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Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

siliconvalley.com

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

#41

Post by wslh »

Discrimination and biases are part of everyday life, whether we like it or not. This is an observation, not an endorsement. Ignoring them is akin to denying human nature or believing that the logical mind can fully control the entirety of our thinking. This is why there are a few academic papers that explore this often-taboo topic. I recommend reading Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange? [1] where there is a table of trust between different European countries.

[1] https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/cu...

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

#43

Post by redrove »

bravetraveler wrote: post #37
seper8 wrote: post #11

[flagged]

As a casual observer, their culture seems to include considerable classism; to the degree that 'where are you from?' appears to be an extremely common and loaded question [saved for the locals] . I only recognize it because it exists in mine, not a judgement.

That exists in the EU as well, although certainly not to the same extent.

If you've never felt it, that just means you're from the countries that look down on other european countries :)

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

#44

Post by JohnBrookz »

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 to help each other get promoted and protect each other.

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

#47

Post by throw49sjwo1 »

physicsguy wrote: post #33
logicchains wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atlassian? As a user, I haven't noticed any decline in quality; it's just as painful to use now as it was a decade ago.

A decade ago, you could self-host though.

Nobody (important) wanted that, though. It was done only because the cloud wasn't available, the moment it became available every big company migrated.

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

#48

Post by supriyo-biswas »

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 demands such as long working hours, transgressions of ethical limits, things that are "bad", but that generates benefits for the employer.

On the other hand, European and American societies generally focus on individualism and autonomy, which obviously causes a conflict when an Indian hiring manager sees anything other than complete deference to them as a threat, and proceeds to reject such candidates.

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

#49

Post by PedroBatista »

throwawayian wrote: post #3

Seeing this happen at an originally Australian unicorn after the technical co-founder stepped down and new CTO swapped out all of their engineering leadership with Indian hires from Microsoft. Previously saw it at a lesser degree to older unicorns and places like Oracle, IBM, etc. Although it’s normalised in the latter ones.

This is unfortunately a widespread practice even in less tech heavy companies. It starts with a very aggressive C suit or manager responding to everything 24/7, supported by “cheap” labor who say yes to everything and promise the World, usually extra complicated. Fast forward a couple years and the company/project is a expensive hell-hole of disfunction and suffering. CEOs and the board also are to blame for this, they are aware, they just don’t care as they like people who say yes and don’t give them any bad news.

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

#50

Post by Dalewyn »

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…

>collectivism and subservience towards authority figures are taught as virtues

Remind me to never fly on a plane piloted by an Indian flight crew.

(Protip: If you can't stand up to your captain, your plane is going down.)

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