How to deal with xenophobia/US decision making only at workplace?
Posted by ParanoidPath@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 44 comments
Hi everyone
I work at a pretty big place and I am part of the internal platform team at an authn company that is really big.
The team took a decision to reduce numbers in US/canada and got 25 people in Offshore(india).
A thing I notice consistently is that
- Decisions are just passed down to india
- There is always a feeling of "Indians are not fit for decision making, we decide, you do and that is it"
- Our work is better
Also the stakeholders/customers are more in the US.
So we only have
- extremely late night calls ( at this point I feel it is done on purpose) with the customers
- complaints that india team does not do well
But here is the weird thing
I went and did a complete Jira analysis of tickets/work being completed by the india team vs the US
The US does whatever they feel that they think is right. EPICS that are not planned at all, tickets that are not planned.
India has way more EPICs closed, way more tickets closed and solid work that actually leads to ROI in some form.
Despite this, there is little to no accountability or scrutiny on the US side. Leadership, especially at the director level, tends to remain silent on these gaps while being more critical of the India team.
This creates a disconnect between perception and reality, and it’s starting to affect team morale.
I’m trying to figure out how to navigate this situation:
- How to surface these observations constructively without it being dismissed or seen as confrontational
- How to push for more balanced ownership and decision-making opportunities
- And how to address the bias in a way that actually leads to change
Would appreciate perspectives from others who have dealt with similar cross-region team dynamics.
Also the director is super biased towards USA and Canada and growing his team there. Some say it is so that he can preserve his job as he is in the US. But he is basically dogshit, sits quiet, takes no decisions, risk averse as fuck, and everybody hates him. He is one of the most useless director that I have ever seen till now. Has 0 autonomy and 0 idea on how to do anything or even techincal knowledge.
codescapes@reddit
This is Reddit, so I risk getting burnt alive for racism if I try to discuss any kind of cultural differences - even sensitively - but I will try. I have substantial personal experience around these cultural interactions. For reference I am Scottish / British but studied abroad in the US for a year and currently work in the UK for a big US multinational on a team that is majority Indian-born.
I'll just say there are a bunch of things in play here:
US multinationals will always keep real decision-making in the US. We see this in the UK, it's not a racial thing, they are where the company is based so they make the big boy decisions no matter what. Insofar as somewhere like London makes decisions it's delegated authority and the US can always 'pull rank'.
On 'tickets' and 'epics' stats... I have found, basically without exception, that Indian-born developers care way more about tickets than Americans or Europeans. They treat them like contracts, we treat them like suggestions. I don't mean that insultingly, I think it speaks to a different relationship with power distance, 'following the boss man's orders' and 'respecting the hierarchy' etc. For the complete opposite experience, anyone who has worked with German or Dutch people knows they will pretty much tell you if they think something is a stupid idea to your face and they also do that as a matter of respect - these are cultural differences around hierarchy.
A sensitive one but many Indians speak only passable English, often at a level that detracts from their work even when it's good. This isn't me trying to be mean or unfair, I cannot speak a second language and anyone who can impresses me by default, but it's true. Also Indian English as dialect has many quirks around word choice and sentence structure that make sense at home but do not conform to so-called 'International English' and can sound broken to Americans. By the way this happens here in the UK with Scots-English vs English.
On that last point on language, there are small things which can actually sour people against the team without them even knowing. One I find for example is that in Indian English people say 'correct' when agreeing with someone but to British or American ears that can sound like they're judging like a teacher or even being slightly patronising by implying they know what counts as 'correct'. It's superficial and minor but there are loads of things like this that can genuinely hurt perceptions if the listener doesn't know this is a dialect thing.
I could share more but I've probably already said enough to get banned so hey. I would just note that a huge amount of friction is down to genuine cultural misunderstanding on either side rather than outright malice.
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
Other than the language bit, I agree with everything else here. Language isn't a problem here as most people are very well educated.
Communication isn't the real pain here. It's just that they don't communicate with us and just pass down the decisions here.
On your second point, we have been pretty vocal on how most of the planned stuff has been poor. We have confluence docs over it, we have had meetings and yet the decision sticks as it is.
It's more of " we hear you, but no".
We have had design reviews from the india side that just end up with "not happening, we don't need this now" Whereas something presented by the US team member is taken more seriously and ends with a yes
Why do people not like listening to us? I have no idea.
The only solution i have found was to just build and productionise. People recieve it well 80% of the time, then the management is in a fix and give us the go ahead. It's sad but the only other way we can do this.
CodelinesNL@reddit
Because cost implies value, and lower cost implies lower value / quality. Even if that's not the case, it's their perception. And you won't change that.
If you want to be in the drivers seat, you should go work for a product company, not for a contracting company.
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
I am in a product company. A very big one in authN and authz.. think public companies in authn and authz. So it's not a small company
Shot_Marionberry5288@reddit
Oh, you work for Okta?
Shot_Marionberry5288@reddit
Yeah on your second point, I had a sense perhaps this was the issue because OP's focus on jira, closing tickets etc. I've noticed Indian developers are very focused on proving their work has been done, perhaps sometimes at the expense of the work. I've noticed sometimes that there's really big issues or gaps in the work, often because the ticket is poorly written, but then if someone in India picks it up it ill just get closed somehow without, and no one notices the gaps in the work until a bug ticket is published and we review the original closed ticket.
I also saw that OP was complaining that the staff engineers in the West close fewer tickets and "spend all their time "on slack answering other people's questions".. which to me sounds like one of the better uses of a staff engineers time. Other complaints include the US team writing documentation and plans.
I think the majority of the issue here is point 2. It sounds like OP has decided to leverage these cultural differences to have the US team basically act as tech leads, designing, documenting, leading, and the indian team implementing.
For OP, for one I think they should not take the timezones personaly. I had Indian team mates that would ping me with alerts at 6am because that's their timezone. American tech companies tend to be biased towards later in the day. And if OP's company is based in california then there's no way they're going to get a good overlap for meetings. I remember my Indian coworkers logged off at 2pm ET, that's only 11am in CA. It's just a challenging fact about working with people across the globe. And probably has something to do with why the American team is spending so much time writing docs.
I'm not going to lie, this post itself is giving ethnic chauvenism. I find it hard to believe that every single person on the 25 person team is better than the US team, just like I'd find it hard to believe that true if the US team every single person in the Indian office was an idiot. Just saying!
CodelinesNL@reddit
And a big difference again between Dutch and German people is that in general we Dutch people really don't care about hierarchy much. Much less than German people at least. So even there you sometimes see struggles with cultural differences.
But yes, Dutch and German tech workers are much closer than others you mentioned.
It's annoying that you even have to care about this. Our job is 90% communication and cross-cultural communication is always hard. That does not mean one is 'inferior' to the other.
Aggressive_Ad_5454@reddit
I’ve worked with developers in India for a US company. They did a really good job as they learned about our biz.
I think you might do what you can to make your India team succeed and let your feckless director take credit for it. At least your users will get decent software out of the deal.
“Standup” via video at 6 am US time is a good way to go. Ask the India team what time they prefer, they know the timezone overlap hours are part of the dealio.
CodelinesNL@reddit
Seems you fundamentally misunderstand the business relationship the contracting company OP works for has with their customer.
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
I do not work as a contractor or whatever here. We don't have customers other than the developers at the company. Its a FTE job that I have. And it's a public product company
CodelinesNL@reddit
Your division is basically a outsourcing/contracting company to the parent in the US.
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
No. We work in pairs with the US team.
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
Lol I wish they would agree to such demands. They would immediately shut that down saying that's too early, hard to collaborate at that time etc etc.
The director also is a moron who is happy to work as less as possible.
Hefty-Strawberry-762@reddit
Maybe they're really burned out from layoffs and offshoring?
ImYoric@reddit
I'm from Europe. I have worked in various international companies and have witnessed lots of US centrism, too. It was not expressed as racism, and I don't think that the US employees considered this racist, but there is definitely a trend of "if a decision doesn't come from the US, it doesn't matter."
I have no firsthand experience of relationships with Indian developers, so can't comment on that.
FuglySlut@reddit
A convenient quality of vendors is they allow you to internalize the success and externalize the failures
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
What do you mean?
FuglySlut@reddit
One of the reasons to use a vendor is because it's easy to blame them when things go wrong
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
But what does that have to do with what I am talking about?
dragonowl2025@reddit
You guys have to stop working 100 hours a week on American timezone to get paid $25,000 a year.
Apparently this is a very good deal for people living in India and they do not give a fuck how they are treated, but this kind of fucks everyone else over indirectly.
farfunkle@reddit
To be honest, companies don't hire in India to improve quality or delegate decision making. Its to reduce cost, so they're not really interested in sharing planning. Companies with long enough term presence eventually integrate their leadership, but that takes a minimum of 5 years - usually closer to 10.
paradoxxxicall@reddit
Yep, most American companies see their teams in India as workhorses. I can definitely imagine how that wouldn’t feel great.
Realistically I’m not sure that there’s any way OP can bring this up in a way that will be received constructively.
Although I’m sure there’s an element of xenophobia, I do think that Indian workers actually in the US get treated better. It’s hard to be seen as part of the decision making process when you’re so separated from the leadership by distance and time.
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
I was just going to point this out too. The Indians who are in high positions in the US (ironically the director is Indian too) get taken more seriously and treated far better too.
If you are going to get the top 1% of Indians who can get some great work done, why use them as workhorses?
The morale here is really low due to this and attrition rate is quite high. :(
apartment-seeker@reddit
Immigrant is not same as offshore foreigner.
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
This does not jibe: “Despite this, there is little to no accountability or scrutiny on the US side.” “The team took a decision to reduce numbers in US/canada and got 25 people in Offshore(india).”
Traditional-Heat-749@reddit
Typical once the decision is made to reduce the size of the team they become lame duck employees and performance no longer matters.
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
Do you mean in Canada? Cause in the US once they decide, it’s a matter Of days!
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
We are already a public company
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
It does not follow
Traditional-Heat-749@reddit
Yes, in the US they could have made the decision a year ago and ate just waiting for a specific time to implement.
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
Absolutely but they wouldn’t tell everyone
Traditional-Heat-749@reddit
Hard truth is that US companies are not hiring in other countries for decision makers. Offshoring is always a cost cutting move. They see you as cheap labor and if you can do more than the US engineers for less they will happily accept.
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
That's just unfortunate :(
beefyweefles@reddit
Maybe you’re not accurately assessing the situation?
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
Sure, but what could be the reasons here?
haseen-sapne@reddit
You should consider the following:
1) How many subject matter experts are in US vs India? Are they deciding or you all are peers?
This is because a lot of companies tend to keep SMEs in head offices.
2) How long tenure/experience does US counterpart have?
…
Overall, ownership is never demanded but earned over time by each team/individuals.
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
We have 2-3 SME in the USA. Who are really good
But we have a principal engineer and a staff here who have been here since the team began. Fantastic devs yet they aren't truly taken " seriously". But the whole india team would have collapsed without them for the first 4-5 months as the team grew. They worked extremely hard to become SME and helped everyone here get to speed with late night calls etc etc
whossname@reddit
Read the agile manifesto. It's about communication, not process. Jira is process, it's ceremony that got bolted on later. It's a terrible proxy for actual value delivered.
Your ticket analysis is probably measuring the wrong thing. Closed epics and ticket counts tell you who's compliant with the process, not who's solving the real problems. A lot of the genuinely valuable work ( unscoped architectural calls, customer conversations, "we need to rethink this" moments) never make it into a ticket. If the US team is doing the messy unplanned stuff and the India team is closing well-defined tickets, the Jira data will look exactly like what you're seeing, and it won't tell you anything about who's contributing more.
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
I agree with this.
I would also add to the conversation which I did forget to add that the "work" done by the US team has 0 impact.
There are a couple who are exceptional that even I look upto, but they - get their work done - do high impact work on the side - add meaningful contributiona to the team
They are amazing devs to work with but thats just 2 out of 10 Dev's which is very poor ratio
calmbuddhist@reddit
Are you senior enough to effect change in this situation? Unless you’re an executive yourself or a critical IC, then there isn’t much you can do, except maybe switch companies.
ParanoidPath@reddit (OP)
Yeah switching companies seems to be the way to go. Even though this team was setup as recent as a year ago, I'm quite sure they'll all quit soon as the pool here is quite exceptional. We'll have attrition rates close to 30-40% soon
Professional_Mix2418@reddit
I’d never work with remote Indian team. Culture of yes people, and happy to continually apologise. I’m not saying there are no skills, but the cultural fit is so removed and the management layers make yes minister look like a modern organisation.
And once embedded in your organisation it’s spreads quickly with everyone’s cousins and uncle joining in.
And it’s not even that cheap anymore. Besides with the changing markets, I don’t think the benefits of outsourcing like that are there at the scale they once were.
Traditional-Heat-749@reddit
For the most part it doesn’t actually matter if it is cheap to a public company. It’s about the bump in stock price when they show they are offshoring. Typically the same places that are this detached from reality also don’t give af about company culture either so they are not really worried.
FrynyusY@reddit
Companies outsource to India to cost-cut at lower levels, not to transfer management and decision making to. If this does not work for you change job to an Indian company.