8 ms·

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especial

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom were "high-achieving". Most of them put a lot of effort into trying to buff their resumes to get into good colleges, for example by volunteering on causes they didn't really care about. Cheating was rampant; the attitude many students seemed to have was why actually learn stuff when you can just cheat and get the same career rewards? Almost all of them followed very conventional (read: boring) career paths; in fact most of them became doctors. True creativity and risk-taking was not a personality trait I commonly observed, I'm sorry to say. I was lucky to have very "Americanized" parents who didn't raise me with these backward attitudes.

Waterluvian 6y ago
Does cheating work or are there a bunch of horrible doctors out there? How did they not get filtered out during residency?
- meritganset 6y ago
  To answer your first two questions: yes and yes.
- gautamcgoel 6y ago
  I'm talking about cheating in high school. It worked in terms of college admissions (presumably these students cheated in college to get into med school, but I can't speak to that with certainty).
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    This is an American high school, right? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone blatantly cheat their way through it (though I’m well aware of “volunteering” and “science projects”); where did you attend?
    - erdos4d 6y ago
      I tutored math in university, had many freshmen who straight up couldn't plug a number into a function and evaluate. They cheated the whole way through and nobody did anything to stop them. I'm sorry to say this, but US high school is a real joke in a lot of places.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  Relevant WHO report: https://www.who.int/hrh/resources/16058health_workforce_India.pdf https://www.who.int/hrh/resources/16058health_workforce_Indi... But I am not sure about the accuracy. There are other reports with similar or lower numbers. Wildly different experience depending on the state and part (South is good in comparison to North). There is a shortage of doctors despite everyone aiming for a medical degree. It is worse in rural areas so there are less qualified people treating others. Pseudoscience and pseudomedicine is a big industry too. Actors, news channels, babas, politicians, etc all encourage it. The most recent example of above is baba ram dev's covid cure: https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/aug/05/covid-19-immunity-booster-coronil-demand-at-10-lakh-packs-a-day-baba-ramdev-2179585.html https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/aug/05/covid-19... He promoted his pseudoscience on multiple news channels as a cure for covid. Ayush ministry (which is a branch of government to regulate/approve pseudomedicine) stopped him on some advertising basis so he rebranded the thing to covid immunity booster.
- compscistd 6y ago
  Highly anecdotal, but my ex at the time (white), bio major, had a real tough time studying for midterms and finals in undergrad. Meanwhile, my cousin (Indian) in the same class was breezing through the exams, partying more than me (a liberal arts major!), generally screwing around and somehow consistently ended up with a better score. My ex couldn’t parse this and just assumed my cousin was smarter or more qualified academically. An understatement to say that she second-guessed if she was qualified to be in medicine. Years later, my cousin laughingly confided in me that he had access to all the old exams that were just questions shuffled around through the years. He got them through his campus Indian student group. I confirmed this with some other people I knew in that group, all of who treated it like common knowledge. Changed the way I saw and interacted with people I’ve known my whole life. Certainly changed the way my ex felt about those haunting exam scores. My personal take? Residencies have n spots. The people qualified to succeed in those spots is n * y (where y > 2). It may be that people who cheat to get into a residency were qualified to do the job, but it doesn’t mean they deserved to be there. This can be true in a lot of other positions that require the applicant to jump through different hoops.
  - rbecker 6y ago
    > He got them [old exams] through his campus Indian student group. Only shared with fellow Indians?
    - compscistd 6y ago
      Yep, it was the official Indian student group registered on campus. Nothing wrong with the association itself, but a large subset of it were Bio majors so I’d imagine that’s how many were involved.
      - rtx 6y ago
        Why is studying based on previous years questions cheating. Dont we do the same with white board interviews?
        6y ago
aviraldg 6y ago
Why are you so quick to blame "backwards attitudes" when this behaviour is simply to meant to compensate for discrimination against Asians in college admissions? (https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-many-sins-of-college-admissions https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-many-sins-...) Asians with far better scores are deemed to be less worthy due to "uninteresting personalities" than others far less qualified. I don't think it's difficult to understand why the children of people motivated enough to emigrate for better opportunities would themselves be ambitious and would want to establish themselves with stable, high performing careers (having almost no generational wealth to fall back on.)
- gautamcgoel 6y ago
  I think it's backwards to believe that the measure of your life is how prestigious a college you went to, or how much money you make, especially if these goals lead you to cheat and lie to advance.
  - rtx 6y ago
    How is that any different than what Facebook and Google do. Or infact many of the American companies. Will you call stealing people data American? Or profitng by bombing poor nations. Is being war criminal an American culture?
  - zabardasth 6y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W--KU79Y0DQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W--KU79Y0DQ
  - bollu 6y ago
    > measure of your life is how prestigious a college you went to In my experience, the prestige of a college definitely correlates with how rewarding your time at college is going to be.
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    You had a shitty circle of friends and are now projecting. I know many Indian-Americans who are hard working, creative and NEVER cheated. One doesn't need "Americanized" parents to be a decent person.
OJFord 6y ago
> I was lucky to have very "Americanized" parents who didn't raise me with these backward attitudes. I'm white British and would rather call them different attitudes. (I'll also be the first to joke about 'PC gone mad 'differently abled'' etc. - that's not my point here - it's not out of an abundance of caution or respect for all, I just think, honestly, yeah, why not push your children into something they don't enjoy but is high-paying, professional, and comfortable? There are reasons 'why not', of course, but also 'why'; so it's a different attitude, not 'backward', unless you only mean to say 'out of favour'.)
whitenoice 6y ago
Please. Being a doctor is boring? It is challenging to be a doctor, and it is almost impossible to cheat through the USMLE (US Medical Licensing Exam) process. It is a 3 step process, which includes four tough exams taken at registered centers, which are actively monitored. I'm saying this as a spouse of a physician who has gone through the journey, and the amount of work they put in through their med school, USMLE, and then residency is unfathomable. Seeing someone put 14 hours of work every day to achieve their goal is not boring, rather a representation of their desire to drive, achieve, and excel. Also, with so many Indian doctors, it says a lot about their grit and hard work.
- ukd1 6y ago
  From the outside it does seem boring; a lot of rote learning and not a lot of flexibility once you're out, high risk of getting sick and or sued. 99.99% or more Doctors are not House.
  - whitenoice 6y ago
    To be a doctor is as hands-on as you can be unless you speak of radiology, but that too is fascinating. You spend four years of your life doing hands-on work during the residency (rote learning?). There is an infinite amount of learning in medicine! Even after so many years of research, we do not understand the human body completely. I don't know what is you mean by boring; as a layperson, everything will seem boring unless you put in the effort to learn more about a field. But still, liver transplant, heart transplant, lung transplant, surgeries, anesthesia, diagnosing unknown diseases are not interesting? (flexibility? there are so many fields) I suggest you visit a Level 1 Trauma center close to your home and see what goes on in there. Reality is more brutal than TV in this case. It may be boring to you, and that is ok, but it does not negate the fact that it is a challenging field and demands immense hard work to be one.
- rramadass 6y ago
  Thank You for making clear that the OP has no idea of what he is talking about. Simply because the path to a Doctor/Engineer guarantees you some basic safety net in life is why so many choose it. It does not make them "boring".
imheretolearn 6y ago
>> I was lucky to have very "Americanized" parents who didn't raise me with these backward attitudes. You miss the entire point of the article. You are privileged not only to have Americanized parents, but you are privileged because you are an American. Your world is way better than that of a common Indian student. Most Indian students need a job, just to be able to feed their families. Quoting from the article: "When push comes to shove (which is the permanent state for most Indians), we only care about one thing, survival." When it's about survival, everything else goes out the window. That's one of the points the article is trying to highlight.
- rramadass 6y ago
  Thank You!, Thank YOU!, THANK YOU! This right here is the truth. The article is simply a rant from somebody who has yet to grow up and understand the real world i.e. they are in a privileged position in life. When you have so much competition for limited opportunities, you cannot apply the same yardstick from a different environment. The Fight for Survival is as true of social structures as it is in biological ones. It seems this Indian American has no idea of the sacrifices his parents made in establishing themselves in America and providing him the privileged position from which he pontificates.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    I don’t understand why you seem to imply that half arsing your education is fine if it means you get a job? Why not make the best of it and get a job? Any Indian with access to a computer can potentially be a (much) better hire than the one from the most desired engineering college. In fact, I’d almost have to expect so since they don’t have to waste time on all that signalling. It’s unfortunate that that apparently doesn’t matter to the companies doing the hiring :/
    - imheretolearn 6y ago
      >> I don’t understand why you seem to imply that half arsing your education is fine if it means you get a job? Why not make the best of it and get a job? Quoting from the article: "In middle school children have dreams to become a Pilot in the airforce, or maybe a Police officer, or maybe a Opera Singer ! But by the time of high school, everyone is just either on road to become an Engineer, a Doctor, a Lawyer, a Chartered Accountant …. or a failure. This may seem harsh but that’s how most of the society operates here in India." The problem here is that students are forced by their parents into a field of education they don't even like. How do you expect someone to understand the intricacies of fluid dynamics when they don't give a rat's ass about it. When you give exams on topics you are not even remotely interested in? Therein lies the privilege of being American. When you're a common Indian student, you don't have a choice in choosing your field of study >> Any Indian with access to a computer can potentially be a (much) better hire than the one from the most desired engineering college. This only works well for computer science. What about students who want to become doctors? Do you know that to get a seat in an Indian medical college, a common Indian student will most likely have to pay a "donation" just to get their foot in the door.
hardwaregeek 6y ago
What's weird is how many students work their asses off, get amazing grades, go to top schools...and end up at a big tech company working with people who went to state school and community college. Of course going to a top school makes the application process easier, but only insofar that you clear the resume screen and get some confirmation/credential bias in your favor. Don't get me wrong, it's great that tech companies can have Stanford alongside community college. But honestly it seems a bit of a waste when my classmates who went to Stanford and Harvard end up at Facebook or Google. Truly the best minds of my generation devoted to getting people to click on ads.
- gge 6y ago
  If thats what they choose to work on, they probably weren't the best minds ;)
  - skybrian 6y ago
    How could anyone know? Google is vast and has many kinds of jobs, and so there simply isn't enough information to say. There is cutting-edge research and also pretty boring business app development. Also, some jobs are pretty specialized and not the sort of thing you can get as a generic software engineer.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hairband 6y ago
I am sure you didn't intend for it to be this way but your comment is very arrogant. It seems you are coming from privilege and haven't really interacted with the real world yet. Perhaps you are still in college/ have only had high paying jobs like software engineering. Most people are not looking for high-risk jobs, they want a stable source of income that can enable them to provide a stable living for their family. This is especially true for people in countries like India. There is nothing boring or backwards about that. Especially not to someone who is not privileged. And please do elaborate on why/how a career in medicine boring?
1024core 6y ago
Is there an equivalent of "Uncle Tom" among Indian-Americans? Because you seem to be it.
- dang 6y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting to HN, we'd be grateful.
  - 1024core 6y ago
    It was not a personal attack per se. This person was insulting all Indian-Americans; so it seemed only fair to call him an "Uncle Tom" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom . I am sure you would feel the same way if a person of your group was insulting all of the members of that group.
ghoomketu 6y ago
I'm also an Indian from one of the "top" engineering colleges and what you say is very much true for what I have seen first hand during the 4 year degree course. Unfortunately the reason here is definitely cultural. I was lucky that my parents didn't force me to become an engineer or doctor (though it was by choice) but for majority of my friends since 9th std, it was about getting into IIT and their whole life and their whole parent's world revolve around getting a good job in a top MNC and that's the Indian version of American dream. Unfortunately the competition is fierce and there are 10 candidates for every spot, so you buff, cheat, cut corners and do everything in your power to get ahead. Because if you don't the other person still will and he will take your spot (it's like SEO). There is an amazing web series called Kota factory. If you want to understand the culture it offers some great insights into it in a very entertaining way!
- gautamcgoel 6y ago
  Yes, this culture is exactly what I was talking about.
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    None of me or my friends cheated. You have a shitty circle of friends.
- nexus2045 6y ago
  This is reality... so why is this being downvoted? Too much clashes with the morals of the privileged audience here who mostly grew up in an environment where no cutting corners was needed?
yumraj 6y ago
I might have agreed had the comment been made by an Indian-American comedian, actor, author, journalist, ... someone in liberal arts, from someone with a truly unconventional career path. A PhD from Caltech in machine learning and optimization doesn't sound very different from being a doctor if we're speaking of conventional (read: boring) career paths
- boruto 6y ago
  Well he has Americanized superior parents with ultimate forward looking attitude. So he chose the highly unconventional path of PhD in STEM. After finishing it he would chose uncustomary and also forward looking job at FAANG. While the Untermenschen from his school mates of indian origin chose to become doctors or did not persue the much forward looking career in TE.
bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
> I was lucky to have very "Americanized" parents who didn't raise me with these backward attitudes. Same here. As I love to remind people who poo-poo "wHitE sUpRemAcy": white supremacy is diverse and inclusive.
mav3rick 6y ago
You just stereotyped a country + immigrants to the tune of billions. I'm sick of minorities being judged as a group and "Americans" being treated as individuals. Do you really think 90% of Americans doing CS are not doing because of an easy FAANG job ? That they had some deep passion for CS since long ?

Waterluvian 6y ago

Does cheating work or are there a bunch of horrible doctors out there? How did they not get filtered out during residency?

meritganset 6y ago
To answer your first two questions: yes and yes.
gautamcgoel 6y ago
I'm talking about cheating in high school. It worked in terms of college admissions (presumably these students cheated in college to get into med school, but I can't speak to that with certainty).
- saagarjha 6y ago
  This is an American high school, right? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone blatantly cheat their way through it (though I’m well aware of “volunteering” and “science projects”); where did you attend?
  - erdos4d 6y ago
    I tutored math in university, had many freshmen who straight up couldn't plug a number into a function and evaluate. They cheated the whole way through and nobody did anything to stop them. I'm sorry to say this, but US high school is a real joke in a lot of places.
searchableguy 6y ago
Relevant WHO report: https://www.who.int/hrh/resources/16058health_workforce_India.pdf https://www.who.int/hrh/resources/16058health_workforce_Indi... But I am not sure about the accuracy. There are other reports with similar or lower numbers. Wildly different experience depending on the state and part (South is good in comparison to North). There is a shortage of doctors despite everyone aiming for a medical degree. It is worse in rural areas so there are less qualified people treating others. Pseudoscience and pseudomedicine is a big industry too. Actors, news channels, babas, politicians, etc all encourage it. The most recent example of above is baba ram dev's covid cure: https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/aug/05/covid-19-immunity-booster-coronil-demand-at-10-lakh-packs-a-day-baba-ramdev-2179585.html https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/aug/05/covid-19... He promoted his pseudoscience on multiple news channels as a cure for covid. Ayush ministry (which is a branch of government to regulate/approve pseudomedicine) stopped him on some advertising basis so he rebranded the thing to covid immunity booster.
compscistd 6y ago
Highly anecdotal, but my ex at the time (white), bio major, had a real tough time studying for midterms and finals in undergrad. Meanwhile, my cousin (Indian) in the same class was breezing through the exams, partying more than me (a liberal arts major!), generally screwing around and somehow consistently ended up with a better score. My ex couldn’t parse this and just assumed my cousin was smarter or more qualified academically. An understatement to say that she second-guessed if she was qualified to be in medicine. Years later, my cousin laughingly confided in me that he had access to all the old exams that were just questions shuffled around through the years. He got them through his campus Indian student group. I confirmed this with some other people I knew in that group, all of who treated it like common knowledge. Changed the way I saw and interacted with people I’ve known my whole life. Certainly changed the way my ex felt about those haunting exam scores. My personal take? Residencies have n spots. The people qualified to succeed in those spots is n * y (where y > 2). It may be that people who cheat to get into a residency were qualified to do the job, but it doesn’t mean they deserved to be there. This can be true in a lot of other positions that require the applicant to jump through different hoops.
- rbecker 6y ago
  > He got them [old exams] through his campus Indian student group. Only shared with fellow Indians?
  - compscistd 6y ago
    Yep, it was the official Indian student group registered on campus. Nothing wrong with the association itself, but a large subset of it were Bio majors so I’d imagine that’s how many were involved.
    - rtx 6y ago
      Why is studying based on previous years questions cheating. Dont we do the same with white board interviews?
      - 6y ago

aviraldg 6y ago

Why are you so quick to blame "backwards attitudes" when this behaviour is simply to meant to compensate for discrimination against Asians in college admissions? (https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-many-sins-of-college-admissions https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-many-sins-...) Asians with far better scores are deemed to be less worthy due to "uninteresting personalities" than others far less qualified. I don't think it's difficult to understand why the children of people motivated enough to emigrate for better opportunities would themselves be ambitious and would want to establish themselves with stable, high performing careers (having almost no generational wealth to fall back on.)

gautamcgoel 6y ago
I think it's backwards to believe that the measure of your life is how prestigious a college you went to, or how much money you make, especially if these goals lead you to cheat and lie to advance.
- rtx 6y ago
  How is that any different than what Facebook and Google do. Or infact many of the American companies. Will you call stealing people data American? Or profitng by bombing poor nations. Is being war criminal an American culture?
- zabardasth 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W--KU79Y0DQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W--KU79Y0DQ
- bollu 6y ago
  > measure of your life is how prestigious a college you went to In my experience, the prestige of a college definitely correlates with how rewarding your time at college is going to be.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  You had a shitty circle of friends and are now projecting. I know many Indian-Americans who are hard working, creative and NEVER cheated. One doesn't need "Americanized" parents to be a decent person.

OJFord 6y ago

> I was lucky to have very "Americanized" parents who didn't raise me with these backward attitudes. I'm white British and would rather call them different attitudes. (I'll also be the first to joke about 'PC gone mad 'differently abled'' etc. - that's not my point here - it's not out of an abundance of caution or respect for all, I just think, honestly, yeah, why not push your children into something they don't enjoy but is high-paying, professional, and comfortable? There are reasons 'why not', of course, but also 'why'; so it's a different attitude, not 'backward', unless you only mean to say 'out of favour'.)

whitenoice 6y ago

Please. Being a doctor is boring? It is challenging to be a doctor, and it is almost impossible to cheat through the USMLE (US Medical Licensing Exam) process. It is a 3 step process, which includes four tough exams taken at registered centers, which are actively monitored. I'm saying this as a spouse of a physician who has gone through the journey, and the amount of work they put in through their med school, USMLE, and then residency is unfathomable. Seeing someone put 14 hours of work every day to achieve their goal is not boring, rather a representation of their desire to drive, achieve, and excel. Also, with so many Indian doctors, it says a lot about their grit and hard work.

ukd1 6y ago
From the outside it does seem boring; a lot of rote learning and not a lot of flexibility once you're out, high risk of getting sick and or sued. 99.99% or more Doctors are not House.
- whitenoice 6y ago
  To be a doctor is as hands-on as you can be unless you speak of radiology, but that too is fascinating. You spend four years of your life doing hands-on work during the residency (rote learning?). There is an infinite amount of learning in medicine! Even after so many years of research, we do not understand the human body completely. I don't know what is you mean by boring; as a layperson, everything will seem boring unless you put in the effort to learn more about a field. But still, liver transplant, heart transplant, lung transplant, surgeries, anesthesia, diagnosing unknown diseases are not interesting? (flexibility? there are so many fields) I suggest you visit a Level 1 Trauma center close to your home and see what goes on in there. Reality is more brutal than TV in this case. It may be boring to you, and that is ok, but it does not negate the fact that it is a challenging field and demands immense hard work to be one.
rramadass 6y ago
Thank You for making clear that the OP has no idea of what he is talking about. Simply because the path to a Doctor/Engineer guarantees you some basic safety net in life is why so many choose it. It does not make them "boring".

imheretolearn 6y ago

>> I was lucky to have very "Americanized" parents who didn't raise me with these backward attitudes. You miss the entire point of the article. You are privileged not only to have Americanized parents, but you are privileged because you are an American. Your world is way better than that of a common Indian student. Most Indian students need a job, just to be able to feed their families. Quoting from the article: "When push comes to shove (which is the permanent state for most Indians), we only care about one thing, survival." When it's about survival, everything else goes out the window. That's one of the points the article is trying to highlight.

rramadass 6y ago
Thank You!, Thank YOU!, THANK YOU! This right here is the truth. The article is simply a rant from somebody who has yet to grow up and understand the real world i.e. they are in a privileged position in life. When you have so much competition for limited opportunities, you cannot apply the same yardstick from a different environment. The Fight for Survival is as true of social structures as it is in biological ones. It seems this Indian American has no idea of the sacrifices his parents made in establishing themselves in America and providing him the privileged position from which he pontificates.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  I don’t understand why you seem to imply that half arsing your education is fine if it means you get a job? Why not make the best of it and get a job? Any Indian with access to a computer can potentially be a (much) better hire than the one from the most desired engineering college. In fact, I’d almost have to expect so since they don’t have to waste time on all that signalling. It’s unfortunate that that apparently doesn’t matter to the companies doing the hiring :/
  - imheretolearn 6y ago
    >> I don’t understand why you seem to imply that half arsing your education is fine if it means you get a job? Why not make the best of it and get a job? Quoting from the article: "In middle school children have dreams to become a Pilot in the airforce, or maybe a Police officer, or maybe a Opera Singer ! But by the time of high school, everyone is just either on road to become an Engineer, a Doctor, a Lawyer, a Chartered Accountant …. or a failure. This may seem harsh but that’s how most of the society operates here in India." The problem here is that students are forced by their parents into a field of education they don't even like. How do you expect someone to understand the intricacies of fluid dynamics when they don't give a rat's ass about it. When you give exams on topics you are not even remotely interested in? Therein lies the privilege of being American. When you're a common Indian student, you don't have a choice in choosing your field of study >> Any Indian with access to a computer can potentially be a (much) better hire than the one from the most desired engineering college. This only works well for computer science. What about students who want to become doctors? Do you know that to get a seat in an Indian medical college, a common Indian student will most likely have to pay a "donation" just to get their foot in the door.

hardwaregeek 6y ago

What's weird is how many students work their asses off, get amazing grades, go to top schools...and end up at a big tech company working with people who went to state school and community college. Of course going to a top school makes the application process easier, but only insofar that you clear the resume screen and get some confirmation/credential bias in your favor. Don't get me wrong, it's great that tech companies can have Stanford alongside community college. But honestly it seems a bit of a waste when my classmates who went to Stanford and Harvard end up at Facebook or Google. Truly the best minds of my generation devoted to getting people to click on ads.

gge 6y ago
If thats what they choose to work on, they probably weren't the best minds ;)
- skybrian 6y ago
  How could anyone know? Google is vast and has many kinds of jobs, and so there simply isn't enough information to say. There is cutting-edge research and also pretty boring business app development. Also, some jobs are pretty specialized and not the sort of thing you can get as a generic software engineer.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hairband 6y ago

I am sure you didn't intend for it to be this way but your comment is very arrogant. It seems you are coming from privilege and haven't really interacted with the real world yet. Perhaps you are still in college/ have only had high paying jobs like software engineering. Most people are not looking for high-risk jobs, they want a stable source of income that can enable them to provide a stable living for their family. This is especially true for people in countries like India. There is nothing boring or backwards about that. Especially not to someone who is not privileged. And please do elaborate on why/how a career in medicine boring?

1024core 6y ago

Is there an equivalent of "Uncle Tom" among Indian-Americans? Because you seem to be it.

dang 6y ago
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting to HN, we'd be grateful.
- 1024core 6y ago
  It was not a personal attack per se. This person was insulting all Indian-Americans; so it seemed only fair to call him an "Uncle Tom" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom . I am sure you would feel the same way if a person of your group was insulting all of the members of that group.

ghoomketu 6y ago

I'm also an Indian from one of the "top" engineering colleges and what you say is very much true for what I have seen first hand during the 4 year degree course. Unfortunately the reason here is definitely cultural. I was lucky that my parents didn't force me to become an engineer or doctor (though it was by choice) but for majority of my friends since 9th std, it was about getting into IIT and their whole life and their whole parent's world revolve around getting a good job in a top MNC and that's the Indian version of American dream. Unfortunately the competition is fierce and there are 10 candidates for every spot, so you buff, cheat, cut corners and do everything in your power to get ahead. Because if you don't the other person still will and he will take your spot (it's like SEO). There is an amazing web series called Kota factory. If you want to understand the culture it offers some great insights into it in a very entertaining way!

gautamcgoel 6y ago
Yes, this culture is exactly what I was talking about.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  None of me or my friends cheated. You have a shitty circle of friends.
nexus2045 6y ago
This is reality... so why is this being downvoted? Too much clashes with the morals of the privileged audience here who mostly grew up in an environment where no cutting corners was needed?

yumraj 6y ago

I might have agreed had the comment been made by an Indian-American comedian, actor, author, journalist, ... someone in liberal arts, from someone with a truly unconventional career path. A PhD from Caltech in machine learning and optimization doesn't sound very different from being a doctor if we're speaking of conventional (read: boring) career paths

boruto 6y ago
Well he has Americanized superior parents with ultimate forward looking attitude. So he chose the highly unconventional path of PhD in STEM. After finishing it he would chose uncustomary and also forward looking job at FAANG. While the Untermenschen from his school mates of indian origin chose to become doctors or did not persue the much forward looking career in TE.

bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago

> I was lucky to have very "Americanized" parents who didn't raise me with these backward attitudes. Same here. As I love to remind people who poo-poo "wHitE sUpRemAcy": white supremacy is diverse and inclusive.

mav3rick 6y ago

You just stereotyped a country + immigrants to the tune of billions. I'm sick of minorities being judged as a group and "Americans" being treated as individuals. Do you really think 90% of Americans doing CS are not doing because of an easy FAANG job ? That they had some deep passion for CS since long ?