Thread regarding Optum layoffs

@cd

It's not racist to simply state true facts, about what is clearly in front of one's face.
Time and time again, it's been proven that a certain offshore "culture" has demonstrated and proven itself as being either: incapable or unwilling to produce acceptable, much less genuine QUALITY work, when it comes to business.

It is what it is.
You've shown us who you are and how you operate.
It doesn't align with a culture of high trust, high intellect, high innovation, or high quality.
Go be corrupt, lame, d-mb, short-sighted and lacking in integrity somewhere else.
We're busy. We don't have time or interest to be wasting playing your lame games.
Stop pretending you're contenders. You're not. You're weirdo low-vibrational losers.

Also, the word is, "inherent", not "inherit".

No one here is looking to "inherit" a cr@p culture.
By all means: keep it to yourselves!

I told our HR rep but they replaced him with a diverse woman of color. Thanks Kathleen Kennedy.

@dd If the person doesn't bring it up to HR, it never gets investigated. If they do bring it up, they will be moved to the RIF list. The best time unfortunately may be during an exit interview to prevent retaliation.

@de And with the horrendous public image this company has right now, getting sued is the last thing they need. Can you imagine if it actually got to a jury? If it were me, I would make sure it did.

@dd I meant "fix" not "address". Good for you for reporting to HR. Someone will eventually sue and have your reports for backup.

I'm a female in tech and worked for 10+ years at this company. I've worked with my offshore dev team - Indian males - for that whole time. This is not a cultural thing that needs to be worked through. That's s-xism and it's not up to you to address. This is illegal. I don't have this issue with my team.

@bj man have you ever heard of generalizing. So what, Optum hires bad offshore engineers because Optum wants rock bottom prices on tale t. There isn’t a mystery to it, they pay like cr-p in India too. There is plenty of good talent in India they just don’t work for Optum. Stop being a racist saying that it’s because of the inherit culture and all people are the same.

@b4 managers don’t have a say in onshore vs offshore hiring. Senior directors give quotas on who to hire and for the past 5 or so years it’s been almost all offshore. It doesn’t help if your org is ran by Indians as well.

@az

First off, I don't believe you're for real, but let's suspend disbelief for the sake of argument, and give you the benefit of the doubt. We'll pretend you're for real.

Now then:

• Are you an American citizen?
• If not, are you here on an H-1B?

• If so, are you planning to go back to your motherland, if you're laid off and can't find another job in time before your visa expires?

• Why, since you refer to yourself as being "onshore Indian" (as opposed to "Indian American", or "American") aren't you living and working in your country of origin to improve it?

Complaining about "your people" to us here isn't going to change anyone's mind about your "culture"-of-origin. We know from first hand experience dealing with said culture what it's about, and it's doubtful that you're as so entirely far removed and singularly opposite from it as you claim to be: magically and so successfully 180 degrees from their incompetence, laziness, scammy ways of doing business, and cr@p@ss work ethic. Seriously doubtful that you're any much different or better than your offshore bretheren, who you didn't hesitate to throw under the bus, here. Way to go, dude...really shows your character!

Ever hear the saying, "You can't fit a square peg into a round hole"?
That's just as futile an exercise as trying to pretend that certain cultures can mesh and work together well. Sometimes, it just doesn't work.

Be honest enough with yourself and the world, to know when to pack it in.
We all tried this experiment and guess what?
It failed.
What may look like a leg up for you, has become an extreme liability for others.
We need to break up, because this relationship just isn't working.
Literally.

You might be a bit more polished than your offshore peeps, but essentially you're just more of the same.
A polished +urd still a +urd.
Either way you slice it, it comes up sh!t.

Start pushing back through petty means. Examples:

1. In calls, correct their broken and obtuse use of the English language and if they call you out frame it as trying to teach them.

2. If they interrupt you, interrupt them back.

3. Any time they get something wrong call it out publicly. If they say the wrong thing, correct it. If you review their work and have to correct things, call that or publicly in stand up meetings or status update meetings.

4. if they are late to meetings, call it out.

5. If you can, publicly fix their work instructions by outlining the problems in an email to them and copy the team and their manager so they see it. Don't fix it directly, just use complex English to describe why it's wrong.

@az it’s almost like we Americans should stop accepting hiring garbage offshore employees that still don’t know how to use a toilet. It’s a statistic. If they can’t do that, they won’t be able to do anything else. If you’re in a position of even some leadership or influence, whenever there’s a chance, be smart and get yourself one of your own kind. Get someone that understands your culture. Get someone that knows your interest. Help your OWN countrymen/women where you live. Be smart about it, be tactical, and over time it will make a difference for Americans that continue to keep this afloat.

I am male FTE, onshore Indian. My manager is offshore Female. She treats me and other onshore people like we don't belong to her team. The offshore team is just terrible, they have been working on simplest requirements for months. Every week there is a reason why it's being delayed. In the mean time, the onshore team of just 2 has produced more business value in 2 months than the offshore team of 8 has in 5 months but still we are being questioned why we take so much time yada yada.. I am not even counting all the KTs, constant guidance and troubleshooting sessions to help offshore. And oh, their documentation is TERRIBLE. inconsistent formatting, typos, errors. The word documents are not even readable, just a garbled bunch of sentences, misaligned titles and random bullet's. Don't even get me started on Excel. I am sympathetic to the individual contributors hardship but Managers and directors don't seem to give a sh-t, they hire incompetent people who have no basic skills, not sure how they could have graduated with such low personal standards and no accountability. They don't even seem to be too keen to understand business requirements nor what is that they are trying to solve. They need detailed stories, step by step instructions for everything, and 3 times more time than what's reasonable. And nothing is ever completed on time till onshore intervenes and completes it with them. And oh, there is some holiday every couple weeks depending on what region/religion. When one is out, the rest just stall waiting for something from that one person. Between PTOs, holidays, sick leaves and maternity/paternity nothing gets done. I am beyond frustrated. Been here 10+ year's and the last few months have been drastically worse.

@a5 "I'm planning to switch jobs soon anyway"
Looks like you missed that part. It was the first sentence.

When we brought on offshore contractors who couldn't do the most basic of coding tasks with plenty of handholding in a reasonable time frame..

We were told we had to work more on training them, to help them MORE, to give them EASIER tasks. There was no easier work for them to do, we were breaking things up into the simplest problems we could as it was.

These were the worst developers we had ever encountered. They were contractors. Our company loses nothing from terminating bad contractors who won't do their job. Yet there were people in the company practically fighting to keep them on teams.

Take it with a grain of salt, but someone, or multiple people, are likely personally benefitting from some of these initiatives. It wouldn't be the first time it's happened.

You're cooked. Going to HR, you moved yourself near the top of the next RIF list. They are not going to get rid of the problem child in India because thats where all the hiring is going.

I see the same things youre describing on my team but dont have a solution. We were told to deal with it on our own, and that offshoring wont be stopping, so figure out how to cope. By a white female "leader" nonetheless. Incredible culture lol