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Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

reuters.com

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Re: Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

#51

Post by thisisit »

This is as always a divisive topic. In most cases, people fail to see both side of the arguments.

Working conditions and pay in Infosys are not great for sure. There is a reason how this has come about - companies trying to do their best to cut IT costs. One of my friends working in a billion dollar IT product company says the company is fine with in-house teams for the product teams but everything auxiliary like Finance systems etc they want to sub-contract to Infy and the likes. They have much larger budget for contracting than they do for in-house hires. The reason is in the managements mind that is a high short term cost with immediate removals, whereas full time employees need to be maintained well. Now the company hasn't done well in the past 2 years and there has been pressure on the company to trim more costs. How are they going to achieve it without compromising on their core products? Hire cheaper developers for everything they can think of. So there are market forces in play and if it wasn't an "Indian" IT there will be a "Philippines" or "Mexico" IT company. There is pressure for cutting labor costs and it has to go somewhere. Sure people can unionize (or protectionism which is happening now) but that hasn't boded well for other industries.

Then there is a question of whether US workers are ready to work on the reduced pay and work culture? It has nothing to do with talent rather the grind. My guess is people don't want to work on the reduced pay and work timings.

It is a complex problem to solve but this is similar to people asking for US made iPhones. Sure the intellect required for R&D might not be found in China but then the mass production with 24*7 cheap production lines is not something feasible in US. If the government goes after China you can be sure companies (maybe even Chinese one) finding the next "best" alternative - Mexico, Africa etc.

Re: Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

#52

Post by thiri »

peteretep wrote: post #50
thiri wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why are they a 150 Billion dollar industry? They must be doing something right.

What they're doing right is providing minimum viable technical ability at bargain basement prices. One wonders how that's going to work in a situation where their costs are dramatically higher because they're hiring Americans.

Maybe the cost of an American has come down. Maybe Americans are willing to work at the rates Indians have been quietly working at. As Jack Ma would say if the damn phone costs 50 bucks to make why should an American business think it can forever keep selling it for 600 bucks. Things rebalance all the time.

Re: Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

#53

Post by denzil_correa »

thisisit wrote: post #51

This is as always a divisive topic. In most cases, people fail to see both side of the arguments. Working conditions and pay in Infosys are not great for sure. There is a reason how this has come about - companies trying to do their best to cut IT costs. One of my friends working in a billion dollar IT product company says the company is fine with in-house teams for the product teams but everything auxiliary like Fin…

I suspect you are describing "Opportunity Costs".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

Re: Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

#54

Post by ccozan »

thiri wrote: post #49
peteretep wrote: post #42

Oooh, offshore standards of excellence at American developer prices! EDIT: India's a huge place, and there must therefore be some exceptionally strong developers there. My experience of dealing with Wipro, TCS, etc, tells me that these companies are very effective at either filtering out any engineering talent, or alternatively simply crushing the talent of those who they employ.

So why are they a 150 Billion dollar industry? They must be doing something right.

it seems that in this case, two wrongs show as right:

1. The CIO/CTOs are too easily pushing the responsibility to such Indian IT companies. You know, easy to blame someone else and save money in the same time. And get some shares up too.

2. The Indian companies use very deceptive means to capture this market. Simply, they lie about their competencies.

It happened in multiple occasions when we got send from the indian 'partner' two 'best' person they had. They were suppose to be 10+ Linux experienced. Believe me, when I showed them the command line and I gave them a random, but real, task they just simply stared and didn't know where to start. After 10 minutes ( had to attend something else), I found them heavily browsing SO. Case closed!

Re: Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

#55

Post by peteretep »

thiri wrote: post #52
peteretep wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they're doing right is providing minimum viable technical ability at bargain basement prices. One wonders how that's going to work in a situation where their costs are dramatically higher because they're hiring Americans.

Maybe the cost of an American has come down. Maybe Americans are willing to work at the rates Indians have been quietly working at. As Jack Ma would say if the damn phone costs 50 bucks to make why should an American business think it can forever keep selling it for 600 bucks. Things rebalance all the time.

    > Maybe the cost of an American has
    > come down. Maybe Americans are willing
    > to work at the rates Indians have been
    > quietly working at.
They haven't, and they're not.

Re: Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

#56

Post by denzil_correa »

piyush_soni wrote: post #34

I keep on seeing this time and again on HN that "H-1B workers are cheap workers" (mostly with disdain, completely disregarding the fact that they might also be technically 'better'), but is there any data to support those claims? Because if that's the case, that clearly warrants a few lawsuits about wage discrimination in American companies.

> Because if that's the case, that clearly warrants a few lawsuits about wage discrimination in American companies.

Interesting. Could you detail out this a bit more, legally? I'd like to know the specific law which makes this "discrimination" illegal.

Re: Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

#57

Post by jimmywanger »

thiri wrote: post #47
sureshn wrote: post #39

For decades many american companies have engaged Indian IT Services companies like Infosys to save on software maintenance costs. Now that there is a wave of economic protectionism across the globe,, many Indian companies have to rethink their strategy. Now is the most opportune moment for Indian IT companies to prove that they are genuinely world class and that they have upped their game in terms of delivering with…

Indian IT companies have already proven they are world class. All you have to do is walk into their endless campuses and see the clients they are handling. People are living in a dream state if they think the next generation of Indian software tech is going to stay forever behind the west.

> Indian IT companies have already proven they are world class.

> People are living in a dream state if they think the next generation of Indian software tech is going to stay forever behind the west.

Pick one.

Re: Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

#58

Post by jimmywanger »

piyush_soni wrote: post #34

I keep on seeing this time and again on HN that "H-1B workers are cheap workers" (mostly with disdain, completely disregarding the fact that they might also be technically 'better'), but is there any data to support those claims? Because if that's the case, that clearly warrants a few lawsuits about wage discrimination in American companies.

https://stoph1bvisafraud.org/2015/05/30/2015-h1b-visa-rank-a...

Google is your friend. Indian body shops pay far less and apply for far more visas.

Re: Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

#59

Post by Terr_ »

CriticalSection wrote: post #32
hackuser wrote: post #12

Many on HN seem to dislike Infosys, but let's not let that cloud larger, far more important issues: Most importantly, it sets very dangerous precedents of U.S. federal government interference in the free market and in business decisions, and of economic nationalism worldwide: * Today you might like who the federal government is picking on and threatening; tomorrow you might not. Do we want politicians making decision…

> Do we want politicians making decisions for businesses and controlling the free market? So a visa only available to workers with a certain skill set that chained them to companies is the free market? > It's surprising how quickly the terms "free market" and "free trade" have disappeared from HN. Because a phrase like "free market" is propaganda and meaningless. That the word free is attached to it is part of the pr…

> Because a phrase like "free market" is propaganda and meaningless.

Well, if not propaganda, at least ambiguous, yeah.

Adding on to that: If there's any group that distrusts the modifier "free", it's techies who've seen enough open-source stuff to remember "free as in beer" versus "free as in speech".

Re: Infosys plans to hire 10,000 American workers, open four U.S. tech centers

#60

Post by nvarsj »

hackuser wrote: post #12

Many on HN seem to dislike Infosys, but let's not let that cloud larger, far more important issues: Most importantly, it sets very dangerous precedents of U.S. federal government interference in the free market and in business decisions, and of economic nationalism worldwide: * Today you might like who the federal government is picking on and threatening; tomorrow you might not. Do we want politicians making decision…

You're being downvoted, but I think you raise some some good points since a lot of people believe what you're saying.

I think the main misconception is that there is a "free market". The US government, and most governments around the world, have been heavily interventionist since at least WWII. This was born of necessity - the Great Depression was largely the outcome of capitalism left unchecked. After WWII the U.S. economy was in tatters. Truman and Eisenhower both took very aggressive interventionist policies to keep the economy afloat. Similarly, with the cold war, the U.S. invested heavily in basic research, much of which is the basis for the tech industry as we know it. This economic policy hasn't changed much since WWII. Most industry in the U.S. has been subsidised. Most of U.S. foreign policy has revolved around protecting U.S. interests - which is our economy, things like our energy sector and interests in farmland in places like Brazil. Agribusiness still gets huge subsidies, making Mexican farmers unable to compete, leading a large part to the poor conditions in our neighboring country and the bleed over effects here. And on and on. A "free market" is a complete illusion.

Globalisation was just another means to promote economic interests. It was nothing to do with some free market ideal, outside of propaganda. It was a means to exploit cheap labor in other countries to the benefit of our own economy. Unfortunately, it is mostly to the benefit of white collar jobs and corporate interests. Unchecked globalisation has decimated the working class in the U.S. and much of Europe, and also cost us generations of knowledge on producing goods. Infosys is another example of this - it hits a bit closer to home for us programmers. Fortunately engineering is not so easy to offshore or replace with cheap labour, as it requires highly trained people. And demand outstrips supply. If offshoring had worked, we would all be a lot more unhappy about the effects of globalisation.

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