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Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

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Re: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

ein0p wrote: post #75
agustamir wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're giving anecdotes, I'll dish out some too. Maybe you're getting at something - communities looking out for their kind. It might be seen as good or bad depending on the situation. I've seen academic research labs that are heavy on certain ethnicities. I've seen heavy tilt of Chinese students with a Chinese PI, similarly for Iranian, Turkish. Heck, I've seen silicon valley teams that are Indian heavy, Turkish h…

Yes, in fact currently I am working in a team which has a disproportionate percentage of Iranians. They too like to hire Iranians. I wouldn’t have any problem with any of this if eg it was OK for Americans to prefer Americans too. If we’re going to play games, let’s at least all play by the same rules.

> Yes, in fact currently I am working in a team which has a disproportionate percentage of Iranians. They too like to hire Iranians. I wouldn’t have any problem with any of this if eg it was OK for Americans to prefer Americans too.

In the US, it is no more OK, legally, to discriminate in hiring on the basis of nationality for any nationality compared to any other.

Re: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

#82

Post by syndicatedjelly »

ein0p wrote: post #79
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to theorize why that is? Sure - it's because Indian people coming from India represent the top cut of a workforce that has an extremely high level of engineering training. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_education_in_India 1.5 million engineering degrees conferred in the year 2021 in India. Compare that with more than an order of magnitude fewer awarded in the US: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indic…

Numbers differ. Some sources say 30%, some say 12%, could be there’s weighting by revenue or something idk (Indians run two of the six multi-trillion dollar companies, including the top most valuable one), but I think you’ll agree that whichever way you run the numbers their share is quite disproportionate for a minority comprising 1.3% of the country’s population (4.4M people).

What would be an appropriate share of Indian people in engineering roles and management in America, in your calculation?

Re: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

#83

Post by wakawaka28 »

bcheung wrote: post #40
ein0p wrote: post #21

Indians prefer to hire their own, this is very well known. And because this can’t even be discussed honestly, US corporations are powerless against this preferential treatment.

...seems even hirer with marriage. I've worked at Silicon Valley startups that were that way. I remember thinking this is really odd how high the concentration was (probably about 70% Indian). Didn't really bother me because it was a great team and honestly one of the best companies I worked at. It didn't really seem like they discriminated in hiring and I never felt discriminated against at work. It was just that co…

Some people will hit each other up for paid references. The guy doing the referral can get paid by the new hire and the company. Idk what threshold of acquaintance is enough for a referral, but the worst things you can imagine have been done and are even routine in some places.

Re: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

#84

Post by wakawaka28 »

feyman_r wrote: post #26
ein0p wrote: post #21

Indians prefer to hire their own, this is very well known. And because this can’t even be discussed honestly, US corporations are powerless against this preferential treatment.

Any sources, data etc. to back that up? Is it also for other ethnicities? How many of the top Indian CEO directs are Indian?

This is just a guess, but I think the problem appears more among low-level employees and managers. Maybe CEOs look the other way but I doubt they have anything real to gain by referring strangers who only look like them.

Re: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

#85

Post by wakawaka28 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #81
ein0p wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in fact currently I am working in a team which has a disproportionate percentage of Iranians. They too like to hire Iranians. I wouldn’t have any problem with any of this if eg it was OK for Americans to prefer Americans too. If we’re going to play games, let’s at least all play by the same rules.

> Yes, in fact currently I am working in a team which has a disproportionate percentage of Iranians. They too like to hire Iranians. I wouldn’t have any problem with any of this if eg it was OK for Americans to prefer Americans too. In the US, it is no more OK, legally, to discriminate in hiring on the basis of nationality for any nationality compared to any other.

There is an exception for work that must be done by US citizens though. No country permits foreigners to do certain security-sensitive jobs, generally.

Re: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

#86

Post by wakawaka28 »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #72
ein0p wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broadly speaking this is undeniable, and as an Indian you know it. This is precisely what I meant when I mentioned this can’t be honestly discussed: you’re denying reality to score some grievance points. I do personally know Indians who do not play these games. They exist, you might even be one of them. Congrats! But do consider the following statistics: 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Indian, and one third of all Silico…

Care to theorize why that is? Sure - it's because Indian people coming from India represent the top cut of a workforce that has an extremely high level of engineering training. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_education_in_India 1.5 million engineering degrees conferred in the year 2021 in India. Compare that with more than an order of magnitude fewer awarded in the US: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indic…

>Sure - it's because Indian people coming from India represent the top cut of a workforce that has an extremely high level of engineering training.

That is a small percentage of incoming Indians IMO. Most are average or worse.

>The world is a lot more complex than you think it is. Indian-Americans are not sitting here committing transgressions against you. They are smarter, more educated, and more qualified than the typical American STEM graduate. Step up your game or find a different career with less-qualified people to compete with.

Indians themselves tell me all the time that they only do software because that's socially desirable in a way that Americans simply don't experience. If they could come to the US with a BS or less, they would, because salaries are so much higher here.

Even if this skill thing was true, it is a privilege for Indians to come here. The US government has a duty to not ruin the lives of US workers by importing the entire world, no matter how many of the foreign workers are believed to be better than average. Your claims about average Indian students is generally wrong but I will give you that most Indian imports have a MS or something, because that is about the minimum requirement to stay here. That doesn't mean they are more talented than US students who pay 10x to get their requisite 4 years of education.

Re: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

#87

Post by scruple »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #80
ein0p wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in fact currently I am working in a team which has a disproportionate percentage of Iranians. They too like to hire Iranians. I wouldn’t have any problem with any of this if eg it was OK for Americans to prefer Americans too. If we’re going to play games, let’s at least all play by the same rules.

Is it because of bias, or because there are just a lot of Indians in our industry? In my case, I have more than a few levels of managers from India, but there doesn’t seem to be any favoritism going on (I was even asked once if I was interested in people management, and said no).

I watched a company go through lawsuits because of layers of Indian middle management. Turns out, they had essentially recreated a caste system inside of a massive American corporation. At the bottom was a staggering number of female engineers from North India who got a handsome payout on the other end. This is just another anecdote. I'm not saying that's what is happening where you work. But the signs where I worked were abundantly clear for anyone who happened to look in the direction of that specific department.

Re: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

#88

Post by rayiner »

ein0p wrote: post #69
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Broadly speaking this is undeniable, and as an Indian you know it. This is precisely what I meant when I mentioned this can’t be honestly discussed: you’re denying reality to score some grievance points. I do personally know Indians who do not play these games. They exist, you might even be one of them. Congrats! But do consider the following statistics: 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Indian, and one third of all Silico…

> China represents an even larger pool, and yet we do not observe a large percentage of Chinese managers or CEOs. Care to theorize why that is?

I think one reason is that Indians are culturally much closer to Americans than East Asians are, specifically in terms of attitudes toward selling and self-promotion. I think language also has something to do with it. English is not only mandatory in Indian K-12, it’s widely used even among Indians. For example, the main India government web portal (India.gov.in) goes to an English site. You need to go to India.gov.in/Hi to access the Hindi site.

Re: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

#89

Post by workingdog »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #67
wizerdrobe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never a popular topic on HN, but I’ve been through some appalling diversity training as a white man that seems a-ok in the broader culture. I’ve left one high paying prominent fintech job over such nonsense. Sadly, I feel this is the result - if we’re not going to be colorblind as a rule everyone is going to “wise up” (and I use the phrase loosely) and start attacking everyone else.

Sorry to hear that. I find those kinds of trainings rather distasteful as well, and I'm not even white. I'm lucky I can ignore that kind of crap for the most part. Except when people start inventing nonsense to libel Indian people with.

Indians do better than white people in the US.

You're next for the two-minute hate from the far-left. Watch for the 'caste' system being brought up like a boogeyman.

Re: Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders

#90

Post by pandaman »

bastawhiz wrote: post #37

I'm genuinely curious why a company would go out of their way to fire Americans in America...to hire folks on temporary visas. If you're going to do the first part, why not just hire people in the countries they are from? I understand the article says the folks on the visas are able to be paid less, but isn't the H1-B process long, complicated, expensive, and somewhat unpredictable? Surely it's cheaper to just outsou…

H1B is pretty straightforward and cheap: it's about $5K, most of which are lawyer fees, if you have a law firm signed up for mass processing you get wholesale discount. And it's only unpredictable for an individual, for an employer who submits thousands of applications the laws of statistics make it pretty reliable, if the approval rate is 34.5% then out of 1000 applications you will get 345 +/- few approvals.

And outsourcing does not work for these companies as their business is putting bodies into chairs on their customer's site.

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