I've witnessed the workings of an SAP project using H1-b visa holders (mostly Indian) here in the US. It wasn't pretty.
At a large chemical and materials science firm I consulted for several years ago, a project to create an SAP 'portal' to all the company's information was started by the Chief Information Officer (the payoff was supposed to be unheard of collaboration and "business intelligence" opportunities...whatever).
SAP projects always seem to require battalion strength coding teams to get the thing working at all, let alone meeting the inflated claims of the vendor. And so, before long, it became clear that more programmers were needed.
There they were, the Indian programmers, here on work visas, hoping for an opportunity to make a new life in the states, crammed into a dirty, previously unused part of the company's headquarters building. They worked 10, 13, 14 hour days, their bathroom breaks were timed, as were their login and logout timestamps.
While the rest of the staff, the citizens, endured corporate boredom with the assistance of amenities like free coffee, sodas and a subsidized lunchroom, the H1-b'ers had to keep banging out corrective and maintainence code with zero distractions (other than imagination).
Sometimes, because one of my duties involved software analysis, I had an opportunity to talk to some of the 'lead' guys (same awful conditions, but more responsibilities than the rest). These were tired and unhappy men and women. While they acknowledged that the $35,0000.00 pay they received was a princely sum back home, the toll was quite high. Emotional problems caused by exhaustion and status insecurity were not uncommon.
Of course, all projects are not so mean spirited and Roman-galley-slave-esque in character. Even so, I've always considered that project to be a cautionary tale - an example of how work that is generally considered to be creative and restraint free can be atomized and turned into a sort of waking nightmare.
DRM
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