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Lawsuit: Oracle Called $50K 'Good Money For an Indian'
jfruh writes "A former Oracle sales manager is suing the database company for what he called racially discriminatory salary-setting practices. Ian Spandow wanted to transfer a high-performing salesman from Oracle's India office to California. When he requested a salary of $60,000 a year or more for the employee, equivalent to what his white American counterparts received, he was told instead to offer $50,000, which was 'good money for an Indian.' When Spandow protested, he was himself summarily fired."
I'm shocked. Oracle has always seemed like one the more reputable companies, willing to compete fairly, not obsessed with gouging its customers, and nary an evil bone in their corporate body. I can't imagine them hiring or promoting people that would act like this.
Oracle didn't say anything. Some dude that works there said it. The company should be charged for any discrimination their employees say, but don't make it like it was a statement from their PR or anything like it. There are people that saying stupid things like that anywhere, at any given time.
No, you don't understand. Amnesty and immigration are needed to keep the social security Ponzi-scheme going. There simply aren't enough young people paying into the system to support all those retired old people. We need to make the undocumented workers legal so they can be taxed.
What Ellison, Zuckerberg and other of their ilk want is more H1B visas. H1B visas are needed to keep salaries down by replacing relatively highly paid American tech workers with lower paid imports who will be unable to leave their awful working conditions to seek better elsewhere lest they be sent back to the countries they worked so hard to leave.
An Oracle executive, sales manager and human resources manager walk into a court room...
In the US, that's the law regarding H1-B workers as well, but it's not enforced.
Indian = someone from India.
Well, yea. That's evident by the fact they offered him money, instead of signing the contract, getting him drunk, then peeing on the contract up as they steal all his land.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
it's funny because you are a solid 10 years out of date. Top grads in India now make comparable amounts to their US equivalents. Hell, just a couple months ago Oracle was offering grands 200k+ for Mumbai based roles. The days of indians taking jobs based solely are salary are quickly coming to a close. Now it's just ability and ease of hiring.
Oh, you can still hire a subcontractor in India for $30K/year. It's just that you'll get what you pay for. As you said, the top jobs there make the equivalent of their counterparts in the US and other places easily. But those jobs only go for the folks who have the critical thinking skills necessary to do programming right. The lead architect at my office was born in Mumbai, and there's a reason he makes more than any of us - the guy's a genius.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Was that they were only willing to offer him $50,000, not even $60,000 in CALIFORNIA. Isn't $60,000 a year under the poverty line there?
As an American sub-contractor of an American who works in a Indian office of a Finish company that was recently acquired by an American company, I feel like I've been screwed somehow.
Yes and no. There are many well-educated, foreign countries in which US companies (several I have worked for) try to hire-in, in an attempt to lower labor costs. India is one, there's also Russia, Singapore, etc. It's all about supply and demand. US companies flock to these countries and start hiring. This increases demand and decreases supply. After a while, the salary offset isn't as large, and there becomes less incentive to do so. This is starting to happen in many countries, and it's a good thing for workers everywhere. (Foreign employees get paid more, less desire to ship US jobs overeases = Good for US workers).
Had Oracle just said that $50k was goody money for someone, and left the issue of Spandow's race unmentioned, they'd certainly have been fine. The problem was, however, that the person didn't just say that.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So it goes..
d
The salary and cost of hiring is secondary to the main issue here.
Mr Bambling will have to explain why he issued a "stern warning" in response to the request, rather than an explanation as to his reasoning; Mr Trudeau will have to explain his contemptuous choice of words, and failure in turn to explain his reasoning; both them and probably others will have to explain why firing the sales manager was considered fair and necessary, in the light of the previous two points.
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
The guy now works at Mongo DB
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ian-spandow/1/739/557
As a tech who is unemployed, I will work for that kind of money today!!!
That was the salary for a salesman already experienced with the company, for a job in California.
Do you still qualify?
To be fair, they *did* do that ca. 1600 to the entire Indian subcontinent, at the behest of a corporation, no less ("The British East India Company"). Took ~300 years before they could be overthrown, only to end up with a much more dangerous problem (India and Pakistan, both with nuclear capabilities).
As An American, I refuse to take credit or blame for stuff the British Empire did.
We have plenty of fucked up behavior in our own history, thankyouverymuch.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese