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Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

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Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#121

Post by lazide »

voiceoftruth wrote: post #74

As others have already pointed out, this is due to the "group-think" mentality that is an inherent part of the hindu religion, which has spilled into the political and social conscience in the last decade, or so. I have thought hard about it, the only solution to this problem to treat hinduism as an umbrella that houses many different faiths (castes, ethinicities, linguistic groups, etc.) and then promote universal r…

Any reservations, ultimately, are doomed to fail as they just foster the exact same type of cronyism with the fractal levels of definitions of castes/reservations. Reservations in general encourage it, as someone has to decide who is ‘in’ the group, and that is never merit based.

Ultimately, blind meritocracy is the only option - but that is also extremely difficult to do. See the historic Chinese style civil service exams for how that can be implemented, and its pros/cons.

One major issue with blind meritocracy is it strongly favors those from families who can invest in their children - aka the rich. Though, there is a path for improvement for those with raw intelligence, unless the tests favor brute force memorization. Like most Chinese tests historically have.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#123

Post by onetimeacc123 »

pk_anon123 wrote: post #90

I just posted this comment with a new account to check how easily hearsay influences people's opinions with no backing, whatsoever. I hope this thread will stay up as a reminder to stay civil and not get carried away by clouded judgement.

I hear you, brother. I am an Indian Muslim and I have essentially stopped considering any company that has a considerable number of Indians. I actively filter these companies out when searching for jobs. The daily micro-aggressions are detrimetal to my mental health, and I have finally come to terms that this is beyond my power to reform, hence my decision to simply ignore. This is sad, really really sad.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#124

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

JohnBrookz wrote: post #44

This happened at intel and was very noticeable even back in 2010. Indians hires other Indians. At every company I’ve been at if you were not Indian you were not invited to the conversation. Sitting in meetings where you were excluded from 30% of the conversation was wild. I never felt like they were rude or anything though- just that I was an outsider. Best team I worked with was very diverse and they actively worked…

I worked at a company with a large multi-ethnic workforce. They had an Indian subsidiary but didn't play the H1B game. The rule was English only in the office to avoid exclusion.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#125

Post by j45 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #93
quadrifoliate wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all? Are you seriously asking how to "fight back" on Indians going to restaurants and joking with each other? As an Indian in a flyover state who has been routinely excluded from golfing events, and had my d…

I am sorry for your experience. I also feel for GP. Neither of you should experience that. Your experience does not negate his. Nor his yours.

One is likely the majority, the other the minority.

It doesn’t negate any behaviour based on bias but would require an honest reflection on the unconscious biases existing in the workplace prior to this.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#126

Post by miningape »

robofanatic wrote: post #109
miningape wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and I'd expect that treatment as a white person working/living in India, and I would adapt to fit in with local customs / culture or else leave. But they are in the US, working for a US company - why is it somehow acceptable when you are a foreigner to create these isolated professional enclaves that exclude the "native" population? (A group of people casually getting together is totally different to someone's…

Thats a typical western mentality. If you do it then it is a problem but if I do the same thing it is somehow justifiable!

> I would adapt to fit in with local customs / culture or else leave

What? It's apparently white to want to fit in with the local culture now.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#127

Post by loufe »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #73
ewuhic wrote: post #54

How to fight back when you see this happening at line management level, but not yet proliferated to upper management? Indian product owner taking mostly to Indian peer developers, bypassing normal communication channels. Indians being friendly with each other and stone cold with the rest. Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restauran…

> Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all? Are you seriously asking how to "fight back" on Indians going to restaurants and joking with each other? As an Indian in a flyover state who has been routinely excluded from golfing events, and had my d…

I think that's an unfairly dismissive take and the "going to restaurants" bit is a mischaracterization at best.

There massive difference is WHERE the discrimination is taking place. Most would not move to India or any other place and impose their culture and exclude locals in a fair and just world. I'm not saying it doesn't take place, and yes colonialism happened and was far worse, but we're talking about what SHOULD be.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#128

Post by j45 »

zo1 wrote: post #75
bbor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m gonna dip into politics a bit for my assertion that “fight racism with racism” isn’t a great move, either for the societal long term or the personal/legal short term.

That is the entire premise of DEI initiatives. It's yet another "an eye for an eye".

DEI is more about getting equally qualified candidates to the table that are ignored or missed.

Yes that makes it more competitive.

Or less-competitive at an advantage to some and both others if it stayed the same way.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#129

Post by nelblu »

ewuhic wrote: post #54

How to fight back when you see this happening at line management level, but not yet proliferated to upper management? Indian product owner taking mostly to Indian peer developers, bypassing normal communication channels. Indians being friendly with each other and stone cold with the rest. Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restauran…

As an Indian immigrant I had noticed this very early on too. It made me very uncomfortable when some of us would crack jokes in non-English language while there were others around who didn't understand the language. After first few years I stopped working for companies that had mostly Indians in IT. I must say I have been lucky since then to always find a good mix of diverse backgrounds in my team that it has not been a problem.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#130

Post by quadrifoliate »

everdrive wrote: post #102
quadrifoliate wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all? Are you seriously asking how to "fight back" on Indians going to restaurants and joking with each other? As an Indian in a flyover state who has been routinely excluded from golfing events, and had my d…

I'm not sure what your point is. "You can't talk about your problem because I have a problem as well" seems to be all you're saying. A better question would be how to prevent people from excluding each other based on group membership.

> I'm not sure what your point is.

That's a good question. I suppose my point is that this is not something you have "fight back" against. Lots of people get excluded from social groups in professional settings due to some silly link that their coworkers have with each other.

Learning to overcome your lack of cultural commonality with coworkers and and breaking into social groups is something that all of us need to do at some point. In my case — I sucked it up, refused to learn golf but bonded with coworkers over board games; and ate the appetizers at the steakhouse.

A tip for OP would be to try doing the equivalent thing in their context. Go up to your Indian coworkers and ask if you can accompany them to the restaurant. I promise you it will be fine.

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