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Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

pulkitsharma07.github.io

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Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#41
post #17
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had never heard of this syndrome! I think it can be found in Europe as well. The post was really illuminating. I don't know the Indian culture very well, but now I can understand why sometimes Indian resumes are so lengthy, difficult to parse, and essentially filled with air.

Another variant of this is "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down." I've usually heard it in reference to Japan, but occasionally other Asian countries as well.

The nail/hammer version is pretty common in Russia, too.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#42

I think the author touched on this lightly, but I feel like there is a little more to be said about “signaling” or what I like to personally call, “resume flexing”. In India, all people at all times are building their resumes for a semi-vague goal usually wealth or a happy retirement. This idea is embedded quite early on in age as the article author suggested - you’re usually pointed at a career in middle school that…

> The flywheel then spins ever faster as every decision you make thereafter is about getting closer and closer to this vague goal of “success/wealth/societal perception”. You pick universities based on rankings, large tech companies over startups, management over individual contributor work

I feel as though I've read numerous parables like this, except describing modern America.

We don't tend to choose our careers so early, but is it really so different? In New York City you typically have parents/children competing for spots in the "best" preschools, and throughout the country high school is basically a big competition to be accepted into the most prestigious college. Only among a certain social group, of course, but I'm sure that applies to India too.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#43
post #10

I’ll duplicate a comment I made on another thread today. This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open source , to balance against the willingness to “hustle”. The fact that a lot of these PRs might originate in India is only relevant insofar as there are a lot of people willing to hustle, and don’t have much open source experience to understand the culture and the…

> If this was Sean Parker with Napster or Zuck with early Facebook, we’d be celebrating their initiative.

I'd say those are both very controversial examples, certainly not heroes.

As for "growth hacking" and generally the ethics of programmers that appeared after the internet bubble, I wonder if one can even describe this as a purely American cultural thing. This is a field which is practically synonymous with internationality.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#44

The poster is being too harsh. It's just a t-shirt. Clearly they haven't met art majors in America attending tech talks for free pizza.

I'd bet most companies are incredibly happy to get an otherwise uninterested art student to listen to their presentation for $1 worth of pizza.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#45
I agree with some points but most of the problems described in the article are not limited to India. People need coaching/training for things they don't know about, parents have expectations, don't want to see their children failed and want to guide(or control, given the chance), people prefer easy ways to survive. Sure, culture makes difference but not everything is unique. It's just the magnitude of visibility due to population.

About quality content, well, have you checked out all github projects? In thousands of YouTube videos being uploaded daily, you can easily find "quality" content by searching it in native language. If mind blowing local newspapers articles are not your thing, you can still find a lot depending how you search through the noise.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does cheating work or are there a bunch of horrible doctors out there? How did they not get filtered out during residency?

I'm talking about cheating in high school. It worked in terms of college admissions (presumably these students cheated in college to get into med school, but I can't speak to that with certainty).

This is an American high school, right? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone blatantly cheat their way through it (though I’m well aware of “volunteering” and “science projects”); where did you attend?

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#47

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom…

> I was lucky to have very "Americanized" parents who didn't raise me with these backward attitudes.

I'm white British and would rather call them different attitudes.

(I'll also be the first to joke about 'PC gone mad 'differently abled'' etc. - that's not my point here - it's not out of an abundance of caution or respect for all, I just think, honestly, yeah, why not push your children into something they don't enjoy but is high-paying, professional, and comfortable? There are reasons 'why not', of course, but also 'why'; so it's a different attitude, not 'backward', unless you only mean to say 'out of favour'.)

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#48

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom…

Why are you so quick to blame "backwards attitudes" when this behaviour is simply to meant to compensate for discrimination against Asians in college admissions? ( https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-many-sins-... ) Asians with far better scores are deemed to be less worthy due to "uninteresting personalities" than others far less qualified. I don't think it's difficult to understand why the children of…

So the solution to being rejected due to high grades and uninteresting personality is to study more, cheat for higher grades and spend less time developing an interesting, genuine personality?

Also, if scores were the only reason to enroll a student, people from poor background, especially black and Latinos would basically never get in.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#49

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom…

Does cheating work or are there a bunch of horrible doctors out there? How did they not get filtered out during residency?

Highly anecdotal, but my ex at the time (white), bio major, had a real tough time studying for midterms and finals in undergrad. Meanwhile, my cousin (Indian) in the same class was breezing through the exams, partying more than me (a liberal arts major!), generally screwing around and somehow consistently ended up with a better score. My ex couldn’t parse this and just assumed my cousin was smarter or more qualified academically. An understatement to say that she second-guessed if she was qualified to be in medicine.

Years later, my cousin laughingly confided in me that he had access to all the old exams that were just questions shuffled around through the years. He got them through his campus Indian student group. I confirmed this with some other people I knew in that group, all of who treated it like common knowledge. Changed the way I saw and interacted with people I’ve known my whole life. Certainly changed the way my ex felt about those haunting exam scores.

My personal take? Residencies have n spots. The people qualified to succeed in those spots is n * y (where y > 2). It may be that people who cheat to get into a residency were qualified to do the job, but it doesn’t mean they deserved to be there. This can be true in a lot of other positions that require the applicant to jump through different hoops.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#50

I think the author touched on this lightly, but I feel like there is a little more to be said about “signaling” or what I like to personally call, “resume flexing”. In India, all people at all times are building their resumes for a semi-vague goal usually wealth or a happy retirement. This idea is embedded quite early on in age as the article author suggested - you’re usually pointed at a career in middle school that…

> The flywheel then spins ever faster as every decision you make thereafter is about getting closer and closer to this vague goal of “success/wealth/societal perception”. You pick universities based on rankings, large tech companies over startups, management over individual contributor work I feel as though I've read numerous parables like this, except describing modern America. We don't tend to choose our careers so…

The example you picked - NYC - has by far the highest population density in the country.

This was one of the major factors cited by the article here; it would seem to lend credence to the "why".

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