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Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

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Re: Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

#11

Post by golergka »

Despite the title of the article, I see one thing unmentioned: general reputation of incompetence. However, nearly everybody I know in IT, from different countries and backgrounds, knows "Indian code" to be a meme of not only bad quality but gross, mind-boggling incompetence.

I don't have a personal experience with indian companies and/or engineers, so don't have a personal opinion on that matter. If anything, it seems strange to me to translate an opinion about outsourcing companies from a poor country to top engineers from that country immigrating abroad. But regardless of whether that opinion is valid or not, people believe it and it certainly has an impact.

Re: Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

#12

Post by bendermon »

American salaries along with low taxes are way more attractive even compared to Nordic countries which apart from high taxes also have some of the highest living costs in the world.

The whole debate on suppressing incomes is quite debatable. Though one can see the argument for people who have spent decades working exclusively on legacy systems. When these become cost centres, companies try and outsource them.

The brief period that I spent working for an Indian outsourcer, I noticed almost every project was about maintenance of legacy systems.

Re: Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

#13

Post by posguy »

golergka wrote: post #11

Despite the title of the article, I see one thing unmentioned: general reputation of incompetence. However, nearly everybody I know in IT, from different countries and backgrounds, knows "Indian code" to be a meme of not only bad quality but gross, mind-boggling incompetence. I don't have a personal experience with indian companies and/or engineers, so don't have a personal opinion on that matter. If anything, it see…

All you have to do is go look at the cluster that projects like ASTPP are to see what low quality developers (in their case from India) get you. The project started with a solid technical foundation (Freeswitch, MySQL, Nginx), was built in PHP (not great), and they proceeded to break or mis-implement Least Cost Routing (you can't do an LRN DIP to find the underlying carrier, nor can you import a normal NANPA voice ratedeck), multi-domain (everyone is on one domain) and block selling under cost or at negative rates.

It shouldn't be this hard, Freeswitch literally does most of this for you (LCR & multi-domain), it is just a matter of building a simple GUI on it.

Re: Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

#14

Post by robjan »

anilgulecha wrote: post #6
robjan wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say it's all down to populism and tribalism. The company I worked for in the UK laid off over 1000 local IT staff and replaced them with people on Tier 2 visas from Tata Consultancy Services and Tech Mahindra who were willing to work for significantly less than our salaries.

Agreed that the replacement happens. I'm saying "give jobs to locals than outsiders" is tribalism. (Not saying if it's right or wrong -- just that it's by definition tribalism).

Not sure if it's tribalism so much as protecting the local economy against salary arbitrage.

Re: Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

#15

Post by posguy »

bendermon wrote: post #12

American salaries along with low taxes are way more attractive even compared to Nordic countries which apart from high taxes also have some of the highest living costs in the world. The whole debate on suppressing incomes is quite debatable. Though one can see the argument for people who have spent decades working exclusively on legacy systems. When these become cost centres, companies try and outsource them. The bri…

Bringing in low cost foreign workers to maintain a system directly drags down the average wage, hurting Americans in the IT industry and lowering their income & benefits. Foreign workers are a tool that companies like to use to scare IT workers away from organizing & unionizing, keeping the Americans they do employ under foot and poorly paid.

As an example, Kroger has a support center for its Fred Meyer brand of stores in Portland, OR. As of last year, they were paying $12hr while expecting in depth networking knowledge, familiarity with SUSE & SunOS, and the ability to write moderately complex scripts for these legacy systems.

Comparatively, another employee who was transfered from Portland to Cleveland went from making a little over $14hr to $120k a year, as the market in Cleveland is apparently so barren of talent that poaching is a serious issue.

Re: Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

#16

Post by nol13 »

golergka wrote: post #11

Despite the title of the article, I see one thing unmentioned: general reputation of incompetence. However, nearly everybody I know in IT, from different countries and backgrounds, knows "Indian code" to be a meme of not only bad quality but gross, mind-boggling incompetence. I don't have a personal experience with indian companies and/or engineers, so don't have a personal opinion on that matter. If anything, it see…

When you charge by the hour, competence is not a virtue.

(dont really have any experience working with their code, but in general I'd say that the Indians I went to school with were the more competent of the bunch, if you want to compare grad students to undergrads at least)

Re: Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

#17

Post by plaban123 »

golergka wrote: post #11

Despite the title of the article, I see one thing unmentioned: general reputation of incompetence. However, nearly everybody I know in IT, from different countries and backgrounds, knows "Indian code" to be a meme of not only bad quality but gross, mind-boggling incompetence. I don't have a personal experience with indian companies and/or engineers, so don't have a personal opinion on that matter. If anything, it see…

The bad "Indian code" is what the client is paying for. If you pay 1/10th of American salary to recruit developers in India who are at the bottom of the stack in terms of competency, what are you expecting?. Everything is magnified in India because of the population. We have bad coders to CEOs of American corporations.

But this works as well. Thats why TCS, Infosys, etc are billionaire dollar enterprises.

Re: Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

#18

Post by andy1729 »

pkaye wrote: post #8
superasn wrote: post #4

Being an Indian engineer myself the funniest part is that regardless of your branch/stream almost every person in my college got an IT job (your branch is decided by the entrance test). We had a saying about TCS in our college "trespassers will be recruited". And they asked chemical engineering and GK questions during the placement tests. It was so weird when I think about it now.

What are examples are branch/stream? Are they just different engineering majors like Civil, Chemical, Mechanical?

Yes, branch/stream is same as majors.

Re: Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

#19

Post by intended »

newsat13 wrote: post #10

I hope the India govt moves fast now. The should take this opportunity to improve local infrastructure and put in reforms for a domestic software economy. The TCS, Infosys & Wipro helped kickstart the software revolution in India but they need to take this to a better conclusion than it is now. We need product based companies in India and we need a strong local domestic market. It needs to retain it's talent at home.…

No?

The govt is already working really fast, and in general all govts have been working fast since 1991.

Making a market and nation building is just hard stuff.

How are you going to make product firms from scratch?

By building a market?

For that at the very least you need connectivity - the current govt has always focused on laying infra and highways.

But that still means people need money to buy stuff, and we have a hugely messed up labor market with a strong dependence on agriculture.

We're 50 years away from anything like what people may want to hear to have a "good" ending.

But this is also a market for people who are able and capable of getting their hands and heads truly dirty.

Re: Countries that are reducing numbers of immigrant workers

#20

Post by posguy »

letitgo12345 wrote: post #7

While many Indians seeking employment abroad are impacted a lot by these changes, I don't think the sentiment behind these changes has much to do with Indian people per se. There's a global backlash against too much immigration in general. Indians are just caught in the mix.

People are tired of the corporate owned politicians allowing companies to run roughshod over the laws, morals & expectations of society.

This is expressed in many ways, from xenophobia to the rise of Bernie Sanders & Donald Trump. People don't want another corporate owned shill like either of the Clintons, both Bushes, and Obama, and I'd wager that Obama knew this in 2008, hence why he made sure his moderately grassroots organization was put out to pasture safely.

We need to stop the union busting, bring back workers rights, prosecute Walmart & T-Mobile for their union response teams (where most potentially "infected" employees are fired), and fight for a better future.

I think we should open our borders, but when it comes to employment we should strive to avoid what has happened in Canada, where low cost workers from overseas work at every single Tim Hortons.

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