From India, working in software product companies since late nineties. My experience all in India, other than couple of years in USA very early. Have worked in

From India, working in software product companies since late nineties. My experience all in India, other than couple of years in USA very early. Have worked in companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc in India. To be honest I'm amazed at all the top level comments around caste, surname etc.! In my career never came across such situations. At places like Microsoft, Amazon etc the promotions and perf eval brutally gets fought over during calibrations time. All in open, one manager against another, supported by data - who shipped what, how well, who could have done better, and so on. The last thing one would bring about is 'caste', 'surname' etc., even whiff of it would have pulled down the managers among their peers and their managers (typically group head), before even reaching to HR. I'm not sure what kind of companies all these people worked at. Just so that HN readers does not get a skewed view - in my two decade plus experience I did not see any evidence AT ALL in those FANG+M companies and also do not hear in startups from my friends.