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Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

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Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#211
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White americans do this too. Think ozarks. I know plenty of ridiculously smart people from this region, who if they talked about the food they ate or didn't work hard to extinguish their accents would probably not have jobs w/ coastal tech companies.

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Caste is the wrong word for what you describe. Yes, those are cultural markers that clearly identify a person belongs to a certain group, but it's not nearly the same thing as caste.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#212

looks the other way when Indian director has all Indian SDMs reporting to him It’s all lip service. Nepotism is rampant at FAANG

If it is, is kept very secret between Indian employees, most American engineers (at least I would) will raise the issue. I don't care how high the is Director, I would just tell him that he is being racist , at his face, if he gets me fired, I would sue the company in a second. I have never seen this non-sense at FAANG in the 7 years I have worked here (Amazon first, then Google).

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#213
post #69

Out of curiosity, for Indians working in America, how hard is it to hide your caste or pretend to be of another caste altogether? Is this something that comes up in conversation among Indians? Do names tend to correlate to you caste? And if so, do people change them as a way of hiding their family caste?

I'm not Indian American my origins are Caribbean but I have some Indian origins and can offer a few answers from my experience. > Is this something that comes up in conversation among Indians? It starts casually with "where are you from?" and the questions get more invasive. > Do names tend to correlate to you caste? In India, yes it does family name is derived from caste. I had some friends adopt English names to ge…

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Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#214
post #176

I could have misread or maybe it was some sort of propaganda but I thought I read somewhere that Silicon Valley's caste discrimination is the inverse of what used to be in India? i.e. the lower castes discriminating against the higher castes.

Lol no. Brahmins (the highest caste) are wildly overrepresented in IT, in and outside India.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#215

looks the other way when Indian director has all Indian SDMs reporting to him It’s all lip service. Nepotism is rampant at FAANG

At a large semiconductor company, the same could be said for many groups: Chinese hiring other Chinese, one group hiring native Americans mostly, others with Hispanic origin…

I worked for the same large semiconductor company and saw the same thing play out. It was hinted to me by some mentors that I was in a good position because my manager was White as opposed to Indian or Chinese.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone hires a person based on their color, that's wrong regardless of who's doing it. Let's say a company is set to hire 1,000 employees. For the first 900 hires, they intentionally exclude white people. Should they, then, make up for this intentional exclusion by then prioritizing white people in their hiring? Or should they correct the problem by giving those who were intentionally excluded priority? In othe…

You can't correct racism against Bob be being racist in favor of Carl. Which is one reason why Affirmative Action is bullshit.

In an ideal world, it would be. However, because of mainly the US' political system, people of different demographic backgrounds - like class, race, family wealth, etc - will not have access to the same education as others.

In an ideal world, everybody (in in this case the US) would have access to the same standard of living, the same standard of education, and everyone would start at the same point in their career, so that employers can do blind job applications (censoring out an applicant's name, age, gender, etc) and hire on merit alone.

But that ideal is still far away, as is blind interviewing. Especially in tech where people are judged not only on merit, but on personality as well - you have to work with them, after all. And that's when things like classism, racism - not even the morally indefensible or conscious type - show up.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#217

looks the other way when Indian director has all Indian SDMs reporting to him It’s all lip service. Nepotism is rampant at FAANG

Having done many interviews around silicon valley, the demographics of companies definitely seem very ... themed. Not necessarily monochromatic for a particular ethnic group, but a small set of ethic groups usually overwhelmingly represented. And at that, this wasn't a thing that seemed particularly biased towards one theme.

They always travel in groups of five...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-b7-fLOjlY

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#218

A lot of companies try to make policies against things that ought to be dealt with by law enforcement. "Did inappropriate things to someone at the Christmas party" being the classic... That sort of thing should be dealt with by the legal system where the accused has the right to a fair trial etc. Obviously the legal system might need some streamlining to take on the extra workload

The policies are more symbolic than anything, they would signify that the company doesn't condone such behavior. However, I think such policies should, by law, kick in after conviction and appeal processes have finished, when incidents are criminal in nature. If a person is not convicted, these policies should not apply. Too often, they apply upon arrest.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Wouldn't lose much either. I'd argue they'd gain face in today's climate. "DEI best practices aren't just for white people anymore" is probably a good look. > Ironically it tends to be high caste Indians who push this stuff (perhaps because of higher education levels). High caste Indian immigrants or their American children? I have trouble imagining someone raised outside of the American cultural context getting e…

You don't think there are folks in India interested in discussing DEI with respect to caste or colorism? What about in the EU? You don't think there are people there enthusiastically discussing DEI?

“DEI” is both a very recent and a uniquely western ideological construction.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#220
post #3

My dad once told me of how at his work (in the 1980s or early 1990s, I think), they had a team of two Indians assigned to a project. One turned out to be of a much "higher" caste than the other, and refused to work with the other, making him utterly useless to the project. It's good that Apple, IBM and other tech companies are taking steps to prevent this sort of discrimination. It's a shame that Google seems be goin…

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