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How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley

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Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley

#41

Who's worked with Brahmin IITians, raise a paw? :paw emoji here: I hope the Valley absorbs all of the world's horrible tech sociological antipatterns because I ejected from that heap. Transient gold miners descended on the place where I grew up, treated it disposably, and failed to make any effort to integrate because they're just visiting to make their coin. Sunnyvale Costco is like an airport in Burma (okay, Myanma…

You sound like the pinnacle of human quality. Glad that I don’t work with you...

Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley

#43

I once was volunteering at an event. I was having a causal conversation with another guy and after a while he asked me my last name and decided to not indulge in any further conversation anymore. This is one of many instances I experienced. There is a paper about caste oppression. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3725938

Thank you for sharing this. While it is apparent that US job market is not a meritocracy, it simply cannot allow ( hell, afford ) to import bad practices from afar.

Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley

#44

I don’t know anything about Indian culture; could someone who is from there shed some light on how prevalent the prejudiced mindset is? E.g., do 80% of people think the caste system is stupid and outdated whereas the other 20% still hold some prejudice toward Dalits? What about Indians that have moved to the U.S.? And is this issue improving quickly or slowly?

Anecdotal, but in university I lived with a large group of students. One housemate came from India for his Masters, and become a real friend we thought. Had lotsa fun together, etc. Until after 4 years or so his wife came over to live together near the university campus. Then it appeared they were really high caste, and he never spoke to us again, even in greeting when passing by.

Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley

#45
post #11

Who's worked with Brahmin IITians, raise a paw? :paw emoji here: I hope the Valley absorbs all of the world's horrible tech sociological antipatterns because I ejected from that heap. Transient gold miners descended on the place where I grew up, treated it disposably, and failed to make any effort to integrate because they're just visiting to make their coin. Sunnyvale Costco is like an airport in Burma (okay, Myanma…

> because of the predominant "fuck it" attitude: don't learn the customs, don't speak the language, don't put down roots, and don't interact with locals [...] when you bring in a junior software engineer's extended family, you're getting a swath of average people too There isn't a huge amount of difference between what you're saying and what the previous president had to say on immigrants coming to the US - "when Mex…

What do you mean by "problematic" here? Is it like "sin?" Or maybe "shameful?" How should I read that?

Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley

#46
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because of the predominant "fuck it" attitude: don't learn the customs, don't speak the language, don't put down roots, and don't interact with locals [...] when you bring in a junior software engineer's extended family, you're getting a swath of average people too There isn't a huge amount of difference between what you're saying and what the previous president had to say on immigrants coming to the US - "when Mex…

What do you mean by "problematic" here? Is it like "sin?" Or maybe "shameful?" How should I read that?

Not acceptable within that person’s value system and virtues, which they’re signaling by calling it problematic. It’s an appeal to an imaginary Problematic Idea Authority that maintains a list of what people aren’t allowed to believe. When the commentary you dislike isn’t an exact fit for something readily indictable on the list, find something close that is on the list (bonus points if it involves a controversial figure), reduce and compare what’s said to that, then proceed with shooting down the proxy opinion regardless of whether your read of what the person was saying is accurate. It doesn’t matter.

Read it again. That’s precisely what happened, followed by clicking the person’s profile to move on to fundamentally shaming the person rather than the problematic idea. That’s a standard playbook in 2021 and it is absolutely not at all about what was actually said. It’s a mating dance for those with similar belief structures and the person being disagreed with is a passenger; the response is only marginally addressing the speaker.

This community can’t get enough of that conflict because the microcosm of people it represents themselves cannot. So it does well here. Other people peacock it, and before you know it, it’s our defining culture. It’s how talking about culture without disparaging other cultures gets risky, because of the pattern matching mechanic against a black and white list with no acknowledgment of grays. “You talked about race, therefore you’re racist” is increasingly logical to folks, and once that chum is in the water whatever point you may have had no longer matters.

Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley

#48
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A contributor to the attitude is the caste itself. These kids (huge majority from upper castes) are treated with too much deference at home by the parents, family and society. Since they are served well at home by servants and society when they go to foreign lands their expectations don’t change and they take the baggage with them. Mind you, they’re modulating the behavior a bit abroad because at home it’s even more…

> These kids (huge majority from upper castes) are treated with too much deference at home by the parents, family and society. Since they are served well at home by servants ... Do not know which area you are from. But in practice most of the traditional "Upper caste" people are not rich enough for having servants. Their air of superiority comes from mere name of the caste and tribal feeling, but upper caste people w…

That sounds suspiciously like the behavior you see out of white supremacists from poor households: the mere "name of the caste" is sufficient to impart a sense of superiority.

Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley

#49
This article is as bullshit at it can get with no proof and random catch phrases on the lines of "ohh blacks are hated in America". Truth is, there is absolutely no place for cast in any top Indian engineering colleges. Millennials and GenZ does not give a single fuck to what the cast of a person is. That too in IITs were 90% students come from middle or poor class of society and have similar lifestyle. There can always be one random incident but that does not mean that the entire community can be painted in same color.

Truth is some sections of American society do not want immigrants to work there and these articles are born from the same mindset. India is losing its caste based social norms as the years pass by much faster than America is losing Black are inferior mindset. Even political changes have come in India which has narrowed the caste lines to almost extinction.

Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is at least gold where you grew up. Lots of other areas have gone through the same transformation without the 'gold'. For example where I live is a touristic part of Spain. It wasn't touristic at all 40 years ago, so much so that people washed their clothes in the river (not joking). Come mass tourism they abandoned everything and erected megahotels. But tourists priced locals out, nobody can afford housi…

I was just in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Everything was geared towards grabbing those tourist dollars. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I’d feel a little better about it if the tourist cash stayed with the locals, but I don’t suspect it does. It’s like displace local culture with tourist culture, and pray the tourists keep coming.

To be fair, that's Playa Del Carmen's schtick. The entire town was built in the last 20 years. It's like complaining about the culture at Disneyland.

Mexico has no shortage of local culture, thankfully.

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