Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem

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33 pointsel_duderino14 comments

I genuinely had no idea and surprised that caste discrimination is a thing in silicon valley companies, have readers here experienced this? I would have imagined that people got better things to occupy their minds with when there's work to be done.

I actually can't say I'm surprised. I've talked to a number of African businessmen who've spent time traveling and working in India on business, and they report that the discrimination and bigotry they faced there is a real cause for concern. One of the weird things about racism is that it's not just former colonial powers/white people discriminating against BIPOC, but also a vast complicated web of xenophobia that some POC exhibit towards other POC. There is a historically discriminated-against ethnic group in Afghanistan who have been persecuted by the Tajik and Pashtun majority, because they look Mongolian/Central Asian and are not Sunni [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazaras

I have personally seen discrimination in Pakistan, by the ruling elite class in the Islamabad/Lahore area, against darker skinned persons of different ethnic groups whose home area is in Balochistan.

I think it's good to be reminded that "POC" is a very coarsely-defined term that comprises a bunch of different groups, some of whom can be racist against other POC groups. Racism, even of the systematic kind, is not limited to white people oppressing non-white people.

It just goes to show you that people like having power over other people, and they'll find any excuse possible to turn some group into the "other" so they can feel justified in oppressing them. In the case of the Indian caste system, race isn't required for this. In Afghanistan, as you point out, it can have a big religious component (though race is part of it too).

It is interesting to note that systematic racism against white people doesn't seem that common, at least in places I've visited (mostly Asia), where white people are in the minority. Discrimination there seems to be more xenophobia-based than race-based.

I think the shocking thing is that even though Dalits are just 1% of the Indian population in the U.S. that other Indians still seek them out as victims here.

One detail I'd lean on is that South Asians are not just "engineers and coders" but in many companies play a big role in management. This is in contrast to East Asians which face more of a "bamboo ceiling". (e.g. a black or white person who goes to Harvard has a golden ticket; an east asian has a ticket to get into medical school)

In what scenario would anyone get to skip medical school? Or are you saying they can't get a job with a Harvard degree? Or maybe they don't get promoted?

I am saying that East Asians get funneled into detail-oriented jobs that are about learning highly complex skills that are well paid.

Other people who go to Harvard can get into bullshit-oriented jobs that outpay the jobs East Asian Harvard grads get by more than East Asian Harvard jobs outpay the average American.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_ceiling

For instance,

"As of 2015, less than 2% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Asian, although they comprise 5.6% of the total United States population, and about 30% of the graduates in the top 20 MBA programs in the last 20 years."

Thanks for clarifying,that sucks! Society should really get rid of this had practice where individuals are always seen through a "race" lens.

Why would people be expected to leave their bias at home when they move? Born, raised and still living in silicon valley and can easily say there are biases here the same as everywhere, yet can seem more magnified by being in a small pond with too many others and people cutting necks to get ahead to nowhere.

As with any form of discrimination, the individuals who subscribe to such a worldview are just shallow. They don't have an appreciation for the complexity and history of each human life.

how hard would it be for a dalit to just lie? "I'm from X upper caste" , genuinely curious. Not that they have to but could they? Is there some cultural aspects that separate people of different castes that could be used to identify which caste a person is from?

There absolutely are, I'm no expert on it, but I imagine it would also be very stressful for the person creating a fabricated family identity. Imagine if you faked a thick Australian accent to get a job and then had to keep that up for years while at work, M-F. Not that it's accent based but the same degree of difficulty.

This has been a big problem in Silicon Valley. My first-hand experience has been in some of the older, "blue-chip" tech and networking companies like Cisco, Aruba, Juniper, etc.

I'm Indian American in my 30s -- one of the rare elusive Bay Area natives -- my parents have been in the states since the 1970s.

Both Engineering and Management in the companies I've worked at have been mostly South Asian Indians who have immigrated from India, not born here.

Management's modus operandi has typically been to only hire other Indians who are here on H1B visas or other work visas (or their Indian friends). Why? Well, the folks who are here on visas who have eventually settled down, taken out a million dollar mortgage, and enrolled their [Indian American-born] kids in local schools are essentially hostages -- captive workers who have learned not to speak up or stir the boat and to never protest for fear of punishment. They've rightfully tried to put down roots and they don't want to risk losing them.

I've witnessed hiring processes essentially being a good old boys club, tied to all forms of discrimination based on gender, race, caste, religion, and language. In my personal career, I've essentially been stonewalled and politicked and harassed because I'm not "Indian" enough -- I'm "American" after all. Meetings where managers joked that they should hire another Kannada-speaker, or meetings that were in Hindi only despite non-Indians being in the room.

Typically in all-Indian teams here in the Bay Area, I've been the only one to speak up and to be the lone voice of dissent. No matter how many facts or data or research you bring up, if you're the only one dissenting, you're looked at as crazy; management squashes your voice and ultimately makes major short and long-term mistakes because everyone else was afraid to tell the emperor [raja?] that he has no clothes.

I've witnessed tens of millions of dollars wasted in R&D and at least $100m in lost sales because our Indian management chain has been an echo chamber of "yes men" and friends and "good old boys" who never hold each other accountable and bide their time for their RSUs to vest.

And what's funny is that the only teams I've actually been able to get meaningful work done has been with "minority" teams, led by white American or European managers, who themselves face an uphill political battle against the Indian teams.

Lastly, the other fight I've gotten in trouble with has been advocating for women engineers. I've witnessed so many senior, experienced women engineers be given dead-end projects or grunt-work, versus new male hires straight out of school getting the best projects (for which they are under-qualified for). Repeatedly. I've brought it up to management and as expected, nothing changes.

With 10+ years of experience, every team I've worked with that had an Indian manager has essentially thrown my work in the trash, reprimanded me, put me up for performance issues, and/or eventually laid me off.

It's been a nightmare. I'm tired. Exhausted. Whenever I think of all the time I've wasted because of the inane politics, it brings me to tears. This is most certainly not now my parents raised me, nor how they adopted and integrated themselves into the American Dream. I am constantly ashamed that the caste system, racism, and sexism in the Indian demographics of tech are so alive and well in the New World, where they should have been shed and discarded so long ago.

P.S. Throwaway since my real account has my real real name and I'm currently knee-deep in a job search. Wish me luck!

One weird thing I noticed at a particular FAANG was that there were many teams that were either overwhelmingly Indian or Chinese. It seemed very unlikely that these could be random, as they were minorities. I made sure to avoid any team like that. Although to be fair it also happens with white people, but at least they are the majority so it seems more likely to occur randomly. I've even overheard certain teams having technical discussions in other languages beside English, which seemed weird because if I was in the team it would make me feel very uncomfortable or excluded.

It is not so much of caste cliques in these groups. As you noticed it yourself, H1-B employees are on-call for everything: if a manager requests something at 7:24 pm, you can expect a reply from an Indian H1-B by 7:30 pm. Then, there is game of "appearing to work hard". A team with majority of Indians is full of "appearances of working hard".

Here are some example of such appearances: (a) reply to emails after work-hours (b) last minute requests to other teams, as though it is urgent, involving managers and others. (c) instead of being upfront, they engage in subtle hard-working techniques.

People can add other examples, as they are relevant to study this Indian phenomenon. This phenomenon has less to do with castes, than more to do with the Indian way of 'management' before the British Raj came to India.

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