
India’s TCS Faces U.S. Trial in Anti-American Bias Case - rainhacker
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-27/india-s-tcs-faces-u-s-trial-in-anti-american-bias-case
======
whack
" _Buchanan claims that at a job fair organized for the employees losing their
jobs, the South Asian TCS regional manager was dismissive of his interest in a
position._ "

" _TCS argued Buchanan ... didn’t attend any of the town hall meetings he was
invited to during the Edison transition to learn about open positions with TCS
and how to apply for them -- and he didn’t apply for a specific job_ "

I have no experience whatsoever with TCS, so I have no idea if there's any
merit to these accusations. But _guy-at-job-fair-was-not-nice-to-me_ hardly
makes for a compelling discrimination argument. I've heard far worse stories
from women and people-of-color interviewing at most American companies.

~~~
sremani
The point is, part of the deal was that worthy individual would have a shot at
being recruited instead of completely let go and TCS did not make a good faith
effort as part of the deal, and the deal was for the optics. This is not a
white or black thing as you are trying to interject race into this. Its more
like, if I hire from India I do not have to pay "premium", that is the part of
the discrimination. Even if Mr.Buchanan was Black Transgender Women with two
kittens, he would not have a shot, the point is the he never had a shot at
being re-employed under the new structure.

~~~
tejaswiy
Your argument would be correct if no American from the company was re-hired by
TCS which I don't think is the case.

Outsourcing efforts at companies usually start with part of the workforce /
couple of projects outsourced to a major outsourcer. This gives them partial
insider information on the competence / political scenario / compensation in
the company. I wouldn't be surprised if TCS worked with company management to
figure out who would be retained based on these 3 variables and let others go
without their fair shot even if they were qualified.

While this sucks for a candidate, I don't think you can allege discrimination
based on this.

~~~
sremani
My point is there was no good faith effort to retain, the dye has been cast
long before and promises were made for optics. You can nitpick this, but that
is my larger point, which you seem to validate in your "explanation".

I am not fool enough to think a cost-arbitrage company would hire an American
as their first second or third option. Its a given that its only last resort
for most cases and that too, it skews to the extremes of competence or keeping
the politics stable.

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

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

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

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cast](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/cast)

\-
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/the_die_is_cast](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/the_die_is_cast)

\-
[https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/die+is+cast](https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/die+is+cast)

~~~
aaronblohowiak
fascinating! thank you!

------
knowThySelfx
It's really simple, these companies are using cheap labour while making a huge
profit in dollars. They can under quote other companies because of this.
Taking in natives mean pay has to be high.

~~~
murukesh_s
Not just the pay, H1b employees need to stick around as it's difficult to
shift to another company, especially if they are processing green card. Also
they tend to work longer hours, as I have seen personally, though that doesn't
necessarily produce more quality, but most of the corporates who hire from TCS
or other outsourcing firms want 24/7 routine jobs like production support,
junior developers or testing. Even for development they use the same stack for
decades so there is pretty much nothing more to build or learn, but minor
patches and fixes here and there, which is barely interesting for anyone other
than who want to stick around for the lack of other opportunities..

p.s. I am from India and have worked in U.S for couple of months for a large
bank.

~~~
ajmurmann
I think the H1B restrictions you touch on are a big part of the problem. If it
was easy for H1B holders to change employers the market would be allowed to
correct this. The H1B holders could demand market rate and proper treatment.
Right now it's completely distorted.

~~~
garyfirestorm
Unfortunately lot of people fail to see H1B's outside of silicon valley and
H1Bs = cheap (indian) IT labor = bodyshops... Many fields demand
multidisciplinary knowledge (for eg. automotive) we need people who understand
physics (mechanical engineering), signal processing, algorithms, data
analysis, programming etc.

There's a huge shortage of people who are willing to dabble in
multidisciplinary fields. Step into any automotive company and ask the
engineers if they know how to code or use large amounts of data effectively.
You will be surprised. I have seen H1B folks overcome tough challenges and put
huge amount of effort in making amazing products.

Generalizing and bashing H1B's is not fair, neither is making regulations from
SV point of view.

p.s. I work in one of the big 3's. I am on H1B and I have never accepted bare
minimum salary. I am not an IT guy.

~~~
Annatar
As a car enthusiast and a system engineer / architect I’d love a shot at
working in the car industry. I never see advertisements for those jobs though;
they are mythical.

That aside, nobody so far has been bashing H1B’s, on the contrary: all the
comments so far are for H1B liberalization (H1B’s should’t be tied to a
particular employer) so that the loan dumping could stop and so that
competition could take place based on experience and competence.

The problem is greedy managers going after “shareholder value” (their bonuses
and promotions) and corrupt politicians who knew the situation and yet didn’t
step in.

~~~
garyfirestorm
working in car industry for about 3-4 yrs. I can assure you these jobs are not
mythical.

read this article - [https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/harman-wants-quiet-
ride-u...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/harman-wants-quiet-ride-using-
tech-behind-noise-cancelling-headphones/)

skills required - fundamentals of acoustics, vibrations, signal processing,
algorithms, coding, managing huge amounts of data, optimization, controls
etc.....

this is just one technology. there are many more things that go in a car and
are way more complex than active noise cancellation.

------
sidcool
This is pretty bad for Indian IT Industry. I would want companies like
Flipkart etc. to represent the tech industry in India rather than TCS and
Infosys.

Having said this, the American companies are equally at fault to exploit the
system. There are a lot of complicit parties to this dysfunctional system.

~~~
unmole
By companies like Flipkart, do you mean companies which have never turned a
profit and are unlikely to do so anytime soon?

~~~
madeofpalk
Yes, just like all the other US tech startups/companies

------
known
Nepotism runs strong in India. Nearly 85% of the country’s businesses are
family-run, and Bollywood is dominated by just a few families. Even job-
seekers with impressive resumes have to fall back on personal connections to
find work.

[https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-
indi...](https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-indians-to-
hire-others-indians-and-its-killing-diversity/)

~~~
Annatar
Strongly reminds me of another country in central Europe. And not
incidentally, that country is one of the poorest and least developed EU
countries, where young qualified people are emigrating in droves.

Nepotism is an extremely destructive toxin to a country and her people.

------
djsumdog
I had a short TCS contract once. I remember the background on my badge was
green to indicate I was a US citizen. It was for an ITAR regulated project, so
we were only allowed to talk about it with other US citizens. It was also just
a software licensing server, which shows just how stupid ITAR is.

~~~
raverbashing
And 5 technical people, 2 projects managers and 6 digits to install a server
that could be done in 30min by someone in house?

------
fortythirteen
There was a thread on reddit a little while back where a guy who claimed to be
an American working for Infosys said he was often subjected to discriminatory
talk, out in the open, by the majority of his coworkers. As in they would
openly discuss such things in meetings.

It's human nature to group up by any perceivable similarity and view oneself
as superior to those who are dissimilar. Add in the fact that these companies
have a much higher margin with non-American employees and it's not hard to see
the plaintiff's claims as plausible.

~~~
princetman
“It's human nature to group up by any perceivable similarity and view oneself
as superior to those who are dissimilar.”

Oh the irony here. On this particular topic, HN is an echo chamber.

------
hbarka
It’s too late. Been going on for the last 15 years and the ladder is already
stacked with nepotism.

------
rainhacker
Why is the lawsuit against the outsourcing companies? American companies took
decision to replace their employees with wokers from outsourcing firms.
Companies like TCS and Infosys provide a service at a cost. They don't and
can't dictate American firms to fire their people and use it's service.

------
happy-go-lucky
> TCS, Asia’s largest software maker,

I'm wondering if that's a fact or just part of the news article.

~~~
sidcool
From a headcount and revenue perspective, it's true.

~~~
happy-go-lucky
OK, thank you for the enlightenment :)

------
kevin_thibedeau
Simple rule: At least 50% of your domestic workers need to be citizens or
green card holders.

~~~
vostok
Why should a company be forced to hire subpar employees? If jobs are the issue
then we can just have a jobs program run by the government. Let's let
businesses do what they're good at.

Unless the visa cap changes, we should just give visas to the 65k most highly
paid workers. If you're in those top 65k then the US probably really needs
you. Don't tie the visa to a particular employer and give people time to find
a new job.

Location and industry are irrelevant.

If you're providing enough value to a company that they're willing to pay you
that much then who cares if you're in San Francisco or Detroit.

If you're providing enough value that a company is willing to pay you that
much then who cares if you're a manager, a software developer, or a sales
person.

If nobody is willing to pay you that much then the market has spoken. We can
have other visa programs for artists and other people whose work might not be
as valuable.

~~~
sytelus
Selecting highest paid H1Bs is actually not a good idea. Assume you ar doing
startup for 3D printer and you found this genius young guy in UK who knows how
to write firmwares for it. Being a startup you can't pay a lot of base salary
and this is a rare skill to find good people in this area. Even though talent
is right in front of you which can make or break your startup, your hands will
be tied up by the law. Hope you get the idea... Sorting applications by pay
will mean that only top 5-10 companies will benefit from global pool of talent
and that would put their competitors even further out from competing.

~~~
lovich
Isn't price the signal the market uses to tell what is more valuable? If
another company is offering more for their candidate than your startup, then
that means the other candidate has more value to the countries economy. If you
aren't going by price and are going to pick by some nebulous value, like
innovation, when it comes to visas then the government is going to be picking
and choosing winners.

I'm playing devil's advocate here a bit as I am not against government
intervention, but it's a question that needs to be asked and answered

------
surferbayarea
Companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple have thousands of job openings and are
desperate to hire more talent. They will happily interview anyone(from US,
India, China, heck Syria) if the person is qualified. So this is just
xenophobia(surprising to see such thinking in comments here on HN). The effect
though is that top valley companies have already instituted a policy to stop
hiring fresh-grad H1bs to avoid risk.

While so far, places like silicon valley have been unique in being centers of
innovation, this will change. Till just a couple decades ago, you literally
had to be physically in the office to work on a database server etc. Within a
generation or so, the advantage of physically being in silicon valley will be
immaterial.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Google, Microsoft, Apple aren’t Indian body shops. Not many of us think the
former are abusing H1Bs like the latter.

~~~
surferbayarea
In that case the solution would have been simple - just ban the top-10 in this
list that are in consulting:
[https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-
Sponsor.asp...](https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

Unfortunately, this is a political issue. Eq the changes proposed in
[http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-
ho...](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-
house/article192336839.html) will affect more than 10% of current employees at
Google, Apple, Microsoft. Note - you cannot just fire these 10% employees and
replace them with another warm body.

I agree with you that the abuse is being done by a few companies(some of which
are Indian - Infosys/TCS, others American - eq IBM/Accenture, French -
Capgemini). However, the "solutions" that have already been executed by the
current administration are aimed at appeasing the economically disadvantaged
section of American society. The reason for rising unemployment is not
foreigners stealing American jobs, it is driven by economic disparity and in
some ways an artifact of how technology innovation disproportionately benefits
the few. Throw out all 100% H1bs and other foreign workers and it will not
move the unemployment index at all.

PS: Reflect on the bias underlying your comment re:Indians. If you actually
look at the data, you will see the companies abusing the system are not just
Indian, but American, French, European as well.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Oh I totally agree, and not all Indian companies are body shops. IBM is in my
mind at the same level as infosys these days.

~~~
surferbayarea
Also the total number of unemployed people in US is 6.6 million. The number of
H1b visas granted every year is 65000 (that's 2 orders of magnitude). If you
were put in charge of solving the unemployment problem of USA, would you focus
on the 99% bucket or the 1% bucket? So you would agree that the backlash is
driven by xenophobia and not any possible rational or data driven argument.

~~~
phonon
More like 15%.

Arguably the _total_ number of working H-1B visas (including extensions while
waiting for a green card) (and working H-4 dependents) is the more relevant
metric.

That number is not tracked directly, but it's about a million or so, all at
significantly higher wages than the median US personal income of $31,099/y.

[https://qz.com/949589/the-h-1b-visa-cap-tells-you-very-
littl...](https://qz.com/949589/the-h-1b-visa-cap-tells-you-very-little-about-
how-many-h-1b-visas-there-are/)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Multiply the yearly grant rate by six and you get abiutnthe total number of
H1Bs, so not quite a million.

But regardless, it’s not like all unemployed are competing with body shoppers,
while the HN crowd probablybisnt either.

~~~
surferbayarea
Yeah it's different non intersecting sets. Also, if you add all the jobs
created by companies started by H1bs, it's definitely more than a million.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Not many of us are against H1Bs in general, but it is easy to dislike the body
shops because they don’t add much to the economy (not creating jobs).

~~~
mavelikara
Companies like Infosys, TCS, Accenture, Capgemini provide backoffice services
for many Western business at a lower price point than what they could do
themselves. That adds much to the economy.

The real leeches in this system are the consulting/placement shops.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Sure, it isn’t binary. Infosys is a good example of a mixture.

------
throwaway-h1b
I've been in the US since 2008, and am still waiting for my green card
because, well, I'm from India and on EB2. I wonder (perhaps due to my not
understanding some aspect of all of this) why there isn't a distinction
between H1Bs sponsored by companies that take on outsourced work and others.
The Microsofts and Googles aren't the ones meeting out "sweatshop" treatment
to its employees. Couldn't this problem be trivially solved by either denying
or having a limit on the ability to sponsor H1B visas only for companies that
take on outsourced work, or is "outsourced work" not a well defined thing?

