7 ms·

The strict social hierarchical dynamics of Indian culture is damaging to a lot of workplaces. 2nd generation Indians are great. The Indians that are from lower

• flattone 6y ago
  I ‘worked’ through the worst job of my life at msft exactly what you described. Literal hell. Ptsd
  • bosswipe 6y ago
    Same, I just quit a job because of it.
• logicslave12 6y ago
  Yup basically, I’ll never work for an Indian boss. Chinese, Hispanic, white, etc all fine for me.
  • Guereric 6y ago
    Uh, this belief sounds extremely prejudiced.
  • dang 6y ago
    I've banned this account. Posting like this will get your main account banned as well, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• edoceo 6y ago
  So many ethnic stereotypes, personal samples only (I doubt this person kept diligent notes) then classified as truth. Sad to read when the topic is ethnic bias.
  • Barrin92 6y ago
    it's definitely more than an anecdote, the NYT ran a piece about it recently. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/opinion/caste-cisco-indian-americans-discrimination.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/opinion/caste-cisco-india...) There's entire ecosystem of chat groups of higher-caste Indians in American firms who systematically hire based on it and even go as far as to expose others.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• flatline 6y ago
  I do not doubt that these things happen, and it sounds like you have some interesting anecdotes. I do take exception to the assertions that this always happens, you will be an outcast, that’s the reason, etc. Ties of language and culture are certainly very strong.
• carabiner 6y ago
  Not my experience at all. They invited me to parties and insisted that I eat with them. Like if I was late to some mini-celebration, they'd ask me why I did not come earlier. They always spoke english at the meetings I attended. I did find them extremely political and manipulative, also browbeating me in work tasks. They did the same to my Indian colleague. But they didn't try to exclude me.
• dzhVAaT8A3Sg 6y ago
  Some of what you are saying is true but I had a good experience with Indians maybe because I knew how to react to it. But Indians are extremely diverse. My wife is Brahmin, and I am white, and I've been around Brahmins as a result. I have found Brahmins who come to the US often are not particularly religious but still practice some of old customs. They complain about a lot of Brahmin hate in India and like escaping from it in the US. There are some subtleties though. * Indians from India like old ways of addressing superiors. They appreciate if you call a manager Sir. Address him as Dear Sir. * Religious Brahmins would not tolerate being around a Dalit because it will adversely effect their purity. There are terms for all this. Aversion to Dalits is deeper than culture, it's a religious belief. This might even be protected by religious freedom. Less religious ones I don't think care as much. Very religious Brahmins in general do not get high paying jobs and do not have a lot of power but also would hold the most discriminatory views. * Indians have a culture of going the extra mile at work. So I think in general they don't appreciate the American view of work. * Indians from India prefer being around other Indians but I think they also don't understand Americans well and think the American work environment is strange. * There are a lot of horrible things that happen in India and it's not just one group that does it. There isn't really any one universally accepted victim group there. There are billionaire Dalits.
  • dbcurtis 6y ago
    > Indians have a culture of going the extra mile at work. No more or less than any other group. I’ve seen, and promoted, hard working Indians. I had to fire an Indian that thought his freshly minted MS degree made him too good for any actual work other than spending his 2 hours of non-nap time per day telling others what to do. And I have worked with everything in between. Law of large numbers should come to mind here.
  • saithound 6y ago
    > This might even be protected by religious freedom. It's not. Religious practices in violation of social duties or subversive of good order are not protected under free exercise of religion (Reynolds v. United States). In particular, it's a nigh-certainty that discrimination in matters of employment based on caste will be ruled illegal under Title VII (a fortiori, even employer or customer's preference for individuals of a particular _religion_ cannot be taken into account; a fortiori intra-religious preferences will not be taken into account either. This is almost certainly what will happen in California v. Cisco).
• lowercasteguy 6y ago
  The solution to the caste system in India is actually very simple. Religious conversion. Ambedkar was a visionary who himself converted out of Hindu religion and gave up his 'caste'. Caste is essentially the same as feudalism, but unlike other regions of the world where feudalism was a societal concept, it became a religious one in India. Buddhism for example is an Indian religion but Buddha was explicitly against the concept of caste-by-birth. Abrahamic religions are also devoid of the concept of caste. So whenever there are any caste issues, it's always two Hindus involved. Upper caste hindus don't probe the caste of a person if they hear a Christian/Muslim/Buddhist name because they know that it won't exist. Because of how easy it is to give up caste, lower castes have been doing religious conversions in India in large numbers. The so called upper caste , only make up 30% of Hindu population and if all lower castes were to convert then Hinduism would become a minority in India. To prevent this mass exodus, various states of India have been coming up with anti-conversion laws which make it really hard for people to convert. Though I really don't understand why lower caste dalits in the US continue to stay Hindu, when they could just change their religion and avoid the whole caste discussion altogether.
  • kelnos 6y ago
    > Though I really don't understand why lower caste dalits in the US continue to stay Hindu, when they could just change their religion and avoid the whole caste discussion altogether. Perhaps it's just they have strong religious belief in Hinduism? I don't have more than a surface understanding of the religion or how devoted people tend to be, but if I think about the various sects of Christianity, many people of certain sects wouldn't even consider switching to a different sect because they are so invested in their particular flavor of Christianity. And I'd think being Hindu and considering converting to Christianity or Islam would be an even larger jump in belief systems. It's not like switching brands of car. I guess in my experience (in US culture at least), "just change your religion" is actually a super big deal and is a huge decision that takes an extraordinary reason. Even discrimination doesn't pass that bar for many people.
    • awakeasleep 6y ago
      Hinduism isn't a religion, it's just a word the British made up to refer to all the (non muslim) beliefs in India in convenient shorthand
• kelnos 6y ago
  So here's the thing. I have no doubt that stuff like this does happen. An Indian friend (Brahmin, Indian citizen, has lived in the US for over a decade) has also seen this happen sometimes, and tries to avoid reporting chains with too many Indians down the line, even though it's unlikely he himself would experience discrimination (he just has no patience for ultra-political, back-stabby environments). But labeling all Indians of a particular caste this way and asserting "this is the truth" is just flat out bigotry, no matter how intellectual and self-effacing your comment sounds. Are there people like this? Sure. Are there a lot of them? Maybe? Even probably? There are also people of other races who act in similar discriminatory ways against other groups, often in much more insidious ways. Is it the same? Maybe not, but it doesn't matter: painting an entire ethnic group with the same broad (negative) brush based on your limited anecdotal experience is just not okay.
  • ertian 6y ago
    It's definitely true that outright dismissing all high-caste Indians is no better than doing the same for low-caste or any other race of people. I have to say, though, if I saw an org chart with a disproportionate number of Indians (relative to nearby & similar companies, or other parts of the same company) I would take that as a warning sign. As you say, in my experience, less political and more open-minded Indian tech workers will tend to be drawn to more diverse workplaces. It just seems unlikely that a whole bunch of cool, modern, forward-thinking Indians just coincidentally happened to fill a whole management chain. Frankly, I'd think the same thing if a management chain were overly-dominated by any particular group, be they Chinese, white, or, I dunno, UC Berkeley grads. It's a sort of organizational smell. It just seems to happen more often, anecdotally, with Indian management, either just because there are proportionally more of them or because they're used to a more old-school corporate culture.
    • srtjstjsj 6y ago
      It turns out that when a woman sees an org chart with almost no women, or a Black person sees an org chart with almost no Black people, they have similar concerns. The language issue is slightly separate factor, of course. Still, insisting that English be the language of business is a pretty huge privilege in favor of native speakers, which can be detrimental to the business when people are forced to communicate in their second language which is slower and less accurate than their native ability.
• troyjfarrell 6y ago
  My experience (anecdote) is the opposite. I worked for an Indian manager in a game studio. I don't know what caste, except that he wasn't Christian or Muslim, probably because he didn't think it worth mentioning. He hired based on demonstrated skill, so we had a diverse group of coworkers. He actively encouraged the group to eat together, arranging meals out with careful consideration for the group's preferences. He was approachable, personable, considerate, friendly and kind. People are people and stereotypes do not always fit.
  • starpilot 6y ago
    Parent comment is about multiple indians in a reporting group, not just one. This can greatly affect the group dynamic.
    • troyjfarrell 6y ago
      I think you are right. I had this part of the comment in mind: > Then there is the case where if an Indian gets into management, they will start > filling everything with their friends. Other management positions, they will start > fighting to bring in some contractors from some place like Infosys. This was not my experience. I also felt that the overall tone of the comment was negative, so I wanted to share that not everyone has had a negative experience with Indians in management.
    • throwawaysea 6y ago
      But no one ever calls it out when a white manager reports to another white manager who reports to another white manager and so on. That has an effect on the group dynamic as well, where an Indian employee or those of other backgrounds may not feel included. Another example is the comments here calling out Indian managers’ nepotism, which feels like an assumption without basis. Referrals and leveraging employees’ personal networks are a key hiring strategy for every tech company. And yet when Indians do it, an ugly label of “nepotism” gets affixed to it, with accusations of racial or religious discrimination. I’m very disappointed in how HN views Indians - it seems like they are not treated as other minorities in America, and aren’t afforded the advantages of being white in America either. Instead a different standard is used against them, labeling standard professional practices with ugly terms. I wonder if the HN crowd also regards other Asian coworkers similarly.
• LordFast 6y ago
  > This might be taboo, but every time I see a situation where there are multiple Indians in a reporting chain, I run. I'm glad these topics are brought up to the surface and being discussed, because the strategy of voting with your feet is no longer an effective one, given the proliferation of Indian management across the industry. It never quite made sense to me why non-American Indians (or any other foreigners, for that matter) are allowed to manage Americans, unless of course company itself is Indian or foreign to begin with. Managing people is an inherently cultural and people-oriented job (and it's NOT an easy job, with consequences cascading well beyond one's tenure). Foreigners are very unlikely to hold enough of the same values as their team as to be qualified to be the manager. The exception here are folks who have already become fully Americanized, in which case there wouldn't be the kind of problematic behaviors you described above. It's the same reason why new immigrants to a country don't go straight into becoming MPs and Presidents, regardless of their backgrounds and qualifications.
  • SickOfHypocrisy 6y ago
    To a large extent it's because the ruling class in America and Western nations is trying to create a managerial class of English-speaking "global men" (and women) for who things like religion, culture and traditions are kept out of the office at best, if not completely eliminated. I don't think it's a good idea in the first place, but it doesn't even work, because it tends to crush weaker cultures while only preserving the more resistant ones: Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, the current form of Han-centric ethno-nationalism promoted by the Chinese Communist Party, etc. I really think we need to do globalization in a different way: free trade between nations, but mostly ethnically homogeneous nations, as it used to be until the 1970s/1980s.
    • amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      I always wonder, when purple express these sorts of views, how they propose to get rid of the ethnic minorities that already exist in various countries. Do you have some sort of nonviolent way that might be done?
  • creata 6y ago
• higerordermap 6y ago
  > But the higher castes are extremely insular, and treat anyone of any race poorly. This is also bigotry. But I should agree that the people who come to become managers are likely to have the attitude that favours nepotism. These people are not interested in what they are doing. They just want to be a manager.
• UncleOxidant 6y ago
  I get nervous when I see too many of one ethnic group in a reporting structure in a large tech company - no matter what the ethnic group is. It's a red flag if a manager is primarily hiring people from his/her ethic group. And yes, if you end up being the only white person in the group you definitely can end up being the odd person out (and I wouldn't exempt Chinese from this as you have). It's uncomfortable, but you can see this as a cultural learning experience - the opportunity to see how it feels to be a minority. It's not often that we white people experience this in the US.
  • srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Do you get nervous when it's too many caucasians too?
    • UncleOxidant 6y ago
      Yes. "no matter what the ethnic group is"
• crossroadsguy 6y ago
  First of all I am limiting this argument to white collar professional setups. Your comment is way off the mark about Christians in India and to a great extant about Muslims as well. Your first paragraph is very poorly put generalisation. As a resident non-upper caste Hindu Indian I couldn't disagree more. While lower caste and Muslim oppression has skyrocketed in India since 2014 (esp. among low income groups of society), this is far from true in professional setups especially in the generalised way you've put it. > But the higher castes are extremely insular, and treat anyone of any race poorly. This is just untrue! > This might be taboo, but every time I see a situation where there are multiple Indians in a reporting chain, I run. I have never worked abroad/in the west (other than short stints in SK/JP) so I can't comment on what you've said directly. But coincidentally most of my friends (different caste groups) who work in the USA (or even EU) avoid this as well - but because of some other reason. Work culture - as in timings, out of work hour calls and forced unreasonable expectations. They know that (and I agree) work-life balance will be shitty in a team full of Indians up, down, and around. Hell, years ago I got an MS accept from MSU but I ran away seeing pretty much the entire CS department manufactured in India and China - PhD scholars, profs - all of them (I had applied w/o checking that). Yes, is this another generalisation but to be honest that's how I felt at that time. Apologies if it came across as offensive.
• sanmon3186 6y ago
  Born in a remote Indian village, studied in towns, worked for a decade in the US and now living in a tier-1 Indian city for the last 6-7 years. Never in my life I observed any kind of bias against christians or muslims at workplace. Coming to the cast issues, there was a post here last week on the same topic. I extended the discussion to a WhatsApp group of 70+ colleagues/friends who come from different backgrounds. I wanted to validate if I am the odd one, who has almost never observed cast based issues either. After two days of long discussion, we came to a conclusion that we tend to show more affinity to the people who speak our native language or/and come from same regional roots, than our cast and religion. Not denying that that the later doesn't exist at all, I feel this whole topic is too exaggerated. Disclaimer: My experience is limited to 20 years of while collar profession (only).