A man who spent over half a decade working in the United States says that his American colleagues treated Indian co-workers like their “dumping ground” for all boring and urgent tasks.
Kapil Bhatt took to X to make claims that seem to have resonated with thousands of Indians who work with colleagues in the US.
Bhatt, an alumnus of Northwestern University, spent over six years working in the field of data science at San Francisco-based Genentech. He then returned to India and is currently on a sabbatical from work, according to his LinkedIn profile.
India team = dumping ground
“My US colleagues treated the India team like their personal task dumping ground,” Bhatt revealed on X earlier this week.
He claimed that for Americans, a typical workday consisted of sending work to the India team, having “useless meetings”, chilling and logging off. As a result, all boring, thankless and urgent work was delegated to the India team.
“Their work day was then basically, send work to India team, have useless meetings, chill, and log off,” wrote the Ahmedabad-based man.
His post has hit over half a million views on X, where it sparked a heated debate on Indian work culture.
A debate on Indian work culture
“All IT folks in my society keep telling me the same thing. Apparently even Indians working from onsite do the same with the team in India & just review PR,” wrote one X user.
“Yes, the same thing happens in my company too. The problem is that people in India don’t complain. People should start giving back to US teams, if they are paid more then they should work more,” another added.
“The problem also is that most folks in India have not learnt how to set boundaries + push back professionally,” an X user opined.
Thanks to significantly lower wages compared to Silicon Valley or New York, American companies find it cost-effective to hire or outsource work to Indian professionals. Because of this, India has become a hub for remote tech talent working with US clients.