SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A lawsuit by four IT workers alleging that outsourcing firm Infosys favored hiring Indian workers over U.S. workers now includes an account from a former Infosys recruiter about the alleged practice. It includes accounts by Samuel Marrero, who worked in Infosys's talent acquisition unit from 2011 until May 2013, of meetings with executives at the India-based IT services firm. Marrero and other recruiters "frequently complained" to higher-ups at Infosys during these weekly calls that many of the highly qualified American candidates they had presented were being rejected in favor of Indian prospects. In response to one of these complaints, Infosys' global enterprise lead allegedly said, "Americans don't know $#!%," according to the lawsuit. Infosys has denied allegations that it discriminates.
On July 10, Computerworld wrote about this lawsuit, and asked Infosys in advance for a comment. The company finally responded on July 18, saying in part:
"It is incorrect to insinuate that we exclude or discourage U.S. workers. Today, we are recruiting to fill over 440 active openings across 20 states in the US. These include 300 openings for professional hires and about 140 openings targeting local and recent MBA graduates, Masters degree holders and under graduates to bolster our sales and management consulting teams. This hiring program is a key investment to strengthen our future leadership pool. The program will see us investing in an extensive training and leadership-mentoring exercise to groom young MBAs for a rewarding career with us.
"Attracting the best and brightest talent is paramount to Infosys' success," the company said in the July 18 statement. "We are committed to creating a work environment where every employee feels included, valued and respected."
Infosys officials could not be reached for comment on the recently amended complaint.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday October 08 2014, @03:30PM
A century ago, it was perfectly OK to talk about it, because that kind of discrimination was legal and common (e.g. "Irish Need Not Apply"). Roughly 50 years ago, a lot of Americans were convinced that this was wrong, and managed to convince the government to pass laws saying it was illegal to do that. A strong majority of Americans still say in surveys that they think that employment discrimination is wrong. But there are still a lot of bigots out there who want to discriminate, so they've hit on the solution of discriminating anyways but not talking about it as a way of pretending they're not doing it. Every black guy in the country knows what "We don't think you'd be a good cultural fit here" really means.
Your idea of saying "Oh, it's totally OK to do this, just not OK to talk about it" seems to me to be presenting the wrong solution to the problem, when the right solution is to say "It's not OK in this country to make hiring decisions based on race/gender/age. Period."
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 08 2014, @05:02PM
Hmm WRT to "solution" I never claimed it fixed anything other than eliminating culture shock for new foreigners who don't understand our rules and our embarrassment when they violate one of our tribal taboos in front of us. I think my description of how we really play the game is accurate. I agree the rules are wrong, but lying to the foreigners intentionally by telling them how it should be rather than how it is, is in some ways a worse end result than leaving them confused and saying the wrong things.
Clearly noone benefits when some foreigner who doesn't know any better talks about a taboo subject. Its not like the Indians are going to start hiring white or black people any time soon because of this, just some poor bastard who said the wrong thing is going to be embarrassed and asking his staff why somebody never told him how things really work over here.
If you wanna take over our economy and do business here, you gotta learn how we do business here. Not an abstract model of "how it should be". Either one of his guys should have advised him what not to say, or one of our guys should have. Its all messed up.