
Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers - kungfudoi
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-infosys-usa-idUSKBN17Y09Y
======
bpodgursky
Infosys sees the writing on the wall for their H1B game. It's one of the few
reforms which absolutely is going to happen -- nobody on any side has any pity
for Infosys.

Better get started with US workers now, before someone cuts in first.

~~~
Clownshoesms
I guess we saw the same in Australia with the 457 visa, and our Prime Minister
abolishing it now.

The act is peppered with phrases like "Preferring local workers etc" but we
know how that turned out (and why it was so easy to ignore the spirit of the
act). It raises revenue for the government, and cuts costs for the "poor old
companies" at the expense of local workers.

Shame on anyone that abused this.

[http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departm...](http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1314/QG/Subclass457Visa)

~~~
jpatokal
The 457 is not even close to "abolished", they're just rolling out a rebranded
version of it.

From the Australian equivalent of the Onion:
[http://www.betootaadvocate.com/entertainment/turnbull-
solves...](http://www.betootaadvocate.com/entertainment/turnbull-
solves-457-visa-problem-turning-off/)

~~~
flukus
The "not a path to full citizen" changes might break it. The only carrot left
is money, which most of the abusers of the program don't want to pay.

~~~
Clownshoesms
Yes that might change things, but I doubt it. As another poster mentioned,
this seems like sleight of hand more than anything.

------
peteretep
Oooh, offshore standards of excellence at American developer prices!

EDIT: India's a huge place, and there must therefore be some exceptionally
strong developers there. My experience of dealing with Wipro, TCS, etc, tells
me that these companies are very effective at either filtering out any
engineering talent, or alternatively simply crushing the talent of those who
they employ.

~~~
thiri
So why are they a 150 Billion dollar industry? They must be doing something
right.

~~~
ccozan
it seems that in this case, two wrongs show as right:

1\. The CIO/CTOs are too easily pushing the responsibility to such Indian IT
companies. You know, easy to blame someone else and save money in the same
time. And get some shares up too.

2\. The Indian companies use very deceptive means to capture this market.
Simply, they lie about their competencies.

It happened in multiple occasions when we got send from the indian 'partner'
two 'best' person they had. They were suppose to be 10+ Linux experienced.
Believe me, when I showed them the command line and I gave them a random, but
real, task they just simply stared and didn't know where to start. After 10
minutes ( had to attend something else), I found them heavily browsing SO.
Case closed!

~~~
thiri
I know what you are talking about but I have also seen the other side of this
story.

I have seen the kinds of clients Indian IT handles and quality of the software
they have produced. You can be more or less guaranteed your bank, insurance
company, hospital, airline/transportation systems, phone/internet utility,
entertainment/sports IT is all totally built and run by Indian IT.

The process is chaotic. The first iteration is a disaster almost always. But
western management persist through that first and second and sometimes third
iteration of garbage because the cost benefit is just impossible to ignore.
And guess what by the 4th or 5th iteration things actually work.

What most people don't realize is there is no big difference between this
story and the Facebook or Google story.

In one case its a bunch of kids who don't know what the command line is thrown
into a bank or insurance or manufacturing companies IT system and its a trial
by fire. Not knowing what the command line is has nothing to do with how
smart/adaptable the kid is who gets thrown into the deep end.

Please note this is exactly what investors are betting on when they dump a
bunch of cash on a bunch of kids at a future Facebook or Google. The kid might
know what the command line is but that's not what investors are betting on.
They are betting on the kid being smart and adaptable when thrown into the
fire. They are willing to put up with the first couple iterations being
disasters and sooner or later if you bet on the right kid things work.

Are there unintended consequences when things get built this way? Of course
yes Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have a solution to fake news, celeb worship, hate
speech, cyber bullying on his platform. But (most)people are willing to give
him the benefit of the doubt. Same rules should apply to the indian kid
running your bank servers that just got breached.

~~~
ccozan
The issue is not about kids being smart and easily trained - they do, and they
are quite capable.

But just advertise it as such: "Look, we don't have any Linux specialists, but
for this amount of money we charge, is worth to train this two guys, they are
smart but no experience. Are you in?"

This honesty ( or lack of it ), is the problem, not the people. I mean, I also
do browse SO, too :), and yes, sometimes I fail to give an immediate answer to
a problem. But I tell this to the customer, and they feel comfortable, because
in the other 99% of the cases I did solve their problem.

------
tn135
Complete PR BS. Infy yearly profits are 2B. Assuming an average US worker
costs $100K a year it is going to cost them $1B + additional expenses not to
mention it totally defeats their core skill of using cheaper human capital
from India.

Infy is playing a long game where it will employ F1 visa students on OPT and
perhaps get better chances of H1B lottery + targeting H4 EAD.

It is pointless to hire American. It defeats the whole purpose of geting
things done cheaply.

~~~
godzillabrennus
Hire American project managers and have them manage teams in India. Makes for
good PR and hedges against the H1B visa program getting the axe during the
Trump era. Seems like good business sense to me.

------
partycoder
You can try to work there, but I am certain you will not enjoy the work
culture much.

While there's a lot of talented people, rather than promoting them, they just
drain them. The ones that get promoted are the ones better at draining people.

------
sureshn
For decades many american companies have engaged Indian IT Services companies
like Infosys to save on software maintenance costs. Now that there is a wave
of economic protectionism across the globe,, many Indian companies have to
rethink their strategy. Now is the most opportune moment for Indian IT
companies to prove that they are genuinely world class and that they have
upped their game in terms of delivering with high quality and skill with a
hugely diverse multi cultural, multi national workforce.

~~~
thiri
Indian IT companies have already proven they are world class. All you have to
do is walk into their endless campuses and see the clients they are handling.
People are living in a dream state if they think the next generation of Indian
software tech is going to stay forever behind the west.

~~~
jimmywanger
> Indian IT companies have already proven they are world class.

> People are living in a dream state if they think the next generation of
> Indian software tech is going to stay forever behind the west.

Pick one.

------
hackuser
Many on HN seem to dislike Infosys, but let's not let that cloud larger, far
more important issues:

Most importantly, it sets very dangerous precedents of U.S. federal government
interference in the free market and in business decisions, and of economic
nationalism worldwide:

* Today you might like who the federal government is picking on and threatening; tomorrow you might not. Do we want politicians making decisions for businesses and controlling the free market? We can count on the politicians making political, not economic decisions. It's like the worst of over-regulation, but with no legal framework or process to restrain it.

* Americans like it when jobs come to the U.S., but the U.S. long has been the standard-bearer of international free trade. If the U.S. stops promoting it, others likely will backslide quickly. Why shouldn't India demand the same of U.S. companies? (If your argument is fairness and how bad Infosys is, then you looking at factors that don't determine international trade practices.) When they demand that U.S. jobs move to their countries, will there even be a net gain in jobs?

All that will result is moving jobs back and forth not to increase
productivity and find market efficiencies, but for political reasons. It will
create market inefficiencies, which could (for example) raise costs for
Infosys customers (including U.S. customers), reduce Infosys' overall
employment, reduce profit for Infosys shareholders, and reduce overall
productivity for the economies involved.

It's surprising how quickly the terms "free market" and "free trade" have
disappeared from HN.

~~~
specialp
Politicians made a decision to help the "free market" by making an _exception_
to immigration rules with H1B visas. H1B visas were intended to address a
shortage of highly skilled tech workers. They were not intended to supplant US
workers, nor provide a readily accessible pool of low wage IT workers.

H1B abusers like Infosys use H1B to hire 90% of their staff. They then
undercut US workers and cause them to be laid off while their cheaper H1B visa
foreigners took jobs on US soil. Pretty much every government in the world
regulates immigration. And if you ask a business which country has less
favorable business rules, that would be India which is amongst the worst in
the world.

~~~
dragonwriter
> H1B visas were intended to address a shortage of highly skilled tech
> workers. They were not intended to supplant US workers, nor provide a
> readily accessible pool of low wage IT workers.

Yes, they were. In a market, a "shortage" is meaningless without reference to
a price level, and the only way to address a shortage at any given price level
is to add additional supply from sellers willing to sell below what the
necessary price would otherwise be for the final quantity traded.

Adding more workers at the "prevailing wage" means increasing the quantity
traded without increasing price, which inherently favors the buyers of the
good (labor, here) over sellers.

Structurally, the "abuse" by Infosys, et al., and the suppression of wage
growth for highly-skilled labor is exactly what H-1B is designed to support,
not just a loophole in the design but the fundamental, basic, high-level
structure of the program.

------
piyush_soni
I keep on seeing this time and again on HN that "H-1B workers are cheap
workers" (mostly with disdain, completely disregarding the fact that they
might also be technically 'better'), but is there any data to support those
claims? Because if that's the case, that clearly warrants a few lawsuits about
wage discrimination in American companies.

~~~
jimmywanger
[https://stoph1bvisafraud.org/2015/05/30/2015-h1b-visa-
rank-a...](https://stoph1bvisafraud.org/2015/05/30/2015-h1b-visa-rank-and-the-
average-salary-battle/)

Google is your friend. Indian body shops pay far less and apply for far more
visas.

~~~
piyush_soni
It's not what I'm talking about though. These are Indian companies which
mostly employ only Indian people, all of whom might be _cheap_ from your
standards. I was mainly talking about the American companies that are
employing both Americans and Indian H-1Bs, and are allegedly paying less to
the similarly qualified Indian workers than their American counter parts
(because that's where an average US citizen seems to have a problem with
'cheap Indians' snatching their jobs). These Indian companies' (Infosys, TCS
etc.) jobs were anyway not "American jobs" to begin with, so there's no chance
of Indians snatching them.

I personally don't have a problem with equally qualified Indians getting paid
less than the American counterparts as well, even if that might be the
(illegal) case. In a free market, whoever provides best quality with the
cheapest price wins anyway (and the employer gets to decide what 'quality'
means to them), so I don't understand all the whining. Eventually, it's
American companies that get benefited by these cheap workers, growing American
economy. The local people, then would need to lower their rates to match the
competition. That's what happens across the world.

------
shhdkx
Seems very much a PR stunt. If you watched Bill Bye Saves the World lately,
they had a pretty much full episode advertisement for Infosys going (The
population control/gender equality episode). Complete with monologues while
panning around their campus and positive name dropping thoughout the episode.
Sneaky PR things like this leave a bad taste in my mouth.

------
thisisit
This is as always a divisive topic. In most cases, people fail to see both
side of the arguments.

Working conditions and pay in Infosys are not great for sure. There is a
reason how this has come about - companies trying to do their best to cut IT
costs. One of my friends working in a billion dollar IT product company says
the company is fine with in-house teams for the product teams but everything
auxiliary like Finance systems etc they want to sub-contract to Infy and the
likes. They have much larger budget for contracting than they do for in-house
hires. The reason is in the managements mind that is a high short term cost
with immediate removals, whereas full time employees need to be maintained
well. Now the company hasn't done well in the past 2 years and there has been
pressure on the company to trim more costs. How are they going to achieve it
without compromising on their core products? Hire cheaper developers for
everything they can think of. So there are market forces in play and if it
wasn't an "Indian" IT there will be a "Philippines" or "Mexico" IT company.
There is pressure for cutting labor costs and it has to go somewhere. Sure
people can unionize (or protectionism which is happening now) but that hasn't
boded well for other industries.

Then there is a question of whether US workers are ready to work on the
reduced pay and work culture? It has nothing to do with talent rather the
grind. My guess is people don't want to work on the reduced pay and work
timings.

It is a complex problem to solve but this is similar to people asking for US
made iPhones. Sure the intellect required for R&D might not be found in China
but then the mass production with 24*7 cheap production lines is not something
feasible in US. If the government goes after China you can be sure companies
(maybe even Chinese one) finding the next "best" alternative - Mexico, Africa
etc.

~~~
denzil_correa
I suspect you are describing "Opportunity Costs".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost)

------
blizkreeg
If they do end up following through on this, they will actually be successful
in hiring American (local) workers, because I doubt any Indians in the US
would want to work for Infosys. Also, it's kind of counter-productive to hire
Indians in the US anyway since they would need an H-1B visa to work for them,
so funnily a bit of a reverse discrimination might happen. The whole thing is
a bit meta.

~~~
impish19
The apparent breakthrough isn't that they're going to hire Americans, but that
they're planning to setup US centers.

------
sjg007
Hopefully with decent working conditions

~~~
giis
Thats a good point but I doubt they can change their working environment. If
they are capable of change they would have done it years back. I assume they
want to continue with current way of doing things, which worked for them for
3+ decades.

------
sidcool
The biggest complain devs in Infosys have is how the incompetent managers call
the shots and kill a metric driven Engineering culture.

------
blockonomics_co
The faster body shopping of indian workers to US stops the better. Sadly, due
to NRI worship culture many Indians are becoming second rated citizens in
their own country.

NRIs are wooed by the goverment and get visa free access and many other rights
like NRI bank accounts and have rights to buy property. They live eating
noodles in US and come back to India to buy few apartments.

Due to this local citizens themselves are unable to buy property in their own
country and have to then resort to send their kids abroad.

------
MS_Buys_Upvotes
PR bullshit to counter-act visa abuse.

------
suyash
What does American worker mean, I doubt it means 'US Citizens'.

~~~
nine_k
Supposedly someone authorized to live and work in the US, that is, citizens
and permanent residents.

------
jsudhams
Hmmm now americans are going to suffer, infosys hired bright indian kids and
made them do CRUD apps and Managers. If this trend continues this is going to
be more exploitation of US Citizens and very bad for the IT industry in US.

~~~
mundanevoice
True fact:

Most people who go to Infosys in India are usually not the brightest but
mostly those people who don't get into other big companies. We call them "Mass
Recruiters" because they hire a whole bunch of people without looking at the
skills or if they are a fit.

------
dominotw
Where are these people going to materialise from, weren't they saying for
decades that Americans are not interested in STEM.

------
virmundi
Why would they seek to employ such dumb people [1]?

1 - [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/08/india...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/08/indian-it-firm-accused-of-discrimination-against-stupid-
americans/)

~~~
Sunset
No respect for the profession?

------
olivermarks
The bigger question is what ethnicity these Americans are going to be...if
they are all Indian Infosys are going to enrage both employees on the Indian
subcontinent and run the risk of alienating US business buyers also.

Infy's best hope is to become a global offshore entity, but the greatest
challenge of all is going to be evolving a legacy IT services and support
outfit into a credible AI development house, two fundamentally different
entities. I doubt it is possible

~~~
olivermarks
[http://www.livemint.com/Industry/Y9OnR44QmD3txzGNXlDBVO/H1B-...](http://www.livemint.com/Industry/Y9OnR44QmD3txzGNXlDBVO/H1B-visa-
reforms-effect-Infosys-to-hire-10000-US-workers.html)

Indian perspective

