4 ms·

Well why then don't you put a sign on your "position ad" (assuming it's real and not dreamed up) saying "no negroes allowed"? Coze surely that's the vibe of you

Well why then don't you put a sign on your "position ad" (assuming it's real and not dreamed up) saying "no negroes allowed"? Coze surely that's the vibe of your message.

epolanski 2y ago
It's not my fault that the experience with developers coming from those areas has not been good and my current company does not want to repeat the mistake. There's no racism involved, African applicants are very welcome as they live in the same timezone as most of Europe do.
- jkaplowitz 2y ago
  > It's not my fault I don’t think anyone was blaming you personally, nor am I. > that the experience with developers coming from those areas has not been good and my current company does not want to repeat the mistake. > There's no racism involved, African applicants are very welcome as they live in the same timezone as most of Europe do. Whether or not racism is involved in this case, it is absolutely possible to be racist against Middle Easterners and Indians without being racist against Africans. Racism is not a single binary yes/no question. Also, is the time zone (whether of residence or of work) really the determining factor, or is it where the person personally or ancestrally comes from? For example, would the client consider someone personally and ancestrally from India or the Middle East who currently lives in Germany or Africa and works in the local time zone there, or who lives in India or a Middle Eastern country but nevertheless can work at the same times that the Europeans work instead of asynchronously? (Tangent: Egypt is usually considered to be both in Africa and in the Middle East, and it’s in a Europe-compatible time zone like the rest of Africa. The rest of my comment will ignore this, but it highlights how weird it is to exclude the Middle East but not Africa for time zone reasons.) What about a Swedish or British person who lives in India or a Middle Eastern country and works in the local time zone there? And does the client’s policy treat Israel like the Middle Eastern country that it in fact is, or is “Middle Eastern” a short hand for “majority Arab or certain other ethnicities such as Persian but not African”? I’ve worked with plenty of good and bad people from all regions - including not only good and bad people from India and the Middle East, but also including good and bad people from Europe and the Americas. The same is true when I’ve interviewed people as a hiring manager. Your client’s biases are not supported by most data or anecdotes, unless there is something very unusual about the particular candidate pool they attract, in which they should fix their outreach methods. Rather than true racism, my suspicion is that your client is simply unaware of how to get past the cultural differences that developers from India and many Middle Eastern countries have to overcome in order to work well in European (or American) companies, none of which are inherent to their level of talent or skill. For example, they need to learn that it’s okay for an individual contributor to take initiative, to admit problems, and to (politely and with data) question potentially bad decisions made or proposed by people above them in the hierarchy. There are ways to either retrain people from that region or to filter at an early stage of the hiring process for candidates who have already made that adjustment.
  - epolanski 2y ago
    It's obvious that there are good and bad engineers everywhere, and we consider most applicants crap regardless of where they come from. The average developer in the world struggles at being proficient at its craft and can, at best, poorly glue some APIs in an unreadable mess of code. That's true globally. And that's true regardless of the candidate having graduated in CS/SE or not. In fact we have been so far been happier with self-taught devs rather than people who went into programming just to find a job and never really learned much besides trying to pass the exams. But Indian/Middle Eastern developers tend to be, on average, even worse. Indian news sites have different articles about that and tie it to the level of education, not just university one. But on top of that, we couldn't match culturally too. As a German/Dutch company my client is all about straightforwardness and no bullshit, whereas devs from those regions focused on impress and not create issues and would hardly raise their hands in case something got wrong. They would consistently do A' when asked for A. Even very simple task like add a translation key or a tracking event took eternities. Obviously there was much we could do to onboard them better, and we tried, but it was always difficult and though, in the end these devs tended to add more work in supervision than what they would accomplish but we simply have no time/budget/patience. Again, I want to reiterate, that's the experience we have and what we feel about devs from any part of the world, but statistically it was worse in India/Middle East (again, probably for cultural/education reasons). It's like if you get burned twice/thrice by a car brand, even if stats tell you it's an okay brand, you're not gonna buy it again. Even other stuff like payments and contracts was complicated. And them being up late at night (for them) when we were still in the morning/early afternoon, was an issue. They were obviously tired and in their circadian low. And no, we don't hire from any other time zone than Central Europe +-2.
    - tmcdos 2y ago
      My experience is quite similar. On top of that, 99% of the time I am unable to understand what they're speaking (Indians and many other Asians). Their writing is slightly better - but still has a large room for improvement in understandability.

Well why then don't you put a sign on your "position ad" (assuming it's real and not dreamed up) saying "no negroes allowed"? Coze surely that's the vibe of your message.

epolanski 2y ago

It's not my fault that the experience with developers coming from those areas has not been good and my current company does not want to repeat the mistake. There's no racism involved, African applicants are very welcome as they live in the same timezone as most of Europe do.

jkaplowitz 2y ago
> It's not my fault I don’t think anyone was blaming you personally, nor am I. > that the experience with developers coming from those areas has not been good and my current company does not want to repeat the mistake. > There's no racism involved, African applicants are very welcome as they live in the same timezone as most of Europe do. Whether or not racism is involved in this case, it is absolutely possible to be racist against Middle Easterners and Indians without being racist against Africans. Racism is not a single binary yes/no question. Also, is the time zone (whether of residence or of work) really the determining factor, or is it where the person personally or ancestrally comes from? For example, would the client consider someone personally and ancestrally from India or the Middle East who currently lives in Germany or Africa and works in the local time zone there, or who lives in India or a Middle Eastern country but nevertheless can work at the same times that the Europeans work instead of asynchronously? (Tangent: Egypt is usually considered to be both in Africa and in the Middle East, and it’s in a Europe-compatible time zone like the rest of Africa. The rest of my comment will ignore this, but it highlights how weird it is to exclude the Middle East but not Africa for time zone reasons.) What about a Swedish or British person who lives in India or a Middle Eastern country and works in the local time zone there? And does the client’s policy treat Israel like the Middle Eastern country that it in fact is, or is “Middle Eastern” a short hand for “majority Arab or certain other ethnicities such as Persian but not African”? I’ve worked with plenty of good and bad people from all regions - including not only good and bad people from India and the Middle East, but also including good and bad people from Europe and the Americas. The same is true when I’ve interviewed people as a hiring manager. Your client’s biases are not supported by most data or anecdotes, unless there is something very unusual about the particular candidate pool they attract, in which they should fix their outreach methods. Rather than true racism, my suspicion is that your client is simply unaware of how to get past the cultural differences that developers from India and many Middle Eastern countries have to overcome in order to work well in European (or American) companies, none of which are inherent to their level of talent or skill. For example, they need to learn that it’s okay for an individual contributor to take initiative, to admit problems, and to (politely and with data) question potentially bad decisions made or proposed by people above them in the hierarchy. There are ways to either retrain people from that region or to filter at an early stage of the hiring process for candidates who have already made that adjustment.
- epolanski 2y ago
  It's obvious that there are good and bad engineers everywhere, and we consider most applicants crap regardless of where they come from. The average developer in the world struggles at being proficient at its craft and can, at best, poorly glue some APIs in an unreadable mess of code. That's true globally. And that's true regardless of the candidate having graduated in CS/SE or not. In fact we have been so far been happier with self-taught devs rather than people who went into programming just to find a job and never really learned much besides trying to pass the exams. But Indian/Middle Eastern developers tend to be, on average, even worse. Indian news sites have different articles about that and tie it to the level of education, not just university one. But on top of that, we couldn't match culturally too. As a German/Dutch company my client is all about straightforwardness and no bullshit, whereas devs from those regions focused on impress and not create issues and would hardly raise their hands in case something got wrong. They would consistently do A' when asked for A. Even very simple task like add a translation key or a tracking event took eternities. Obviously there was much we could do to onboard them better, and we tried, but it was always difficult and though, in the end these devs tended to add more work in supervision than what they would accomplish but we simply have no time/budget/patience. Again, I want to reiterate, that's the experience we have and what we feel about devs from any part of the world, but statistically it was worse in India/Middle East (again, probably for cultural/education reasons). It's like if you get burned twice/thrice by a car brand, even if stats tell you it's an okay brand, you're not gonna buy it again. Even other stuff like payments and contracts was complicated. And them being up late at night (for them) when we were still in the morning/early afternoon, was an issue. They were obviously tired and in their circadian low. And no, we don't hire from any other time zone than Central Europe +-2.
  - tmcdos 2y ago
    My experience is quite similar. On top of that, 99% of the time I am unable to understand what they're speaking (Indians and many other Asians). Their writing is slightly better - but still has a large room for improvement in understandability.