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Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

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Re: Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emphasizing hiring of groups that have been traditionally discriminated against absolutely has a different moral character from discriminating against those people. There are a variety of ways to argue against the former practice, but to draw equivalence with the latter practice is dishonest and/or willfully ignorant.

I'm sure that will be a great comfort to the Asian kid who was born in poverty, got bullied in school, struggled all his life to achieve the grades and stats to qualify for a top school, then got rejected in favor of a rich black American kid, since he was born with the wrong skin color.

Like I said, there are plenty of valid arguments against it. But they aren't equivalent, which is what I was specifically responding to.

Re: Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

#192
post #53

I was a consultant for an American company that also hired dozens of cheap consultants from development countries. Mostly India but also neighbouring countries and some Eastern European countries. Indians were by far the hardest to work with. They ghosted women systematically which was a nightmare for our project manager. They also lied shamelessly about their qualifications which led to absurd situations. The proble…

> They ghosted women systematically which was a nightmare for our project manager. What do you mean by this? That they refuse to work with women based on their gender? "India has more women STEM grads than US, UK or France". And I see way way more women employees in software companies in India compared to US. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-has-more-wom...

Right on!

Technology firms in India have a better female to male staff ratio than the tech giants of Silicon Valley [1]. India has a much better male-to-female ratio compared with the U.S. Engineering male-female ratio in India is 1.96 as compared with 4.61 in the U.S.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2...

[2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-...

What India Can Teach Silicon Valley About Its Gender Problem https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/

https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-sk...

The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are first generation immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe.

Re: Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

#193
post #53

I was a consultant for an American company that also hired dozens of cheap consultants from development countries. Mostly India but also neighbouring countries and some Eastern European countries. Indians were by far the hardest to work with. They ghosted women systematically which was a nightmare for our project manager. They also lied shamelessly about their qualifications which led to absurd situations. The proble…

> They ghosted women systematically which was a nightmare for our project manager. What do you mean by this? That they refuse to work with women based on their gender? "India has more women STEM grads than US, UK or France". And I see way way more women employees in software companies in India compared to US. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-has-more-wom...

I have a relative that worked for a US medical company. There were certain people who would take women's lunches out of the microwave right in front of them just so they could cook their own. She said they were mostly from the south central area of Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangledesh). It was only a few individuals, not everyone.

Obviously this is a secondhand story, so I can't vouch for it directly. I was shocked and could barely believe what I was hearing.

Re: Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

#194
post #4

How does this differ from companies and elected officials openly saying right now that females and minorities are preferred for X position, like vice president of USA or CEO of Reddit?

Emphasizing hiring of groups that have been traditionally discriminated against absolutely has a different moral character from discriminating against those people. There are a variety of ways to argue against the former practice, but to draw equivalence with the latter practice is dishonest and/or willfully ignorant.

> Emphasizing hiring of groups that have been traditionally discriminated against absolutely has a different moral character from discriminating against those people.

This is your personal opinion.

> There are a variety of ways to argue against the former practice, but to draw equivalence with the latter practice is dishonest and/or willfully ignorant.

This rests on sharing the former assumption. Hence, not necessarily dishonest or ignorant.

Or if you want to maintain it: Want to lay out that difference for those of us who are (in your opinion) ignorant? Because I don't see it.

Re: Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

#195
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the assumption here? Marginalized groups will be hired even if they aren't the better candidate? If a person making hiring decisions says that the next candidate for such-and-such role should be a person from such-and-such group (a woman, a person of color, etc.), then the criterion of being the better candidate doesn't apply. Or, rather, it gets adjusted such that belonging in the desired group is included…

That is in interesting way to define "better candidate" being that it does not tie to the bottom line except unless there are explicit business incentives to discriminate.

> it does not tie to the bottom line

I completely agree with you, which is what makes all these recent trends in hiring all the more fascinating to me. If the only concern of a company were the bottom line (which I would expect it should be), then there wouldn't have been any conversation about marginalised groups etc., because, for companies, a candidate's demographics would have been irrelevant. The only thing that would have mattered is which candidate is expected to be the best fit for a given position. That it doesn't work like that suggests that companies are also political creatures, and are concerned about their public image and, possibly, about things like ESG scores. It may even be that the public image and things like ESG scores are a strong contributor to the bottom line.

Re: Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are discriminatory, but one is virtuous and the other is bad?

Yes. Not to mince words, as others frequently do, but that's basically what's happening. The alterntive, so-called "pure meritocracy", is a farce because the implied implicit "merit" is, by the very nature of the systemic inequalities that exist, unequally distributed. And merit is transferred down the generations. Privilege begets privilege. Etc. This is the issue that we are rightfully trying to counter. It is righ…

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Re: Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

#197
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't, but you can't discriminate against white men. /s

you can discrimnate against anyone and you do it every day. When you choose your gf you discriminated another girl that liked you. When you choose another coffee brand also. When you hire someone also. Ppl who pay the cost should be able to choose. Any solution forcing the party paying to choose what you would like them to choose without you paying the cost is, IMHO , plain wrong.

Discrimination at least in this case means attributing value to a person (seemingly) belonging to a certain group. The word you're describing is called choice.

Re: Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It becomes part of self-worth to value one's cohort above those that are seen as opressive.” Meaning that its ok to be racist against the race that is perceived as oppressive. I dont subscribe to that and it proves my point. There is a sense of “racial preference” and the justification is that comment above. I think an eye for an eye will make us all blind and it needs to stop. We really need to move beyond this non…

Misrepresenting the point that was being made, to manufacture an objection. It was a description of identity politics, made to clarify why attitudes are different in different places/peoples. Not some kind of policy suggestion.

I think i understand where the issue stems as there are a lot of defensive insinuations here. I am not misrepresenting. I am potentially misunderstanding. I can critique germany or america and there will be nowhere near this level of tension. I never looked down upon india or indians and i never considered india as a weak country. Thus i felt at liberty to critique. To me it appears tho that my comments are taken as insults instead of just the usual debates that country or culture X has wrong Y policy or view.

Educate me as i am listening. Clarify my misunderstandings so i can make better judgment next time.

Re: Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are running a marathon, half way through it is discovered half of them had been given weighted shoes that made them run significantly slower. The organizers and racers agree this is wrong and unfair, and so they make sure everyone has correct shoes for the rest of the race. Yet those half of the racers that had weighted shoes are several miles behind the rest. What would you suggest be done?

Bad analogy. That’s like suggesting we give racers in the next race an advantage because of what happened in the current race, which creates obvious unfair outcomes.

There is no next race, it’s an ongoing relay.

Re: Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children'

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are running a marathon, half way through it is discovered half of them had been given weighted shoes that made them run significantly slower. The organizers and racers agree this is wrong and unfair, and so they make sure everyone has correct shoes for the rest of the race. Yet those half of the racers that had weighted shoes are several miles behind the rest. What would you suggest be done?

Okay, let's play the silly analogies game. Some people from group A enjoy running and can run fast, therefore join marathons and are good at it. Some people from group B enjoy playing table tennis and have great reflexes, therefore join table tennis tournaments and are good at it. Some other people realise that marathons have way more A people than B people, and since marathons are prestigious they force equal ratio…

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