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I'm not making a racist judgement here. There are good and bad developers of all races and from all countries! To be conservative in my financial estimates, I

I'm not making a racist judgement here. There are good and bad developers of all races and from all countries! To be conservative in my financial estimates, I made the assumption that chess.com's technical workforce is mostly made up of less accomplished developers, and, orthogonally, of those in areas with a low cost of living. If I said "bottom-of-the-barrel Silicon Valley devs", I would have estimated their costs 3x higher, but I wouldn't have become racist against Californians.

yunohn 5y ago
- lukevp 5y ago
  The phrase you’re focusing on is taken out of the larger context, which was estimating the lower possible bound of expenditure on staffing. Bottom of the barrel means the lowest quality / cheapest of a given option, which in this case would be the lowest-bidding team of engineers from a low cost of living country, and the combo of those 2 often is India. It’s a reference to the way middle managers think about cost reduction and not the OP’s feeling about Indians.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    Yes, I understand English and semantics. I still disagree with the derogatory phrasing. The intent could've been phrased in innumerable alternative ways, with various other words and idioms and phrases.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      Pray, give us an example? If you switch ‘Indian’ devs out for ‘third-world’, you are just expanding the scope of your ‘racism’. People keep turning up everywhere lately getting offended over every little thing.
      - yunohn 5y ago
    - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
      Please continue with the worst interpretation possible. It makes it easy for moderators to cue on those that are not adhering to HN rules.
- _coveredInBees 5y ago
  Gotta love HN down voting this comment that gets to the crux of the problem in OP's original comment. Just goes to highlight the subconscious biases that a lot of predominantly Western devs have when they are totally cool with throwing around language like that without realizing why or how it is problematic. Some examples of phrasing that would have worked just as well: - Low-cost developers - Unskilled, inexpensive developers But that doesn't quite have the ring of some good ol' casual racism/stereotyping that everyone can pile on I suppose.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    > - Unskilled, inexpensive developers Would have gotten exactly the same backlash if he said "unskilled inexpensive Indian developers". You just show here how unreasonable you are. The developers being stationed in India is very important for the comment, since then you pay much less for them, and then you pick the cheapest among the developers stationed in India, hence "bottom of the barrel Indian developers". There is no racism at all embedded in that statement. > But that doesn't quite have the ring of some good ol' casual racism/stereotyping that everyone can pile on I suppose. What? "Bottom of the barrel" has no racial connotations at all, you can use it in any scenario.
    - KittenInABox 5y ago
      "Bottom of the barrel devs on the cheap" capture what you want to say without pointing to a specific geographic area or ethnic group, fwiw.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        No it doesn't. When you say "bottom of the barrel devs on the cheap" people would assume you pay American prices, so $70k a year or so. Location matters a lot. And when making estimates you need a real value, so taking a real location where we know what cheap developers costs helps making the estimate more realistic.
        5y ago
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  From experience, lots of Indian IT firms are far worse than any other company I’ve worked with. Wipro and Infosys. Criticizing Indian developers in these IT shops is simply the truth. So you can weasel your way about political correctness or just simply admit to the reality. Doesn't mean that Indian developers are bad. Quite the opposite probably - I have several Indian friends and they know how these IT firms are and they openly criticize them. That said, I would also call out Chinese suppliers and American food. That’s not racist. Has not a shred of racism. Disappointing to see racism accusations on HN. Every culture has its pros and cons. They’re not some sanctity that is immune to any sort of criticism. Most people here have double standards - criticizing American culture!? No problem. Encouraged. You know why this wokeness is a problem? Next time someone in your company wants to hire a terrible Indian IT firm, people will accuse you for being racist when you oppose this decision. It has serious implications on day-to-day business, and I would extrapolate to the society in general.
  - bigtex 5y ago
    Very well said and sad to see it being downvoted.
throwaway413 5y ago
Your analogy does not hold water because there is not an existing stigma you’d be playing into if you had said that. Lack of sensitivity towards racism doesn’t excuse you from being racist. And it’s ok. Mistakes happen. I think all anyone is looking for here instead of excuses is just a “didn’t realize my wording there, apologies,” so that we may all give the burden of the doubt and move on with our lives. Instead, by denying acknowledgement, it just drives the wedge further.
docfort 5y ago
I think you meant to say “cheapest” developers. Forget about location. Cheapest in the world. Obviously, the managers need to be able to interact with them reasonably well, so this is a constraint that likely raises the costs. Using this article [1] mining information from payscale.com, I found that the lowest hourly rate for a junior developer can be found in Alexandria, Egypt for about a dollar an hour. Maybe the article is wrong, but I’d love to see data here. Objectively, India has improved relative to other countries, so we should expect that some locales in Africa could take the “lowest cost dev” title by this point. I think you can avoid the racist appearance of your original comment by stating the actual objective, the resolution of which changes over time. [1] https://devoxsoftware.com/blog/average-software-developer-hourly-rate/ https://devoxsoftware.com/blog/average-software-developer-ho...

yunohn 5y ago

lukevp 5y ago
The phrase you’re focusing on is taken out of the larger context, which was estimating the lower possible bound of expenditure on staffing. Bottom of the barrel means the lowest quality / cheapest of a given option, which in this case would be the lowest-bidding team of engineers from a low cost of living country, and the combo of those 2 often is India. It’s a reference to the way middle managers think about cost reduction and not the OP’s feeling about Indians.
- yunohn 5y ago
  Yes, I understand English and semantics. I still disagree with the derogatory phrasing. The intent could've been phrased in innumerable alternative ways, with various other words and idioms and phrases.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Pray, give us an example? If you switch ‘Indian’ devs out for ‘third-world’, you are just expanding the scope of your ‘racism’. People keep turning up everywhere lately getting offended over every little thing.
    - yunohn 5y ago
  - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
    Please continue with the worst interpretation possible. It makes it easy for moderators to cue on those that are not adhering to HN rules.
_coveredInBees 5y ago
Gotta love HN down voting this comment that gets to the crux of the problem in OP's original comment. Just goes to highlight the subconscious biases that a lot of predominantly Western devs have when they are totally cool with throwing around language like that without realizing why or how it is problematic. Some examples of phrasing that would have worked just as well: - Low-cost developers - Unskilled, inexpensive developers But that doesn't quite have the ring of some good ol' casual racism/stereotyping that everyone can pile on I suppose.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > - Unskilled, inexpensive developers Would have gotten exactly the same backlash if he said "unskilled inexpensive Indian developers". You just show here how unreasonable you are. The developers being stationed in India is very important for the comment, since then you pay much less for them, and then you pick the cheapest among the developers stationed in India, hence "bottom of the barrel Indian developers". There is no racism at all embedded in that statement. > But that doesn't quite have the ring of some good ol' casual racism/stereotyping that everyone can pile on I suppose. What? "Bottom of the barrel" has no racial connotations at all, you can use it in any scenario.
  - KittenInABox 5y ago
    "Bottom of the barrel devs on the cheap" capture what you want to say without pointing to a specific geographic area or ethnic group, fwiw.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      No it doesn't. When you say "bottom of the barrel devs on the cheap" people would assume you pay American prices, so $70k a year or so. Location matters a lot. And when making estimates you need a real value, so taking a real location where we know what cheap developers costs helps making the estimate more realistic.
      - 5y ago
systemvoltage 5y ago
From experience, lots of Indian IT firms are far worse than any other company I’ve worked with. Wipro and Infosys. Criticizing Indian developers in these IT shops is simply the truth. So you can weasel your way about political correctness or just simply admit to the reality. Doesn't mean that Indian developers are bad. Quite the opposite probably - I have several Indian friends and they know how these IT firms are and they openly criticize them. That said, I would also call out Chinese suppliers and American food. That’s not racist. Has not a shred of racism. Disappointing to see racism accusations on HN. Every culture has its pros and cons. They’re not some sanctity that is immune to any sort of criticism. Most people here have double standards - criticizing American culture!? No problem. Encouraged. You know why this wokeness is a problem? Next time someone in your company wants to hire a terrible Indian IT firm, people will accuse you for being racist when you oppose this decision. It has serious implications on day-to-day business, and I would extrapolate to the society in general.
- bigtex 5y ago
  Very well said and sad to see it being downvoted.

throwaway413 5y ago

Your analogy does not hold water because there is not an existing stigma you’d be playing into if you had said that. Lack of sensitivity towards racism doesn’t excuse you from being racist. And it’s ok. Mistakes happen. I think all anyone is looking for here instead of excuses is just a “didn’t realize my wording there, apologies,” so that we may all give the burden of the doubt and move on with our lives. Instead, by denying acknowledgement, it just drives the wedge further.

docfort 5y ago

I think you meant to say “cheapest” developers. Forget about location. Cheapest in the world. Obviously, the managers need to be able to interact with them reasonably well, so this is a constraint that likely raises the costs. Using this article [1] mining information from payscale.com, I found that the lowest hourly rate for a junior developer can be found in Alexandria, Egypt for about a dollar an hour. Maybe the article is wrong, but I’d love to see data here. Objectively, India has improved relative to other countries, so we should expect that some locales in Africa could take the “lowest cost dev” title by this point. I think you can avoid the racist appearance of your original comment by stating the actual objective, the resolution of which changes over time. [1] https://devoxsoftware.com/blog/average-software-developer-hourly-rate/ https://devoxsoftware.com/blog/average-software-developer-ho...