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Outsourced IT Workers Ask Sen Feinstein For Help, Get Form Letter in Return (computerworld.com)
Reader dcblogs writes: A University of California IT employee whose job is being outsourced to India recently wrote Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for help. Feinstein's office sent back a letter addressing manufacturing job losses, not IT, and offered the worker no assistance. "I am being asked to do knowledge transfer to a foreigner so they can take over my job in February of 2017," the employee, wrote in part. The employee is part of a group of 50 IT workers and another 30 contractors facing layoffs after the university hired an offshore outsourcing firm. The firm, India-based HCL, won a contract to manage infrastructure services. Since the layoffs became public, the school has posted Labor Condition Applications (LCA) notices -- as required by federal law when H-1B workers are being placed. UCSF employees have seen these notices and made some available to Computerworld. They show that the jobs posted are for programmer analyst II and network administrator IV. For the existing UCSF employees, the notices were disheartening. "Many of us can easily fill the job. We are training them to replace us," said one employee who requested anonymity because he is still employed by the university.
H-1B Visas are meant to cover skills not readily available in this country. I would argue that if the current workers are training their replacements, then the skill set is readily available in this country. To quote Wiki :
The regulations define a "specialty occupation" as requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor[1] including but not limited to biotechnology, chemistry, architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine and health, education, law, accounting, business specialties, theology, and the arts, and requiring the attainment of a bachelor's degree or its equivalent as a minimum[2] (with the exception of fashion models, who must be "of distinguished merit and ability").[3] Likewise, the foreign worker must possess at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent and state licensure, if required to practice in that field.
Tell the university that you simply don't have the skill set required to train your replacement...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
People in India need to eat something, too, and most of them are piss poor in comparison to US standards anyway. It's hard to find a reason why they shouldn't deserve to get work on an international labor market. I bet I'm going to be downvoted for this, and fully understand the personal problems of the workers who get fired, of course, but there is also another side to these kind of stories.
At this point it's better to actively sabotage the effort while you look for other employment and then quit. I've fought this battle in a different field, it didn't do anyone any favors to go along with it, including the corporate masters who thought they were saving money. The best policy is subtle sabotage: make enemies, say vague things, give wrong directions when someone talks to you without a paper trail then deny or dissemble. The government has sold you out, unions won't work here, so at this point misbehaving and taking their money for as long as it lasts is the best policy.
The cultural differences thing is real. I inherited a team of Indian H1Bs which we picked up as a favor to a VC who had over-extended himself. It took me almost a year to figure out how to manage across the cultural divide.
While the first thing most Indians will tell you is that there isn't just one "Indian culture", it's fair to say that Indian business manners tend to be a lot more hierarchical than American manners. There are of course fire-breathing outliers; people are not cultural automatons, after all. But for the most part my Indian supervisees were much more reluctant than an American would be to do anything which might be construed as challenging my authority or competence in a public way.
That took a lot of adjustment; as an American you feel free to speak your mind to power; and as a supervisor you implicitly rely on your people to tell you to your face when you're going off the rails. I found I had to manage in a different way with the Indians; it wasn't better or worse, it was just different. What worked for me was to really get to know each of them; to take them out to lunch or drinks after work. One on one, in a relaxed and informal atmosphere I could get their true opinion of things. In a meeting they'd take my spitballing suggestions as orders to go out and fall on their swords. At least at first. As we got to understand and trust each other more they became more assertive, but I had to make the first move.
It was a rewarding experience, and I highly recommend it, but I really can't imagine navigating that divide with me in the US and the team in India. If your relationship was merely a matter of handing over specifications and reviewing finished code, maybe. You'd need to have a strict, well-thought out division of responsibilities that did not rely in any way on any kind of implicit communication.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.