Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

My guess would be that a lot of non-Indians at these companies are rejected on the basis of &quot;vibes&quot;; which is slightly different from racism as I explain below, although it probably ends up having the same net effect as overt racism.<p>As an Indian, I&#x27;ve observed that collectivism and subservience towards authority figures are taught as virtues; this obviously makes it quite easy for employers to extract unreasonable demands such as long working hours, transgressions of ethical limits, things that are &quot;bad&quot;, but that generates benefits for the employer.<p>On the other hand, European and American societies generally focus on individualism and autonomy, which obviously causes a conflict when an Indian hiring manager sees anything other than complete deference to them as a threat, and proceeds to reject such candidates.

The worst HR case I ever got involved in was a semi-onshore (Indian) development team who couldn&#x27;t deal with having a female (Indian) tech lead. She was eminently qualified for the role, but they would attempt to undermine her at every turn, speak over her, hold meetings without her, always going over her head... Caste did not appear to be a factor; it seemed to be good old fashioned sexism.

definitely my experience dealing with them at F500s. Indian mafia running the IT org, and a PITA to get things out of them.<p>personal favorite was that someone from network support ran a script that changed ownership of all of the docker containers and associated configs, outputs, and logs to root. we had pretty clear proof in the logs that a Cog support tech did it, and basically had to escalate to the CTO and get him to threaten a lawsuit to get them to fix it.<p>Also watched caste bulling play out in real time in a cramped meeting room in the RDU Triangle, in NC. Wasn&#x27;t clear what the strain was until later when a full-timer of Indian extraction explained it to me.

The waitlist for Indians to get a green card (i.e. second-class citizenship) is 134 years currently. By the end of this decade, it will touch 200. No regular Indian going on a work visa to the US currently has any significant scope of ever being recognized a citizen.<p>Think of that what you will, but the list of incentives an Indian has to bother integrating into American society is rather short.

This is obvious at a number of these big box consulting firms for many years (Tata, Cognizant, HCL, Capgemini). Its so easy to verify too - go on linkedin and comb through dozens of search results of exclusively Indians (I&#x27;m not talking about American-Indians who go to undergrad in the US like every other person). These firms also take a lions share of the h1b visas which is another conversation - why does India get to have 75% of all h1b visas? Seems not very diverse.

I am going to disclose my own bias here: I tend to look for multicultural teams and somewhat evenly distributed.<p>As an African so far I have worked and learnt a lot from a Brazilian-Japanese, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Israeli, Russian, English, Indian, Pakistani, German, Argentinian, and a Polish.<p>Some of which I have the pleasure to call friend.

As others have already pointed out, this is due to the &quot;group-think&quot; mentality that is an inherent part of the hindu religion, which has spilled into the political and social conscience in the last decade, or so. I have thought hard about it, the only solution to this problem to treat hinduism as an umbrella that houses many different faiths (castes, ethinicities, linguistic groups, etc.) and then promote universal reservations across the government and non-government sectors to reflect the true hindu makeup. I also, support bringing the religious minorities into the fold. This will upset the cronyism that is present currently, and allow the truly meritorious to succeed from each group. Think of this, the meritorious get their opportunities and the demographic makeup is correctly reflected across the spectrum. Thankfully, this line of thought is gradually picking up pace in India. I am hopeful of the future that everyone, irrespective of their caste, language and faith, will be able to prosper in India.

We changed the URL from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;USTechWorkers&#x2F;status&#x2F;1843744799607898260" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;USTechWorkers&#x2F;status&#x2F;1843744799607898260</a> to what looks like the article it points to.<p>Submitters: &quot;<i>Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.</i>&quot; - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>

I was at one point located in Plano, Texas which has a large Indian IT community. When my job search started around eight years ago fresh out of school with a masters degree I was passed up by every IT firm in the area. This is a hard and controversial topic to discuss, and I apologize if anyone find my words here offensive. But the pattern I recognized was if the interviewers were Indian I would not be passing the interview. I have no proof of this. But my Indian peers at my school who applied to the same firms with similar credentials and skill level had little trouble.

Some of favorite coworkers have been from India during my career. This includes both their personalities as I got to know them and their demeanor at work.<p>I have worked at Cognizant for just over a year. Though we don&#x27;t have this problem on my immediate team, it is something we talk about because it&#x27;s obvious in other teams and as an overall culture at the company.<p>It doesn&#x27;t seem like overt discrimination (from me and my coworkers limited perspectives). There&#x27;s a couple factors<p>1. People hire who they know. About two thirds of the employees are of Indian descent. So on average they hire their friends and former coworkers who are also Indian.<p>2. Leadership requires the offshore teams to be on every project. This is to keep costs down and because the other lines of business besides their main and original one (staff augmentation) are relatively new.<p>3. A minority (but not a small one) of Indians really are just blatantly discriminatory.

I worked for Cognizant for a couple of years on multiple engagements, and I&#x27;m not Indian. I saw different things, and obviously there was some dynamic around ethnicity, from &#x27;I&#x27;ll only hire Indians because they work harder&#x27; to Indian boss abusing another Indian programmer while excluding me. I was somewhat advanced level, though, maybe that played a role, so for me personally it was an overall OK time. Overall it&#x27;s good that this conversation eventually happening, I think, it&#x27;s in everybody&#x27;s interest.

The comments on this story are very interesting - not in the good way. This rhetoric is very similar to previous ones that existed in over the decades like Jewish&#x2F;Polish&#x2F;Chinese&#x2F;etc people only doing business with other people of their groups. Or democrats&#x2F;republicans in deep blue&#x2F;red states sticking with their own.<p>Back to the topic:<p>I know a lot of 2nd, 3rd generation Indians who definitely do not fit the stereotypes.<p>What we&#x27;re likely seeing is the effect of three things:<p>- Indian has a very community based dynamic that prioritizes group identity over individual identities, a number of folks have never experienced being outside their groups<p>- Newly arrived Individual are likely experiencing culture shock, it happens to most people. It&#x27;s very much a fight or flight response. People either choose the tribe they know, or find a new one. The later is rare<p>- Most other ethnic groups we&#x27;re hearing about took a few generations to get to white collar jobs, they already understood local norms, because these were their norms. We&#x27;re seeing a lot of 1st generation Indians (and some other groups) start in white collar professions, and that will play out differently.

something weird on my team is that most of them (around 40) are from the exact same province in india<p>just seems kind of bizarre to me, like deciding to only hire people from Florida for a team in California

Also (18 points, 1 day ago) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41774300">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41774300</a>

I am a proud Indian-American (naturalized after h1b) and I think this kind of discriminatory mindset has no place anywhere, definitely not in the workplace. I think my community can be secure in its success and learn to do better and be open to critique. Let&#x27;s work to abolish these attitudes by being more self-aware and raising awareness &amp; use cautionary tales like this as a wake-up call.

I’ve been very interested in forming a union lately, this is just another straw on the camel’s back.<p>The US Tech Workers site seems to be full of reasons why it is necessary but it cannot be a US movement alone, all tech workers need to have solidarity so these companies can’t shift production to another country in the event of a strike.<p>My search for an organization solely focused on *tech workers* and protecting our trade was fruitless — is there any such organization?<p>If this all sounds interesting to you let’s talk, hn.droop582 @ passmail.net

The only point of contention I have with this whole debate is the general premise that it&#x27;s wrong to make citizens of a country redundant (lay them off) in order to replace with cheaper labor brought in from other countries.<p>From an accounting standpoint perhaps it makes sense, but from the view of the workers, and the community, it just seems wrong.

Is anyone really surprised?<p>At the risk of sounding racist (though I&#x27;m Indian, so I guess I get some leeway here), there are likely more biases at play than it seems.<p>You’ll see South or North Indians from a particular state prefer hiring employees from the same state, who speak the same language, and who look like them. And it doesn’t stop there. Caste discrimination plays a role too, and it even has its own Wiki page: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Caste_discrimination_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Caste_discrimination_in_the_Un...</a>. See also:<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dalit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dalit</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;harpercollinsin.medium.com&#x2F;how-does-anyone-know-what-your-caste-is-an-excerpt-from-ants-among-elephants-f2aa71e24f26" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;harpercollinsin.medium.com&#x2F;how-does-anyone-know-what...</a><p>This kind of thing is so rampant in India that you hear about it all the time on Reddit.<p>So yeah, Cognizant has been found guilty against non-Indians but they probably do this to other Indians.

It&#x27;s weird how racism against Indians online is so normalised. I see the same on reddit too.

Source article is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mercurynews.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;h-1b-visa-company-supplying-thousands-of-tech-workers-to-silicon-valley-discriminated-against-non-indians-jury-finds&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mercurynews.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;h-1b-visa-company-sup...</a><p>Paywall workaround: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;PiMNU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;PiMNU</a><p>Another non-paywall article on the same topic: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;insider.govtech.com&#x2F;california&#x2F;news&#x2F;jury-finds-discrimination-in-h-1b-visa-tech-worker-case" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;insider.govtech.com&#x2F;california&#x2F;news&#x2F;jury-finds-discr...</a><p>It&#x27;s about the (previously) Indian outsourcing firm and H-1B body shop supplying contractors to SV companies. It&#x27;s unrelated to the Indian manager only hiring Indians phenomenon which many people here are discussing; FWIW I believe it was quite widespread at least back when I was in the Valley, but this ruling doesn&#x27;t address that in any way.

Why is the submission a link to a twitter screenshot of a news article?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mercurynews.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;h-1b-visa-company-supplying-thousands-of-tech-workers-to-silicon-valley-discriminated-against-non-indians-jury-finds&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mercurynews.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;h-1b-visa-company-sup...</a> is the paywalled source.<p>That said, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.siliconvalley.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;h-1b-visa-company-supplying-thousands-of-tech-workers-to-silicon-valley-discriminated-against-non-indians-jury-finds&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.siliconvalley.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;h-1b-visa-company-s...</a> seems to be the exact same article (author, timestamp, and all) published by the same group (Bay Area News Group) but without a paywall. (Both siliconvalley.com and mercurynews.com are registered to MediaNews Group, which is the owner of Bay Area News Group as of 2006.)

dang? Where are you?<p>This comment section has gone to the gutter. Please flag this thread. This isn&#x27;t even that significant of a news - we can come back to this when the court actually hands a ruling.

This happened at intel and was very noticeable even back in 2010. Indians hires other Indians. At every company I’ve been at if you were not Indian you were not invited to the conversation. Sitting in meetings where you were excluded from 30% of the conversation was wild. I never felt like they were rude or anything though- just that I was an outsider.<p>Best team I worked with was very diverse and they actively worked to help each other get promoted and protect each other.

Seeing this happen at an originally Australian unicorn after the technical co-founder stepped down and new CTO swapped out all of their engineering leadership with Indian hires from Microsoft.<p>Previously saw it at a lesser degree to older unicorns and places like Oracle, IBM, etc.<p>Although it’s normalised in the latter ones.

Some of the reasons why this is happening :<p>-&gt; Getting an assignment in the US is viewed as a reward for employees who work in the company for 5+ years.<p>-&gt; H1B visa employess are given a 50% minimum discount to market rate. cause lol what are you gonna do . Quit and go back in the Queue for H1B.<p>-&gt; nepotism &#x2F; favoritism self explanatory.<p>-&gt; Are more willing to work 40+ hours a week. Less likely to take vacations.<p>These are the observations of myself and members of my family who are from India.

How to fight back when you see this happening at line management level, but not yet proliferated to upper management?<p>Indian product owner taking mostly to Indian peer developers, bypassing normal communication channels. Indians being friendly with each other and stone cold with the rest.<p>Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all?<p>All these culture things (except for the first regarding PO which is spit-in-the-face level of unprofessionalism) add up, and then you find yourself in a corporation described in other messages of this thread.<p>I had to offboard from multiple projects throughout my career because development was hijacked by Indian cronyism.

I just posted this comment with a new account to check how easily hearsay influences people&#x27;s opinions with no backing, whatsoever. I hope this thread will stay up as a reminder to stay civil and not get carried away by clouded judgement.

[flagged]

Since there&#x27;s a lot of negativity about Indians in the comments here:<p>I just worked for a startup with many Indians (including the founder). It was all fine, and I liked my coworkers. I can understand that other people had different experiences: companies and people differ.<p>For context, everything was remote, and I worked from Singapore. I&#x27;m not India, but I do like to prepone my meetings.

I wrote about this in another comment, but I&#x27;ve typically found that public US companies hiring a majority of Indian&#x2F;Indian-origin staff seem to perform (in market cap terms) on par with companies have just 10% of their total employee headcount.

Discrimination and biases are part of everyday life, whether we like it or not. This is an observation, not an endorsement. Ignoring them is akin to denying human nature or believing that the logical mind can fully control the entirety of our thinking. This is why there are a few academic papers that explore this often-taboo topic. I recommend reading Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange? [1] where there is a table of trust between different European countries.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kellogg.northwestern.edu&#x2F;faculty&#x2F;sapienza&#x2F;htm&#x2F;cultural_biases.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kellogg.northwestern.edu&#x2F;faculty&#x2F;sapienza&#x2F;htm&#x2F;cu...</a>

Everyone on Blind says this all day, and thats basically an Indian social network

Damm Microsoft its crazy company

I am seeing the flight to low cost countries now termed as &quot;Best&quot; cost countries is afoot in Europe. Germany has shot itself in the foot by destroying its energy sector. Now that the energy prices have shot through the roof most of the industries are going to get outsourced. The thirst for cheap labour and where the laws especially labour laws are lax is a wet dream for management.