This bullying persists at the bottom of a complex system
that supplies workers to some of America’s richest and
most successful companies, such as Cisco Systems, Verizon
and Apple.
I find this extremely confusing, why companies like Facebook and Apple and others in SV, that're sitting on an unbelievable shitload of cash take filthy shortcuts like this, screw the very people that work for them so badly. I mean, seriously, I'm at a loss for words. Why? Why not just pay them a reasonable wage when you are more than capable enough to?
Excessive money (== power == domination of your peers) corrupts everybody. We don't need any new studies to prove this.
That's the sick part of our economic culture - the "natural" tendency of concentration of money/power (instead of spreading it as equally as possible).
Efficiency. Its not Tim Cook's or any middle manager's personal money, it's the money of the shareholders. Besides, overpaying drives all salaries up and can spark a wage war between companies that only benefits the employees.
There's some saying about rich people being cheap is what made them rich in the first place, but I'm not super convinced this carries over into business.
It is extremely frustrating that a lot of tech companies have ended up like so many other companies : caring only about that dollar metric, and not considering the human aspect. So what if it costs more? At least you can feel better about yourself for not treating people as slaves.
For a while I was naive enough to think that SV, being so awash with cash, would not feel the need to become filled with money-grubbers.
"Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed. "
This doesn't explain which way the causality flows, but my own experience with silicon valley glitterati suggests that they start out nice (or at least pretty normal) and the money and power very, very gradually turns them into assholes.
Why on Earth would a for-profit, capitalist corporation not force down labor wages to maximize profits? Maximizing profits is their sole imperative. They do not love you, nor do they hate you, but your labor has a market value they can use for something else ;-).
Most people in the programming business are quite okay un-unionized and with capitalist corporations employing them, because while said corporations are quite willing to push down wages to save money, there are also plenty willing to push up wages if that's what it takes to hire someone decent. That's why talented senior people in New York and San Francisco can make $150,000/yr. It works both ways.
The problem with the H1-B slave is that he doesn't properly have the option of employers competing on any level, because of Immigration Regime Legal Shenanigans.
For the record, Facebook, at least, says that it does not use labor brokers:
Some companies say they shun labor brokers; a Facebook official told CIR that
her company does not use them. Others who rely on them renounce the abuses but
are quick to deflect responsibility.
Facebook, Microsoft and others do end up using consulting firms like Cognizant, which generally provide them H1-B immigrant workers. The conditions of their employment, at least in my eyes, are similarly predatorial in nature.
These little power hungry kings are the monsters we made. These kings have one job and just one job, keep raising the stock price.
One of the quickest way to get liquid, meet your projections and so on, is to liquidate jobs. Get all that $$ back on the books. 10 ppl isn't just (assuming they make 100k each) 1m, its also the training and benefits, and social security, health 401k..etc.
A few dips in the stock price == dethronement, possibly disinterest and the looming specter of irrelevance/demise.
All corporations are about profit. All stockholders want them to be. All people, who often are also stockholders, find this at odds with being a reasonable, nurturing workplace
All employers resent their employees and are seeking to exploit them as much as possible for as little money as possible. Always. Every single one of them. Every second of every day.
Make no mistake- that air hockey table is a ruse to steal your money.
I don't the tech companies do this because they want to. They just try to get a contractor in and because the market is filled with these scum companies they inevitably get into all the companies.
What actually happened in the story is Wipro Indian overpaid their employee and when they discovered the error the employee refused to return the money.
There are some bad actors here but I found that particular anecdote unconvincing.
He was on the staff of Wipro USA when he worked in the
United States on a software project for Apple in 2011, for
roughly $100,000 per year. During a visit to India, he
continued working on the project.
When the project was complete, Wipro told Paul that a
mistake had been made: While he was away, he should have
been switched to Wipro India for lower Indian wages,
according to emails Paul shared with CIR.
A company representative asked him in one email to sign backdated
agreements and return salary he’d already been paid. When Paul
refused, he said Wipro withheld pay, benefits and documents he needed
to maintain his immigration status – and threatened to hold his visa
hostage.
“They wanted to take all my salary,” Paul said. “I was forced and
coerced.”
I've been overpaid by my employer in the past, usually the money just disappears from my account a few days later with no intervention on my part (like a partial ACH reversal). It wasn't my money to begin with, so I had no right to contest it. Even though it was nice to see the extra balance for those few days, it wasn't mine to keep.
If I had transferred the money out such that the reversal was not possible, I'm sure it just would have been withheld from my next check (a.k.a withholding pay/benefits). Now the part about withholding documents sounds illegal, but so is keeping the ill-gotten salary. This of course assumes that Paul was in fact over-paid, which is what TFA says, so safe to assume.
Several of the anecdotes in the story have weird details like this where it's not 100% clear who is screwing who. That does not in any way excuse what some employers are doing.
* s/Indian/India/ in my parent post -- too late to Edit
