Infosys asked HR not to hire 'Indian-origin candidates', 'women with children' • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by antiterra » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

4gotunameagain wrote: post #161

gilbetron wrote: post #44

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…

Getting ‘into’ the sport is not the measure of merit. It’s an imperfect filter meant to manage the finite space available and to select people who are even actually able to finish the race.

I can’t count how many Ivy League classmates I knew who thought simply being admitted was the end game that proved they were superior. Cheating was rampant. 5.0 weighted GPA perfect SAT Eagle Scouts dropped out.

People angry at the morality of an imperfect collectivist fix in favor of an imperfect collectivist filter are on grounds of curious firmness.

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

#232

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

phpisthebest wrote: post #205

tsimionescu wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 1, even after whites-only schools became illegal, little changed. Previously legally whites-only schools stayed in-practice whites-only, often with explicit discrimination by racist parents and teachers to discourage any black people from sending or keeping their children in the school, but other times simply as by-product of housing inequality. It was hard for people in a black neighborhood - itself create…

I understand that, which is why today I 100% support back pack funding of schools. I despise the idea of Regional school districts, and really the fact that most schools are funded by local very tiny regional property tax districts, making some schools VERY VERY well funded to the point where high schools are building professional sports arena's and other districts just a few miles away can not afford proper computer…

[deleted]

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

#233

Post by alephnerd » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

dartharva wrote: post #168

This entire comment section seems to have gone down the drain to Reddit-tier exchanges. People giving their own false commentary on broad topics just for the sake of it without even trying to understand contexts, this is totally not expected on HN.

Agreed! I’ve complained about this before recently on HN and was flagged for this.

Also, a lot of these accounts appear to be new accounts (less than 1 year tenure on HN), so most charitably they might be users who aren’t used to the norms on HN.

On a separate note, Dang can you please moderate this entire section? The dog whistles and mean spirited comments on here are insane.

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

#234

Post by indian_ark » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

azangru wrote: post #126

notart666 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of them just can't speak English correctly. Only a small percentage of the individuals who speak English at a proficient level of those who do, they predominately come from very wealthy upper caste families and now you have a new problem. And well. When it comes to caste, many Indians simply believe it to not exist anymore in India because of how deeply engrained it is in their social classes they never notice i…

> Many of them just can't speak English correctly. Only a small percentage of the individuals who speak English at a proficient level of those who do, they predominately come from very wealthy upper caste families and now you have a new problem. There is something very confusing to me in this paragraph. You put forth as a premise (at least if I am understanding the logic of the paragraph correctly) that fluency in En…

It's used to be the case that, high caste people (Brahmins mostly) are the ones who can afford higher education and in turn they can speak English fluently compared to others in India. They were also the first to emigrate and likely hold high level positions in many companies.

Fortunately, this situation is changing rapidly. I don't see any caste discrimination in my line of work (urban IT companies). Nearly none of my coworkers know my caste, they don't care, neither am I.

It does happen in rural villages, specially inter caste marriages are still frowned upon. But it getting less effective over time. Determined people go make money and caste is not a hinder in many cases.

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

#235

Post by notart666 » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

basicoperation wrote: post #163

notart666 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is the simplest Latin based language. This has nothing to do with pronunciation but not even knowing basic words. Or how to communicate. Only a small percentage of Indians speak English and most statistics on it are heavily inflated. The Indian English Education system is the same one the Japanese and Koreans use. And they don't know English. The reality is it's like if you learned Spanish in middle school to…

Whilst it uses a lot of Latin words (mostly via French), English is actually a Germanic language.

I know it comes from the Angles of Angaland.

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

#236

Post by wiseowise » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

padolsey wrote: post #25

newsclues wrote: post #17

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…

> And merit is transferred down the generations. Privilege begets privilege. Etc. This is the issue that we are rightfully trying to counter.

As a migrant from dirt poor family from ex-Soviet Republic, I seem to forgot to collect my generational merit, where and when can I do that? And can I add it to my own merit?

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

#237

Post by jwond » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

sumeno wrote: post #219

jwond wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why? Do you think white men aren’t being discriminated against? Do you think white men are being discriminated against and just don’t like seeing people talk about it? Or maybe some other reason?

Because we work in an industry and are posting on a website that is predominantly male and white. Any time even the smallest measures are taken to improve the balance there's just a bunch of whining about being discriminated against. It's as silly and unfounded as complaining how "foreigners are coming to take our jobs" It's the same attitude that makes it hard to recruit women and people of color into the industry,…

When people are victims of discrimination based on their race or sex they are likely to complain about it. The fact that some people believe the discrimination is justified is little solace to someone who is actually subject to said discrimination.

If that makes you feel gross then you’ll just have to deal with it I guess.

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

#238

Post by em-bee » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

germandiago wrote: post #84

pfisch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not making a pro or con judgement but it does help future women/minorities for current women/minorities to break glass ceilings and get into new industries/positions. Just like the first black kids sent to white only schools during integration helped make things less terrible for future minorities.

What is the glass ceiling? In Norway years back they promoted a program for women to study engineering disciplines. They increased a lot. So at some point they thought they could stop doing it and percentages came back to where they were before after some time I recall. If it was a cultural thing... they would have stayed. On the way u had discrimination by sex (AFAIK men were not paid for choosing engineering and wo…

i know nothing about what happened there in norway, so what i say is pure speculation.

if i understand you correctly part of the program was financial support. so once that support went away, the numbers went back.

sounds to me that, all other things being equal, the program was not able to change the culture. and that includes possible ongoing discrimination against women, only that the financial support helped some women to enter engineering despite the discrimination happening.

it is possible that this program was the wrong approach. (where it comes to discrimination, i believe it matters to teach everyone to change their attitude towards women in engineering) or that it simply wasn't active long enough. it takes time to change peoples attitudes. maybe after a few decades people get used to women in engineering. (that worked in china, they have a lot more women in engineering)

the problem with liking it is that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the field at hand. i may love programming, but i hate working in a bro-culture, and that alone would be enough to rather work in a job that i don't like where the people are nice than the reverse.

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

#239

Post by notart666 » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #225

phpisthebest wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in the midwest, live in a mid size city in the mid west. I live in a Middle Income Neighborhood in the midwest... Demographics of this city I believe are 30% minority and 70% white. Of the 10 Homes owners closest to me (and they are all home owners no rentals) 4 of them are black. My employer has a much larger than 30% black workforce. Homelessness is not a large problem here, however it is primarily white men t…

Quoted post unavailable.

I'm not from the cities and am well aware of many issues of rural life and suburbia.

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

#240

Post by speed_spread » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

dr-detroit wrote: post #33

throwaway894345 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't fungible. Discriminating in favor of some women/minorities doesn't help other other women/minorities elsewhere who have been harmed by discrimination. The goal should be to reduce injustice, not to incur more injustice as a mechanism to achieve parity between arbitrary identity groups.

The state I live in is 85% white and the goal is to hire much less than 85% whites. So the goal is to create a diverse community that doesn't exist.

Of course if 95% of the workforce is currently white and you aim for proportional representation the hiring goals will be to hire more non-whites for until the goal is reached.