IT Worker's Lawsuit Accuses Tata of Discrimination 294
dcblogs writes An IT worker is accusing Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) of discriminating against American workers and favoring "South Asians" in hiring and promotion. It's backing up its complaint, in part, with numbers. The lawsuit, filed this week in federal court in San Francisco, claims that 95% of the 14,000 people Tata employs in the U.S. are South Asian or mostly Indian. It says this practice has created a "grossly disproportionate workforce." India-based Tata achieves its "discriminatory goals" in at least three ways, the lawsuit alleges. First, the company hires large numbers of H-1B workers. Over from 2011 to 2013, Tata sponsored nearly 21,000 new H-1B visas, all primarily Indian workers, according to the lawsuit's count. Second, when Tata hires locally, "such persons are still disproportionately South Asian," and, third, for the "relatively few non-South Asians workers that Tata hires," it disfavors them in placement, promotion and termination decisions.
Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:4, Funny)
Corporations are people to, and they speak; how?
"How" is American Indian. South Asian Indian is "Namaste".
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corporation : person :: money : speech
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By the way, a company named "tata" is sued for discrimination and it's not sexual? I guess nobody there had very nice ta ta's. Seriously, Tata?!?!? WHO PICKED THAT?!
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Seriously, Tata?!?!? WHO PICKED THAT?!
Seriously, who picked Ta Ta's as a slang term for boobs? Tata industries was founded by Jamshedji Tata in 1868.
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Considering it comes from High German/Old English I think it's been used as slang for a lot longer than that!
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:5, Funny)
Depends on definition of 'equal work'. I'm not sure if American workers are as good in reverting mails and doing the needful.
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not that simple.
As an Indian American, I've looked at such companies (Infosys, TCS, Cognizant etc). What they want are cheap IT consultants, and if you don't fit the profile, they won't hire you.
As a senior management consultant at a top firm (think Mitt Romney) and a US citizen, they pretty much ignore my profile, even for pretty neat gigs where my profile matches their needs. Why? Because my asking salary and profile aren't that of a "typical" cheap IT consultant from India.
I was once told that I was "too young", never mind my qualifications and experience for a senior position (I'm 35).
The truth is, they don't just want south Asians, they want south Asians who fit a certain profile. I have many friends and colleagues who are also Indians with exemplary qualifications (PhDs, MBAs, JDs, and MDs from top schools) who are pretty much ignored by these firms. I am an American and Ivy-league educated with graduate degrees, and I am certainly not their type.
Why? Because if you are really well qualified, then you will demand more salary. If you more cosmopolitan, then even if you happen to be ethnically south Asian, you are less likely to be "culturally" brainwashed or pliable to shady or questionable business practices.
That goes against their fundamental business model, and they will not want you.
~m
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised if the company mentioned by OP got a bunch of their workers, particularly the ones located outside of the US, to jump on here and try and help defend them.
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:5, Funny)
Remember, for all those H1B's, they diligently posted ads advertising each job locally and couldn't find any qualified applicants. Otherwise, it would be illegal.
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:5, Funny)
Needed:
IT professional, speaks excellent Hindi, Tamil a bonus. Should have full understanding of Tata's "international" management culture. Minimum 5 years experience in southern Asia. Should have at least two days experience with Oracle and excellent customer expectation realignment skills..
The sad thing is that once upon a time (around e.g. 2000) Indian IT bods almost all really were good. Those guys all went into management. Now the clowns from Tata and WiPro will turn anything they touch to shit.
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You'll never be the Purple Squirrel,
You'll never even see on.
'Cause I can tell you anyhow,
They'd rather H1B one.
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You jest, but I have seen many ads that were either impossible to fulfill- like 5 years experience in a language released last week-
Or listed with such low pay as to be insulting- 15 years experience in every known programming languages as well as machine language for every processor ever: $7.35/hr no benefits
I suspect these are listed by companies seeking to import some H1b workers in a very tech-employee heavy market. You can't tell me a company based in the Valley could not find qualified techs.
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Remember, for all those H1B's, they diligently posted ads advertising each job locally and couldn't find any qualified applicants. Otherwise, it would be illegal.
You're thinking of the labor certification [wikipedia.org] as part of the green card process, which is unrelated. H-1B visas [wikipedia.org] are temporary visas for workers in specialized occupations. You need to show that the job requires specialized knowledge, that the worker is qualified for the job by virtue of training or experience applying the specialized knowledge, and that you will be paying at least the prevailing wage (as determined by the Department of Labor) for that type of position. You don't need to either assert nor de
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:5, Informative)
From the wiki article:
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
The employer must, prior to filing the H-1B petition, take good-faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for the position for which the H-1B worker is sought, offering a wage at least as high as what the law requires for the H-1B worker. The employer must also attest that, in connection with this recruitment, it has offered the job to any U.S. worker who applies who is equally or better qualified for the position.
The employer must not have laid off, and will not lay off, any U.S. worker in a job essentially equivalent to the H-1B position in the area of intended employment of the H-1B worker within the period beginning 90 days prior to the filing of the H-1B petition and ending 90 days after its filing.[34]
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:5, Informative)
No teeth if they refuse to enforce it. California Edison had 400 of their current US Citizen employees train the H1b workers that were replacing them. DoL refuses to take any action on it.
http://www.computerworld.com/a... [computerworld.com]
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream - for Co. (Score:5, Insightful)
For Companies yes. That is why they want more H1-B's to drive wages down to slave wages an help line the pockets of executives. I think companies should have to pay monetary penalties for every H1-B they hire.
My last company I was asked to help my boss write a job description targeted to a specific persons resume - it was a person from India with an H1-B. The person was "submitted" by another person in the company that was an H1-B. I informed my boss that by law he had to look for an American Candidate first. He told me that if an American candidate fit the job description he would hire them. When the job description is tailored to a specific persons resume the chances of someone else fitting it are slim. Been there, done that. I told my boss I could not with a clear conscious help him do something so underhanded. I immediately started looking for another job and found one and started my new job within 4 weeks. I couldn't work for a slimy company like that. Granted anymore, just about every company is becoming slimy.....
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nevertheless, sometimes an American will respond to the ad, which is where the "qualifications" section comes in. The company will publish a laundry list of qualifications that no one has. sometimes they'll demand more years of experience with a particular piece of software than the piece of software has been in existence for. (e.g. 10 years experience with Windows 8). More frequently, they'll just chain together arbitrary pieces of software that are totally unrelated. This allows them to trash the applications of any Americans. The foreign workers, however, know to put this huge list on their resumes, even if they don't actually have the experience. Importantly, there is no requirement for the company to verify the experience of any applicant. However, if an American attempts this same tactic, they'll exercise their *option* to call employers and check references to prove that the American is lying.
Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score:4, Insightful)
First Experience With Tata (Score:5, Interesting)
My first experience with them was back in 1999. They came into our office saying they could provide programmers at 60% of the cost of the existing contractors. Even less if we were willing to hire a woman.
Re:First Experience With Tata (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First Experience With Tata (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't speak to Tata, but I have worked with teams who were receiving outsourced projects (they were in India), with Indian developers working for customers in Boston, and with Indian developers and QA from an Indian firm in Ottawa, plus sundry individuals on other projects over the last 15-20 years.
I have found them a fairly mixed bag. Some had English challenges which made communication difficult. That was amplified by their tendency to claim they understood everything even when they did not. There was also a cultural (corporate or national I'm not sure) where, when asked when something could be ready, they'd identify a date that they couldn't meet (and that those of us posing the question were pretty sure they couldn't meet). We ended up having to allocate twice the time they allowed or more. From a QC perspective, we often had bugs entered with "X doesn't work" without detail of how this notion was arrived at, without the QC having read the spec to see (in many cases) that this was "as designed", or without having repeated the test in different respects to be sure the feature was truly broken, etc.
In my general experience, there were some top notch people there as well. Those ones were smart but were humble enough to not worry about asking a question if they had one (and I never bit off heads when questions were asked). Some of the smartest, without a doubt, and the most willing to learn and not try to just claim a knowledge they hadn't bothered to study deeply, were the female employees.
On one project, the smartest person on the team was the female QC in India. She was constantly talked over by the males on the team who knew less than she did. I think there's a culture of chauvanism in operation in parts of India, even in tech. We found we often were further ahead to skip talking to her in group teleconferences with her and the males on the team and just talk to her separately - she didn't report bugs that weren't, did identify the surrounding circumstances and edge cases that were related, documented things well, and if she wasn't sure if it was a bug, she asked for some insight into how the system worked and then used that knowledge subsequently. I wish she'd been local because I'd have recommended hiring her for the long term.
I have run across some managers who were with our Indian partners and I found them to be too willing to say yes to things they could not deliver and then full of excuses when they could not. They didn't seem to understand we had some idea of what was actually doable and how long it should take and promising incredibly unlikely speed meant we didn't believe them (and it turned out to be right as they often did a half-assed job of testing in those cases).
I like working with Indians generally. They've all been nice folk, even the ones that I thought were too busy trying to look smart and in the know to actually ask the questions they needed to know to learn what they needed to learn. The only things I didn't like were the sly/oily managers trying to sell us BS and call it broccoli and the chauvanistic behaviour shown towards female Indian IT workers.
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My first experience working with people from India was in 1996.
Absolutely some of the most intelligent people that I had ever worked with
A decade later another Indian fellow that I worked with explained the selection process that lead to the slightest fraction of the top percentage of their people making it to the US in that time period
I would expect that the standards have been loosened somewhat since then
this industry is so wrecked... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that Tata isn't crooked but I wouldn't be surprised if the number of western programmers applying was lower too. Seriously, if you've worked with Indians before, why would you even consider a workplace that was stuffed with them?
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Yeah, I'd hesitate to join Tata based on my experience of their management practices and the quality of their staff.
That's got fuck all to do directly with the race of their employees though, so doesn't explain why local hirees have such an unrepresentative demographic.
get rid of the H-1B job lock and set a higher minw (Score:5, Insightful)
get rid of the H-1B job lock and set a high min wage for them maybe with X2 OT (or ever higher min wage) at 60-80+ hours a week. Then the issue will go away.
Re:get rid of the H-1B job lock and set a higher m (Score:5, Insightful)
get rid of the H-1B job lock and set a high min wage for them maybe with X2 OT (or ever higher min wage) at 60-80+ hours a week. Then the issue will go away.
What! Are you crazy or something man?!? You can't do that, Zuckerberg, Gates and the Chamber of Commerce wouldn't have it!
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Easier- require the job be independently categorized (prevents high end programmers listed as "janitorial staff") and the pay rate has to be set at 150% of the current median pay for the area for a US worker in that position. And THEN they must list that job exactly as categorized for US workers to have the opportunity to apply for- reviewed by the H1b oversight to ensure if there are qualified applicants that they are made an offer at the 150% rate. THEN- if there are really no qualified US applicants- the
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But if you raise the minimum wage to say $15/hour like Seattle and other places, statistics show job growth of US citizens will increase and they will hire more Americans to work!
Can you provide a citation for these "statistics" that show mandatory higher wages lead to more jobs? I have seen studies (using a methodology that many economists dispute) that show no significant job losses from a higher minimum wage, but never one that showed actual gains. Since that defies common sense, and if your "statistics" actually existed, they would be widely trumpeted by advocates of a higher minimum, I hereby conclude that you are full of baloney and just making stuff up.
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It is not immediate, it is economic growth. Every time the minimum goes up the economy gets a boost which leads to more jobs. That growth stagnates and declines when inflation overtakes the gains. Inflation has shown NO change to its rate of growth in relation to minimum wage hikes. Ever. it grows whether or not wages keep up- but the economy suffers if wages do not keep up.
http://www.dol.gov/minwage/myt... [dol.gov]
http://www.cepr.net/documents/... [cepr.net]
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Yes, it's called the very low unemployment rate here. Which DROPPED after minimum wages were increased.
The unemployment rate dropped all across America, and in Europe as well. I doubt all of that was because the minimum wage was raised for 1500 workers [seattletimes.com] at SeaTac.
Anyway, I appreciate your honesty in confirming that your "statistics" don't exist.
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I suggest you give this paper (http://www.nber.org/papers/w12663.pdf [nber.org]) a read.
This was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and it was an analysis of the studies on the employment effects of minimum wages.
From the abstract:
A sizable majority of the studies surveyed in this monograph give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically
significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages. In addition, among the
papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment
effects, both for the United States as well as for many other countries. Two other important conclusions
emerge from our review. First, we see very few - if any - studies that provide convincing evidence
of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from those studies that focus on the
broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model predicts disemployment
effects. Second, the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming
evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups.
Getting undercut by those... (Score:3, Insightful)
We are getting undercut by those wanting to live the same life as us. What these people don't understand is that they are lowering said life style. As an entry to mid level technology person I would be concerned because you are being undercut by people possibly as competent as you minus communication skills. Experienced technology people usually have an edge due to their emersion into the North American corporate culture as well as their generally better communication skills. Keep in mind that I'm generalizing but doing so based on personal experience.
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We are getting undercut by those wanting to live the same life as us. What these people don't understand is that they are lowering said life style. As an entry to mid level technology person I would be concerned because you are being undercut by people possibly as competent as you minus communication skills. Experienced technology people usually have an edge due to their
immersion
into the North American corporate culture as well as their generally better communication skills. Keep in mind that I'm generalizing but doing so based on personal experience.
sigh...
Re: Getting undercut by those... (Score:3, Funny)
As competent as you, maybe, but I'd have to survive a dozen strokes to get within striking distance of the best Indian I ever worked with...
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One of my coworkers is from India, he's a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology and he's one of the smartest people I've ever met (I was accepted to MIT and went to RIT so that's not a light compliment). Just because your employer chooses to hire the bottom of the barrel from India doesn't mean there aren't a LOT of smart people from there (or even smart people from there working in IT). It would be hard to have 1.3B people and a history of eduction and NOT have lots of smart people =)
Re:Getting undercut by those... (Score:4, Insightful)
We are getting undercut by those wanting to live the same life as us. What these people don't understand is that they are lowering said life style.
Who's going to stand up and say so, when everyone is so focused on climbing higher in the world themselves to escape the "not as good as it used to be" level they're at now?
A person who wants a lifestyle of "more", for example everyone ever to exist, doesn't really know what that lifestyle of "more" is actually like, so they have no frame of reference to know if they are damaging it. They just know that it's "more" and therefore must be better than what they have now.
In their eyes it doesn't matter how much of that cliff crumbles on the way up, because they are still higher up in the world when they get to its summit. Who cares if it's a foot shorter and everyone standing on it is now a foot lower and angry with you, as long as you can see over the heads of your former peers, right? But wait, there's always another plateau just a little higher up.
That pesky greed thing is innate to human beings. Left to its own devices, it overrides any regard for the wellbeing of others.
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"What these people don't understand is that they are lowering said life style."
What do you expect them to think? "Oh, sorry, I don't want to affect your much higher standard of living. I'll just stick to my subsistence living with my postgrad education then."
Would you care that you were "lowering said lifestyle," if half the standard of living where you're going is multiple times better than the standard of living where you are now? Probably not. I certainly wouldn't.
The blame doesn't fall on people wan
I love tatas (Score:5, Funny)
Nature's pillows.
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I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to get any kind of "tata" joke.
That said, it's a sad state of affairs when "tata" jokes are the exception in a thread like this, not the rule.
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i blame the vast majority of H1b visa holders that now permeate the marketplace thus diluting the culture where tatas and tata realted jokes were much appreciated. /sarc
also women in the tech market
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Eh, I'm as immature as anyone when it comes to lame humor with just-this-side-of-naughty euphemisms.
I came in looking for lame jokes and puns because, hey, it brightens my day when a bunch of us can get together and be goofy.
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The "real" law (Score:2, Insightful)
Doesn't matter what the actual law says. The actual, unwritten law that everyone follows says that you cannot discriminate against straight white men. Lawsuit won't succeed unless they dig up some incredibly damning emails.
Re:The "real" law (Score:5, Insightful)
The "actual law" often says that discrimination is behavior towards a member of a legally recognized minority on the basis of their membership in said legally minority. Of course it varies state to state and between municipalities, but that's usually the language of it. It's only the general, unwritten interpretation that provides the vague assurances of "racial discrimination is illegal" or "gender discrimination is illegal" or similar nice-sounding definitions.
Unfortunately, 'male' and 'white' are not legally recognized minorities, so by many actual, written laws, you cannot discriminate against someone if you disadvantage them because they are either white, or male, in the same way that it's not discrimination if you only hire the deaf over the non-hearing-disabled.
The same is true of the legal definition of rape in some states; rape is only defined as a male penetrating a female. All other combinations (man/man, female/female, female on man) is considered a lesser form of sexual assault. In these places, a female can never be charged with rape.
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You're spouting nonsense. There is nothing about "minorities" in the Federal law, which takes precedence.
http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/pract... [eeoc.gov]
http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statu... [eeoc.gov]
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Accenture? You dodged a bullet.
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And it really sucks that you can spend a lot of time learning new skills but no one cares if you don't have on the job experience. I think I pissed away several thousand dollars on training (not including university) on my own dime that did nothing for me. And since I haven't the need to use them, I forget it.
I feel for you on that. I do my best to discourage anybody from spending their own money on IT training, as the payback just isn't there.
You need to self-learn and get on the job training (paid, self-employed/hobbyist or via open source), and then decide whether to supplement that experience with additional training/certification. But there are so many people out there will hands-on knowledge that just having the training is pretty much never enough to pull a job.
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I can post an add saying White men under 40 need not apply and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Except that that covers three protected classes. Sex, age and race.
racial discrimination prevelant in the world (Score:2, Insightful)
The United States is an exception in caring about racial discrimination in the world. This seems to surprise many Americans.
Can we stop the "War on Discrimination"? (Score:2, Insightful)
It does not work — despite decades of efforts, Blacks [epi.org] and womyn [washingtonpost.com] still earn less than others — for whatever reasons.
It causes ugly discrimination of other kinds — with government contracts officially favoring womyn-run businesses [cepro.com] and colleges openly penalizing certain races [usatoday.com].
It costs businesses billions to avoid such lawsuits [activescreening.com], and millions more in damages and fees when the avoidance-efforts fail. And not just businesses — government agencies too pay (with our monies) to avoid being s [govexec.com]
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The funny thing about those women favoring contracts, they end fulfilled by a minority woman owned pass-through entity which files the paperwork and the same old contractors do the actual work. That's how a friend of mine described it, he said when he worked for Booze Allen he worked on just such a contract, three minority women had an office in DC where they filed paperwork and passed off the actual fulfillment to his group while they collected their 1-2% management fee. Those three were doing a couple $Bi
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Your links don't back up your MRA talking point claims. There is no evidence that equality laws cost businesses "billions". Using the term "womyn" is just plain trolling. There is no punishment of "thoughtcrime" - in order to bring a prosecution there has to be proof of action to discriminate.
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No, what I say is that it should stop being illegal. You and I may still dislike it, but no one should be prosecuted for it.
It should not be tolerated in public and government-run organizations — police, public transport, military ought to be "color-blind". But private companies should remain just as free to refuse to hire anyone for any reason (or no reason at all), as a girl may refuse to marry a particular suitor.
Race to the bottom (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. (Score:5, Interesting)
The comments below that article are interesting, and they- as well as the article- mirror my experience exactly.
I used to work for a domestic (US) majority (65%+) Indian company. Not small, at least 5,000 people. The CEO and CFO were Indian, and the rest followed. Not knowing their H1-B figures, I distinctly got the impression they were using the place for an immigration/sponsorship factory for their friends, extended family, caste, whatever. Management? Virtually 100% Indian. Layoffs? Huh, no Indians in that round, either. It was pretty obvious how non-Indians were treated like crap, but no one was in a law-suitin' mood because this was just after the dot-bomb crash and tech jobs weren't falling off the trees anymore. I realize everyone is an individual, blah, blah, but it seems endemic to native Indian culture that if you're not Indian you ain't shit.
I'm probably going to get yelled at for saying this, but the thing that pissed me off the most- another cultural thing- is that they weren't interested in working together (amongst themselves or with non-Indians) to find the best solution to a problem. Technical discussions always degenerated into dick waving arguments. They were more interested in getting *their* solution jammed through for a personal victory than the greater good. It was disgusting.
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How is this different from any workplace loaded with geeks? "Tool X is has better flux capacity and washes dishes while juggling. You are using obsolete crap."
2/3 of the time they just want to use Tool X to get resume experience in it to move on to better-paying buzzword suckers, leaving their steaming experi
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Snort. It's not always that way. Maybe in any Silicon Valley workplace loaded with semi-adolescent/self-absorbed/hipster geeks and PHBs (I've been there)- but there is actually a subset of the geek population that is quiet, thoughtful, polite, reasonably socially adept, extremely smart, and devoted to the mission over their own personal gain. For optimal results, add good management that recognizes the value of an employee that is a team player and not a prima donna that needs to be "tamed".
It's about be
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"They were more interested in getting *their* solution jammed through for a personal victory than the greater good."
Please -- you just described at least half the population, and probably 90% of managers.
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You will respect ACs authoriti!
And so, (Score:2)
It starts.
hate to blow the bubbles (Score:2)
The King Has No Clothes (Score:3)
And somebody finally said it out loud.
I was a local hire (Score:4, Informative)
I was a local hire at TATA (TCS) doing software work at Apple... Treated me well enough, however I quickly came to realize there was little chance for advancement / promotion in that track. So I found another job, where the bias was going more in my favor. The racial preference at TCS in the US would be more "awful" if it wasn't just a small coin balancing a big stack of the opposite bias elsewhere in the industry.
The root problem is the body shop mentality (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for a specialty IT services firm. The company is European, I'm an American. Even though we do a lot of the same services that Tata, CSC, Wipro and the others do, the company is single-industry focused and therefore most of our employees have some clue what they're doing. The discrimination claim is going to be nearly impossible to prove unless there's a real smoking gun hanging out there
The problem with IT services is that when a company outsources their IT, a new layer of abstraction is created between them and their systems. That layer also needs to make money. I know there are MBA accounting tricks that make this arrangement look better on paper, but the reality is that the outsourcing costs more in real dollars and time lost than the company could save by doing it in house. These IT services firms want the maximum profit from the arrangement, so they bill like crazy, and are constantly testing ways to provide the absolute lowest level of service they can get away with. In the case of, say, IBM or Accenture, this is done by swapping the labor out to whatever country is cheapest that year, and only keeping project managers and absolutely key people in high-cost countries. In the case of Tata or Infosys, that's accomplished by a mix of H-1B sponsorships and doing the work in India. The result is very clear, and has been for years -- unless the IT services company is willing to leave some money on the table and someone with a clue at the customer, the customer will get the minimum service level that won't breach the contract, and pay more for bad work product. The problem, like I said, lies in the MBA accounting tricks that make this look like a good idea.
That said, we have the same problem in our company, but not to the same extent as the complaint alleges. All the top leadership is European, it's been that way for quite a while, and the company is very Euro-centric. What we don't have is what this guy is describing -- our engineering group isn't given crap work assignments, etc. But, I highly doubt anyone from the US could move beyond the VP level. That's fine by me, because I have no ambition to do that. What the lawsuit alleges is that there's no opportunity at the lower ranks either.
The thing I worry about for the future is firms like Tata squeezing out the entry-level IT jobs that allow IT professionals the ability to learn and grow into better IT jobs. It's not about the people's national origin -- my job involves working with a worldwide group of employees and customers, and there are great, fair and abysmal examples of IT professionals in all countries, all races, etc. Culture can be a problem, especially in mono-culture firms. The root problem is that if someone can make more money as a...whatever...instead of an entry level IT tech, then there will be no more job/career progression for anyone, and the domestic job market in IT will stagnate.
Don't work for them if you want to learn (Score:2)
I started with experience in both networking and database management. I had only basic Perl and BASH experience and two quarters worth of community college VB classes. They of course assigned me to Java development assignment. Where the best Java Dev I was onboarded with, he went to work on a DB project even though he didn't even what it means to normalize a database.
Over the course of two years with the company (including 3 months of techni
Gringo here. Can confirm. (Score:5, Informative)
Worked with them at Motorola. All non-Indian contracts were not renewed. Friends who were employed by Motorola said we were replaced by them. Was very informative when on mandatory 50+ user HR training calls, the presenters had to be reminded to speak in English for the two non-Indians on the call. How do I know we were the only ones? They asked us to speak up if we needed english.
You can sue them? (Score:3)
This is Tata's entire business model. They don't even try to be subtle.
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I'm assuming that the suit really means "against white people" (race is a protected class), and we just got a bad summary, as usual.
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Why would you assume it's a lawsuit to try to help a particular race, like white people? Presumably it's about the 80%+ of the world, comprising many races and ethnicities, who aren't South Asian.
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I'm assuming that the suit really means "against white people" (race is a protected class), and we just got a bad summary, as usual.
"National origin" is also a protected class. You can't legally discriminate against someone just because they are, or are not, an immigrant, or are, or are not, an immigrant from a particular country. There is an exception when the government mandates US citizens for national security reasons, like TSA inspectors.
Re: Protected class? (Score:2)
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realistically its profit driven and they are only exploiting the laws that the congress has passed. this is exactly why citizen united is win/win.
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win/win? win/win means it is a win for both sides, not a win for one side 2x.
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The courts haven't always upheld that type of thinking. I forget the details, but there was a case in the mid-west US where caucasians had become the minority in an area and tried to make use of a "school choice" law to choose their children's school that was intended to send kids in poverty stricken areas to the "better" schools in more affluent areas. The court basically told them they couldn't claim to be minorities even though they were the actual minority in their district.
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People like to hire others like them, it's sort of a natural occurence. However it's illegal in many places.
I remember one multinational company where we had offices in California, and one Indian woman applied for an internal job and was rejected because she did not speak Vietnamese and thus wouldn't fit in with the small QA group. I told her to take the case straight to HR because that was blatantly against all company policies, and our official language for communications had always been English and all
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What rights? There is no right to employment.
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It was called the Equal OPPORTUNITY Commission.
It's not that you have a right to employment. You have, in the US, a right to an equal opportunity.
Yeah, I know. That too.
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Except unions — such as by defending the incumbent workers — contribute to inequality [cato.org], rather than fight it.
If Tata's workforce — 95% South Asians according to TFA — unionized today, would that be helping other races make satisfying careers in the company?
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Moron.
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That may be one of the issues in TFA, but rickb928 brought up Equality of Opportunity here.
That Equality transcends citizenship, actually, and unions impede rather than advance it, was my counterpoint.
If you keep using the term as your signature, people will start making conclusions... Please, don't hate.
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What rights? There is no right to employment.
True. However, workers can undertake actions to increase their bargaining power and thus wages, as can any other supplier. My hat you pay a wage is no different than any economic transaction. If workers can improve their position in negotiations than so be it. You're free to fire me and I am free to walk but often that is in neither of our best interested so we need to come to some agreement we both can live with.
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It is different, because of the official governmental support worker-unions enjoy — instead of being treated with the anti-trust laws, like any other entity working to raise the prices of what its members are selling.
The right to organize like everybody else still exists, and has not gone away — one can join a volleyball league,
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It is different, because of the official governmental support worker-unions enjoy — instead of being treated with the anti-trust laws, like any other entity working to raise the prices of what its members are selling.
Except, unlike a group of producers acting in concert to exert market power; an employer still has many other options for labor. They can outsource, refuse to sign a contract and bring in replacements, move to another non-union location; unlike a monopoly where there is no other source of the product. Granted, those are not easy things to do but hey still are viable competitors to a union workforce. The government has intervened in the workplace in many ways, sometimes to the workers favor (unions, labor la
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Unions stand up for union dues. They don't give a shit about you beyond that.
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way to stereotype all unions there. While some, or even many, but not all of them.
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way to stereotype all unions there. While some, or even many, but not all of them.
So.... #NotAllUnions ???
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Re: and people say unions are bad this is what hap (Score:3)
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I was a member of the AFL-CIO, so, yes.. I have belonged to a union. I had no choice since to work at that company you had to join the union. Although we could opt out, we would still have had to pay dues, which is part of my reasoning that they really care a lot about dues and not much else. In fact, the only time we ever heard from them was when they were announcing that dues were rising. The only people in tech that I have ever heard talking about unions are those that barely hanging onto their jobs.
Re:and people say unions are bad this is what happ (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, we need unions to stand up for the union officials and to justify their existence. Don't believe me
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Sure they can (Score:2)
But won't you be among the first to complain when some company refuses to hire blacks, gays, and women?
You really can't have it both ways.