Ask HN: Remote companies prefer not to hire remote developers from India? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Remote companies prefer not to hire remote developers from India?

I have been working as a full time developer in India for about 6 years now, and am trying to get a remote job. However remote work culture in India is practically non-existent, hence I am looking for international engagements.

However I don't get interview calls at all(maybe 1 in about 50-60 job applications) and that too generally don't go beyond initial discussions(no assessment/grading of my technical skills). Most of them just reject me upfront even though I match the skillset exactly(and can demonstrate my proficiency).

To people hiring remotely: What do you look for people when hiring remotely? Is there something I can do to make my job applications appealing.

I understand that Indian developers seem to have a bad rap internationally but there are good people too. However is it so bad that people don't want to hire out of India at all or may be I am just missing something?

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If you're not even getting interviews, take a hard look at your resume. The resumes I get from India (and from H1Bs looking to switch jobs) are very different from those I get from European and American candidates. They're dense, verbose, and describe hiring requirements rather than results.

Also, if you're submitting 50-60 applications at a time, you may be spamming, which only annoys hiring managers. You'll get better results from fewer applications with both resume and cover letter carefully tailored to the company and position.

This is especially important when you're applying remotely from India, because hiring managers get glutted with spammy and irrelevant resumes from there. If yours looks exactly like the resumes of the hundreds of developers who've created scripts to auto-submit to every listing on Indeed with the terms "Python", "Java", or "C#" in them, it won't even get read.

Based on my experience in offshoring projects, and several Indian friends that I have made through the years, try to make a point that you wouldn't be like the low level devs usually offered from the likes of Wipro, TCS, Sasken, Infosys.

Many western companies are burned with them, because they usually bring the top devs for sales and onsite development, but have lots of low quality devs doing grunt work, failing deadlines and delivering half promises.

So the best thing you can do is differentiate yourself from them.

Serious question here, I'm in the interview funnel with wipro (senior Dev) and I'm seeing lots of comments like yours on HN recently. Is there something shady about them I should know about? Any articles or links to support their bad reputation would be appreciated.

edit: Yup, I get it now. Their head of recruitment (whose signature address is a wework office in denver) just made me schedule a call with them days in advance only to let me know they don't think it's a good fit because they're now changing the posting to a manager role. This is also after a 5 hour take home code challenge and my original recruiter quitting the company.

It’s less to do with India and more to do with “big consulting” (or bullshit consulting because that’s the only thing they’re good at). See the recent fiasco with Hertz suing Accenture.

It's also to do with India. There exists an even worse category of "small consulting" on places like odesk that caters to individuals and small businesses that are very budget conscious and whose need for software development is oneoff or occasional. Many of these folks are self taught, semi trained, or generally fizbuz challenged. Some of these organizations will quote whatever price you want for whatever work you want, regardless of whether they even know what it is, let alone how to complete it. They keep the deposit, write some garbage, and then stall, delay, lie, or ghost you. I would estimate that around 80% are form south asian formerly British colonies that many Americans pejoratively lump together with India. A lot of the rest are from other low income countries that have a history of english langue proficiency, but none of then have the population that India does. Anyone who has encountered this ecosystem is going to be especially cautious hiring remote devs from India just because there are _so_ _many_ of them who have no business writing code. Unfortunately, as a competent dev, this is probably going to make it significantly harder to get through the early hiring filters at many places. I don't know what the solution is, but I'd maybe focus some effort on visible markers of status/competence like open source contributions, giving talks, etc to try to differentiate yourself.

Aside from the other feedback already given, time zones play a large factor in decisions like this.

If developers from India run into a problem and you're half a world away, you usually don't hear about it until you come into work in the morning. They haven't made any progress due to being stuck, you help them out so they can continue, but they're done for the day. They come in the next morning, get stuck again, no work gets done, problem gets fixed, they come in the next day, and hopefully can continue working.

Unless both parties are making themselves available 24/7, development cycles tend to go on forever.

I've see cases where a whole team from Southeast Asia shifted work time so there was some overlap, but that also takes a toll.

That also runs into transportation problems - my understanding is that there are a lot of people without their own cars in India (especially dense places like Bangalore) who rely on public transportation which shuts down overnight there.

Sometimes the transportation issues work in our (US) favor though. I felt kind of bad about doing meetings early my time, which was kind of on the late side in Bangalore, until I realized that practically everyone there worked on a late schedule to avoid traffic. Without that factor, there would have been no time convenient for everyone.

Going through this right now. This is exactly what's been happening in for our team. It's stretched out development time so much because of it. Tasks that could be done in a couple days are taking over a week just because each back and forth exchange costing an extra day. Code reviews by themselves can take so long that sometimes I just make the last changes myself and check it in myself because we've run out of time.

I'm literally doing this right now. There are multiple bugs with the implementation, poor quality overall, but all my manager sees is the dollar signs. Somehow, they forgot it's already 2x overdue, still not feature complete, and the good developers we have are burning out trying to make up for their slack.

It's a shame really.

This seems to be the script. Has anyone else NOT experienced this?

It's your job to make sure your manager feels the pain. What is he doing to hold them to account? And what are you doing to quantify the amount of work your team is doing to mitigate the disaster?

(It's truly a frustrating experience, and I empathize. I have a strong feeling the people who force these decisions should share in the pain.)

Totally this. I'm on the US east coast. At my last job, most of my colleagues were in Bangalore. Time zones made meetings a bit of a pain for everyone. Certainly nothing ad hoc, and even meetings planned well in advance were usually less than ideal. Even worse, the evening-to-morning "ping times" often slowed progress. That's bad when it's a code review that ends up taking weeks. It's terrible when it's debugging a customer issue.

I have to say that certain cultural issues made all that worse. I did run into the "say yes but then do nothing" issue that other people had warned me about. Also, the team I worked with was super sensitive to hierarchy, who got to make decisions, who got credit for what, even who could talk to whom. This often led to people being offended, or to realizing that the "wrong" people had been involved in a discussion, requiring another round-the-world ping time or two to resolve. I saw multiple people forced out of the group because of these issues and have had lengthy discussions with a couple about how that happened (it turns out that just being too friendly with me is one thing that broke a local taboo), so I don't think it was a purely local phenomenon.

I don't know how any of the cultural issues affect a single developer joining a team elsewhere, though. Perhaps people who've had a bad experience with an Indian team don't think about how an individual would be different. Perhaps they're just discriminating. But I'll bet time zones are a big part of it.

Agreed with this.

However, I have a slightly unethical suggestion especially for freelancers. One of my friend did this.

Open up a LLC in the US. You don't need to step a foot in the US to open LLC here. Get a bank account for LLC in the US. My friend did it via family connection but there are many lawyers who should be able to help international clients with this.

Once you have LLC, it makes so much easier to get paid.

Next step is to work mostly nights. And for unethical part, tell clients you are in South America. Indian developers have such a bad reputation that it is almost impossible to close. But by using American name and saying he is in South America, his close rate is about 50%.

It is not just a matter of ethics. I once had a colleague who suggested to me (in private), that I "adjust" a report I was giving to ensure a favourable outcome. At that moment, I realized that I could never trust the colleague again. And I never did. If you (OP) get caught with such a massive lie ("I live in South America") you reputation will be permanently damaged. Stay honest. Honestly.

I wonder if you can lawyer it. Fly to South America, write in the e-mail "I write to you from Rio de Janeiro, and I'm available to work from 9 to 6 US east coast time".

Technically... it's all honest.

Our company recently recruited multiple Indian colleagues. Then we realize that "paid professional certificate" is the root cause of everything. They don't have basic technical knowledge yet hold professional certificate. They don't understand any Linux commands and have not much network knowledge.

My advice would be don't just blindly execute tasks and ask for instructions. Be initiative, give suggestions based on your professional knowledge.

*my opinion might be biased because of the Indians colleagues that I'm dealing with

Indians have a very bad rep. That being said the best developer I know is Indian.

I once worked on a a mostly Indian team and could not understand anything they were saying during the meetings.

What is your accent like? Can non-indians understand you easily?

Well I like to think so. I have never faced this problem in an interview/discussion.

Neither has any potential employer has ever had problems understanding what I am saying nor have has anyone told me it was an issue while giving feedback(I have started requesting for detailed feedback for my application rejections. Most people don't reply , some that do didn't really say anything about my communication skills being bad).

This.

It's unfortunate but true that Indian devs and especially Dev teams have a bad reputation amongst western companies.

Nothing you can do about this to be honest, just be aware that it's an uphill battle for you to prove you are a good communicator and a skilled Dev beyond what would normally be accepted.

On the other hand, and I know this isn't relevant to your case, but for some reason Romanian Dev teams have an excellent reputation from most people I've spoken too.

> However I don't get interview calls at all

Remote != Offshore.

Some remote work companies don't even allow you to work remotely from a location outside their home country.

So "foreign national on foreign soil" is VERY different from "remote"!

Moving development offshore is often not what companies have in mind when they say "remote", and for good reasons. Taxes, travel expenses, timezones, risk profile, etc. are more complicated. Especially the risk profile. And that's before considering more nebulous stuff like communication skills and "culture fit". At the very least, it's a lot of unknowns.

So, make sure you aren't wasting energy applying for positions that were never open to international (or non EU in the case of Europe) applicants in the first place.

Already filtering that out. Unfortunately most people don't seem differentiate between the two clearly. So I generally end up writing a mail asking about their geographic hiring constraints before applying for the job.

Also, when I say I get very less interview calls for whatever jobs I apply to, it is for companies which are looking to hire from other countries.

I can relate to this. I’m not from India but from that part of the world and have been in the same situation as the OP. Many companies who advertise them as ‘globally distributed’ are simply not willing to hire someone who does not have proper time zone overlap. Plus the logistical challenges involved makes them more reluctant.

Also, you have to keep in mind remote companies get more applicants per job posting than a non-remote one. Unless your application truly stands out it’s unlikely that you’ll get through the initial screening.

How is your accent? I literally cannot understand many Indian people (who were born and raised in India, thus developing their accents there), and I suspect I'm not alone. Are the interviewers asking you to repeat what you said, or to get closer to the mic etc.?

Communication is pretty much sorted for me. I know exactly what you mean and do see people around me struggle with it. But I have never had people tell me to repeat my sentences or get closer to the mic etc. (Well it might have been because of the internet connectivity etc. but never because of my accent)

I lived in the US for 2 years as a kid, so have a pretty neutral accent.

It may be partly because india is looked at having lesser talented developers (in the sense of questioning things, speaking up, really thoroughly thinking before starting to do your work and if it makes sense), while i know this is not always true it seems to be for majority from my experience

I highly doubt living in USA for 2 yrs neutalized your accent. How do you know for sure?

Two years as a child could be plenty to develop a local accent. I know people who lived in Germany for less than that time (usually because of US military parents) and return to Germany after decades of not speaking the language at all with near perfect accents. The combination of excellent accent with barely-existent grammar and vocabulary can be quite funny.

german has very similar sounds to english though. The sounds of English and German are similar, as are stress and intonation patterns.Also, accent is not just sounds its also culture. germany and us have similar cultures.

What exactly is neutral accent, I don't know what that even means.

My wife lived in Korea as a child for 3 years, and has a perfect korean accent to this day (we visited korean recently, people were surprised she was actually American)

I struggle with this problem daily at work. The whole company is remote and we have a new team of excellent developers from India. But in group meetings, while I listen hard I can rarely make out what they say. When my name comes up in a group conversation my standard answer has become, please describe the issue via email or slack. It's no use asking them to repeat themselves or to talk more slowly.

To me it's yet another reason why I prefer async means of conversation over live meetings.

I'm hoping that I'll learn to understand the accent after more experience with it, but if that's happening, it's slow going. Maybe there's a more systematic way to go about it, like finding books, podcasts, etc., spoken in strong Indian accents to practice with. Or even learning a little of their language to get experience with their cadence, etc. If I can learn a new computer language dammit, I should be able to learn to decipher the accent of people who are speaking my birth language coherently, with better grammar than I do.

I've the same problem, but reversed: since I know my strong Italian accent can be hard for people to understand, especially in phone calls, I often ask if we can instead have a chat. But people rarely accept, with the result of having a hard time understanding each other.

So I have worked with Indian offshoring, remote and on-shore since the late 90's for various companies. Currently we have people in India and remote here in the U.S. The reality is that Indian developers are just as talented as their U.S. counterparts in most things. However, where I have seen struggles is around 3 key things.

1. Timezone difference is just too large to make it efficient. I routinely have to wake up very early my time or stay up very late just to have meetings or calls with teammates in India. This isn't a 3 hour difference like hiring in the U.S. remote. I literally have some calls that start at 10:30pm and others that at times start as early as 5am. This is a huge barrier to most companies and teams. This is why you are starting to see a lot of remote job ads with a +/- timezone difference.

2. Indian developers as a group are more specialized in their skillsets and expectations and less able to move things forward without on-site direction compared to their western counterparts. I think this is more cultural as this is how the larger firms in India work, but it differs greatly from most western companies. I found working with really good people in India, they still struggle to task switch and handling disparate tasks as is very typical in many early stage and smaller companies. Where this becomes less of an issue is with large multi-national corporations because those companies will have highly specialized positions which fits better. This isn't about intelligence or capability, just how one culture works vs the other.

3. Communication can be tough, and I don't necessarily mean understanding people like others are saying, although this does happen in some cases. What I mean is that communication is more about how things are said and interpreted. While most every educated Indian person I have ever dealt with has solid English skills (likely more properly than most Americans I know) there are distinct issues in translation of nuanced requirements for most things. Many times with super complex issues I have to find one of the Indian team members that I can communicate best to, make sure they get it and then have them help me make sure the other team members get it. Also, western people (especially U.S. sadly) in general I have noticed can communicate pretty poorly expecting people to adapt to them and learn their nuances rather than finding middle ground, so that doesn't help.

There are a number of other factors I could share that also affect the ability to hire remotely in India but I already wrote a bunch, and in the end, I'd say item #1 is the biggest factor overall, 9.5-12.5 hours is a huge difference to make up for a remote team member.

#3 was a huge problem for my company when we had an offshore job in process. My manager liked to speak in colloquialisms and slang, and he also had a bad habit of covering his mouth with his hand while talking. This all combined for lots and lots of misunderstanding during phone conferences.

Yea, it can be a huge issue if people don't adapt quickly. I don't think we realize how often we use colloquialisms or slang terms until we are talking to a non-native. Then you figure it out real quick. I had this same experience when I worked with a group of UK based people, and I was the only US guy, they'd use terms I didn't know and had to figure out, 90% was colloquialisms or slang. And of course I took the regular (good natured) beating for not speaking "proper English".

Funny thing, when I travel to India, in restaurants and places I go (non-touristy type places) you have to be very direct and remove adjectives a lot of the time otherwise you confuse people. This isn't exactly the same issue with the developers but similar things can help the communication (removing unnecessary terms etc).

In regards to #1 I'd suggest OP look into European companies. The different is a lot less, and if they don't mind working later in the day, you can easily get 6 hours overlap.

This is why at pesto.tech we conduct classes during PST working hours and place a huge emphasis on communication.

One of the bigger concerns for some companies is about any international developer is intellectual property (rather than talent). 99% of them will not do this, but if someone does take your codebase and launches a copycat site, there is literally nothing you can do. No common court system where you could go after them.

Not saying this has really stopped us (we still work with the occasional talented international dev that was referred) but all other things more or less equal, this can have a slight chilling effect on hiring.

Interesting, is this why lots of positions say "Remote (US only)"? I couldn't find any legal basis for restricting remote employees to a certain country but your theory may explain the rational.

Payroll internationally is likely a PITA.

What countries are you interviewing with? I'm in the US and on a remote team. We have a counterpart team based out of Bangalore.

The biggest challenge for us is simply the time zone difference. There is nearly very little time where the US team's working hours and the India team's working hours overlap. The only way to have face-to-face time is if people from one country start work really early and one country stay working rather late.

This means that something like a code review can be delayed a long time. If two team members are working at the same time, the review might take an hour or two. If the review is between India/US team members the same review can take 3-4 days in the best case: (1. code, 2. review, 3. address review, 4. approve)

So really we're looking for projects for the teams that can be done independently with as little cross-country review as possible but this is tricky for our project's current state of development.

I guess the takeaways would be: Look for roles in countries that have working hours with overlap with your own. A remote team doesn't necessarily mean any timezone

Look for roles with larger companies. If a large company does remote, it's probably more likely that they would have a team with similar hours to your own.

I don't think the author is talking about _that_ kind of remote. A lot of companies have dev offices in India, while they sell in US primarily. Nutanix, Ruberik, SumoLogic come to mind.

Author is talking more about office less companies like GitLab, Automattic.

@OP FWIW, I know a friend of friend who worked at Automattic and GitLab had a couple devs from India last time I checked. (But from their salary calculator, it seems GitLab pays much below Indian market salaries)

> Author is talking more about office less companies like GitLab, Automattic.

So these are the exact type of companies I am talking about.

> But from their salary calculator, it seems GitLab pays much below Indian market salaries

I am not sure about this, but from whatever information I have been able to gather/ask people remote companies tend to pay much better than what Indian companies pay.

I think the take aways still stand. Our US team doesn't have a central office, we're spread out across the US timezones but there is still a large overlap when we are working so its easier to synchronize when we need to.

It's the lack of overlapping schedules, not office space that is the sticking point.

Hi Avneesh - I'm looking to hire remote developers in India. Please email me at mark.mclaren@mclarencollege.in or add your email address to your HN profile.

To answer your question: I see a lot of Indian CVs that are just filled with buzzwords. When I see "J2EE certification" I get a sense that the person is not really passionate about the technology and is simply writing a CV that they think has the best chance to pass the HR filter at TCS

Amazingly, I also see a lot of job applications where there is only a one-line description for each job they did. Tell me what tools and technologies you used for each job, and how strong did your skill become in that technology. Tell me what you liked and didn't like.

I like it when an applicant is honest about where they do not match my requirements. It's good to say, "I don't have any professional Dart experience, but I've written this simple app and from what I've read it's pretty similar to Javascript and I have done plenty of Javascript". It shows me that you have thought about my requirements and aren't simply trying to bullshit me.

I love it when you have done programming outside your job. That includes completing MOOCs or writing interesting blog posts about programming (as you have done!). You should have a portfolio of interesting projects you have done - even better if I can download an app or go to an actual website in addition to seeing the code on GitHub.

I hate it when I'm interviewing someone and I'm not sure that they understood what I said. If you get to a Skype/Zoom interview with your potential manager do everything you can to ensure that there is smooth communication. Do not use a cheap laptop - get a fast computer with plenty of memory. Reboot it before the interview and do not have unnecessary applications running. Use a microphone that sits in front of your mouth like those Apple earpods, test your ping, upload and download connection speeds. When the interviewer is talking and you can understand them, nod your head and say 'ok' or 'uh-huh'. If you can't understand what they said, tell them - don't try to cover it up.

More broadly, the main reasons people in the US avoid directly hiring Indian programmers remotely is:

(a) Being a software engineer is the 'golden ticket' to a better life much more in Indian than the US, and this means every man and his dog wants an IT job in India. So you end up with a lot of people trying who have no passion or interest in programming. This means a recruiter has to wade through a lot of poor-quality candidates before finding someone who can even do FizzBuzz. Kind of related is that a lot of the cheapest software development for US companies is done by Indians - either outsourced to Infosys/TCS or using H1B visas in-house - so there is a subconscious bias against Indians (and occasionally more overt prejudice).

(b) India is in just about the worst timezone for US companies, especially on the US west cost - when you are working they are sleeping and vice-versa. You will probably get more interest if you state you are prepared to work at least 4 hours at night - say from 9pm to 1am IST.

(c) US companies are worried that you will steal their intellectual property. This is true to some extent of any remote employee, but particularly with a country where it is very difficult to take someone to court for breach of contract.

(d) More generally it's simply easier from a legal perspective for US companies to hire people in the US. You may have a better chance by offering an initial 1- or 2-month contract to the US company, with the understanding that at the end of the contract they will either walk away or hire you on a full-time basis.

(e) Indian accents can be hard to understand to western ears - a short video of you talking about your latest personal project is very helpful in this regard, and also as a general 'sales pitch'. Spend time to make a quality video and put it on YouTube. Here's a good example, although you should also include a talking-to-camera clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AexrSP9uY0

(f) There are cultural differences that reflect poorly on Indians, particularly around not wanting to look bad. For example it seems Indians are very reluctant to say "we're behind on this task and will not finish by Tuesday" or "I don't understand your second point - are you saying that the user shouldn't see it until they are logged in?" or "Wait, I've never heard of RabbitMQ - what's that?"

(g) I think many managers are worried their remote staff will 'slack off' and not work the hours they are supposed to. And to be honest I can't blame them - I myself find it difficult to maintain focus when I'm working from home. Maybe it would help your chances of being hired to say to your potential boss, "Every minute that I'm working I will record my webcam and screen in a Zoom meeting which you can review in real time or later"

What a thoughtful and detailed response. I wish more ppl here in US thought like you instead of throwing leetcode puzzles at you.

> I understand that Indian developers seem to have a bad rap internationally but there are good people too.

Yeah, maybe. But India is probably known to most because of support calls from "Microsoft" and other shady scams.

Some friends have lived and worked in India for a prolonged time and after listening carefully to all of them I will prefer not to work with Indians, too.

What did they tell you about working with Indians

In loose order:

- Deadlines don't matter: If it doesn't get finished today, maybe it gets finished tomorrow, nevermind if it needs to be finished today.

- Quality doesn't matter, too. Customer is in Europe, unlikely that he will come over and be angry with us. Basic quality principles (talking about media production here) are simply ignored.

- Come when you want and leave when you want. Working hours are just a recommendation, nothing to really stick to.

- If you tell people they need to stick to the working hours so work gets done, they will probably get "sick" and not be seen for the rest of the week.

> maybe 1 in about 50-60 job applications

Are you submitting your resume with a script? This sounds like you are part of the problem. What if you got 50-60 low-quality job offers each day? You'd probably do the same thing: respond to 1 of them and immediately hang up when you realized you were tricked.

> What do you look for people when hiring remotely?

* Someone within 3 hours of my timezone

* A resume tailored to the job position

* Obviously not spam

Side Note: I just got a robocall on my cellphone from the "SSN Department" saying, in broken robo-english, there is a problem with my Social Security Number and I need to call them back. FCC just got a report. This is also why your country gets a bad rap.

I work in the UK and we hire remote teams in the UK (forget India for a second) and we have terrible problems keeping them on track, getting genuine honest updates from them, forcing them to follow processes, making them support out of hours, getting them to give us updates. So imagine all that but now 5 hours ahead of time.

I agree with some of the comments on here of not being transparent. I feel most Indians are honest, but when they don't know something they won't admit it which makes people suspicious are they really claiming to know everything? (which everyone knows is impossible)

Being a fellow Indian I am also facing the similar issue, I have been actively searching for remote work, facing the similar problems and haven't been able to pin point the cause.

I don't spam and don't use generic scripts, I invest time in applying so it's more painful. I also have hard time showing my work with majority of my work being propriety in nature.

After going through thread, going forward when applying I will also explicitly mention that I absolutely don't have a problem with the timings and maybe attach a voice clip also.

Have you tried asking follow up questions on why you got passed over? some companies will respond and you can pivot accordingly. also if you are good enough for remote, you should really look at angellist, lots of startups in india are willing to hire remotely from other cities(i just got two offers for react dev work from startups in blore).

stackoverflow is good for this if a bit sparse

Majority of the companies don't respond back.

Till now I have been able to give maybe 5-6 interviews out of which 2 people responded back with feedback .

One company just sent back a generic email about how I was not looking for but the second company/startup did give a nice and detailed feedback.

And it just seems like there are more frontend related jobs than backend. I primarily do backend.

I have been applying through stack-overflow, RemoteOk and Hacker-news who's hiring, however I haven't really applied using Angel-list till now.

I'll check out Angel List

Full stack is the new normal, i advise you to learn some form of UI work(enough to be conversant)

My last company that was mostly remote for everyone had two developers in India. Not sure how the first one got hired but the second one was hired because the first one knew him.

My recommendation is to find remote offices that already employ people from India, or to meet people in India already working for US countries and befriend them

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