Las Vegas casino giants are eyeing big profits in Macau, the port city in China that has overtaken the Las Vegas Strip in gambling volume.
And now local companies that make slot machines and related equipment for the world’s casinos are looking to yet another far-flung locale for talent.
Technology companies that have turned to software engineers in India now include slot makers Bally Technologies and International Game Technology.
“Their colleges are turning out quality people and the best of the best want to be software engineers,” said Gary Kapral, senior vice president of human resources for Bally Technologies.
Bally and IGT say it’s not about saving money — even though India’s engineers come more cheaply. Rather, executives say they can’t find enough local software engineers to do the job.
Over the past year, IGT, the world’s largest slot machine manufacturer, began using contractors in India to work on the development of new products. Some of them are learning the ropes by working alongside Las Vegas employees before returning to their home country.
About two years ago, competitor Bally Technologies opened an office of nearly 300 employees in Chennai, a technology hub along India’s southeastern coastline. Last year, the company opened an office employing nearly 350 people in Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley. The offices are part of a growth spurt at Bally, which emerged from a slump with a slew of new products and global offices in France, Macau and other locations.
“When you’re in a growth mode and you need to go from 200 to 400 software engineers very quickly, there’s no one city in the world that can help you do that,” Kapral said. “It’s a fact of the technology industry that we’re in a global economy right now.”
And not everyone wants to work in Nevada or in the gaming business when they can work for higher-profile software companies.
“We’ve had some difficulty attracting software engineers to IGT,” said Ed Rogich, vice president of marketing for the slot giant. “We’re competing with the top players in the country, like Microsoft, for talent.”
State law prevents gaming companies from going as far as they would like in employing foreign workers.
Nevada gaming regulations require manufacturers of gaming devices and certain related equipment, such as software that accounts for gambling activity and player information, to be licensed. The licensing process for a manufacturing company can take more than a year and involves extensive reviews of business practices and background investigations of top executives.
Engineers at these companies must register with the Gaming Control Board by filling out an application form, passing a criminal-background check and submitting to fingerprinting by local law enforcement authorities — a work card process similar to that required of money-handling casino workers such as card dealers and cashiers.
This rule prevents companies from employing contractors to work on slot machine games and other gaming-related equipment. IGT, for example, says its contractors are restricted to equipment that isn’t regulated by the board because it has limited interaction with gambling functions. Because of the board’s concerns about contractors and a desire for a more integrated corporate culture abroad, Bally executives chose to open offices in India with full-time employees.
The global spread of gambling has led Nevada regulators to make some exceptions to rules that were written for an industry once limited to a single state.
In a few cases, the board has allowed Nevada manufacturers to work with unlicensed technology companies with unique technology, such as video game graphics adapted for slot machines, that would be cost-prohibitive for manufacturers to create on their own.
“We look at these arrangements on a case-by-case basis,” said Travis Foley, chief of the Gaming Control Board’s technology division. In any case, “licensees are responsible for the actions of their employees and contract workers.”
The board audits manufacturers by visiting far-flung offices rather than simply relying on reports submitted to regulators, Foley said.
Regulators say they also allow some offshore workers to avoid the registration process, which has proved cumbersome and even irrelevant for foreign-born workers who will never set foot in this country.
The offshore trend concerns computer engineer and Las Vegas native Tess Kowalczyk, who quit her software development job at IGT in February after she did not receive an expected promotion.
“These are good, high-tech jobs that are going away to India,” Kowalczyk said. “We have so few tech jobs here as it is. Employees in Nevada should be working on these systems.”
Kowalczyk fears that foreign workers will eventually displace local engineers, through either layoffs or fewer local hires.
IGT and Bally say they haven’t displaced any local employees by hiring abroad.
Bally executives say the company’s ability to open software development offices abroad has enabled it to serve customers more efficiently and therefore profitably, creating more job opportunities for engineers in Nevada.
Bally has hired about 500 new employees over the past three years and has more than 140 job openings in the United States, primarily engineering jobs, and most of those openings in Las Vegas.
Nevada schools are producing relatively few engineers but not because the programs are lacking, said Rama Venkat, professor and former chairman of UNLV’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
Some students graduate without experience in specialized software programs used by gaming companies and require additional, on-the-job training. Others don’t want to work for gaming manufacturers, a niche with relatively few opportunities, he said.
Chennai and Bangalore are turning out a high number of software engineers compared with Nevada, allowing companies to pick from the cream of the crop. These are students with superb math skills and an enviable work ethic who compete fiercely for jobs by paying for additional technical training on their own, Venkat said.
That their work can be bought more cheaply is “always a factor,” though it’s far from the only one, he said.
That said, his engineering students aren’t suffering for want of a job.
“Most of our students graduating in the last few years have found decent jobs in Las Vegas.”
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