Vanguard to Shift 1,300 Jobs to Infosys

[24601NoMore]

I recommend you to take a drive through Cupertino CA. Look at cost of houses on zillow. Then kindly observer that town is 90% Indian and Chinese.

Do you really think those people are making 25% less and live in multimillion dollar houses?

I'm not saying that there are not exceptions to the rule. In my last company, some of the Senior R&D leadership was foreign born. That said, I think you may be missing the point.

The houses in Cupertino (which I'm quite familiar with, having worked for Silicon Valley companies most of my career and having visited the area dozens and dozens of times) are not owned by the H1B VISA holders. They are owned by the VPs and Senior VPs if not CEOs of major tech companies.

I'm talking about the H1B VISA holders taking American jobs. Not the Senior leadership (C and VP-level) that are buying the houses in Cupertino.

And, yes, H1B VISA holders ABSOLUTELY make 20-25% what American IT workers make. I used to manage both and know the salary levels personally and quite intimately.

 

[JoeWras]

I recommend you to take a drive through Cupertino CA. Look at cost of houses on zillow. Then kindly observer that town is 90% Indian and Chinese.

Do you really think those people are making 25% less and live in multimillion dollar houses?

Bengaluru? Pune?

 

[Vincenzo Corleone]

Having worked in IT my entire career, I'm pretty familiar with Infosys and the playbook here.

While the article does say that "transitioning" employees will receive the same salary and benefits for 12 months, what it leaves out is what will likely happen after that 12 month period has ended.

The 12 months is most likely so that the "transitioning" employee can train their Indian replacement (with "incentive" to do so - ie: you keep your job for now, even though everyone knows it will go away at the end of the 12 months), who will likely work for 25-30% of the cost (if that) of the "transitioning" employee and who likely has far less benefits.

We've seen this play out in Global 2000 companies time and time again. And while it will save VG customers like us some on the cost side of the equation, it's almost guaranteed that the quality of service will drop significantly once those former VG employees have completed their 12-month "transition" and the new crew takes over..

And if you think VG IT and website is bad now.. just wait until Infosys gets done "improving" things. I haven't seen a single Infosys implementation (and I've seen dozens if not hundreds) that's worth anything. There is a HUGE difference in quality between what American IT workers can build and what cheap Indian offshore labor can build. There's really no comparison - and I say this as someone that used to sell Consulting Services that included both American (expensive) and Indian (very, very cheap) resources.

ETA - I just noticed that this is apparently only for defined contribution plans (for now). But still...not a good sign of things to come, as these things typically morph once senior management sees all the cost savings and totally ignores the quality of the implementation.

I spent 20 years in IT. I can corroborate what 24601NoMore said.

 

[TechLead]

I'm not saying that there are not exceptions to the rule. In my last company, some of the Senior R&D leadership was foreign born. That said, I think you may be missing the point.

The houses in Cupertino (which I'm quite familiar with, having worked for Silicon Valley companies most of my career and having visited the area dozens and dozens of times) are not owned by the H1B VISA holders. They are owned by the VPs and Senior VPs if not CEOs of major tech companies.

I'm talking about the H1B VISA holders taking American jobs. Not the Senior leadership (C and VP-level) that are buying the houses in Cupertino.

And, yes, H1B VISA holders ABSOLUTELY make 20-25% what American IT workers make. I used to manage both and know the salary levels personally and quite intimately.

Those houses are owned by people who came here mostly as Graduate students and after Grad School got jobs with US Companies on *H1B* Visa. This is how most companies use H1B. They don't hunt for workers in India or China. They do it in Stanford and MIT Grad Schools.

VPs and CEOs live in Saratoga or Los Altos

 

[JoeWras]

I spent 20 years in IT. I can corroborate what 24601NoMore said.

What 24601 said is basically why I ER'd. I had enough. It wasn't the people I was working with. It was the process. Difficult meeting times. Short collaboration windows. Etc. And then, there was the issue of wages that were completely stagnant.

The writing was on the wall. And it wasn't fun. Time to go. I could have waited for a layoff, and prayed for one hard, but it didn't come to me, personally. I was losing mental health and left on my own. 18 months later much of my group was laid off.

 

[Toocold]

I recommend you to take a drive through Cupertino CA. Look at cost of houses on zillow. Then kindly observer that town is 90% Indian and Chinese.

Are you saying that the offshoring companies have back-end productions sites in the Bay Area? And the 90% observation is a bit hyperbole.

In general, offshoring from a pure economics perspective makes sense. This is why inflation has been kept tame whether you look at supply chain in goods or backend functions in services.

Fidelity and the vast majority of the other financial institutions have moved in this direction.

 

[TechLead]

Are you saying that the offshoring companies have back-end productions sites in the Bay Area? And the 90% observation is a bit hyperbole.

I was referring to H1B Visa comment. Yes 90% is hyperbole. It is more like 60-70%

 

[Alan]

Thanks for the interesting discussion.