Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Past related threads. I think there have been others.

How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March 2021 (195 comments)

Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley's richest tech companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct 2020 (322 comments)

How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 - Sept 2020 (47 comments)

Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 comments)

Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 - Aug 2020 (14 comments)

California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 - July 2020 (56 comments)

California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592 comments)

Cisco is a hell hole that attracts a particular type of employee without talent who indulge in this type of discrimination blatantly. Narrow-minded Indians (I'm speaking as an Indian myself) who bring their Indian attitudes abroad. These types of Indians put others to shame. This is another side effect of doling out H1Bs and L1s without consideration for assimilation. I'm not sure if this is endemic to Indians though. I had a North Vietnamese classmate who used to complain that South Vietnamese students did not speak properly with them or respect them. Fundamentally boils down to growing up as human beings.

Telecommunications industry seems to be particularly toxic, I hear there are in Santa Clara, and in Bangalore too, buildings full of 'Automation engineers'. There are like thousands and thousands of people whose whole job is to plugin in some values in a Jenkins job and pull out values, and mail it to the next person up the chain. And yes most of these people are on H1B, and many times are even given GC's in EB1 by cooking up legal documentation.

In a set up where there is such low/non-existent value going around and nothing much to show for, I'd expect toxic politics for every little thing.

There are quite a few places like this in this industry, and it can be very hard to achieve anything of value both personally and professionally at such places. And its all about identity politics, and cartel behaviour at the end.

> Cisco is a hell hole that attracts a particular type of employee without talent who indulge in this type of discrimination blatantly.

I work for Cisco. Best place to work for, best salary in the market, the smartest people I've ever come across. Best work life balance.

I'm not Indian though, so maybe I'm not aware of all the details.

Lol @ best salary in the market and best place to work for

Every time such articles pop-up, I wonder what rock am I living under. In 22 years of experience (Half in US/UK and rest in India) in eight global organizations, not even a single time I heard or witnessed any cast based biases. What we regularly see is region/lingustic biases.

Cast based discrimination exist in India, but in my experience the issue is overblown in the knowledge industry.

I respect your tenure but that itself does not justify calling the issue as overblown. If workers are experiencing it and it’s being reported in multiple teams, it exists.

A thing to keep in mind is that the Tech industry is very large. Even within organizations culture can be really different; cue Amazon engineers sharing horror stories while others paint it as the best place they’ve ever worked at.

I was in a rating sync once and noticed some very strange crab bucket behavior that only came from more sr Indian managers and engineers with regards to another jr Indian-origin teammate who never even lived in India AFAIK. The fact that the negative detractors were only Indian, and everyone else was positive about the person made me connect the possibility that maybe there was something going on that I couldn't tell culturally.

I never saw this negative behavior out in our day to day, so it surprised me. This might be how the discrimination happens.

Yeah, that’s why I make it a point not to join a company with any Indians in it. I was born in America, but they insist on playing their weird Hindu mind games and politics with me. If there’s an Indian on the prospective team or on the interview panel, I end the interview right there. The risk is just too much that it will be an unfun place to work at.

It’s also why I’ve had to cut off contact with most if not all of my family who are of Indian origin. They play strange political games that I have no interest in participating. At the end of the day humans are tribal and it is this aspect which makes me hate a lot of people.

> ...in my experience* the issue is overblown in the knowledge industry.*

Let me hazard a guess: You're "not lower-caste" (and that's how you can then dismiss your own assertion).

I understand where you are coming from. I am not lower-class and may have my biases, but unlike Siddhant in the story, I got my first bicycle (a second hand) at the age of 23 to commute within college campus while doing my masters. So I have definitely not lived in some urban bubble, away from the grassroot issues in the country.

I am not denying the discrimination in the industry. It is the magnitude that I have my doubts on.

This is equivalent to a really poor white person saying "nah man, them blacks don't have it any harder."

I knew someone would say that.

Caste issues are much more complex in my view. Feel free to disagree.

Imagine having two friends, one dirt poor and another fairly rich (but comes from a lower caste). Both appears in an entrance exams for the engineering degree. The poor score 99% but fails to make it but the rich dude who score 70% makes it to the college. He gets caste reservation.

One may say that reservation is is off topic but is it really? It is a lifelong reminder of who you are, to both the friends.

The poor friend who somehow makes it to the Silicon Valley, is often reminded of his caste privileges.

The rich lower caste friend, gets discriminated for his caste and economic privileges that others find undeserving.

People are so obsessed over this mythos of the "more deserving" person being pushed down cuz he's white/upper cast/<insert dominant group of people> and yet if you still look at most people in power, it's still that same fucking dominant group in charge, just maybe not AS dominant as before.

There was a reddit thread that went super viral right after the SuperBowl (with zero data) about "demographics of people in the tv ads vs US demographics", and everyone was obsessing over how black people were vastly overrepresented versus their demographics... and STILL white people were also over-represented.

Don't kid yourself that just because you hear (or even experience) anecdotes of people belonging to the dominant group being "discriminated" against that it's the norm.

Simple - go try applying for jobs with a white-sounding versus a black-sounding name and see what happens.

And btw, this is literally what CRT is, and actual experts and academics have shown over and over and over again that the political systems are tilted against the non-dominant groups, even with the boogeyman of affirmative action.

I don't think I've seen it in 20+ years in banking, but I don't know the caste of the Indian people I've worked with. For all I know they could have all been the same caste.

Is there a way to tell an Indian's caste? I'm guessing it's impolite to ask.

Surnames are often caste signifiers.

That's the thing with different types of discrimination - most of the time it's not done out in the open, and it's easy to allow yourself to not see it if you aren't being negatively affected.

You have a choice: you can assume you're correct that this is "overblown" and do nothing, or you can recognize that it clearly does happen (even if it really is rare) and make sure you're actively watching for it and reporting it when you see it.

It's spelled "caste" not "cast"

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