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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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The 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.

Your 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.

My 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.

Since you mentioned nit-picking, I'll nit-pick :). You mean "die", as in the singular of "dice".

I believe it is a reference to die as in manufacturing dies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_(manufacturing) basically the phrase is like “the mould is set”

I believe your parent has it right: cast in this case means thrown or tossed. "to cause to move or send forth by throwing cast a fishing lure cast dice", sense 1a here:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cast

- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/the_die_is_cast

- https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/die+is+cast

fascinating! thank you!

Isn't likely to be from dice because it's such an ancient expression, like from Roman times?

Yeah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alea_iacta_est

Trivial detour. Remani hits the point.

Your right which is why the EU has TUPE to stop abuse of employees when a company is taken over.

If the problem is just that US employees demand higher pay, wouldn't a simpler (and legal) way of solving this for TCS would just be to offer a salary that they were planning to offer the Indian workers? If US workers are happy to work for that then fine; nobody loses out.

No. It’s not that simple. I’m an American who used to work for an Indian consulting company and I worked in the Bay area. The issue is that as an American, I could quit my job at any time because I found employment somewhere else, and at 20+ years of experience (more like 35 actually) I commanded a rate substantially higher than all my Indian colleagues (which were all except for one other American colleague Indian, from India). My Indian colleagues explained to me that they were trapped because of the H1-B visa: since the employer sponsors those, they had to take whatever salary the employer offers or they don’t get the job. They also can’t apply for another job nor switch jobs because of it, whereas I could (and did, but for family reasons). They were effectively stuck and made artificially dependent on the mercy of their Indian consulting companies, for years. Because of this, the consulting companies would pay them the lawful minimum so as not to hit against the dumping laws, which is far below market value. That’s how it works.

> They also can’t apply for another job nor switch jobs because of it,

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.

Technically you can, but if you have a Green Card application you have to restart the 12-year process over again.

Not true. You have to restart the process but can retain the same priority date. Your place in the queue is never lost.

That would come as a pleasant surprise to my friends, who seem to be under the impression (and they are fairly knowledgeable about the process, since it is a sword of Damocles that constantly dangles over them and their families). Also, this seems to indicate otherwise: https://www.murthy.com/2017/11/30/changes-in-employer-employ...

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."

It talks about "if current employer is not the GC sponsoring employer". I am saying that job changes are easy IF the new company is willing to sponsor the GC in which case the process restarts (taking about 2 years) but the priority date is retained.

(2 years)

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.

0xcafecafe is right. I think the confusion you're having is "place in line" vs "length of green card process".

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 might get downvoted for this but I don't feel sorry for these guys as they have made their choice. Over the years, I have routinely seen people who make this exact choice - join the US arm of the outsourcing company for depressed wages. They do it because of the "onsite" allure.

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.

It'll be more telling if of 400 laid-off employees a significant number applied and if they did, what percentage were hired by the consultancy. If very few were hired, it would raise the question why they would not be preferred candidates, given their job history.

Or why the employees where not transferred to the new employer unless their role was redundant (note I say role here)

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