Indians are taking over corporate America–and tech layoffs won’t stop them
fortune.com
fortune.com
'Indians are sycophants', 'Indians don't speak English well', 'Indians are corrupt', 'Indians are good at office politics'—all from this thread alone.
I am trying to respond as civilly as possible without swearing, but this phenomenon is making it increasingly hard to do so.
Somehow white people are allowed to be 'sycophants', but Indians aren't? Somehow white people were allowed to trod all over Asia and Africa (many still are) for half a millennium, and coughed up racist theories to justify their borderline enslavement of non-whites, and evangelise their religion and culture[1]. But then when non-white people succeed, it's 'corruption' or 'nepotism'?
India is a country of 1.5 billion people. Include the rest of the Indian subcontinent and that number becomes nearly two billion. One quarter of the human population is from that region. Given these numbers, is it that surprising that Indians are quickly reaching the highest echelons of corporate America/Europe? By numbers alone, Indians still outnumber both the US and the EU, combined.
The region is still developing. India is a democracy, and the democracy is an absolute cacophony. It has taken its time to develop, and is frequently compared to a certain other neighbouring country with a similarly large population. That country had (and still has) no qualms in murdering millions of people to achieve its goals. India does not do that, and will bring its populace forward and upward, slowly but steadily.
These stereotypes are old, unfair, and unjustified. I am extremely unhappy that this is silently accepted, while racism against Blacks is white-knighted against.
[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Civiliza...
I personally don’t think this dynamic is as true anymore because Indians can command market rate globally and are going to have to compete less on undercutting price.
You're actually presenting this as an excuse for racism against Indians? Holy shit.
> 'Cheaper for the sake of cheaper'—India launched a probe to Mars for $75 million. That's less than the budget of many Hollywood films about space.
India manufactures drugs extremely cheaply and supplies much of the Global South that is unable to afford the rates demanded by EU-US pharmaceutical companies.
Your 'market rate' cannot be afforded by about two-thirds of the human population.
I am not presenting it as an excuse, I am presenting it as a probable reason for it. It’s like if a historian explains to you the Treaty of Versailles and all you take away from it is that I’m presenting an excuse for Nazism and WW2. It is merely an explanation for what fermented the situation, not a justification. It’s up you to accept the reality or not.
I don’t think it’s racism. It’s resentment. No one likes an undercutter.
Take it for what it’s worth, that’s the reason you are seeing all the anti Indian tech worker vibes here.
However I agree with you that some of the comments are close to being derogatory.
In my experience (as I have shared below) many Indians are more career oriented than, say, Europeans. No criticism here, I personally don’t care and love my Indian colleagues.
It's okay to prefer working with people (particularly managers) who speak your language natively. Labeling or shaming this preference is wrong, and counterproductive.
There are cultural differences in the world. There are even huge cultural differences within India. We are allowed to observe the factual reality that these cultural differences matter in hundreds of ways, and we'd be irresponsible NOT to. If you ignore the differences between Indian and non-Indian how are you going to make sure your workplace doesn't partake in caste-based discrimination?
This is a fair take. As you say, when this is labelled as 'nepotism' (as was done below), I take issue with it. It happens everywhere worldwide: Chinese prefer Chinese, Indians prefer Indians, etc etc.
As for Indian diversity and caste-based discrimination, I think that's an entirely different matter.
For the record, a majority of the Indians indirectly or directly mentioned in the article are South Indian Brahmin (Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Raja Koduri, Indra Nooyi, Vasant Narasimhan, Sowmyanarayanan Sampath, Jayathi Murthy; heck, even Kamala Harris' mother is Brahmin).
Covert Racism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_racism (see also "Casual Racism")
When a easily-identifiable group rises in the World and challenges/changes the status-quo, those who have profited from it so far and feel "entitled" to it in perpetuity, will feel threatened and thus resort to "Racism" to simply deflect from their waning importance in the "New World Order".
But Everybody needs to stand up against this; here is a how-to: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/smarter-living/how-to-be-...
Slavery? Whom did indians enslave?
This is why I don’t answer to “person of color.” Indian Americans have nearly double the median white income. They live almost 8 years longer than white Americans. (Heck, Asian women make more money than white men, while Asian men live longer than white women.) Even the ones that grow up here in poverty have vastly higher income mobility as adults than whites. What clarity or insight is gained by grouping them together with other minorities suffering from generational poverty? In fact if the goal is helping people, it would make way more sense to include folks like Appalachians and Cajuns, who also suffer from generational poverty. That might give you real insight into root causes.
And when white people use the label, it’s offensive as fuck. “We are going to group you together with people you have nothing in common with economically, historically, or culturally, because you’re all ‘coloreds’ to us!”
Don't you think it's _describing_ this grouping, not _prescribing_ it? The truth is that racism isn't rational or know what your net worth is.
It’s also just racist insofar as it makes skin color the dominant grouping to the exclusion of others. The fact that you might think you have good intentions doesn’t make it less racist. For example, the closest analogue to the Latino experience in America is the Italian American experience. From socioeconomics to food to patriotism to language to religion there are myriad parallels. Likewise the closest parallel to Indians is Jewish people—both of whom are successful in America but often the target of resentment, especially due to religious differences. But white people can’t look past skin color and insist on categorizing Latinos and Indians as “colored people” in the process erasing much more salient aspects of their experiences in America.
Your point about “racism” illustrates the problem. There is no single coherent thing called “racism” that applies to all “people of color.” Indian Americans face the ordinary prejudices people of different ethnic groups have towards each other. It’s the same prejudices Indians have towards Chinese or vice versa. Jewish people almost certainly face more prejudice in America than Indian Americans. We acknowledge that prejudice, but don’t go so far as to categorize and define them based on it.
Meanwhile, the “racism” faced by ADOS and indigenous people is different in kind. The prejudice is just the tip of an iceberg, and beneath that are the realities of being a minority population that was enslaved and brought to this country by the majority population or one that was nearly wiped out by the majority population in settling the country. The point is not that “racism” knows how rich you are. The point is that “racism” that isn’t accompanied by structural socioeconomic disparities isn’t meaningfully the same thing as “racism” that is.
And it’s not useful to any minorities to conflate these categories. Thinking in terms of “people of color” is bad for black and indigenous people. Because fixing prejudice based on skin color won’t meaningfully fix structural problems. At the same time, it’s not good for Indian Americans to falsely believe they face structural disparities when they do not.
I have never met a single European who would differentiate between a Portuguese and a German based on their skin color. But if that Portuguese person moves to the US they are suddenly a PoC and a victim of white oppression.
Also, if their parents moved to Brazil in the 1960s they somehow became a PoC? Does the actual ancestry matter or are we just assuming that everyone who is not from Europe is a PoC?
>Does the actual ancestry matter or are we just assuming that everyone who is not from Europe is a PoC?
Somehow the people who successfully colonized latin america get grouped in as marginalized because its too hard to do a color shade test or a blood quantum test.
Race isn't scientific. Even less so when you collapse the whole world into two races. White and not-white.
But it won't stop the the casually racist tropes masquerading as "anecdotal data" --- there are a couple of thought starters already in here already. Apparently Indians hiring Indians and this somehow ties to corruption. Alternatively, Indians are good at office politics because they are yes-men and therefore succeed.
Just replace the word Indian with Jewish to see whether these comments would still be made.
Yikes.
That said, "Indian" is too big of a group. How much does this involve cross-caste versus intra-caste hiring?
And also pointing out that people looking at Indian hiring trends from the outside need to be aware that Indian (/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Diaspora/look-alike Sri Lankan) people do not see themselves as a monolith. They are not only as diverse as European peoples, but tack on caste on top of it.
If an Indian is only hiring Indians, but is hiring Indians from all castes, this might be better than a Yalie (graduate of Yale) hiring only other Yalies.
Does that make this behavior okay? Let's run a thought experiment:
If a White man is only hiring White men, but is hiring White men from all ethnic groups (English, French, German, Italian, Polish, etc.), this might be better than a Yalie (graduate of Yale) hiring only other Yalies.
And no, I'm not talking about ethnic group hiring here (primarily), I'm talking about caste-based hiring. Which would make the following a better parallel:
If a White man is only hiring White people, but is hiring from all economic and educational groups (from dirt-poor white folk with a third-grade education to blue-bloods with post-doctoral certifications), this is better than a Yalie hiring only other Yalies. All else held equal.
Computer disciplines are different than most others in not requiring a degree to prove competency. I'm in biology, and good luck getting any decent job without a B.S., regardless of how competent you are. For Bio jobs a third-grade education is only a third-grade education, regardless of your self-taught skills.
Edit: I figured out how to change it without losing the idea.
Good job Indians, not sure how y’all did it.
I think you’re right that people wouldn’t make the same comments about Jews and to me that’s an indication that Jews are more protected than they should be. Let’s all ask questions and let the truth come out. Better that than pretending that people don’t have in-group motives and waiting to see what happens when we’re not looking.
The moral of WW2 wasn’t “don’t persecute Jews”, it was “don’t be afraid to question those who are resisting being questioned”.
1) Size of population, education and language are better explainers of the effect than any of these stereotypes or anecdata people bring up
2) These anecdata are generally biased negatively. Note the lack of positive (though equally bullshit) explainers like "they're just smarter and work harder than white people". This negative tilt is socially acceptable for Indians, but has become socially not acceptable for Jews. I don't particularly care either way as long as people call out the bias when they see it.
Implicit in all of this is how we as humans ascribe characteristics to our own groups vs. other groups, e.g. my asshole white boss is just an asshole, but my asshole Indian boss is an asshole because she's Indian.
Or as an Indian, my white co-workers is entitled and lazy because he's white etc. etc.
> Indians are good at office politics because they are yes-men and therefore succeed.
Compared to other nationalities (in my case in random order italian/german/swiss/polish/american/french/hungarian/turkish/greek), I noticed indians, as managers, being a lot more willing to initially accept anything while others would have probably shouted an initial "NO WAY!". I do worry about this for the company I'm working for (we now have many indian managers).
I cannot say the same for indians as developers (the ones that worked/are working for us had/have strong positions about their code/logic and were/are still able to accept valid changes/proposals/improvements), I liked it and I still like it.
These include poor language fluency, a large gap in power dynamics, insufficient attention to detail, a reactive approach to problem-solving, and a lack of motivation to question and improve upon the status quo.
For non-Indian folks, a few interesting movies to watch that go into this aspect of the culture l: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_30_(film)
This cultural phenomenon is not unique to Indians though, it’s also seen in China and may be other countries in Asia that I’m missing.
I’m also a little surprised by some of the comments here, I would expect comments on hackernews to be intellectually stimulating and balanced arguments that are atleast with some effort removed of personal biases. Some examples of biases that I see — lumping Indians as a group or general human tendencies quoted as exclusive to Indians such preferring your group over others (in-group out of group mentality)
On the flip side though, I’m not much surprised. As the under developed countries industrialize they’re taking back what has been historically their share of the world GDP. And as a result a larger Indian influence is visible and likely to grow as the Indian economy continues to grow. I think some folks should find it in themselves to reconcile the changing world around us.
The proverbial luxury condo building adjacent to a slum in the third world. It’s funny, I’m not sure if I can claim the last sentence as an analogy because that’s exactly what you see in India.
It is what it is.
Looking at levels of corruption in India, this 'takeover' is not a good thing for America.
The weird thing is that nobody from HR seemed to find it strange, like maybe telling managers that they should not prefer hiring from their own ethnic group - nobody seemed to care.
Many western European ethnic groups are largely unwilling to act like this, i.e. to act on strong in-group preference when hiring. So the most interesting aspect of the status quo is about second-order effects. Will it be stopped somehow? Will it lead other groups to start behaving similarly? Will it lead to an Ottoman-style millet system but adapted to corporate culture and needs in the 21st century west?
The Indian on Indian war is inevitable. How do you think they got hired in the first place? Some white executive beat another white executive by cutting costs by offshoring.
The investor stopped the CEO and was like, "Why are they all Indian?".
It's just that, in the USA at least, white people have been guilted for years into specifically not doing that. I suspect the same would happen to any majority, with time, but we'll see.
I agree about the natural tendency, the call of the "tribe" (ethnic group, common language, etc.) is there for all kinds of people, more or less. But there is a difference, and I'm talking about frequency distributions of behaviors, not naive black and white: some groups of people are aware of these tendencies, and they act purposefully and conscientiously to counteract them; other groups, well, it's hard to tell whether they are aware of these tendencies or not, but what is certain is that they don't practice any countermeasure to a natural bias.
Now, for some ethnic groups or nations, it is quite forbidden to talk about any kind of "tribal" behavior that they exhibit. But if within Facebook or Google or Netflix or whatever there was a team led by a Bulgarian citizen with all Bulgarian members, some complaints about the oddity of the situation, I am sure, would be heard.
- Indian immigrants are selected from the top 0.1% of Indian society (often urban, educated Indians with significant social, economic, and knowledge capital who speak English growing up).
- Most Indian american immigrants are knowledge workers/students (Medicine, Tech, Science) coming to the US through the two govt blessed visa routes of University and Business.
I’m guessing be a grade A yes-man has a lot to do with it.
If true, that behavior in anyone should be criticized. This sounds to me like "gaming the system."
Yes. It's the how that gets me. Who needs problem solving when you can just bury them.
Good for India. Just like China, they will become a world power thanks to the American economy, then they will turn on us, become our enemies, and threaten to nuke us at every turn.