8 ms·
Infosys accused of racism
- apk-d 9y agoWhy not just let them hire whoever they want? I'm seriously tired of people sticking their noses into everything.
- david38 9y agoThere are hundreds of books and policy documents detailing why. This is an utterly stupid question.
- jazoom 9y agoWhy be so rude?
- vacri 9y agoBecause with even the tiniest of thought, it's clear that basically means that you can be openly racist when hiring. "No niggers or irish need apply".
- apk-d 9y agoYet it's considered perfectly PC to create companies that hire exclusively women or organize black-only university events. Similarly, Infosys hired a large amount of minority group workers. Whether this is racist or empowering is a matter of opinion. (And in reality, it's merely a business model).
- vacri 9y agoCompanies that hire exclusively women are not 'perfectly PC'. That's a canard thrown in as a strawman.
- ominous 9y agoThis post has 5 comments. (mine is the sixth). When you placed your comment, did you think it fair for the rest of the population to try and take control of 1/5 of the opinion expressed on this website? Do you speak for 1/5 of the internet population? OR, crazy idea: let the comment content speak for itself, without thinking about quotas.
- vacri 9y agoYes, david38 patiently waited for the right number of replies before pasting his own, just so the proportions would be right. /s For someone complaining about shoehorning words into others' mouths, you're doing a gnarly job of it yourself.
- apk-d 9y agoThere's hundreds of books on any topic, but it's hardly a reason to stop all discussion. If you're not interested in providing any valuable insight then I kindly suggest you refrain from posting. My question wasn't rhetorical.
- tpeo 9y agoIt cannot be a stupid question if there are hundreds of books on it. I know what you mean, but that's no way to get your opinion across.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoBecause racism is a real problem that has a significant impact on it's victims for no good reason.
- fabatka 9y agoThe fact that it is a problem doesn't mean that this is the solution for it. I think quotas are just symptomatic treatment instead of treating the cause. Couldn't the market take care of racism? Nowadays if a company is dumb enough to make blatantly racist things, the social media makes sure that people know this, and not racist people will think twice when dealing with that particular company. However, if racism is hidden behind internal processes, e.g. they don't openly reject minorities, just set the bar higher for them when hiring, it can be really hard to unveil the misconduct.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoNo because comments like "I'm seriously tired of people sticking their noses into everything" are really about letting the current situation become the status quo. It's really an underhand way of saying "If I want to have a racist employment policy that's none of your business". Expecting the market to solve these problems is naive, it just won't happen except in a few high profile cases.
- apk-d 9y agoMarket-based solutions? Nonsense! Let's all just accuse and shun and sue each other into oblivion, because that's a healthy way for a society to function.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> Why not just let them hire whoever they want? Consider a sole proprietor. It's detrimental to society if she refuses to hire black people. It causes social tension, an underutilisation of labour and is just plain racist. Now consider an investor-owned company. We don't want managers hiring their friends and family over qualified candidates. It wastes capital, promotes inequality and impairs labour utilisation. (It also messes with education incentives). All that makes raising money harder for everyone which, in turn, makes the economy less effective. TL; DR Employers being racist hurts other people. Hence, we regulate it.
- drngdds 9y agoBecause hiring discrimination is bad. No one should be shut out of a job because of their race. It's also illegal in the US.
- r4ally 9y agow.r.t. "hiring discrimination is bad ... it's also illegal in the US". Discrimination is not illegal in the US. In fact, it is the basis of every hiring decision and every interview. However, in the US, there is a list of criteria which the government has made illegal to take into account in hiring decisions. For anything not on the list you are free to discriminate (intelligence discrimination, ivy league education discrimination, culture fit discrimination, etc...).
- DarkKomunalec 9y agoFrom the article: "While roughly 1% of the US population is of the South Asian race and national origin, roughly 93%-94% of Infosys’s United States workforce is of the South Asian national origin (primarily Indian)."
- nippples 9y ago> In 2013, India’s second-largest IT firm took a $34 million hit—the largest ever payment in a visa case—after a Texas court found the behemoth guilty of “systemic visa fraud and abuse.” > Green, the former global head of immigration who has previously spoken out about the detrimental effect of curbing H-1B visas on the US tech sector, is accusing Infosys of using the very same work visas to replace or supplant non-south Asians at the company. This is probably one of the reasons why there's a lot of people in tech industry (other than CEOs) who want stricter immigration rules in the US.
- ominous 9y ago"While roughly 1% of the US population is of the South Asian race and national origin, roughly 93%-94% of Infosys’s United States workforce is of the South Asian national origin (primarily Indian). This disproportionately South Asian and Indian workforce, by race and national origin, is a result of Infosys’s intentional employment discrimination against individuals who are not South Asian, including discrimination in the hiring, promotion, compensation, and termination of individuals." What kind of argument is this? When the time to elect the 100th president comes, should all non-South Asian candidates be excluded from the start? (Assuming no South Asian is elected until then. And by then the 1% might have changed, of course).
- pvg 9y agoIt's an argument that's a lot easier to follow than whatever it is you are trying to say about a hypothetical future presidential candidates and how might be related to their point.
- ominous 9y agoIt is an argument in the sense that it is a chain of facts and a conclusion is implied. "x% of all A have property X. We have been taking A's for the purpose of Y. The record shows the y% of our A's have property X". A = population X = being South Asian x = 1 y = 93-94 Y = working at infosys And the conclusion seems to be that when making a selection, the selection should be 'fair' for all properties of A, and not 'fair' for the purpose Y. And I am not even mentioning the fact that the selection is made by infosys, whereas if fairness was that important no selection should be made at all. Maybe we could just ask the government (with their census data) to send the 'fair' distribution of people to work at infosys.
- rayiner 9y agoThat's how legal complaints work. You set forth a chain of facts that plausibly imply a conclusion. Proving the conclusion is what you do at trial, after having the benefit of discovery.
- mankash666 9y agoI'm unsure if there's racism at play here. The business model of Infosys is based on outsourcing to India, with the US employees mostly acting as go-betweens. Likewise, Huawei's US workforce is overwhelmingly Chinese, but that's probably not a result of racism. Samsung's US R&D is almost fully Korean at the top - not because of racism In India, as a counter example, Philips, the Dutch company, has most of the upper brass as Dutch. Again, not because of racism, but because of the go-between nature of the job
- wapz 9y agoI really don't like how racism comes up so often in these situations when I think the closer term is probably familiarity or customs. A lot of bosses like to work with people that have a similar mindset and work ethic that they do. It makes sense that if you've been born and raised in country X and worked there for 15 years and become a boss you will probably prefer people with work ethics similar to your own. In Japan, as a foreigner working for a Japanese company, I can see how Japanese would much prefer to hire a Japanese over me (they don't outwardly complain about long, unpaid overtime, they do mundane tasks that aren't productive, they don't talk back when erroneously attacked). And I can see an American boss much preferring an American who's more likely to bring up points that they think are wrong. I apologize for the stereotyping but meant it as an example.
- fennecfoxen 9y ago> I really don't like how racism comes up so often in these situations when I think the closer term is probably familiarity or customs As a rule, 90% of what people call "racism" in the US today is closer to xenophobia. Likewise, 75% of what they call "racist police" is fundamentally a failure of the justice system as a system to restrain, discipline, or be responsible for its own career employees (police, prosecutors, and even judges), let alone properly incentivise them.
- golemotron 9y agoXenophobia is a negative spin on an evolved response that is very basic to human nature: homophily [1]. You see it in all human societies. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily
- throwaway40483 9y agoThe only people Infosys discriminates against is people who don't like to be underpaid.
- coolg54321 9y agoYes this is the thing, they just want to pay less and make sure the onsite guys work overtime for free with the fear of getting offshored/fired. This wont work well with the Americans. This has nothing to do with racism.
- DarkKomunalec 9y agoThere's many other countries they could have hired from, and the article states discrimination occurred at all levels of hierarchy in the company, which strongly implies it was not limited to H1B employees.
- nonamechicken 9y agoAs an Indian working in one of these companies, they treat employees different depending on where they come from. You get better treatment if you are an American. The next level is those who were hired from USA. At the bottom is the h1b folks who come from India. Managers and HE will treat them as disposables and will have no problem showing them that. You have a problem, go back to India. I have seen first hand this difference in treatment multiple times.
- known 9y agoI'm not surprised http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-worlds-racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-wo...
- known 9y agoNot just Infosys https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-indians-to-hire-others-indians-and-its-killing-diversity/ https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-indi...
- dumdumdumNow 9y agoAs a person of South Asian origin, I am glad this is out. My friends, Indians and non-Indians applied to these firms after college. Only Indians were called in for interviews. And only international students took the job offers as they promised H1B after their work permit expires. We thought it was raciest that none of non-Indian friends even get a chance to do interview but they all end up with offers at better companies, so no one looked deep into this.
- IanDrake 9y agoWow, some of the rationalizing here is priceless. I hope the folks dismissing this apply their logic evenly. Here's some of what I've read so far: Economic - There's no discrimination because they only want the cheapest labor possible. Culture - They want a consistent culture so, of course, they mostly hire Indians "because they work harder"- paraphrasing from another comment. Language - It's easier to have everyone speak the predominant language of the company. Never mind that it's not the same language as the country its operating in. Now, if a predominately white company used these same reasons to explain their lack of minorities there would be an uproar. And rightfully so.
- ksk 9y ago>Now, if a predominately white company used these same reasons to explain their lack of minorities there would be an uproar. Well, yes, because American minorities are part of the same culture/language/economy as other Americans.
- someSven 9y agoThe term 'racism' should be socially banned, because of it's misuse and because it can mean so many things. Basicly racism only exists as an combat term.
- DonHopkins 9y agoSo you're saying Trump campaigning for years about Obama not being born in the United States was not racist, and it's just combative to say that? So using the term 'racism' should be socially banned to protect Trump's feelings, but him acting that way to increase his power over others shouldn't be?
- t0mbstone 9y agoThis is completely off topic, but did anyone else think that the guy in the headline picture totally looked like an indian version of Mr. Bean? The facial expression, the eyebrows, the haircut, everything!
- r4ally 9y agoRacism is a term that has different meanings to different people. Does it mean believing that your race is superior to all the others? Or does it mean believing that there are non-surface level differences between different evolutionary groups of people? Or does it mean simply having tribal instinct to help out people who you perceive are similar to you? Under the standard to which european-americans are held in US employment law, this would almost certainly be classified as illegal discrimination. Imagine if you had a company the size of infosys which was 93-94% european-american. Even though the US is somewhere about 60% european-american I think, I suspect a non-european-american would almost certainly be able to bring a successful discrimination case against the company (my gut feeling). In this scenario, we have a company which is 93-94% east indian, out of a US population of around 1%. There has to be around 6000% more racial discrimination going on to make this happen than would be required to form a 93-94% european-american company in the US. I don't know if this will be ruled as discrimination though -- my gut feeling that the vast majority of US anti-racial-discrimination enforcement is aimed at european-americans and not other groups (this is called a double standard e.g. hypocrisy).