Why is this on HN? This is clearly political.
It is an illuminating view of a system which is present in many tech workforces but rarely spoken of.
How To Be An Anti-Casteist
101–110 of 309 posts
Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist
#102> They patted his shoulders to see if he was wearing a white thread that only Brahmins wear.
If Brahmins can be identified by wearing a white-thread – do any non-Brahmins ever try to pass as Brahmin by donning a white thread for themselves?
Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist
#103I saw this on quite a few anti-India pro-pakistani sub-reddits where they are brigading this to top of hacker news.
I’m not surprised. There’s been an unusual spike in very similar stories being pumped to the front page of HN by low karma accounts.
Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. I can't say that I have experienced caste in same light as the article - in many jobs and across many hiring decisions it was never about caste but rather sometimes about language, geography and compatibility. It's also a matter of preferences as far as marriage goes - Brahmins for e.g. marrying within is not so much of a given today and whatever percentage of it is still happening is more about familiarity and…
This is the regular fallacy that is peddled by privileged upper class - denying casteism and promoting falsehoods supported by anecdotal evidences. Brahmins and other upper castes are over represented in power positions. The names of people at the helms of government institutions is a dead give away. Check this article for the demography of some of the top bureaucrats: https://theprint.in/india/governance/of-89-secre…
That article with the data mentions nothing about Brahmins and it also mentions the below. Also do you have any idea how hard it is for a non SC/ST/OBC person to become an IAS officer? If despite that there aren't enough SC/ST/OBC IAS officers by what means do you think the upper castes prevented them from getting there? It's just unproductive to keep blaming everything on upper castes in the 50+ years of reservations while ignoring a whole lot of other issues that have nothing to do with discrimination.
“Selection of secretary, additional secretary and joint secretary-level officers is made from the pool of officers who are empanelled for that particular post. If there isn’t an adequate number of officers belonging to the SC/ST/OBC categories in the pool, their number is obviously going to be smaller,” said the retired civil servant who did not want to be named.
A serving IAS officer, who belongs to the general category, said: “At times, senior IAS officers do not want to come to the Centre on deputation or the state government does not relieve them, resulting in a lesser number of SC/ST category officers in the upper echelons of government.”
Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist
#105The strict social hierarchical dynamics of Indian culture is damaging to a lot of workplaces. 2nd generation Indians are great. The Indians that are from lower casts or from oppressed groups like Christians or Muslims are really great. But the higher castes are extremely insular, and treat anyone of any race poorly. This might be taboo, but every time I see a situation where there are multiple Indians in a reporting…
I ‘worked’ through the worst job of my life at msft exactly what you described. Literal hell. Ptsd
Same, I just quit a job because of it.
Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a couple ways to read this one, and no context for deciding between them. Indians have a deeply engrained culture of noticing caste. This is true whether they are ok with discriminating on that basis, or staunchly against it, caste permeates the culture. So either she was only interested in hiring Brahmins, and realized that she shouldn't have tipped her hand... or she was curious about it, and then realized…
I think when it gets to saying these things out loud it might be too late The fact that it would be top of mind at all Could be curiosity or it could be a status play. Are there castes she would/would not hire from, would it be a problem to getting work done? Edit: I’ve worked with indians my whole career and only recently learned via HN that caste system “carried over” to the US
It may be because of my habit of blurting out whatever stupid thought I'm having, but believing that someone might blurt out whatever stupid thought they're having comes easy to me.
Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist
#107The strict social hierarchical dynamics of Indian culture is damaging to a lot of workplaces. 2nd generation Indians are great. The Indians that are from lower casts or from oppressed groups like Christians or Muslims are really great. But the higher castes are extremely insular, and treat anyone of any race poorly. This might be taboo, but every time I see a situation where there are multiple Indians in a reporting…
Yup basically, I’ll never work for an Indian boss. Chinese, Hispanic, white, etc all fine for me.
I've banned this account. Posting like this will get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist
#108After an interview I attended at a fintech company, my Indian team lead straight out said she was trying to figure out the interviewee's cast. I was not familiar with the concept -- so my expression was mostly blank -- but she immediately followed up with "oh, I shouldn't have said that". I took no action, but wasn't sure what to do. After I learned more about it, I started to wonder where I was in this hierarchy. If…
I have zero tolerance for trying to evaluate candidates on things other than performance against what the interview is benchmarking against. Hearing something like that would have had me instantly report it to HR. It makes me angry now even reading it. Why would this have any impact on the work the candidate would be able to perform?
I think someone who's not Indian could easially interpret that statement as completely neutral. Like if I said oh, $candidate is also from New Jersey, that's cool.
Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist
#109The strict social hierarchical dynamics of Indian culture is damaging to a lot of workplaces. 2nd generation Indians are great. The Indians that are from lower casts or from oppressed groups like Christians or Muslims are really great. But the higher castes are extremely insular, and treat anyone of any race poorly. This might be taboo, but every time I see a situation where there are multiple Indians in a reporting…
Not my experience at all. They invited me to parties and insisted that I eat with them. Like if I was late to some mini-celebration, they'd ask me why I did not come earlier. They always spoke english at the meetings I attended. I did find them extremely political and manipulative, also browbeating me in work tasks. They did the same to my Indian colleague. But they didn't try to exclude me.
Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had an interim manager who did this subtly. It wasn't hard for us to catch on after some time, we brought it up to HR and he was disciplined as far as I know, and soon left the company, not sure on what terms. It's absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by something like caste, or social status. It's like if your lead said she was trying to determine if they were an inferior race.
It's absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by something like caste, or social status Caste no, social status? Absolutely, happens all the time. It’s very easy to proxy social status based on interests, hobbies, mannerisms, etc. Those that don’t pass the sniff test, are deemed “bad culture fits”.
>> It's absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by something like caste, or social status
> Caste no, social status? Absolutely, happens all the time. It’s very easy to proxy social status based on interests, hobbies, mannerisms, etc. Those that don’t pass the sniff test, are deemed “bad culture fits”.
Isn't that pretty much the definition of caste-based discrimination?