Former US Merchant Marine captain John Konrad, the CEO of gCaptain, shared his experience of working in India and with Indians and said hardworking Indians or visa holders are not the problem. He said there is no doubt that Indians are hardworking but after spending some time in India, he realized why Indians are so hardworking — because they don’t want to return to India. Konrad said this is not culture but a cultural escape and if he were ever told that he had two options: working 18 hours a day or going back to the Bronx, he would have worked 18 hours a day.But if he were given two options: to move back to the Brox or to go to India where he worked for two years, he would choose going back to the Bronx, he said.Comparing the red tape between the US and India, Konrad said paperwork in the US feels like a cakewalk next to Indian bureaucracy.Sharing his experience of working in oil and gas around the world, and in both the US and India, Konrad said getting permits to even do the simplest things in America in a nightmare but the nightmare is nothing in comparison to India.And thus, he concluded that Indians, accustomed to such lengthy processes and paperwork, are better at navigating grinding.
Indians vs Americans
“The average American thinks navigating government websites and IRS forms is torture. Compared to India, it’s child’s play. And here’s the key: the more punishing the process, the more HR nonsense piled on top, the bigger the edge H-1B visa holders from India hold,” Konrad opined.“Americans quit before they’ll spend eight hours grinding through mind-numbing bullshit paperwork and HR training. Indians fill out every form without blinking.”“When Americans hit a bureaucratic death loop, we call HR or tech support (often a call center in India) and rage. Indians trade notes with each other and hunt for the loopholes.”“The real problem isn’t the visa holders. It’s that the system rewards them for making our bureaucracy worse, not better. Bureaucracy becomes an artificial moat, and the people who’ve mastered it have every incentive to deepen it.”Konrad’s conclusion was that Americans are not lazy or not qualified but they are unwilling to navigate boring paperwork which means nothing.“So the next time an executive at Amazon or Google claims they can’t find Americans capable of doing the job, ask the real question: Are Americans incapable of doing the actual work? Or just unwilling to navigate paperwork that never needed to exist? Are Americans lazy or do we just have a low tolerance for bullsh!t paperwork?” the CEO said.
