
Ask HN: Remote companies prefer not to hire remote developers from India? - mightymosquito
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.<p>However I don&#x27;t get interview calls at all(maybe 1 in about 50-60 job applications) and that too generally don&#x27;t go beyond initial discussions(no assessment&#x2F;grading of my technical skills). Most of them just reject me upfront even though I match the skillset exactly(and can demonstrate my proficiency).<p>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.<p>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&#x27;t want to hire out of India at all or may be I am just missing something?
======
gshdg
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.

------
pjmlp
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.

~~~
Zenbit_UX
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.

~~~
Nextgrid
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.

~~~
b_t_s
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.

------
rando444
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.

~~~
rgergewrgerg
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%.

~~~
herodotus
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.

~~~
netsharc
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.

------
asdz
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

------
jakobov
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?

~~~
Zenbit_UX
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.

------
throwawayjava
_> 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.

~~~
rubayeet
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.

------
badpun
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.?

~~~
mightymosquito
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.

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

~~~
taejo
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.

~~~
dominotw
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.

------
davismwfl
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.

~~~
vidanay
#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.

~~~
davismwfl
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).

------
atonse
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.

~~~
Zenbit_UX
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.

~~~
dylz
Payroll internationally is likely a PITA.

------
awithrow
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.

~~~
jatins
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)

~~~
mightymosquito
> 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.

------
MarkMc
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](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"

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

------
martin_a
> 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.

~~~
dominotw
What did they tell you about working with Indians

~~~
martin_a
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.

------
netsectoday
> 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.

------
amriksohata
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)

------
flanker
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.

------
kkarakk
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

~~~
mightymosquito
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

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

------
whamlastxmas
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

