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Comment by ein0p | Hacker News Reader

Broadly speaking this is undeniable, and as an Indian you know it. This is precisely what I meant when I mentioned this can’t be honestly discussed: you’re denying reality to score some grievance points. I do personally know Indians who do not play these games. They exist, you might even be one of them. Congrats!

But do consider the following statistics: 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Indian, and one third of all Silicon Valley engineers. While India represents a large talent pool, eg China represents an even larger pool, and yet we do not observe a large percentage of Chinese managers or CEOs. Care to theorize why that is?

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> China represents an even larger pool, and yet we do not observe a large percentage of Chinese managers or CEOs. Care to theorize why that is?

I think one reason is that Indians are culturally much closer to Americans than East Asians are, specifically in terms of attitudes toward selling and self-promotion. I think language also has something to do with it. English is not only mandatory in Indian K-12, it’s widely used even among Indians. For example, the main India government web portal (India.gov.in) goes to an English site. You need to go to India.gov.in/Hi to access the Hindi site.

Exactly this. What OP sees is likely survivorship bias. Indians are the biggest population compared to China who have learnt English pretty much as a first language. It makes a big difference, especially for managerial positions in American companies.

> China represents an even larger pool

I am curious why would you think that given India has a slightly larger population than China now, and larger % of those who can speak English

> China represents an even larger pool

How many in the Chinese pool speak good English?

100%.

You can't be in the so-called "talent pool" without being able to speak good English.

CEOs are selected by boards of companies. I’ll be surprised if majority boards are of Indian descent.

    Care to theorize why that is?

Sure - it's because Indian people coming from India represent the top cut of a workforce that has an extremely high level of engineering training.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_education_in_India

1.5 million engineering degrees conferred in the year 2021 in India.

Compare that with more than an order of magnitude fewer awarded in the US:

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cta/undergrad-deg...

   But do consider the following statistics: 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Indian, and one third of all Silicon Valley engineers.

First of all, I'm pretty sure that number is NOT 30%. I want a citation.

Second - English has been taught to generations of primary school students throughout India. English is the language of business. It makes sense that business people with a good grasp of English make it to the top levels of business in Silicon Valley, which almost exclusively transacts in English. I know that English was not widely taught in China (maybe things have changed) - because China wasn't ruled by the British for almost 100 years. As for the engineers, see above stats - there is an enormous talent pool to filter the best from.

It seems like you had some experiences where you observed what appeared to be preference for Indian candidates. Maybe some of those observations were of an Indian person selecting another highly-qualified Indian person for a job. I don't know. Maybe it's also preferential treatment in some cases. I don't know.

Just because you think something is happening, doesn't mean you get to grab a hold of an Indian person and shake them down for a confession. I can make any number of generalizations about your race of people, and demand your justification. But I don't, because I try not to be a shitty person.

You want an honest discussion, there it is. The world is a lot more complex than you think it is. Indian-Americans are not sitting here committing transgressions against you. They are smarter, more educated, and more qualified than the typical American STEM graduate. Step up your game or find a different career with less-qualified people to compete with.

Numbers differ. Some sources say 30%, some say 12%, could be there’s weighting by revenue or something idk (Indians run two of the six multi-trillion dollar companies, including the top most valuable one), but I think you’ll agree that whichever way you run the numbers their share is quite disproportionate for a minority comprising 1.3% of the country’s population (4.4M people).

What would be an appropriate share of Indian people in engineering roles and management in America, in your calculation?

>Sure - it's because Indian people coming from India represent the top cut of a workforce that has an extremely high level of engineering training.

That is a small percentage of incoming Indians IMO. Most are average or worse.

>The world is a lot more complex than you think it is. Indian-Americans are not sitting here committing transgressions against you. They are smarter, more educated, and more qualified than the typical American STEM graduate. Step up your game or find a different career with less-qualified people to compete with.

Indians themselves tell me all the time that they only do software because that's socially desirable in a way that Americans simply don't experience. If they could come to the US with a BS or less, they would, because salaries are so much higher here.

Even if this skill thing was true, it is a privilege for Indians to come here. The US government has a duty to not ruin the lives of US workers by importing the entire world, no matter how many of the foreign workers are believed to be better than average. Your claims about average Indian students is generally wrong but I will give you that most Indian imports have a MS or something, because that is about the minimum requirement to stay here. That doesn't mean they are more talented than US students who pay 10x to get their requisite 4 years of education.

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