Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees(siliconvalley.com) |
Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees(siliconvalley.com) |
-> Getting an assignment in the US is viewed as a reward for employees who work in the company for 5+ years.
-> H1B visa employess are given a 50% minimum discount to market rate. cause lol what are you gonna do . Quit and go back in the Queue for H1B.
-> nepotism / favoritism self explanatory.
-> Are more willing to work 40+ hours a week. Less likely to take vacations.
These are the observations of myself and members of my family who are from India.
H1B does suppress wages as employees don’t care how much they are paid. They only care that they stay on H1 so they get their green cards.
However, one they get their green card they feel the same that H1B’s suppress wages…lol…
Indian product owner taking mostly to Indian peer developers, bypassing normal communication channels. Indians being friendly with each other and stone cold with the rest.
Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all?
All these culture things (except for the first regarding PO which is spit-in-the-face level of unprofessionalism) add up, and then you find yourself in a corporation described in other messages of this thread.
I had to offboard from multiple projects throughout my career because development was hijacked by Indian cronyism.
Are you seriously asking how to "fight back" on Indians going to restaurants and joking with each other?
As an Indian in a flyover state who has been routinely excluded from golfing events, and had my dietary needs totally ignored while organizing things like steakhouse lunches, this is sort of darkly funny to read.
There massive difference is WHERE the discrimination is taking place. Most would not move to India or any other place and impose their culture and exclude locals in a fair and just world. I'm not saying it doesn't take place, and yes colonialism happened and was far worse, but we're talking about what SHOULD be.
As someone who has experienced this, I encourage you to draw on that experience and have empathy, even if that experience is expressed in ways that don't immediately resonate with you. You have more in common with the commenter you're replying to than you appreciate.
Neither of you should experience that. Your experience does not negate his. Nor his yours.
I'm hopeful that some light will be shed on how ridiculously dystopian it is to force D.I.E. mandates with posters like "United Colours of Benetton" as if "All Men/Women/Etc Are Created In Test Tubes Equivalent And Interchangeable" and we Voters of American Progressive Enlightenment must lobby to crush out every aspect of culture that suggests otherwise.
https://youtu.be/vvDYuj1Bs6Y?si=sodV00r3eefBoZ79 Harrison Bergeron for ya
So it goes. Namaste.
(A group of people casually getting together is totally different to someone's work environment where they have to attend to bring a paycheck home - I'm talking exclusively about professional/work environments)
Yes? Or is it just a problem when white people choose to associate with one another at work?
A better question would be how to prevent people from excluding each other based on group membership.
it is interesting to observe how people react to being in such a position when they are in a foreign work culture in their own soil. neither parties are completely at the right, but the fact that it is completely fine in one side but unacceptable for the other is so fascinating to me.
What makes me uncomfortable is that this inclusivity is increasingly being taken for granted to the point where not having it starts conversations about how to "fight back".
Even though it's not my preference I don't think there is anything wrong with Indians cracking jokes in a non-English language, or going to a restaurant by themselves. You will find that Americans will mysteriously be far more tolerant of, say, a group of French people talking among themselves in French; and going to a French restaurant as a group.
I'd always been around people from all sorts of places, and many of the schools I went to would intentionally keep kids of similar origins apart to force them to mingle with others, so I grew up to prefer being around people from different places over just sticking with other Indians. I've had several experiences of running into people who seem to take pride in being the way you describe. My interpretation has been that they have a chip on their shoulder about not being "westerners" and view anyone who is better integrated as being some sort of traitor.
For now, I've only had to experience it in school and university. It's been awful every time. Yours is also a sentiment many people have expressed to me about other Indians once they've opened up to me and realized I won't care if they say something that could be racist.
Vote with your feet, if you don't like it?
Don’t threaten me with a good time
Now I want to hear an Indian joke.
A naan sequitur.
you said it yourself, the first one was unprofessional and should be avoided and may be cause for action. The other things, learn to live as the minority in a group and accept what the group values.
I mean maybe your colleagues follow suit about eating Indian food because Indian food is delicious? "Hey you guys know a good Indian food place around here - that's great!" would be my response.
Usually, the sanest recourse in these kinds of situations is to cut your losses and vote with your feet.
I mean, if you're going out with a group, it's usually majority vote anyway
And frankly they have good food
The issue highlighted here is that it seems at times that there are exceptions that people are afraid to call out and criticise, especially at lower levels.
Pretty sure white people aren't mass immigrating to India and doing this there.
LMAO! What are white restaurants?
And if you think Casteism is a bitch, Pakistani/Indian (or Indian Hindu vs Indian Muslim) is a bitch and a half. Just try to apply for a visa for India and see how many times they ask if you or any of your relatives are from Pakistan to get a taste.
Edit: ooh, downvotes away. Hah! No better way to tell when you hit a nerve than the torches come out.
>How do these managers know your country of origin?
The irony.
I just worked for a startup with many Indians (including the founder). It was all fine, and I liked my coworkers. I can understand that other people had different experiences: companies and people differ.
For context, everything was remote, and I worked from Singapore. I'm not India, but I do like to prepone my meetings.
The contracting companies probably single-handed build and maintain lots of racist stereotypes against indians, because the level of service those companies offer is always unmitigated failure, even internally. I once accidentally stumbled into working on a contract through WiPro myself, and it was a horrific experience. The way I see it, the line workers that end up the target of ire and stereotypes are just victims of actions taken way above them.
The people who can, apparently avoid working for them, or use every opportunity to escape. Those who can't yet but have ambition for more, apparently use every opportunity to escape - whether it is by jumping ship on H1B, or otherwise. Those currently stuck are in no way encouraged to do a good job, and for obvious cost cutting you get people who were in no way prepared to do the job.
Occasionally a client will get angry enough and they will pull an actually skilled person to smooth the ruffled feathers, someone they usually trot for dog&pony show when winning the contract as example of who is supposed to work on it.
But the "important" people, upper management who decide to contract with WITCH, and the upper management of WITCH who run such strategy, they all profit. The managers and/or C-level who outsource sight-unseen with no quality enforcement disappear with their rewards before institutional inertia stops papering over their decisions. The WITCH companies pocket huge amounts of money while paying pittance to line workers and providing worse than zero service.
A few jobs ago, when I was working for a third-tier legacy bank, my manager joked that all the outsourcing they were doing was actually really useful and pragmatic, because it means they can fail their IT projects cheaper. (The implication being that their projects were by and large inevitably doomed anyway.)
There isn't, though. There's a lot of negativity about _H1B_s in the comments here, but you conflate that with Indian.
[1] https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/cu...
If you've never felt it, that just means you're from the countries that look down on other european countries :)
And it's been used in the US by Indians who practice caste-centric Hinduism who feel they are at a certain step of the caste ladder to those below them, or non-Hindus.
> https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/the-caste-system-has...
A hypothetical claim that all Indians are racist would clearly be absurd, but it’s hardly surprising to find a group of Indians practicing something that is openly part of their native culture.
Nevermind that "race" as a concept did not exist in the modern sense in Western cultures prior to colonization despite the exposure to other peoples with other skin tones from other parts of the world. Nevermind that cooperation and aiding the weak and forming alliances has been the only thing keeping us alive as naked, defenseless animals that need to sustain our young for years before they can carry their weight, feed themselves, let alone fend for themselves.
From https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/industry-electricity-pr...
> Economist and economy ministry advisor Jens Südekum called the analysis’s results “astonishing.” Commenting on social media platform X, Südekum pointed out that industry prices had fallen “significantly” and that price indicators continued to point downwards. The trend would be similar for private households, albeit at a slower pace, he argued. Once current contracts expire, Südekum said lower prices should become widespread in new ones. “Overall, the BDEW figures don’t chime with current mood in debates, which is that everything is going down the drain due to high energy prices,” he argued.
An anecdotal evidence, a large semiconductor in Germany with fabs is moving to "best" cost countries and the message provided is clear by the management. Positions are moved to "best" cost countries and new offices in these locations are being opened. Support jobs i.e. back office, accounting etc are in the process first. R&D is next and many engineers have taken the hint. The biggest customers for them is automotive as is usually the case for most of the German companies. If automotive market falls then they are in serious trouble. Make what you want out of this.
But consumer prices have largely stabilized at a range of 0.25€ - 0.35€ although you'll also find some prices listed as low as 0.20€ or less if you are willing to price hop a lot.
Apparently there will also be price cuts in the North and East of Germany as well as Bavaria in the near future but I don't know the specifics of that.
Unfortunately there is little reason to invest in Germany at the moment. It will get worse(they are already announcing an increase in health insurance rates) before it will get better.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/25/americans...
The funny part is having both Indians & Pakistanis pull you aside and tell you to watch out for the other ones because "They don't shower every day." I've had that happen a few times now...
This is exactly what I understand under “racist culture”, certainly not “all indians are racist”
edit: I say 'seems' here lightly; a system is conveniently reinforced by depriving participants words and the ability (or even desire) to identify. Time and time again the gut feeling is a well-established thing.
These numbers are set using prevailing wage calculations for a geographical area and role. There is an incentive for companies to figure out ways to get it as low as possible but I have never seen 50% myself, that is a hard stretch to pass the DOL.
H1B is to tech what H2A is for agriculture . Yall want to Drive the combine ( Managment, Software development, VC ) but dont want to do the dirty work ( QA, Devops, IT admin )
Woah, less caps and racist thoughts and more critical thinking please. I am saying taking a simple average between the two like you did is flawed for a number of reasons.
1) You don't even have an apples to apples comparison. H1B data is based on prevailing wage which is just base pay. So taking your link, 129K - $171K/yr comparing to your other data, 100-150k. Lets take a simple average. and say the glassdoor wage is 150k, that means 50% minimum, remember you said minimum, is 75k. That does not really track with 125k.
2) Prevailing wage is based not only on the role but the geographical location too. An overall average between those two datasets is a very rough guide and I think its better to do direct comparisons at a company level or regional level. Again there is still a lot of normalization and cleanup to do in the datasets, the H1B data is not great for analysis right out of the gate.
Your case of a minimum 50% reduction in base pay is hard to defend except in outlier cases. If it was closer to 25% I think its a much easier number to defend.
https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/basf-chem...
https://www.electrive.net/2023/05/23/volkswagen-streicht-woh...
https://www.chemietechnik.de/markt/lanxess-spart-und-schlies...
And due to the fact that they decided to shut down the last nuclear power plants directly after that, which further reduced supply and until today I consider this one of the most stupid political decisions ever made.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
As someone with Indian heritage it’s super disheartening to see plenty of comments negatively generalizing a diaspora of over 1B people.
Treating anyone who presents as Indian as apart of cultural monolith is absurd. I was born and raised in the US, and have no connection to the alleged cronyism or caste-based discrimination.
Many of these comments make blanket statements about Indians. I don’t think the same moderation guidelines are being applied in this case. Replace Indians with Europeans, Black people or any other ethnicity and it should become clear that this violates the site’s guidelines.
Here are a few top level examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41786112
The diaspora is only a few dozen million, isn't it? I don't think you want to count every Indian inside of India as being in the 'diaspora'?
Nitpick aside, I agree. (I wrote the original comment above.)
It doesn’t negate any behaviour based on bias but would require an honest reflection on the unconscious biases existing in the workplace prior to this.
- Neal Stephenson
And the people GP is talking about are trying to do the exact same thing, though obviously in highly detrimental ways. Part of professionalism entails not making your job into an identity that overwhelms every other aspect of your life. If you just focus on delivering good results to the best of your ability, there's no need to be dependent on constant social approval from 'insider' peers.
Classism in the Netherlands isn't too bad though, unless you're from the old aristocracies (they live in certain areas, go to private schools, often have archaic letter combos like Y, AE, CK, or apostrophes in their multi-word surnames, etc [1]), they definitely live on their own island. Often end up in politics, too, because so it goes.
[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_Nederlandse_adellijk...
Wait until they figure out you earn less than them. "You cannot understand [rich people bs 'struggle']" I've had the misfortune of hearing over and over again, them showing a complete lack of any form of empathy for anyone except their own class.
And you would certainly know if you were working with someone, at least here.
I suppose I have spent a lot of time with Indian Americans but not as much with Indians in India (just zoom calls) so that’s interesting.
Some emphasis should be made on the total percentage of H1B applicants 75% are Indian and at-least ~90% of those are in the TECH working for CTS, TCS both are consulting firms They dont sell any products or services (and dont have offices in SF). They survive by giving the lowest bid for a service . And when the minimum wage is the lower bound why bother paying any higher (60-75% discount), This was the case prior to trump. After Trump H1Bs became scarce and to justify it you needed "highly skilled" employees and they made the paygap more justifiable to 45-50%.
So i still hold my original statement H1B is for tech what H2A is for agriculture.
25% of the pieces summed would be 25% of the whole. I am not sure how we hand wave to 30-40% and then jump to 50%. Your 50% minimum is still dubious but hey go with it!
That's a good question. I suppose my point is that this is not something you have "fight back" against. Lots of people get excluded from social groups in professional settings due to some silly link that their coworkers have with each other.
Learning to overcome your lack of cultural commonality with coworkers and and breaking into social groups is something that all of us need to do at some point. In my case — I sucked it up, refused to learn golf but bonded with coworkers over board games; and ate the appetizers at the steakhouse.
A tip for OP would be to try doing the equivalent thing in their context. Go up to your Indian coworkers and ask if you can accompany them to the restaurant. I promise you it will be fine.
Just pass on the gulab jamun if you value your liver.
If you go more regularly, a somewhat healthy meal at an Indian restaurant is:
- The tandoor chicken (not the one in gravy)
- The veggie salads and/or yogurt raita
- Whole wheat rotis if you can find them
- Any of the vegetables that don't have a ton of cream (cauliflower is one that's reliably dry)
I can't pretend that I don't indulge with anything beyond that; but I tend to not be a regular at the Indian restaurants here.
https://x.com/MohabMo5102/status/1494070281731809281?mx=2
Also someone please tell me why were harems in Mamlukian and Ottoman courts largely filled with Slavic and Circassian men and women?
To your question: I'm referring to modern Western racism which is built on the scientific racism that became popular when there were economic incentives to explain why chattel slavery is okay when you do it with some people when it's otherwise not okay to do with others. This was downstream from a massive need for cheap labor in the colonies to produce exotic goods to export to Europe for profit.
I don't know why you're asking for an explanation of random unsourced and unqualified historical factoids (without mentioning e.g. which harems, which courts, where and in what time period, which seem kind of important specifics when using vague generalisations like "largely") - maybe ask whoever you learned that from unless you're "just asking questions".
But if you want a general answer to "why is there discrimination against groups outside the imperial core" mine would be that it is easier to justify an exploitative power hiearchy, especially one that subjugates the majority of "its own" people, if you declare outside forces as non-human or sub-human to prevent fraternization which might challenge your rule.
You can easily find this happening in sexism/"patriarchy": men are humans, women are different because they can get pregnant so they are more emotional, more deceitful, stupider, incapable of abstract thought, too easy to manipulate to deserve voting rights, more likely to cheat on their partners because they want the best genes for their offspring, naturally nurturing and caring, inherently better at social skills, inherently risk averse and unfit for leadership, etc etc whatever whatever. Or, as I already said, racism: white people are humans, Asians are different because they're clever but have no soul and operate like a hive mind, Black people are different because they're stronger but impulsive and child-like and must be disciplined to protect them from themselves, Arabs are different because they're deceitful and uncultured and only know how to steal and destroy and breed, etc etc whatever whatever. Heck, you can even find it in the trappings of "enlightened" critiques of democracy (or defense of capitalism, i.e. the centralisation of control of "capital"): us studied high-IQ people of wealth of course should get a say in things but most people allowed to vote are very stupid, easy to manipulate, only seek to reaffirm their biases, bordering on mentally incapable of managing their own life but also of course completely at fault for everything they suffer, etc etc whatever whatever. All of these are bullshit just-so generalisation that just happen to neatly explain why we (men, white folks, academics, people of wealth, etc) deserve to be in charge and anyone who isn't in that group not only does not deserve to have any say but it is in fact in their best interest for us to be in charge of their life too and if this just happens to benefit us immensely, that is only by pure circumstance and what harm does it do anyway if that is the case.
Also, I'm not talking about individual bigotry or stereotypes. "Scientific" racism existed to help perpetuate a system of power relations by justifying the ownership and subjugation of groups of people. Caste systems does and medieval European feudalism did much the same. "Tribalism" however is a red herring because in tribal systems, society is confined to the tribe itself and interactions between tribes are, essentially, diplomacy. Once society expands past a tribe, we usually use the term "nepotism" (or "networking" if you want a positive spin).
I literally said Ottoman and Mamlukian harems. There was only one Ottoman dynasty in one place in one historical time period. As there was only one Mamlukian harem in one place in one contiguous historic period.
FYI both of those dynasties, as did many other kingdoms and empires, had a strong preference for Slavic and Caucasian (as in from the Caucasus) consorts, as can be seen from the ethnicities and religions of most of their dynastic rulers' mothers. And Islamic and Mongol rulers were notorious for keeping younger male slaves from both regions as companions. Heck, the Mamluk dynasty itself was formed by a bunch of Cuman and Circassian slaves who ended up being so powerful as to control their Ayyubid masters.
Just ascribing behavior we observe in humans to "human nature" is a thought-terminating cliché and prevents looking deeper into how we got here and why. Modern society didn't pop into existence fully baked and that goes as much for the good (which we rightly laud as important achievements we need to preserve) as it does for the bad (which we often just describe as "human nature" to avoid challenging our assumptions).
If everything bad is human nature, there's literally no way to improve things. If everything bad is human nature but only for certain people, that's one step away from arguing that the only way to improve things is through genocide.
That was true till 10-20 years ago or so when we had things like the Matrix and Lord of the Rings, but most of the modern entertainment content coming out of the US right now is not only low quality predictable slop but also filled with US-centric political messaging, identity politics and virtue signaling that nobody else outside the US identifies with or wants to pay for. Taht why so many bomb.
I'm trying to say that going to restaurants as a group of people and having in-jokes does not qualify as "imposing your culture" in any way. These things routinely happen at companies that have few to no Indians, they just take a different form.
Also, are you really claiming that if you moved to Bangalore, and had 2-3 coworkers from your hometown that you knew and shared cultural ties with; that you wouldn't tend to hang out together at lunch?
That's why I think it's weird to only target Indians in this regard. They are building an in-group just like everyone else; the difference is that OP seems to have little experience not being part of the in-group.
Seeking "your" people when living/working abroad, or when working in a diverse workspace, is pretty normal and happens everywhere. It's usually harmless though.
> Indians being friendly with each other and stone cold with the rest.
We can all wax lyrical and paint pretty pictures about the noble goals of DEI. But till we get an equal and fair world, the ugly picture is that DEI starts by dividing the pie into smaller parts, and taking from one to give to another, instead of making the pie bigger for everyone.
And if history is anything to go by, most "DEI"-like efforts never ever reach that end-goal. They perpetuate indefinitely until they create yet another oppressed or previously-disadvantaged class, and the cycle will just repeat.
Yes that makes it more competitive.
Or less-competitive at an advantage to some and both others if it stayed the same way.
This is the first time I've heard that. The normal party line is that, yes, they're worse at the job but it's because they never got the opportunity to learn. You can observe in colleges that DEI-appointed students do massively worse overall despite probably being given even more leeway than normal students.
Ask yourselves, who paid for your education? Was it pulled up by the bootstraps rags-to-riches, or did you get help from e.g. family? Where did you grow up, and how did that contribute to your current career / life?
Now imagine you didn't have those opportunities, because your family (going back generations) never was able to build up generational wealth and comfort.
DEI is an attempt to make up for that. Is it ideal? No. Does it come across as discrimination to the priviledged people / classes? Sure. Does it personally affect you? Probably not, but I don't know you (generalised you, the reader).
That said, if you don't like DEI, vote and act accordingly. Work to make sure everyone earns a liveable wage, owns a house, gets a good education and consequent steady job opportunities regardless of familial wealth. Be and act anti-racist and anti-classist, because it's not enough to simply "not be racist".
But that doesn't make it okay for others to do.
We should be working to decrease it in all exclusionary groups by working to make them more inclusionary. That means intentionally rotating comfort zones.
And it is a historically seductive siren call that once an immigrant community in any country attains some power, they use it to ramp up exclusion and cronyism.
In all fairness, to protect their tenuous grasp on that power from external racism, but it also succumbs to use for less noble, more human ends. E.g. getting ones friend hired.
HR at most companies doesn't do nuance or complexity.
Theres lots of ways to improve hiring.
If holding space for equally qualified candidates is preferential treatment, is it having to exist because of the gatekeeping that existed before it?
Still, it remains important for any practice to do a good job of helping everyone understand how it's working better.
Too often companies jump to signal trends and keep doing whatever they were all along. Like organizations who's leadership looks nothing like the pool of qualified candidates in the respective country.
I put forward a single simple point. Since it's resonating in a response, it might be worth considering why, and see how our viewpoints form and how much of it might be rooted in isolating emotions like fear.
In discussing, an open mind to me is one that can openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't their own, and seeing if they're open to growing or changing their viewpoint.
Maybe.. the way your country does DEI is trying to do the opposite of the race based separation it did prior and doesn't know if any other levers exist?
One nice thing is you're inheriting the world and can help make it the way you think it should be instead of wanting to be a passive beneficiary of past gatekeeping baselines.
Hypothetically speaking... could openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't our own.. be similar to believing software could be better, if it was only improved, by trying to improve ourselves and building software better?
As an Indian, I've observed that collectivism and subservience towards authority figures are taught as virtues; this obviously makes it quite easy for employers to extract unreasonable demands such as long working hours, transgressions of ethical limits, things that are "bad", but that generates benefits for the employer.
On the other hand, European and American societies generally focus on individualism and autonomy, which obviously causes a conflict when an Indian hiring manager sees anything other than complete deference to them as a threat, and proceeds to reject such candidates.
As a Non-Indian, I'm quite aware/familiar with this kind of culture you speak of within Indian culture in the workplace and, to be blunt, if I were applying for a role as say a high level product manager (my current gig) and there was a native-born/raised Indian person as the hiring manager, I would at the very least be very cautious about this risk.
But in this situation, given the power dynamic is in favour of the other party, does this make me "biased"?... Or just "careful"?
Remind me to never fly on a plane piloted by an Indian flight crew.
(Protip: If you can't stand up to your captain, your plane is going down.)
(Protip: If you can't stand up to your captain, your plane is going down.)
Not sure if you're joking, but this is actually cited as one of the reasons behind one crash.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Express_Flight_134...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_culture_on_aviation_...
It is a very observable and simple fact, why spin it?
Are you sure it's not just money ? You can pay Indians on H1B less and keep them tied to you. At a place like Cognizant, you aren't trying to get the best talent. You want the cheapest talent that gets the job done.
Are you sure it's unconscious?
Say it's conscious (eg "I like my hires to be scrupulously polite and deferential") and that overlaps with a cultural norm - is that problematic?
How about "I like my employees to be extremely punctual". Or "I like my employees to be dressed smartly". Is correlation with any subset of people sufficient to be illegal? Should it be?
I've seen all this OUTSIDE of the US, in a non-Indian Asian country that had a high number of Indian software developers in a shared service centre.
It was very clear my communication style and values is drastically different.
It was a good opportunity, but one of the most frustrating encounters I’ve ever had. I’m glad the offer didn’t go anywhere.
personal favorite was that someone from network support ran a script that changed ownership of all of the docker containers and associated configs, outputs, and logs to root. we had pretty clear proof in the logs that a Cog support tech did it, and basically had to escalate to the CTO and get him to threaten a lawsuit to get them to fix it.
Also watched caste bulling play out in real time in a cramped meeting room in the RDU Triangle, in NC. Wasn't clear what the strain was until later when a full-timer of Indian extraction explained it to me.
I have never seen such ratios in 20+ years of my career.
The experience with outsourced resources is significantly different.
I build a good rapport with one who talked me through the politics and power plays behind the scenes at their midsize outsourcing arm. Just very different social values to Western orgs. Incredibly hierarchical with no value given to autonomy or independence. Those who want to do well and try really hard frequently get their helmets dented by over zealous managers.
Also experienced - ex offshore very often have incredible cvs until you interview and there's no actual experience. Polling the above contact he mentioned that for some offshore orgs promotion is literally time in role, not competency based.
My experience, your mileage may vary, and I reiterate those I've worked with on-site have been awesome, generous, funny and very supportive people.
I don't fault the outsourcing companies it's nothing different than what occurs with American consulting outsourcing before offshoring: get the deal signed, get the responsibilities transferred, and milk the cow.
The anti nerd bias of american culture means that IT is less respected than even blue collar workers by management.
The higher salaries of IT are begrudgingly given. I predict over the next two decades they will collapse to what typical engineers are paid: as in it's more lucrative to be a plumber
Think of that what you will, but the list of incentives an Indian has to bother integrating into American society is rather short.
Think about it, this could solve everything. There would no longer be exploitation on either side.
Not to defend the Indians or their paymasters, but the H1B isn't diversity based, and there are a lot of Indians who also speak English, so...
As an African so far I have worked and learnt a lot from a Brazilian-Japanese, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Israeli, Russian, English, Indian, Pakistani, German, Argentinian, and a Polish.
Some of which I have the pleasure to call friend.
Ultimately, blind meritocracy is the only option - but that is also extremely difficult to do. See the historic Chinese style civil service exams for how that can be implemented, and its pros/cons.
One major issue with blind meritocracy is it strongly favors those from families who can invest in their children - aka the rich. Though, there is a path for improvement for those with raw intelligence, unless the tests favor brute force memorization. Like most Chinese tests historically have.
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I have worked at Cognizant for just over a year. Though we don't have this problem on my immediate team, it is something we talk about because it's obvious in other teams and as an overall culture at the company.
It doesn't seem like overt discrimination (from me and my coworkers limited perspectives). There's a couple factors
1. People hire who they know. About two thirds of the employees are of Indian descent. So on average they hire their friends and former coworkers who are also Indian.
2. Leadership requires the offshore teams to be on every project. This is to keep costs down and because the other lines of business besides their main and original one (staff augmentation) are relatively new.
3. A minority (but not a small one) of Indians really are just blatantly discriminatory.
Mine, too. Some of my least favorite coworkers have been from India as well. Mostly because almost all of my coworkers have been from India since about 1997.
Back to the topic:
I know a lot of 2nd, 3rd generation Indians who definitely do not fit the stereotypes.
What we're likely seeing is the effect of three things:
- Indian has a very community based dynamic that prioritizes group identity over individual identities, a number of folks have never experienced being outside their groups
- Newly arrived Individual are likely experiencing culture shock, it happens to most people. It's very much a fight or flight response. People either choose the tribe they know, or find a new one. The later is rare
- Most other ethnic groups we're hearing about took a few generations to get to white collar jobs, they already understood local norms, because these were their norms. We're seeing a lot of 1st generation Indians (and some other groups) start in white collar professions, and that will play out differently.
It's the nature of service that WITCH prefers to provide and puts people in position where it's hard to change it, and the executives who contract with WITCH.
just seems kind of bizarre to me, like deciding to only hire people from Florida for a team in California
You can see this in action on the eastside of Lake Washington, always fun to get glared at for being at the wrong block in Samamish, or the wrong (or sometimes right) condo building in Bellevue. Do not bring a dog! You will get solid stares, does not matter how said dog behaves or what local policy is.
Seattle notably legislated against the caste system persisting in the city, but from what I hear it still is a thing stateside. Most of the Indian community lives outside Seattle though.
But language is a problem and you will see people speaking the same Indian language group themselves together.
And I will say, they've shown me a great deal of hospitality
I see a lot of negative feelings in the comments here. If anyone is having negative feelings they should be directed to corporations who have artificially engineered this situation. The people involved are not to blame
You can blame the people as well. Some of them will have a preference for people from their own state and who speak the same language compared to a non Indian or even an India from a different part of India.
The US Tech Workers site seems to be full of reasons why it is necessary but it cannot be a US movement alone, all tech workers need to have solidarity so these companies can’t shift production to another country in the event of a strike.
My search for an organization solely focused on *tech workers* and protecting our trade was fruitless — is there any such organization?
If this all sounds interesting to you let’s talk, hn.droop582 @ passmail.net
From an accounting standpoint perhaps it makes sense, but from the view of the workers, and the community, it just seems wrong.
While I understand this particular case involves allegations of discrimination within U.S. offices, the larger trend seems unavoidable. As companies prioritize cost-efficiency, it may no longer make economic sense for citizens of HCOL countries, to seek employment with such firms. Similarly, these companies are likely incentivized to constantly try and minimize the number of high-cost employees—whether they are Indians on H1B visas or American citizens—on their payroll.
This raises a concern about whether the government should intervene to address this industry trend of outsourcing. However, if we look at what happened with manufacturing and China, one wonders if such intervention will ever come, or if the shift is already inevitable.
At the risk of sounding racist (though I'm Indian, so I guess I get some leeway here), there are likely more biases at play than it seems.
You’ll see South or North Indians from a particular state prefer hiring employees from the same state, who speak the same language, and who look like them. And it doesn’t stop there. Caste discrimination plays a role too, and it even has its own Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_discrimination_in_the_Un.... See also:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit
[2] https://harpercollinsin.medium.com/how-does-anyone-know-what...
This kind of thing is so rampant in India that you hear about it all the time on Reddit.
So yeah, Cognizant has been found guilty against non-Indians but they probably do this to other Indians.
It’s the discrimination version of the world’s largest choose your own adventure book.
I wouldn't consider it racist to call out racism.
The end result is that you see a mention of "Bangalore" and you get immediate shivers because it doesn't matter how nice and good as a person the people you are forced to work with are, if the entire qualification you can discern is that they are statistically expected to speak english, and their work environment and supervisors enforce certain counter-productive behaviours. Which is honestly abusive to the poor person in Bangalore, because it's not like they can learn the skills this way either.
To the point that I once had security team in a company where specific area of security might involve "uncomfortable questions from government" in cases of failure (fortunately not defense industry) actually sponsor my efforts to bypass supposedly crucial firewall - because connectivity including said firewall were handled by TCS.
Paywall workaround: https://archive.is/PiMNU
Another non-paywall article on the same topic: https://insider.govtech.com/california/news/jury-finds-discr...
It's about the (previously) Indian outsourcing firm and H-1B body shop supplying contractors to SV companies. It's unrelated to the Indian manager only hiring Indians phenomenon which many people here are discussing; FWIW I believe it was quite widespread at least back when I was in the Valley, but this ruling doesn't address that in any way.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/10/07/h-1b-visa-company-sup... is the paywalled source.
That said, https://www.siliconvalley.com/2024/10/07/h-1b-visa-company-s... seems to be the exact same article (author, timestamp, and all) published by the same group (Bay Area News Group) but without a paywall. (Both siliconvalley.com and mercurynews.com are registered to MediaNews Group, which is the owner of Bay Area News Group as of 2006.)
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This comment section has gone to the gutter. Please flag this thread. This isn't even that significant of a news - we can come back to this when the court actually hands a ruling.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Best team I worked with was very diverse and they actively worked to help each other get promoted and protect each other.
Previously saw it at a lesser degree to older unicorns and places like Oracle, IBM, etc.
Although it’s normalised in the latter ones.
The problem is that every Fortune 500’s internal systems are hooked up to it.
That said, there's frequently islands of Indian and "the other" developers, in part that'll be cultural, but in part it's down to simply having a different job, expertise, department, etc.
If I posted a comment complaining about how black Americans are criminals, I think I’d rightfully be called out for oversimplifying in a hurtful way. What am I missing here?
As it happened, fate intervened, and wider organizational spasms caused the project to be mothballed. We had to give notice to the whole dev team, including the lead. Fortunately, this was a megacorp, and other projects swiftly moved in, and new work orders were drafted. This gave us an opportunity to approve the team sheet for the outsourced roles. The female tech lead was waved on through. The troglodytes were rejected. The reason was stated. We received a duly grovelling "this will never happen again" response from the account manager. They never worked for us again under my watch, but I believe they were simply rotated on to another client rather than receiving any material comeuppance.
So, they kind of got away with it - but also kind of didn't.
2. The Indians in top leadership positions you see in tech firms are rare exceptions. To some extent they also come from fairly well off families and communities in India, who have social capital. Can afford cram school fees for Ivy league exams, money and ability to take loans to study abroad etc.
3. Any body who once makes non-trivial money or sees non-trivial career success instantly realises, given how big India is. Given its politics, and overall spending on Education, R&D, and the rate of industrialisation. The only hope for a good life for their, or atleast at their children is to move to the west.
Basically people want to leave India, as fixing India is largely a long term, and also a nearly impossible project.
It brings me hope to see shark tank getting popular there. Not to say the hosts or the contestants have been as honest as they should be, but it shows a big shift in mindset since India's 80s/90s economic policies
I'd wager it's a deliberate US state policy. It's because we indians are good immigrants - whether it be US, Europe or the middle-east, we tend to respect (even if we necessarily don't like) the local culture and laws and try to avoid trouble and be good citizens (often better than in our own country :). And the US is a country built by immigrants that needs people. That is why Indians today are one of the largest immigrant group in the US. Also, cheap labour. That's capitalism at work - why hire American when the whole world can be your HR pool?
Exactly. If India sided with America's enemies, those visas would go bye-bye. The money being made in the US, being sent back to India, probably represents a good chunk of GDP.
See Australia. George Bush gave them a sweetheart visa deal in return for their support in the middle east in the early 2000s post 9-11.
On a positive note I got replaced by a guy in India. Then after a year of them clambering over each other’s corpses for promotion and destroying the org from the inside, I got hired back on contract to unfuck the mess at 4x my previous salaried rate.
Nothing against India or Indians but the reason outsourcing fails is no one wants to be an outsourced workforce so they go for promotion first to get a better job. And I don’t blame them.
I am curious, was this due to them speaking in a different language in actual professional meetings at Intel? I have often heard these reports, but in a social context.
I have never personally observed this in professional settings; but am curious to hear more so I can watch out for it if/when I do encounter it. It's odd because I would struggle to hold a professional conversation in any of the Indian languages that I speak (I have no idea how to say something like "thermal characteristics" or "power dissipation" in them); and would likely keep lapsing into English.
Another aspect is that I have found that they are quite hierarchical, probably a cultural trait. So how much they stick to English also depends on how senior the "non-Indian(s)" are compared to them. If you are their senior they are very nice.
This happened frequently at a WITCH I worked at out of college. The meeting would be in English then have segments change in the middle as certain speakers switched languages. Luckily, I often had a coworker stand up for me to mention to use English although I did miss many conversations.
Indians were actively discriminating against other Indians if they weren't born into the "highest" caste of hinduism (the few percent only allowed to learn to read and write), or avoiding the "lowest caste" of hinduism (way over 90 percent).
This caste system discrimination in tech, is also used to discriminate against other minorities who are not Indian, originating from the Indian subcontinent.
Trapped in Silicon Valley's Hidden Caste System https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde...
Insight: Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/caste-...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/big-techs-big-pro...
More: https://www.google.com/search?q=silicon+valley+caste+system
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-human-rights-...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/caste-discri...
https://www.trtworld.com/americas/toronto-school-board-recog...
I think it's pretty easy to go learn the spectrum of DEI.
The world is generally run with gatekeeping, which means withholding access to opportunity to improve one's life to a selected group for a long time.
It's possible that your country may codify gatekeeping and privilege, and the only way they may know how is to do the same thing in the opposite way.
It might not be a good way of holding space for qualified candidates to get to the same table, or even, not allowing an average person to "get a chance" to fail upwards except if you're from one background.
The relevance of DEI shouldn't be held exclusively with its implementation at any given time, as long as it's improving. Kind of like software, maybe.
I'm not sure where your observation is based on - happy to learn and read from any studies though beyond anecdotal differences.
It would be like generalizing that lots of rich kids end up doing nothing as well after their parents pay for their way into and school. Doesn't make it true as a generalization of everyone though.
Theoretically it could be, but you should be aware if your argument directly contradicts years of other people advocating for DEI. The idea being sold isn't "we need jobs to be more merit based" but "we don't have enough merit and have to discriminate".
> It's possible that your country may codify gatekeeping and privilege, and the only way they may know how is to do the same thing in the opposite way.
My country, the US, codifies that you're not allowed to racially discriminate. Somehow this doesn't stop people from declaring that we must explicitly perform racially discrimination in order to offset some perceived discrimination.
> The relevance of DEI shouldn't be held exclusively with its implementation at any given time, as long as it's improving. Kind of like software, maybe.
The relevance is that I'm a race it explicitly disadvantages, and so it my family. It's illegal, racial discrimination is apparently immoral when it's done to anyone else, and it needs to go.
> I'm not sure where your observation is based on - happy to learn and read from any studies though beyond anecdotal differences.
Go look at medical schools. High scoring Whites and Asians are about as likely to get in as extremely poorly performing Black students.
https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/med1.jpg?x850...
Your country, explicitly codifies race based tracking in universities, long before this DEI wave. It's so incredibly wack. Other countries have better language to identify anything unique and under-represented, and maybe are less awkward but still awkward at it.
Historically, the creation of places of higher learning in the US were not created for women to be accepted, let alone people of color.
It's helpful to take a more historical look at how those pesky college application forms got the checkboxes they did, and how they were added at the moments of change in the particular decade. Imagine all the people who don't get counted.
What kind of system names an entire group of people a whole continent like Asia? :)
There is historical merit to people not being counted... not counting... or existing.. or qualifying as human enough to vote.
When it comes to data.. what gets measured, gets managed.. and maybe some of the wording of what got measured had some unconscious bias.
It's also not about whataboutism seeking a perfect solution to undermine change that is trying to be better for more people.
I have some international experience in the academic industry and student data collection, management, etc. Race based data in the US always stands out compared to other countries.
While it's true that disadvantaged children regardless of background can have similar challenges, its no contest that people of color experience it so very much more.
Discrimination starts with the contract that there is a privileged contract place prior to it being adjusted for said offence.
There are awful references to suggesting people of color "work harder" .. maybe that is advice for everyone?
I'm not going to participate in taking shots at any one group of students, especially black students who are way more disadvantaged per capita than any other.
About the med-school link - isn't it a little dated (and risking a stereotype) to believe that the best grades are the only thing important about getting into med school? Great doctors are well rounded people who connect with and help all walks of life - understanding people is a key skill beyond maniacal memorization and regurgitation for years of study to only stop and impossibly be behind research after graduation.
- Using candidates' loud belief in DEI as a litmus test, even if the candidate themselves has no diverse characteristics
- Hiring diverse candidates
It’s only about getting people to the table who are equally qualified and capable and overlooked and under represented.
Often to the chagrin of most people who are lamenting on it changing.
Perhaps, instead we can think about how could it be taken it professionally..
There's equal or better qualified candidates for every position that don't make it to the table because of existing gatekeeping.
That would likely have the effect of helping borderline candidates who can fail upwards, maybe do that a little less... or level up.
What's curious is the presumption that one persons experience or interpretation (yours) doesn't mean a better perspective, experience can't exist.
Is it possible you might not be the only one experiencing DEI?
Gatekeeping has been a thing that's existed for a very, very, very long time. Often to the benefit of many of the people complaining about new kinds of space-making that affect gatekeeping that they didn't realize benefitted them.
This current wave of DEI is definitely early. It's not perfect. Neither was the gatekeeping that preceded it.
Other things that were early got a lot more leeway and understanding. But it can shows what some folks want to see happen (or not happen) one way or the other.
One example where this comes up a lot is hair. People from backgrounds where straight hair is the norm envision "well-dressed" to include neat and orderly hair, often more neat and more orderly than people with type 3 or 4 hair can actually achieve. So many areas where both straight and curly hair are common have found it necessary to stipulate in law that any grooming expectation you impose has to accommodate the full range of natural hair textures.
Fortunately in Poland our local equivalent (Comarch) never got that big, and doesn't suffocate the job market. Also tended to hire slightly higher up, probably because it couldn't compete on rates with WITCH for tech support.
In-group, Out-group Theory at play
So, when someone wants to feel better, or even objectively have it better, the easiest way to do it is to make sure there is someone else having it worse nearby.
And doing that all the time based off fuzzy, changeable things like merit is a lot of work. Or even worse, something that someone has to do all the time or maintain, like results or wealth.
Both for the downtrodden trying to improve their station, and the ones ‘on top’ trying to keep them down.
Much more stable to systematize it, and use things like permanent labels on entire family lines, eh? And bonus points if you can do it in a fine grained enough way, that essentially everyone has someone lower than them to shit on.
Then all anyone has to do is exist, and push the buttons provided for them. Easy peasy.
Non-Hispanic white Americans are not native to the US, and I don't see a reasonable basis for concluding that non-Hispanic white culture should be the "native" or "default" culture in the US.
Sure, it might be the dominant culture — but there are other subcultures like Black or Hispanic cultures that are pretty strong here. Would you feel comfortable asking how to stop a group of Black coworkers from going to a restaurant that serves Black cuisine, or Hispanic coworkers from going to the local taqueria? If not, then why are you singling out Indians?
> I don't see a reasonable basis for concluding that European-American culture should be the "native" or "default" culture in the US
Like it or not, it is the dominant culture especially in professional environments. If you want to have a conversation about why that is the case, what else it could be, etc. thats fine! But it's not the kind of conversation I'm looking to have here.
> Would you feel comfortable asking how to stop a group of Black coworkers from going to a restaurant that serves Black cuisine, or Hispanic coworkers from going to the local taqueria?
If they are doing it to the detriment of the overall business yes! - the line of reasoning follows for a predominantly Black business that is having a White enclave forming. Or a Hispanic cultured business with a Slavic enclave forming. Even more importantly a multicultural environment which is having 1 group overtake it. It's fundamentally a job of business leaders to set the tone and direction of company culture - and this is one aspect of it.
At least sometimes it's not, which is why the OP feels so excluded and is asking for tips on how to navigate the clearly unfamiliar feeling of not being able to just "fit in" as part of the dominant culture.
The reality is that the US is a melting pot with a lot of subcultures, and you should learn to navigate those subcultures instead of demanding that they conform to some mythical default.
Maybe next time the OP should show some curiosity about what their coworkers are joking about, and shyly ask for a seat at the table. I have done it plenty of times.
The word Hispanic comes from Hispania meaning "Iberian Peninsula", which, I have news for you, is in Europe. They are hardly native to the USA either.
When Hispanic mix with Irish, or English, or French or North European, they are simply called "white". A lot of Spaniards are as much "white" in their aspect as one could ask for. They are just labeled as "non white" for outdated reasons but people always chuckle about it. Is just silly.
Also, weren’t Solutreans brown skinned?
There is nothing organic about that.
Personally I have no experience with Indian co-workers, but I do know that Black and Hispanic people do not exclude whites at all. I have only great experiences with them.
Then to where is it native? Don't deny a culture its existence just because it isn't the first culture to arise within a particular area. Example: Mormon culture and religion is "native" the US despite certainly not being the first culture in the area.
You can certainly make a claim that Mormon culture is "native" to Utah, but I think at 200 v/s 5000+ you can expect that claim to be contested.
Weird exclusion; Hispanic white Americans aren't native to the US either; their ancestors came from Spain.
What? It's apparently white to want to fit in with the local culture now.
In case anyone else was wondering about that acronym.
So it’s a good sign of long, well established, and ingrained discrimination, eh? With associated infrastructure to make it easier to continue, and ‘fairer’ in that it allows almost everyone to have someone under them to take their own angst out on. (Except those ‘outside the system’ anyway, which historically were the Dalits, but now even they are in the system eh?)
Yes, that's what I am saying. In- and out-groups are made contextually in each unique situation.
> So it’s a good sign of long, well established, and ingrained discrimination, eh? With associated infrastructure to make it easier to continue, and ‘fairer’ in that it allows almost everyone to have someone under them to take their own angst out on. (Except those ‘outside the system’ anyway, which historically were the Dalits, but now even they are in the system eh?)
Can't understand what you're trying to say here.
Why create new groups when you have proven and well trod ones handy to choose from?
That seem to be the major difference between Western and non-Western countries; we're more cognisant of things like racism/being excluded and have taken steps to try to resolve it - you do not get the same in many other countries at all.
It seems it's much more acceptable to be exclusionary and racist if you're non-white, sometimes.
Yep 100% this is the only decent solution OP has barring leaving the company. It leads to really interesting conversations and you get to learn a lot about a huge portion of the planet's population. Some people go out of their way for these experiences. But it also shouldn't be forced on someone who just wants to collect a paycheck.
It's good to experience new cultures and stretch out of ones comfort zone!
But cultural similarity is also the strongest form of bias in office dynamics.
So, it's great if people go to Indian restaurants. It's not great if people only go to Indian restaurants. It's not great if people only go to steakhouses.
And it's especially not great if colleagues don't make efforts to include less culturally similar colleagues in events, whatever the cultures in question.
That is usually a characterization used by non-Hispanic white people; hence my reply referenced non-Hispanic whites. I also wanted to highlight that they would probably be tolerant of an unfamiliar Hispanic white in-group at their company, but weren't tolerant of a South Asian one.
Sorry, I'm just going to have to go with the consensus of the majority of scientific study on this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United....
I'm sure you'll find some like-minded people that share your worldview and are not "rude".
> The Indians in top leadership positions you see in tech firms are rare exceptions
This is absolutely not the case. Despite being 2% of the population, Indians are way overrepresented in tech leadership positions (not just CEO/CTO). I recall in a meeting at a med size tech firm I worked at, the recruiting/HR department no longer considered Asians of any ethnicity a minority and lumped them in with white males.
there was, IIRC, an infamous spat at a FAANG about that
Why didn't big tech companies fight tooth and nail to get Asian recognised as a minority so they could then turn around and say look 'We employ minorities at a rate way higher than other companies' ?
Why does HR even need to keep track of ethnicities? Is this a US thing?
Here in my EU country you're just employee/applicant #3215, that's it, nobody asks or enters your ethnicity anywhere to even be able to keep tabs on how many are of what ethnicity, since everyone is considered equal by default and judged exclusively on performance (in theory at least, in practice there are still biases, but tracking ethnicities won't fix that, since that's human nature).
What you're saying would even be against the law here since then it opens the door to bias and potential discrimination.
That’s what we’re trying to fix (or at least mitigate) in the US. You say it is just human nature, but we’re a pretty diverse country, so we have a strong incentive to proactively try and see if we can make it work.
Lot of Indians do focus on learning/studying hard, get good grades to get a good job and move up the ladder. Ofcourse that does not automatically mean you get to be a CEO/CTO but the pool of people who hard hard and ambitious is bit bigger compared to other countries.
You can also get killed in India if you go against some powerful politician or people close to power.
In this case we don't have a decline in quality.
Done badly it meant you suffocated the application server with too little resources giving dreaded "super slow JIRA" effect.
Done well it meant you didn't have to deal with Atlassian underprovisioning resources in the cloud or having rigid maintenance times that didn't fit with your company needs.
I don't think it was ever a magically good Australian product that Indian hires from Microsoft suddenly ruined.
Joking, I do not think it is the case, BUT I do know that cheap is often more expensive
To me that's exactly what helps lead to discrimination versus not knowing ethnicities and treating employees as anonymized numbers which would be fair to everyone.
Here is one example that might be interesting: https://www.npr.org/2024/04/11/1243713272/resume-bias-study-...
To me that's exactly what helps lead to discrimination versus not knowing ethnicities and treating employees as anonymized numbers which would be fair to everyone.
Currently in the US, businesses don’t actively have official policies of bigotry. If they did, collecting that data could be harmful. But instead we have bigotry as a sort of soft social thing, a compounding of many little challenges, “bad culture fit,” that sort of thing. Because it is subtle, we need to keep it from slipping under the radar.
