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I have worked in the Seattle tech scene since 1997 and sex and caste discrimination is rampant in the Indian tech community. I only know this 2nd and third hand

I have worked in the Seattle tech scene since 1997 and sex and caste discrimination is rampant in the Indian tech community. I only know this 2nd and third hand as I am the stereotypical cis male white guy. The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa, with a women making up the vast majority of qa even though they graduated with the same degrees as the men from the same Indian universities. Even Indian men that I respected on multiple levels, when they get on an interview with a women they are overly harsh in ways they were not with men. So much so that I stopped interviewing all together. I reported to HR and they of course didn't know how to handle it. It really makes me sad. I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons. I applaud this action. This shit has to stop, leave it in India, America is better than this. Discrimination is fractal. All interview should be truly double-blind. https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/double-blind-study https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-term...

brailsafe 4y ago
Now that you mention it, on my non-American fully remote team, while we have no Indian men as engineers, I believe all our QAs are Indian women.
- meowtimemania 4y ago
  I never realized it, but on my team we have several Indian male engineers, no female engineers, and 4 Indian female QA
  - codegeek 4y ago
    See my comment above about "women in QA". Also, "no female engineers" is laughable because that is 1 anecdote. There are plenty of Indian female engineers. You know that right ?
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      "on my team" does mean anecdote. That's not laughable.
  - roguecoder 4y ago
    This is an American problem too. I've worked with a lot of women in QA who have CS degrees, and lots of male programmers who were shocked to discover that the testers they were working with had exactly the same qualifications they did. In America companies, women who struggle to find software engineering roles due to discrimination are often able to get lower-paid roles in QA where they are less likely to be pre-judged for not looking like what people think engineers look like. The result is that 38.8% of American QA testers are women, compared to 14% of software engineers.
    - meowtimemania 4y ago
      That’s interesting and holds true for me experience. In hindsight I think I’ve worked with more female qa engineers than female engineers
    - biztos 4y ago
      > less likely to be pre-judged I wonder how much that has to do with the hiring managers also being women. (For the places where that’s the case.)
      - roguecoder 4y ago
        It is likely to have more to do with gender stereotyping, and attitudes towards the work itself. Women and men alike perpetuate gender discrimination: https://escholarship.org/content/qt8s94154n/qt8s94154n.pdf https://escholarship.org/content/qt8s94154n/qt8s94154n.pdf Fields that hold fixed-mindset beliefs, where success in the field is attributed to innate talent, "being smart" or other unchanging characteristics, have significantly more discrimination against women and traditionally-marginalized racial groups than do fields that believe success relies on hard work and practice: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1261375 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1261375
    - yucky 4y ago
      Or another possibility is men and women are wired differently, and the things that make a good dev (such as coming up with a novel solution to a problem) is different from the things that make a good QA (testing every possible edge case to make sure the thing does what the thing is supposed to do).
- codegeek 4y ago
  Hint: It is not casteism. It is cultural. Women in India want to get into IT (best way to make decent money) and QA has lower barrier to entry with less pressure. Nothing to do with casteism. This is why GP's comment is extremely reckless and dangerous.
  - justin66 4y ago
    > GP's comment is extremely reckless and dangerous Unless sitkack thumbed their comment into an iPhone while simultaneously driving drunk and having unprotected sex with a prostitute, "extremely reckless and dangerous" is an awfully weird commentary on their post.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    I read your post, then I we back to again read the original post. To quote: The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa, with a women making up the vast majority of qa even though they graduated with the same degrees as the men from the same Indian universities. No where in that sentence does it say anything about casteism. (Yes, I know the original post was discussing both casteism and sex discrimination.) Also, you wrote: Nothing to do with casteism. Yes, in this particular case. Casteism results in lower human development for low caste people. As a result, they are likely to perform worse in the workplace due to multiple reasons, including education, confidence, etc. It is not casteism. It is cultural. Why do you think that they are separate? Any university-level sociology professor would tell you that they are clearly intertwined. Sexism is also cultural. About "extremely reckless and dangerous": On HN, each time casteism is the topic, it evokes strong, emotionally defensive responses from Indian-descent people (both nationals and the diaspora). Something that I often see repeated: "Oh, you just don't understand." "Oh, you cannot understand this ${thing} in our ancient culture." It's hard to understand if you don't ask. Yes, you may perceive their asking as a slight, but in many cases they are making an effort to learn more about this complex social issue. I see similar reactions during discussions about transgender rights and Black Lives Matter _in the United States_. There seems to be a small, vocal minority that wants to deny these are real, very serious, and important social issues that need our attention. When a non-Indian descent person sees what they perceive as casteism or sex discrimination towards Indian descent people, how would you like them to raise the issue with you?
aaomidi 4y ago
“ This shit has to stop, leave it in India, America is better than this.” The rest of your comment is fine but you can say it without throwing an entire country under the bus. Guess what, the US is currently literally allowing for caste discrimination. So maybe it’s not better than this. Not yet.
- pancrufty 4y ago
  You’re not wrong, but that refers to the general idea that you emigrate to improve your status; The caste system should not be exported.
- GenerocUsername 4y ago
  Perfect is the enemy of good. India is not dealing with this issue, America is.
  - coolestguy 4y ago
    >India is not dealing with this issue, America is. Lmao - clearly never been to india. Where do you think this comes from?
    - edgecombeddy 4y ago
      I read this as: Dealing as in working on it, not dealing as in enduring.
      - coolestguy 4y ago
        Ah - my bad.
      - aaomidi 4y ago
        Correct
  - chimeracoder 4y ago
    > India is not dealing with this issue, America is. India is not dealing with caste discrimination? Is this a joke? India has implemented incredibly wide-reaching and aggressive policies to both combat present-day casteism and remediate the effects of past/historical casteism. Yes, caste discrimination still happens in India - that's why it remains an ongoing effort with a multi-pronged approach. But it's very much an issue that is actively being addressed at nearly every layer of society, to a degree that would be inconceivable in the US or Europe. Honestly, if you compare the tangible and concrete steps to combat casteism that India has undertaken (a currently active effort) to the incredibly milquetoast anti-racism efforts within Europe (for example), it makes the latter look like mere lip service by comparison.
chollida1 4y ago
> Discrimination is fractal What does it mean for something to be fractal in this sense?
- bediger4000 4y ago
  It's self similar on different scales. On a small scale there's small discrimination. On a large scale there's larger discrimination.
- joeframbach 4y ago
  Maybe, "self-perpetuating".
- rubatuga 4y ago
  Maybe causing fractures in the group?
- tormeh 4y ago
  Probably that groups discriminated against often discriminate internally. Recurse a couple times. Rarely is someone only discriminating or discriminated against. Most people are both.
- CobrastanJorji 4y ago
  Very coarse racial/religios groups, (caucasians/asians/africans or christians/jews/muslims) discriminate against each other. But those groups are each divisible into smaller groups, which discriminate against each other just as hard, and those groups are also divisible into yet smaller groups, which discriminate against each other just as hard. There's a famous old Emo Phillips joke about this problem, which goes as follows. Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
_-david-_ 4y ago
How would you expect to implement a double blind interview? Have the interview over text or something?
trieste92 4y ago
> I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons. I notice this too. It's like someone brings up caste discrimination online (somewhere like teamblind) and a bunch of people come out of nowhere and say "that isn't real". Isn't very convincing to say the least
- petilon 4y ago
  That's because for the most part it's not real. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-not-past.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-no...
  - trieste92 4y ago
    ??? > "the vast majority of high paying jobs are still in the hands of the top three castes."
  - flandish 4y ago
    An Op-Ed in the nytimes is no different than a blog on geocities. Not. Real. Fact.
  - croes 4y ago
    An opinion article from 2013 is hardly counter evidence.
  - agarren 4y ago
    An op-ed piece from the NY Times? Not what I would consider an authoritative source. The author says caste discrimination is illegal, but goes onto suggest that other than people avoiding discussing the topic, and aside from a few high profile and moderately successful social initiatives, it’s still very much a thing. The piece doesn’t quite support your assertion, e.g.: > As India transforms, one might expect caste to dissolve and disappear, but that is not happening. Instead, caste is making its presence felt in ways similar to race in modern America: less important now in jobs and education, but vibrantly alive when it comes to two significant societal markers — marriage and politics… > Inter-caste marriages in India are on the rise but still tend to be the province of the liberal few. For much of the country, with its penchant for arranged marriages and close family ties, caste is still a primary determinant in choosing a spouse… …and a bit more. Why do you believe caste discrimination isn’t real? That seems like a strong stance.
quadrifoliate 4y ago
[flagged]
- metalforever 4y ago
  Wtf ? No, women do not all want to be QA, I assure you.
  - quadrifoliate 4y ago
    > No, women do not all want to be QA, I assure you. Of course they don't! People make their own choices! My point was that QA teams are often more welcoming to women, and don't have a ton of male brogrammer "let's crush some LeetCode" types. This also tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Where would you rather go, the team that treats interviews as a hazing ritual, or the one that conducts a good conversation and respects your time? I tried to make this more clear in my comment, since clearly I didn't do a good job of communicating it the first time.
  - andreareina 4y ago
    I'm reading GP as sarcastic and saying the preëxisting sexism explains it adequately, i.e. yes sexist, but because tech not because Indian.
    - quadrifoliate 4y ago
      Yes, you put my point much more concisely – thank you!
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
  [dead]
kilgnad 4y ago
Useless. You can't force this change. There are tons of ways around it. You have to attack it at the root and get these people to change themselves, and that's basically also impossible.
- SimDeBeau 4y ago
  That being said, it does provide some recourse for those who can show they’ve been discriminated because of their caste against the perpetrator. It doesn’t fix the root of the issue, and cases might be difficult to prove, but seems like a net good to add this protection. Might force discrimination on these grounds to be more subtle, but that means blatant discrimination would have consequences. Which again, seems better than the status quo.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    Better to have the law then to not have it sure. But from a practical perspective all of this is already done and kept on the DL even before the law was in place. The social pressure already stops the blatant treatment from occurring.
- roguecoder 4y ago
  Nonsense. People respond to incentives all the time. I recommend reading up on "zero-determinate strategies": all it takes to change someone's behavior is changing your behavior in response in ways that impact their payoffs. We are rationalizing creatures, not rational creatures. Once racism, sexism or caste discrimination stop being strategic, people stop buying into them. The book "Pax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds" describes several instance where this worked. Voluntary legal protection of minority rights by a historically-dominant group has repeatedly dismantled long-standing ethnic conflicts.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    Nonsense my ass. What fantasy incentive are you talking about? There's no incentive preventing someone from not hiring someone because of their caste and then completely fabricating a different reason. >We are rationalizing creatures, not rational creatures. Once racism, sexism or caste discrimination stop being strategic, people stop buying into them. Sure but the point is, it will never be "not strategic".
codegeek 4y ago
Caste System exists in India but you are generalizing way too much by saying "My Indian Colleagues". I am an Indian-American and I hate the caste system. I love that America is multi-cultural and allows people of all cultures/races to come here and make something for themselves. If you are going to assume by default that I believe in caste system, you are mistaken. But I am not interested in explaining too much. So yea, I will probably be tight lipped in front of you because you don't understand the complexity and roots of this practice. Just be careful about generalizing a country of 1.4 billion people. Someone more ignorant will automatically assume that all Indians are the same and they all believe in caste system.
- lolinder 4y ago
  >> I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons. > but you are generalizing way too much by saying "My Indian Colleagues" ... I will probably be tight lipped in front of you All OP said is their Indian colleagues are tight-lipped about caste, which it sounds like you would be too. I'm not sure why you feel that's unfair generalization. OP isn't claiming they all support it, just that they're silent about it.
  - codegeek 4y ago
    I can't speak for others but I may be tight lipped personally because it is a very complex issue that a non Indian cannot just understand. I see this tendency that people of non Indian origin throw the keyword "caste" without really knowing what it is. OP is making sweeping generalizations. Another example: All women in QA. So what ? May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work. Sure, some of it may be cultural but tieing to casteism is a stretch.
    - lolinder 4y ago
      > May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work. OP is talking not just about casteism but also about sexism, and in the US this would be considered a badly sexist remark. Why do you assume that women seek jobs with a lower barrier to entry and less demanding work?
petilon 4y ago
> The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination Let's review the facts. Technology firms in India have a better female to male staff ratio than the tech giants of Silicon Valley [1]. India has a much better male-to-female ratio compared with the U.S. Engineering male-female ratio in India is 1.96 as compared with 4.61 in the U.S. [2] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/24/why-women-in-stem-may-be-better-off-working-in-india-and-latin-america https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2... [2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-is-a-mane28099s-field-changing-a-stereotype-with-a-lesson-from-india/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-... What India Can Teach Silicon Valley About Its Gender Problem https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/ https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/ https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-skilled-female-developers/ https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-sk... The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are first generation immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe.
- kiratp 4y ago
  A very large part of why there M:W ratio is different for immigrants than those back in India is also very sexist - parents don’t want to send their daughters abroad alone because… <sexist> reasons whereas the sons all get pushed to try and get out.
  - roguecoder 4y ago
    Also because American companies take advantage of the H1B process to legally discriminate on the basis of gender. While hiring in America must provide equal opportunities, there is no requirement that American companies not discriminate when sponsoring visas.
    - roguecoder 4y ago
Consultant32452 4y ago
FWIW, women tend to do even worse in double-blind hiring processes. Figuring out how to get more women in tech is a tough nut to crack. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...
roguecoder 4y ago
Interviewing double-blind in a discriminatory system is still going to reproduce existing discriminatory dynamics. That solution works in situations where performance is individual, the standards are largely agreed-upon and the access to training & opportunities are equally-accessible. That's why it was so effective for orchestras. Unfortunately, computer science education remains one of the most discriminatory part of our industry, and the decades of discrimination mean people's resumes and post-education training vary already. And finally, what makes a developer effective varies by team and context, and we don't have any consistent way to judge those things. Luckily, there are plenty of techniques that can successfully address bias even under those situations. They just tend to be harder to sell to anxious people who want to stay centered in the majority, because they all require admitting that discrimination exists.
desi_ninja 4y ago
copying from earlier where I posted this answer....Kshama Sawant is exploiting the ignorance about Hindu religion and ground reality about India among US audience to get a political bill passed which makes "Hindu= castiest" to avg ignorant american and opens them up for hate attacks.... the problem is certain groups thrive on the American's lack of information about Indian society to spread their misinformation as truth. Caste, being a complex issue, has been reduced india to rural areas. Any cases about caste favoritism or discrimination area dealt with public outcry and government laws. Meritocracy is the currency in the new Indian tech space. Caste as portrayed by American newspapers and "human rights" agencies is that every Hindu (they single out, even though caste problem exists in all religions in India Pakistan Bangladesh etc) comes with caste lense, which is untrue. There has been a deliberate attempt to make Brahim = white so that US left liberals can easily make oppressor-opressed connections. Reality is way different and complex but nobody wants to read sources. In many parts lower castes are in high power, and they exert atrocities on everyone else - other lower castes and higher castes. Whole India is riddled with examples like that. Person in power exploits poor person. Caste is just a tool. Again, with public outcry and strict laws, it has been relegated to deep rural areas of India. You won't find it easily in cities. What all this points to ? This is an attempt to dehumanize hindu population, attack hindu tech workers (who are micro minority in USA) and erode any goodwill around India. Take this article for example, it doesn't go into the Dalit activists obvious misinterpretations but paints Rajiv Malhotra as devil incarnate. Propaganda pieces rarely show their teeth this easily. Any follower of reuters will form their opinion by reading such propaganda piece. Salvatore Babones, american statistician warned about same thing - Salvatore Babones | Demonising A Democracy? | India Today Conclave 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGkFwDk7TUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGkFwDk7TUQ . For a western audience, India is becoming a fascist state even though ground reality is entirely opposite because they are surrounded by media reports which say so. If you repeat lie long enough, it becomes the truth.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
When I was working for an American tech in China, my boss would joke about the QA team being all female while there were scarcely another girls in the engineering team. I guess that kind of thing doesn’t just happen in India (although things are much better now at the company I worked for in their Beijing office).
- unmole 4y ago
  I worked for a Chinese tech giant in India. I just realised that all the female Chinese engineers I interacted with were SDETs. While the skew existed in India, it wasn't as pronounced.
newusertoday 4y ago
regarding sex discrimination. Did you actually asked women in qa whether they chose to be in qa or were forced to be in qa or you came to this conclusion solely based on the observation that there were more women in qa than dev? My anecdotal experience is that lot of south asian women choose to go in QA. I have several women in dev jobs coming to me asking for transfer in QA when they needed predictable office timing and wanted to concentrate more on their family lives but without losing thier touch from corporate jobs. I also have women transferring from QA back to dev jobs when their kids were slightly older and well adjusted to school when they needed more challenge. I have had similar requests for going into program management jobs too for similar reasons. This was before pre-pandemic i don't know the current state as i am out of corp. world but i don't subscribe to this idea. I think there is cultural angle to it as well.
the_third_wave 4y ago
> I am the stereotypical cis male white guy. Newspeak™ terms like 'cis' should be kept out of the general discourse, they have no place in a society where people live and thrive based on what binds them together. This type of language only serves to divide and create more 'us versus them' which may be a boon for those who want to push identity politics but is a bane for the rest of society.
Longlius 4y ago
I'm seeing a lot of Indians replying to this post's point about sex discrimination, but I'm assuming they're men. Are there any Indian women on HN who can sound off on their own experiences with sex discrimination?
kjsingh 4y ago
> I reported to HR and they of course didn't know how to handle it. The biggest problem - the structures meant to solve the problem don't know what to do

brailsafe 4y ago

Now that you mention it, on my non-American fully remote team, while we have no Indian men as engineers, I believe all our QAs are Indian women.

meowtimemania 4y ago
I never realized it, but on my team we have several Indian male engineers, no female engineers, and 4 Indian female QA
- codegeek 4y ago
  See my comment above about "women in QA". Also, "no female engineers" is laughable because that is 1 anecdote. There are plenty of Indian female engineers. You know that right ?
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    "on my team" does mean anecdote. That's not laughable.
- roguecoder 4y ago
  This is an American problem too. I've worked with a lot of women in QA who have CS degrees, and lots of male programmers who were shocked to discover that the testers they were working with had exactly the same qualifications they did. In America companies, women who struggle to find software engineering roles due to discrimination are often able to get lower-paid roles in QA where they are less likely to be pre-judged for not looking like what people think engineers look like. The result is that 38.8% of American QA testers are women, compared to 14% of software engineers.
  - meowtimemania 4y ago
    That’s interesting and holds true for me experience. In hindsight I think I’ve worked with more female qa engineers than female engineers
  - biztos 4y ago
    > less likely to be pre-judged I wonder how much that has to do with the hiring managers also being women. (For the places where that’s the case.)
    - roguecoder 4y ago
      It is likely to have more to do with gender stereotyping, and attitudes towards the work itself. Women and men alike perpetuate gender discrimination: https://escholarship.org/content/qt8s94154n/qt8s94154n.pdf https://escholarship.org/content/qt8s94154n/qt8s94154n.pdf Fields that hold fixed-mindset beliefs, where success in the field is attributed to innate talent, "being smart" or other unchanging characteristics, have significantly more discrimination against women and traditionally-marginalized racial groups than do fields that believe success relies on hard work and practice: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1261375 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1261375
  - yucky 4y ago
    Or another possibility is men and women are wired differently, and the things that make a good dev (such as coming up with a novel solution to a problem) is different from the things that make a good QA (testing every possible edge case to make sure the thing does what the thing is supposed to do).
codegeek 4y ago
Hint: It is not casteism. It is cultural. Women in India want to get into IT (best way to make decent money) and QA has lower barrier to entry with less pressure. Nothing to do with casteism. This is why GP's comment is extremely reckless and dangerous.
- justin66 4y ago
  > GP's comment is extremely reckless and dangerous Unless sitkack thumbed their comment into an iPhone while simultaneously driving drunk and having unprotected sex with a prostitute, "extremely reckless and dangerous" is an awfully weird commentary on their post.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  I read your post, then I we back to again read the original post. To quote: The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa, with a women making up the vast majority of qa even though they graduated with the same degrees as the men from the same Indian universities. No where in that sentence does it say anything about casteism. (Yes, I know the original post was discussing both casteism and sex discrimination.) Also, you wrote: Nothing to do with casteism. Yes, in this particular case. Casteism results in lower human development for low caste people. As a result, they are likely to perform worse in the workplace due to multiple reasons, including education, confidence, etc. It is not casteism. It is cultural. Why do you think that they are separate? Any university-level sociology professor would tell you that they are clearly intertwined. Sexism is also cultural. About "extremely reckless and dangerous": On HN, each time casteism is the topic, it evokes strong, emotionally defensive responses from Indian-descent people (both nationals and the diaspora). Something that I often see repeated: "Oh, you just don't understand." "Oh, you cannot understand this ${thing} in our ancient culture." It's hard to understand if you don't ask. Yes, you may perceive their asking as a slight, but in many cases they are making an effort to learn more about this complex social issue. I see similar reactions during discussions about transgender rights and Black Lives Matter _in the United States_. There seems to be a small, vocal minority that wants to deny these are real, very serious, and important social issues that need our attention. When a non-Indian descent person sees what they perceive as casteism or sex discrimination towards Indian descent people, how would you like them to raise the issue with you?

aaomidi 4y ago

“ This shit has to stop, leave it in India, America is better than this.” The rest of your comment is fine but you can say it without throwing an entire country under the bus. Guess what, the US is currently literally allowing for caste discrimination. So maybe it’s not better than this. Not yet.

pancrufty 4y ago
You’re not wrong, but that refers to the general idea that you emigrate to improve your status; The caste system should not be exported.
GenerocUsername 4y ago
Perfect is the enemy of good. India is not dealing with this issue, America is.
- coolestguy 4y ago
  >India is not dealing with this issue, America is. Lmao - clearly never been to india. Where do you think this comes from?
  - edgecombeddy 4y ago
    I read this as: Dealing as in working on it, not dealing as in enduring.
    - coolestguy 4y ago
      Ah - my bad.
    - aaomidi 4y ago
      Correct
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > India is not dealing with this issue, America is. India is not dealing with caste discrimination? Is this a joke? India has implemented incredibly wide-reaching and aggressive policies to both combat present-day casteism and remediate the effects of past/historical casteism. Yes, caste discrimination still happens in India - that's why it remains an ongoing effort with a multi-pronged approach. But it's very much an issue that is actively being addressed at nearly every layer of society, to a degree that would be inconceivable in the US or Europe. Honestly, if you compare the tangible and concrete steps to combat casteism that India has undertaken (a currently active effort) to the incredibly milquetoast anti-racism efforts within Europe (for example), it makes the latter look like mere lip service by comparison.

chollida1 4y ago

> Discrimination is fractal What does it mean for something to be fractal in this sense?

bediger4000 4y ago
It's self similar on different scales. On a small scale there's small discrimination. On a large scale there's larger discrimination.
joeframbach 4y ago
Maybe, "self-perpetuating".
rubatuga 4y ago
Maybe causing fractures in the group?
tormeh 4y ago
Probably that groups discriminated against often discriminate internally. Recurse a couple times. Rarely is someone only discriminating or discriminated against. Most people are both.
CobrastanJorji 4y ago
Very coarse racial/religios groups, (caucasians/asians/africans or christians/jews/muslims) discriminate against each other. But those groups are each divisible into smaller groups, which discriminate against each other just as hard, and those groups are also divisible into yet smaller groups, which discriminate against each other just as hard. There's a famous old Emo Phillips joke about this problem, which goes as follows. Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

_-david-_ 4y ago

How would you expect to implement a double blind interview? Have the interview over text or something?

trieste92 4y ago

> I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons. I notice this too. It's like someone brings up caste discrimination online (somewhere like teamblind) and a bunch of people come out of nowhere and say "that isn't real". Isn't very convincing to say the least

petilon 4y ago
That's because for the most part it's not real. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-not-past.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-no...
- trieste92 4y ago
  ??? > "the vast majority of high paying jobs are still in the hands of the top three castes."
- flandish 4y ago
  An Op-Ed in the nytimes is no different than a blog on geocities. Not. Real. Fact.
- croes 4y ago
  An opinion article from 2013 is hardly counter evidence.
- agarren 4y ago
  An op-ed piece from the NY Times? Not what I would consider an authoritative source. The author says caste discrimination is illegal, but goes onto suggest that other than people avoiding discussing the topic, and aside from a few high profile and moderately successful social initiatives, it’s still very much a thing. The piece doesn’t quite support your assertion, e.g.: > As India transforms, one might expect caste to dissolve and disappear, but that is not happening. Instead, caste is making its presence felt in ways similar to race in modern America: less important now in jobs and education, but vibrantly alive when it comes to two significant societal markers — marriage and politics… > Inter-caste marriages in India are on the rise but still tend to be the province of the liberal few. For much of the country, with its penchant for arranged marriages and close family ties, caste is still a primary determinant in choosing a spouse… …and a bit more. Why do you believe caste discrimination isn’t real? That seems like a strong stance.

quadrifoliate 4y ago

[flagged]

metalforever 4y ago
Wtf ? No, women do not all want to be QA, I assure you.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  > No, women do not all want to be QA, I assure you. Of course they don't! People make their own choices! My point was that QA teams are often more welcoming to women, and don't have a ton of male brogrammer "let's crush some LeetCode" types. This also tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Where would you rather go, the team that treats interviews as a hazing ritual, or the one that conducts a good conversation and respects your time? I tried to make this more clear in my comment, since clearly I didn't do a good job of communicating it the first time.
- andreareina 4y ago
  I'm reading GP as sarcastic and saying the preëxisting sexism explains it adequately, i.e. yes sexist, but because tech not because Indian.
  - quadrifoliate 4y ago
    Yes, you put my point much more concisely – thank you!
sieabahlpark 4y ago
[dead]

kilgnad 4y ago

Useless. You can't force this change. There are tons of ways around it. You have to attack it at the root and get these people to change themselves, and that's basically also impossible.

SimDeBeau 4y ago
That being said, it does provide some recourse for those who can show they’ve been discriminated because of their caste against the perpetrator. It doesn’t fix the root of the issue, and cases might be difficult to prove, but seems like a net good to add this protection. Might force discrimination on these grounds to be more subtle, but that means blatant discrimination would have consequences. Which again, seems better than the status quo.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  Better to have the law then to not have it sure. But from a practical perspective all of this is already done and kept on the DL even before the law was in place. The social pressure already stops the blatant treatment from occurring.
roguecoder 4y ago
Nonsense. People respond to incentives all the time. I recommend reading up on "zero-determinate strategies": all it takes to change someone's behavior is changing your behavior in response in ways that impact their payoffs. We are rationalizing creatures, not rational creatures. Once racism, sexism or caste discrimination stop being strategic, people stop buying into them. The book "Pax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds" describes several instance where this worked. Voluntary legal protection of minority rights by a historically-dominant group has repeatedly dismantled long-standing ethnic conflicts.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  Nonsense my ass. What fantasy incentive are you talking about? There's no incentive preventing someone from not hiring someone because of their caste and then completely fabricating a different reason. >We are rationalizing creatures, not rational creatures. Once racism, sexism or caste discrimination stop being strategic, people stop buying into them. Sure but the point is, it will never be "not strategic".

codegeek 4y ago

Caste System exists in India but you are generalizing way too much by saying "My Indian Colleagues". I am an Indian-American and I hate the caste system. I love that America is multi-cultural and allows people of all cultures/races to come here and make something for themselves. If you are going to assume by default that I believe in caste system, you are mistaken. But I am not interested in explaining too much. So yea, I will probably be tight lipped in front of you because you don't understand the complexity and roots of this practice. Just be careful about generalizing a country of 1.4 billion people. Someone more ignorant will automatically assume that all Indians are the same and they all believe in caste system.

lolinder 4y ago
>> I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons. > but you are generalizing way too much by saying "My Indian Colleagues" ... I will probably be tight lipped in front of you All OP said is their Indian colleagues are tight-lipped about caste, which it sounds like you would be too. I'm not sure why you feel that's unfair generalization. OP isn't claiming they all support it, just that they're silent about it.
- codegeek 4y ago
  I can't speak for others but I may be tight lipped personally because it is a very complex issue that a non Indian cannot just understand. I see this tendency that people of non Indian origin throw the keyword "caste" without really knowing what it is. OP is making sweeping generalizations. Another example: All women in QA. So what ? May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work. Sure, some of it may be cultural but tieing to casteism is a stretch.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    > May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work. OP is talking not just about casteism but also about sexism, and in the US this would be considered a badly sexist remark. Why do you assume that women seek jobs with a lower barrier to entry and less demanding work?

petilon 4y ago

> The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination Let's review the facts. Technology firms in India have a better female to male staff ratio than the tech giants of Silicon Valley [1]. India has a much better male-to-female ratio compared with the U.S. Engineering male-female ratio in India is 1.96 as compared with 4.61 in the U.S. [2] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/24/why-women-in-stem-may-be-better-off-working-in-india-and-latin-america https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2... [2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-is-a-mane28099s-field-changing-a-stereotype-with-a-lesson-from-india/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-... What India Can Teach Silicon Valley About Its Gender Problem https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/ https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/ https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-skilled-female-developers/ https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-sk... The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are first generation immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe.

kiratp 4y ago
A very large part of why there M:W ratio is different for immigrants than those back in India is also very sexist - parents don’t want to send their daughters abroad alone because… <sexist> reasons whereas the sons all get pushed to try and get out.
- roguecoder 4y ago
  Also because American companies take advantage of the H1B process to legally discriminate on the basis of gender. While hiring in America must provide equal opportunities, there is no requirement that American companies not discriminate when sponsoring visas.
  - roguecoder 4y ago

Consultant32452 4y ago

FWIW, women tend to do even worse in double-blind hiring processes. Figuring out how to get more women in tech is a tough nut to crack. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...

roguecoder 4y ago

Interviewing double-blind in a discriminatory system is still going to reproduce existing discriminatory dynamics. That solution works in situations where performance is individual, the standards are largely agreed-upon and the access to training & opportunities are equally-accessible. That's why it was so effective for orchestras. Unfortunately, computer science education remains one of the most discriminatory part of our industry, and the decades of discrimination mean people's resumes and post-education training vary already. And finally, what makes a developer effective varies by team and context, and we don't have any consistent way to judge those things. Luckily, there are plenty of techniques that can successfully address bias even under those situations. They just tend to be harder to sell to anxious people who want to stay centered in the majority, because they all require admitting that discrimination exists.

desi_ninja 4y ago

copying from earlier where I posted this answer....Kshama Sawant is exploiting the ignorance about Hindu religion and ground reality about India among US audience to get a political bill passed which makes "Hindu= castiest" to avg ignorant american and opens them up for hate attacks.... the problem is certain groups thrive on the American's lack of information about Indian society to spread their misinformation as truth. Caste, being a complex issue, has been reduced india to rural areas. Any cases about caste favoritism or discrimination area dealt with public outcry and government laws. Meritocracy is the currency in the new Indian tech space. Caste as portrayed by American newspapers and "human rights" agencies is that every Hindu (they single out, even though caste problem exists in all religions in India Pakistan Bangladesh etc) comes with caste lense, which is untrue. There has been a deliberate attempt to make Brahim = white so that US left liberals can easily make oppressor-opressed connections. Reality is way different and complex but nobody wants to read sources. In many parts lower castes are in high power, and they exert atrocities on everyone else - other lower castes and higher castes. Whole India is riddled with examples like that. Person in power exploits poor person. Caste is just a tool. Again, with public outcry and strict laws, it has been relegated to deep rural areas of India. You won't find it easily in cities. What all this points to ? This is an attempt to dehumanize hindu population, attack hindu tech workers (who are micro minority in USA) and erode any goodwill around India. Take this article for example, it doesn't go into the Dalit activists obvious misinterpretations but paints Rajiv Malhotra as devil incarnate. Propaganda pieces rarely show their teeth this easily. Any follower of reuters will form their opinion by reading such propaganda piece. Salvatore Babones, american statistician warned about same thing - Salvatore Babones | Demonising A Democracy? | India Today Conclave 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGkFwDk7TUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGkFwDk7TUQ . For a western audience, India is becoming a fascist state even though ground reality is entirely opposite because they are surrounded by media reports which say so. If you repeat lie long enough, it becomes the truth.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

When I was working for an American tech in China, my boss would joke about the QA team being all female while there were scarcely another girls in the engineering team. I guess that kind of thing doesn’t just happen in India (although things are much better now at the company I worked for in their Beijing office).

unmole 4y ago
I worked for a Chinese tech giant in India. I just realised that all the female Chinese engineers I interacted with were SDETs. While the skew existed in India, it wasn't as pronounced.

newusertoday 4y ago

regarding sex discrimination. Did you actually asked women in qa whether they chose to be in qa or were forced to be in qa or you came to this conclusion solely based on the observation that there were more women in qa than dev? My anecdotal experience is that lot of south asian women choose to go in QA. I have several women in dev jobs coming to me asking for transfer in QA when they needed predictable office timing and wanted to concentrate more on their family lives but without losing thier touch from corporate jobs. I also have women transferring from QA back to dev jobs when their kids were slightly older and well adjusted to school when they needed more challenge. I have had similar requests for going into program management jobs too for similar reasons. This was before pre-pandemic i don't know the current state as i am out of corp. world but i don't subscribe to this idea. I think there is cultural angle to it as well.

the_third_wave 4y ago

> I am the stereotypical cis male white guy. Newspeak™ terms like 'cis' should be kept out of the general discourse, they have no place in a society where people live and thrive based on what binds them together. This type of language only serves to divide and create more 'us versus them' which may be a boon for those who want to push identity politics but is a bane for the rest of society.

Longlius 4y ago

I'm seeing a lot of Indians replying to this post's point about sex discrimination, but I'm assuming they're men. Are there any Indian women on HN who can sound off on their own experiences with sex discrimination?

kjsingh 4y ago

> I reported to HR and they of course didn't know how to handle it. The biggest problem - the structures meant to solve the problem don't know what to do