Lawsuit: Oracle Called $50K 'Good Money For an Indian' 409
jfruh writes "A former Oracle sales manager is suing the database company for what he called racially discriminatory salary-setting practices. Ian Spandow wanted to transfer a high-performing salesman from Oracle's India office to California. When he requested a salary of $60,000 a year or more for the employee, equivalent to what his white American counterparts received, he was told instead to offer $50,000, which was 'good money for an Indian.' When Spandow protested, he was himself summarily fired."
Shocking (Score:5, Funny)
I'm shocked. Oracle has always seemed like one the more reputable companies, willing to compete fairly, not obsessed with gouging its customers, and nary an evil bone in their corporate body. I can't imagine them hiring or promoting people that would act like this.
Re:Shocking (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm... I don't think Boycott is what you think it is.
You really don't need to be justified to boycott a product/company. You can do it whenever you really want.
Besides no matter how bad Oracle gets, if your Boss says use this Oracle product or your fired, then you will probably be a little less outraged.
Now this if proven true in court, could be justifiable for Oracle workers to unionize and strike.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Informative)
What surprizes me is that the sales guy in India needs to come to the U.S.? Also, 60K is chump change for sales. All this nonsense combined with so much drum beating has me wondering, "why?"
The subtext not mentioned in either the summary or the article is that Oracle's overseas hiring policy is a money-saver, which goes completely against the spirit and letter of the H1B visa legislation. The policy is that visas should be granted where skilled staff fill a skills gap in the USA, not because US staff are too expensive. There have been complaints that big companies have been flouting this, and if this guy wins his case, Oracle will end up with a judgement that effectively states that they're breaking immigration laws. That's the big story....
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It's easy to avoid breaking the law when the job requires a fluent Hindi speaker. The cost savings is just a nice side effect.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Informative)
If proven true in court, this justifies a boycott of Oracle products.
It wasn't the public shaming and mudslinging between Oracle and Google, or the dozens of lawsuits [google.com] Oracle has brought on with various companies, like those providing Solaris support "illegally" [networkworld.com], or even the controversies [wikipedia.org] surrounding the company and it's business tactics. No, one racial comment and termination in an at-will [ca.gov] state is what's going to cause the boycott.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm reminded of an exchange between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway [quotecounterquote.com].
Ellison is no different than any other Type-A asshole, he just has more money. Arguably his biggest flaw is that he loves to flaunt what he has while being a huge dick while giving interviews to the press, so we can't help but want to punch him in the face.
Re:Shocking (Score:4, Informative)
I was on that page myself ... how on earth is this even news to people who've followed Oracle? The whole company appears to be one big jerk.
Re: Shocking (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this isn't about race more nationality.
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I think this isn't about race more nationality.
It's a good thing for Oracle that the Civil Rights Act 1964 allows you to discriminate based on National Origin. Oh, wait! Doh!
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I think this isn't about race more nationality.
Nationalism isn't any better than racism.
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If proven true in court, this justifies a boycott of Oracle products by all us techies until Oracle produce an open salary audit proving no racial differentials between staff at the same locations. The allegation if true is disgraceful
Hmmmm....Interesting concept. An open salary audit. Let me see. So what you are saying is that all employees for a given job description are equal. Is that correct?
Well, I guess that you would have to make sure that there are measureable metrics to ensure that employee A is doing the same and equal job of employees D, B, F, E, T, C.
Look, what was said, or practiced, is wrong on all fronts. As an employer and a one time employee, it sucks, but it happens all the time. I know for a fact that recruiters look t
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Why does it have to be a racial difference? Why can't it just be the difference between hiring a guy from India, and hiring a guy locally? Employment negotiations are full of these kinds of discrepancies. One guy negotiates more than another guy. One guy knows the market better than another guy. There are all kinds of people that do the same exact work, yet get paid differently. The "Indian" may have referred to the guy coming from India, rather than locally. They know Indian demand to transfer to the US is
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Funny)
Next thing you know, they're going to be bundling adware with Java and suing open source projects.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
I gotta say, it was hilarious (in retrospect) how the open source community got ultra-paranoid about Mono and C#, and it turned out that it was Java that turned into the lawsuit fodder instead.
Do any of the people who were beating up on de Icaza feel bad about that now, or are they incapable of shame?
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect if Google had chosen Mono instead of Java, Microsoft would have sued the fuck out of Google exactly like Oracle did. Hell, Microsoft is shaking down Android OEMs over FAT patents.
So that mistrust was not wrong, Oracle and Microsoft both suck and their product offerings reflect that.
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Not to mention that using Java leveraged all the professional Java developers already out there.
The C# pool is substantially shallower.
Re:Shocking (Score:4, Interesting)
Mono works on Android and, in my experience, the dev times are much faster than using the built-in APIs. Combine with Monogame, which took the place of XNA and has Microsoft's full support, and you have a really viable (though not perfect) cross-platform gaming solution. If you want to give it a try, I recommend Xamarin studio.
http://xamarin.com/android
Xamarin has been endorsed by Microsoft as a legal and legitimate cross-platform c# vendor for a while now. Microsoft may still be evil, but whoever is running their C# ecosystem is yet untainted. *fingers crossed*
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Oh come now, corporate behavior and the behavior of a few individuals are miles apart.
But in this instance it was an honest mistake, the Indian reference was to an old treaty with the Powhattan tribe, where that kind of wampum was damn good beads.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm shocked. Oracle has always seemed like one the more reputable companies, willing to compete fairly, not obsessed with gouging its customers, and nary an evil bone in their corporate body. I can't imagine them hiring or promoting people that would act like this.
Honestly, I am shocked; but for totally different reasons:
Oracle is evil, sure; but they are a major corporation, with a legal department, HR, 'Compliance' people, and so on. Try to stiff an employee and fire him if he complains? Fuck yeah, Larry can't keep himself in yachts if the peons get all the crumbs they ask for.
Outright admit that you are engaging in discrimination based on racial/ethnic/national origin, when there are so many other ways to massage something as potentially ambiguous as salary level, 'fit with the company', and so on? Was somebody drunk on the job? Asking to get fired and sued? Got away with it so often that they got arrogant?
That is what strikes me as shocking (though, rather convenient for the cause of justice). There are endless legal, or at least 100% unprovable, ways of fucking with somebody. What kind of utter moron would be dumb enough to tell the guy the truth to his face?
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You're surrised that one HR person in a huge company is horribly incompetent and stupid? Even if he's let go they'll probably do no more that confirm his dates of employment and he'll soon work for another company. Most companies just want to get rid of the lemon quietly without causing a lawsuit.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure why people are acting surprised. Undercutting the local market is the entire reason US tech companies import people from India just like it's the entire reason they export functions to India. You didn't actually believe there is any sort of shortage of talented labor? Only in the sense that local labor wants more money than companies like Oracle would care to be paying therefore they want a cheaper pool of labor.
Re:Shocking (Score:4, Insightful)
might be a huge raise, but the living expenses are very different too
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Pretty much this.
It is surprising how many thinks that money by itself has a value. It doesn't, the value comes from the things you can buy from it.
Say that I don't have any desires beyond somewhere to sleep and food for the day. My salary would still have to be significantly higher if I work in the US instead of in China.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Informative)
Now, when someone is already working for for you for far far less, and you are paying for one of them and his family to move to America, why would you expect them to pay him as much as the other employees, already there.
Because that is the law. Paying someone on a H1-B or L1-B visa less than the US rate is prohibited.
Oracle has more than enough lawyers; at least one of them should have known this.
Re:Shocking (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shocking (Score:4, Informative)
This has to do with discrimination: paying someone less than someone else for the same work simply because of the color of their skin.
I think it probably had more to do with the fact that wages are generally a lot lower in India. This improved Oracle's bargaining position in wage negotiations. If they had offered someone already in the US less then the going rate, he would likely refuse in the hope of getting a better offer. But if this employee refused their offer, he would remain in India and get much less than their lowball offer. Is this unfair, exploitive, and illegal? Of course it is. But the decision to exploit him may have had more to do with his poor bargaining position than his skin color.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about race, it's about money.
It's about race (ethnicity really) being used as a basis to pay someone less money. The motivation might be to save money, but so what? The practice is, and ought to be, illegal.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about race (ethnicity really) being used as a basis to pay someone less money.
Nationality. Not race or ethnicity. There's zero reason to think that an Indian-American would have been offered a lower salary.
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So if "going rate" is 60k and I offer someone 50k, that's discriminatory? That happens All. The. Time. Except it happens with "locals" - it's called negotiating from a position of power. Employers think they've got a position of power (ie something the interviewee wants) and use it. How is this any different?
Why would I ever offer an Indian a job, then? What I understand here is that this is a big mess because the fucking H1B worker didn't get preferential treatment?!
That's idiotic.
I hate Oracle on numerous
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So if "going rate" is 60k and I offer someone 50k, that's discriminatory? That happens All. The. Time.
And that is legal. It's like right to work states. It's legal to fire a person for no reason what so ever, but it's not legal to fire somebody for a reason that is illegal. Usually, it takes a serious fuck up to catch somebody on it, or a long history of suspicious behavior. This is a case of being a serious fuck up. The hiring manager asked for more money, they should have said "No, that's all we'll offer." but instead they said "No, we illegally discriminate." He complained that they were operating illega
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Informative)
So you're perfectly okay with one of the largest companies in the world engaging in salary gouging?
We're not talking about salary in India vs salary in California - we're talking about salary in California vs salary in California. If they want to import workers from abroad, because there aren't enough qualified local workers, they need to pay the same salary to the imported workers as they would to local workers.
That's not only decent behaviour - it's the law. People like yourself - well, you're only going to ruin the game for yourself down the road, and sadly you seem unable to understand this.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
In contrast, in many Asian countries, it are the western ex-pats that are asked by their employer to move that get payed more than the local staff. And on top of that extra pay, they often get housing allowance, schooling allowance for their children, and other benefits local employees do not get. These salaries are not only higher than what locals get, they're also higher than what they'd get back home. The justification is that these people are exceptionally good at what they do, and are worth their money, and that the company needs this foreign talent. So they receive the extra cash and benefits as incentive to move.
Now of course it's more common that people move from high-paying countries to low-paying countries, however it's quite reasonable for that Indian employee to not only get offered a salary at least as much as what the US locals get, but also other allowances. Indeed that $50k will be a lot more than he gets in India, though cost of living in the US are far higher as well. It may very well be that at say $20k in India he can have a higher standard of living (big house, car, various domestic staff such as a butler, gardener and a maid) than he can have at this $50k in the US.
The guy is considered so good, they want to move him to the other side of the world. That generally means he's at least as good as, if not better than, the top performers of his US counterparts. Otherwise a company would not normally bother with the efforts of moving an employee.
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I was thinking that he deserves to be paid *more* than his local counterparts as well.
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Which, afaik, is typically about domestic helpers and similar low-skilled jobs.
In Hong Kong, there is a population of about 400,000 helpers (>90% female), about half Philipino, half Indonesian, and a few from other countries such as Sri Lanka and Nepal (on a population of about 7 mln total). They are paid low wages indeed, and no local would want to do the job. They have a special minimum wage that's about 1/3 of the regular minimum wage, have to live with the employer (so no housing and food expenses),
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
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short version is it's a snake pit but you can make some serious $ if you can survive in it & produce!
The anonymous coward is correct.
I work for an enterprise software company (security space) and I'm friends with much of our sales team. Exactly the same deal.
Indians are hired for low wages (Score:2, Interesting)
There is an Oracle office in India for a reason. They're cheap. Defeats the purpose if you bring them all over here on US wages, wouldn't it? Might as well hire Americans, god forbid!
Re:Indians are hired for low wages (Score:5, Informative)
it's funny because you are a solid 10 years out of date. Top grads in India now make comparable amounts to their US equivalents. Hell, just a couple months ago Oracle was offering grands 200k+ for Mumbai based roles. The days of indians taking jobs based solely are salary are quickly coming to a close. Now it's just ability and ease of hiring.
Re:Indians are hired for low wages (Score:5, Informative)
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of course, but you can hire a low level moron in the US for the same amount. It's not that hard to find people who will go for it. But the fact 100k+ starting salaries are becoming regular offers from the IT companies in India for highly qualified new grads means the market is flattening very fast. I actually don't know any new IT grands that pull down 100k their first year but I'm sure they are out there.
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Ease of hiring? Took our company 15 months to hire 6 phone-support guys, that we were contractually required to have in place loooong ago.
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well, that's also why wages are converging to US levels very fast in those industries. I know friends of mine in finance there would tell me they could easily negotiate 25% salary increases YoY back in 2006.
Re:Indians are hired for low wages (Score:4, Interesting)
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...wanted to transfer a high-performing salesman from Oracle's India office to California
Reading comprehension fail
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As an American who worked in the Indian office of a Finnish company, the same applies, we were way cheaper than our Finnish counterparts...
Re:Indians are hired for low wages (Score:5, Funny)
Oracle is not a person (Score:5, Insightful)
Oracle didn't say anything. Some dude that works there said it. The company should be charged for any discrimination their employees say, but don't make it like it was a statement from their PR or anything like it. There are people that saying stupid things like that anywhere, at any given time.
Re:Oracle is not a person (Score:5, Interesting)
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Quiz: who said "Corporations are people, my friend"?
Ob. Monty Python (Score:2)
Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
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If you want to see whats wrong with Oracle look whos running it.
Compared with Larry Ellison...Bill Gates is Mahatma Gandhi.
"A few months ago, a female ex-employee with whom Ellison had had an affair launched a lawsuit in which she alleged that he tempted several female employees into bed with the offer of an Acura sports car. Ellison claimed the offer was a joke but, when questioned, admitted that he had bought four Acuras in the previous year."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/network-meet-larry-elli [independent.co.uk]
Comedy Gold (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Comedy Gold (Score:5, Funny)
An Oracle executive, sales manager and human resources manager walk into a court room...
Oh! I know this one...
...suddenly a crazed gunman on trail in the next room escapes and takes them all hostage. He threatens to kill the hostages one by one over the next 10 minutes unless his demands are met.
What kind of sandwich do you go make yourself?
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An IceCreamSandwich?
Hmm (Score:3)
If the Indian's didn't work for less, would it disincentivize their hiring?
Or is there also an expectation they will tolerate longer hours in a less hospitable work environment?
The cruelest part (Score:5, Insightful)
Was that they were only willing to offer him $50,000, not even $60,000 in CALIFORNIA. Isn't $60,000 a year under the poverty line there?
Re:The cruelest part (Score:5, Insightful)
you joke, but for that income in the bay area, you'd have to have room mates, eat cheap food every day and maybe not even own a car. and you'll have no savings each month, it will all go to rent, food, insurance.
$60k/yr might be ok in some areas of the country, but you will never have anything in your savings account at this kind of rate and with bay area housing prices. if you define poor as being a paycheck away from being homeless, this could count as being poor, then.
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Presumably, that's a base salary. Most sales positions have low-ish base salaries and sky-is-the-limit commission polciies. If you're really, really good at sales, you can make a boatload; if you can't hit your quota, though, it can really suck.
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I'm one of several hundred people who live in "those places" doing that kind of work for my employer, and we have our jobs explicitly because we're the cheapest "cost center" available. My boss's boss said that to my face once. And it's true. It's also perfectly true that my boss's boss's boss and everybody higher up the chain doesn't live here, or anywhere near here. If I lived near them, they'd have to pay me three times as much for me to maintain my standard of living, and they aren't going to do tha
EEOC (Score:2)
Visa requirements - above-average salary? (Score:2)
Someone disagrees - and gets fired? (Score:2)
Mongo DB (Score:4, Informative)
The guy now works at Mongo DB
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ian-spandow/1/739/557 [linkedin.com]
Oracle and everybody else (Score:3)
Oracle just got caught.
Anybody familiar with the corporate-tech H1B propaganda knows that Oracle's view is entirely normal.
Tech companies want the public to think that H1B are extremely highly skilled, and highly paid.
Anybody who actually works for the tech giants knows that H1Bs are mainly a cost cutting measure.
The US GAO even proved this in 2009.
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Re:Truth hurts (Score:5, Insightful)
Indian = someone from India.
Well, yea. That's evident by the fact they offered him money, instead of signing the contract, getting him drunk, then peeing on the contract up as they steal all his land.
Re:Truth hurts (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, they *did* do that ca. 1600 to the entire Indian subcontinent, at the behest of a corporation, no less ("The British East India Company"). Took ~300 years before they could be overthrown, only to end up with a much more dangerous problem (India and Pakistan, both with nuclear capabilities).
As An American, I refuse to take credit or blame for stuff the British Empire did.
We have plenty of fucked up behavior in our own history, thankyouverymuch.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, Columbus fucked that one up over 500 years ago, so it's a little late for that.
Re:B-But Muh Talent (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you don't understand. Amnesty and immigration are needed to keep the social security Ponzi-scheme going. There simply aren't enough young people paying into the system to support all those retired old people. We need to make the undocumented workers legal so they can be taxed.
What Ellison, Zuckerberg and other of their ilk want is more H1B visas. H1B visas are needed to keep salaries down by replacing relatively highly paid American tech workers with lower paid imports who will be unable to leave their awful working conditions to seek better elsewhere lest they be sent back to the countries they worked so hard to leave.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. (If you meant that in sarcasm, you're more right than you think.) Our government (feebly attempts to) turn back lots of good taxpayers [itep.org] who just want a decent wage and standard of living. We can put public records (and, yes, the NSA) to good use: gather info on the immigrants before they attempt to enter, and when they try and if they are able to learn our history without posing an imminent threat to lives, make them legal in 8
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People ghave every right to complain about illegals. They are often hired at less than minimum wage by employers who know they won't dare to complain to the Dept. of Labor.
I say make them legal and make sure they know their rights.
Re:german law (Score:4, Informative)
In the US, that's the law regarding H1-B workers as well, but it's not enforced.
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In the US, that's the law regarding H1-B workers as well, but it's not enforced.
No kidding... As an American, when I worked for a U.S. company a decade ago, the Indians brought over on H1-B visas were paid quite a bit more than I was for doing the same job.
On the flip side, though, I guess I had better job security (being competent and underpaid...)
Re:german law (Score:4, Insightful)
So it goes..
d
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That would mean law is enforced, and that is commie red soshalsism, friend.
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It's a little early to pull the old "race card" out. Is the employee an indian (citizen of India)? I can easily interpret that as "$50K/year is good for an indian national."
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But he's not a Black Irishman...
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I don't think it matters. Companies will pay significantly less for employees in rural Georgia than they do for the same employees in Silicon Valley because rural Georgia has a much lower cost of living. This is standard business practice everywhere. Is that racial (or any other kind of) discrimination? Of course not. This is the same practice regardless of whether the manager technically said "for an Indian" (which sounds less politically correct) or "for someone living in a low-cost area like India" (whic
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"In September 2012, Spandow asked for permission to transfer an Oracle employee working in India to California."
They were not talking about paying someone living in India a $50,000 salary. They were planning on transfering the employee from India to California which would have increased the employee's cost of living significantly.
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Re:Where is "racial" discrimination? (Score:4, Informative)
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It certainly is good money for someone — whatever their race
In which case, why was the "for an Indian" phrase even mentioned, unless to single them out as opposed to other persons?
Unless Mr. Spandow's own dismissal was due to racism or some other illegal discrimination against him, I doubt, the suit will be found to have much merit.
I'd be surprised if the court finds that context and lead-up is not relevant to their decision. If the senior managers are found to have been violating equal opportunities regulations, their handling of Mr Spandow, who was effectively trying to rectify their ill behaviour, could be a direct consequence of their violation, and encompass him. Possibly a grey zone to be clarified.
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The salary and cost of hiring is secondary to the main issue here.
Mr Bambling will have to explain why he issued a "stern warning" in response to the request, rather than an explanation as to his reasoning; Mr Trudeau will have to explain his contemptuous choice of words, and failure in turn to explain his reasoning; both them and probably others will have to explain why firing the sales manager was considered fair and necessary, in the light of the previous two points.
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Re:50K good? in the USA too, you bet! (Score:4, Informative)
As a tech who is unemployed, I will work for that kind of money today!!!
That was the salary for a salesman already experienced with the company, for a job in California.
Do you still qualify?