7 ms·

This is a biased, but honest observation that I'd like to share. I've been working for a big corp for about 5 years now. I was born in a SE Asian country and ca

This is a biased, but honest observation that I'd like to share. I've been working for a big corp for about 5 years now. I was born in a SE Asian country and came to the US for college. I have worked with a lot of India-born people. As a fellow foreigner and as an Asian, I can tell that more often than not Indian people are bolder and more aggressive in asking for what they want (e.g., one of my Indian colleague asked for salary raise and the permission to go back to India in December for a month every year as part of his negotiation when he applied and got offer from another company; what he told me was simple, "It's my responsibility to ask. It's my boss' task to refuse or accept.") On top of that, some (not everyone; some are meek/introvert like myself). Because of their boldness, Indian people seem to be more successful at making themselves more visible, which is very important in corporate culture to get ahead. On top of that, some of them are pretty clever at courting favor of their superiors and/or playing office politics. I have seen quite a few of my peers/acquaintances from India who climbed corporate ladder pretty fast, so I'm not surprised they are doing well in terms of representation in C-level roles.

kamaal 7y ago
>>On top of that, some of them are pretty clever at courting favor of their superiors and/or playing office politics. As a fellow Indian myself, let me assure you the biggest victims of this are the remaining other fellow Indian themselves. Things like this are the biggest reason why I wish I had a chance to settle and work in the US.
- johnhughesco 7y ago
  I believe Denpok from Silicon Valley is representative
xboxnolifes 7y ago
This followed my own similar observations with Indian people that I know. They, more often than not, are more confident and straightforward in their actions whether it be how they honestly feel or not.
- bonzer 7y ago
  I’ve seen (while working at Google) that on paper they seemed to have lots of “education” and in meetings the ones in management were overly confident and talked the talk but in 1:1 rarely did they know anything that wasn’t in a book, jargon or memorized. Rarely did they think up their own ideas or challenged the status quo. My manager was from India. He told me to make my solutions look more complicated and more lines of code to “make it on his team”. Engineers I found amazing, but once they decide to go the management path stay away, they would step over and on anyone, claim ownership for others ideas. not in a productive, supportive, work hard way, but a calculating negative way. Been doing this a long time, and every culture has differences but only with Indians in management from India did I feel I had to watch my back. Nepotism was so obvious I’m shocked it isn’t researched more. Maybe something with that ridiculously stupid and inhuman caste system. Ymmv
  - terminaljunkid 7y ago
    Caste system doesn't seem to be a reason. People here just want shortest way for something, not much ethical considerations or whatever. People study CSE mostly because it pays well, despite having literally no interest in this. People study 4 years sacrificing everything, in a rote learning way, to get into IITs. People demand reservations for government jobs and education on whatever basis imaginable. They just want some end at all means. 80% of Indian people are shit.. source: I am an Indian.
whack 7y ago
This comment seems to be assuming that Indians are over-represented at the C-suite, but that seems doubtful. Given the huge proportion of the tech workforce that Indians occupy, the number of CEOs being discussed seems perfectly... average. If I were to draw any conclusions at all, it would be that Indians are just like everyone else in tech, not the opposite.
jbattle 7y ago
ALSO. the people you are describing are (I'm guessing) immigrants. Meaning they are a subset of people from their home country with the internal initiative, drive, and resources to move halfway around the world and make their way in a culture besides the one they grew up in
- chairmanwow1 7y ago
  This is under appreciated. I spent significant time living and working in China and it’s HARD. I came back to the US with a MUCH deeper respect for any immigrants I work with. Everything is much more confusing and frustrating.
  - safog 7y ago
    The language / the cultural barrier isn't as high as it is for an American living in China though. I've grown up speaking English and watching a lot of American / British movies and TV, reading a lot of english literature. I assume this is not the case for most Americans with Chinese culture. There's definitely a culture shock when you first move here and are figuring stuff out - How do you order food at a subway or a chipotle? (not a big deal anymore given the explosion of these restaurants in India in the last few years). Why is called Cilantro and not Corinander? How do I get a phone when I don't have any credit history at all? What is a turn-pike?
    - xtracto 7y ago
      I lived in both UK and Germany for about 4 years on each. My native language is Spanish (Mex) and I found it more difficult to adapt/blend with Britons than with Germans. Even though my English is Ok and my German is terrible...
      - ahartmetz 7y ago
        It probably depends on the particular place and environment. In general I think the UK does a better job at integration, for historical reasons.
booboolayla 7y ago
Don't forget the infamous in-group preferences they bring as soon as they take over.
- president 7y ago
  Not sure why you were downvoted. There have been lawsuits [1][2] about Indian nepotism in US companies. As always, people are quick to claim "racism". [1] https://qz.com/india/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-indians-to-hire-others-indians-and-its-killing-diversity/ https://qz.com/india/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouragin... [2] https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/09/h-1b-san-jose-tech-firm-discriminated-against-non-indians-favored-visa-holders-lawsuit-claims/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/09/h-1b-san-jose-tech-fi...
- m0zg 7y ago
  At Microsoft we called this phenomenon the "Indocritical mass", for obvious reasons. Russians are the polar opposite of this, BTW. If a Russian is interviewing a Russian, _less_ slack will be cut than if they were interviewing anybody else.
- programmertote 7y ago
  You notice it as well. :) My division was managed by an Indian managing director, who succeeded a Caucasian boss prior 2018. Within 2 years of his arrival (and his departure for another company at the end of 2019), our department has the ratio of Indian to non-Indian ratio suddenly goes from around 20% to 70% (this increase in ratio accelerated because quite a few of the non-Indian people left in the past year). The guy that I mentioned above who asked for one whole month of vacation also encouraged another Indian guy to do the same and they both took off last December to India while some team members from other projects were asked to cover for their absence by the ex-managing director. Worse, that guy also somehow convinced our management to hire his then-fiance in mid 2019 directly from India as a manager. I just can't believe how he pulled these off, but I have to give it to him for being really good at getting things done the way he wants them.
  - lowdose 7y ago
faraday2211 7y ago
Indians are one of the few racist people I met in my life, at least in west europe, against whites.
dmix 7y ago
I remember reading a study about gender pay disparity (where it actually exists between similarly skilled people in the same industry) was because the female members of the group were less likely to ask for pay raises than their male peers. They may have felt more intimidated or less entitled to simply ask, possibly as a cultural side effect (maybe as a result of childhood stuff like the way males are highly competitive early on). I know a female software engineer friend of mine had read about that and got inspired and ended up asking for a serious raise when she got a new contract. I remember being both surprised and jealous the person said yes and took it as a life lesson. I also remember tptacek on here always talking about the value in asking for more money as a software person, product, or consultancy because you're probably worth it. So as the other commented mentioned the qualities of new immigrants might certainly select for this sort of thing, ie, people with high-motivation, bold life plans, taking advantage of their opportunity to really buy into the American dream, etc. That combined with a local-cultural confidence thing could certainly help explain it.
- interlocutor 7y ago
  That's nonsense. It is well-known that Indian women do better in the tech industry than their American counterparts. See articles below. https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/24/why-women-in-stem-may-be-better-off-working-in-india-and-latin-america https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2... https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-is-a-mane28099s-field-changing-a-stereotype-with-a-lesson-from-india/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-... https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/ https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/ https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-skilled-female-developers/ https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-sk... Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015
  - dmix 7y ago
    I didn’t say anything about female engineers in general in my comment or compared them to Americans. So I’m not sure which part is “nonsense” which you are talking about. The reasons why there are more females going into engineering in India and other countries on the developing side like Romania have been well discussed on HN (yet the pattern of women not being as frequently in math or engineering remains in many developed countries, hardly just the US) I don’t think it’s particularly unique to India or Indian women.
Swizec 7y ago
I think a lot of this also comes down to class and your environment growing up. For example: I grew up in an environment where you're meant to resent your boss, complain about them, and see them as an adversary. They are not someone you try to become because bosses are bad. How much harder do you think that makes it to climb corporate ladders if your internal narrative is that being the boss means you're a bad person?
- davchana 7y ago
  In big companies, not a small family owned business, I see bosses or mamagers have their own bosses or managers which give them difficult tasks like refusing promotion, or increment or such. When I started seeing my boss and his/her duty as two different things, that he is just doing his job; I started feeling less resentful against boss & more towards the company or its policy makers. Obviously there can be exceptions & great & worst bosses can be there enjoying themselves.
pm90 7y ago
This feels somewhat strange. A more plausible explanation (one given in some of the sibling threads) is that most of these folks are immigrants, and simply being an immigrant tells you something about the nature of this groups of people. But there is a twist: most of the immigrants from South Asia are also highly educated and here legally. That is quite a powerful combination in itself. Considering the large population of India, there are bound to be a ton of smart, driven people that immigrate to the US. And in a system that doesn’t actively discriminate against them based on their race, they do well. I am not sure why this is surprising. South Asia has a LOT of people. Many of them are well versed in English because colonialism. A small (but still significant) number of them emigrate to the US and do very well.
- terminaljunkid 7y ago
  I think explains it. But there are more south Indian people than north Indian people as well, despite there being lesser population.
  - pm90 7y ago
    Education, literacy rates and standard of living are generally higher in Southern India.
- hd10o 7y ago
  Indian Brahmins (the traditionally educated class) mostly getting kicked out of the country and not finding space in its social hierarchy after imposing thousands of years of the untouchability/caste system on everyone else. No other country had as many priests who were suddenly displaced from social hierarchy after their independence movement.
  - sa1 7y ago
    They're hardly getting kicked out. They still occupy positions of power and leave only because they have the choice and privilege to do so. The caste system, like racism in Western countries, is only abolished legally - in social settings it continues to exist - though it's not as bad as it was before independence.
thwerw4234 7y ago
To be fair, the Indian education system was crafted to create 'Brown Sahibs' to manage the Colonial Govt., and unlike say SE Asia and E. Asia, the system remains in essentially the same state that the British left it in. Indeed, most 'Indian Americans' are united in their hatred for their home countries IMO. On the other hand, it's very unsurprising that India's greatest export remains Human Labour. For those who don't realize this, India's balance of payments is actually positive inspite of the imports being about ~$150 billion more than exports (that is about 5% of nominal GDP). This comes about because of the amount of money that is being repatriated by Indians. Perhaps it is for this reason that India maintains a linguistic apartheid, whereby only the English speakers have access to education, and higher wrungs of the state like the judiciary, civil services etc. It's also a testament to the nation's collective stupidity that it thinks exporting cheap labour over building skills within the country, is a justifiable strategy. This is echoed, unsurprisingly, by 'body traders' like Infosys (c.f Nandan Nilekani), but is a common state doctrine after 'independence'. Unlike China, which emphasized mass education access, and local technological ability, India's schools specialize basically in serving Anglo-Saxon nations - most IITians etc. leave the country on graduation (esp. in CS). Within a country like India, where each of the major languages have a speaking population of an average 6+ million (similar to S. Korea, Germany etc.), and where Hindi has a speaking population of 400+ million, you'd be hard pressed to find a single university of repute that can educate people in any of the native languages. Even the bombastic Tamils in the south or the Hindi pushers in the north have little to show after 70+ years of bitter politicking. How a mob of uneducated rabble, neither interested in agriculture nor equipped for industry, will be beneficial for India is a puzzle that only Indians appear to be able to "bend" around. For these reasons, those who compare India with China, have neither an awareness of India's history, its present British colony run by "Brown Sahibs", or even about its historic role as the "pivot for Asia", whereby it was used to colonize the whole of Asia. This is not surprising, since its own 'eminent' academics are often at a loss in doing anything that doesn't involve mimicking their long gone masters.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  That's both a little harsh and doesn't stand up to scrunity. As a counterexample, consider Singapore, which also has inherited and retained the British education & legal systems, as well as standardized on English as the lingua franca despite it being nobody's mother tongue. Yet Singapore has still become one of the world's richest countries, while Malaysia next door, starting from almost the same position (they were part of the same colony/country!), has not. My equally unpopular opinion is that Gandhi's ruinous Swaraj/socialist economies theories that basically involved blocking off imports and central planning of everything were the primary cause India stagnated for so many decades, and has now fallen so far behind China in everything except exporting brainy IT engineers to work in the US.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

kamaal 7y ago

>>On top of that, some of them are pretty clever at courting favor of their superiors and/or playing office politics. As a fellow Indian myself, let me assure you the biggest victims of this are the remaining other fellow Indian themselves. Things like this are the biggest reason why I wish I had a chance to settle and work in the US.

johnhughesco 7y ago
I believe Denpok from Silicon Valley is representative

xboxnolifes 7y ago

This followed my own similar observations with Indian people that I know. They, more often than not, are more confident and straightforward in their actions whether it be how they honestly feel or not.

bonzer 7y ago
I’ve seen (while working at Google) that on paper they seemed to have lots of “education” and in meetings the ones in management were overly confident and talked the talk but in 1:1 rarely did they know anything that wasn’t in a book, jargon or memorized. Rarely did they think up their own ideas or challenged the status quo. My manager was from India. He told me to make my solutions look more complicated and more lines of code to “make it on his team”. Engineers I found amazing, but once they decide to go the management path stay away, they would step over and on anyone, claim ownership for others ideas. not in a productive, supportive, work hard way, but a calculating negative way. Been doing this a long time, and every culture has differences but only with Indians in management from India did I feel I had to watch my back. Nepotism was so obvious I’m shocked it isn’t researched more. Maybe something with that ridiculously stupid and inhuman caste system. Ymmv
- terminaljunkid 7y ago
  Caste system doesn't seem to be a reason. People here just want shortest way for something, not much ethical considerations or whatever. People study CSE mostly because it pays well, despite having literally no interest in this. People study 4 years sacrificing everything, in a rote learning way, to get into IITs. People demand reservations for government jobs and education on whatever basis imaginable. They just want some end at all means. 80% of Indian people are shit.. source: I am an Indian.

whack 7y ago

This comment seems to be assuming that Indians are over-represented at the C-suite, but that seems doubtful. Given the huge proportion of the tech workforce that Indians occupy, the number of CEOs being discussed seems perfectly... average. If I were to draw any conclusions at all, it would be that Indians are just like everyone else in tech, not the opposite.

jbattle 7y ago

ALSO. the people you are describing are (I'm guessing) immigrants. Meaning they are a subset of people from their home country with the internal initiative, drive, and resources to move halfway around the world and make their way in a culture besides the one they grew up in

chairmanwow1 7y ago
This is under appreciated. I spent significant time living and working in China and it’s HARD. I came back to the US with a MUCH deeper respect for any immigrants I work with. Everything is much more confusing and frustrating.
- safog 7y ago
  The language / the cultural barrier isn't as high as it is for an American living in China though. I've grown up speaking English and watching a lot of American / British movies and TV, reading a lot of english literature. I assume this is not the case for most Americans with Chinese culture. There's definitely a culture shock when you first move here and are figuring stuff out - How do you order food at a subway or a chipotle? (not a big deal anymore given the explosion of these restaurants in India in the last few years). Why is called Cilantro and not Corinander? How do I get a phone when I don't have any credit history at all? What is a turn-pike?
  - xtracto 7y ago
    I lived in both UK and Germany for about 4 years on each. My native language is Spanish (Mex) and I found it more difficult to adapt/blend with Britons than with Germans. Even though my English is Ok and my German is terrible...
    - ahartmetz 7y ago
      It probably depends on the particular place and environment. In general I think the UK does a better job at integration, for historical reasons.

booboolayla 7y ago

Don't forget the infamous in-group preferences they bring as soon as they take over.

president 7y ago
Not sure why you were downvoted. There have been lawsuits [1][2] about Indian nepotism in US companies. As always, people are quick to claim "racism". [1] https://qz.com/india/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-indians-to-hire-others-indians-and-its-killing-diversity/ https://qz.com/india/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouragin... [2] https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/09/h-1b-san-jose-tech-firm-discriminated-against-non-indians-favored-visa-holders-lawsuit-claims/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/09/h-1b-san-jose-tech-fi...
m0zg 7y ago
At Microsoft we called this phenomenon the "Indocritical mass", for obvious reasons. Russians are the polar opposite of this, BTW. If a Russian is interviewing a Russian, _less_ slack will be cut than if they were interviewing anybody else.
programmertote 7y ago
You notice it as well. :) My division was managed by an Indian managing director, who succeeded a Caucasian boss prior 2018. Within 2 years of his arrival (and his departure for another company at the end of 2019), our department has the ratio of Indian to non-Indian ratio suddenly goes from around 20% to 70% (this increase in ratio accelerated because quite a few of the non-Indian people left in the past year). The guy that I mentioned above who asked for one whole month of vacation also encouraged another Indian guy to do the same and they both took off last December to India while some team members from other projects were asked to cover for their absence by the ex-managing director. Worse, that guy also somehow convinced our management to hire his then-fiance in mid 2019 directly from India as a manager. I just can't believe how he pulled these off, but I have to give it to him for being really good at getting things done the way he wants them.
- lowdose 7y ago

faraday2211 7y ago

Indians are one of the few racist people I met in my life, at least in west europe, against whites.

dmix 7y ago

I remember reading a study about gender pay disparity (where it actually exists between similarly skilled people in the same industry) was because the female members of the group were less likely to ask for pay raises than their male peers. They may have felt more intimidated or less entitled to simply ask, possibly as a cultural side effect (maybe as a result of childhood stuff like the way males are highly competitive early on). I know a female software engineer friend of mine had read about that and got inspired and ended up asking for a serious raise when she got a new contract. I remember being both surprised and jealous the person said yes and took it as a life lesson. I also remember tptacek on here always talking about the value in asking for more money as a software person, product, or consultancy because you're probably worth it. So as the other commented mentioned the qualities of new immigrants might certainly select for this sort of thing, ie, people with high-motivation, bold life plans, taking advantage of their opportunity to really buy into the American dream, etc. That combined with a local-cultural confidence thing could certainly help explain it.

interlocutor 7y ago
That's nonsense. It is well-known that Indian women do better in the tech industry than their American counterparts. See articles below. https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/24/why-women-in-stem-may-be-better-off-working-in-india-and-latin-america https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2... https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-is-a-mane28099s-field-changing-a-stereotype-with-a-lesson-from-india/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-... https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/ https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/ https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-skilled-female-developers/ https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-sk... Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015
- dmix 7y ago
  I didn’t say anything about female engineers in general in my comment or compared them to Americans. So I’m not sure which part is “nonsense” which you are talking about. The reasons why there are more females going into engineering in India and other countries on the developing side like Romania have been well discussed on HN (yet the pattern of women not being as frequently in math or engineering remains in many developed countries, hardly just the US) I don’t think it’s particularly unique to India or Indian women.

Swizec 7y ago

I think a lot of this also comes down to class and your environment growing up. For example: I grew up in an environment where you're meant to resent your boss, complain about them, and see them as an adversary. They are not someone you try to become because bosses are bad. How much harder do you think that makes it to climb corporate ladders if your internal narrative is that being the boss means you're a bad person?

davchana 7y ago
In big companies, not a small family owned business, I see bosses or mamagers have their own bosses or managers which give them difficult tasks like refusing promotion, or increment or such. When I started seeing my boss and his/her duty as two different things, that he is just doing his job; I started feeling less resentful against boss & more towards the company or its policy makers. Obviously there can be exceptions & great & worst bosses can be there enjoying themselves.

pm90 7y ago

This feels somewhat strange. A more plausible explanation (one given in some of the sibling threads) is that most of these folks are immigrants, and simply being an immigrant tells you something about the nature of this groups of people. But there is a twist: most of the immigrants from South Asia are also highly educated and here legally. That is quite a powerful combination in itself. Considering the large population of India, there are bound to be a ton of smart, driven people that immigrate to the US. And in a system that doesn’t actively discriminate against them based on their race, they do well. I am not sure why this is surprising. South Asia has a LOT of people. Many of them are well versed in English because colonialism. A small (but still significant) number of them emigrate to the US and do very well.

terminaljunkid 7y ago
I think explains it. But there are more south Indian people than north Indian people as well, despite there being lesser population.
- pm90 7y ago
  Education, literacy rates and standard of living are generally higher in Southern India.
hd10o 7y ago
Indian Brahmins (the traditionally educated class) mostly getting kicked out of the country and not finding space in its social hierarchy after imposing thousands of years of the untouchability/caste system on everyone else. No other country had as many priests who were suddenly displaced from social hierarchy after their independence movement.
- sa1 7y ago
  They're hardly getting kicked out. They still occupy positions of power and leave only because they have the choice and privilege to do so. The caste system, like racism in Western countries, is only abolished legally - in social settings it continues to exist - though it's not as bad as it was before independence.

thwerw4234 7y ago

To be fair, the Indian education system was crafted to create 'Brown Sahibs' to manage the Colonial Govt., and unlike say SE Asia and E. Asia, the system remains in essentially the same state that the British left it in. Indeed, most 'Indian Americans' are united in their hatred for their home countries IMO. On the other hand, it's very unsurprising that India's greatest export remains Human Labour. For those who don't realize this, India's balance of payments is actually positive inspite of the imports being about ~$150 billion more than exports (that is about 5% of nominal GDP). This comes about because of the amount of money that is being repatriated by Indians. Perhaps it is for this reason that India maintains a linguistic apartheid, whereby only the English speakers have access to education, and higher wrungs of the state like the judiciary, civil services etc. It's also a testament to the nation's collective stupidity that it thinks exporting cheap labour over building skills within the country, is a justifiable strategy. This is echoed, unsurprisingly, by 'body traders' like Infosys (c.f Nandan Nilekani), but is a common state doctrine after 'independence'. Unlike China, which emphasized mass education access, and local technological ability, India's schools specialize basically in serving Anglo-Saxon nations - most IITians etc. leave the country on graduation (esp. in CS). Within a country like India, where each of the major languages have a speaking population of an average 6+ million (similar to S. Korea, Germany etc.), and where Hindi has a speaking population of 400+ million, you'd be hard pressed to find a single university of repute that can educate people in any of the native languages. Even the bombastic Tamils in the south or the Hindi pushers in the north have little to show after 70+ years of bitter politicking. How a mob of uneducated rabble, neither interested in agriculture nor equipped for industry, will be beneficial for India is a puzzle that only Indians appear to be able to "bend" around. For these reasons, those who compare India with China, have neither an awareness of India's history, its present British colony run by "Brown Sahibs", or even about its historic role as the "pivot for Asia", whereby it was used to colonize the whole of Asia. This is not surprising, since its own 'eminent' academics are often at a loss in doing anything that doesn't involve mimicking their long gone masters.

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
That's both a little harsh and doesn't stand up to scrunity. As a counterexample, consider Singapore, which also has inherited and retained the British education & legal systems, as well as standardized on English as the lingua franca despite it being nobody's mother tongue. Yet Singapore has still become one of the world's richest countries, while Malaysia next door, starting from almost the same position (they were part of the same colony/country!), has not. My equally unpopular opinion is that Gandhi's ruinous Swaraj/socialist economies theories that basically involved blocking off imports and central planning of everything were the primary cause India stagnated for so many decades, and has now fallen so far behind China in everything except exporting brainy IT engineers to work in the US.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]