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I have noticed this as well, both as a worker and an interviewer. The number of unqualified people of Indian ethnicity that inundate job applications is stagg

I have noticed this as well, both as a worker and an interviewer. The number of unqualified people of Indian ethnicity that inundate job applications is staggering, and some perform embarrassingly bad in the interview. That said some of my favorite people to work with (smart, easy to work with) are Indian. It's really a shame that the issues affect perception of everybody. It's a good reminder to me not to judge a book by it's cover, metaphorically speaking.

ekianjo 6y ago
> That said some of my favorite people to work with (smart, easy to work with) are Indian. It's really a shame that the issues affect perception of everybody. It's a good reminder to me not to judge a book by it's cover, metaphorically speaking. I don't even know why race or color would even matter when it comes to considering one's capability to do some engineering job. At the end of the day just work with whoever can get the job done.
- sethammons 6y ago
  Because humans are pattern matchers. We have to strive to eliminate or reduce conscience and subconscious biases to ensure fairness. I know intelligent and successful people who would never take financial advice from someone with a beard for example. Edit: maybe an interesting example. I grew up around smart woman and girls. From observation, I “knew” women were smarter than men. I was in college before I heard that some thought that woman were not suited for math. I couldn’t even process that. But people see patterns and extrapolate based on their observations and what they hear, and often start to believe something that does not exist.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > Because humans are pattern matchers Agree, but then you would think that engineers (when it comes to working with other engineers) are a little more rational than the average folks and can go beyond superficial observations.
    - nsonha 6y ago
      > > Because humans are pattern matchers > Agree, but then you would think that engineers (when it comes to working with other engineers) are a little more rational than the average folks and can go beyond superficial observations. You are saying pattern matting is irrational? If one is to apply pattern matching in an absolutely rational way, they would not make abitrary judgements that some traits are/are not superficial. They should just take the fact as is, then make their hypothesis, then prove or disprove it then act upon the result.
    - splintercell 6y ago
      But these are not 'superficial' observations. People of Indian ethnicity are more likely to be the product of (tier B) Indian educational system (which is based on Brahminical rote memorization), Indian culture (always say yes to your superior), Indian incentive structure ("how many people are you managing?"). The last job I worked at, more than 50% developers on the floor were Indian (like either fresh H1b or intra-company transfers), so I noticed that I would get 'lost' in the crowd. A non-Indian person will immediately notice other non-Indian person, and ignore me. It wasn't their fault because most Indians on my floor never bothered to say 'hi' or 'bless you' or even acknowledge anyone who wasn't Indian. But then, I'd also ignore other 'pattern breaking' Indians (until, like me, they made themselves stand out).
    - couchcombinator 6y ago
      You just matched all engineers to a pattern you observed.
      - stormdennis 6y ago
        That's brilliant! (as is the observation that humans are naturally pattern matchers)
        int_19h 6y ago
        In fact, I would argue that engineers tend to be people with stronger pattern matching capabilities, because that's exactly how most engineering problems are solved.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    > We have to strive to eliminate or reduce conscience and subconscious biases to ensure fairness. Why? Does fairness serve a business purpose? Are businesses held to be fair to their employees in other circumstances? What is fair? Perfect proportional representation of the host population? Within what limits? Can we make a heuristic for what's more fair? Should that drive hiring decisions more than other factors? The way I've come to see it, so-called fair hiring practices are purely a social signal that companies are required, by the market, to hold - and only in the sense that they need to NOT appear to NOT be fair, in terms of bad press. Other than that, companies don't seem to have any actual obligation to be fair, unless held accountable by some other mechanism (a union, the court of public opinion, government regulations, etc). They will only do so as far as it provides a favourable outlook for the company, and not further. When sweatshop-like conditions are profitable and the attention of the public is elsewhere, for instance, sweatshops you will get. It doesn't matter much if every race is slaving away in there together side by side if they're still slaving away.
    - iguy 6y ago
      Another reading of "We have to strive" is simply that, if we do wish to reduce various biases, it is something we must do consciously. That doing so runs against what's easy, our natural inclination is to extrapolate and generalize. Deciding what fair means is indeed hard. But most would today agree (I think) that judging someone to be incompetent based on the reputation of those of the same ethnicity is unfair.
      - core-questions 6y ago
        > if we do wish to reduce various biases Again, though, the desire to do this is based entirely on marketing, and not on merit. > judging someone to be incompetent based on the reputation of those of the same ethnicity is unfair Sure, but mandatory hiring of people of particular ethnicities in order to boost some arbitrary "diversity quotient" (read: non-white quotient) is potentially just as unfair to other qualified applicants.
        6y ago
  - Causality1 6y ago
    Indeed. Categorization is how the brain works. On purpose or not, if you have two people with the same resume your initial impression of "Steve Smith" is better than your initial impression of "Bubba-Joe Willum Jr."
  - galfarragem 6y ago
    All living things use pattern matching - not just humans - as a surviving mechanism. It allows fast decision making. Which model do any of us prefer in most situations: one that allows us to be right more than 50% of times done in miliseconds, or one that takes hours/days/weeks (whatever) and allows 95% of good (or fair) decisions?
    - ninju 6y ago
      The appropriate response time depends on what is being decided When it comes to deciding who I will be working with I would rather take the time (hours/days/weeks) so that that we make a fair (un-baised) decision As for deciding to whether to evade a baseball being thrown at my head, I would prefer the faster response time. It okay to be biased against fast moving projectiles :-) Any time you deal with people you need take the time needed to eliminate any biases that are common to many humans
      - red_admiral 6y ago
        User story: Jane works in HR for $COMPANY. They have 10 places on the graduate scheme this summer, and have already received something like 800 applications. The boss wants a shortlist by Friday - they're going to read each one on the shortlist in detail and make a fair decision, but they're not going to spend half an hour on each one in the 800-pile because that would be 400 person-hours. Of course, first you throw out the obviously bad ones - anyone who sent a word document when they clearly asked for PDF; anyone who doesn't have an engineering degree etc. etc. That still leaves you with 500. What do you do? This is I suppose why implicit bias training exists, so you don't go "this one's from India, the last 10 from India couldn't even spell the company name right, reject". (The next step in the UK is, reject everyone who doesn't have a first-class degree, if that still leaves you with a long enough shortlist. No wonder students are anxious about getting a first!) Point I'm trying to make: there's situations in hiring where the time you can take is influenced by the volume of applications.
      - sethammons 6y ago
        I think the parent was referring to survival instinct. Millions of years of evolution has lead to the need for fast pattern matching to avoid danger.
- onemoresoop 6y ago
  Maybe it’s not the race but the culture that makes working with them a pleasant experience. And they are also good engineers. From my experience with working with indian engineers they are very agreeable and polite people. Of course it’s a big generality and they have flaws like everybody else
- devcpp 6y ago
  If you noticed that people with a pimple on the left cheek performed significantly worse in interviews and you had limited time to review candidates, wouldn't you apply more scrutiny to resumes of this type of people? Well, this case is even stronger because there is an intuition at to why people of certain races are more likely to be worse engineers.
- eps 6y ago
  Because there is a clear correlation between an amount of blatant lies in an average resume and the country of origin.
  - entha_saava 6y ago
    I am from India and I think it is because many people try to game the system instead of actually working hard. It is rooted deeply in the education system itself.
    - JAlexoid 6y ago
      That's cultural, historic and economic reality that puts pressure. I'm in US and despite US having 20%(?) black population, I'm yet to have a black American colleague in engineering.
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  This has racial connotation only because India is mostly populated by brown people. Other than Pakistan and Bangladesh - no other place has a clear majority of what you would call brown people. That said - Indian cultural quirks definitely play a role in how majority is raised and how they operate. Economic situation and a very clear way to get a well paying job makes people try to get into these fields. IT doesn't have an insane filter like medicine, which is another way to earn a lot in India. Thus you get a lot of people that try to get around the system. I had two cases happen in India to demonstrate this: One of developers lied about their qualifications for the previous 3 years. He was supposed to be working for Oracle for 3 years, but we found out that he worked at multiple companies for 3 months at time. The other one was one of three brothers, but only one of them was somewhat competent and would do the interviews... while the other brothers would actually try to show up for work. I could not make up this crap.
monadic2 6y ago
> Indian ethnicity Small nit, this is a nationality, not an ethnicity.
- garmaine 6y ago
  Actually in the context of racial discrimination, I think ethnicity is correct. The true nitpick is that it should be “Indian ethnicities”, plural.
- reshie 6y ago
  true but its like saying African as a ethnicity even African American is pointing to both. there is original regionality to ethnics so to speak. perhaps our terms are at fault here but is still accepted and not negative in a racial context.

ekianjo 6y ago

> That said some of my favorite people to work with (smart, easy to work with) are Indian. It's really a shame that the issues affect perception of everybody. It's a good reminder to me not to judge a book by it's cover, metaphorically speaking. I don't even know why race or color would even matter when it comes to considering one's capability to do some engineering job. At the end of the day just work with whoever can get the job done.

sethammons 6y ago
Because humans are pattern matchers. We have to strive to eliminate or reduce conscience and subconscious biases to ensure fairness. I know intelligent and successful people who would never take financial advice from someone with a beard for example. Edit: maybe an interesting example. I grew up around smart woman and girls. From observation, I “knew” women were smarter than men. I was in college before I heard that some thought that woman were not suited for math. I couldn’t even process that. But people see patterns and extrapolate based on their observations and what they hear, and often start to believe something that does not exist.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > Because humans are pattern matchers Agree, but then you would think that engineers (when it comes to working with other engineers) are a little more rational than the average folks and can go beyond superficial observations.
  - nsonha 6y ago
    > > Because humans are pattern matchers > Agree, but then you would think that engineers (when it comes to working with other engineers) are a little more rational than the average folks and can go beyond superficial observations. You are saying pattern matting is irrational? If one is to apply pattern matching in an absolutely rational way, they would not make abitrary judgements that some traits are/are not superficial. They should just take the fact as is, then make their hypothesis, then prove or disprove it then act upon the result.
  - splintercell 6y ago
    But these are not 'superficial' observations. People of Indian ethnicity are more likely to be the product of (tier B) Indian educational system (which is based on Brahminical rote memorization), Indian culture (always say yes to your superior), Indian incentive structure ("how many people are you managing?"). The last job I worked at, more than 50% developers on the floor were Indian (like either fresh H1b or intra-company transfers), so I noticed that I would get 'lost' in the crowd. A non-Indian person will immediately notice other non-Indian person, and ignore me. It wasn't their fault because most Indians on my floor never bothered to say 'hi' or 'bless you' or even acknowledge anyone who wasn't Indian. But then, I'd also ignore other 'pattern breaking' Indians (until, like me, they made themselves stand out).
  - couchcombinator 6y ago
    You just matched all engineers to a pattern you observed.
    - stormdennis 6y ago
      That's brilliant! (as is the observation that humans are naturally pattern matchers)
      - int_19h 6y ago
        In fact, I would argue that engineers tend to be people with stronger pattern matching capabilities, because that's exactly how most engineering problems are solved.
- core-questions 6y ago
  > We have to strive to eliminate or reduce conscience and subconscious biases to ensure fairness. Why? Does fairness serve a business purpose? Are businesses held to be fair to their employees in other circumstances? What is fair? Perfect proportional representation of the host population? Within what limits? Can we make a heuristic for what's more fair? Should that drive hiring decisions more than other factors? The way I've come to see it, so-called fair hiring practices are purely a social signal that companies are required, by the market, to hold - and only in the sense that they need to NOT appear to NOT be fair, in terms of bad press. Other than that, companies don't seem to have any actual obligation to be fair, unless held accountable by some other mechanism (a union, the court of public opinion, government regulations, etc). They will only do so as far as it provides a favourable outlook for the company, and not further. When sweatshop-like conditions are profitable and the attention of the public is elsewhere, for instance, sweatshops you will get. It doesn't matter much if every race is slaving away in there together side by side if they're still slaving away.
  - iguy 6y ago
    Another reading of "We have to strive" is simply that, if we do wish to reduce various biases, it is something we must do consciously. That doing so runs against what's easy, our natural inclination is to extrapolate and generalize. Deciding what fair means is indeed hard. But most would today agree (I think) that judging someone to be incompetent based on the reputation of those of the same ethnicity is unfair.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      > if we do wish to reduce various biases Again, though, the desire to do this is based entirely on marketing, and not on merit. > judging someone to be incompetent based on the reputation of those of the same ethnicity is unfair Sure, but mandatory hiring of people of particular ethnicities in order to boost some arbitrary "diversity quotient" (read: non-white quotient) is potentially just as unfair to other qualified applicants.
      - 6y ago
- Causality1 6y ago
  Indeed. Categorization is how the brain works. On purpose or not, if you have two people with the same resume your initial impression of "Steve Smith" is better than your initial impression of "Bubba-Joe Willum Jr."
- galfarragem 6y ago
  All living things use pattern matching - not just humans - as a surviving mechanism. It allows fast decision making. Which model do any of us prefer in most situations: one that allows us to be right more than 50% of times done in miliseconds, or one that takes hours/days/weeks (whatever) and allows 95% of good (or fair) decisions?
  - ninju 6y ago
    The appropriate response time depends on what is being decided When it comes to deciding who I will be working with I would rather take the time (hours/days/weeks) so that that we make a fair (un-baised) decision As for deciding to whether to evade a baseball being thrown at my head, I would prefer the faster response time. It okay to be biased against fast moving projectiles :-) Any time you deal with people you need take the time needed to eliminate any biases that are common to many humans
    - red_admiral 6y ago
      User story: Jane works in HR for $COMPANY. They have 10 places on the graduate scheme this summer, and have already received something like 800 applications. The boss wants a shortlist by Friday - they're going to read each one on the shortlist in detail and make a fair decision, but they're not going to spend half an hour on each one in the 800-pile because that would be 400 person-hours. Of course, first you throw out the obviously bad ones - anyone who sent a word document when they clearly asked for PDF; anyone who doesn't have an engineering degree etc. etc. That still leaves you with 500. What do you do? This is I suppose why implicit bias training exists, so you don't go "this one's from India, the last 10 from India couldn't even spell the company name right, reject". (The next step in the UK is, reject everyone who doesn't have a first-class degree, if that still leaves you with a long enough shortlist. No wonder students are anxious about getting a first!) Point I'm trying to make: there's situations in hiring where the time you can take is influenced by the volume of applications.
    - sethammons 6y ago
      I think the parent was referring to survival instinct. Millions of years of evolution has lead to the need for fast pattern matching to avoid danger.
onemoresoop 6y ago
Maybe it’s not the race but the culture that makes working with them a pleasant experience. And they are also good engineers. From my experience with working with indian engineers they are very agreeable and polite people. Of course it’s a big generality and they have flaws like everybody else
devcpp 6y ago
If you noticed that people with a pimple on the left cheek performed significantly worse in interviews and you had limited time to review candidates, wouldn't you apply more scrutiny to resumes of this type of people? Well, this case is even stronger because there is an intuition at to why people of certain races are more likely to be worse engineers.
eps 6y ago
Because there is a clear correlation between an amount of blatant lies in an average resume and the country of origin.
- entha_saava 6y ago
  I am from India and I think it is because many people try to game the system instead of actually working hard. It is rooted deeply in the education system itself.
  - JAlexoid 6y ago
    That's cultural, historic and economic reality that puts pressure. I'm in US and despite US having 20%(?) black population, I'm yet to have a black American colleague in engineering.
JAlexoid 6y ago
This has racial connotation only because India is mostly populated by brown people. Other than Pakistan and Bangladesh - no other place has a clear majority of what you would call brown people. That said - Indian cultural quirks definitely play a role in how majority is raised and how they operate. Economic situation and a very clear way to get a well paying job makes people try to get into these fields. IT doesn't have an insane filter like medicine, which is another way to earn a lot in India. Thus you get a lot of people that try to get around the system. I had two cases happen in India to demonstrate this: One of developers lied about their qualifications for the previous 3 years. He was supposed to be working for Oracle for 3 years, but we found out that he worked at multiple companies for 3 months at time. The other one was one of three brothers, but only one of them was somewhat competent and would do the interviews... while the other brothers would actually try to show up for work. I could not make up this crap.

monadic2 6y ago

> Indian ethnicity Small nit, this is a nationality, not an ethnicity.

garmaine 6y ago
Actually in the context of racial discrimination, I think ethnicity is correct. The true nitpick is that it should be “Indian ethnicities”, plural.
reshie 6y ago
true but its like saying African as a ethnicity even African American is pointing to both. there is original regionality to ethnics so to speak. perhaps our terms are at fault here but is still accepted and not negative in a racial context.