That is 100% true. Also, you forgot another group - sales guys. I think they also play a big role in exploiting Indians by paying peanuts while charging the customer $25-30 per hour.
Indians are not being exploited - they are being paid market wages, and are part of a huge emerging middle-class in India.
A teacher in a government school gets paid more than a IT worker these days, and they have guaranteed job till 55. Since IT job is primarily based on low wages, job opportunities become drastically less once they have 10+ years experience (please tell me I am wrong on this).
Even $10/hour is lot more than $5k/year for someone working full time. It seems the middlemen are gobbling up a lot of that!
Around 2004, many south Indian governments provided free tuition fees for engineering. So, thousands of engineering colleges were opened just to grab the fees by admitting more students. Now, the new minimum for students is: Bachelor of Technology.
This is India, where 1.3 billion people live. Unemployment is extremely high. So, even 3 lack rupees ~ $4k per annum is better than not having a job. If you want to call it a market wage, that's fine. It is like $15 per hour in the bay area is market wage, just because people have some jobs.
Inflation in India more than doubled in the last 15 years. 15 years, the base salary was $7k per annum. Now the same is paying $4k. (In other words, 300,000 rupees was 2004 salary , even today it is 300,000 for freshers). Basically, WITCH shops want warm bodies for their billable hours.
When you say this does not make it okay, it seems you simply have no clue the level of disparity most people in India are dealing with. Unless someone magically make every one earn >10K dollars per annum, 5K is lot of money in country where median income is about 600 dollars yearly.
Who is 'you', exactly? I assume it's some hypothetical 'you' and not me specifically, given that I've only asked a clarifying question.
> So yeah, its market wages by definition, but it doesn't make the practice OK.
No, it doesn't make the practice ok, but it's important to identify the right problem if you want to solve it. "The market affords better opportunities for these workers but they are being forced to work below market" is a different problem with different solutions than "Better opportunities do not exist because the market is very competitive".
I feel really sorry for them. One of the project managers lived in a rented bedroom of another Indian family with his wife and daughter because he couldn't afford a place of his own. Another guy, single, lived in a shared 2BR house with 8 other people for the same reason. And there were more people in the same situation.
This was in NY where housing is not cheap but either way, the way I see it they were being exploited. Probably should blame the company I was working for as well, or perhaps just the VP that pushed to replace Infosys with Tata because he had a history with them and they were cheaper.
Edit: typo
I see your point and in no way do I advocate for people being treated that way in US. But the viewpoint of many of the workers who accept these arrangements is that its better than what they had back home, or some variation of that argument. I'm not sure how to argue with that.
Its not so black and white, if that person is living in the US temporarily then his main motivation is to save a lot of money when in the US and then use that to buy a house back in India.
Some of them make enough money to live alone comfortably but why do that when your main objective is to save so you share with others who have the same mindset.
Today, 5 years later, this figure is surely even more inflated. But if you talk to graduate engineers from these companies they still pay 5k USD. So, I don't know if we can safely say there is no exploitation here.
The counter point obviously here is that there is a large young population joining the workforce each year. So, ensuring everyone gets an IT job as well as paid well is a challenge.
What I found was that 12k USD inflated adjusted was same as 5k USD in 2007
[0] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=5000&year1=200...
Exploiting is pretty loaded word, we are not talking about sweatshops. These IT companies provide jobs to many people directly and indirectly. The good people who are paid peanuts then move to greener pastures.
In my experience, these companies as well as the American consultancies were hiring Indian students who studied in US way way more than h4 eads. These students are desperate to get a visa, so they will settle for any job that will sponsor them. Over 100k Indian students alone come to US every year, so its no wonder there would be insane competition for the 80k visas.
Also, I wonder, if South Asia employees are so productive, why do they need an expensive US-based management reaping most of the profit? Why cannot they create their own company?
WITCH companies are reaping profit. TCS market cap is $100B today.
Now, the WITCH companies are into the BS jobs, jobs that help American economy be far more efficient.
Any comment can be criticized in two ways: (a) it is a generalization; (b) it is too specific or anecdata. Here, we are talking about HCL's preference for Indians.
Even in WITCH companies, there are smart people. If there are x percent of smart people in the world, then WITCH companies do have x percent of smart people.
The way WITCH companies send people onsite (USA, UK), depends NOT so much on how smart a candidate is, BUT on some kind of cronyism. At TCS, if someone wants to go onsite on H1, he needs to cozy up with all three levels above him, then this big boss recommends him to HR.
Even if someone comes onsite, he has to suck up to onsite managers to process I-140. If he doesn't suck up to these parasite managers onsite, he will be sent back to India.
Not many Americans know how these WITCH companies operate. That's what I am shedding light on.
Here is something to look at: https://www.petition2congress.com/ctas/stop-eb1-c-abuse-frau...
Since I am involved with lot of immigration advocacy I am familiar with the so called eb-1 abuse. It is not abuse at all. It is a sensible strategy where the companies follow the letter of the law. It is US Congress that is idiotic to put foreign managers and noble winners in the same group of immigrants.
I do feel hr1044 is a perfect solution to this coupled by increasing h1b cap significantly.
Delivery managers prefer a cheaper resource to an expensive resource. They also practice this in India: that's why every team in India is filled with 80% freshers or those who get paid $5k per annum in India.
In the states, they look for the cheapest resource to fill a position. Often times, they find spots that just require warm bodies to add billable hours. Guess, who would they go for? They will hire some H4 EAD who asks $65K per annum in NJ. These people are happy to get some job and experience.
In old days, companies used to have lots of people coasting in their jobs. Now, WITCH companies have captured that profit in a two prong process: offshore to India and charge the client $30 per hour per person, then pay some desperate college grad in India $3 per hour. And capture that $27 per hour.
This is similar to outsourcing the manufacturing, as the middle layers capture the profit, by paying peanuts in China and by getting rid of expensive employees in India.
Edit: basically, these companies are making money off of outsourcing lots of bullshit jobs. They are NOT eliminating bs jobs. In fact, most of WITCH company onsite people are project managers pretending to be super smart workers.