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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

#171

>This is something torontonians have gotten over ages ago. Bad example. Canada is a globalist punching bag and their behaviour isn't indicative of a country that has grown but one that has merely submitted. I lived in Toronto for a couple of years and even at that point most of the people I met who were born and bred there were hauling ass out of the city to places like Barrie, Burlington or other provinces entirely.…

> and a love for consuming mainly American media, American brands and American social issues.

Isn't Canada heavily subsidizing cultural products? Even with this massive artificial capital injection, why are people still not interested?

Seems only the French part of the country consumes it's own content.

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

#172
post #7

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…

>failed to make any effort to integrate because they're just visiting to make their coin I mean, have you seen the waiting times for Indian US green cards? You may literally die of old age before getting through the queue right now. The system is structured to make them disposable temporary workers and not future American citizens. So why is it surprising that they act like it?

A lot of the wait time is really self-imposed.

Visa abuse is rampant at consulting companies... that are mostly Indian-owned! [0] This doesn't help the wait time for the legitimate cases.

[0] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/silicon-valleys-body-s...

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

#173
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not at all being defensive, merely pointing to the double standards.

Again respectfully disagree. "double standards" is in the eye of the beholder. Barring some incendiary comments, this dialogue has been healthy & necessary. My 2c.

Well, aren’t you making an assumption that my comments where I have been admonished were deserving and not similar in vein to the ones in this thread.

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

#174

This goes beyond just the Indian caste system. We're importing all kinds of historical grievances from around the globe. I worked for a consultancy in a regional tech hub on the East Coast. I thought it was odd that all of my fellow software engineers were from China or Taiwan. Turned out that the head of software engineering was Pakistani and refused to hire anyone from India. Since the company had a strong preferen…

Reminds me of some of my Indian coworkers at a previous job suggesting muslims deserve, basically, genocide. Also, a lot shit talking Gandhi. A lot of people are bringing over their baggage and I think it's getting worse as companies, or at least business units in companies, become ethnic and cultural enclaves

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

#175

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

Yes I heard that too. Like you can tell from the name, or the length of the name, something. I think if India gets rid of that part most Indians should be pretty happy...

One of my Indian coworkers said you could tell a lot about someone from their last name. Family origin, for one, down to a pretty fine granularity. Caste, likewise. My closest Indian friend once asked me if I could guess his caste. I told him I wouldn't even try. He laughed and told me that any Indian would instantly recognize his last name as placing him not only as a Brahmin but at a specific position within caste. In fact he hides it a bit, going by last initial when he can. I think you're right that a lot of Indians would be glad to get out from under their last names.

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

#176
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>failed to make any effort to integrate because they're just visiting to make their coin I mean, have you seen the waiting times for Indian US green cards? You may literally die of old age before getting through the queue right now. The system is structured to make them disposable temporary workers and not future American citizens. So why is it surprising that they act like it?

A lot of the wait time is really self-imposed. Visa abuse is rampant at consulting companies... that are mostly Indian-owned! [0] This doesn't help the wait time for the legitimate cases. [0] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/silicon-valleys-body-s...

You have the cause and effect reversed. Body shops and US companies love hiring Indians over other nationalities precisely because they're much more likely to get stuck working for them for several years if not decades, and making them more money while suppressing wages, while other nationalities switch companies for higher pay etc. once they get their Green Card in a year or two. The body shops only exist and serve a purpose because the worker visa laws are worker-hostile and company-friendly on purpose to screw labor and benefit companies, for example according to the law workers are illegal aliens starting on Saturday after getting laid off or fired on Friday. People have to file a Freedom of Information Act to get a receipt number of a step in a Green Card process to continue the process at different company if the previous employer refuses to give it to you.

It's not just me saying that, the Congressional Research Service has it in their report about removing country caps. If that happens then there is no reason for these companies to prefer hiring Indians over others. TLDR: The abuse that you speak of is the end result of the racist per country limits from 1964.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45447

>Others who favor eliminating the per-country ceiling contend that the current system discriminates against some foreign workers based on their country of origin, a characteristic they contend has little bearing on workers’ labor market contributions. Such proponents argue that the current system effectively ties immigrant workers to the employers that sponsor them for extended periods and invites potential exploitation. According to this perspective, employers who petition on behalf of prospective employment-based immigrants have disproportionate power over them. Because such employers can withdraw their petitions at will, they discourage foreign workers from negotiating for higher wages and/or improved working conditions.55 All else being equal, rational employers therefore benefit financially by sponsoring such workers who remain relatively immobile during their extensive waits to receive LPR status. Prospective immigrants who consider leaving their employers face the prospect of effectively forfeiting their pending employment-based immigrant petitions. If they cannot utilize another immigration pathway to remain in the United States, they must return to their home countries. In particular, Indian (and to a lesser extent Chinese and Filipino) nationals sit in much longer queues of pending employment-based petitions submitted to USCIS and visa applications to DOS than their counterparts from other countries.56 They consequently must wait the longest to obtain LPR status. Those who favor eliminating the per-country cap contend that such circumstances effectively encourage employers to sponsor prospective employment-based immigrants primarily from India.57 According to this perspective, de facto discrimination results on the basis of origin country, fostered partly by U.S. laws which otherwise prohibit most forms of labor market discrimination. The more that employers follow this hiring approach, the greater the queue of Indian prospective immigrants and the longer the waiting times for acquiring LPR status, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that may limit hiring of prospective employment-based immigrants from other countries. Proponents argue, therefore, that removing the per-country ceiling from employment-based immigrants would “level the playing field” by making immigrants from all countries more equally attractive to employers. If the per-country ceiling is eliminated and the current queue of pending petitions and visas is processed, proponents argue, employers would have no incentive to sponsor employment-based immigrants from any one country over others except based on conventional labor market criteria. As a result, waiting times for prospective employment-based immigrants to receive LPR status would ultimately equalize across countries of origin

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I heard that too. Like you can tell from the name, or the length of the name, something. I think if India gets rid of that part most Indians should be pretty happy...

One of my Indian coworkers said you could tell a lot about someone from their last name. Family origin, for one, down to a pretty fine granularity. Caste, likewise. My closest Indian friend once asked me if I could guess his caste. I told him I wouldn't even try. He laughed and told me that any Indian would instantly recognize his last name as placing him not only as a Brahmin but at a specific position within caste.…

Yeah, just imagine how many talents are buried under that caste system...

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

#178

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…

Its insane the level of generalizations about Indians/Asians that are tolerated in "woke" spaces like this forum. If someone made a similar comment about black people, they would be excoriated (and rightfully so). As an Indian American who lived in SF, this perception of "unwantedness" was pervasive. People aren't outright racist but harbor views that imply that Indians/Asians are not part of the "in" group. We are seen as a monolith rather than as individuals. This hypocrisy really irks me and I will call it out when I see it.

Your rhetoric is not that different from Trump's. I get that there are anxieties about the familiar culture of the place you grew up in changing due to immigration/migration from other parts of the country. However, no place in the history of the world was culturally static.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I heard that too. Like you can tell from the name, or the length of the name, something. I think if India gets rid of that part most Indians should be pretty happy...

One of my Indian coworkers said you could tell a lot about someone from their last name. Family origin, for one, down to a pretty fine granularity. Caste, likewise. My closest Indian friend once asked me if I could guess his caste. I told him I wouldn't even try. He laughed and told me that any Indian would instantly recognize his last name as placing him not only as a Brahmin but at a specific position within caste.…

Around independence many Indian families kind of chose their last names (or had a choice imposed on them, in the case of lower caste members). Surnames were kind of a European import and traditionally people were identified by a personal name and one of several specifying markers like their home village, their familial vocation, religion, or jati. The Jati-based names are the ones people are talking about as being identifying. People who weren't enthusiastic about their caste identity tended not to pick identifying names and would have named themselves after their hometown or something instead. But even that has some associations.

A jati is what people talk about when they talk about 'caste.' They're sort of like large, extended kinship groups analogous to Clans in Scotland. These groups all have associated vocations akin to how in the West we have stereotypes like linking Jews with banking or Koreans with dry cleaning. There's all sorts of legal, practical, and historical reasons why these associations take hold. And since they have associated vocations, they have associated Socio-economic-status markers as well. It's not all that different from ethnic discrimination except more concentrated and formalized since it has a much longer history.

Untouchability is kind of a special category. Those groups were sort of pre-designated as being outside the pale of polite society. This was largely informal and variegated around India but become codified around the late Gupta empire (around 500-600AD). There was still a sort of group or ethnicity-based form of social mobility around this time. My own jati, for example, would have been considered among the lowest of the low in antiquity but by the time of the British Raj they had became more of a "middle-tier" caste. This was much more common in South India than in the North where the lines were never very formalized or rigid. There are all sorts of records of geneologies being created to link caste groups to mythological heroes to raise their profiles.

The British Raj--by creating a sub-continent-wide government, a census, and a literal-to-the-letter interpretation of Hindu law books that exaggerated the traditional influence and role of priestly castes--ended up hardening and ossifying these pre-existing cultural mores into hard rules that we're living with to this day. You notice a big difference in older diasporic Hindu communities, such as in the West Indies where Indians were brought over as bonded labor. Most high-caste brahmins absolutely did not go because of a superstition around losing your caste if you cross the ocean. BUT they still observe many of the same rituals and religious rites. It turns out there were low-caste/low-status mendicant priests around. They just weren't the high-status ones that the Raj and Western anthropologists talked to when they started defining what "Hinduism" is.

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

#180
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>failed to make any effort to integrate because they're just visiting to make their coin I mean, have you seen the waiting times for Indian US green cards? You may literally die of old age before getting through the queue right now. The system is structured to make them disposable temporary workers and not future American citizens. So why is it surprising that they act like it?

A lot of the wait time is really self-imposed. Visa abuse is rampant at consulting companies... that are mostly Indian-owned! [0] This doesn't help the wait time for the legitimate cases. [0] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/silicon-valleys-body-s...

> A lot of the wait time is really self-imposed.

Self-imposed by whom ? Why is the individual responsible for the actions of a whole group of people/companies?

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