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Comment by yunohn | Hacker News Reader

The phrase you’re focusing on is taken out of the larger context, which was estimating the lower possible bound of expenditure on staffing. Bottom of the barrel means the lowest quality / cheapest of a given option, which in this case would be the lowest-bidding team of engineers from a low cost of living country, and the combo of those 2 often is India. It’s a reference to the way middle managers think about cost reduction and not the OP’s feeling about Indians.

Yes, I understand English and semantics. I still disagree with the derogatory phrasing. The intent could've been phrased in innumerable alternative ways, with various other words and idioms and phrases.

Pray, give us an example?

If you switch ‘Indian’ devs out for ‘third-world’, you are just expanding the scope of your ‘racism’.

People keep turning up everywhere lately getting offended over every little thing.

Please continue with the worst interpretation possible.

It makes it easy for moderators to cue on those that are not adhering to HN rules.

Gotta love HN down voting this comment that gets to the crux of the problem in OP's original comment. Just goes to highlight the subconscious biases that a lot of predominantly Western devs have when they are totally cool with throwing around language like that without realizing why or how it is problematic.

Some examples of phrasing that would have worked just as well:

- Low-cost developers

- Unskilled, inexpensive developers

But that doesn't quite have the ring of some good ol' casual racism/stereotyping that everyone can pile on I suppose.

> - Unskilled, inexpensive developers

Would have gotten exactly the same backlash if he said "unskilled inexpensive Indian developers". You just show here how unreasonable you are. The developers being stationed in India is very important for the comment, since then you pay much less for them, and then you pick the cheapest among the developers stationed in India, hence "bottom of the barrel Indian developers". There is no racism at all embedded in that statement.

> But that doesn't quite have the ring of some good ol' casual racism/stereotyping that everyone can pile on I suppose.

What? "Bottom of the barrel" has no racial connotations at all, you can use it in any scenario.

> There is no racism at all embedded in that statement.

The phrasing and sentiment, which non-Western people are subjected to time and again, are racist.

Your "semantics-based" explanations AKA opinions do not change that.

"Bottom of the barrel devs on the cheap" capture what you want to say without pointing to a specific geographic area or ethnic group, fwiw.

No it doesn't. When you say "bottom of the barrel devs on the cheap" people would assume you pay American prices, so $70k a year or so. Location matters a lot.

And when making estimates you need a real value, so taking a real location where we know what cheap developers costs helps making the estimate more realistic.

You are aware that there are innumerable developing (colonised) countries that are low-cost, relative to developed (colonising) countries right? India is only one of them.

Right, he could have used many other examples, but he took one which he knew what the developers are paid in and went with it. What is wrong with that? You need to use some number for your example. If he knew a location with cheaper developers he would have used it instead.

This sub thread is a demonstration in triggeredness run amok.

By pointing to a specific region or country, it entirely changes the cost factor on the bottom of the barrel. That's so obvious as to be quite obnoxious that it would require explanation.

Which bottom of which barrel are you talking about? Germany's bottom? The bottom in the US? Russia? Ukraine? China? India? It's hyper relevant and entirely reasonable to state the location for that reason, given the dramatically different economics involved (~10x-20x cost difference in bottom of the barrel labor). It also changes the development cost context as well as the overall cost factor, if the labor is local vs foreign.

From experience, lots of Indian IT firms are far worse than any other company I’ve worked with. Wipro and Infosys.

Criticizing Indian developers in these IT shops is simply the truth. So you can weasel your way about political correctness or just simply admit to the reality. Doesn't mean that Indian developers are bad. Quite the opposite probably - I have several Indian friends and they know how these IT firms are and they openly criticize them.

That said, I would also call out Chinese suppliers and American food. That’s not racist. Has not a shred of racism.

Disappointing to see racism accusations on HN. Every culture has its pros and cons. They’re not some sanctity that is immune to any sort of criticism. Most people here have double standards - criticizing American culture!? No problem. Encouraged.

You know why this wokeness is a problem? Next time someone in your company wants to hire a terrible Indian IT firm, people will accuse you for being racist when you oppose this decision. It has serious implications on day-to-day business, and I would extrapolate to the society in general.

Very well said and sad to see it being downvoted.

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