Ask HN: Remote companies prefer not to hire remote developers from India?

Yeah, maybe. But India is probably known to most because of support calls from "Microsoft" and other shady scams.

Some friends have lived and worked in India for a prolonged time and after listening carefully to all of them I will prefer not to work with Indians, too.

Remote != Offshore.

Some remote work companies don't even allow you to work remotely from a location outside their home country.

So "foreign national on foreign soil" is VERY different from "remote"!

Moving development offshore is often not what companies have in mind when they say "remote", and for good reasons. Taxes, travel expenses, timezones, risk profile, etc. are more complicated. Especially the risk profile. And that's before considering more nebulous stuff like communication skills and "culture fit". At the very least, it's a lot of unknowns.

So, make sure you aren't wasting energy applying for positions that were never open to international (or non EU in the case of Europe) applicants in the first place.

I once worked on a a mostly Indian team and could not understand anything they were saying during the meetings.

What is your accent like? Can non-indians understand you easily?

stackoverflow is good for this if a bit sparse

To answer your question: I see a lot of Indian CVs that are just filled with buzzwords. When I see "J2EE certification" I get a sense that the person is not really passionate about the technology and is simply writing a CV that they think has the best chance to pass the HR filter at TCS

Amazingly, I also see a lot of job applications where there is only a one-line description for each job they did. Tell me what tools and technologies you used for each job, and how strong did your skill become in that technology. Tell me what you liked and didn't like.

I like it when an applicant is honest about where they do not match my requirements. It's good to say, "I don't have any professional Dart experience, but I've written this simple app and from what I've read it's pretty similar to Javascript and I have done plenty of Javascript". It shows me that you have thought about my requirements and aren't simply trying to bullshit me.

I love it when you have done programming outside your job. That includes completing MOOCs or writing interesting blog posts about programming (as you have done!). You should have a portfolio of interesting projects you have done - even better if I can download an app or go to an actual website in addition to seeing the code on GitHub.

I hate it when I'm interviewing someone and I'm not sure that they understood what I said. If you get to a Skype/Zoom interview with your potential manager do everything you can to ensure that there is smooth communication. Do not use a cheap laptop - get a fast computer with plenty of memory. Reboot it before the interview and do not have unnecessary applications running. Use a microphone that sits in front of your mouth like those Apple earpods, test your ping, upload and download connection speeds. When the interviewer is talking and you can understand them, nod your head and say 'ok' or 'uh-huh'. If you can't understand what they said, tell them - don't try to cover it up.

More broadly, the main reasons people in the US avoid directly hiring Indian programmers remotely is:

(a) Being a software engineer is the 'golden ticket' to a better life much more in Indian than the US, and this means every man and his dog wants an IT job in India. So you end up with a lot of people trying who have no passion or interest in programming. This means a recruiter has to wade through a lot of poor-quality candidates before finding someone who can even do FizzBuzz. Kind of related is that a lot of the cheapest software development for US companies is done by Indians - either outsourced to Infosys/TCS or using H1B visas in-house - so there is a subconscious bias against Indians (and occasionally more overt prejudice).

(b) India is in just about the worst timezone for US companies, especially on the US west cost - when you are working they are sleeping and vice-versa. You will probably get more interest if you state you are prepared to work at least 4 hours at night - say from 9pm to 1am IST.

(c) US companies are worried that you will steal their intellectual property. This is true to some extent of any remote employee, but particularly with a country where it is very difficult to take someone to court for breach of contract.

(d) More generally it's simply easier from a legal perspective for US companies to hire people in the US. You may have a better chance by offering an initial 1- or 2-month contract to the US company, with the understanding that at the end of the contract they will either walk away or hire you on a full-time basis.

(e) Indian accents can be hard to understand to western ears - a short video of you talking about your latest personal project is very helpful in this regard, and also as a general 'sales pitch'. Spend time to make a quali...

1. Timezone difference is just too large to make it efficient. I routinely have to wake up very early my time or stay up very late just to have meetings or calls with teammates in India. This isn't a 3 hour difference like hiring in the U.S. remote. I literally have some calls that start at 10:30pm and others that at times start as early as 5am. This is a huge barrier to most companies and teams. This is why you are starting to see a lot of remote job ads with a +/- timezone difference.

2. Indian developers as a group are more specialized in their skillsets and expectations and less able to move things forward without on-site direction compared to their western counterparts. I think this is more cultural as this is how the larger firms in India work, but it differs greatly from most western companies. I found working with really good people in India, they still struggle to task switch and handling disparate tasks as is very typical in many early stage and smaller companies. Where this becomes less of an issue is with large multi-national corporations because those companies will have highly specialized positions which fits better. This isn't about intelligence or capability, just how one culture works vs the other.

3. Communication can be tough, and I don't necessarily mean understanding people like others are saying, although this does happen in some cases. What I mean is that communication is more about how things are said and interpreted. While most every educated Indian person I have ever dealt with has solid English skills (likely more properly than most Americans I know) there are distinct issues in translation of nuanced requirements for most things. Many times with super complex issues I have to find one of the Indian team members that I can communicate best to, make sure they get it and then have them help me make sure the other team members get it. Also, western people (especially U.S. sadly) in general I have noticed can communicate pretty poorly expecting people to adapt to them and learn their nuances rather than finding middle ground, so that doesn't help.

There are a number of other factors I could share that also affect the ability to hire remotely in India but I already wrote a bunch, and in the end, I'd say item #1 is the biggest factor overall, 9.5-12.5 hours is a huge difference to make up for a remote team member.

Many western companies are burned with them, because they usually bring the top devs for sales and onsite development, but have lots of low quality devs doing grunt work, failing deadlines and delivering half promises.

So the best thing you can do is differentiate yourself from them.

If developers from India run into a problem and you're half a world away, you usually don't hear about it until you come into work in the morning. They haven't made any progress due to being stuck, you help them out so they can continue, but they're done for the day. They come in the next morning, get stuck again, no work gets done, problem gets fixed, they come in the next day, and hopefully can continue working.

Unless both parties are making themselves available 24/7, development cycles tend to go on forever.

My advice would be don't just blindly execute tasks and ask for instructions. Be initiative, give suggestions based on your professional knowledge.

*my opinion might be biased because of the Indians colleagues that I'm dealing with

The biggest challenge for us is simply the time zone difference. There is nearly very little time where the US team's working hours and the India team's working hours overlap. The only way to have face-to-face time is if people from one country start work really early and one country stay working rather late.

This means that something like a code review can be delayed a long time. If two team members are working at the same time, the review might take an hour or two. If the review is between India/US team members the same review can take 3-4 days in the best case: (1. code, 2. review, 3. address review, 4. approve)

So really we're looking for projects for the teams that can be done independently with as little cross-country review as possible but this is tricky for our project's current state of development.

I guess the takeaways would be: Look for roles in countries that have working hours with overlap with your own. A remote team doesn't necessarily mean any timezone

Look for roles with larger companies. If a large company does remote, it's probably more likely that they would have a team with similar hours to your own.

Not saying this has really stopped us (we still work with the occasional talented international dev that was referred) but all other things more or less equal, this can have a slight chilling effect on hiring.

Also, if you're submitting 50-60 applications at a time, you may be spamming, which only annoys hiring managers. You'll get better results from fewer applications with both resume and cover letter carefully tailored to the company and position.

This is especially important when you're applying remotely from India, because hiring managers get glutted with spammy and irrelevant resumes from there. If yours looks exactly like the resumes of the hundreds of developers who've created scripts to auto-submit to every listing on Indeed with the terms "Python", "Java", or "C#" in them, it won't even get read.

My recommendation is to find remote offices that already employ people from India, or to meet people in India already working for US countries and befriend them

Are you submitting your resume with a script? This sounds like you are part of the problem. What if you got 50-60 low-quality job offers each day? You'd probably do the same thing: respond to 1 of them and immediately hang up when you realized you were tricked.

> What do you look for people when hiring remotely?

* Someone within 3 hours of my timezone

* A resume tailored to the job position

* Obviously not spam

Side Note: I just got a robocall on my cellphone from the "SSN Department" saying, in broken robo-english, there is a problem with my Social Security Number and I need to call them back. FCC just got a report. This is also why your country gets a bad rap.

I don't spam and don't use generic scripts, I invest time in applying so it's more painful. I also have hard time showing my work with majority of my work being propriety in nature.

After going through thread, going forward when applying I will also explicitly mention that I absolutely don't have a problem with the timings and maybe attach a voice clip also.

I agree with some of the comments on here of not being transparent. I feel most Indians are honest, but when they don't know something they won't admit it which makes people suspicious are they really claiming to know everything? (which everyone knows is impossible)