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US IT Worker Files Hiring Lawsuit Against Infosys, Class Action Proposed
itwbennett writes "Brenda Koehler is a VMware-certified professional network engineer with a master's degree in information systems and 17 years of experience. You might think that would qualify her for a lead VMware/Windows administrator, but Indian outsourcing firm Infosys apparently didn't. And Koehler has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that Infosys ignored her qualifications and eventually hired a Bangladeshi worker to staff a position she was qualified for. Koehler and her lawyers are asking the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to allow a class-action lawsuit against Infosys, with 'thousands' of potential plaintiffs in the case, according to the lawsuit, filed Thursday."
I find it interesting that they are claiming Title VII instead of violation of H1-B rules, presumably because this way they can point at a systematic exclusion of Americans on a non-technical basis. Of course, when discovery happens, and people start to pop out of the woodwork...
All to common of a problem. H1 Visa applicants are way cheeper than Americans. I was replaced a few years ago because they "could not find anyone in america that could do my job". No one asked if I would like to apply.
"Master's degree in information systems and 17 years of experience" does not tell us that she was more qualified than the Bangladeshi hired. I have interviewed too many people who look good on paper only.
Infosys is notorious for abusing the visa system to bring in totally unqualified and clueless south asians to be billable load on the U.S. system. We're talking people that couldn't even make the helpdesk script-reading sytem you get when you call tech support.
Homeland security and Justice department have an intricate investigation since 2012 ongoing on Infosys' fraud and abuse of visa system.
National Origin is the claim. And yes, discrimination must be proved, as must any claim in court. They select Asians over Americans. That's discrimination.
Learn to love Alaska
I wouldn't be surprised if someone else is behind this. If Infosys was smart, they'd settle quickly, otherwise lots of interesting information will come out in discovery. Information which will require they buy a lot of Congress-people and Senators if they want to continue operating in the country.
The plaintiff doesn't have to do anything of the sort. The plaintiff doesn't even have to prove that she is more qualified than the person they ultimately hired, merely that she was qualified for the position. H1B and the like require you to hire locally if possible first.
it starts with the letter u. what am i thinking about, IT douchebags?
I can't think of any English word that meets those requirements.
You're thinking about "union", but "union" doesn't rhyme with "ion".
Just like a typical union worker, you've:
1: Failed to get the basics right.
2: Demanded far too much time, money, and attention for your output.
3: Managed to act like an asshole in the brief interaction you've had with other people on the matter.
You might be surprised... see, if they're hiring H1B workers, it means they're implicitly claiming (under the laws that allow H1B work visas so you can hire foreigners in the first place) that NO SUITABLE TALENT could feasibly be found state-side. If it can be proven however that they regularly pass over US citizens for the sole reason that H1B workers are the more cost effective option, they're probably going to be facing heavy fines at the very least. Its quite possible they will be in a lot of trouble and the court case will precipitate the type of more heavy restrictions on granting of H1B visas in the first place.
While most will criticize her ego, I see the lawsuit has some merits from an immigration/hiring practice angle. The biggest source of H1-B visas are from outsourcing companies like InfoSys, who hires almost exclusively from India. She is alleging that they passed over the qualified American applicants (which she may be one), to claim that no one can fill the opening and get an H1-B instead. This also inadvertently causes a racial bias, which favors South Asians over any other ethnic groups. She may have an inflated sense of self-worth, but the lawsuit is noteworthy as it's (the first time???) I've heard an American worker stands against tech companies in their hiring practices. The are hardly attracting the best minds to the US. They are only getting them cheap. And it must be stopped.
With a masters and 17 years experience the first thing I think of is $$$$!
How much is she going to cost me? If I hire her for $50,000 a year how do I know she wont quit on me for a better job? $50,000 a year is what the average salary of a LAN admin is where I live. I asked HR and they only hire on that number with no budget for anything greater as I.T. is an expense that adds no value.
So I think you have it the other way around as she is obviously overqualified except for consulting and I.T director and CIO kind of work.
http://saveie6.com/
This is a slow train that's been coming for a long time. Richly deserved, by any measure. the US is not India, and isn't going to allow for flagrant, over the top wholesale discrimination. We've already been there, done that, and we're not going back.
Infosys is fucked.
Sell.
There are job posts that may be for level 1-2 jobs but the listed skills needed for the job can be make people who really have all the listed skills to be overqualifed for that job. Some times it's just HR who does not know to much about IT and puts stuff down like need 5 years working with 2012 or windows 7 / 8.
Some times the over the top job posts are there to hire an H1B1 and the big list makes it easy to say that there is no one who wants the job and few that do get past that they find to way to say they will not fit in this job.
I thought so too, but then I read the complaint. They claim harassment on basis of national origin.
At one job, the Asian workers left messages for (non-Asian) American workers threatening them and their families if they made trouble, etc. The Asians weren't just working cheaper. They were harassing the Americans. It sounded like they really didn't understand American culture.
There was also an element of anti-American discrimination.
The complaint also argues that they got H-1B visas by certifying that there were no available American workers, when it wasn't true. They also certified that they would pay Asian workers the prevailing wage, when that wasn't true either.
I've contracted in the US a few times. I worked closely with the consulting companies I dealt with.
And when it came time to search for more work, they let me in on some of the keywords to watch out for when perusing ads. Those keywords mean they're postings to meet the legal obligation of advertising for a position before bringing someone in on a work visa.
There is no point applying for those jobs -- 99% of the time they already have an overseas candidate in mind and they're just filling in the blanks for the paperwork by posting the ad.
And that was way back in the late 1980's. From what I can see of the situation, it has not changed. Most ads placed in newspapers and online nowadays seem to be to meet the paperwork requirements for bringing in cheap overseas labour.
By the way, I was quite qualified for many of those jobs, and applied anyhow. I had a few interviews, but despite years as an Oracle performance tuner and DBA, it seemed that the cheap Indian offshore workers always got the jobs. Same old, same old.
The US doesn't need H1-B programmers at this point in time -- there are too many unemployed people out there. It's all a scam to save money.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Nice tightly packed grouping of lies there. Either your employers have REALLY pulled the wool over your eyes, or else that is your job.
Um they have to at least offer her the job for the pay they are willing to pay.. It is a requirement of the H1-B program that they have to have no one qualified. If you are overqualified you are still qualified for the position. That however would lead to an issue of the government seeing that they are not actually paying people market value for their work.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You are right only if they made her an offer she refused by demanding more than market pay. They didn't make her an offer, so how do they know she wouldn't work for their desired fee? They don't. They rejected her without proper legal consideration. They broke the law.
Learn to love Alaska
The H1B wars... begun they have...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Standing up for certain legal rights is a legally-protected quality in an employee, and employers can't retaliate against them for that.
There were a lot of sex bias cases in which the employee didn't have enough evidence to prove the bias, but they did have enough evidence to prove retaliation, and they won the case.
You can't discriminate against people who refuse to work below the minimum wage, for example.
In addition, if they did preferentially hire Asians for some reason -- on the assumption that Asians were more deferential, for example -- that could be racial discrimination. If they found Infosys managers saying that clearly in emails, they'd win.
The article indicates they did not offer her a job at any price. Also, the H1-B laws require "market rates" not "below market rates so we can claim no local talent was suitable, despite 10,000 applicants that were qualified on paper)".
Learn to love Alaska
This isn't about being white or race in general, it's about domestic labor versus imported labor.
They could have hired British H1B workers and it would be just as illegal.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
My company recently adopted a no H1-B visa policy because we're doing a bit of military work, or so I assume (they really don't tell me anything). We've had a rec open for a hot-shot algorithms geek since January, and trust me, the applicants are not beating a path to our door. This is a fantastic job for the right guy, and it kills me that we're having trouble finding someone to fill it.
The last super-algorithms programmer we hired was from IIT Madras. He's amazing. Before that, we hired an equally amazing white guy right out of college with a BS degree. Good talent is hard to find right now, which is why I think this class action lawsuit is doomed. Maybe it could have gotten some traction in 2010.
Shameless plug: if you're a super-geek, work well with others (so many of us don't), and live near RTP in NC, or Winston-Sallem, send me a resume.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
You mean ignoring American labor for cheap foreign nationals doesn't have anything to do with national origin?
I know it's difficult for some to understand, but THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "REVERSE" DISCRIMINATION. There is only discrimination, regardless if you are white, black, brown, male, female, or transgender.
blog
Under H-1B rules, they still must hire an American if they can find one that is qualified, over a non-American.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The thing is you can't bring in an H1-B visa person just because you want them, or feel like they are a "better fit" or any of that. You can only do it if you cannot find a qualified US candidate (citizen, permanent resident, etc). If you get an applicant that is qualified and wants the job, you have to take them over getting someone on a visa. You can't argue that they are overqualified, because you have to take them if they are qualified.
That's the whole deal with the H1-B visa program: It is supposed to be for jobs you can't fill locally, either because there is too much demand for that kind of worker, the skill set isn't around, whatever. You can't find a qualified candidate, so you get one on a visa.
H-1B rules are different. H-1B allows brining in foreign workers to fill the gap when Americans with the qualifications cannot be found. Assuming she is qualified and assuming she did apply for the job, then they have no basis to use H-1B to bring in the foreign worker.
More likely she is being discriminated against because she won't submit to a captive (stuck with the same employer and cannot complaint about horrible working conditions we so often see in H-1B situations).
Personally, I'd rather see an open system. But that also means the foreign workers who hold the H-1Bs can jump over to any employer they want (carrying a prorated debt to the company that paid for getting them the H-1B). So anyone that wants an open system needs to also allow this or it isn't really open.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I get about 3-6 emails a week from H1B shops offering me jobs in cities I do not live in. I've also expressed no interest in moving to those cities.
Really obvious "We couldn't find a US worker!!" scam.
I hope that the company gets nailed to the wall. I've been in a similar situation for the past four years. I hold multiple certifications including Oracle DBA, but prospective employers don't care about experience, skills or anything except how little they can pay. I've applied for jobs and been passed over for a less experienced H1B worker or some inexperienced trade school kid with an academic visa who doesn't want to go back home and is scrambling to get a green card. We need a law that says "Hire Americans first" with some stiff penalties. Or how about letting companies have as many H1B visas as they want with a yearly fee of $250,000 per H1B visa? And have a clause that overseas outsourcing firms have to pay a similar "labor import duty" per contract worker or employee that is doing work for US companies and the onshore company that has contracted the outsourcing firm has to pay a similar "outsourcing license fee".
Of course when we have Chinese companies doing work on military computer systems for the Pentagon and working on weapons systems as engineers and software developers it's kind of obvious that our leaders have their heads located where the sun never shines, it's nice and warm and the spine assumes a near circular shape. I'd bet that much of the development of the monitoring systems that are watching phone calls, comments on sites, blogs and emails went to Chinese, Pakistani or Indian workers under lucrative outsourcing contracts.
There's a much easier reform. Make it so the H1B worker can work for any employer.
H1Bs are abused because the worker can not seek a job elsewhere in the US. So let them. Pay for H1B workers will rise to be closer to US workers, but companies that really can't find a US worker could still import one.
Meesa most upset that my mooie mooie Gungan network engineering certification not gonna be good enough for a job in America. Meesa be thinking that I be back to working in Gungan call center taking orders for cheap shit coming soon.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Cuz yachts don't buy themselves...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It's great to see this kind of thing. I hope she wins, honestly. She's got an uphill battle ahead of her.
What a lot of people don't realize is that Wipro and Infosys buy influence in this country, that's how they've been able to game the system and get away with it for a long time?
Ultimately we need to restructure the H1-B system so that it allows companies to get the talent they need without all the middle-man broker approach and doesn't exploit workers from abroad and keep wages down and unemployment high in this country. We don't need to hire Kindergarten teachers on H1-B visas. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Fort-Worth-Independent/202267.htm
Really? Fort Worth ISD? Come on you can't find a qualified US resident to teach?
Also, the immigration reforms that seem largely stalled now have some things in it that are making H1-B mills a bit nervous, I say good!
Even in their own country, Wipro, Infosys et al are viewed as "Selling Indians abroad." So it'll be great to see how this case evolves.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-04-23/outsourcing/38762361_1_h-1b-immigration-reform-indian-it
Take a look at the comments.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Depending on its implications, it sounds like your "for the right guy" qualifier might be the problem. Maybe your corporate culture needs to learn to deal with people who aren't readily willing to be emotional tampons in order for your company to gain reliable access to more of that kind of intellect. Superbright people, rare as they are, rarely fit in those politically correct, passive aggressive, corporate drone square holes..
On the other hand there are plenty of second, some third or even fourth grade engineers still enchanted by USA. They still apply and they are the ones most slashdotters disdainfully make fun of as poor quality desi programmers.
I would not go back, no matter what pay they offer and how many cooks, drivers and maids I could afford over there. Once you get used to the clean water and clean air, and reliable electric grid, it is difficult to readjust. But next generation of me are not coming here. Sadly. It would benefit both USA and them. And those who are still willing to come damage USA and damage the reputation of all Indians, all for a fistful of dollars.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I've witnessed abuse myself.
Part of the problem is that there is usually too much wiggle-room in job descriptions and titles; and judges and juries have no clue or experience in such to understand what's realistic in terms of qualifications, long skill lists, and tasks.
The whole H1B thing is based on multiple lies. It's basically the wish of deep-pocket lobbyists coming alive. An objective "shortage" has never been demonstrated and the voting public is too clueless to understand or care, meaning lobbyists have free reign over politicians. AKA Plutocracy-in-action.
Table-ized A.I.
Okay, they can't "legally" hold it against an employee but we all know how the world really works. I have seen it over and over again. Funny how if you turn whistle blower or stand up for yourself you are suddenly noticed for everything everyone else does, but yours gets you written up then fired and life made generally miserable.
All lawyers and all doctors are in unions, dumbfuck.
I'm actually all for the home team advantage. If we are bleeding tech jobs in the US, then shut down the H1-Bs and save those jobs for Americans. If our startups are struggling because they can't find local talent, then increase the H1-Bs and let in the best talent the world has to offer. We benefit both ways. What we need to avoid is opening the flood gates on H1-Bs when American programmers are having trouble finding jobs, and also we need to avoid closing the flood gates on H1-Bs when American companies are struggling because they can't find the talent they need. Unfortunately, this is mostly a matter of politics, and you know how well that works...
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
This lawsuit is for a relatively generic IT position, not some specialized job opening that's difficult to fill. That is to say, just because H1-B is appropriate for your circumstance does not mean it isn't being widely abused elsewhere.
This lawsuit is about a job that is based in the US and so must follow US laws. The worker would not be relocating to India.
Pay 20% above the market rate and you will have no problem finding devs. Just saying..
Exactly this. The kind of person you're looking for is probably going to be outside the bounds socially. And if you're not willing to exchange how you THINK a person should dress or behave in exchange for their knowledge; then you're going to have some real issues.
Problem is, people have to do things like file lawsuits to change this, exactly what this story is about.
It's difficult in general to be sure you were discriminated against in order to file a lawsuit. If you only hear about it you can't file the lawsuits yourself. If you're a customer of these firms you can't file lawsuits since you're not the one being discriminated against, the most you can do is stop doing business with them.
And some people just don't want to cause problems. I was at a firm where one Indian QA woman applied for a job in the next building as her position was being cut, and the other group said she was qualified but because she didn't speak Vietnamese they couldn't give her the job. I told her to immediately go and complain to HR as this was an over the top violation of the law, but she said she didn't want to cause any problems for anyone.
doesn't have to be 20%..10% with a better work environment can make quite a difference.
What is a better work environment ?
Flex time, comfortable clothing, not stuffing people in a 6x6 cube.
Nonsense. I've met some brilliant people and most of them have been quite socially adept. You don't have to put up with crappy behavior to get a great developer. Doesn't mean they are going to wear a 3 piece suit, but you can get an actual, reasonable human being that does great work.
Infosys is basically a staffing company, a "middle man" if you will.
If an American company wants to hire an American worker, why would that American company go through an Indian "middle man?"
Of course Infosys hires mostly Indian workers, American employers don't have to go through an Indian staffing company to hire an American.
Which is the point.
An American company that wants to avoid the hassle of going through the process of hiring cheap off shored labour will go through an "American" Indian middle man. The middle man is a local company that stocks up on off shore staff and offers them out to companies, this way the companies can still claim they aren't off shoring when sending jobs overseas.
The same thing happens in Australia. Outsourcer A stocks up on Indians, Indonesians and a variety of other nationalities with as many MS certificates as possible. Claims they have highly talented engineers with hundreds of hours of experience, smoozes their way into the board room, does a job poorly unleashes the lawyers (aside from the managers, the only Australians on staff) when the client calls them out on it.
These companies should be fined out of existence. The operators reduced to paupers and denied welfare.
Please note I have nothing against Indians, I've met plenty of competent Indians who can get work in Australia, the US or the country of their choosing on their own merits. I simply hate the companies abusing both Indian workers and local companies.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I think too many aren't aware of any "market rate". And they also don't truly appreciate having a talented developer on their payroll, which is why they would rather get one of few barely qualified employees and hope the dev does something right while getting paid 20% below market (or worse) than have to sift through a stack of resumes, pick out the most qualified applicants, take time to properly interview them, and make decisions that to them all seem like expenses with no return. And if not to whoever is doing the hiring, then to that person's superior.
tl;dr: it's my opinion that so many companies don't appreciate paying for or retaining a great development team.
This is different. Off shoring is sending jobs to India, where as this is paying people to come here to work instead of hiring people who can do the work who are here already. That the government can prevent, by stopping the visas
When you cant win, ad hominem.
One thing I noted in working with Infosys is that they require your high school graduation date.
Not evidence you graduated.
Not the year you graduated from college.
I'm sure they think they are being cute, but I hope that they get burned hard for it someday.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Bad news if you're not a web programmer. The economy still sucks if you didn't notice, non web programmers are still finding it hard to find new jobs and are holding onto the old ones if they have them. In most recent interviews I've been seeing a real decline in quality, and part of me suspects it is because those with real qualifications are sticking where they are.
The lawsuit may not go before a jury. But if it does I can see a good amount of sympathy in an American court room regarding a foreign company that hires almost no Americans to fill jobs located in America. No amount of "if she's qualified she can get a job anywhere" hand waving is going to erase that stain.
"Web programmer" that's pretty funny. Do you call secretaries "office document engineers" as well?
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The law requires that to hire an H-1B visa holder that the company must certify that there is no American that qualifies for the position. It doesn't matter if the Bangladeshi is qualified or not. If the American was qualified the firm broke the law by hiring the H-1B visa holder.
Reacting to a company breaking the law by filing a lawsuit is the right thing to do.
But not to worry the conservative SCOTUS in conjuction with tort reform and a proper realignment of labor laws will soon put an end to that. We can't have individuals oppressing corporations because, after all, corporations are people. If workers want to be treated as people they shouldn't be workers. They should choose to be wealthy.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Which 'one job' was this? Can you give details? Otherwise I can also make up a lot of stories.
Incorrect. They choose cheaper labor over more expensive labor. This is Business 101. No court in the land would rule for Plaintiff.
Fortunately for the plaintiff, they cannot use the "we wanted cheaper labor" defense, since they would then be subject to liability for falsely claiming that they could not find suitable local talent, the only justification for hiring using H1-B visas.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I'd literally take 10% less for that. I'd also take extra vacation days at a double pro-rata cut.
Exactly. They could have not liked her attitude at the interview, the color of her shoes, the way she said "Hi, I'm here for the interview", or a million other things.
We do know it probably came down to dollars. She wanted Y, they were willing to pay B. No company or organization is required to hire the best candidate. They're only not allowed to discriminate on the list.
I've been not hired before, because when they finally let loose with a number, it was insulting. Not the "I'm worth a million, I'll settle for $200k". It was $20/yr, no benefits. I don't know why they even bothered offering it. After a few in that ballpark, from companies who couldn't afford ... well ... anything, I start off the conversation with "what's your budget, so I'll know if we should even continue the conversation."
From the article, "High-tech companies claim they can't find Americans to fill U.S jobs, when, in fact, they are rejecting talented Americans..."
Of course they are. Why give her a 6 figure salary, when you can get someone at a weak 5 figures?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The beauty is that we do all the work for them just by being our usual elitist snobby selves. I'm not sure how many people have been sent packing just because they don't know some piece of jargon or aren't familiar with the latest trends in some relatively ephemeral technological zeitgeist, in the hopes that Candidate will immediately become useful within the first week of employment.
Being a "VMWare/Windows Administrator" strikes me as relatively irrelevant compared to MS IT + 17 years, which should be enough to suggest that this person is competent in her field, and can learn to administrate just about anything, if she's motivated. But I'm sure if she doesn't know in the interview how to optimally configure a redundant VMware server, she's hopelessly lost... I mean that's like rocket science right there. Or something. We're not hiring people, we're hiring wikipedia pages, and due to all the jargon and groupthink, mostly vandalized wikipedia pages.
I'm not sure how this person plans to prove discrimination, I have no doubt (having been on interviews designed to hire H1Bs), that she was thrown into a ringer designed to make her look inferior to someone who got the questions ahead of time, and did the research ahead of time. The irony is that I've survived these interviews, fielding questions from database design to maxwell's equations applied to PCB designs, but the ultimate trump card is suddenly the job you're interviewing for is suddenly a more junior position, and suddenly the pay is less than what the job description might IMPLY (no salaries/grades given!). Then of course you say no and they hire the H1B anyway, because the qualified American wasn't interested. There's no winning. These people SHOULD be sued, I just lack the faith that they'll get what they deserve.
It's in the court documents, which are linked from TFA. http://www.pbclaw.com/2013/08/02/proposed-class-action-complaint-filed-against-infosys-for-failure-to-hire-national-origin-discrimination/
D. Particular Instances of Discrimination
69. Numerous instances of discriminatory intent have come to light.
70. While working on the assignment at Vinings, Georgia in December 2008, Infosys employee-whistleblower Jay Palmer claims that another Infosys employee wrote “Americans cost $,” and “No Americans/Christians” on a whiteboard.
71. Palmer claims that he received a couple of telephone calls in which the caller asked, “Why are you doing this, you stupid American, we have been good to you.” While Palmer does not know who made these calls, they came after he began to complain about Infosys’s misuse of the visa system.
72. On February 28, 2011, while Palmer was working on a project in Alpharetta,Georgia, he claims that he found a typewritten note on his keyboard, and a Word document on his computer, both of which stated, “Just leave your [sic] not wanted here hope your journey brings you death stupid american.”
73. On April 21, 2011, Palmer claims that he received an e-mail on his personal e-mail account stating, “if you make cause for us to sent [sic] back to india [sic] we will destroy you and your family.
74. Palmer claims that he was called a stupid American on one occasion by two Infosys employees.
75. Mr. Palmer brought these issues to the attention of Infosys, but Infosys did nottake significant steps to investigate or prevent future issues
76. During Mr. Palmer’s lawsuit, another employee also testified that Americans generally were made to feel unwelcome at Infosys.
If you are filtering out "overqualified" workers who are applying for your job, that still does not justify an H1-B. Overqualified or not, if they will accept your rate, or something at least reasonable, then you can't go asking for H1-Bs. That's not legal.
As for people going off and leaving your job later, that can happen at any time anyway. Presumably, if they can't find a job that uses their Master's degree, they probably aren't going anywhere any time soon. And legally, the time to hire the H1-Bs is after the citizen has departed and then there is no one to fill the job.
H1-Bs make sense, when under control. In many cases, they are completely out of control. I cannot accept that with unemployment as high as it is that we need to have H1-Bs for grunt coder tasks.
You won't get that job. The H1 Employer will write the ad so that only his potential hire can pass it. I need a person who speaks creole and yiddish, with a degree in fine arts and electrical engineering. Must be able to program in Fortran and java, in cantonese.
When the Employer goes back to INS to prove the job they wrote the definition for cannot be filled except by the H1, the circle is closed.
Oh, and you OWN the H1...you'll never get that with a normal employee.
Attorney who used to write those ads.....
Frankly, you're either grossly uneducated, or a troll. Either way you're showing your ignorance.
Just because you might know a little C or ASM does not give you the right to sneer at talented developers who chose different platforms. Go here and tell me these people aren't "real programmers": http://www.chromeexperiments.com/
Guess what: I code in C and asm, I hand solder my own boards. I write cross platform drivers for Windows and Mac. I'm reasonably proficient in probably every language you've ever heard of, from Clipper to RPG (on the AS400) to Java and .Net and I've been doing it for about 17 years now professionally, longer as a hobby. And you know what? I choose to spend 90% of my current development time in Javascript, both in the browser and in NodeJS.
Hopefully one day, if I work really hard and keep trying, maybe I can be considered a "programmer" in your book.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
Given this climate what choice do we have but to drop wages in the US radically? And that would mean the cost of everything would have to come down to indian standards.
I don't think the legislators have really thought this one through.
The US is going to become a third world country if we don't get some kind of traction.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Sapient hired about 2,000 staff in India last year too. The Boston-based company has 65% of its total workforce of more than 10,100 based in India.
"About 35% of our people are hired locally [in markets the company operates]," Mr. Endow said. "That's a very healthy mix."
However: Sapient has only about 1,500 US employees, and at least one-third to one-half of those are here b/c of visa sponsorship. (Consider that an H1-B lasts for 3 years -- extendable up to 6 -- and 2013 isn't even over, yet.) So:
Not just you. Our management quickly found out that techs are actually more interested in some "work perks" than money. And I guess it pays off. We have pretty much everything the GP asks for (and a few more job perks like free lunches (provided you're here at noon, which isn't really a given considering our VERY flexible time schedules), free sodas, a dress code that basically consists of "please, at least cover your privates somehow, if it doesn't bother you too much" (I'm sitting here in shorts and t-shirt, but I have a suit around for those "just in case" moments, some customers kinda expect that from management, no idea why) and a few more less important things.
The pay is sub-par, though. Still, we have no problem hiring or keeping our staff. We also have a pretty impressive productivity level despite (I'd rather say because) we don't expect our techs to sit around when they're essentially still asleep. Free lunch in house means everyone's always around in case of an emergency (and yes, it does happen at times that your lunch break is cut short), and some simply eat at their desk to read some info while eating, which they'd probably do in their "working" hours instead. The flex time schedule means we have staff on site nearly around the clock without having to pay overtime for it (seriously, one guy comes in around 3pm but stays past midnight, which would not only be prohibitively expensive under normal circumstances, you also couldn't "force" someone to work those hours under our work laws), it IS kinda empty, though, at 8am. :)
Essentially, what this means to us is that our salary levels are quite a bit below industry standard, we still do not get the "bottom of the barrel, can't get work elsewhere" idiots (quite far from it, actually), we actually have quite dedicated people who like their jobs and who really want to keep it, who willingly work "odd" hours, actually they're zealously guarding their "timeslot" where others would ask for higher wages just to think about working those times, and so on.
I think what matters is that you simply use what people want naturally. If you FORCE people to work during evenings, they'll probably give you the finger. Offer them to choose their times and you'll be surprised how easily they do it willingly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have been watching this happen in Silicon Valley and other tech regions for years. It's an abomination and it's about time that it stop! I have seen L-1 visa holders from India who are here for "university studies", go to a place like Heald College for six months, come on board as *full-time* employees, with benefits (while professional non-Asian-Indian American IT professionals *with experience* were hired on as contractors). THen, I watched as the full time Americans with rock-solid skills got riffed after training the L-1 visa holder who didn't know jack, and *still* didn't know jack after a long training period.
I have seen these H1-B, L-1 and several other visa holders come to work on the first day and start hugging and chumming around with senior Asian-Indian supervisors who were their *relatives or friends* from back home.
I have watched as Asian Indian supervisors treat their American (and Indian) subordinates like chattel, not to mention looking right through female employees.
I have seen Asian Indian "consulting" groups establish domestic US connections so that their workers can claim "experience with a US company for 1 year", thus enabling the visa holder to emigrate to America.
I have listened to the likes of Bill Gates, John Chambers, Mark Zuckerberg, and many others LIE about the shortage of qualified American IT workers.
I have talked to DOZENS of IT peers who have been out of work for more than a year because every time they aplpy for a position thety are talking to guess who? - an East-Asian-Indian recruiter who can't speak clear English, does not have a clue about what the requirements are for the position, and spouts nonsense from the their doctored RPF's that list skills like "must know C++ and Ruby" for a BASIC QA position. Are you kidding me?
Now, our corporate overlords and these corrupt Indian companies (including the Indian government, whose corrupt officials are on the take from American corporations) want an increase in the H1-B quotas that would double those quotas AND let the spouses of these mostly UNQUALIFIED H1-Bs get an immediate right to work in America (which has not been possible by current rules). Are you kidding me.
The entire Hi-B whine is a SCAM, and a LIE, and a TRAITOROUS double-cross of the American IT worker, and other workers who would LOVE to have the same opportunity as an L-1 worker who doesn't know crap, and still won't know crap after s/he's trained.
Last, outside of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) why don't we hear about the PATHETIC level of instruction and talent that comes out of most of India's other universities, where professors don't even show up, and make their real $$$ arranging private tutorials with students that can afford to pay for private lessons. Why? Because the immoral, corrupt leaches that run the Indian government don't give a rat's ass about their own people, just like the corrupt, immoral leaches in the American government.
I'm sorry, but when I hear "so-and-so's overqualified and more experienced and therefore more expensive" I really have to wonder how this becomes such a common topic in hiring conversations.
Certainly, some positions require a great deal of negotiation for both parties to arrive at a price - but most jobs really don't work that way at all, do they?
No, most jobs have a static pay rate or relatively fixed contract budget and either you accept what they offer, or you move on.
Same for the other side of the table - do most managers really have the authority to grossly overspend on talent? Really? "Spent too much on that guy, $50K to script batch processes at 3rd shift at a colo, and he just isn't innovating... That's what I get for hiring a college graduate... "
If you are looking for the best, you spend and take that risk, if not, you make a reasonable offer and if they counter too high, you say, "this is what the position pays, do you want it or not?"
At some businesses, you start as a temp, no matter what your experience. At a Big NYC Agency, you start in the mail room, even if you've passed the bar exam in 2 states. Given that this model is successful for some very successful firms, maybe businesses that "overpay for talent" are really just overpaying too many middle-managers or doing a piss-poor job of recruiting. Or, maybe it's a complaint without any merit at all, designed to create a chilling effect on an aging workforce to get them to give up things like benefits
you are right on the spot. I have been replaced by incompetent junior IT personnel from Tata Consultancy (same kind of shop as Infosys) at a large nationalised bank in the EU. They don't care about what you can or cannot do. They don't even care about the hourly rate. They only care about executing their contracts; which means flying in as many junior IT people as possible to replace locals. The bank still pays about the same rate, the difference is that the newly hired people are crammed in to little houses (6-8 persons per house), they have to cook their own lunch because they cannot afford the company restaurant, and are generally unfit for working in western culture. Then after 6-12 months when the visa expires they replace the team with a fresh batch of juniors and the cycle begins once again. The management layer sucks up the difference between paid rate and paid salary, which is huge. It all smells like corruption and discrimination but being an independent contractor I don't have any solid ground for legal action. However, I am still in touch with some of the remaining staff and I have been informed that the whole IT ecosystem is becoming such an amateurish mess that they are already reconsidering. Too late in my opinion.
You can be perfectly socially adept but simply revolted by the hypocrisy and dishonesty required in many organizations. As a species, developers are just less willing to go with the herd and spout bullshit they don't believe.
They could have offered her a lower wage but would be afraid she would be disgruntled and quit because the budget is $55,000 a year set by the beancounter. Yes H1B1 visa holders you do have to charge a competitive wage but that is never enforced.
I didn't see any specific mention that they did or didn't offer her the job, but it implies they didn't offer. That invalidates your arguemnt. They aren't allowed to declare "no qualified applicants" because they suspect that the multiple qualified ones would have turned it down.
Someone with 17+ years experience would obviously not be comfortable in that environment and the price is more important than the value since the MBA's feel IT is only an expense anyway. So it is better to simply not even bother her with an offer and instead find someone cheaper. A jr. level employee is much cheaper and often half the price of a sr. whether they are h1b1 visas or a kid fresh out of college who was just at the call center last week who is gaining his VMWare certs.
Do you think that the illegal exploitation of labor is a good thing? If not, then you should stop defending it.
Learn to love Alaska
We all know, unless you have a secret recording from the interview, some stupid employer representative says things that is not so kosher, it is impossible to prove discrimination. But, does it really mean that her lawsuit is baseless ? We, including all the competent and mostly incompetent IT workers from India, know that, infosys, tata and wipro are only functional and operational in USA, because they know how to rig and play the system. And the corrupt US politicians who in the pockets of facebooks and micro$ofts are fanning the fire by providing higher number of H1B quotas.
Do you know the latest game infosys a-holes play ? I have been a victim of this ploy. First off they use third party, pond-scum Indian operated recruiters to make their bids, so nothing sticks to them. I am not sure how this lady got into talks with these people at infosys, directly. But anyway, infosys runs the support shop for Cisco Systems and they were looking for a UNIX heavy guy with some TCP/IP networking knowledge and they found me through some site, where I posted my resume. FIrst off the bat, they low-balled the initial offer for working in San Jose. They offered me something like 10% less money than, what I was making at my last position in Southern Cali. which is another 20-some percent cheaper to live compared to the bay area. But, considering it is better than living on an unemployment check, I agreed to interview. After about 3 or 4 botched calls by them, I had the *pleasure* of talking to an infosys employee, calling me from India, for about 30 minutes, who did the *technical* interview to judge my UNIX expertise level with few easy questions, which, someone who installed linux and played with it for a couple of days can answer. Then I got a call back from the secondary, pond-scum agency, telling me that, I past my tech-screen with flying colors. No-shit-Sherlock... I have been a UNIX sysadmin for more than 20 years and he read a book about it ?? Anyway, they wanted to offer me the position but, the BIG BUT, infosys renegotiated the rate and they have to scale back the already low hourly rate by another 15%. At that point, I told the guy to go pound sand. And I am sure, for the money they were thinking about paying, they hired an indian UNIX sysadmin, who didn't mind sharing an apartment with 5 or more others like himself.
Maybe, just maybe, we the American IT workers should play their game and force these three clown companies from india, by filing lawsuit after lawsuit, even if it is going to be rejected. The problem is, we do not have the deep pockets. Maybe organizations like groklaw and EFF should consider mounting such a campaign. Operating on the outskirts of the law, doesn't necessarily mean that, they have the right to rape the American IT sector.
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The more I know people, the more I love animals
It sounds to me like you're pretty much arguing that the work visa a a really cool business model. WHEN IT'S BEING USED CORRECTLY.
My "saga":I have a few years ago worked for a very large American company. And in my country, admittedly, there are about 50 times the number of IT jobs available compared to the amount of unemployed IT people (Bachelor degree equivalent or higher education).
this puts (and still does) a higher price on talent. And i've benefitted from that, certainly. I wont deny that. But I've ALSO been taking paycuts to finance improving working conditions, re-educating obsolete talent and a few other things.
So I was appauled when I found out that MY company, whom I had worked for for over 10 years, had started, not only "importing" foreign labor, but underpaying them, AND lying about it to the government (otherwise they couldn't get a visa, if the salary officially wasn't high enough), AND forcing the hirees to pay a "deposit" of roughly 2 years salary, payable to the company should the hirees, for ANY REASON be dismissed from their work within the first 2 years of their employment. downright blackmail.... They underpaid, they lied and cheated the government and their own employees. I immediately handed in my resignation and found a new job. Sure the new place didn't have the benefits I had fought for over the last 10 years, but at least the new place was honest about it.
And the new place also hired foreign talent, but did it according to the rules, and only because staffing was a pain, and took forever.
Bottom line: There are liars and cheats out there who will do anything for a buck, but there are also businesses who will act morally, legally and ethically correct. The trick is to be able to tell them apart. And I believe that if the OOP is in the a situation where someone else was hired under the rules, at his/her expense, then that's just tough luck. If that person was hired, bending the rules, then it's abuse of power, not discrimination. I see many problems with this type of hiring, but I do not see a discrimination suit being won...
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
As for people going off and leaving your job later, that can happen at any time anyway.
It might happen a lot less often, however, if you make your company a place where people want to stay.
You don't even have to be the best-paying place in town. There are plenty of studies that indicate that a lot of people value other things than just money when it comes to their job. Even though good pay never hurts.
And as far as real over-qualifications go, it's always possible that a need may turn up for someone with those qualifications. While it's fashionable these days to treat people as interchangeable cogs and go outside for talent, there are advantages to being able to tap a known quantity, and especially one who already knows the corporate structure and culture. For me, at least, getting up to speed on a new technology happens quickly. But knowing where to go outside my department when things need doing takes longer.
Does not matter. It, according to the law, has to be US market pay.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Federal rates are calculated based on regulations established by the Department of Labor. According to Code of Federal Regulations, "The prevailing wage shall be the wage paid to the majority (more than 50 percent) of the laborers or mechanics in the classification on similar projects in the area during the period in question. If the same wage is not paid to a majority of those employed in the classification, the prevailing wage shall be the average of the wages paid, weighted by the total employed in the classification."[4] State level rates are calculated using various methods including an average of all wage rates paid, the mode, or based on collectively bargained rates.
When you cant win, ad hominem.