.
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-littl...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
Any system is going to have winners and losers. As I said above, my company can't sponsor new H1Bs under the current regime. I suspect that your startup example can't take that gamble either.
Finally, there are always workarounds. Your hypothetical startup could hire the expert as a remote employee or if they're a true expert then other visas are available to them.
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.
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.
Unfortunately, this is a political issue. Eq the changes proposed in 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.
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-littl...
But regardless, it’s not like all unemployed are competing with body shoppers, while the HN crowd probablybisnt either.
The real leeches in this system are the consulting/placement shops.
Secondly - H1B can be extended indefinitely while the AOS process is pending, this is in the news right now since Trump's admin announced they are looking into ways to prevent this. The same news are saying over a million H1Bs holders will be affected if the admin succeeds.