Google’s caste-bias problem
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
They seem to focus on this blanket ban against discussing this issue at Google, as the discriminatory act - rather than alleging that actual caste discrimination is being perpetrated at Google (for the most part).
They do however seem to point to two examples of rumoured alleged casteism at Google (I think):
"I think the Cisco case is probably the most publicly known example—is that, within a team, when you’ve got people who are caste privileged and caste oppressed, the people who are caste oppressed start to be given inferior assignments, get treated differently, left out of meetings, which are certainly things that I heard from Google employees within the company. "
"Asking things like “What’s your last name? I’m not familiar with it.” Then, when the manager hears that last name, they’re, like, “Oh, so you’re from this caste—no wonder you have these leadership skills.” Things like that. And somebody else in the room is, like, “What the hell?” It’s those different types of experiences that I’ve seen or that have been shared with me that show that caste discrimination is happening in the workplace.
By the tone of the article/employee I'm confused whether the employee is discussing hearsay based on examples of how discrimination could be occuring at Google - based on what they read about stuff at Cisco or elsewhere (perhaps with the intention of explaining why such issues could be relevant to discuss at Google) - or if they actually met Google employees facing these issues.
I wonder if the journalist themselves are trying to intentionally conflate the issues of 1) actual caste discrimination possibly taking place and 2) not being allowed to talk about casteism
Either way censoring internal talks about employee grievances/ possible workplace discrimination/discrimination outside the workplace (which one was the talk going to be about!?) is not a good look on Google - given that they've always tried to paint an image a company that lets its employees openly discuss anything for the most part.
>"T.G.: There was my own obvious background. My parents immigrated from India in the early nineteen-eighties. I was certainly familiar with the topic. In September, 2021, two employees approached me. I hosted D.E.I. office hours every week where people could come in and talk about these topics, confidentially, and multiple Google employees came into my office and reported that they had faced discrimination when trying to talk about matters of caste in the workplace. There was already a public condemnation of caste discrimination at Google from the Alphabet workers’ union. They had put out a press statement when the Cisco case broke. There were reports from at least twenty Google employees as well. [In June, 2020, California sued Cisco and two of its managers for engaging in caste discrimination. Afterward, Equality Labs received complaints from more than two hundred and fifty tech workers, including twenty Google employees.]"
Your quote doesn't say that casteism is a rising problem. It only says some people allegedly got pushback for talking about matters of caste. It's possible they were talking about caste politics in India or whatever, and got reprimanded for bring up non-work related controversial issues.
Seems weird to me that a ban on talking about discrimination wouldn't automatically be seen as being discriminatory rather than somehow the reverse.
And another (2020): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083
---
One good resource (imo as an outsider) from the recent one is this:
"As a Dalit myself, I wrote a Dalit 101 for non Indian audience. https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101" by user thelit (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595663)
Google cancelled a talk on caste bias - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 - June 2022 (946 comments)
Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 - March 2022 (543 comments)
India’s tech sector reinforces old caste divides - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 - Jan 2022 (5 comments)
The Casteism I See in America and American Tech Companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 - Nov 2021 (5 comments)
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)
India’s engineers have thrived in the tech industry. So has its caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 - Oct 2020 (6 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)
Ask HN: There is caste system in the Silicon Valley? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 - Feb 2017 (6 comments)
When I worked as a software engineer are capital one earlier in my career, thus was a very noticeable trend.
You had entire teams/groups (and to some extent geographical regions given the way the capital one workforce was split between Richmond Virginia, McLean Virginia, and NYC) where particular castes grouped together.
It became particularly acute when you took into account who was on visa/sponsored and who was not.
We very openly have universities in the US that favor admitting children and relatives of alumni. Hell, we just had a US President that installed his own kids and son in law in various government capacities, and then pardoned his son in law’s dad.
I guess my comment is to question whether Indians are doing something that different to what non Indians are doing.
It seems like a very gray area. Of course, Indians could be doing it to a shade of gray closer to nepotism than others.
(This comment will of course be downvoted heavily and/or flagged)
When Jews were being discriminated against they were nowhere near a majority of the student population or squeezing out the representation of other groups.
If you don’t think representation matters then all of this will seem very silly to you.
> When Jews were being discriminated against they were nowhere near a majority of the student population or squeezing out the representation of other groups.
So like, it wasn't okay to discriminate against Jews because there weren't that many of them in absolute terms, but it's ok to discriminate against Filipinos? There are about twice as many Jews as Filipinos in the US, by the way.
Are you really trying to grapple with the problem here, or is it as simple to you as “we should never take steps to affirmatively correct past racial injustices”? Your deep concern with Jews being treated too well makes me suspect you aren’t arguing from a genuine place of concern about injustice, but carelessly lobbing white supremacist talking points. They would indeed argue that we need to restrict Jewish admissions because Jews are replacing “true whites” in Universities.
I thought we were talking about why racial quotas for Asian people were good, not some other topic.
Filipinos' ancestors were placed in human zoos in America in the 1900s. After the Japanese surrender in World War II, Americans continued bombing their villages. The US has bankrolled a dynasty of looters who have overseen the decline of the country in the postwar period and, recently, the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people flimsily accused of being affiliated with organized crime.
A lot of this is fairly typical of the US's treatment of any country where the US fought a war between World War II and the Vietnam War or any country where the US has had a preferred political party, so I don't have any particular argument for correcting injustices carried out by the US against Filipinos that does not also apply to a slight majority of South American countries. We do not currently have a program of racial quotas for South Americans though.
> Are you really trying to grapple with the problem here, or is it as simple to you as “we should never take steps to affirmatively correct past racial injustices”?
Perhaps it would help if you could reply to what I wrote, and not to what I did not write?
> Your deep concern with Jews being treated too well makes me suspect you aren’t arguing from a genuine place of concern about injustice, but carelessly lobbing white supremacist talking points.
Maybe you're thinking of some other comment you read elsewhere? I'm honestly not sure what to say. Maybe I could randomly impugn your motives as a proponent of the reinstatement of Japanese internment or whatever, if this is your preferred way to chat with people, and you are trying to show me how you would like to be treated.
To be clear, I am not concerned with Jews being treated too well. Jews seem to be treated appropriately now, as far as US college admissions go. They were treated unfairly in the past. We rightly see the way they were treated in the past as an injustice. Why do we not see it as an injustice when we apply the same rules to different minorities? That is the question I originally posed. So far you chose to reply to "It was wrong to do discriminate against Jews. Why is it right to discriminate against Filipinos?" by calling me a white supremacist.
Asians don’t have a representation issue in education.
If you think representation doesn't matter, that we live in a pure meritocracy, that only grades and tests scores matter, then attempts to fix injustice will seem silly to you. The smallest minority is the individual, so if you insist on breaking down racial-subcategories enough, you will always find "winners" and "losers" in attempts to redress injustice.
Does their representation matter to you? How about South Asian students versus Chinese, or (perhaps most concerningly) wealthy Nigerian immigrants versus poorer African-American descendants of slavery? The former often benefit from affirmative action aimed at the latter.
Asians don’t have a representation issue in education.
If you think representation doesn't matter, that we live in a pure meritocracy, that only grades and tests scores matter, then attempts to fix injustice will seem silly to you. The smallest minority is the individual, so if you insist on breaking down racial-subcategories enough, you will always find "winners" and "losers" in attempts to redress injustice.
I also absolutely think there is a double standard in regards to how seriously allegations of racism against white and non-white managers are taken.
Additionally, there is some selection-bias as well. In other words, do we measure against the Indian pop in the US (or Canada, etc) or against the proportions in India itself and when doing so raw numbers, or number of graduates or graduates from the IITs?
It sounds like this is occurring everywhere.
I'm a native western european so I'm likely blind to some extend for these issues. Like the article says, this sounds like harmful class-ism that silences or disadvantages specific groups, but not in an "obviously" racist manner based on skin color.
Anyone care to share some real life experience? Was this a problem in your workplace? How did you detect this was going on, at all?
https://web.archive.org/web/20220725001219/https://www.nytim...
There is plenty of colorism within India too (everywhere in fact). I think you should definitely read about forms of discrimination.
- The accuser was hired to a coveted project by the manager, where every member was among the highest paid employees in Cisco (millions in total take home). Even among those people, the accuser was among the highest paid.
- The accuser was supposedly discriminated by not getting a $5,000 raise after the annual performance appraisals.
- The accuser was passed over for promotion, but the person appointed as the leader / successor by the manager was also of the same, supposedly discriminated caste.
- The accuser and the manager went to school together, studied every class for 4 years together, and the accuser was hired to this coveted position by this supposedly discriminatory manager.
A few decades ago during the Cold War, there were several large scale anti-caste movements, and this caused a lot of the moneyed upper caste (note that many of the upper caste are poor) to flee to the US where money often open doors. The immigration to the UK and the other English speaking countries tended to be more varied and more middle class based on skills (doctors, engineers, etc...).
It's widely known within India that a notable portion of the upper caste are based in the US, but in India the IT industry is one of the most caste-blind industries in India, along with how the majority of the IT industry is based in South India where casteism is traditionally less.
I wonder if these two things are connected. In some cases is this going beyond just caste discrimination and becoming something like a recreation of a caste system within the company itself? And why are we incapable of even discussing whether or not these things are happening despite them being blatantly illegal?
This happens all the time in Canada. When you have a large ethnic majority and they start identifying with the language and start bringing toxic work culture with management fully aware of the issues and exploiting this.
For example for a startup I worked for in Vancouver had a large Chinese/Russian majority in the development team. They would stay behind past working hours and require me to do the same. When I left early they reported me. They also started to bully and talking only in Chinese or Russian.
It was absolutely a shock and not a surprise why Canada has a brain drain going on. I don't even have any beef with these groups since I have friends from those community that grew up here but for whatever reason, those guys at that startup specifically chose to isolate ppl that didn't speak their language.
It was a modern day sweatshop and it was weird seeing even Taiwanese engineers who also grew up here for less than a decade participate in this toxic behavior.
My mistake was expecting Canadian work culture and expecting others to follow it and the management who were white canadians knew exactly their culture and exploited it.
Just more and more reasons to leave Vancouver. Happened to my friend who were with Indian engineers too, funny thing is they discriminate based on caste which confuses a lot of Indians from island nations, south america.
As a fellow Canadian, I really doubt this is the reason Canada is having "brain drain" problems. I'm in Toronto, not Vancouver, and I have never heard anyone leaving the country because of bad management. It's usually just for money.
(I’m a Canadian too, speaking from my own experience border hopping for work.)
Canada and multi-ethnic diversity go hand in hand. I've always worked at companies with plenty of people of Asian and South Asian heritage. Never noticed any cliques myself. Maybe because I've only worked at relatively smallish companies that are sub 400 people?
The Canadian multiculturalism model is broken and increasing number of immigrants, PR and Canadian citizens are leaving Canada in record numbers.
One positive of a melting pot culture is that there are common boundaries that define what is and what isn't. In Canada we do not have this and the post-state ideology that Trudeau dynasty has pushed resulted in a highly fragmented, silo'ed, patchwork of cultures that live separately and do not identify with Canadian values.
If you've only worked in tech, you won't get to see the entire picture of this city and nation like I have done starting with blue collar work. I've had relatives who were bullied and working conditions worsened on purpose simply because they didn't speak the same language as their counterparts who didn't bother using English at work with an indifferent management that were exploiting the cheap labour to suppress wages. Nobody wants to work in this type of environment very long and who wants to keep paying taxes to a broken system for less pay and more stress?
Still water runs deep and you won't know if you can't know.
I'm all for fairness for all, no matter their race, but seeing what I've seen in person is very eye opening. I no longer have sympathy for DEI and other such initiatives because they will always be targeted against white people and males, no matter the state of equity/fairness in the world.
> I no longer have sympathy for DEI and other such initiatives because they will always be targeted against white people and males, no matter the state of equity/fairness in the world.
Certainly, there are demographics influences at play: higher Asian concentration in California, higher rates of graduation in tech fields. But all this DEI talk really makes one wonder if race-based hiring isn't at play here. It's really interesting how often people claim there's bias in hiring, but opposed anonymized hiring and other measures that eliminate the ability to discriminate between applicants.
1. https://about.google/belonging/diversity-annual-report/2022/
You cannot both be correct in the reasons you dislike dei. They're contradictory. (You could both be wrong, but you can't both be right).
* Double diverse: Black or Latin + female
* diverse: white or Asian female, or Black or Latin male.
* standard: white male
* Negatively diverse: Asian male
So it definitely is the case that asian males are even more undesirable than white males at some companies. I can attest to that myself. But each company is different, some categorize Asians as diverse.
Serbs, Croats and Bosnians are all "white", but there's a good chance they won't get along.
Similarly, Pakistanis and Indians are both "South Asian" etc etc
Plus there's a lot of discrimination going the other way where American born developers got the preference. Again, not really due to racism (at least AFAICT) but more because of culture & language barriers.
If the talk was standard DEI fare (shitting on white men) I'm sure any complaints would have been ignored.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/labor-department...
Nonetheless, my hunch is that legal or not legal, this kind of discrimination would be extremely unpalatable to most Americans across the political spectrum.
https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/06/title-vii-and-caste-dis...
I am ashamed to say I did not have an appreciation for its perniciousness when one employee from India made caste-based comments about another one, a decade ago, in my presence.
The CEO of Google being a Brahmin is a pretty good reason. Either (1) he knows there's discrimination but he won't pursue because it calls into question his own legitimacy or (2) having risen through the ranks since 2004 as a Brahmin he knows there's no real problem with discrimination.
BJP: Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the right wing Hindu nationalist party that is in power in India (of which Modi is a part of) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatiya_Janata_Party
BJP - Bharatiya Janata Party (the current ruling political party of India)
> “The right-wing Hindu movement in India has historically not been associated with people from underprivileged castes, and those people have generally been less supportive of the movement“
My understanding is that BJP has come to power under an OBC wave, both in UP in 2022, and in the North 2019.
So I can see someone who is not themselves discriminating on the basis of caste taking offence to someone suggesting it exists. Add Google’s elitist culture (nothing wrong with that per se, but it creates blind spots) and I can see how reasonable people may conclude the problem doesn’t exist.
That said, internal activism is unlikely to be effective. By the time it worked for e.g. racism, it was an established problem in popular opinion and the law. Companies generally aren’t at the vanguard of social change.
We need legislation and case law. In that respect, firing the organiser was a strategic blunder—it frees her to meaningfully penalise Google.
It seems an increasing disbelief in politics and democracy has moved these discussions from public forums to private companies. This is problematic, as it’s not in a private company interest to promote discussion (even if it’s pretending to do so, for PR or legal reasons), neither is it a power equilibrium since a company can just fire you at will.
Isn't it in a company's interest to nurture an environment where everyone they hire can thrive?
>You don’t get to claim or hijack one form of discrimination to perpetuate another form.
And yet from the Hindu's perspective, this is exactly what Gupta is doing. The only instances of caste discrimination Gupta can recall are anecdotes of "coded speech". Meanwhile, I'm sure that many Hindus feel that anti-caste-discrimination is coded speech. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that using feelings as a rationale for argument is completely counterproductive.
The lesson to be learned is, if you are offended by someone saying they experienced oppression/discrimination, really, look inward.
Might I add, if you weren't a party to an experience, an off handed observation that those are just subjective experiences, is frankly not yours to make.
>Might I add, if you weren't a party to an experience, an off handed observation that those are just subjective experiences, is frankly not yours to make.
Do you share the same opinion about the white activists who are supporting Gupta? Why are you calling me out for expressing a nonzero disagree of sympathy towards her opposition who also claim they are discriminated against? I'm not Indian, but I've seen fairly egregious examples of caste being used to attack Indians. Admittedly, it was on 4chan, but I'm sure weaker forms of this attitude exist in real life as well.
> when you’ve got people who are caste privileged and caste oppressed, the people who are caste oppressed start to be given inferior assignments, get treated differently, left out of meetings, which are certainly things that I heard from Google employees within the company.
> Asking things like “What’s your last name? I’m not familiar with it.” Then, when the manager hears that last name, they’re, like, “Oh, so you’re from this caste—no wonder you have these leadership skills.” Things like that. And somebody else in the room is, like, “What the hell?” It’s those different types of experiences that I’ve seen or that have been shared with me that show that caste discrimination is happening in the workplace.
Now that I am a more senior in my career, I’ve made it my mission to always call it out when it happens.
I hope others start doing it as well.
Other than the fact that perhaps they should spend time on actually working, the typical activist method cannot ever succeed. It starts with some sweeping assertion affecting a large group: men oppress women, this cast has a bias to this cast, white people discriminate against black people.
So it starts with a sweeping accusation. Which is presented as fact. The accused can't bring forward any counter point as this confirms the accusation, according to activist logic. Instead, you need to sit down and be "educated" and humiliated on things you don't even agree you did, as an individual.
We shouldn't be surprised that this approach makes people angry and creates even more division. Activism, DEI and its struggle sessions are wildly unpopular and ineffective.
Recently there was a good article (a serious one, I promise, from a progressive research institute) concluding the same: DEI in corporates is a massive failure. It's done nothing to progress any cause, instead deepened division. In extremer cases it even ends in a shouting/bullying match.
Vague sweeping claims do not work. If you have a case of discrimination, document it the best you can, have a good story with tangible evidence. And then take it forward.
They're collective lies. Things we tell each other to make us feel better about ourselves. Same for "open and honest conversations" which really means a tiny subset of allowed conversations fitting ideology.
None of the situations described in the parent has ever happened. Nor do any of the scientific studies agree with the positions above that are implied to be facts. However, because it is written dispassionately (even condescendingly) the flaws will be ignored and the sentiment applauded.
Pushing back against government overreach is now also right-wing, as is defending free speech.
But hey, hard to argue with California logic where the top 1% earners of the world working for harmful neoliberal companies spend their time telling themselves they are victims and oppressed, and doing the "right" thing.
It is not shocking to me that you can't understand the difference while talking about the things you talk about.
Preventing counter arguments is NOT fine, that's the issue with generic claims. You can read in the article itself the extreme annoyance the activist experienced when there was a pushback.
Think of it this way, would it be fine in this situation if an additional speaker was brought in, one projecting the exact opposite of her claims? Absolutely no way that would happen, which means it's not a discussion. It's an accusation with a fixed outcome.
"but trying to prevent the discussion from happening does suggest that you benefit from the status quo."
I know this language is normalized but saying that people benefit from some status quo is a wild claim. You need extraordinary evidence. And even then it means nothing to the individual. People will keep throwing around demeaning stuff to generalize entire demographics like it's nothing, but it will never ever work.
This is why progressive politics is so broken. It builds enemies instead of allies. It burns bridges instead of making new ones.
And that's where my complaint about silencing this topic at Google stems from. If others have been able to do it and get special privileges for themselves than preventing further discussion along these lines only further cements those advantages and the disadvantage of others. It either needs to be eliminated entirely or allowed to continue to evolve.
Fully agree, where "these things" also include topics the typical activist may not agree with.
Personally, I think it's a myth for such truly open truth-seeking debates to be possible at all, at work even less so.
Just the other day I remembered how as a young guy I was once dating a Korean girl in college and how our relationship fizzled quickly the minute I met her parents... And how I was working long hours on a job and being so stressed by management that I was grinding my teeth in my sleep, even though I was a manager myself, while 2 colleagues I was supposed to lead got away with constantly not being technical enough to support a project at all.
It's something special to be referred to by a sitting president (meant to reflect and represent everyone) and hear him say the words "My African American", and to observe memes that creatively play with a word that was used as my family members and ancestors have historically been abused to, or to see even things like Juneteenth Ice Cream coming from huge corporations that don't hire people like me to consult them time after time to properly address the issues...
It's also not surprising that discrimination is ingrained in many things in our world, and that so many people would easily say they are against hate and division, but are unaware of how it is upheld and sustained by apathy towards the micro aggressions that are embedded in it.
It is truly epic when someone of dark skin tone can navigate through and overcome the adversity created by old world ignorance, and it's even more special when they see it as an opportunity to represent everyone properly despite the adversity they encountered. It's also rare to find people that truly aren't bound in their word and actions by some sort of historical and psychological bias in terms of the dark history of this world... It's an every day struggle which rarely gets talked about, and an internal conflict that many people deal with, and more often reason out irrationally. This bias also translates into company policy, into platform algorithms, into service delivery, into everything.
If your company photos from leadership levels to the development room don't truly reflect diversity, the people in charge often end up multiplying the blindness to cultural bias in everything they do until it makes the news...
It works in both and all ways, and screws everything about a company, product, and service up... Royally.
In traditional American Black/white photos, you are flat-out right. Many of the problems you allude to cannot be fully addressed until leadership is diverse.
In the context of caste, it is challenging for non-Indian Americans to discern the caste differences in such photos.
So many people study history and economics, but only the parts that are relevant to them... Learning outside of our own experiences actually helps greatly to increase chances of success in life by connecting with others outside of our normal culture and experiences...
It's a challenge that can be very rewarding if it is ritually practiced by all individuals not just in companies, but in life... Different cuisines alone that I've been exposed to (by new friends outside of my home culture) have been life altering in a great way. I understand context of current events and even TV shows and movies far better than I used to because of my exposure to cultures and languages beyond my own.
It's unfathomable to me how anyone could be resistant towards cultural learning, empathy, understanding, and growth outside of their own. It's a big reason why bias keeps resurging, because of that ingrained resistance (in this world) towards understanding and learning about each other.
Let's talk about Google's caste system.
There are at least two main castes at Google: The "Googlers" who get all the perks, and the support staff who do all the work and get far fewer perks. The upper caste gets meals, those nifty buses, medical care, etc. The lower caste does not get all those things (I think they get meals, but not in the same cafeteria) and they are specifically trained not to get familiar with the upper caste. In fact, they can get in trouble for fraternizing with the "real" Googlers.
It's worth noting that the upper caste is made up mostly of white, Chinese, or Indian folks while the lower caste is mostly Mexican (in CA that means anyone from south of the border from Mexico to Chile and Argentina), Filipino, and some Arab people. (There are very few black people working at Google.)
Google is progressive in the sense that they don't hate their servant class, but they are just as caste-conscious, if you will, as Indian culture.
You're right, of course, and that's a valuable distinction to make. Anyone in one class at Google could move to the other and they would be accepted.
> The fact that the two classes are made up mostly of different ethnicities is probably caused by a confounding variable, such as different educational opportunities, as well as discrimination of course.
In California at least the racial component is pretty clearly due to history: The Spanish took CA from the Indians, and then we took it from the Spanish (and now the Latinos are gradually taking it back in a largely peaceful demographic transition.) Throughout the state, even in the most progressive enclaves, there's this racial/class system. (Come to think of it, would that count as a caste system?)
To me the weird thing isn't that progressives don't want to hang out with "the help". That's hypocritical but unsurprising. The thing I find strange is when other nationalities/ethnicities come into the picture and they slot into the system in different classes.
The easiest way to get to live in the US is to have money.
The southern border is the new ellis island trough which the great unwashed can enter.
Usually dealing with what city they are from, what city are your parents from, are you vegetarian, are you having dessert?
I've never experienced or seen the thread searching. Larger person grabs your shoulder to see if the thread is there. But that wouldn't surprise me at all.
That’s one way to play the system - outvictim the victim! Well done. Who can prove they really felt unsafe or just wanted to keep the issue hidden and perpetuate caste discrimination.
The number of people in this HN thread without the critical thinking skills to understand that is astounding.
It seems like if you said there was discrimination against tall white men, people would also deny that.
as I see it, such phrases are a goal, an intention, more than they are a reality.
we need to keep working perpetually in pursuit of such an ideal goal, but just pretending we do not live in a caste (or tiered) society does not really do anything to achieve this goal.
this is the my point: to pretend that tiers (or castes) do not exist does not move us any closer to the stated ideal goal.
the more direct action I can think of is to dissasociate what somebody does to earn a living from their social status.
Skin color, wealth, relatives, philosophies, habits, and infinitely more characteristics are used to determine who will and will not benefit you or not benefit you and it can change with every scenario.
I agree with comparing caste-ism to racism, and very well may be the same. It is very similar in that they classify someone as part of a tribe because of their ancestors. But it is also quite similar to classifying someone based on their accent, which side of town they grew up in, or what university they attended, because they all end up being a function of who one’s ancestors are also.
This is fair. The salient difference for me emerges in immigration. The fact that someone can look at an Indian American speaking American English, dressed in Western garb and educated in America and determine something about their parents' caste puts caste closer to race than e.g. wealth, religion or sexual orientation.
When I try to get to the root cause of why people want to categorize others, I often find it is about utility. Surely, it can be evil too such as someone wanting to punish others or getting a feeling of superiority from viewing others as being below. But it can also be about going with who you think will have your back when the situation gets hairy (which can include covering up your misdeeds), or simply someone who will help you.
In that sense, an Indian American speaking American English, dressed in Western garb and educated in America who is likelier to have many cousins and family who are engineers/doctors/lawyers/business owners could be more useful than a visually identical Indian American who is not as likely to have that family background.
The compounding effects of networking really hamper efforts to increase equality of opportunity.
The caste system has been enforced strictly enough to even have an imprint on the DNA:
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/Caste-system-has-l...
In other words, casts differ from each other in ways that are similar to how Jews differ from other Europeans. And I would definitely label anti-Semitism as racism, even if it is usually difficult to identify a Jew by appearance.
Seems a bit extreme. Even questioning whether caste discrimination in the US or Google is a large problem is enough to get you lumped into Holocaust denial territory.
> People can absolutely discriminate based on caste by essentially denying it and not wanting to learn about it.
What makes discrimination bad is the arbitrary nature. If you don't know the arbitrary classifications of groups, and you're making decisions on something tangible that presumably affects the person's skill set, then is it discrimination if it correlates with some arbitrary distinction you're not aware of?
>If you don't know the arbitrary classifications of groups, and you're making decisions on something tangible that presumably affects the person's skill set, then is it discrimination if it correlates with some arbitrary distinction you're not aware of?
The problem was clearly stated to be discrimination from other Indians against lower class Indians, NOT white managers unknowingly discriminating against low class Indians.
I don't know what these two are and I'm fairly certain I don't belong to either one of them.
The efforts from the article made it sound like its an education effort. Presumably the parties discriminating are very much aware of the class distinction so education might not be the right call, more enforcement of existing anti-discrimination policies. Or throw the decisions to unbiased third parties.
If person A slaps person B and person C goes "I didn't experience anything. There are no slaps in this company", does that sound reasonable?
Such (pro)active denial usually indicates the denier has something to hide. Now that may not be the case here. But assuming you're right about this not being a Google problem but just small pockets like sexual harassment and racism.
Doesn't google still hold talks about racism & sexual harassment? I'm pretty sure they do. So why the voice against this talk, and this issue specifically?
The article doesn't suggest it is a problem unique to Google. It suggests that Google's efforts at DEI, which you are telling us are industry best, have a blind spot on this subject, as evidenced by the way they handled this situation. A story that sounds plausible to me.
If something bad is occurring inside Google, then of course it is Google's problem.
Whether or not it's ocurring I don't know, but to think that just because they have training materials saying something is bad and absolutely not to be tolerated means that it's necessarily in practice not tolerated is very naive!
Vote with your feet and leave.
Would you say the same thing to someone facing racism at work? To Oliver Brown?
Just like I can't blast my music tastes on others, not everyone should be subjected to insane Eric Andre humor
It was much better when memegen was a force for positive google culture, such as when somebody exposed just how bad hello.com's static content was or how dumb google+'s policies were.
I would expect Google to have a non-negligible Russian and Ukrainian community.
I think the discussion should be had anyways. There might be some value that comes out of it. Like in my own case, I'm on the losing end of these policies in theory despite having very serious disadvantages in my life that aren't on the list of things to account for. Broadening the definition of diversity could alleviate feelings people have that they're not being treated fairly. But because we aren't willing to have difficult conversations about this stuff we have a supreme court case about it instead.
cough...'wealth inequality'...cough
An AP analysis finds that most foreign workers with H-1B visas are paid less than their American counterparts. But for most non-computer science occupations, foreigners are paid more.
paid less than X is one thing, but they are probably paid more than in any other company they could work. People always tend to go for the glass half full despite the fact they are better paid than probably 99% of other occupations out there.
> AP analysis
give me a break, you don't do an analysis of medians without comparing the sample size. Medians out of context mean absolutely nothing. If you want to do such an analysis, it needs to be statistically accurate, and also account for the potential bias in reporting or non-reporting, the years of experience and all potential factors that can account for differences in pay.
Follow the money. Google has a lot to lose if they discriminated against black people or gay people. Google has, or at least had, little to lose by allowing discrimination against dalits. Never forget that all major corporations are essentially money-generating psychopaths and if they stood to make a buck by building death camps for left-handed people they would break ground tomorrow.
I'd recommend being open to other, unexplored (by you) possibilities, since one person cannot be everywhere at once, nor understand the experiences of everyone at Gigantic Mega Corp (100k+ people).
I think having a perspective closed to unexplored possibilities is arguably a good definition of naive.
"na·ive /nīˈēv/ Learn to pronounce adjective (of a person or action) showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment. "the rather naive young man had been totally misled" (of a person) natural and unaffected; innocent."
That said, I think you have good intentions-- You appreciate your employer. But that said-- this likely also results in certain biases.
I've had fellow team members subject to extreme verbal abuse by managers who would stop by their desk and say absolutely horrible things to them in their native language while maintaining otherwise perfect composure. Threatening their visa status, threatening their family reputation, or just threatening to fire them. I've also learned of the out-of-work social pressure they can face because their communities are smaller and insular and so they interact with these folks outside of work, and there can be power dynamics extending to those places that are just not at all visible to other employees or leadership within the organization.
Those peers have had to suffer quietly some of the most abusive workplace relationships I've ever been adjacent to.
Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Another thing that I've learned, is that companies very often talk to the most about the things they suck at the most. For example, one firm that I worked for touted how everything was based on Teamwork. There were teams for everything. Every employee was expected to be on at least 5 teams. 3 "position related" and 2 "organizational" (e.g. The Birthday Part Team). Your annual evaluation wasn't based on your direct manager at all, it was entirely based on feedback from your "teams".
Needless to say, I've never seen a less team-oriented culture in my life. Every single team was entirely dysfunctional. Nothing got done. Epic levels of in-fighting over every little thing.
Anyhow, people usually talk the most about their insecurities. So, just because it's being talked about, with tons of posters and "trainings", doesn't mean anything truly effective is being done. Probably just the opposite.
ps. As a fellow fan of "edgy" humor, you just gotta learn that work isn't where your edgy sense of humor belongs. Even in the "edgy humor" industry, you'll find that people don't like it mixing with "the job". It's how you get fired or have your career ruined. Regardless of Google's internal HR policies, you're gonna need professional references at some point, and if you've annoyed or creeped everyone out, it's going to be a self-limiting behavior. It doesn't matter if you work at Google, or a truck stop, or a comedy club. Be professional, be inclusive, be friendly. I know a lot of people are going to disagree, but the simple fact of the matter is that you aren't as funny as you think you are, and you probably don't have the ability to "read a room" the way a world-famous entertainer does. Even they get it wrong.
Believe me, I understand how impossibly frustrating it can be to represent a minority/contrarian view in an internet discussion on an inflammatory topic, but turning over the chessboard and storming off—which is what deleting comments and leaving spiteful remnants in their place amounts to—is not a positive contribution.
People can be truly diverse, including in ways that other people find offensive, objectionable, or unacceptable, when they're not forced to share the same physical spaces.
The question of how google should solve the complex and confusing world of indian caste politics is a stupid question. Google should fix their search results and leave fixing India to Indians.
While sharing physical space requires arriving at a least common denominator culture (watered down western culture), sharing virtual spaces requires far fewer and less intrusive compromises.
Personally, I think work and open source should be done like it was in the nineties, where everybody has an IRC handle and you don't know enough about who they are or where they're from to discriminate against anybody or be offended by anybody's lifestyles and cultural quirks.
Why shouldnt the talk be allowed?
What harm could it do to raise awareness about this very practical issue that Dalits face day in and day out for centuries.
Google employees who had this talks cancelled are ultimate COWARDS and should be ashamed of themselves.
If they had just waited a few years it would still be illegal, but also the open practice of nearly every big hiring department. "We especially encourage AAPI, BIPOC, neurodiverse, nonbinary and LGBTIA+ candidates to apply." That's quoted nearly word-for-word from job listings I'm reviewing. Wonder what that means for my application, as someone who falls outside those boxes and didn't go to an Ivy. Really gets me thinking about politics.
You could easily declare yourself “mildly autistic” and “agender” and become neurodiverse and queer.
You will find this everywhere from pickpockets in Thailand, credit card scammers in India all the way to top universities.
But they also have a big language barrier: they don’t speak English well and in their groups they always communicate natively. They also have a culture barrier as well, combined with the language barrier this makes them seem awkward.
So I don’t blame them.
I would expect many companies to not consider many of them, due to the communication limitations. That would mean that those who ignored those issues could get a LOT of them, and possibly at a lower-than-average salary, for their technical ability.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32425607.
This has zero to do with demographics at companies or any of the other topics you've been breaking HN's rules about.
Why did you want to join Google, and what did you feel about the place when you did?
tanuja gupta: I started working at Google in 2011. I had been working as a program manager in engineering and software for about a decade, but Google was top of the top. Of course you want a career at a great company. That was a product that I used day in and day out. It was a great opportunity
Regardless of what the New Yorker thinks.
Edit: Bring in the downvotes, I welcome them. It’s clear to me that white lives don’t matter to the HN crowd, but that doesn’t surprise me at all considering the main people who come here are white people from California who grew up in completely white society and now have a savior complex. That’s an American caste system nobody wants to talk about right there, the way coastal whites treat everyone else.
If you think that cops target white folks then you must probably be an avid supporter of reforming law enforcement.
And to be clear, I don’t think cops “target white people” just like I don’t think cops “target black people”. Cops have an aggression problem, are trigger happy, and poorly trained.
This. Here lies the core of the disagreement. Data suggests otherwise.
“By one estimate, Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime. And in another study, Black people who were fatally shot by police seemed to be twice as likely as white people to be unarmed”
And
“Data from California show that police stopped and used force against Black people disproportionately, compared with other racial groups, in 2018 (see go.nature.com/2bgfrah). A December 2019 paper reported that bias in police administrative records results in many studies underestimating levels of racial bias in policing, or even masking discrimination entirely”
Etc.
> *I have wondered if the high Asian population is one reason why San Francisco has such conspicuous homelessness. Western religion has some egalitarian ideas such as “The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
> On the other hand if you think a person's fortune now depends on karma they got from past lives then you might think it is a virtuous thing to perpetuate people's misery.
Some branches of protestantism do believe in predestination. It's also common to see (bad) Christian takes that suffering is a challenge from god (often backed by Job's trials) and thus a thing that may not need changing.
I believe Max Weber also covered this concept sociologically in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
> If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven
> He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.
Whereas per the great Eastern religions, the material world is Maya, all is the Self (tat tvam asi), righteous action is its own reward, and the Abrahamic concepts (despite many overlaps) seem rather peculiar.
Or to quote Sadhguru:
If you take in too much input from everywhere, the karmic process becomes very complicated. And the strategy evolved for your karma will not work if you keep mixing it up with someone else’s all the time. Why some who are in serious sadhana withdraw into a solitary cave or the like is because they do not want to complicate things. They understood the complexity of their own karma and do not want to complicate it anymore.
That is why you do not step over anyone. You can go around them. It is also a mark of respect. And apart from that, it would disturb that person if you step over them. If you disturb their energy body, they may not immediately wake up, but internally, it disturbs them.
All this comes from a fundamental understanding about life. No matter what you were doing – you were running a business, you were married, bearing and raising children, fighting a battle – for anyone who was born in this land, there was only one goal – ultimate liberation. Mukti was the only goal. The whole culture was structured around this. Many strategies were evolved so that you do not trip over someone else’s karma. You do not want to acquire anything new because you know the complexity of what you already have. If you undo your own puzzle, it is good enough. You do not want to complicate it.
"perpetuate people's misery" may have been sloppy & incendiary editorial work, but the theological structure of PaulHoule's argument is sound.
If they have problems to work with lower caste people, they should change their company.