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Google’s caste-bias problem

newyorker.com

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Re: Google’s caste-bias problem

#201

Post by yedava »

Aunche wrote: post #168
yedava wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caste discrimination is not a "subjective experience", however much your subjective experience maybe telling you so.

Like I said, their only example of caste discrimination at Google is "denial of caste discrimination" and "coded conversation", which is very much subjective. A Hindu can make the same case that "denial that caste is used as a dog whistle for Hindu discrimination" or "accusing Hindus who are opposed to a caste talk as being bigoted" as forms of Hindu discrimination.

From the article:

> when you’ve got people who are caste privileged and caste oppressed, the people who are caste oppressed start to be given inferior assignments, get treated differently, left out of meetings, which are certainly things that I heard from Google employees within the company.

> Asking things like “What’s your last name? I’m not familiar with it.” Then, when the manager hears that last name, they’re, like, “Oh, so you’re from this caste—no wonder you have these leadership skills.” Things like that. And somebody else in the room is, like, “What the hell?” It’s those different types of experiences that I’ve seen or that have been shared with me that show that caste discrimination is happening in the workplace.

Re: Google’s caste-bias problem

#202

Post by malermeister »

jrsj wrote: post #160
treis wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happened at one of my previous jobs too. We called them the Indian Mafia because it was like Cosa Nostra minus the crime.

I think we sort of ignore this as an industry because we still look at DE&I primarily through the lense of representation and proportions and not in terms of actual power being wielded for the benefit of an in-group at the expense of the out-group. You don't need to be an outright majority to wield political power like that. And it can easily go against industry wide trends in the context of a specific company too if…

In the US diversity is also seen through an oversimplifying lense of "race".

Serbs, Croats and Bosnians are all "white", but there's a good chance they won't get along.

Similarly, Pakistanis and Indians are both "South Asian" etc etc

Re: Google’s caste-bias problem

#203

Post by dekhn »

jimmywetnips wrote: post #73
remflight wrote: post #52

Deleted because it’s clear I won’t change anyones mind. People who want to believe that Google is guilty, will believe they are guilty no matter what.

A friend once showed me the internal Google meme page and it was so safe and PG that it was unintentionally funny as hell in how lame it was. But I understand it has to be this way in any large company Just like I can't blast my music tastes on others, not everyone should be subjected to insane Eric Andre humor

There is a team called Community Policing at Google that sends requests to take down memes. If you don't comply they complain to your manager and HR. The folks running this team are super-woke and totally unaware of things like historical racism (like in Europe) while bending over backward to accomodate their favored groups.

It was much better when memegen was a force for positive google culture, such as when somebody exposed just how bad hello.com's static content was or how dumb google+'s policies were.

Re: Google’s caste-bias problem

#204

Post by treis »

jrsj wrote: post #160
treis wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happened at one of my previous jobs too. We called them the Indian Mafia because it was like Cosa Nostra minus the crime.

I think we sort of ignore this as an industry because we still look at DE&I primarily through the lense of representation and proportions and not in terms of actual power being wielded for the benefit of an in-group at the expense of the out-group. You don't need to be an outright majority to wield political power like that. And it can easily go against industry wide trends in the context of a specific company too if…

It's also because it's not exactly racial discrimination. They didn't hire almost all Indians because they thought white/black/hispanic people were inferior. At least I don't think they did. It was more network based and as immigrants their network were mostly other immigrants.

Plus there's a lot of discrimination going the other way where American born developers got the preference. Again, not really due to racism (at least AFAICT) but more because of culture & language barriers.

Re: Google’s caste-bias problem

#205

Post by vanderZwan »

For a moment I thought this was going to be more like "allegorically" about castes than about actual castes, since Google also has a history with the former, as highlighted by Andrew Norman Wilson in his 2007 art piece "Workers Leaving the Googleplex"

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0RTgOuoi2k

Re: Google’s caste-bias problem

#206

Post by secondcoming »

jaywalk wrote: post #66

> The Google spokesperson told The New Yorker, "We made the decision not to move forward with this proposed talk which was pulling employees apart rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness." If the talk was standard DEI fare (shitting on white men) I'm sure any complaints would have been ignored.

Attendance at the talk would have been mandatory

Re: Google’s caste-bias problem

#207

Post by lotsofpulp »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #195
lotsofpulp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can all be abstracted into “tribalism”.

When someone can look at a pair of parents and tell you their kid’s “tribe,” the difference between tribe and race becomes purely semantic.

Yes, that is my point. Everyone is constantly evaluating everyone else and placing them in different tribes with different priorities. All the way from parent child relationships to neighbors to country level and even global level.

Skin color, wealth, relatives, philosophies, habits, and infinitely more characteristics are used to determine who will and will not benefit you or not benefit you and it can change with every scenario.

I agree with comparing caste-ism to racism, and very well may be the same. It is very similar in that they classify someone as part of a tribe because of their ancestors. But it is also quite similar to classifying someone based on their accent, which side of town they grew up in, or what university they attended, because they all end up being a function of who one’s ancestors are also.

Re: Google’s caste-bias problem

#208

Post by jrsj »

joshuamorton wrote: post #192
Manuel_D wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Google, whites are underrepresented in engineering roles. In 2022, 36% of tech hires were white, about half their national population. Asians on the other hand, made up 55% of tech hires despite making up 6% of the population [1]. Why do an underrepresented group deserve a "nerf" while vastly overrepresented groups do not? Certainly, there are demographics influences at play: higher Asian concentration in Californ…

I'll just casually mention here that in the last week or so someone on hn claimed very insistenly to me that they, as an asian man, were the primary "victim" of modern dei policies and that white people weren't harmed by them. And that this was why dei was bad and that I was engaging in white supremacy to suggest anything to the contrary. You cannot both be correct in the reasons you dislike dei. They're contradictor…

That guy was wrong. He's also looking at it from a binary perspective when that is not how any of this works.

Re: Google’s caste-bias problem

#209

Post by jackling »

nojito wrote: post #116
40acres wrote: post #34

How would a non Indian person even tell? Is it really all in the last name? I've worked with a fair amount of Indian folks with a wide variety of names - how would you even go about determining someone's caste? Based on this article it sounds like most people who end up in Big Tech will be upper caste.

It’s done through seemingly simple questions. Usually dealing with what city they are from, what city are your parents from, are you vegetarian, are you having dessert? I've never experienced or seen the thread searching. Larger person grabs your shoulder to see if the thread is there. But that wouldn't surprise me at all.

What does dessert have to do with it? I have never heard about that.

Re: Google’s caste-bias problem

#210

Post by jackling »

carapace wrote: post #159

The Indian caste system is Google's problem to solve? Let's talk about Google's caste system. There are at least two main castes at Google: The "Googlers" who get all the perks, and the support staff who do all the work and get far fewer perks. The upper caste gets meals, those nifty buses, medical care, etc. The lower caste does not get all those things (I think they get meals, but not in the same cafeteria) and the…

"support staff who do all the work and get far fewer perks", what do the support staff do? Are they also engineers, or are they the ones doing the non-product work at Google. Since you said they do all the work, I guess they're directly working on the products as well?
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