Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by sourcepluck » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 9:20 AM UTC

miningape wrote: post #335

sourcepluck wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware that the US ranks below Romania, Belarus, Serbia, Cuba and Thailand on the UN's sustainable development report from 2024? It might be appropriate to update your picture of the place to reflect the reality. Your views here seem to be predicated on some notion of the US as a place the entire "third world" wants to move to - perhaps you should consider the fact that it's not really top of everyone's list a…

> Are you aware that the US ranks below Romania, Belarus, Serbia, Cuba and Thailand on the UN's sustainable development report from 2024? Are you aware of how shit of a metric that is? It's literally the %age of GDP spent on sustainable energy, so the US could still be spending more than all those countries combined and still have a lower %age. Let's also not forget who gives out the loans for sustainable development…

I am aware that it's an imperfect metric yes, but think it's still sufficient to back up the point I was making in this case.

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

#432

Post by Ntrails » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 9:59 AM UTC

ErigmolCt wrote: post #365

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #48

My guess would be that a lot of non-Indians at these companies are rejected on the basis of "vibes"; which is slightly different from racism as I explain below, although it probably ends up having the same net effect as overt racism. As an Indian, I've observed that collectivism and subservience towards authority figures are taught as virtues; this obviously makes it quite easy for employers to extract unreasonable d…

When these hiring decisions are based on gut feelings or "vibes," these subjective judgments often reflect an unconscious bias

> these subjective judgements often reflect an unconscious bias

Are you sure it's unconscious?

Say it's conscious (eg "I like my hires to be scrupulously polite and deferential") and that overlaps with a cultural norm - is that problematic?

How about "I like my employees to be extremely punctual". Or "I like my employees to be dressed smartly". Is correlation with any subset of people sufficient to be illegal? Should it be?

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

#433

Post by KwisatzHaderack » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 10:03 AM UTC

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #187

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…

Now imagine being a minority. You're white colleagues making white jokes. Hiring only white people. Going to white restaurants. Etc... I like when a privileged class gets a contact high of the real world for so many and can't handle it. Employment discrimination is one thing. Having friends and going to lunch is another. For the record, as a white man I've never met, in my entire life, a single Indian person who refu…

> white restaurants

LMAO! What are white restaurants?

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

#434

Post by lupusreal » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 10:04 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #420

lupusreal wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need or even want a US president to be respected by other countries leaders. All I need is for the POTUS to not get this country involved in more foreign wars. Trump is a lapdog of Israel so he doesn't fit this bill, but what I'm saying is "foreign leaders laugh at him" falls flat. IDGAF.

Trump is planning on surrendering to Russia. (There's no other way to "end the war in a day"). That's a massive signal of weakness to America's adversaries.

America is not at war with Russia, yet.

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

#435

Post by rudnevr » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 11:27 AM UTC

raincom wrote: post #385

dartharva wrote: post #280

The waitlist for Indians to get a green card (i.e. second-class citizenship) is 134 years currently. By the end of this decade, it will touch 200. No regular Indian going on a work visa to the US currently has any significant scope of ever being recognized a citizen. Think of that what you will, but the list of incentives an Indian has to bother integrating into American society is rather short.

Produce kids on American soil. These kids can sponsor parents once a kid reaches 18 years of age.

that's what they actually do, yes. It's been a joke first, not anymore

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

#436

Post by rudnevr » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 11:45 AM UTC

I worked for Cognizant for a couple of years on multiple engagements, and I'm not Indian. I saw different things, and obviously there was some dynamic around ethnicity, from 'I'll only hire Indians because they work harder' to Indian boss abusing another Indian programmer while excluding me. I was somewhat advanced level, though, maybe that played a role, so for me personally it was an overall OK time. Overall it's good that this conversation eventually happening, I think, it's in everybody's interest.

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

#437

Post by dartharva » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

nitwit005 wrote: post #419

dartharva wrote: post #280

The waitlist for Indians to get a green card (i.e. second-class citizenship) is 134 years currently. By the end of this decade, it will touch 200. No regular Indian going on a work visa to the US currently has any significant scope of ever being recognized a citizen. Think of that what you will, but the list of incentives an Indian has to bother integrating into American society is rather short.

You may be right, but that has basically nothing to do with sidelining and firing non-Indians.

Of course it does. If it is all but definite that you are not going to stay, why would you not just optimize everything for your short-term comfort or preference, sacrificing long-term benefit?

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

#438

Post by aitchnyu » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #295

The worst HR case I ever got involved in was a semi-onshore (Indian) development team who couldn't deal with having a female (Indian) tech lead. She was eminently qualified for the role, but they would attempt to undermine her at every turn, speak over her, hold meetings without her, always going over her head... Caste did not appear to be a factor; it seemed to be good old fashioned sexism.

Who are "they"? How did the complaint move forward? I'm Indian and seen too many cases of this and the bad guys always win.

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

#439

Post by s1artibartfast » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:24 PM UTC

odux wrote: post #410

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caste is not the driving factor in Indian culture.

As an Indian, this, unfortunately, is not true. Within India caste is very ingrained with the culture and in some aspects it is very difficult to separate culture from caste.

Would you say it is more or less important than gender?

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

#440

Post by bee_rider » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

Rinzler89 wrote: post #423

bee_rider wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (in theory at least, in practice there are still biases, but tracking ethnicities won't fix that, since that's human nature) That’s what we’re trying to fix (or at least mitigate) in the US. You say it is just human nature, but we’re a pretty diverse country, so we have a strong incentive to proactively try and see if we can make it work.

You still haven't answered how employers keeping track of the ethnicities of employees helps against discrimination in any way. To me that's exactly what helps lead to discrimination versus not knowing ethnicities and treating employees as anonymized numbers which would be fair to everyone.

Nope, and I won’t. There are a lot of programs, and with various levels of effectiveness, and I don’t particularly want to dive into the nitty-gritty details of whether or not each one is working well. We haven’t got a perfect solution. But, I think it is self-evident that without collecting any data, we are just… hoping it’ll all work out? That’s not a plan.

Currently in the US, businesses don’t actively have official policies of bigotry. If they did, collecting that data could be harmful. But instead we have bigotry as a sort of soft social thing, a compounding of many little challenges, “bad culture fit,” that sort of thing. Because it is subtle, we need to keep it from slipping under the radar.