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Comment by imheretolearn | Hacker News Reader

>> I was lucky to have very "Americanized" parents who didn't raise me with these backward attitudes.

You miss the entire point of the article. You are privileged not only to have Americanized parents, but you are privileged because you are an American. Your world is way better than that of a common Indian student. Most Indian students need a job, just to be able to feed their families. Quoting from the article:

"When push comes to shove (which is the permanent state for most Indians), we only care about one thing, survival."

When it's about survival, everything else goes out the window. That's one of the points the article is trying to highlight.

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I'm from a poor background and I didn't cheat. Nor did I commit bogus pull requests just to pad my resume. These things poison any community trust, put people into positions that jeopardize other peoples lives, and make meritocracy a joke.

What does is say about a person if their attitude is that these things are okay if you are from a certain background? It says that they care about the background of the person more (for whatever reason, good or bad) than the damage it does to the communities that they interact with. Consider the consequences of this.

To give you a hypothetical example, in India, there are maybe 10k jobs but a million aspirants for that job. And 90% of those million people are poor. In USA, you have social security to fall back on if you don't get a job. In India, if you don't get that job, you're on your own until the next attempt. Being poor in USA and being poor in India are very different.

I am in no way encouraging hacky ways for resume grooming. I am just stating why it is a phenomena in India. You're doing a good job by not employing these tactics to further yourself. Also, a key difference could be that you're maybe not from India. And if you are, you're an exception not the norm.

His comment was about Indian Americans, who are on average much much better off than the average American, so really there isn't much need to bring third world resource scarcity mentality into raising your children here, but alas, you can take the immigrant from the country of origin but you can't take the country of origin from the immigrant.

Thank You!, Thank YOU!, THANK YOU!

This right here is the truth. The article is simply a rant from somebody who has yet to grow up and understand the real world i.e. they are in a privileged position in life. When you have so much competition for limited opportunities, you cannot apply the same yardstick from a different environment. The Fight for Survival is as true of social structures as it is in biological ones. It seems this Indian American has no idea of the sacrifices his parents made in establishing themselves in America and providing him the privileged position from which he pontificates.

I don’t understand why you seem to imply that half arsing your education is fine if it means you get a job? Why not make the best of it and get a job?

Any Indian with access to a computer can potentially be a (much) better hire than the one from the most desired engineering college. In fact, I’d almost have to expect so since they don’t have to waste time on all that signalling.

It’s unfortunate that that apparently doesn’t matter to the companies doing the hiring :/

>> I don’t understand why you seem to imply that half arsing your education is fine if it means you get a job? Why not make the best of it and get a job?

Quoting from the article:

"In middle school children have dreams to become a Pilot in the airforce, or maybe a Police officer, or maybe a Opera Singer ! But by the time of high school, everyone is just either on road to become an Engineer, a Doctor, a Lawyer, a Chartered Accountant …. or a failure. This may seem harsh but that’s how most of the society operates here in India."

The problem here is that students are forced by their parents into a field of education they don't even like. How do you expect someone to understand the intricacies of fluid dynamics when they don't give a rat's ass about it. When you give exams on topics you are not even remotely interested in? Therein lies the privilege of being American. When you're a common Indian student, you don't have a choice in choosing your field of study

>> Any Indian with access to a computer can potentially be a (much) better hire than the one from the most desired engineering college.

This only works well for computer science. What about students who want to become doctors? Do you know that to get a seat in an Indian medical college, a common Indian student will most likely have to pay a "donation" just to get their foot in the door.

> How do you expect someone to understand the intricacies of fluid dynamics when they don't give a rat's ass about it.

The same way I studied everything in high school? I certainly didn’t give a fuck arout the molecular mass of hydrogen, but since I was going to be there anyway, I might as well spend my time there actually learning instead of sleeping.

It’s unfortunate if that situation continues into university, but hardly the end of the world.

>> It’s unfortunate if that situation continues into university, but hardly the end of the world.

And then from university, goes on to become your career. On, which you spend 1/3 of your day for 40 years.

I recognize that these "backwards" attitudes I described may make sense in India, since as you say, the culture and society is very different there. I consider these attitudes to be backwards in the US.

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