Dive Brief:
- Infosys announced further details about its new tech hub in Raleigh, North Carolina further expanding its American workforce. The facility will take on 2,000 employees over the course of four years with 500 employees expected to start in 2018, according to ZDNet.
- The Raleigh hub comes after Infosys' decision to hire more than 10,000 American workers in four different states following the Trump administration's changes to the H-1B visa program. The move started in Indiana when the state offered Infosys $30 million in tax credits in exchange for $9 million for a facility to accommodate 2,000 employees.
- Infosys has seen several shakeups in the last few months including the resignation of CEO Vishal Sikka on August 18 and Yusuf Bashir, innovation fund managing director, in July. The senior vice president, Sanjay Rajagopalan, resigned on Monday. Sikka's resignation was reportedly in wake of his ongoing disagreements with co-founder Narayana Murthy, according to the report.
Dive Insight:
The future of H-1B visas are unclear, causing companies such as Infosys to recalculate their hiring model. Concerns about potentially losing access to contracts in the U.S. has led Infosys to establish hubs in the country.
The purpose of the visa program is to expand a company's global presence but also to diversify the talent pool. The USCIS has a 65,000-person cap on visas, and since 2014 the program has hit maximum capacity within five days of the opening of the submission period, threatening access to talent.
Though the company's potential long-term H-1B access is uncertain, Infosys is working to diversify its approach to IT contracting. The Raleigh announcement is in an effort to secure more international talent for machine learning, cloud, data and other digitization efforts.
The company noticed a constant rise in the cost of tech workers in India and the expansion of talent in the U.S. as cloud-based technologies flourish. Employing U.S.-based talent is a move to remain relevant and productive in an ever-evolving market.
"We will not survive if we remain in the constricted space of doing as we are told...By standing still instead of moving forward decisively, we will face the brunt of the disruptive forces, as our industry has already started to see," Sikka said before his resignation.
