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Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

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Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#131

Post by [deleted] »

zxienin wrote: post #91
yrgulation wrote: post #26

The caste system is so deeply entrenched in the culture of those abused by it that even centuries after leaving india they cant leave it behind. Romania has a considerable group of such people. The Gipsy (also know as Romani) are an Indian people that are thought to have been part of a caste and fled India hundreds of years ago. To this day they cant lift themselves up, and frankly the government of Romania is not do…

Gypsy — India connect, would be interesting TIL for me. Is there a reputed citation on this?

[deleted]

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#132

Post by cpitman »

redtriumph wrote: post #89

> One day, Siddhant’s older son shared a story from his own life. A teacher had asked a group of kids, who were all of Indian descent, about their family backgrounds. One by one, the kids shouted out their religion, region, and caste. How can a school teacher ask kids about religion and caste? How does this not contribute to discrimination based on ?

It doesn't sound like they did. They asked about family background, which often is a way to say "tell me about where you come from?"

The telling part is the kids assuming the most important part of their background is religion, region, and caste.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#133

Post by fdgsdfogijq »

safog wrote: post #122
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #47

In a well known big tech company (FAANG), I have seen many many examples of a whole layer of management from the same caste. So like under one director, every senior manager will have been from the same part of India. Sometimes this will extend to another layer of managers below them. Behind the scenes, there is a strong communication network that is often not caught or shown in org charts. This will include high ran…

There's a huge language / culture divide in India and yes managers of a certain culture can hire reports of their culture to be their yes-men but it's not exactly based on caste. It's effectively a French guy hiring another french guy or a German guy stacking their team with other Germans. It's a bit more complicated than that because if you look at things like power distance index (PDI), India measures way higher in…

Logically this makes sense. In reality, its not what I have seen in my career. I cant recall ever discovering that meetings about high level objectives were taking place where everyone but one group was excluded, where that group was german, italian, french or any group other than Indian. I've just seen it too many times at too many companies.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#134

Post by shitlord »

pinephoneguy wrote: post #56
txcan wrote: post #2

Only to be bogged down by a level higher "country-of-birth" based discrimination system for GreenCards in the US.

Countries have borders, we invest a lot of money in our children and people and would like a return on that investment. In order for that to be possible we have to reject the people who would abuse the system.

Abusers like highly paid tech workers earning 10x what the average American makes?

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#135

Post by pm90 »

drawkbox wrote: post #128
jmyeet wrote: post #51

It's crazy to me to see people saying "this doesn't exist because I've never seen it". Here's a good rule to live by: privilege is invisible to those who have it. Just think about that. I'm not Indian so can't speak to that experience but discrimination masquerading as "culture fit" is just as rampant in Silicon Valley as it is in the rest of the US. This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism. If you don't t…

> discrimination masquerading as "culture fit" is just as rampant in Silicon Valley as it is in the rest of the US. This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism This is why remote work is so important, the politics of the office and "culture" is more about delivery with remote over internal politics. Remote work emphasizes the external view over the internal view which is always skewed in office environments.…

I don’t think remote work is gonna eliminate class/caste.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#136

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Ok, so we have decades of US company policies trying (to less or more effect) to combat the black/white discrimination - quotas, tribunals, edication, Hollywood movies etc.

What, besides Bollywood, should a US (tech) company do? Remove the surname field on the internal company address book? Prevent Indian nationals hiring / interviewing /managing other Indian nationals?

I do ask seriously - my utterly uninformed instinct says that we are close to the equivalent of 1950s US - southern blacks left the USA to fight and came back with tales of drinking warm beer in British pubs and people being amazed by their accents not their skin colour. India is seeing a second generation leaving to work in global markets and there will be an effect.

So - how do we get on the right side of history?

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#137

Post by beerandt »

lolinder wrote: post #117
rajin444 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> privilege is invisible to those who have it. Just think about that This is not true (very easy to prove it’s false) and I’d question the intent of who taught you this - it’s the kind of method religions/cults/political parties use to indoctrinate.

> it’s the kind of method religions/cults/political parties use to indoctrinate This kind of language ("cult" and "indoctrinate") is a conversation-stopper and does nothing to help anyone. If it's so easy to prove the idea is false, could you do that instead of using baseless invectives?

>This kind of language

Same can be said for current usage of "privilege" and "equity".

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#138

Post by exdsq »

I think this is probably true of all people, no? Academically, socially, family wealth, etc... I may very well misunderstand this because I am not Indian and I appreciate it'll be more nuanced but in its most raw form is it not similar to the British class system, Ivy League vs non-Ivy League schools, etc?

To me this is one of those things people really care about when they're involved and slightly better off - so someone in the upper-middle class, someone from a good school, etc - but the majority of people don't really care. The only people who care about what school they went to or what class they identify as are those slightly above average without other notable accomplishments yet. Professors at Harvard care less about their school prestige than the fresh undergrad entering the job market. So, to take this as an example, I'd assume the only people who care about the Indian caste system are young, in a caste slightly above average whatever that means, and yet to really progress in their career to have more notable accomplishments to base their identities around.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#139

Post by manquer »

belval wrote: post #7

To Indian commenters on HN, how much of that is true? Do you feel threatened when a coworker asks about where you are from? It's something I do ask from time to time (not during interviews obviously, but during lunch for example) out of pure curiosity. Should I stop? I guess that I should explicitly add that I am not from India. Cross-cultural communications can be a bit difficult at times and I'd rather not make blu…

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I don't think any one would be threatened by asking where they are from, even in India unless you grew up around in the same state or region, location is not a nuance (in the caste sense) you would be able to easily get. For example some one from the south, won't know anything about punjabi castes or where they hail from, even one state over it is hard to know they would usually speak a different language after all.

A foreigner asking is generally not considered threatening, they however might be worried you would say something to another indian colleague without understanding the implication and that can be difficult for them.

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Most of the article is certainly true, it is important to note that all groups discriminate not just ones on top, disproportionately high representation of forward communities among the Indian diaspora makes it seem it similar to black racism here it is more complex than that [1]

There many groups collectively known as dalits, form one end of the spectrum, other castes form the middle, and forward/dominating castes a the end, every group discriminates against everyone else, and there are sub groups within groups. family, lineage, language, color, religion[2], region and dozen other factors to break into further sub groups.

It shouldn't be that surprising, India as country has as much or more diversity and double the population of Europe. You find similar discrimination of Europeans too, by country (Poland,Serbia etc), region of a country, language (Catalans), groups (gypsies) race/skin, religion (even with Christianity: Catholic, orthodox, Protestants etc ) and so on and on.

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[1] This happens because these groups have access to more funding/ education, relatives already living give a boost and so on

[2] Caste is not limited to Hindus, there are plenty of communities where you will find mix of Hindus and Christians, or Muslims , depending who is dominant the others would be discriminated

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#140

Post by derbOac »

jmyeet wrote: post #51

It's crazy to me to see people saying "this doesn't exist because I've never seen it". Here's a good rule to live by: privilege is invisible to those who have it. Just think about that. I'm not Indian so can't speak to that experience but discrimination masquerading as "culture fit" is just as rampant in Silicon Valley as it is in the rest of the US. This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism. If you don't t…

Swap out whatever "class" you want and many of the same processes arise in various places. Not disagreeing with you, but it's sometimes frustrating to me that even when there's obvious discrimination, people still question it, and when they don't question it, they often don't see how the same processes play out in other ways with other less obvious group memberships.

I've always said, when you see some kind of "obvious" discrimination going on in an organization -- sex, age, race, caste, whatever -- I almost guarantee that's manifesting in some other ways as well.

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