Hacker News Reader

Comment by throawayname | Hacker News Reader

What are you willing to sacrifice? I can give you an answer, but you won't like it. As an Indian man you'll be discriminated against. Period. Lots of empirical proof for that, not just job wise but in lots of other cases (dating, etc).

While folks here will give you lots of tips on the professional side, here are a few actionable things you can do to minimize racial bias:

- Change your name to an americanized version. I know someone who did this. Lots of research that proves this point: http://bit.ly/1mcsxdJ

- Take acting classes and learn to speak with no accent It wont be permanent, but you'll be able to minimize your accent for a few hours in the interview. It's akin to speaking with a fake French accent. See: http://bit.ly/2loPQwy

- Pay people to give you mock interviews and record them. Pay someone else to review the footage and give you interviewing tips.

- Improve your appearance: Bleach your hair lighter shade of brown and try to dress comfortably casual.

- Take some dating classes, learn to improve your confidence (or at least fake it for the in-person interview0.

- Improve your public speaking ability: Join a toastmasters group, get a mentor and give a few speeches.

A job interview is a bit like dating. If you're getting rejected during in-person interviews, then learn to "date better". A lot of racial biases here in SFbay are pretty rough. Even if you graduated top of your class at Stanford and had a successful exit you'll be near the bottom of the pile when it comes to dating.

View on HN

Amen.

There are very strong racial stereotypes. They also vary by who holds them.

I'm a 40+ yo Russian system programmer, moved to States when I was 25, worked in a bunch of places from smaller startups to Fortune-500 shops. Here are my stereotypes:

* Russians are frustrated know-it-alls with strong NIH syndrom wanting to redo everything from scratch. The language barrier often makes it hard for them to clearly express their grand ideas, hence the frustration. They will solve things backwards because it's more interesting that way.

* Chinese will cut corners to fit deadlines. They can write beautiful code, but more often than not they don't bother and go with absolute minimal something that fits the spec.

* Swedes, Finns, Germans and Brits are very much OK. Easily the best in terms of working together.

* Canadians and Australians are solid if a bit slow.

* Eastern Europeans are immensely productive hacks, opinionated as hell, but very good for rapid prototyping.

* Indians ...

Now, Indians are arrogant know-it-alls that _lust_ for respect and power. Frequently the source of pointless drama in the workplace. They are very smart, write good code, but they also have very hard time admitting their mistakes. This often makes it hard to work with them as colleagues.

Stereotypes are VERY important to keep in mind, because that's the starting point for every candidate assessment. The best the OP can do is to throw the interviewers off their footing. Say something like I'm Indian, but I was born in Argentina - and, bam, they can't sort you in a default bucket, so they are forced to actually start assessing you from scratch. The same goes for dyeing your hair, fixing the accent, changing the name - it's all for trying to separate yourself from a stereotype and make them view you as an individual.

Just for curiosity, I would like to hear your thoughts about western europeans ;)

I would like to hear your thoughts on:

* Israeli jewish people

* non-Israeli (eg US) jewish people

(edit: Formatting)

Unfortunately, I haven't met anyone who gathers those requirements so far.

For American Jews, I think the stereotype is that they are rich and well connected.

Too bad you've posted from the throwaway, otherwise I'd give you an UPvote :)

Curiously, if I had to come up with stereotypical descriptions, I'd say I'd come with something similar. :)

What's wrong with posting as throwaway. Probably the author of the post want to avoid racial bias over his name ?

An up vote on a throwaway doesn't earn your main account any internet points, so it's be a thrown away up vote.

Who cares about points? I'll sell you some cheap

What's the use of the point if it stops u from expressing your opinion without racial bias.

> Curiously, if I had to come up with stereotypical descriptions, I'd say I'd come with something similar. :)

That's the whole point of stereotypes, isn't it? ;)

The interesting thing is that we're divided by an ocean, and still have same stereotypes ;)

That's interesting. Are you aware of any stereotype about/against italians?

In Canada the stereotypes I heard about Italians weren't the nicest ones but I see their reasons

But the perception is usually neutral it seems

What kind of reasons? Old stuff like mafia or instead something (semi-)factual like our relaxed relationship with time management?

The Mafia is not "old stuff" in some parts of Quebec (and maybe other places)

anecdata of 1: I used to work for an italian boss who worked her ass off to become a professor. I had a lot of respect for her. But I could tell that at some level she had been fighting stereotypes (both on the nationality/gender issues) her whole life. She hired an italian postdoc who was basically a walking stereotype. He never came in to work, did shoddy work when he did come in. It was a disaster. Generally I thought of her as a very "tough but fair" boss, there was one time where she got extremely upset at grad students for using the wrong instrument for critical experiments (but really, they should have known better). But. I could see steam coming off of her head in her interactions with him. She eventually quit being a professor, but didn't tell him that she was quitting, basically he showed up to work one day with no job.

My understanding is that there's a north/south work ethic stereotype within Italy, and maybe that the regional attitude differences are not as well appreciated outside of Italy, moreso outside of Europe. She was from the north. Non so de dove il postdoc viene.

Nice, as an Australian I concur.

I live in Paraguay, could anyone shed light on what stereotypical views/biases I would experience in a job interview as an Aussie living in Paraguay?

> Russians are frustrated know-it-alls with strong NIH syndrom wanting to redo everything from scratch.

That's my stereotype for all engineers.

I think this is due to "saving face" aspects of their culture.

I oversaw a team of Indian-based Indians while working for a software company in Austin, TX.

My stereotypical experiences:

- Ask an Indian if he understands something, he'll always answer "Yes" even if he doesn't understand it.

- Indians will not admit fault or mistakes. They seem to take it as a personal attack when you critique their work, rather than take it a suggestion for improvement.

> - Ask an Indian if he understands something, he'll always answer "Yes" even if he doesn't understand it.

That has absolutely been my experience. After so many instances where I found out later they had actually no clue about the thing they claimed to fully understand, I started to follow up with questions like, "OK, now explain to me how you're going to proceed," or "just to make sure we're on the same page, explain to me what ____ is and how it works." Not to embarrass them or anything, just to find out if they were being truthful, which often they weren't.

- Indians will not admit fault or mistakes. They seem to take it as a personal attack when you critique their work, rather than take it a suggestion for improvement.

I've seen this in members of all ethnic groups I've worked with, but I've found it to be quite common among Indian developers.

One time a rush bug-fix ended up letting a showstopper regression bug get into production. (The getting into production part was entirely my fault.) The dev was calling (Java) toString() on a value that had just been read from a nullable column of a relational database, without null-checking it first. When I asked him, "do you understand why you can't do this?", he would not admit any error, instead arguing "that column should not have been allowed to contain nulls." (The table/column in question predated his presence on the team by years.)

The answer I would have preferred to have gotten would have been something like, "OMG, I can't believe I did something so stupid, I absolutely DO understand what I did wrong and I'll make sure it never happens again." I don't, after all, expect people to make zero mistakes. I just want them to own up to them and hopefully learn something from them.

That's just one particularly egregious example out of many I've witnessed over the years.

I am not denying that discrimination is an issue in the US but I think in OP's case in doesn't look like this is his main problem. Here is why not:

- OP is not hiding the fact that he his Indian. It probably shows in his name, on his CV and in his slight accent during phone interviews. Nevertheless, he has been invited for interviews and has even frequently made it to the final round. If being Indian was such an issue, he would not have made it so far so often.

- even in the final round when he didn't get the job, according to OP, he was sometimes offered another role instead. If the HR department was so very racist and didn't like Indians, then why would they do that?

Of course this is not a proof that there was no discrimination at all, but I would say the chances are greater that there is some other issue that is affecting his chances. Apparently an issue that becomes apparent only in the final rounds.

I would definitely not change his name to an americanized version! The problem is that there is something inconsistent between the impression given in his CV and phone interview and what comes out during the final round. Hiding the fact that you are Indian on your CV could only make this problem worse.

Sorry, that's overly simplistic. We don't live in the 1950s. Modern discrimination is "he doesn't really fit into the team culture" ie can't really fist bump him and have a few kegs after work bro. The fact of the matter is teams are tribalistic and often that's synonymous with racially homogenous.

I agree; I thought it was odd that he was being offered other positions (what kind of positions, OP?) and it sounds as though he's perhaps not as qualified as he thinks for the position he's seeking.

All these people talking about discrimination against South Asians... I don't know, every tech company today has South Asians and East Asians and just about every other ethnicity. I've worked on teams with Indians and Pakistanis for decades now, and I have yet to hear of discrimination, or to witness it.

Actually, our economy would grind to a halt if we got rid of all these Asian chaps. And why would we? As a rule, they're smart, they work hard, they're pretty well trained. The one slight stereotype if any, that I would confess to is that the Asians as a group tend not to be mavericks and cowboys. U.S. people and English, and to a lesser extent other Europeans, tend to produce more mavericks and cowboy programmers who question authority, think outside the box, etc. That may be changing, as more Asian folks are raised and educated in the U.S.

OP, I would also agree, don't change your name, tint your hair, and "become Western". Take pride in your heritage, for Pete's sake. Who likes a sycophant? Be yourself. And, perhaps, think about what else you might be qualified for that companies are seeing in you that you're not seeing in yourself. Sometimes you have to go where the market is.

This is half true. I'm not Indian but I've been in the Bay Area long enough. I'd say in the PM world, if you apply at companies like ebay, oracle, paypal, etc. being Indian is actually a plus ;) Applying at startups in San Francisco though, I have to admit that you can easily get discriminated. Now, on the engineering side, I can copy/past your message and replace "Indian" by "caucasian".

There is definitely a lot of discrimination in the professional environment in general. People don't want to go outside of their comfort zone. They'd rather see themselves 5 times in a team instead of learning things from different people.

Long story short, applying for a PM role with an accent and some sort of stereotypes in the Bay Area is definitely not a plus. Increase the number of applications you'll find a place. It's a candidate's market right now so people pick whatever they feel comfortable not having to adapt to much. Laziness is king right now.

No offence, some of this is dubious and degrading advice at best. Don't mean to be mean below in deconstructing the above, only clear.

Current heritage CEO of Google and Microsoft prove some things.

You don't choose things like the family you're born into or the colour of your skin. It's humiliating to be treated in a way to try to cover it up like you made a mistake of choosing those things.

Americanized name - If people can learn yoga and chai latte, I'm pretty sure it's not due to a lack of capability to give someone the dignity of learning their name. This isn't the 1970's. People should be free to choose their name, not adjust it for what someone might think.

Cultural norms - I do think there is benefit from being able to navigate and work in a lot of environments and groups. But doing it solely to fit in and be accepted may be a form of colonialism that creates the very insecurities generationally you're trying to type away in a few sentences. The more you learn about other cultures and people, the richer you get.

Accent - Being born and raised in North America, I get to speak perfect english. Sadly, sometimes salespeople in a store won't greet me unless I say hi first. Guess who smiles and always says hi first and hopes future generations might not have to.

I hope some of the below helps, I have had a few major transitions in my career and the things that helped to move to the next step included:

ABOVE ALL - Continue becoming well rounded for yourself, not others. People's own insecurities (including those who are hiring) will naturally want to be around someone who's calm, self-assured, and not phony. If you are swimming around a lot of phonies and not connecting with that culture, it's OK.

1) Always add value. First. - Most people are takers. Don't be one. Won't work if you're not a giver. Learn to be nice, and smart and give freely to good situations and things. The karma builds up and comes back. Whether or not one should need to, generating goodwill seems to help. Finding how to add value and help people achieve what they are doing will always come back. This is the most important thing I practice every single day. Give a shit about others and some, eventually will give a shit back. Don't worry about the one's who don't or the inefficiency of it all.

2) Self-Confidence - Know people who won't want to accept you for any reason will find a reason. Lazy people will find convenient reasons. People have their own hangups. There is a big difference between thinking less about yourself vs thinking less of yourself.

3) Self-directed - embrace your proud geek culture and be your own person learning and pursuing the things that interest you. It transfers to other areas of your life.

4) Work ethic - There will always be some you come across who don't like that you work harder than them, or less than them. Ignore them all.

5) 8x - I was told by a mentor that shared some good math: It's not uncommon to have to be twice as good to get half the respect, four times as good to be treated as an equal, and eight times as good so you can't be ignored. It's up to the individual, I guess to see that they end up winning by becoming. You will have to work hard anyways.

6) Be a creator - whatever you create, become good at sharing it online. What you built or have done in the last 2 years is the most relevant things folks will look at. Curate and keep it active and healthy with a good mix of the things that interest you and what you build when no one's looking

7) Out Educate - Whatever you're good at, give the knowledge away. The hard part is doing it. People who interview well but turn out to be garbage are bullshitters will not appreciate it. Companies who get burnt by the wrong hire will remember it. When I meet someone for some work together, I always give them the knowledge I have for free.

8) Be visible - build and share things to demonstrate capability of your work. Don't show off. It will introduce you to people, build your network, and on that basis introduce you to opportunities that are often created. Don't chase social status, but be aware that social proof

9) Communication - I won't tell you to get rid of your accent. But do ensure you know how to communicate extremely clearly when neccesary. If I went to another country, and success might be enhanced by how well I commit myself to being able to communicate flawlessly in that language, I might see that as a tool, but not a flaw or shortcoming in myself.

10) Dating - is for most, largely a blind emotional baggage collection exercise of expecting a complete stranger coming into your life to supplant and rise to the highest relationship in your life. If you're optimizing your life to meet and end up with the right person, improving yourself in the right way will improve the situations and opportunities for that to happen, it becomes apparent that it's more about realizing how to recognize that person and situation, and hope they do the same. When that clicks, one can end up happily, and hopelessly married forever. Don't confuse dating (temporary startup) with the goal of a lasting relationship (established business)

11) Don't take advice from people who don't have experience with what they are giving advice on. Like the post above in some cases.

I know you might feel excluded from some opportunities, but in a way, maybe it's filtering out the crap for you and you will only meet the people who genuinely want to work with you.

Being a visible minority can have it's perks. Like the exclusionary glances immediately telling you in a room who you can talk to and be a star with, and who you don't need to talk to.

While we don't know your exact situation, know you're not alone, and let the losers and losing situations filter themselves out, it is for the best.

Feel free to connect offline if you would like to chat some more.

A few of your remarks are solid in an ideological sense, but sadly the bulk of your comment comes across as "white dude mansplaining to an indian dude why he doesn't have to worry about racism".

Racism is alive and well, and a real problem that people have to deal with. Advice like "embrace your proud geek culture and be your own person learning and pursuing the things that interest you" is generic feel good woowoo that is just not relevant here.

"11) Don't take advice from people who don't have experience with what they are giving advice on. Like the post above in some cases."

Or like yours, as someone "born and raised in North America, [who] speaks perfect english"

Sorry man, but sometimes you have to accept that you don't have much to bring to a conversation, no matter how strongly you feel about it.

tl;dr: the post you replied to is linking freaking research papers to support what it says and your reply is "don't worry just think positive and everything will be fine"

10x

Especially the American name thing. You can only know the disadvantages of having a non-western name if you've actually used one. There's a reason why so many ethnic (particularly Asian, from what I understand) lawyers use American "professional names".

I have a non-western name, and I get no problems. More curiosity and questions, rather than outright discrimination or anything of that sort.

The other advice really is solid: Don't fit the stereotype when you meet new individuals, and they won't treat you like one. First impressions count a lot, so you can't change someone's mind after the fact without a lot of work.

I have a non-western name. I don't have an American or professional name. Not saying everyone should, or not, only that it exists.

Shortening one's name is a common practice among American names.

Ironically I grew up in a school environment where I was one of the few minorities, and when I got to university, people of a shared background shortened my name.

I could counterpoint his/her entire comment, but I'll just briefly say that citing the success of certain ethnicities (backgrounds of the CEOs of Microsoft and Google) is like implying racism/sexism is over because Obama was President and a woman almost became President.

CEO is just publicly visible example, but at every level in Microsoft there're Indian, VP, managers, product managers, principal developers, regular developers. I think you can just browse/search Microsoft product managers thru linkedin to verify that. I'd be very surprised to see any bias towards any nationality at MS, given >50% of employees are foreign.

I don't doubt that Microsoft might actively try to counter implicit racism which is evident in their demographics, but I do believe there are stats that show there are clear disparities between number of Asians in professional jobs and number of Asians who end up getting promoted from their positions to C-level positions.

There's no doubt "diversity" is corporate bs when it doesn't exist from the top down.

Such reflection also shines a light on how unreasonably hard some people, in any group are having to work to ensure organizations reflect society, and the nature of their sacrifices and commitment compared to others.

The main reason I mentioned the CEO's, is outside of perceived differences or challenges, achieving goals often require becoming a lot better than one probably should have had to.

Attitude, curiosity, work ethic, being easy to get along with and work with others go a long way.

Respectfully, it's not about counterpointing, or there only being one way to be right.

It's more about developing a positive and healthy inner mental and emotional dialogue that allows you to live in a viewpoint of seeing and acting on possibility instead of worshipping doubts to drag ourselves and others down.

Innovation, improvement happens by pushing yourself to grow, not finding faults in everything around you and in yourself.

No one will be in your corner if you aren't.

Hi, I'm not white. Not even close. I'm not sure why someone as openminded as yourself would jump to a conclusion. Sincerely have not meant to do it myself.

I assure you I'm among the most visible and targeted of minorities.

Racism is sadly, absolutely alive and well. The question is are you going to resign to it or engage with it in a positively unreasonable and relentless way? Ending racism is also a startup.

The first step for me to get used to taking a strangers and making them a human being so it's not as easy to dismiss them, or their experience.

It's concerning you might automatically think what I wrote is ideological. I practice these things every day. Happy to chat about any points above you'd like to know more about me, I just wanted to share what I have learnt by my own experience with the original poster, and the results it has helped achieve.

As for "generic woo woo culture", there's no need to put someone down, my message was for the original poster. If this has a hit a nerve with you of what you feel the world is, I agree it's not an easy place, and it gets harder, but the only peace I'm finding is when I'm getting better.. leave me no choice but to take responsibility for improving myself.

I also belong to another woo woo culture/practice that fiercely promotes manifesting yourself in action in the world through positivity action towards other, treating all of humanity as one and your extended family, and selfless service towards all. So why not be that way.

reachj45@gmail.com, would love to learn more about you :)

What? Why do you think he's white? And even if he was -- his post is full of great advice. Any job candidate (or person, in general) would benefit from implementing those ideas to the best of their ability.

It's not "feel good woowoo," it's fundamental human psychology, and I think it's absolutely relevant here.

edit: I should add that I don't actually recommend blindly taking his, or anyone's, advice. Educating oneself should come first. I would recommending reading "Influence," by Robert Cialdini, if you want to learn more about the type of stuff discussed in j45's post.

Thanks for the recommendation for the read, just bought it.

Pursued understanding a little too inefficiently myself, means a lot.

Looking different and having a different accent can also be seen as attractive. But there are human biases ... I have a theory that if you get a lot of calls from "scammers" (for example Microsoft support, saying you got a PC virus), and they have a special accent, you will form a bias that someone with that accent is untrustworthy.

>Sadly, sometimes salespeople in a store won't greet me unless I say hi first.

That sounds fantastic. I wish this was my experience when shopping because I hate being harassed by salespeople looking to make a commission.

Hah, I didn't say it was a bad thing. Except when you actually do need help with something.

The strangest one (and it is rare) is was at Costco a few weeks ago. The guy just pointed at the payment terminal, didn't say hi. I asked him why he was pointing at the machine and not saying hi. I forgot to say hi first.

Change your name to an americanized version. I know someone who did this. Lots of research that proves this point

That is clearly not the problem, since the OP is making it to on-site, and even being offered other roles.

>> Take acting classes and learn to speak with no accent It wont be permanent, but you'll be able to minimize your accent for a few hours in the interview. It's akin to speaking with a fake French accent.<<

This is terrible advice. As soon as you start the job, the people who interviewed you will wonder why your accent is totally different, and it will instantly put you on the backfoot.

>>I am almost thinking of halting my job search and finding some kind of hobby to keep me occupied and keep my mind off work.<<

This is a far better idea than just applying for jobs for the sake of it. It could be possible that you are coming across as slightly desperate in your interviews because you hate your current job so much.

Good luck

>> This is terrible advice. As soon as you start the job, the people who interviewed you will wonder why your accent is totally different

That's not quite how accent reduction works. I think the goal is to be clear and understandable in the interview. The accent would have no weight on his professional capabilities.

Is being clear and understandable not an important professional capability? If not, then why does the interview require it?

> A: Please take a seat. As you know, we hired you because you did great on your interview. But we recently noticed that you speak with an Indian accent. Did you attempted to hide your accent during the interview?

> B: Uh, maybe a little? I've been taking accent reduction classes and learned to speak without one, but can't keep it up 24/7.

> A: Thanks for your honestly. Unfortunately we'll have to let you go. Please pack your desk.

I don't know man. I can see "acting classes" under hobbies on your CV not as a bad thing.

I believe employers might ask about it. if you tell them you are bettering your communications skills. It can only be a plus? Because this guys is using his spare time to better himself, instead of watching firefly over and over again in hope they will continue the series.

If this conversation happened, you should be glad. That does not sound like the type of place you would want to work at in the first place.

That doesn't sound like a very likely reaction. The acting classes are working, so if A really can't tolerate B's accent, why not just tell him to keep taking those lessons and practicing? Maybe offer to pay for them.

Many people find it uncomfortable to listen to accent. Interviewer feels uncomfortable around you, so he is less likely to hire you. It has nothing to do with ability to do the job.

That's not entirely correct. I've experienced several cases of inadequate language skills leading to misunderstandings that took months to clear up and that had real consequences. On a day to day basis, bad language skills also introduces friction and frustration.

Learning whatever language you use for work properly and being able to make yourself understood is immensely important.

I work for a company that has a pretty extensive global footprint. Just in the office I work we have around 15 nationalities, and it isn't even a big office.

Just about the only hard requirement I have for people being hired on my team is that they can make themselves clearly understood in english over a dodgy phone connection. Despite the fact that we are a norwegian company, I don't care if people know any norwegian at all. But english they must know. And yes, I have passed on norwegian candidates that could not make themselves understood in english.

And to underline how important people being able to communicate is for me: despite almost exclusively hiring people that are multidisciplinary (just being a software developer isn't enough, you need at least one other skill) I don't care about what education people have and I don't look at their grades.

If you are a developer, the most important language isn't any programming language: it is english.

I am stealing your last line for my personal use.

Clear communication is the most important skill for almost any business person, but certainly for developers.

>This is terrible advice. As soon as you start the job, the people who interviewed you will wonder why your accent is totally different, and it will instantly put you on the backfoot.

Struggling to see why this would be seen as bad advice. The basic human response to a foreign accent is "this is hard work for me to understand them". On a more subconscious level, they're probably wondering if you share the same cultural interests and therefore whether you'd get on. If you are not like this, good on you, but I assure most are not.

Some people can be horrendously unforgiving about accents, the quickest way to experience this is to go to France or China and try to speak French and Chinese to them respectively. (these are the two countries I've found to be the most unforgiving on accent from personal experience).

If someone is presenting you with a solution to a problem (as defined by other people), why is that terrible advice?

In any case, why should the acting classes stop after landing the job? Being able to speak with a native accent in a non-native language should be seen as a virtue...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com