Welcome bodyshoppers to the Week 8 edition of the Bodyshop Report! We have added fifty more hand picked bodyshops to our collection which has grown to 350. This week we have two more large outsourcing companies in our top ten to go along with many of the shadiest mom and pop shops you will ever see. We have a lot to cover, so let’s get going!
319. Blue Cube Corporation
Way down our list we find this scammy little shop near Atlanta. Blue Cube seems to be running a simple pay for H1B scam where they take $4,000 up front, then you never hear from them again. One reviewer helpfully posted their bank account details in the review. I have passed this information on to the authorities for investigative purposes and hopefully a subpoena will be issued to get these people back their money.
301. Software Global USA
Let’s stay in the south and head over to Austin, Texas based Software Global USA. Software Global seems to be one of those companies that has a hard time with the concept of a paycheck. They don’t pay their workers on the bench, don’t pay workers who are NOT on the bench, and on the rare occasions they do pay, they don’t provide pay stubs. The word “illegal” comes up over and over again in their reviews. Finally, their guesthouse accommodations are not exactly the Ritz Carlton:
“Room they provides that sucks. It is not having basic furniture, lights.. nothing..”
226. Mergen IT LLC
Here we go again in Texas with a Houston company that is a bunch of merry fraudsters from Hyderabad. The HR manager who calls herself “Lauren Hill” responds to negative reviews complaining about the CEO by saying that guy must be the CEO of those other companies.
211. Hire IT People, Inc.
Now let’s head up to the northeast to New Jersey where they say let’s get “IT” done (groan) at Hire IT People Inc. CEO Dan Nandan can be seen frequently on Hyderabad station TV5 News where he hosts a show about RFEs and STEM OPT. Perhaps someone can call into his show and ask why he is holding $14,000 owed to one of his employees?
184. Niche Software Solutions, Inc.
And now for another Houston shop. Niche Software is run out of a small room in Bangalore where they use American names like Mike, Adam, and Jack, and spoof their location using VoIP. Niche appears to be running a variation on the pay for H1B scam where they take $2000, create a fake offer letter, then later a fake rejection letter from USCIS, since they never applied for the H1B in the first place.
177. Broadgate, Inc.
Now on to the Midwest where we find this Troy, MI company that traps OPT students in their guesthouse and makes them sleep on the floor every night because there are 8 people in a 2 bedroom apartment.
174. GenuineIT LLC
And we’re right back in Houston again with the ironically named “Genuine IT”. The only thing I could find genuine about this company is the website dedicated to complaints against GenuineIT.
173. Strategism, Inc.
Fremont, CA in Silicon Valley is where we are going next. Strategism seems to be breaking every immigration law on the books (paying for visas, payroll running, faking visa applications).
167. Saransh Inc.
We found fourteen bodyshops at the address of 666 Plainsboro Rd in New Jersey including Saransh Inc. Saransh is one of the illegal “layer” companies that sit between the client and the vendor and take a cut of all earnings. This causes delayed payments when the middle vendor (Saransh) holds on to the money for 4 months, forcing the employee to complain to the client, who has to get involved and yell at the layer company.
166. Covanex, Inc.
This company in Corning, NY seems to be an expensive bodyshop to work for. Employees end up paying them $3,000 per month, $15,000 for extensions, and $20,000 for green cards. Maybe I’m old fashioned but where I come from the employer pays the employee, not the other way around.
160. US Software Professionals
Located in Chicago, I’m supposed to believe most of the software engineers at an H1B dependent company are shall we say, slightly more attractive than your average coder. Seems legit.
67. Infojini Inc.
Here is a bodyshop in Maryland that the EEOC might want to know about.
More red flags than Moscow 1945
[The CEO] openly prefers to work with men. and makes it painfully obvious that he neither trusts nor respects women. He and the other male employee at the NJ office were rarely in the office; however, as a woman, I could only work remote during weather emergencies, and I had to account for nearly every minute of the day (even on days when I had multiple client meetings, listed on a shared calendar with names, times, and locations). Additionally, both I and the other female employee in the office had an application on our laptops that tracked everything we did – it would lock your computer up if you stepped away from the computer for more than four (4!) minutes, and before you could get back in you had to type a message explaining why you were not working during that time. Our male colleague did not have this application installed.
Like I said above: Extreme sexism is the rule of the day. A male colleague left a massive time-sensitive project unfinished, and it was up to the female colleagues to finish it after he went to India for the holidays. He then blamed us when it was not completed in time.
53. Cogent Data Solutions LLC
Not far from where your humble author is typing this is Hoffman Estates, IL based Cogent Data Solutions (CDS). They are accurately summarized by this pithy comment:
I would suggest not to get your H1 filed through this company. You will be deep shit.
Rahul
37. Plato Technologies
Jacksonville, FL is the home of this super shady bodyshop which shattered our previous record for US IT recruiters, with a whopping 123 according to LinkedIn. Their contact numbers are all Vonage numbers and they use American names like “David”. Plato is one of the illegal layer companies used by #5 Infosys and is also accused of misconduct at IBM. When the WITCH companies source labor, they insert one or more of these middle vendors in between themselves so they can steal a cut of the employee’s wages. Oh yeah, and Plato doesn’t have government permission to operate in Hyderabad. So they are illegal in two countries.
2. Tech Mahindra (Americas) Inc.
Our new #2 is Tech Mahindra (Americas) located in Telangana sister state New Jersey. Tech Mahindra is a multinational company ranked #5 in India’s IT firms. Tech Mahindra set a new record for the most one star reviews in Glassdoor (950), catapulting them past other India IT firms in our list.
Tech Mahindra started as Mahindra & Mahindra in 1986 to perform outsourcing for British Telecom. Then they acquired Satyam Computer Sciences after the Satyam scandal, beating Larsen & Toubro in the company auction, and merged with Mahindra Satyam.
The average salary at Tech Mahindra is $85,711 so we can see this is clearly one of the employers that profits from labor arbitrage by undercutting wages, and stands to be impacted by the proposed restrictions to eliminate lower wage levels. Tech Mahindra’s visa denial rate of 32% shows they are already in the crosshairs of USCIS.
Out of all the hundreds of one star reviews in Glassdoor, I’m only going to include one recent review written by an employee whose job was outsourced to Tech Mahindra, as I think it accurately sums up what is happening with outsourcing right now.
I worked at Tech Mahindra full-time for less than a year
Pros
I was outsourced from Jackson National into this job. So at the very least I wasn’t laid off immediately, although that’s the long term goal. Get everybody they outsourced to quit and ship everything to India.
Cons
Garbage company. Typically outsourcing company where it’s all about providing the cheapest service at the lowest quality. Extremely low quality systems and training. If you are considering a job here, don’t. If you are consider outsourcing your IT to here, don’t. Consider a better company or better yet, keep your in house IT department if you have one.
Advice to Management
Either invest in your IT division or drop it. Holy Moses this company is terrible
— Former Employee – Senior Systems Engineer in Lansing, MI
1. Capgemini US LLC
Capgemini is located in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont near O’Hare airport. Capgemini is a French multinational that specializes in outsourcing (it says so right in their company logo). Started in 1967 as Sogeti, the company merged with New York based Gemini Computer Systems in 1974 and became CAP Gemini Sogeti, then CAP Gemini DASD after acquiring Milwaukee company DASD, and finally shortened the name to Capgemini. Last year, Capgemini acquired Altran, their biggest merger which brought their bodycount to 250,000.
Capgemini’s #1 score is powered by their unusually large number of recruiters (1657), the highest we have seen so far. Reviews of Capgemini on myvisajobs allege the company abuses L1 and EB1 to bring in inexperienced managers, and fires their workers after one month on the bench. Capgemini’s average salary of $89,646 is a direct result of their overusing the level 1 wage category. Reviews on Glassdoor call the company “Crapgemini” and “just a big bodyshop”. Employees are not big fans of Capgemini’s immigration department which itself is outsourced to India and seems to be incapable of handling RFEs or any basic visa paperwork, possibly because they don’t speak English.
That’s all folks! Tune in again next week when we will be adding another of those scary WITCHes. In the meantime feel free to take a look at our bodyshop dashboard for all the latest data.
White-Collar Workers of America 