Under political pressure, Infosys says it will hire 10,000 American workers

[Recursion]

Source: Tech Crunch

Infosys, the India-headquartered tech consulting giant, has promised to hire 10,000 American workers over the next two years. The company said today that it will accomplish this by launching four new technology hubs in the U.S., with the first set to open this August in Indiana. The facility is supposed to create 2,000 jobs by 2021.

The company’s announcement comes two weeks after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to review how H-1B visas are distributed. Bills to reform the program, which grants visas to highly skilled workers, are also under consideration in Congress and have received bipartisan support. Indian IT firms like Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy rely heavily on the H-1B program to bring in workers and are eager to gain favor with U.S. politicians.

While no changes have been made yet to the H-1B program under the current administration, Infosys has been treading carefully. Reuters reports that the company plans to apply for just under 1,000 H-1B visas this year, a dramatic decrease from 6,500 applications in 2016 and 9,000 applications in 2015.

Other tech companies that have promised to create more positions in the U.S. since Trump’s election include Amazon, IBM, SoftBank and Alibaba. As CNBC points out, however, some of those companies already had hiring or expansion plans in place before their announcements were made and it’s still unclear if those jobs will come to fruition.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/02/under-political-pressure-infosys-says-it-will-hire-10000-american-workers/

[FrodosNewPet]

1. The H-1B program has been abused

Back when I was a cab driver, many of our clients were H-1B workers. In conversations, I discovered many were performing relatively low level jobs such as running backups, replacing hard drives, designing web forms, and administering SQL Server. Stuff that a reasonably intelligent high school kid could do.

[Recursion]

3. A big part of the problem is that the minimum salary hasn't been increased in 20 years

It started at $60K in the 90s. If you adjust that to increases in tech-sector wages, that would be about $150K. Which, hey: I'm not really concerned about techs at that level having to compete, and I'm all for Google and Apple being able to hire the literal best engineers in the world. So that seems like an easy fix to me: up the minimum salary to $150K.

[dalton99a]

2. They'll replace the Americans when politicians aren't looking

[Recursion]

4. Infosys? Absolutely

They're the scum of the industry.

[IronLionZion]

5. American DUers can apply for these jobs here

https://www.infosys.com/careers/know-us/global-presence/

https://www.infosys.com/careers/job-opportunities/Pages/index.aspx

Companies have replaced their internal IT services with contracted companies for decades now. If you don't like it, blame the corporate clients not the workers. The Indian firms actually came to the US in the 1970s to work for local governments like the Detroit police. If they can't afford Accenture or IBM, they hire Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc. Infosys has a reputation for treating their workers better than some of their competitors. Democratic politicians have encouraged these companies to open offices in economically distressed cities like Buffalo, Detroit, Cincinnati, etc. and hire some locals. When Hillary was a NY senator, she got them to hire graduates of Western NY colleges.

I'm American and worked for an Indian company for several years. IT jobs exist and keep growing. While we wait patiently for Trump to get rid of the H1Bs I still need to pay the bills and live. I'm still going to work somewhere even if it's not ideal.

I'd love to have American coworkers to grab a beer after work and discuss politics and laugh at our stupid president. No one is stopping you from applying for these jobs. If you don't apply, they'll claim that Americans don't want these jobs.

[Recursion]

6. OK, but Sikka has said "I wont hire Americans; they're lazy"

Plus they are horrible about bringing people over with a visa to be a QA engineer and instead having them work as a software engineer (which has twice the prevailing wage)

[IronLionZion]

7. I'm American, I'm not lazy,

and I don't care what Sikka or anyone else thinks of me.

I won't sugarcoat the fact that it is a very difficult way to live and many of the Americans I worked with quit or found new jobs within a year. Indian companies are slow, bureaucratic, and some in leadership don't value their people.

It all depends on what's important to you. Having experience can help with applying for better jobs somewhere else in the future.

[NewJeffCT]

8. Coincidence that their first place is in Indiana?

home of Mike Pence...