36 ms·

Google’s caste-bias problem

212 points by frb 4y ago

kthejoker2 4y ago
Sidebar: Anecdotes and personal experiences aren't sufficient evidence to make conclusions about DEI efforts and whether discrimination is occurring, where, to what extent, for or against whom, etc. The number of people in this HN thread without the critical thinking skills to understand that is astounding.
mitchbob 4y ago
Archived: https://archive.ph/bAsma https://archive.ph/bAsma
anovikov 4y ago
Maybe i'm being ignorant, but why don't you just not work for the company that has few or no Indians? Because other nations of course don't know about which last name means which caste or would ever care about it, you won't be a subject for discrimination. And besides, these places will probably pay better anyway.
- Karawebnetwork 4y ago
  Because they are American citizens and deserve the same opportunities as everyone.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
  - xbar 4y ago
    Because they are employees of American companies and they deserve the same opportunities as every other employee.
    - Karawebnetwork 4y ago
      Better wording, thank you. This includes all workers as not all workers are citizens.
      - anovikov 4y ago
        But discrimination comes from people, not companies. Also, indeed, why not work in places where there are no other Indians? It's not like with black people: no one who's not from India may have a slightest idea of a caste to discriminate based on it. AND it will also mean making more money.
        Karawebnetwork 4y ago
        It's up to the companies to make sure that their employees are not experiencing duress at the workplace.
- throwaway6734 4y ago
  because this is an American company and American cultural norms should be expected
- becquerel 4y ago
  People should not have to curtail their life choices in order to bow to unjust systems or experiences.
- hobabaObama 4y ago
  May be it should be the other way around. If they have problems to work with lower caste people, they should change their company.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  If you don't want to experience Racism just don't live near Racists. Lol what?
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I'm all for acknowledging my ignorance and charging forward with a bad idea in technical situations (if nothing else it gives somebody more experienced something to tee up on), but generally I try to avoid it on discrimination issues.
PaulHoule 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- vehemenz 4y ago
  Doubtful. It's more to do with population density, climate, and concentration of services.
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  Aren't most of the absurdly rich people in California white people? To me it seems like Asians in SF as a race are more in a middle to upper middle "professional" class, hardly the group of people to fix very hard social issues such as homelessness.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    To the contrary. The upper middle class is the group with the most money and most power to change things. There’s not enough absurdly rich people to change voting patterns, and while they’re individually very rich in the aggregate they’re not a large enough tax base to pay for social programs.
- nelblu 4y ago
  Eastern religious actually talk a lot about material pleasures and how they are harmful. Both Buddhism and Hinduism are very much against "showing off" or "accumulating wealth". In fact, Buddhism clearly says - "Desire is the root cause of all sufferings". That said, most immigrants from Asia are used to seeing poverty and homelessness everywhere, so it probably just feels like the extension of that in the west. Also Hindu text talks about - कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥ २-४७ - which literally means you only have right to perform your duty (karma) you have no right to expect the fruit of your duty (karma). This whole bastardised definition of "karma" doesn't fit with the values that I was brought up with. (Disclaimer: I grew up Hindu in India, but I am no longer religious, I would identify myself as atheist/agnostic/rationalist/freethinker.)
shultays 4y ago
Why did you want to join Google, and what did you feel about the place when you did? tanuja gupta: I started working at Google in 2011. I had been working as a program manager in engineering and software for about a decade, but Google was top of the top. Of course you want a career at a great company. That was a product that I used day in and day out. It was a great opportunity Heh, I was expecting an emotional lie/response such as "I want to change the world" but got surprised. I appreciate her honesty
- kome 4y ago
  i would be surprised of the contrary
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
What people dont realize is that leetcode problem style testing is a very eastern/asian approach to hiring. Memorization for a test with a large body of problems ends up selecting for people that grew up in those cultures....
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
isoprophlex 4y ago
As someone doing management in a company that hires many Indian workers, both in on-shore and off-shore teams, this is a highly relevant topic for me. I'm a native western european so I'm likely blind to some extend for these issues. Like the article says, this sounds like harmful class-ism that silences or disadvantages specific groups, but not in an "obviously" racist manner based on skin color. Anyone care to share some real life experience? Was this a problem in your workplace? How did you detect this was going on, at all?
- bko 4y ago
  Isn't being blind to caste distinctions the optimal way to avoid discrimination? It's like a blind audition.
  - powerhour 4y ago
    Maybe if you and your peers and all of the higher-ups are equally blind, ya. Otherwise your blindness might prevent you from seeing what's going on.
  - isoprophlex 4y ago
    Yeah, sure! I however want to understand if something untowards is happening between team members. I might be blind, others amongst eachother might not necessarily be.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - cheeze 4y ago
    Yes and no. It's great to not have that inherent bias, but it's important to be able to see where the bias exists.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    Somehow in $current_year, blind auditions are also racist: https://web.archive.org/web/20220725001219/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220725001219/https://www.nytim...
elefanten 4y ago
[flagged]
AuthorizedHelp 4y ago
I always find it funny how there are massive east asian only groups in all major corporate entities. This is not diversity, this is racism. Nice work FANG.
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  and they get there through working their ass off but that is totally off topic as far as what op was asking.
  - xbar 4y ago
    Do they? Or do they arrive due to denial of opportunity for equally or greater hard working folks?
  - deepdriver 4y ago
    Or in the case of [big tech company] interns, getting matched to a team purely for being Chinese. For a while there was a big Mandarin-only mailing list that coordinated this type of ingroup selection within [big tech company]. HR found out and shut it down. It was unclear whether those running the list realized what they were doing was highly illegal. If they had just waited a few years it would still be illegal, but also the open practice of nearly every big hiring department. "We especially encourage AAPI, BIPOC, neurodiverse, nonbinary and LGBTIA+ candidates to apply." That's quoted nearly word-for-word from job listings I'm reviewing. Wonder what that means for my application, as someone who falls outside those boxes and didn't go to an Ivy. Really gets me thinking about politics.
    - tomp 4y ago
      Why don’t you fit in any of those groups? You could easily declare yourself “mildly autistic” and “agender” and become neurodiverse and queer.
  - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    Which is what every entrenched group of racists claims is the reason for their control over an entity. The 'other' is lazy and we're hard workers. Nope, no bigotry involved, just our innate superiority over other groups.
John23832 4y ago
(Outside looking in perspective. I am not Indian.) When I worked as a software engineer are capital one earlier in my career, thus was a very noticeable trend. You had entire teams/groups (and to some extent geographical regions given the way the capital one workforce was split between Richmond Virginia, McLean Virginia, and NYC) where particular castes grouped together. It became particularly acute when you took into account who was on visa/sponsored and who was not.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
  Saw this at American Express. In many cases, VPs and Directors were actually cousins or even siblings. This was a decade ago. Fast forward to now, and they are at the top of many NYC banks running IT divisions, the same group that worked together so many years ago. Theres an invisible network in many large corporations and none of the jobs are available to employees of those corporations
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    It seems like you are describing the norm. The prime advice for everyone is networking, networking, networking, isn’t it? And it’s not what you know, but who you know. Going to the right schools to be able to make the right friends, etc.
    - ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
      No I'm saying a group of relatives from India methodically only hire eachother and use vicious politics to climb the ladder in american corporations. I watched it occur over a decade and still see the hiring updates on LinkedIn, "I am proud to announce we have hired XYZ from other big corp as the new head of data and governance."
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - hadlock 4y ago
Karawebnetwork 4y ago
Previous thread on a similar topic (2022): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 And another (2020): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 --- One good resource (imo as an outsider) from the recent one is this: "As a Dalit myself, I wrote a Dalit 101 for non Indian audience. https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101 https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101" by user thelit (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595663)
- dang 4y ago
  Yes. Related: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 - June 2022 (946 comments) Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 - March 2022 (543 comments) India’s tech sector reinforces old caste divides - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 - Jan 2022 (5 comments) The Casteism I See in America and American Tech Companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 - Nov 2021 (5 comments) How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March 2021 (195 comments) Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley's richest tech companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct 2020 (322 comments) India’s engineers have thrived in the tech industry. So has its caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 - Oct 2020 (6 comments) How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 - Sept 2020 (47 comments) Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 comments) Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 - Aug 2020 (14 comments) California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 - July 2020 (56 comments) California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592 comments) Ask HN: There is caste system in the Silicon Valley? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 - Feb 2017 (6 comments)
_fat_santa 4y ago
I don't know why Google (or really all the tech companies in SV) aren't taking this far more seriously. I feel like it opens them up to lawsuits and with the weight they hold, a company like Google can easily institute a zero tolerance policy against it. Send a message that if you do this, you're getting kicked to the curb.
- dcolkitt 4y ago
  Caste is not a protected class in US employment law. Arguably there might be a basis for a suit if you could show that it reasonably projects onto an existing protected class, but it's not clear to me that you could.
  - chadash 4y ago
    Not to say that this is authoritative, but an article in the Harvard Law Review argues that "caste discrimination is a type of racial discrimination, religious discrimination, and national origin discrimination — all covered under Title VII". Nonetheless, my hunch is that legal or not legal, this kind of discrimination would be extremely unpalatable to most Americans across the political spectrum. https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/06/title-vii-and-caste-discrimination/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/06/title-vii-and-caste-dis...
  - elil17 4y ago
    An ongoing lawsuit against Cisco claims that caste discrimination is a form of national origin discrimination. Cisco's attempts to throw out the lawsuit on the grounds that caste discrimination isn't illegal were unsuccessful. There's a good shot that a judge will rule that caste discrimination is covered by national origin discrimination.
    - encryptluks2 4y ago
      I'm optimistic but that could also open the door to many more lawsuits where someone felt prejudiced because of what side of town they grew up on or what state they are from.
- 4y ago
hobabaObama 4y ago
Caste based discrimination is so subtle, that it is extremely hard to detect by Non-Indians Why shouldnt the talk be allowed? What harm could it do to raise awareness about this very practical issue that Dalits face day in and day out for centuries. Google employees who had this talks cancelled are ultimate COWARDS and should be ashamed of themselves.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bko 4y ago
> If you replace the denial of caste discrimination with the denial of the Holocaust or something like that, it instantly clicks where other people start to realize, “Oh, something’s wrong if people are denying this.” Seems a bit extreme. Even questioning whether caste discrimination in the US or Google is a large problem is enough to get you lumped into Holocaust denial territory. > People can absolutely discriminate based on caste by essentially denying it and not wanting to learn about it. What makes discrimination bad is the arbitrary nature. If you don't know the arbitrary classifications of groups, and you're making decisions on something tangible that presumably affects the person's skill set, then is it discrimination if it correlates with some arbitrary distinction you're not aware of?
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  Sounds like you are a Brahmin mad about Dalits messing with your status. >If you don't know the arbitrary classifications of groups, and you're making decisions on something tangible that presumably affects the person's skill set, then is it discrimination if it correlates with some arbitrary distinction you're not aware of? The problem was clearly stated to be discrimination from other Indians against lower class Indians, NOT white managers unknowingly discriminating against low class Indians.
  - bko 4y ago
    > Sounds like you are a Brahmin mad about Dalits messing with your status. I don't know what these two are and I'm fairly certain I don't belong to either one of them. The efforts from the article made it sound like its an education effort. Presumably the parties discriminating are very much aware of the class distinction so education might not be the right call, more enforcement of existing anti-discrimination policies. Or throw the decisions to unbiased third parties.
AcerbicZero 4y ago
I'm pretty sure the modern world has a Caste problem - Meritocracy and castes just don't go together and it's pretty obvious to me which of those two I'd prefer for myself.
- pictureofabear 4y ago
  No, castes are primarily a phenomenon from the Indian subcontinent and surrounding areas. It is becoming a larger problem in the world due to Indian emigration.
- deleted 4y ago
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40acres 4y ago
How would a non Indian person even tell? Is it really all in the last name? I've worked with a fair amount of Indian folks with a wide variety of names - how would you even go about determining someone's caste? Based on this article it sounds like most people who end up in Big Tech will be upper caste.
- known 4y ago
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  Well most people that immigrate not trough the south border or diversity visa are usually middle class or up in their country of origin. The easiest way to get to live in the US is to have money. The southern border is the new ellis island trough which the great unwashed can enter.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Assuming caste maps to socioeconomic status, the situation is the same for Indians and non Indians around the world.
- nojito 4y ago
  It’s done through seemingly simple questions. Usually dealing with what city they are from, what city are your parents from, are you vegetarian, are you having dessert? I've never experienced or seen the thread searching. Larger person grabs your shoulder to see if the thread is there. But that wouldn't surprise me at all.
  - 40acres 4y ago
    This is interesting. I believe vegetarianism is higher caste but dessert is a tricky one.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
vsr_pg 4y ago
I take no position on the broader issue of the article, but I was shocked to see that Isaac Chotiner (a repeat India-related article writer at New Yorker) failed to mention that Narendra Modi is an OBC in the context of describing the BJP's caste base. Truly, an egregious oversight and one that misleads readers.
- metadaemon 4y ago
  What do OBC and BJP stand for?
  - mtalantikite 4y ago
    OBC: "Other backward class" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class BJP: Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the right wing Hindu nationalist party that is in power in India (of which Modi is a part of) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatiya_Janata_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatiya_Janata_Party
  - seventyheads 4y ago
    OBC - Other Backward Class [1] BJP - Bharatiya Janata Party (the current ruling political party of India) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class
  - adharmad 4y ago
    OBC stands for "Other backward classes". It is a caste classification created by the Indian government based on certain criteria of people who are economically/educationally backward but who do not fall under the main backward class group (Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes - SC/ST).
- 1sembiyan 4y ago
  He also says > “The right-wing Hindu movement in India has historically not been associated with people from underprivileged castes, and those people have generally been less supportive of the movement“ My understanding is that BJP has come to power under an OBC wave, both in UP in 2022, and in the North 2019.
hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
Here’s my take: It seems an increasing disbelief in politics and democracy has moved these discussions from public forums to private companies. This is problematic, as it’s not in a private company interest to promote discussion (even if it’s pretending to do so, for PR or legal reasons), neither is it a power equilibrium since a company can just fire you at will.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > not in a private company interest to promote discussion Isn't it in a company's interest to nurture an environment where everyone they hire can thrive?
flak48 4y ago
From what I understood, the former Google employee being interviewed here is discussing the problem of not being allowed to discuss 'caste discrimination in India', eg. during Uttar Pradesh elections - and in companies like Cisco. They seem to focus on this blanket ban against discussing this issue at Google, as the discriminatory act - rather than alleging that actual caste discrimination is being perpetrated at Google (for the most part). They do however seem to point to two examples of rumoured alleged casteism at Google (I think): "I think the Cisco case is probably the most publicly known example—is that, within a team, when you’ve got people who are caste privileged and caste oppressed, the people who are caste oppressed start to be given inferior assignments, get treated differently, left out of meetings, which are certainly things that I heard from Google employees within the company. " "Asking things like “What’s your last name? I’m not familiar with it.” Then, when the manager hears that last name, they’re, like, “Oh, so you’re from this caste—no wonder you have these leadership skills.” Things like that. And somebody else in the room is, like, “What the hell?” It’s those different types of experiences that I’ve seen or that have been shared with me that show that caste discrimination is happening in the workplace. By the tone of the article/employee I'm confused whether the employee is discussing hearsay based on examples of how discrimination could be occuring at Google - based on what they read about stuff at Cisco or elsewhere (perhaps with the intention of explaining why such issues could be relevant to discuss at Google) - or if they actually met Google employees facing these issues. I wonder if the journalist themselves are trying to intentionally conflate the issues of 1) actual caste discrimination possibly taking place and 2) not being allowed to talk about casteism Either way censoring internal talks about employee grievances/ possible workplace discrimination/discrimination outside the workplace (which one was the talk going to be about!?) is not a good look on Google - given that they've always tried to paint an image a company that lets its employees openly discuss anything for the most part.
- themenomen 4y ago
  You forgot the most important statement from which is clear casteism is a rising problem: >"T.G.: There was my own obvious background. My parents immigrated from India in the early nineteen-eighties. I was certainly familiar with the topic. In September, 2021, two employees approached me. I hosted D.E.I. office hours every week where people could come in and talk about these topics, confidentially, and multiple Google employees came into my office and reported that they had faced discrimination when trying to talk about matters of caste in the workplace. There was already a public condemnation of caste discrimination at Google from the Alphabet workers’ union. They had put out a press statement when the Cisco case broke. There were reports from at least twenty Google employees as well. [In June, 2020, California sued Cisco and two of its managers for engaging in caste discrimination. Afterward, Equality Labs received complaints from more than two hundred and fifty tech workers, including twenty Google employees.]"
wikitopian 4y ago
One of the best features of homesourcing, one that everybody is thinking about but nobody is discussing, is that it completely sidesteps the need to arrive at a universal, global workplace monoculture. People can be truly diverse, including in ways that other people find offensive, objectionable, or unacceptable, when they're not forced to share the same physical spaces. The question of how google should solve the complex and confusing world of indian caste politics is a stupid question. Google should fix their search results and leave fixing India to Indians.
- deleted 4y ago
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- markisus 4y ago
  But supposedly the problem also exists in the United States because many people who work in America come from India.
  - wikitopian 4y ago
    Whether an Indian is in India or Indiana, his participation in the economy shouldn't be contingent upon his discarding his ancient culture in exchange for a tacky workplace monoculture that was concocted last thursday. While sharing physical space requires arriving at a least common denominator culture (watered down western culture), sharing virtual spaces requires far fewer and less intrusive compromises. Personally, I think work and open source should be done like it was in the nineties, where everybody has an IRC handle and you don't know enough about who they are or where they're from to discriminate against anybody or be offended by anybody's lifestyles and cultural quirks.
remflight 4y ago
Deleted because it’s clear I won’t change anyones mind. People who want to believe that Google is guilty, will believe they are guilty no matter what.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kache_ 4y ago
  You don't have to put up with it. Lots of great companies great out there that create a safe space for normal adults like you and I. Vote with your feet and leave.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Vote with your feet and leave Would you say the same thing to someone facing racism at work? To Oliver Brown?
    - kache_ 4y ago
      yes. but in that case, maybe also voting with "lawyer getting you a bag"
- arvindamirtaa 4y ago
  If you haven't experienced something, and think someone else claiming that they experienced it is stupid, I really don't know who is stupid. If person A slaps person B and person C goes "I didn't experience anything. There are no slaps in this company", does that sound reasonable?
  - remflight 4y ago
    Deleted
Aunche 4y ago
>Numerous employees within the company expressed the view that any talk on caste discrimination was offensive to them as Hindus, and made them feel unsafe. >You don’t get to claim or hijack one form of discrimination to perpetuate another form. And yet from the Hindu's perspective, this is exactly what Gupta is doing. The only instances of caste discrimination Gupta can recall are anecdotes of "coded speech". Meanwhile, I'm sure that many Hindus feel that anti-caste-discrimination is coded speech. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that using feelings as a rationale for argument is completely counterproductive.
- arvindamirtaa 4y ago
  The DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) forum is pretty unambiguously the forum to talk about caste discrimination. What forum is Gupta "highjacking" to talk about caste in your opinion? The lesson to be learned is, if you are offended by someone saying they experienced oppression/discrimination, really, look inward.
  - Aunche 4y ago
    If your platform champions people's subjective experience, and Indians at Google feel that Soundararajan is discriminatory herself, then they have a right to oppose her talk without being labelled as caste bigots.
    - yedava 4y ago
      Caste discrimination is not a "subjective experience", however much your subjective experience maybe telling you so.
      - Aunche 4y ago
        Like I said, their only example of caste discrimination at Google is "denial of caste discrimination" and "coded conversation", which is very much subjective. A Hindu can make the same case that "denial that caste is used as a dog whistle for Hindu discrimination" or "accusing Hindus who are opposed to a caste talk as being bigoted" as forms of Hindu discrimination.
jaywalk 4y ago
> The Google spokesperson told The New Yorker, "We made the decision not to move forward with this proposed talk which was pulling employees apart rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness." If the talk was standard DEI fare (shitting on white men) I'm sure any complaints would have been ignored.
- thisiscorrect 4y ago
  I doubt the complaints would be ignored. It'd be fair to assume that the complainant might face consequences for not going along with the program.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    That's very true. The retaliation would go against the complainants instead of the person who wanted to put on the talk.
- secondcoming 4y ago
  Attendance at the talk would have been mandatory
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  lol claims of white people being the victims are so not ignored that it's common discussion fodder right here on this board, and Oracle has been sued for not hiring white people in certain roles https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/labor-department-sues-oracle-for-racial-discrimination/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/labor-department...
pc86 4y ago
We need to stop calling this a "caste-bias problem" and call it what it is: racism. Just because they're not a distinct ethnicity doesn't mean it's not racism, and the people looking down on others because of their caste are no different than the white guy yelling the n word in traffic. Neither should be tolerated, and if you find yourself working with one, they should be fired. It is antithetical to an open society.
- pictureofabear 4y ago
  caste-bias is a subset of racism.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It can all be abstracted into “tribalism”.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    When someone can look at a pair of parents and tell you their kid’s “tribe,” the difference between tribe and race becomes purely semantic.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Yes, that is my point. Everyone is constantly evaluating everyone else and placing them in different tribes with different priorities. All the way from parent child relationships to neighbors to country level and even global level. Skin color, wealth, relatives, philosophies, habits, and infinitely more characteristics are used to determine who will and will not benefit you or not benefit you and it can change with every scenario. I agree with comparing caste-ism to racism, and very well may be the same. It is very similar in that they classify someone as part of a tribe because of their ancestors. But it is also quite similar to classifying someone based on their accent, which side of town they grew up in, or what university they attended, because they all end up being a function of who one’s ancestors are also.
      - 4y ago
jrsj 4y ago
I've also heard rumors about discrimination by Indian managers against non-Indian employees at the largest employers in my city. I'm inclined to believe this is true as I've heard from multiple people who worked there that most of engineering management consists of upper caste Indians now but that group represents a relatively small minority of engineering as a whole. I wonder if these two things are connected. In some cases is this going beyond just caste discrimination and becoming something like a recreation of a caste system within the company itself? And why are we incapable of even discussing whether or not these things are happening despite them being blatantly illegal?
- upupandup 4y ago
  > Indian managers against non-Indian employees This happens all the time in Canada. When you have a large ethnic majority and they start identifying with the language and start bringing toxic work culture with management fully aware of the issues and exploiting this. For example for a startup I worked for in Vancouver had a large Chinese/Russian majority in the development team. They would stay behind past working hours and require me to do the same. When I left early they reported me. They also started to bully and talking only in Chinese or Russian. It was absolutely a shock and not a surprise why Canada has a brain drain going on. I don't even have any beef with these groups since I have friends from those community that grew up here but for whatever reason, those guys at that startup specifically chose to isolate ppl that didn't speak their language. It was a modern day sweatshop and it was weird seeing even Taiwanese engineers who also grew up here for less than a decade participate in this toxic behavior. My mistake was expecting Canadian work culture and expecting others to follow it and the management who were white canadians knew exactly their culture and exploited it. Just more and more reasons to leave Vancouver. Happened to my friend who were with Indian engineers too, funny thing is they discriminate based on caste which confuses a lot of Indians from island nations, south america.
  - jackling 4y ago
    "not a surprise why Canada has a brain drain going on" As a fellow Canadian, I really doubt this is the reason Canada is having "brain drain" problems. I'm in Toronto, not Vancouver, and I have never heard anyone leaving the country because of bad management. It's usually just for money.
bsedlm 4y ago
fact is we live in a tiered society. no matter how many times we repeat to ourselves that "we are all equal" (before the law). as I see it, such phrases are a goal, an intention, more than they are a reality. we need to keep working perpetually in pursuit of such an ideal goal, but just pretending we do not live in a caste (or tiered) society does not really do anything to achieve this goal. this is the my point: to pretend that tiers (or castes) do not exist does not move us any closer to the stated ideal goal. the more direct action I can think of is to dissasociate what somebody does to earn a living from their social status.
- pictureofabear 4y ago
  This is not true of traditional American families. In many traditional American families you will have some people that are widely successful and many others that are not. Yes, there are the elites, they are a different class for sure, but the middle and lower classes of American society are not tiered in the way a caste system is. In a caste system, your family is your destiny. Confusing the two is dangerous because it normalizes the caste system, a system that is very economically damaging to a country.
lampshades 4y ago
Friendly reminder that white people are shot by cops at a very high rate and yes, all lives do matter. Regardless of what the New Yorker thinks. Edit: Bring in the downvotes, I welcome them. It’s clear to me that white lives don’t matter to the HN crowd, but that doesn’t surprise me at all considering the main people who come here are white people from California who grew up in completely white society and now have a savior complex. That’s an American caste system nobody wants to talk about right there, the way coastal whites treat everyone else.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > white people are shot by cops at a very high rate If you think that cops target white folks then you must probably be an avid supporter of reforming law enforcement.
  - lampshades 4y ago
    Yes, I am an avid supporter of reforming our increasingly militarized police force, why wouldn’t I be? And to be clear, I don’t think cops “target white people” just like I don’t think cops “target black people”. Cops have an aggression problem, are trigger happy, and poorly trained.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      > I don’t think cops “target black people”. This. Here lies the core of the disagreement. Data suggests otherwise.
      - andsoitis 4y ago
        From https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z “By one estimate, Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime. And in another study, Black people who were fatally shot by police seemed to be twice as likely as white people to be unarmed” And “Data from California show that police stopped and used force against Black people disproportionately, compared with other racial groups, in 2018 (see go.nature.com/2bgfrah). A December 2019 paper reported that bias in police administrative records results in many studies underestimating levels of racial bias in policing, or even masking discrimination entirely” Etc.
nojito 4y ago
As a US born individual with immigrant parents, I had NO idea how many times I got scoped for my caste. It’s quite amazing how routine simple questions have ulterior motives behind them. Now that I am a more senior in my career, I’ve made it my mission to always call it out when it happens. I hope others start doing it as well.
- Tryk 4y ago
  What kinds of questions would people ask to scope out your caste?
  - pictureofabear 4y ago
    What's your last name? Where did you grow up? What did you parents do for a living?
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  I'm an unworldly white boy in a sea of Indian immigrants, probably several generations in. How can I help prevent that kind of discrimination from going on? I don't know what to look for and how to not take part in it.
deleted 4y ago
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winternett 4y ago
We spend so much time talking about the traditional race and class struggles in the United States that we don't really have the capacity to properly deal with and address the issues inserted into race by other world countries. It bewilders me to this day to think of all the different dynamics that old world thought subtly imposes on the painting that is now... Just the other day I remembered how as a young guy I was once dating a Korean girl in college and how our relationship fizzled quickly the minute I met her parents... And how I was working long hours on a job and being so stressed by management that I was grinding my teeth in my sleep, even though I was a manager myself, while 2 colleagues I was supposed to lead got away with constantly not being technical enough to support a project at all. It's something special to be referred to by a sitting president (meant to reflect and represent everyone) and hear him say the words "My African American", and to observe memes that creatively play with a word that was used as my family members and ancestors have historically been abused to, or to see even things like Juneteenth Ice Cream coming from huge corporations that don't hire people like me to consult them time after time to properly address the issues... It's also not surprising that discrimination is ingrained in many things in our world, and that so many people would easily say they are against hate and division, but are unaware of how it is upheld and sustained by apathy towards the micro aggressions that are embedded in it. It is truly epic when someone of dark skin tone can navigate through and overcome the adversity created by old world ignorance, and it's even more special when they see it as an opportunity to represent everyone properly despite the adversity they encountered. It's also rare to find people that truly aren't bound in their word and actions by some sort of historical and psychological bias in terms of the dark history of this world... It's an every day struggle which rarely gets talked about, and an internal conflict that many people deal with, and more often reason out irrationally. This bias also translates into company policy, into platform algorithms, into service delivery, into everything. If your company photos from leadership levels to the development room don't truly reflect diversity, the people in charge often end up multiplying the blindness to cultural bias in everything they do until it makes the news... It works in both and all ways, and screws everything about a company, product, and service up... Royally.
- xbar 4y ago
  > If your company photos from leadership levels to the development room don't truly reflect diversity, the people in charge often end up multiplying the blindness to cultural bias In traditional American Black/white photos, you are flat-out right. Many of the problems you allude to cannot be fully addressed until leadership is diverse. In the context of caste, it is challenging for non-Indian Americans to discern the caste differences in such photos.
tolkienfanatic 4y ago
naruvimama 4y ago
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
India is going through a ethnic nationalist revival. That creates a victimhood complex in which criticism is taken as animosity towards the group, whether that be all Indians or Hindu Indians. So I can see someone who is not themselves discriminating on the basis of caste taking offence to someone suggesting it exists. Add Google’s elitist culture (nothing wrong with that per se, but it creates blind spots) and I can see how reasonable people may conclude the problem doesn’t exist. That said, internal activism is unlikely to be effective. By the time it worked for e.g. racism, it was an established problem in popular opinion and the law. Companies generally aren’t at the vanguard of social change. We need legislation and case law. In that respect, firing the organiser was a strategic blunder—it frees her to meaningfully penalise Google.
woweoe 4y ago
If someone wants some more background information. A few decades ago during the Cold War, there were several large scale anti-caste movements, and this caused a lot of the moneyed upper caste (note that many of the upper caste are poor) to flee to the US where money often open doors. The immigration to the UK and the other English speaking countries tended to be more varied and more middle class based on skills (doctors, engineers, etc...). It's widely known within India that a notable portion of the upper caste are based in the US, but in India the IT industry is one of the most caste-blind industries in India, along with how the majority of the IT industry is based in South India where casteism is traditionally less.
- thunkshift1 4y ago
  - sreevisakh 4y ago
    That isn't even right because almost every single victim of caste discrimination is an Indian themselves. If there are caste allegations outside India, then it can only be from Indians themselves. Covering it under the wide umbrella of anti-India smear campaign is disingenuous at best.
    - woweoe 4y ago
      Yes and no. Casteism is virtually a non-existent concept among the Indian diaspora in the West, who are mostly in the second generation or further, though the US is possibly an exception. If you asked an Indian person in Australia about casteism then they would look at you as if you were asking something about India history and implied they weren't Australian. Furthermore casteism in the Indian American circles or even the Indian American IT industry may actually be worse than the casteism in India, because caste is a rare discussion point in the Indian tech world, and casteism is a less poignant issue in South India where most of the tech industry is based.
      - kyawzazaw 4y ago
treyfitty 4y ago
It's not just Google. As a non-Tech non-Indian that previously worked at AmEx, I was shocked to see how many indians there were at AmEx. I was even more shocked to learn that they discriminate based on caste.
georgia_peach 4y ago
I am reposting PaulHoule's (flagged) comment because it was a very good one: > *I have wondered if the high Asian population is one reason why San Francisco has such conspicuous homelessness. Western religion has some egalitarian ideas such as “The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” > On the other hand if you think a person's fortune now depends on karma they got from past lives then you might think it is a virtuous thing to perpetuate people's misery.
- hikingsimulator 4y ago
  It's not a very good one. Western philosophies and religions can definitely show this type of bias. Some branches of protestantism do believe in predestination. It's also common to see (bad) Christian takes that suffering is a challenge from god (often backed by Job's trials) and thus a thing that may not need changing. I believe Max Weber also covered this concept sociologically in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
  - jackling 4y ago
    Isn't the idea that all suffering is a challenge of god key to Abrahamic religions. I always hear it from anyone religious when discussing that rational of why there is suffering the world when God can end it. And from my quick read of Job's story, it seems that it does exemplify that.
    - georgia_peach 4y ago
      While the loving Father metes out punishment as a correction to his wayward children, the Son has authority on earth to forgive sins, and has given very specific instructions to those who would be his followers: > If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven > He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Whereas per the great Eastern religions, the material world is Maya, all is the Self (tat tvam asi), righteous action is its own reward, and the Abrahamic concepts (despite many overlaps) seem rather peculiar. Or to quote Sadhguru: If you take in too much input from everywhere, the karmic process becomes very complicated. And the strategy evolved for your karma will not work if you keep mixing it up with someone else’s all the time. Why some who are in serious sadhana withdraw into a solitary cave or the like is because they do not want to complicate things. They understood the complexity of their own karma and do not want to complicate it anymore. That is why you do not step over anyone. You can go around them. It is also a mark of respect. And apart from that, it would disturb that person if you step over them. If you disturb their energy body, they may not immediately wake up, but internally, it disturbs them. All this comes from a fundamental understanding about life. No matter what you were doing – you were running a business, you were married, bearing and raising children, fighting a battle – for anyone who was born in this land, there was only one goal – ultimate liberation. Mukti was the only goal. The whole culture was structured around this. Many strategies were evolved so that you do not trip over someone else’s karma. You do not want to acquire anything new because you know the complexity of what you already have. If you undo your own puzzle, it is good enough. You do not want to complicate it.
glibmelody 4y ago
I've read the details of the original california lawsuit against cisco, and it seemed to be a blatant attempt by the accuser to get back at his colleague and manager, in the guise of caste discrimination. It was subsequently sensationalized by the media. - The accuser was hired to a coveted project by the manager, where every member was among the highest paid employees in Cisco (millions in total take home). Even among those people, the accuser was among the highest paid. - The accuser was supposedly discriminated by not getting a $5,000 raise after the annual performance appraisals. - The accuser was passed over for promotion, but the person appointed as the leader / successor by the manager was also of the same, supposedly discriminated caste. - The accuser and the manager went to school together, studied every class for 4 years together, and the accuser was hired to this coveted position by this supposedly discriminatory manager.
carapace 4y ago
The Indian caste system is Google's problem to solve? Let's talk about Google's caste system. There are at least two main castes at Google: The "Googlers" who get all the perks, and the support staff who do all the work and get far fewer perks. The upper caste gets meals, those nifty buses, medical care, etc. The lower caste does not get all those things (I think they get meals, but not in the same cafeteria) and they are specifically trained not to get familiar with the upper caste. In fact, they can get in trouble for fraternizing with the "real" Googlers. It's worth noting that the upper caste is made up mostly of white, Chinese, or Indian folks while the lower caste is mostly Mexican (in CA that means anyone from south of the border from Mexico to Chile and Argentina), Filipino, and some Arab people. (There are very few black people working at Google.) Google is progressive in the sense that they don't hate their servant class, but they are just as caste-conscious, if you will, as Indian culture.
- jackling 4y ago
  "support staff who do all the work and get far fewer perks", what do the support staff do? Are they also engineers, or are they the ones doing the non-product work at Google. Since you said they do all the work, I guess they're directly working on the products as well?
  - carapace 4y ago
    They do all the physical work, janitor, maintenance, cooking, cleaning, etc. Everything that isn't sitting at a desk typing on a keyboard.
- dsq 4y ago
  I think what you are describing is class based rather than caste based. Caste is explicitly based on heredity and is unchangeable. The fact that the two classes are made up mostly of different ethnicities is probably caused by a confounding variable, such as different educational opportunities, as well as discrimination of course.
  - carapace 4y ago
fleddr 4y ago
The simplest solution from a company perspective is to not hire activist type employees. It just never ends well. You may very well find the activist's point valid and just, but it still won't end well in most cases. Other than the fact that perhaps they should spend time on actually working, the typical activist method cannot ever succeed. It starts with some sweeping assertion affecting a large group: men oppress women, this cast has a bias to this cast, white people discriminate against black people. So it starts with a sweeping accusation. Which is presented as fact. The accused can't bring forward any counter point as this confirms the accusation, according to activist logic. Instead, you need to sit down and be "educated" and humiliated on things you don't even agree you did, as an individual. We shouldn't be surprised that this approach makes people angry and creates even more division. Activism, DEI and its struggle sessions are wildly unpopular and ineffective. Recently there was a good article (a serious one, I promise, from a progressive research institute) concluding the same: DEI in corporates is a massive failure. It's done nothing to progress any cause, instead deepened division. In extremer cases it even ends in a shouting/bullying match. Vague sweeping claims do not work. If you have a case of discrimination, document it the best you can, have a good story with tangible evidence. And then take it forward.
- rdtsc 4y ago
  Consequently, to filter out the potential troublemakers, for short a period of time encourage “bring your whole self to work”, “open and honest conversations” etc. See who starts to raise issues and then put them on PIP for purely “technical” reasons.
  - fleddr 4y ago
    If anybody would say "bring yourself to work" my first response would be "are you really sure"? They're collective lies. Things we tell each other to make us feel better about ourselves. Same for "open and honest conversations" which really means a tiny subset of allowed conversations fitting ideology.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
anonymoushn 4y ago
> The first thing is denial. Saying this doesn’t even exist. That is a form of discrimination. There were messages on e-mail threads that talked about how this isn’t a problem here. If you replace the denial of caste discrimination with the denial of the Holocaust or something like that, it instantly clicks where other people start to realize, “Oh, something’s wrong if people are denying this.” It seems like if you said there was discrimination against tall white men, people would also deny that.
ggfdh 4y ago
I can understand why Hindus would be resistant to being labeled the “oppressor” in an “oppressor/oppressed” dynamic. Instead of discussing individual discrimination and behavior these discussions always result in the “reverse” hatred where the oppressed group is vilified. See white people in discussions of racism and Christians in discussion of LGBT issues.
deleted 4y ago
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rdtsc 4y ago
> Numerous employees within the company expressed the view that any talk on caste discrimination was offensive to the That’s one way to play the system - outvictim the victim! Well done. Who can prove they really felt unsafe or just wanted to keep the issue hidden and perpetuate caste discrimination.
vanderZwan 4y ago
For a moment I thought this was going to be more like "allegorically" about castes than about actual castes, since Google also has a history with the former, as highlighted by Andrew Norman Wilson in his 2007 art piece "Workers Leaving the Googleplex" [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0RTgOuoi2k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0RTgOuoi2k
naruvimama 4y ago
[dead]
known 4y ago

212 points by frb 4y ago

Sidebar: Anecdotes and personal experiences aren't sufficient evidence to make conclusions about DEI efforts and whether discrimination is occurring, where, to what extent, for or against whom, etc. The number of people in this HN thread without the critical thinking skills to understand that is astounding.

mitchbob 4y ago

Archived: https://archive.ph/bAsma https://archive.ph/bAsma

anovikov 4y ago

Maybe i'm being ignorant, but why don't you just not work for the company that has few or no Indians? Because other nations of course don't know about which last name means which caste or would ever care about it, you won't be a subject for discrimination. And besides, these places will probably pay better anyway.

Karawebnetwork 4y ago
Because they are American citizens and deserve the same opportunities as everyone.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
- xbar 4y ago
  Because they are employees of American companies and they deserve the same opportunities as every other employee.
  - Karawebnetwork 4y ago
    Better wording, thank you. This includes all workers as not all workers are citizens.
    - anovikov 4y ago
      But discrimination comes from people, not companies. Also, indeed, why not work in places where there are no other Indians? It's not like with black people: no one who's not from India may have a slightest idea of a caste to discriminate based on it. AND it will also mean making more money.
      - Karawebnetwork 4y ago
        It's up to the companies to make sure that their employees are not experiencing duress at the workplace.
throwaway6734 4y ago
because this is an American company and American cultural norms should be expected
becquerel 4y ago
People should not have to curtail their life choices in order to bow to unjust systems or experiences.
hobabaObama 4y ago
May be it should be the other way around. If they have problems to work with lower caste people, they should change their company.
adamsmith143 4y ago
If you don't want to experience Racism just don't live near Racists. Lol what?
bee_rider 4y ago
I'm all for acknowledging my ignorance and charging forward with a bad idea in technical situations (if nothing else it gives somebody more experienced something to tee up on), but generally I try to avoid it on discrimination issues.

PaulHoule 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
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vehemenz 4y ago
Doubtful. It's more to do with population density, climate, and concentration of services.
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
Aren't most of the absurdly rich people in California white people? To me it seems like Asians in SF as a race are more in a middle to upper middle "professional" class, hardly the group of people to fix very hard social issues such as homelessness.
- rayiner 4y ago
  To the contrary. The upper middle class is the group with the most money and most power to change things. There’s not enough absurdly rich people to change voting patterns, and while they’re individually very rich in the aggregate they’re not a large enough tax base to pay for social programs.
nelblu 4y ago
Eastern religious actually talk a lot about material pleasures and how they are harmful. Both Buddhism and Hinduism are very much against "showing off" or "accumulating wealth". In fact, Buddhism clearly says - "Desire is the root cause of all sufferings". That said, most immigrants from Asia are used to seeing poverty and homelessness everywhere, so it probably just feels like the extension of that in the west. Also Hindu text talks about - कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥ २-४७ - which literally means you only have right to perform your duty (karma) you have no right to expect the fruit of your duty (karma). This whole bastardised definition of "karma" doesn't fit with the values that I was brought up with. (Disclaimer: I grew up Hindu in India, but I am no longer religious, I would identify myself as atheist/agnostic/rationalist/freethinker.)

shultays 4y ago

Why did you want to join Google, and what did you feel about the place when you did? tanuja gupta: I started working at Google in 2011. I had been working as a program manager in engineering and software for about a decade, but Google was top of the top. Of course you want a career at a great company. That was a product that I used day in and day out. It was a great opportunity Heh, I was expecting an emotional lie/response such as "I want to change the world" but got surprised. I appreciate her honesty

kome 4y ago
i would be surprised of the contrary
deleted 4y ago
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ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago

What people dont realize is that leetcode problem style testing is a very eastern/asian approach to hiring. Memorization for a test with a large body of problems ends up selecting for people that grew up in those cultures....

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isoprophlex 4y ago

As someone doing management in a company that hires many Indian workers, both in on-shore and off-shore teams, this is a highly relevant topic for me. I'm a native western european so I'm likely blind to some extend for these issues. Like the article says, this sounds like harmful class-ism that silences or disadvantages specific groups, but not in an "obviously" racist manner based on skin color. Anyone care to share some real life experience? Was this a problem in your workplace? How did you detect this was going on, at all?

bko 4y ago
Isn't being blind to caste distinctions the optimal way to avoid discrimination? It's like a blind audition.
- powerhour 4y ago
  Maybe if you and your peers and all of the higher-ups are equally blind, ya. Otherwise your blindness might prevent you from seeing what's going on.
- isoprophlex 4y ago
  Yeah, sure! I however want to understand if something untowards is happening between team members. I might be blind, others amongst eachother might not necessarily be.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cheeze 4y ago
  Yes and no. It's great to not have that inherent bias, but it's important to be able to see where the bias exists.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  Somehow in $current_year, blind auditions are also racist: https://web.archive.org/web/20220725001219/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220725001219/https://www.nytim...

elefanten 4y ago

[flagged]

AuthorizedHelp 4y ago

I always find it funny how there are massive east asian only groups in all major corporate entities. This is not diversity, this is racism. Nice work FANG.

strikelaserclaw 4y ago
and they get there through working their ass off but that is totally off topic as far as what op was asking.
- xbar 4y ago
  Do they? Or do they arrive due to denial of opportunity for equally or greater hard working folks?
- deepdriver 4y ago
  Or in the case of [big tech company] interns, getting matched to a team purely for being Chinese. For a while there was a big Mandarin-only mailing list that coordinated this type of ingroup selection within [big tech company]. HR found out and shut it down. It was unclear whether those running the list realized what they were doing was highly illegal. If they had just waited a few years it would still be illegal, but also the open practice of nearly every big hiring department. "We especially encourage AAPI, BIPOC, neurodiverse, nonbinary and LGBTIA+ candidates to apply." That's quoted nearly word-for-word from job listings I'm reviewing. Wonder what that means for my application, as someone who falls outside those boxes and didn't go to an Ivy. Really gets me thinking about politics.
  - tomp 4y ago
    Why don’t you fit in any of those groups? You could easily declare yourself “mildly autistic” and “agender” and become neurodiverse and queer.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Which is what every entrenched group of racists claims is the reason for their control over an entity. The 'other' is lazy and we're hard workers. Nope, no bigotry involved, just our innate superiority over other groups.

John23832 4y ago

(Outside looking in perspective. I am not Indian.) When I worked as a software engineer are capital one earlier in my career, thus was a very noticeable trend. You had entire teams/groups (and to some extent geographical regions given the way the capital one workforce was split between Richmond Virginia, McLean Virginia, and NYC) where particular castes grouped together. It became particularly acute when you took into account who was on visa/sponsored and who was not.

ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
Saw this at American Express. In many cases, VPs and Directors were actually cousins or even siblings. This was a decade ago. Fast forward to now, and they are at the top of many NYC banks running IT divisions, the same group that worked together so many years ago. Theres an invisible network in many large corporations and none of the jobs are available to employees of those corporations
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It seems like you are describing the norm. The prime advice for everyone is networking, networking, networking, isn’t it? And it’s not what you know, but who you know. Going to the right schools to be able to make the right friends, etc.
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
    No I'm saying a group of relatives from India methodically only hire eachother and use vicious politics to climb the ladder in american corporations. I watched it occur over a decade and still see the hiring updates on LinkedIn, "I am proud to announce we have hired XYZ from other big corp as the new head of data and governance."
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - hadlock 4y ago

Karawebnetwork 4y ago

Previous thread on a similar topic (2022): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 And another (2020): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 --- One good resource (imo as an outsider) from the recent one is this: "As a Dalit myself, I wrote a Dalit 101 for non Indian audience. https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101 https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101" by user thelit (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595663)

dang 4y ago
Yes. Related: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 - June 2022 (946 comments) Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 - March 2022 (543 comments) India’s tech sector reinforces old caste divides - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 - Jan 2022 (5 comments) The Casteism I See in America and American Tech Companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 - Nov 2021 (5 comments) How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March 2021 (195 comments) Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley's richest tech companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct 2020 (322 comments) India’s engineers have thrived in the tech industry. So has its caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 - Oct 2020 (6 comments) How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 - Sept 2020 (47 comments) Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 comments) Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 - Aug 2020 (14 comments) California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 - July 2020 (56 comments) California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592 comments) Ask HN: There is caste system in the Silicon Valley? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 - Feb 2017 (6 comments)

_fat_santa 4y ago

I don't know why Google (or really all the tech companies in SV) aren't taking this far more seriously. I feel like it opens them up to lawsuits and with the weight they hold, a company like Google can easily institute a zero tolerance policy against it. Send a message that if you do this, you're getting kicked to the curb.

dcolkitt 4y ago
Caste is not a protected class in US employment law. Arguably there might be a basis for a suit if you could show that it reasonably projects onto an existing protected class, but it's not clear to me that you could.
- chadash 4y ago
  Not to say that this is authoritative, but an article in the Harvard Law Review argues that "caste discrimination is a type of racial discrimination, religious discrimination, and national origin discrimination — all covered under Title VII". Nonetheless, my hunch is that legal or not legal, this kind of discrimination would be extremely unpalatable to most Americans across the political spectrum. https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/06/title-vii-and-caste-discrimination/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/06/title-vii-and-caste-dis...
- elil17 4y ago
  An ongoing lawsuit against Cisco claims that caste discrimination is a form of national origin discrimination. Cisco's attempts to throw out the lawsuit on the grounds that caste discrimination isn't illegal were unsuccessful. There's a good shot that a judge will rule that caste discrimination is covered by national origin discrimination.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    I'm optimistic but that could also open the door to many more lawsuits where someone felt prejudiced because of what side of town they grew up on or what state they are from.
4y ago

hobabaObama 4y ago

Caste based discrimination is so subtle, that it is extremely hard to detect by Non-Indians Why shouldnt the talk be allowed? What harm could it do to raise awareness about this very practical issue that Dalits face day in and day out for centuries. Google employees who had this talks cancelled are ultimate COWARDS and should be ashamed of themselves.

deleted 4y ago
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bko 4y ago

> If you replace the denial of caste discrimination with the denial of the Holocaust or something like that, it instantly clicks where other people start to realize, “Oh, something’s wrong if people are denying this.” Seems a bit extreme. Even questioning whether caste discrimination in the US or Google is a large problem is enough to get you lumped into Holocaust denial territory. > People can absolutely discriminate based on caste by essentially denying it and not wanting to learn about it. What makes discrimination bad is the arbitrary nature. If you don't know the arbitrary classifications of groups, and you're making decisions on something tangible that presumably affects the person's skill set, then is it discrimination if it correlates with some arbitrary distinction you're not aware of?

adamsmith143 4y ago
Sounds like you are a Brahmin mad about Dalits messing with your status. >If you don't know the arbitrary classifications of groups, and you're making decisions on something tangible that presumably affects the person's skill set, then is it discrimination if it correlates with some arbitrary distinction you're not aware of? The problem was clearly stated to be discrimination from other Indians against lower class Indians, NOT white managers unknowingly discriminating against low class Indians.
- bko 4y ago
  > Sounds like you are a Brahmin mad about Dalits messing with your status. I don't know what these two are and I'm fairly certain I don't belong to either one of them. The efforts from the article made it sound like its an education effort. Presumably the parties discriminating are very much aware of the class distinction so education might not be the right call, more enforcement of existing anti-discrimination policies. Or throw the decisions to unbiased third parties.

AcerbicZero 4y ago

I'm pretty sure the modern world has a Caste problem - Meritocracy and castes just don't go together and it's pretty obvious to me which of those two I'd prefer for myself.

pictureofabear 4y ago
No, castes are primarily a phenomenon from the Indian subcontinent and surrounding areas. It is becoming a larger problem in the world due to Indian emigration.
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40acres 4y ago

How would a non Indian person even tell? Is it really all in the last name? I've worked with a fair amount of Indian folks with a wide variety of names - how would you even go about determining someone's caste? Based on this article it sounds like most people who end up in Big Tech will be upper caste.

known 4y ago
ReptileMan 4y ago
Well most people that immigrate not trough the south border or diversity visa are usually middle class or up in their country of origin. The easiest way to get to live in the US is to have money. The southern border is the new ellis island trough which the great unwashed can enter.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Assuming caste maps to socioeconomic status, the situation is the same for Indians and non Indians around the world.
nojito 4y ago
It’s done through seemingly simple questions. Usually dealing with what city they are from, what city are your parents from, are you vegetarian, are you having dessert? I've never experienced or seen the thread searching. Larger person grabs your shoulder to see if the thread is there. But that wouldn't surprise me at all.
- 40acres 4y ago
  This is interesting. I believe vegetarianism is higher caste but dessert is a tricky one.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

vsr_pg 4y ago

I take no position on the broader issue of the article, but I was shocked to see that Isaac Chotiner (a repeat India-related article writer at New Yorker) failed to mention that Narendra Modi is an OBC in the context of describing the BJP's caste base. Truly, an egregious oversight and one that misleads readers.

metadaemon 4y ago
What do OBC and BJP stand for?
- mtalantikite 4y ago
  OBC: "Other backward class" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class BJP: Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the right wing Hindu nationalist party that is in power in India (of which Modi is a part of) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatiya_Janata_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatiya_Janata_Party
- seventyheads 4y ago
  OBC - Other Backward Class [1] BJP - Bharatiya Janata Party (the current ruling political party of India) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class
- adharmad 4y ago
  OBC stands for "Other backward classes". It is a caste classification created by the Indian government based on certain criteria of people who are economically/educationally backward but who do not fall under the main backward class group (Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes - SC/ST).
1sembiyan 4y ago
He also says > “The right-wing Hindu movement in India has historically not been associated with people from underprivileged castes, and those people have generally been less supportive of the movement“ My understanding is that BJP has come to power under an OBC wave, both in UP in 2022, and in the North 2019.

hcarvalhoalves 4y ago

Here’s my take: It seems an increasing disbelief in politics and democracy has moved these discussions from public forums to private companies. This is problematic, as it’s not in a private company interest to promote discussion (even if it’s pretending to do so, for PR or legal reasons), neither is it a power equilibrium since a company can just fire you at will.

andsoitis 4y ago
> not in a private company interest to promote discussion Isn't it in a company's interest to nurture an environment where everyone they hire can thrive?

flak48 4y ago

From what I understood, the former Google employee being interviewed here is discussing the problem of not being allowed to discuss 'caste discrimination in India', eg. during Uttar Pradesh elections - and in companies like Cisco. They seem to focus on this blanket ban against discussing this issue at Google, as the discriminatory act - rather than alleging that actual caste discrimination is being perpetrated at Google (for the most part). They do however seem to point to two examples of rumoured alleged casteism at Google (I think): "I think the Cisco case is probably the most publicly known example—is that, within a team, when you’ve got people who are caste privileged and caste oppressed, the people who are caste oppressed start to be given inferior assignments, get treated differently, left out of meetings, which are certainly things that I heard from Google employees within the company. " "Asking things like “What’s your last name? I’m not familiar with it.” Then, when the manager hears that last name, they’re, like, “Oh, so you’re from this caste—no wonder you have these leadership skills.” Things like that. And somebody else in the room is, like, “What the hell?” It’s those different types of experiences that I’ve seen or that have been shared with me that show that caste discrimination is happening in the workplace. By the tone of the article/employee I'm confused whether the employee is discussing hearsay based on examples of how discrimination could be occuring at Google - based on what they read about stuff at Cisco or elsewhere (perhaps with the intention of explaining why such issues could be relevant to discuss at Google) - or if they actually met Google employees facing these issues. I wonder if the journalist themselves are trying to intentionally conflate the issues of 1) actual caste discrimination possibly taking place and 2) not being allowed to talk about casteism Either way censoring internal talks about employee grievances/ possible workplace discrimination/discrimination outside the workplace (which one was the talk going to be about!?) is not a good look on Google - given that they've always tried to paint an image a company that lets its employees openly discuss anything for the most part.

themenomen 4y ago
You forgot the most important statement from which is clear casteism is a rising problem: >"T.G.: There was my own obvious background. My parents immigrated from India in the early nineteen-eighties. I was certainly familiar with the topic. In September, 2021, two employees approached me. I hosted D.E.I. office hours every week where people could come in and talk about these topics, confidentially, and multiple Google employees came into my office and reported that they had faced discrimination when trying to talk about matters of caste in the workplace. There was already a public condemnation of caste discrimination at Google from the Alphabet workers’ union. They had put out a press statement when the Cisco case broke. There were reports from at least twenty Google employees as well. [In June, 2020, California sued Cisco and two of its managers for engaging in caste discrimination. Afterward, Equality Labs received complaints from more than two hundred and fifty tech workers, including twenty Google employees.]"

wikitopian 4y ago

One of the best features of homesourcing, one that everybody is thinking about but nobody is discussing, is that it completely sidesteps the need to arrive at a universal, global workplace monoculture. People can be truly diverse, including in ways that other people find offensive, objectionable, or unacceptable, when they're not forced to share the same physical spaces. The question of how google should solve the complex and confusing world of indian caste politics is a stupid question. Google should fix their search results and leave fixing India to Indians.

deleted 4y ago
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markisus 4y ago
But supposedly the problem also exists in the United States because many people who work in America come from India.
- wikitopian 4y ago
  Whether an Indian is in India or Indiana, his participation in the economy shouldn't be contingent upon his discarding his ancient culture in exchange for a tacky workplace monoculture that was concocted last thursday. While sharing physical space requires arriving at a least common denominator culture (watered down western culture), sharing virtual spaces requires far fewer and less intrusive compromises. Personally, I think work and open source should be done like it was in the nineties, where everybody has an IRC handle and you don't know enough about who they are or where they're from to discriminate against anybody or be offended by anybody's lifestyles and cultural quirks.

remflight 4y ago

Deleted because it’s clear I won’t change anyones mind. People who want to believe that Google is guilty, will believe they are guilty no matter what.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kache_ 4y ago
You don't have to put up with it. Lots of great companies great out there that create a safe space for normal adults like you and I. Vote with your feet and leave.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Vote with your feet and leave Would you say the same thing to someone facing racism at work? To Oliver Brown?
  - kache_ 4y ago
    yes. but in that case, maybe also voting with "lawyer getting you a bag"
arvindamirtaa 4y ago
If you haven't experienced something, and think someone else claiming that they experienced it is stupid, I really don't know who is stupid. If person A slaps person B and person C goes "I didn't experience anything. There are no slaps in this company", does that sound reasonable?
- remflight 4y ago
  Deleted

Aunche 4y ago

>Numerous employees within the company expressed the view that any talk on caste discrimination was offensive to them as Hindus, and made them feel unsafe. >You don’t get to claim or hijack one form of discrimination to perpetuate another form. And yet from the Hindu's perspective, this is exactly what Gupta is doing. The only instances of caste discrimination Gupta can recall are anecdotes of "coded speech". Meanwhile, I'm sure that many Hindus feel that anti-caste-discrimination is coded speech. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that using feelings as a rationale for argument is completely counterproductive.

arvindamirtaa 4y ago
The DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) forum is pretty unambiguously the forum to talk about caste discrimination. What forum is Gupta "highjacking" to talk about caste in your opinion? The lesson to be learned is, if you are offended by someone saying they experienced oppression/discrimination, really, look inward.
- Aunche 4y ago
  If your platform champions people's subjective experience, and Indians at Google feel that Soundararajan is discriminatory herself, then they have a right to oppose her talk without being labelled as caste bigots.
  - yedava 4y ago
    Caste discrimination is not a "subjective experience", however much your subjective experience maybe telling you so.
    - Aunche 4y ago
      Like I said, their only example of caste discrimination at Google is "denial of caste discrimination" and "coded conversation", which is very much subjective. A Hindu can make the same case that "denial that caste is used as a dog whistle for Hindu discrimination" or "accusing Hindus who are opposed to a caste talk as being bigoted" as forms of Hindu discrimination.

jaywalk 4y ago

> The Google spokesperson told The New Yorker, "We made the decision not to move forward with this proposed talk which was pulling employees apart rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness." If the talk was standard DEI fare (shitting on white men) I'm sure any complaints would have been ignored.

thisiscorrect 4y ago
I doubt the complaints would be ignored. It'd be fair to assume that the complainant might face consequences for not going along with the program.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  That's very true. The retaliation would go against the complainants instead of the person who wanted to put on the talk.
secondcoming 4y ago
Attendance at the talk would have been mandatory
mrguyorama 4y ago
lol claims of white people being the victims are so not ignored that it's common discussion fodder right here on this board, and Oracle has been sued for not hiring white people in certain roles https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/labor-department-sues-oracle-for-racial-discrimination/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/labor-department...

pc86 4y ago

We need to stop calling this a "caste-bias problem" and call it what it is: racism. Just because they're not a distinct ethnicity doesn't mean it's not racism, and the people looking down on others because of their caste are no different than the white guy yelling the n word in traffic. Neither should be tolerated, and if you find yourself working with one, they should be fired. It is antithetical to an open society.

pictureofabear 4y ago
caste-bias is a subset of racism.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
It can all be abstracted into “tribalism”.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  When someone can look at a pair of parents and tell you their kid’s “tribe,” the difference between tribe and race becomes purely semantic.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Yes, that is my point. Everyone is constantly evaluating everyone else and placing them in different tribes with different priorities. All the way from parent child relationships to neighbors to country level and even global level. Skin color, wealth, relatives, philosophies, habits, and infinitely more characteristics are used to determine who will and will not benefit you or not benefit you and it can change with every scenario. I agree with comparing caste-ism to racism, and very well may be the same. It is very similar in that they classify someone as part of a tribe because of their ancestors. But it is also quite similar to classifying someone based on their accent, which side of town they grew up in, or what university they attended, because they all end up being a function of who one’s ancestors are also.
    - 4y ago

jrsj 4y ago

I've also heard rumors about discrimination by Indian managers against non-Indian employees at the largest employers in my city. I'm inclined to believe this is true as I've heard from multiple people who worked there that most of engineering management consists of upper caste Indians now but that group represents a relatively small minority of engineering as a whole. I wonder if these two things are connected. In some cases is this going beyond just caste discrimination and becoming something like a recreation of a caste system within the company itself? And why are we incapable of even discussing whether or not these things are happening despite them being blatantly illegal?

upupandup 4y ago
> Indian managers against non-Indian employees This happens all the time in Canada. When you have a large ethnic majority and they start identifying with the language and start bringing toxic work culture with management fully aware of the issues and exploiting this. For example for a startup I worked for in Vancouver had a large Chinese/Russian majority in the development team. They would stay behind past working hours and require me to do the same. When I left early they reported me. They also started to bully and talking only in Chinese or Russian. It was absolutely a shock and not a surprise why Canada has a brain drain going on. I don't even have any beef with these groups since I have friends from those community that grew up here but for whatever reason, those guys at that startup specifically chose to isolate ppl that didn't speak their language. It was a modern day sweatshop and it was weird seeing even Taiwanese engineers who also grew up here for less than a decade participate in this toxic behavior. My mistake was expecting Canadian work culture and expecting others to follow it and the management who were white canadians knew exactly their culture and exploited it. Just more and more reasons to leave Vancouver. Happened to my friend who were with Indian engineers too, funny thing is they discriminate based on caste which confuses a lot of Indians from island nations, south america.
- jackling 4y ago
  "not a surprise why Canada has a brain drain going on" As a fellow Canadian, I really doubt this is the reason Canada is having "brain drain" problems. I'm in Toronto, not Vancouver, and I have never heard anyone leaving the country because of bad management. It's usually just for money.

bsedlm 4y ago

fact is we live in a tiered society. no matter how many times we repeat to ourselves that "we are all equal" (before the law). as I see it, such phrases are a goal, an intention, more than they are a reality. we need to keep working perpetually in pursuit of such an ideal goal, but just pretending we do not live in a caste (or tiered) society does not really do anything to achieve this goal. this is the my point: to pretend that tiers (or castes) do not exist does not move us any closer to the stated ideal goal. the more direct action I can think of is to dissasociate what somebody does to earn a living from their social status.

pictureofabear 4y ago
This is not true of traditional American families. In many traditional American families you will have some people that are widely successful and many others that are not. Yes, there are the elites, they are a different class for sure, but the middle and lower classes of American society are not tiered in the way a caste system is. In a caste system, your family is your destiny. Confusing the two is dangerous because it normalizes the caste system, a system that is very economically damaging to a country.

lampshades 4y ago

Friendly reminder that white people are shot by cops at a very high rate and yes, all lives do matter. Regardless of what the New Yorker thinks. Edit: Bring in the downvotes, I welcome them. It’s clear to me that white lives don’t matter to the HN crowd, but that doesn’t surprise me at all considering the main people who come here are white people from California who grew up in completely white society and now have a savior complex. That’s an American caste system nobody wants to talk about right there, the way coastal whites treat everyone else.

andsoitis 4y ago
> white people are shot by cops at a very high rate If you think that cops target white folks then you must probably be an avid supporter of reforming law enforcement.
- lampshades 4y ago
  Yes, I am an avid supporter of reforming our increasingly militarized police force, why wouldn’t I be? And to be clear, I don’t think cops “target white people” just like I don’t think cops “target black people”. Cops have an aggression problem, are trigger happy, and poorly trained.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > I don’t think cops “target black people”. This. Here lies the core of the disagreement. Data suggests otherwise.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      From https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z “By one estimate, Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime. And in another study, Black people who were fatally shot by police seemed to be twice as likely as white people to be unarmed” And “Data from California show that police stopped and used force against Black people disproportionately, compared with other racial groups, in 2018 (see go.nature.com/2bgfrah). A December 2019 paper reported that bias in police administrative records results in many studies underestimating levels of racial bias in policing, or even masking discrimination entirely” Etc.

nojito 4y ago

As a US born individual with immigrant parents, I had NO idea how many times I got scoped for my caste. It’s quite amazing how routine simple questions have ulterior motives behind them. Now that I am a more senior in my career, I’ve made it my mission to always call it out when it happens. I hope others start doing it as well.

Tryk 4y ago
What kinds of questions would people ask to scope out your caste?
- pictureofabear 4y ago
  What's your last name? Where did you grow up? What did you parents do for a living?
mrguyorama 4y ago
I'm an unworldly white boy in a sea of Indian immigrants, probably several generations in. How can I help prevent that kind of discrimination from going on? I don't know what to look for and how to not take part in it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

winternett 4y ago

We spend so much time talking about the traditional race and class struggles in the United States that we don't really have the capacity to properly deal with and address the issues inserted into race by other world countries. It bewilders me to this day to think of all the different dynamics that old world thought subtly imposes on the painting that is now... Just the other day I remembered how as a young guy I was once dating a Korean girl in college and how our relationship fizzled quickly the minute I met her parents... And how I was working long hours on a job and being so stressed by management that I was grinding my teeth in my sleep, even though I was a manager myself, while 2 colleagues I was supposed to lead got away with constantly not being technical enough to support a project at all. It's something special to be referred to by a sitting president (meant to reflect and represent everyone) and hear him say the words "My African American", and to observe memes that creatively play with a word that was used as my family members and ancestors have historically been abused to, or to see even things like Juneteenth Ice Cream coming from huge corporations that don't hire people like me to consult them time after time to properly address the issues... It's also not surprising that discrimination is ingrained in many things in our world, and that so many people would easily say they are against hate and division, but are unaware of how it is upheld and sustained by apathy towards the micro aggressions that are embedded in it. It is truly epic when someone of dark skin tone can navigate through and overcome the adversity created by old world ignorance, and it's even more special when they see it as an opportunity to represent everyone properly despite the adversity they encountered. It's also rare to find people that truly aren't bound in their word and actions by some sort of historical and psychological bias in terms of the dark history of this world... It's an every day struggle which rarely gets talked about, and an internal conflict that many people deal with, and more often reason out irrationally. This bias also translates into company policy, into platform algorithms, into service delivery, into everything. If your company photos from leadership levels to the development room don't truly reflect diversity, the people in charge often end up multiplying the blindness to cultural bias in everything they do until it makes the news... It works in both and all ways, and screws everything about a company, product, and service up... Royally.

xbar 4y ago
> If your company photos from leadership levels to the development room don't truly reflect diversity, the people in charge often end up multiplying the blindness to cultural bias In traditional American Black/white photos, you are flat-out right. Many of the problems you allude to cannot be fully addressed until leadership is diverse. In the context of caste, it is challenging for non-Indian Americans to discern the caste differences in such photos.

tolkienfanatic 4y ago

naruvimama 4y ago

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

India is going through a ethnic nationalist revival. That creates a victimhood complex in which criticism is taken as animosity towards the group, whether that be all Indians or Hindu Indians. So I can see someone who is not themselves discriminating on the basis of caste taking offence to someone suggesting it exists. Add Google’s elitist culture (nothing wrong with that per se, but it creates blind spots) and I can see how reasonable people may conclude the problem doesn’t exist. That said, internal activism is unlikely to be effective. By the time it worked for e.g. racism, it was an established problem in popular opinion and the law. Companies generally aren’t at the vanguard of social change. We need legislation and case law. In that respect, firing the organiser was a strategic blunder—it frees her to meaningfully penalise Google.

woweoe 4y ago

If someone wants some more background information. A few decades ago during the Cold War, there were several large scale anti-caste movements, and this caused a lot of the moneyed upper caste (note that many of the upper caste are poor) to flee to the US where money often open doors. The immigration to the UK and the other English speaking countries tended to be more varied and more middle class based on skills (doctors, engineers, etc...). It's widely known within India that a notable portion of the upper caste are based in the US, but in India the IT industry is one of the most caste-blind industries in India, along with how the majority of the IT industry is based in South India where casteism is traditionally less.

thunkshift1 4y ago
- sreevisakh 4y ago
  That isn't even right because almost every single victim of caste discrimination is an Indian themselves. If there are caste allegations outside India, then it can only be from Indians themselves. Covering it under the wide umbrella of anti-India smear campaign is disingenuous at best.
  - woweoe 4y ago
    Yes and no. Casteism is virtually a non-existent concept among the Indian diaspora in the West, who are mostly in the second generation or further, though the US is possibly an exception. If you asked an Indian person in Australia about casteism then they would look at you as if you were asking something about India history and implied they weren't Australian. Furthermore casteism in the Indian American circles or even the Indian American IT industry may actually be worse than the casteism in India, because caste is a rare discussion point in the Indian tech world, and casteism is a less poignant issue in South India where most of the tech industry is based.
    - kyawzazaw 4y ago

treyfitty 4y ago

It's not just Google. As a non-Tech non-Indian that previously worked at AmEx, I was shocked to see how many indians there were at AmEx. I was even more shocked to learn that they discriminate based on caste.

georgia_peach 4y ago

I am reposting PaulHoule's (flagged) comment because it was a very good one: > *I have wondered if the high Asian population is one reason why San Francisco has such conspicuous homelessness. Western religion has some egalitarian ideas such as “The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” > On the other hand if you think a person's fortune now depends on karma they got from past lives then you might think it is a virtuous thing to perpetuate people's misery.

hikingsimulator 4y ago
It's not a very good one. Western philosophies and religions can definitely show this type of bias. Some branches of protestantism do believe in predestination. It's also common to see (bad) Christian takes that suffering is a challenge from god (often backed by Job's trials) and thus a thing that may not need changing. I believe Max Weber also covered this concept sociologically in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
- jackling 4y ago
  Isn't the idea that all suffering is a challenge of god key to Abrahamic religions. I always hear it from anyone religious when discussing that rational of why there is suffering the world when God can end it. And from my quick read of Job's story, it seems that it does exemplify that.
  - georgia_peach 4y ago
    While the loving Father metes out punishment as a correction to his wayward children, the Son has authority on earth to forgive sins, and has given very specific instructions to those who would be his followers: > If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven > He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Whereas per the great Eastern religions, the material world is Maya, all is the Self (tat tvam asi), righteous action is its own reward, and the Abrahamic concepts (despite many overlaps) seem rather peculiar. Or to quote Sadhguru: If you take in too much input from everywhere, the karmic process becomes very complicated. And the strategy evolved for your karma will not work if you keep mixing it up with someone else’s all the time. Why some who are in serious sadhana withdraw into a solitary cave or the like is because they do not want to complicate things. They understood the complexity of their own karma and do not want to complicate it anymore. That is why you do not step over anyone. You can go around them. It is also a mark of respect. And apart from that, it would disturb that person if you step over them. If you disturb their energy body, they may not immediately wake up, but internally, it disturbs them. All this comes from a fundamental understanding about life. No matter what you were doing – you were running a business, you were married, bearing and raising children, fighting a battle – for anyone who was born in this land, there was only one goal – ultimate liberation. Mukti was the only goal. The whole culture was structured around this. Many strategies were evolved so that you do not trip over someone else’s karma. You do not want to acquire anything new because you know the complexity of what you already have. If you undo your own puzzle, it is good enough. You do not want to complicate it.

glibmelody 4y ago

I've read the details of the original california lawsuit against cisco, and it seemed to be a blatant attempt by the accuser to get back at his colleague and manager, in the guise of caste discrimination. It was subsequently sensationalized by the media. - The accuser was hired to a coveted project by the manager, where every member was among the highest paid employees in Cisco (millions in total take home). Even among those people, the accuser was among the highest paid. - The accuser was supposedly discriminated by not getting a $5,000 raise after the annual performance appraisals. - The accuser was passed over for promotion, but the person appointed as the leader / successor by the manager was also of the same, supposedly discriminated caste. - The accuser and the manager went to school together, studied every class for 4 years together, and the accuser was hired to this coveted position by this supposedly discriminatory manager.

carapace 4y ago

The Indian caste system is Google's problem to solve? Let's talk about Google's caste system. There are at least two main castes at Google: The "Googlers" who get all the perks, and the support staff who do all the work and get far fewer perks. The upper caste gets meals, those nifty buses, medical care, etc. The lower caste does not get all those things (I think they get meals, but not in the same cafeteria) and they are specifically trained not to get familiar with the upper caste. In fact, they can get in trouble for fraternizing with the "real" Googlers. It's worth noting that the upper caste is made up mostly of white, Chinese, or Indian folks while the lower caste is mostly Mexican (in CA that means anyone from south of the border from Mexico to Chile and Argentina), Filipino, and some Arab people. (There are very few black people working at Google.) Google is progressive in the sense that they don't hate their servant class, but they are just as caste-conscious, if you will, as Indian culture.

jackling 4y ago
"support staff who do all the work and get far fewer perks", what do the support staff do? Are they also engineers, or are they the ones doing the non-product work at Google. Since you said they do all the work, I guess they're directly working on the products as well?
- carapace 4y ago
  They do all the physical work, janitor, maintenance, cooking, cleaning, etc. Everything that isn't sitting at a desk typing on a keyboard.
dsq 4y ago
I think what you are describing is class based rather than caste based. Caste is explicitly based on heredity and is unchangeable. The fact that the two classes are made up mostly of different ethnicities is probably caused by a confounding variable, such as different educational opportunities, as well as discrimination of course.
- carapace 4y ago

fleddr 4y ago

The simplest solution from a company perspective is to not hire activist type employees. It just never ends well. You may very well find the activist's point valid and just, but it still won't end well in most cases. Other than the fact that perhaps they should spend time on actually working, the typical activist method cannot ever succeed. It starts with some sweeping assertion affecting a large group: men oppress women, this cast has a bias to this cast, white people discriminate against black people. So it starts with a sweeping accusation. Which is presented as fact. The accused can't bring forward any counter point as this confirms the accusation, according to activist logic. Instead, you need to sit down and be "educated" and humiliated on things you don't even agree you did, as an individual. We shouldn't be surprised that this approach makes people angry and creates even more division. Activism, DEI and its struggle sessions are wildly unpopular and ineffective. Recently there was a good article (a serious one, I promise, from a progressive research institute) concluding the same: DEI in corporates is a massive failure. It's done nothing to progress any cause, instead deepened division. In extremer cases it even ends in a shouting/bullying match. Vague sweeping claims do not work. If you have a case of discrimination, document it the best you can, have a good story with tangible evidence. And then take it forward.

rdtsc 4y ago
Consequently, to filter out the potential troublemakers, for short a period of time encourage “bring your whole self to work”, “open and honest conversations” etc. See who starts to raise issues and then put them on PIP for purely “technical” reasons.
- fleddr 4y ago
  If anybody would say "bring yourself to work" my first response would be "are you really sure"? They're collective lies. Things we tell each other to make us feel better about ourselves. Same for "open and honest conversations" which really means a tiny subset of allowed conversations fitting ideology.
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anonymoushn 4y ago

> The first thing is denial. Saying this doesn’t even exist. That is a form of discrimination. There were messages on e-mail threads that talked about how this isn’t a problem here. If you replace the denial of caste discrimination with the denial of the Holocaust or something like that, it instantly clicks where other people start to realize, “Oh, something’s wrong if people are denying this.” It seems like if you said there was discrimination against tall white men, people would also deny that.

ggfdh 4y ago

I can understand why Hindus would be resistant to being labeled the “oppressor” in an “oppressor/oppressed” dynamic. Instead of discussing individual discrimination and behavior these discussions always result in the “reverse” hatred where the oppressed group is vilified. See white people in discussions of racism and Christians in discussion of LGBT issues.

deleted 4y ago

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rdtsc 4y ago

> Numerous employees within the company expressed the view that any talk on caste discrimination was offensive to the That’s one way to play the system - outvictim the victim! Well done. Who can prove they really felt unsafe or just wanted to keep the issue hidden and perpetuate caste discrimination.

vanderZwan 4y ago

For a moment I thought this was going to be more like "allegorically" about castes than about actual castes, since Google also has a history with the former, as highlighted by Andrew Norman Wilson in his 2007 art piece "Workers Leaving the Googleplex" [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0RTgOuoi2k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0RTgOuoi2k

naruvimama 4y ago

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known 4y ago