As a matter of fact, in India, engineers mostly avoid service based Indian companies like Infosys, CTS, TCS unless otherwise they are in the extreme bottom end of the funnel (they just need a job) or at the extreme top end (disproportionate high pay).
These firms are notorious for their carrot (probable on-site opportunities) and stick (mindless work hours clocking among others) approach, and their typical workplace is full of discontent and frustration. Just for an example, I have known people working there who were trying to game the clocking system by finding a bug that allowed them to leave early provided they clock before midnight from any of the offices which would increase their clocking hours.
That aside, these firms are just a small part of the actual tech scene in India, except they have sheer numbers when it comes to the H1B process, which kind of projects these firms as representative entities of Indian engineers.
While many Indians seeking employment abroad are impacted a lot by these changes, I don't think the sentiment behind these changes has much to do with Indian people per se. There's a global backlash against too much immigration in general. Indians are just caught in the mix.
People are tired of the corporate owned politicians allowing companies to run roughshod over the laws, morals & expectations of society.
This is expressed in many ways, from xenophobia to the rise of Bernie Sanders & Donald Trump. People don't want another corporate owned shill like either of the Clintons, both Bushes, and Obama, and I'd wager that Obama knew this in 2008, hence why he made sure his moderately grassroots organization was put out to pasture safely.
We need to stop the union busting, bring back workers rights, prosecute Walmart & T-Mobile for their union response teams (where most potentially "infected" employees are fired), and fight for a better future.
I think we should open our borders, but when it comes to employment we should strive to avoid what has happened in Canada, where low cost workers from overseas work at every single Tim Hortons.
In the UK we have had a 'Polish plumber' stereotype develop over the last decade or so. Basically, if you want your plumbing or building done properly then you really want the 'Polish plumber' and not the British guy. It is commonly understood that the Pole has the work ethic, the Brit from the estate down the road does not.
I think that parallel to the 'Polish plumber' we had the 'Indian call center' stereotype happen. The call to the call center was a horrific thing, thank goodness that off-shore madness came to an end. Along the way I think a lot of things were tarnished, any work with an Indian company would have overtones of the call center nightmare years.
Nationalistic tribalism, such as we're seeing now, usually comes and goes as a cycle.
My hypothesis: Increasing automation puts pressure on the job market, leading to such sentiment. We're seeing this effect, the world over. And India being the largest low-cost English-speaking tech-center will feel this effect the largest.
I guess the silver lining is that this will stop the brain-brain from India, hopefully leading to a more stronger local tech and other industries.
I wouldn't say it's all down to populism and tribalism. The company I worked for in the UK laid off over 1000 local IT staff and replaced them with people on Tier 2 visas from Tata Consultancy Services and Tech Mahindra who were willing to work for significantly less than our salaries.
I hope the India govt moves fast now. The should take this opportunity to improve local infrastructure and put in reforms for a domestic software economy. The TCS, Infosys & Wipro helped kickstart the software revolution in India but they need to take this to a better conclusion than it is now. We need product based companies in India and we need a strong local domestic market. It needs to retain it's talent at home. Any Indians want to chime in on whether this is likely? I hear great things about Modi.
Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't see how India can move from a services/back office economy to product development until expats with such experience move back. Our education quality is pathetically dismal, infrastructure within cities needs improvement, red tape needs to go etc. We don't have enough risk takers and many of us are risk averse.
I think the key is convincing expats to come back, which is hard.
As a small business owner, revenue streams are fickle these days. It makes pay as you go, zero hour labour alluring even if it's more expensive because it can be planned according to the revenue stream.
This same discipline leads one to encapsulate work better. A senior data scientist goes for £700/d in London; theres a significant advantage to being able to use her counterpart in Delhi.
It is salary arbing. It is also inevitable. Companies buy services that they could perform themselves more often than not, in order to keep focus on core business. After a certain price they don't.
Forcing the immigrants away pushes up prices, which literally changes the internals of companies and how and what they buy over time. this is constantly afoot but there's an inherent risk that any given change may be for the worse.
Being an Indian engineer myself the funniest part is that regardless of your branch/stream almost every person in my college got an IT job (your branch is decided by the entrance test).
We had a saying about TCS in our college "trespassers will be recruited". And they asked chemical engineering and GK questions during the placement tests. It was so weird when I think about it now.
If India were smart they would copy China and ban Facebook, Google and the rest of the American web companies. This would have the effect of creating powerhouse Indian web companies similar to Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, etc in China which are now starting to break out to become global brands. India more than has the talent to pull this off.
China didn't ban those web companies for using their local talent. They did it as part of their censorship practices. There are plenty of Indian people working now in Google, Facebook etc. Google CEO itself is an Indian. It would be extremely foolish of any government to ban any entity solely to create an alternative with the hope of utilising its local talent. In India, so far this kind of discussions is solely focused on getting tax concessions for home grown companies (like for Flipkart, Ola which are Indian Amazon, Uber respectively). Even then, they are faced with lot of flak, since their investor money is mostly from abroad.
I mean, when you put your "scum-bag profit or nothing boss" thinking hat on, it makes so much sense.
You can hire these people, and they'll accept extremely noncompetitive wages (lowers wages), over-saturates the labour market (lowers wages), AND gives a nice boost to PR because on the outside it seems like this company is "diversely hiring from all backgrounds".
1.I don’t agree with the author, issue is local job loss due to immigration
2.Don’t forget Google and Microsoft CEO’s are INDIAN Engineers
3.Looks odd A Global leader Country advocating protectionism
4.Rather than job loss at micro level check How many Job loss due to wrong practice by companies to make more profits check “double-Irish” tax system used by Google, Apple and Oracle
5.Check Job loss due to scandals Enron,Lehman brothers http://www.accounting-degree.org/scandals/
6.Yes its eye opener for Indians only focusing on services thats why we don’t have Baidu,Yandex and QQ
What will happen If every country started nationalism, protectionism and avoids Products made by other countries? Who will hurt more?
I met an Aussie guy here in Shenzhen this week who is quite wealthy indeed and who actually wants to spend money to bring some manufacturing to Australia from China.
Unfortunately, he can't get a visa for the one (Chinese) employee who really needs it (to plan out the factory and begin many million dollars of investment), and can't get a reason why out of the immigration department. Nobody in Australia can do the job because they don't have experience with current gear (Australian manufacturing is today basically a few specialist, legacy facilities and some defense-related stuff only) and it's only documented in Chinese.
Because the guy is wealthy and well connected and Australia is a small place, he managed to get some phone calls directly with the Immigration Minister, Mr. D., who essentially said "re-apply, I can't do anything". Meanwhile, the target region (with no jobs) has lost 200 planned jobs (including 30% committed to be allocated to disabled workers, and others likely to be allocated to challenged demographics such as aged workers) and the significant accompanying economic stimulation from the planned facility, and the guy is paying 10s of 1000s a month in opportunity costs. True story, this week.
In Australia for example it has NOTHING to with Indians and the situation is basically the same in all the countries listed. It is pure politics within the right-wing governments in power caused by the rise of nationalism, the struggles of blue collar workers who have been left behind and the fear of terrorism.
Politicians are so scared of being flanked by the right (e.g. Tony Abbott in Australia) that they are pushing the anti-immigrant angle at every opportunity. But if you look at the details you will see that any immigration changes are more about "feeling good" than doing anything substantive. For example recent changes in Australia have seen a "values" test added which is hilariously pointless. And in fact we have made it easier for highly skilled migrants to enter the country e.g. Indian IT consultants.
> Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers
Is this headline accurate? Are numbers of immigrant workers reducing?
The H1B visa program is always over-subscribed more than 4x so if the number of applicants decreases, there is still the same number coming in.
Every country looks to be trying to reduce low-skilled immigration which is fair enough.
Its tiring these days that every headline is made alarmist by lumping all immigrants into one big group. Illegal immigration vs legal immigration is always referred to as simply "immigration". Low skilled vs high skilled = immigrant. Temporary working visa vs. foreign-born US citizen = immigrant.
Despite the title of the article, I see one thing unmentioned: general reputation of incompetence. However, nearly everybody I know in IT, from different countries and backgrounds, knows "Indian code" to be a meme of not only bad quality but gross, mind-boggling incompetence.
I don't have a personal experience with indian companies and/or engineers, so don't have a personal opinion on that matter. If anything, it seems strange to me to translate an opinion about outsourcing companies from a poor country to top engineers from that country immigrating abroad. But regardless of whether that opinion is valid or not, people believe it and it certainly has an impact.
I've met a few brilliant Indian engineers. I asked one of them why he was different to his peers.
He explained that most of his peers don't enjoy or like what they are doing. They chose to become a developer, because it's a potential path to become a 'manager', which has a higher status in the eyes of their parents, friends and family.
Edit: But we have to be careful not to stereo type. I think a comment made here is pretty good 'Shit code doesn't have nationality'. We just need to understand the motivators for people to become an engineer and if the joy of creating something with code isn't up there and it's mainly about money or a stepping stone to higher status, then code quality will suffer as it seems.
Shit code doesn't have nationality. But in general outsourcing works only if you have strong technical leadership onshore. And this job sucks. I managed Infy's onshore/offshore team and it was decent but it was hard due to our management being dickheads and Indians being shielded by their management so basically our comms were filtered by two layers of nonsense and 1-2 days of time difference. Onshore guys were great but I always felt for them not being treated nicely by Infy and being pretty powerless in the process. Actually this is why the project was outsourced first place as us locals just ask too many questions and often say WHY and NO to stupid requirements.
The bad "Indian code" is what the client is paying for. If you pay 1/10th of American salary to recruit developers in India who are at the bottom of the stack in terms of competency, what are you expecting?. Everything is magnified in India because of the population. We have bad coders to CEOs of American corporations.
But this works as well. Thats why TCS, Infosys, etc are billionaire dollar enterprises.
Come on what general reputation of incompetence? Just take a look at proportion of indians at top engineering and management positions in Tech Companies.
This "meme" is nothing but some racist stereotype pushed by old commenters on Slashdot style website who paint themselves to be next turing award material.
Guess what the Market never lies and you get what you pay for! Those who pay the best/most still have large number of indians throughout the hierarchy.
So that meme is nothing but outright xenophobia not too different from the ones propagated in past against Italians, Irish, Japanese or Jews.
I've worked with the really shitty Indian programmers, the dishonest one, and occasionally one that was both!
However, I also worked with a couple of really brilliant ones...
But then again I also worked with non-endian programmers that shared all the same characteristics in my 30y career.
However, I also have to say that some of the poor endian programmers manage to play the 'diversity' card very well; I know one that I wanted to fire the first day he arrived as he was clearly completely incompetent. HR was involved, and he still managed to waste time and resources for eighteen months before he actually ...quit...
I hate to say it, but I do suspect that a boring white guy would have been fired well before the end of his first month... During all that time, the guy was reported for completely faking demos, lying about task completions, but he still manage to survive 3 'performance improvement plans' from HR.
When you charge by the hour, competence is not a virtue.
(dont really have any experience working with their code, but in general I'd say that the Indians I went to school with were the more competent of the bunch, if you want to compare grad students to undergrads at least)
All you have to do is go look at the cluster that projects like ASTPP are to see what low quality developers (in their case from India) get you. The project started with a solid technical foundation (Freeswitch, MySQL, Nginx), was built in PHP (not great), and they proceeded to break or mis-implement Least Cost Routing (you can't do an LRN DIP to find the underlying carrier, nor can you import a normal NANPA voice ratedeck), multi-domain (everyone is on one domain) and block selling under cost or at negative rates.
It shouldn't be this hard, Freeswitch literally does most of this for you (LCR & multi-domain), it is just a matter of building a simple GUI on it.
I don't really get why the submission title was changed from the initial "Everywhere Indian engineers are unwanted," to the current one, since the former is the literal title in the linked article and its actual focus ?
I'm all for having reasonable Politically Correctness on HN, it just seems weird in this case.
[+] [-] palerdot|9 years ago|reply
These firms are notorious for their carrot (probable on-site opportunities) and stick (mindless work hours clocking among others) approach, and their typical workplace is full of discontent and frustration. Just for an example, I have known people working there who were trying to game the clocking system by finding a bug that allowed them to leave early provided they clock before midnight from any of the offices which would increase their clocking hours.
That aside, these firms are just a small part of the actual tech scene in India, except they have sheer numbers when it comes to the H1B process, which kind of projects these firms as representative entities of Indian engineers.
[+] [-] letitgo12345|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] posguy|9 years ago|reply
This is expressed in many ways, from xenophobia to the rise of Bernie Sanders & Donald Trump. People don't want another corporate owned shill like either of the Clintons, both Bushes, and Obama, and I'd wager that Obama knew this in 2008, hence why he made sure his moderately grassroots organization was put out to pasture safely.
We need to stop the union busting, bring back workers rights, prosecute Walmart & T-Mobile for their union response teams (where most potentially "infected" employees are fired), and fight for a better future.
I think we should open our borders, but when it comes to employment we should strive to avoid what has happened in Canada, where low cost workers from overseas work at every single Tim Hortons.
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|9 years ago|reply
People conveniently ignore the fact that we receive as many immigrants from Europe as from Asia (including India but excluding the Middle East).
[+] [-] Theodores|9 years ago|reply
I think that parallel to the 'Polish plumber' we had the 'Indian call center' stereotype happen. The call to the call center was a horrific thing, thank goodness that off-shore madness came to an end. Along the way I think a lot of things were tarnished, any work with an Indian company would have overtones of the call center nightmare years.
[+] [-] anilgulecha|9 years ago|reply
My hypothesis: Increasing automation puts pressure on the job market, leading to such sentiment. We're seeing this effect, the world over. And India being the largest low-cost English-speaking tech-center will feel this effect the largest.
I guess the silver lining is that this will stop the brain-brain from India, hopefully leading to a more stronger local tech and other industries.
[+] [-] robjan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newsat13|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sreenadh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intended|9 years ago|reply
The govt is already working really fast, and in general all govts have been working fast since 1991.
Making a market and nation building is just hard stuff.
How are you going to make product firms from scratch?
By building a market?
For that at the very least you need connectivity - the current govt has always focused on laying infra and highways.
But that still means people need money to buy stuff, and we have a hugely messed up labor market with a strong dependence on agriculture.
We're 50 years away from anything like what people may want to hear to have a "good" ending.
But this is also a market for people who are able and capable of getting their hands and heads truly dirty.
[+] [-] ashwinaj|9 years ago|reply
I think the key is convincing expats to come back, which is hard.
[+] [-] throwaway31233|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usgroup|9 years ago|reply
This same discipline leads one to encapsulate work better. A senior data scientist goes for £700/d in London; theres a significant advantage to being able to use her counterpart in Delhi.
It is salary arbing. It is also inevitable. Companies buy services that they could perform themselves more often than not, in order to keep focus on core business. After a certain price they don't.
Forcing the immigrants away pushes up prices, which literally changes the internals of companies and how and what they buy over time. this is constantly afoot but there's an inherent risk that any given change may be for the worse.
[+] [-] superasn|9 years ago|reply
We had a saying about TCS in our college "trespassers will be recruited". And they asked chemical engineering and GK questions during the placement tests. It was so weird when I think about it now.
[+] [-] pkaye|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] palerdot|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nrki|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oceanghost|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamUK96|9 years ago|reply
You can hire these people, and they'll accept extremely noncompetitive wages (lowers wages), over-saturates the labour market (lowers wages), AND gives a nice boost to PR because on the outside it seems like this company is "diversely hiring from all backgrounds".
Great!
[+] [-] zac99|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] contingencies|9 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, he can't get a visa for the one (Chinese) employee who really needs it (to plan out the factory and begin many million dollars of investment), and can't get a reason why out of the immigration department. Nobody in Australia can do the job because they don't have experience with current gear (Australian manufacturing is today basically a few specialist, legacy facilities and some defense-related stuff only) and it's only documented in Chinese.
Because the guy is wealthy and well connected and Australia is a small place, he managed to get some phone calls directly with the Immigration Minister, Mr. D., who essentially said "re-apply, I can't do anything". Meanwhile, the target region (with no jobs) has lost 200 planned jobs (including 30% committed to be allocated to disabled workers, and others likely to be allocated to challenged demographics such as aged workers) and the significant accompanying economic stimulation from the planned facility, and the guy is paying 10s of 1000s a month in opportunity costs. True story, this week.
[+] [-] threeseed|9 years ago|reply
In Australia for example it has NOTHING to with Indians and the situation is basically the same in all the countries listed. It is pure politics within the right-wing governments in power caused by the rise of nationalism, the struggles of blue collar workers who have been left behind and the fear of terrorism.
Politicians are so scared of being flanked by the right (e.g. Tony Abbott in Australia) that they are pushing the anti-immigrant angle at every opportunity. But if you look at the details you will see that any immigration changes are more about "feeling good" than doing anything substantive. For example recent changes in Australia have seen a "values" test added which is hilariously pointless. And in fact we have made it easier for highly skilled migrants to enter the country e.g. Indian IT consultants.
[+] [-] joelthelion|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stuaxo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masondixon|9 years ago|reply
Is this headline accurate? Are numbers of immigrant workers reducing?
The H1B visa program is always over-subscribed more than 4x so if the number of applicants decreases, there is still the same number coming in.
Every country looks to be trying to reduce low-skilled immigration which is fair enough.
Its tiring these days that every headline is made alarmist by lumping all immigrants into one big group. Illegal immigration vs legal immigration is always referred to as simply "immigration". Low skilled vs high skilled = immigrant. Temporary working visa vs. foreign-born US citizen = immigrant.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] n0pn0p|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] golergka|9 years ago|reply
I don't have a personal experience with indian companies and/or engineers, so don't have a personal opinion on that matter. If anything, it seems strange to me to translate an opinion about outsourcing companies from a poor country to top engineers from that country immigrating abroad. But regardless of whether that opinion is valid or not, people believe it and it certainly has an impact.
[+] [-] cryodesign|9 years ago|reply
He explained that most of his peers don't enjoy or like what they are doing. They chose to become a developer, because it's a potential path to become a 'manager', which has a higher status in the eyes of their parents, friends and family.
Edit: But we have to be careful not to stereo type. I think a comment made here is pretty good 'Shit code doesn't have nationality'. We just need to understand the motivators for people to become an engineer and if the joy of creating something with code isn't up there and it's mainly about money or a stepping stone to higher status, then code quality will suffer as it seems.
[+] [-] democracy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plaban123|9 years ago|reply
But this works as well. Thats why TCS, Infosys, etc are billionaire dollar enterprises.
[+] [-] aub3bhat|9 years ago|reply
This "meme" is nothing but some racist stereotype pushed by old commenters on Slashdot style website who paint themselves to be next turing award material.
Guess what the Market never lies and you get what you pay for! Those who pay the best/most still have large number of indians throughout the hierarchy.
So that meme is nothing but outright xenophobia not too different from the ones propagated in past against Italians, Irish, Japanese or Jews.
[+] [-] buserror|9 years ago|reply
However, I also worked with a couple of really brilliant ones...
But then again I also worked with non-endian programmers that shared all the same characteristics in my 30y career.
However, I also have to say that some of the poor endian programmers manage to play the 'diversity' card very well; I know one that I wanted to fire the first day he arrived as he was clearly completely incompetent. HR was involved, and he still managed to waste time and resources for eighteen months before he actually ...quit...
I hate to say it, but I do suspect that a boring white guy would have been fired well before the end of his first month... During all that time, the guy was reported for completely faking demos, lying about task completions, but he still manage to survive 3 'performance improvement plans' from HR.
[+] [-] nol13|9 years ago|reply
(dont really have any experience working with their code, but in general I'd say that the Indians I went to school with were the more competent of the bunch, if you want to compare grad students to undergrads at least)
[+] [-] posguy|9 years ago|reply
It shouldn't be this hard, Freeswitch literally does most of this for you (LCR & multi-domain), it is just a matter of building a simple GUI on it.
[+] [-] xbmcuser|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kurtz79|9 years ago|reply
I'm all for having reasonable Politically Correctness on HN, it just seems weird in this case.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]