"with an offer package that totaled almost $450,000." Sounds like he went from the bottom 1% to the top 1%. That's impressive.
It’s unclear if that’s annual compensation or how much of it vests over 4 years.
Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
311–320 of 592 posts
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#312One day it occurred to me that I can tell if someone is from India, but that I'd never considered to notice more nuances than that, for such a big country with so many groups of people. I have just begun to notice, but I have no idea about the identity politics. I recall in college that some of my friends from India would fawn over certain last names, and I felt it was something to do with the caste system, but I had…
> One day it occurred to me that I can tell if someone is from India
Can you really tell if someone is from India and not from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh? Because I can't and I am from India.
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side. What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons. Also the problem is not necessarily limited to Pakistani and Indians. It's Indians and Indians. Not sure what you want done there. I freely believe that the caste system of t…
It's called a conflict of interest, and anyone who has a conflict of interest in a given business situation should absolutely be removed from making any decisions around that conflict of interest (and they should be more than forthcoming about those conflicts of interest). Standards of Business Practice 101.
I agree that genuine conflicts of interest need to be addressed.
It seems absurd to declare a-priori that “no Indian shall be the unsupervised leader of a Pakistani (nor vice-versa) because that’s a conflict of interest”.
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#314I don't "hide" the fact that I am Italian (couldn't if I had my mom's maiden name) but nor do I tell anyone - because a) they don't need to know and b) it's of no relevance. Honest question: why is it different with caste? Rather than "hide" it, why not have it a non-thing?
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#315The reason for my current user name here at hn was this exact form of racism. It is the first post I made when I created this throwaway. I was assured that my experience was unique and not widespread. I am both sad and happy to see this, sad because it exists, happy because it is getting some attention here at HN. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that everyone of us needs to be vigilant about this t…
I’m native Chinese and I don’t hold any opinion against Japanese people… especially in my job, that’s just not professional and seems very childish and immature…
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comment was about not allowing them in the interviewing process.
If interviewing is considered a normal job function, isn't not allowing certain people to interview certain people a violation of EEO laws by discriminating based on a protected class(national origin)? Unless you have some specific knowledge that an employee just can't handle people of nationality X, I would be very hesitant to institute OP's advice, at least in the US.
And if you do “have some specific knowledge that an employee just can’t handle people of nationality X”, disallowing them from interviewing them is a woefully inadequate response.
“Yeah we know Pat’s a racist a-hole, but we fixed it by just not letting Pat interview people he’s racist against. It’s an elegant solution.”
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#317The reason for my current user name here at hn was this exact form of racism. It is the first post I made when I created this throwaway. I was assured that my experience was unique and not widespread. I am both sad and happy to see this, sad because it exists, happy because it is getting some attention here at HN. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that everyone of us needs to be vigilant about this t…
>> One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side. What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons. Also the problem is not necessarily limited to Pakistani and Indians. It's Indians and Indians. Not sure what you want done there. I freely believe that the caste system of t…
You needn’t be ham handed and stupid about it, just use meaningful internal controls.
Not just for this issue. If everyone hires friends and family, people from the hometown, place of worship, etc you run into other conflicts of interest. It’s always good to have disinterested parties involved in the hiring process.
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Or almost like a white man hiring another white man?
No, because there are many foreign white people in America and they don’t consider white Americans to be their ethnic group any more than a Somali or Jamaican considers themselves to be African-American. Even if you exclusively talk about born in America white people there are at least four quite distinct ethnic groups there so there’s limited fellow feeling. And then there are children of immigrants who feel a strong identification with their parents’ ethnic group too. White Americans have as little fellow feeling as Asian Americans, if for different reasons. Asian American identification is a sign of assimilation. Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese people are proud of their own heritage. Anyone who feels that being Asian is an important part of their identity probably speaks the language of their ancestors badly or not at all.
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#319I don't "hide" the fact that I am Italian (couldn't if I had my mom's maiden name) but nor do I tell anyone - because a) they don't need to know and b) it's of no relevance. Honest question: why is it different with caste? Rather than "hide" it, why not have it a non-thing?
You could just as well ask a racist why they don’t like black people.
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is BS. You don't write your name at all, just your student id number.
^ This is BS. You don't write your name at all, just your student id number. Also, this is the reason students in their board exams (+2 / Twelfth-grade tests) were forbidden from writing their last name in the answer sheets. Teachers in India openly discriminated against students from other castes/jatis/varnas by giving them lower marks. Didn't you notice the past tense? Also, this defensiveness without properly read…
I wrote exams 25-30 years ago. The answer script only had the ID number. We did write the name on the first page but it was torn off before it was passed on for grading.