I've never understood why Cisco has moved so many employees (management & non-management) from India to the US. What is the motivation to do so ? Is it cost savings ? How ? or are these exceptional managers & engineers that had to be retained ?
36 replies (most recent on top)
Cisco moves employees form many countries including UK, Canada and Israel. Also just because someone is of Indian decent, does not mean they moved here from India.
Cisco lost its way back in 2007 and has never recovered, the real issue is that its run like a financial company and not a technology company and products are kills due to internal politics and software is discounted to support declining hardware sales.
No one is being brought in for high-end research work or new projects. They are being brought in for maintenance projects. And most of them are not the cream. The cream of Indian talent goes to startups or better paying companies like Google. These are average engineers, some of them really sincere (and naive & gullible) and some of them street-smart boot-licking ones. There can be multiple reasons to bring them in.
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Difficult for managers to fill positions in USA.
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Easier to retain due to green card carrot
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Can be paid the minimum at their grade level
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Subordinate culture
. so they can be made to work day/night
. do not question the manager as they do not know the dynamics here
"" The real question is why does Cisco not reduce headcount in the US and move a lot more overseas. That really would be the logical thing to do. There is a post on this website...
There are plenty of existing posts asking the same thing, so kudos on the cutting and pasting. You'll be one of the greats in Cisco software.
Replying with what has been said many times in other posts, Cisco has been trying to do this for ages and can't, having gone so far as to as US citizens to move to India, so clearly there isn't a deep bench waiting in the wings."
I agree! Cutting and pasting is just lazy!"
Too right. Good point. Cutting pasting is just shabby.
" The real question is why does Cisco not reduce headcount in the US and move a lot more overseas. That really would be the logical thing to do. There is a post on this website...
There are plenty of existing posts asking the same thing, so kudos on the cutting and pasting. You'll be one of the greats in Cisco software.
Replying with what has been said many times in other posts, Cisco has been trying to do this for ages and can't, having gone so far as to as US citizens to move to India, so clearly there isn't a deep bench waiting in the wings."
I agree! Cutting and pasting is just lazy!
"There are plenty of existing posts asking the same thing, so kudos on the cutting and pasting. You'll be one of the greats in Cisco software.
Replying with what has been said many times in other posts, Cisco has been trying to do this for ages and can't, having gone so far as to as US citizens to move to India, so clearly there isn't a deep bench waiting in the wings."
Maybe they should be trying harder and do a bit more outsourcing. There is no point in exporting yanks to India....kind of defeats the point.
The real question is why does Cisco not reduce headcount in the US and move a lot more overseas. That really would be the logical thing to do. There is a post on this website...
There are plenty of existing posts asking the same thing, so kudos on the cutting and pasting. You'll be one of the greats in Cisco software.
Replying with what has been said many times in other posts, Cisco has been trying to do this for ages and can't, having gone so far as to as US citizens to move to India, so clearly there isn't a deep bench waiting in the wings.
American protectionism and racism aside I think the answer is obvious. In India the pool of talent is larger. Its a well educated, tech savvy country....like so many other countries...Poland, UK, Portugal etc.
The real question is why does Cisco not reduce headcount in the US and move a lot more overseas. That really would be the logical thing to do. There is a post on this website asking what the salary of a Grade 10 in SJ is:
010 CORP USD min:86,300 mid:115,000 max:143,800
011 CORP USD min:96,800 mid:129,100 max:161,400
Stick on top of that all the costs Cisco cover and the question should really be when do we move headcount out of the States. The argument that Americans are better educated, more tech savvy etc. has long gone stale.
Indians are running US tech Industry. Sadly there are not many STEM skill sets in US to match to latest tech industry needs. Indians make a good replacement and help US maintain the global leadership in tech Industry.
Favoritism and nepotism. Duh. I've seen it first hand. My ex boss was useless Indian. It's who you know and she knows the cisco Indian god apparently ;) so her manager is white but of course that white managers boss is Indian. So that white manager is a puppet I guess .
Its a mixture of great talents and mediocre talent with great contacts. Just because they are Indians it doesn't mean they are not talented. its easy to hire from India and train them. for most of Indians, its dream to move to US and work there. India is still a developing country and America offers better life, more money than doing same job in India. please note its not easy to make a movement. its needs lot of approvals and years of hard-work/Name recognition and persuasion using good contacts.
It takes atleast 4 to 5 months to move a sources from Cisco India to Cisco US. Getting L1 is not easy in Trump world. He made it tough for everyone.
It may sound harsh but face the reality .. its NOT at all about talent, if you have good director or upper layer approach and you are a good A Li*r you can surely get internal movement to USA.
I have seen many transfer from UCS team India to USA who were good for nothing in india itself but got transfer just because they had good contacts.
One common trick is recommending friends and family members against open positions. HR thinks it is a retention strategy to use internal referrals to fill vacancies oblivious to the fact that it sows the seeds for future undetectable fraud.
What kind of tricks should we guard against ? If the backdoors were known, the abuse can be avoided.
It's time HR put in a rule that any engineer with 20+ years of experience, be moved to the US. They obviously have accumulated deep expertise in the product by staying hands on for those many years and can be a mentor for the US new hires.
God mate. If Americans moved to Timbuktu Africa would empty!
Because the USA has a better quality of living standard. Would you Americans move to Timbuktu to do subsistence farming? I don't think so.
Cisco is in decline, so spare me the argument of more smart Indians will make Cisco great.
If this was the case then Cisco would be the best company in the world with all the Indians joining in the last decade or so. If anything this had the opposite effect.
The United States has simply had the 70+ year benefit of reaping the international financial plundering results from winning World War II.
Many other prior post WWII US immigrant generations, composed of European cultures, had the then much easier to immigrate benefit of leaving their old countries for the good old USA.
The USA is still the place that everyone wants to go.
Being born here, I can’t seem to blame everyone. It is still a good country.
But it just seems like the USA has turned into an oversold all-you-can eat buffet; or an over-hyped tech stock from the 1990s. The core founding ingredients are starting to spoil and are tainted from the quality they once were. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Maybe; whatever that means in the days of the drive-through Starbucks every two miles.
What I’m saying is, does the USA nostalgic dream of freedom really truly exists; did it ever really truly exist. Yes, it’s still good, but it sure is getting a whole lot tougher to get here.
Once you are here; you might wonder what the heck it’s really all about…while stuck in a fifty minute California commute, drinking your Starbucks latte, while driving back to your almost half-a-million dollar town-home (make sure to pick up take-out dinner on the way home too).
Freedom. Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it…and a big belly from all that take-out food...and thinking a whole bunch about which is better...a simple life...or a commuter life crunching a keyboard all week...
Ppl on L1 visa are unlikely to leave csco seeing how tough to get fresh h1. So stable employee for 5 yrs
Some are naturalized us citizens or well connected older types looking to be closer to kids going to undergrad and need to be in usa for resident state lower fee.
Why would they be cheaper. They would get the same salaries. Cisco is pretty sensible. It employees good people and these guys are probably very very good. But why the focus on Indians. I'm guessing it's just pure racism. Head of marketing, the head of comms and the head of sales are Brits. Presumably because they are white it's ok?
I just saw the video on The Beat about Cisco's next great thing. Most of the guys on the video looked Indian. Could explain why they come to America. They are good. Cost probably doesn't come into it.
That's right, the only argument made was its cheap. Fact is Cisco is paying for the move...that is NOT cheap.
What a dumb bunch of haters, no wonder the smarter talent was brought in. Not even one good counter point was made why the moves are happening.
Indians are cheap labor.
That makes zero sense. You actually believe that the entire management chain and HR are conspiring to bring in H1B worked to hush up failures. Why because the Americans are writing public blogs about the failures ?
It's a great method to have an indentured servant. With all the failed strategic initiatives, Directors need a few servants that will not speak up. Look at Trump's cabinet, he used the same strategy.
'Merica
Good points made here. Instead of resenting those who were moved here, we better get to know them and be on good terms with them. After all given the powerhouse of talent they are to beat out 10000s of other contenders, they are very likely our next crop of leaders.
To my fellow Americans, find your neighborhood H1B holder who was brought in, and talk to them to understand how awesome they are, that won them a ticket to the US over their 10s of thousands other compatriots.
What do you mean, bribery ? being yes-man? To whom ? The manager, director, VP, SVP, HR ... hogwash. It's plain and simple, if they were moved to the US, it is because they are high potential and proven performers.
@hzf it seems you are not aware of how things work now a days, it is very simple all it is needed is greasing the wheel a bit at Cisco if you know what I mean
It is not a village-ism issue. A move to US is not a single manager's decision, it needs many levels of approvals, not all the levels are Indians. Those being moved are the rockstar of their BU, else the move would not get passed though all the approval levels.
They are moved to the US to either get a US advanced degree and/or get a working knowledge on a product due to be transitioned to India.
Cheaper slaves who would do anything to move to US.
Managers know this and take advantage, and by the way most of those managers are Indian.
Indentured servants are easier to manage
Yeah, I have the same query too, and it's not the Indians favouring their own argument, because a lot of the moves are facilitated by US managers.
It can't be cost either, because the company pays for facilitating the move & that is not cheap. So what gives ? Is there a rule that says after x years of experience you can automatically move to the US ?