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by throwmeaway222 1y ago
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- teachrdan 1y agoOut of curiosity, do they favor hiring Indians in general, or Hindu Indians in particular. (To the exclusion of Muslim Indians)
- throwmeaway222 1y agothat is definitely part of it
- mystraline 1y agoYep. And caste based discrimination is legal in the USA. Its not a protected EEOC class, as much as that doesn't matter in our legal environment. So yeah, you can discriminate against Dalits, and hire predominantly Brahmins.
- jkaplowitz 1y agoExcept in Seattle, which explicitly bans caste discrimination as of 2023, and in California, which interprets its own state anti-discrimination laws to already include caste discrimination in other broader categories (which was the reason Governor Newsom gave when he vetoed a bill in 2023 to explicitly ban caste discrimination). Quite a lot of tech companies hire in either Seattle, California, or both.
- SilverElfin 1y agoWhat’s the evidence? I remember seeing allegations but all the court cases resulted in nothing, because there was no evidence of such discrimination.
- zdragnar 1y agoIt's been awhile since I've seen it, but there was a very brief and small wave of articles perhaps a few years back claiming a lot of Indians in the US were still facing caste-based discrimination (by skin color, name or something else, I'm not sure) by other Indian managers and execs.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoNewsom vetoed the ban [1]. A pair of professors are having a bad time trying to got CSU’s ban on caste-based discrimination thrown out on the grounds of being religiously discriminatory [2]. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/09/us/california-caste-discrimination-bill-veto https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/09/us/california-caste-discrimin... [2] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/23-4363/23-4363-2025-03-12.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/23...
- snozolli 1y agoNewsom vetoed the ban [1] From that article: In a statement explaining his veto decision, Newsom said the measure was “unnecessary” because discrimination based on caste is already prohibited in the state. (Just adding context that I would have missed if not for another commenter pointing it out further down)
- crooked-v 1y agoFor whatever it's worth, that's been a consistent trend with other things Newsom has vetoed with statements that he considers the vetoed item to be already covered by other laws, including some purely technical legislative things. I think it's likely that he sees himself as trying to keep California bureaucracy from growing indefinitely, especially with his push for things like CEQA process reduction/simplification.
- polotics 1y agofunny question, I believe we're more precisely talking about Brahmin "upper" caste hiring only from their caste. Muslims don't even come into the picture...
- srameshc 1y agoI don't think so. I feel Indian managers have a tendency to hire anyone else but Indians. If they have to favor Hindu, Brahmin, Muslim is very subjective, depending on that person's background, but I would say very rare. If they really have a prefrence, it will be "the connect", like if they both can connect based on region (ex: Delhi or that region) but very few Indians of current generation would care about caste or religion.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> I feel Indian managers have a tendency to hire anyone else but Indians I'd guess this varies massively depending on whether the hiring manager and the people they're hiring are H1-Bs.
- srameshc 1y agoUnless they have any personal advantage in doing so.
- tmule 1y agoThis is a remarkable claim. Not a single Indian in tech that I know in my personal or professional life - numbering over a hundred - has ever disputed that Indians have strong (sub)ethnic affinities that color their views hiring. In addition, nepotism is a real thing in Indian culture. I’d be laughed out of a room with aforesaid folks if I claimed “Indian managers have a tendency to hire anyone else but Indians”. This is either deliberately misleading to “save face” on behalf of the community (another cultural trait), or you’re utterly oblivious in an outlying way to how things work.
- sjiabq 1y ago[flagged]
- viridian 1y agoHow so? There are 172 million Muslims in India.
- SilverElfin 1y agoI think he means since they aren’t originally “Indian” but are colonizers of India who arrived through invasion.
- oblio 1y agoThat might have been the case 200+ years ago but for sure the majority of Indian Muslims these days are just descendants of converted Hindus and Buddhists, etc.
- anon291 1y agoSo are the brahmins. The indigenous religions of India are basically gone. Only remembered in various folklore.
- SilverElfin 1y agoWhere can I read more about this? That the indigenous are gone?
- anon291 1y ago'Why I am not Hindu', an essay by Kancha Ilaiah is a good starting point. In the west, the narrative is that India = Hinduism..however Hinduism is a term the British made up to describe anything other than Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The Brits classified Jains, Buddhists, and anyone else as Hindu. However, when you get people to tell you various 'beliefs' of Hinduism , it's often very discordant, much more so than protestant/ Catholic / etc. This is because there's hundreds of different sets of practices with various links. Due to migration selection, only some subset are commonly discussed in a western context. But, in reality, the common people of India had a wide range of practice that is not the typical 'Indian' you hear about. For example, many Indians in the west claim that Indians don't eat meat. This is a lie. Many groups have eaten meat since the time of the Indus Valley Civilization and still continue. https://www.waterstones.com/book/why-i-am-not-a-hindu/iiaiah/9788185604183 https://www.waterstones.com/book/why-i-am-not-a-hindu/iiaiah...
- silverquiet 1y agoMost people (regardless of race) prefer to hire from within their network. It makes sense that Indians' networks would consist of other Indians.
- ajross 1y agoYeah, "racist" seems to fail the Occam test here. But at the same time that makes it clear that the now-suddenly-unpopular opinion is also wrong. Diversity takes work, and companies need to guard against this kind of decisionmaking. "DEI" protects the native-born too!
- zdragnar 1y agoDEI arose to public consciousness around the same time that "whiteness" was often used as a synonym for bigotry and privilege. So long as academic circles (and those who come from them, such as the people now in HR departments) believe that having white skin is a sin, DEI will never be D, E or I. The three words themselves are nice and generally good things to believe in, but the packaging philosophy it is wrapped up in is poisonous.
- ludicrousdispla 1y agoI've never met a single HR person that could be characterized as coming from, or even brushing up against, an academic circle.
- Spooky23 1y agoMuch the opposite. They are usually the weaker animals in the herd or people who flipped out of corporate finance to negotiate benefits.
- ajross 1y ago> HR departments [...] believe that having white skin is a sin Can we just stop? This is a meme, it's clearly never been true. It's extrapolating from a bunch of intemperate stuff said by oddball losers (yes, often in academic environments which encourage out-of-the-box thinking and speech[1]) to tar a bunch of extremely bland policies enacted by HR and hiring managers (to ensure that their masters don't get sued) with an ideological brush. We people with "white skin" are very clearly doing just fine in the job market. [1] Something that in other contexts we at HN think is a good thing!
- deadbabe 1y agoDo you see them selectively picking based on the caste of the Indian?
- nostrademons 1y agoI've noticed this as well, but see it mostly as "A players hire other A players, B players hire C players". The top tier of Indian execs/management that I've met will hire diverse teams, just like the top tier of every other ethnicity will as well. There's simply not enough people at the top to put a racial/ethnic/caste filter on it. But then once you get down to the second tier, people will happily hire people like themselves, because at that level you're hiring on vibes rather than data and similar people give you fuzzy comfortable vibes. Unfortunately most Fortune 500 companies are in the hands of B players now, and it goes all the way up, with the government (multiple governments, really) being in the hands of B/C players. The A players are happily retired and pulling strings in the background with their 501(c)4s.
- mjcohen 1y ago[flagged]
- cyanydeez 1y agoOnly because the politics of most common idiot id the cheapest for monied interests to manufacture. Business is much worse at the same scale. Infact, you probably cant find any org at large scale that functions in rational, logic driven capacity. So theres just a bogeyman, not a useful critique of government.
- fijiaarone 1y agoThat’s extremely racist to assume that Indian execs are all D tier or worse.
- lazyasciiart 1y agoThat's clearly not an assumption that this sentence is based on: > The top tier of Indian execs/management that I've met will hire diverse teams
- thrawa8387336 1y agoWhile I understand your bias to read that, please, read again.
- silentsea90 1y agoThere are also Indians who loathe being on such teams and actively seek diverse meritocratic teams, as one of those Indians.
- rootusrootus 1y agoI have seen this myself. I have also experienced more than a few Indian colleagues who were far more critical of Indians in management than the rest of us were. I feel like there is an extra layer of dynamics that just isn't apparent if you are not accustomed to seeing it.
- silentsea90 1y agoIn a way, the people that despise Indians most are Indians themselves :) I say it in a non violent way, as a self critique and a welcome embrace of ideas outside of the Indian mold.
- edm0nd 1y agoIn the past, having to work with Indians from firms like Cognizant or HCL is pretty much torture. Instead of working with 2-3 Americans, you get stuck working with 10-20 Indians who dont know jack shit about shit. Thankfully the company recently nuked their contracts and brought everything back on shore because of how much of a shit show dealing with those companies is lol. Literally tens of millions of dollars wasted. Im kinda convinced that's their entire business plan. They lure these mega companies with omg "skilled labor" and having to pay them less, sign XX-XXXM contracts, 2-3 years go by and these mega corpos finally see how shit it is and just cancel them. HCL and Cognizant make money still regardless.
- gp90 1y ago> It's extremely racist I'm not sure if the motive behind such behavior is racism. Instead, I think it's more likely the power play. That is, they would pick the population that is the easiest to command and to push them up the corporate ladder.
- dexwiz 1y agoI made the mistake once of insinuating the reason no else was complaining about current conditions was that everyone else was on a visa. That was pretty much the end of my job there. Which only made me more confident in my opinion in the end.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago[flagged]
- cess11 1y ago[flagged]
- oblio 1y agoWhat about these cases happening outside of the US?
- techbro92 1y agoAt certain companies and it’s org structures yeah
- DontchaKnowit 1y agoI never understood this redefinition of the word... Racism means prejudice based on race. Period. Thats all it means. Redefining the word like you suggested is moving the political goalposts
- cess11 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- SilverElfin 1y agoWhat makes you think they’re racist versus just hiring the best available talent? There are more Indians in universities than the general population, and a lot more of them in engineering degrees than other degrees. It makes sense there are lots of Indians in some industries, both in the management roles and in the populations that managers are hiring from.
- giancarlostoro 1y agoYou really think nobody in the continental US can do good work in tech? You will have to fight really hard to convince me that all the talent is non existent.
- SilverElfin 1y agoI didn’t say non existent. But in short enough supply at the appropriate level of skill to have different skews without any discrimination happening
- giancarlostoro 1y agoSoftware Engineering is not some obscure thing it is a known science that anyone can learn and become better at. I see Juniors who outpace Senior developers all the time.
- xienze 1y ago> What makes you think they’re racist versus just hiring the best available talent? Yeah that’s never considered an acceptable argument whenever the ratio of white people in a company gets “too high”, don’t see why it should be any different with Indians.
- truffet 1y ago[flagged]
- toss1 1y agoIt is not just racist, it also allows all kinds of exploitation and unethical practices. I briefly worked for one such CEO in a major tech city. Core of Indian H1-B staff coders and about same amount of US white staff in both coding, customer-facing, and administrative roles. A lot of hiring was done rapidly. After less than six months the staff discovered the product being sold was basically a fraud (think summarization & classification of emails that could be handled by ChatGPT today, but back in early 2000s, the work was actually secretly being transmitted to staff in India every night, not the "AI" claimed). Of course, that was just one of the many layers of fractal dishonesty about that CEO and company. So, within a few weeks the entire white staff quit. During the process of organizing to quit, we also found out we were at least the third wave of [all the white staff quitting]. Of course, through all of these waves of quitting all the H1-Bs stayed, because they had no choice. Ironically, if it had been packaged honestly, it could have been a valuable and profitable service, but that wouldn't have been sellable to VCs (who were also being scammed). So yes, cheaper, fully compliant with fraudulent practices, and racist to boot. A toxic brew.
- araes 1y agoThanks, was actually my main question on reading the article. "Why go to all that effort if an American will accept the job for the same pay and you don't have to deal with sponsorship?" This seems like one of the most likely reasons. Racism's been mentioned, yet leverage over employees who have very little other alternative seems somewhat more likely. American's will just leave and go look for another job. Probably much larger chance of having them lateral to a different company also. fmajid in another thread had a similar paraphrase > H1-B holders have to find a new employer within 2 weeks or lose their visa, the threat of firing is the same thing as deportation, making for a form of indentured servitude. It's probably greater difficultly to lateral also, since then there's another company talking with the government about sponsorship on somebody you're already sponsoring. A lot of banks and financials already have standing threats to fire anybody they even find looking around.
- justanotherday9 1y ago[dead]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tomhow 1y agoPlease don't post in this inflammatory style on HN. You've set off a whole flamewar – nearly 100 comments so far – with many of the comments debating the definition of racism. This is the last thing we need here. The overall topic is important, which is why it needs to be discussed with comments that are thoughtful and substantive, which the guidelines clearly ask us to do: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't fulminate. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- franktankbank 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y agoThe guidelines apply equally to everyone. It makes all the difference whether a comment is worded in a way that promotes curious conversation vs rage.
- franktankbank 1y agoThey are quite subjective. IMO it's not very controversial to say they often exclude interesting corners of discussion. The nitty gritty of employee/employer dynamics for one.