Google’s caste-bias problem
newyorker.comFrom what I understood, the former Google employee being interviewed here is discussing the problem of not being allowed to discuss 'caste discrimination in India', eg. during Uttar Pradesh elections - and in companies like Cisco.
They seem to focus on this blanket ban against discussing this issue at Google, as the discriminatory act - rather than alleging that actual caste discrimination is being perpetrated at Google (for the most part).
They do however seem to point to two examples of rumoured alleged casteism at Google (I think):
"I think the Cisco case is probably the most publicly known example—is that, within a team, when you’ve got people who are caste privileged and caste oppressed, the people who are caste oppressed start to be given inferior assignments, get treated differently, left out of meetings, which are certainly things that I heard from Google employees within the company. "
"Asking things like “What’s your last name? I’m not familiar with it.” Then, when the manager hears that last name, they’re, like, “Oh, so you’re from this caste—no wonder you have these leadership skills.” Things like that. And somebody else in the room is, like, “What the hell?” It’s those different types of experiences that I’ve seen or that have been shared with me that show that caste discrimination is happening in the workplace.
By the tone of the article/employee I'm confused whether the employee is discussing hearsay based on examples of how discrimination could be occuring at Google - based on what they read about stuff at Cisco or elsewhere (perhaps with the intention of explaining why such issues could be relevant to discuss at Google) - or if they actually met Google employees facing these issues.
I wonder if the journalist themselves are trying to intentionally conflate the issues of 1) actual caste discrimination possibly taking place and 2) not being allowed to talk about casteism
Either way censoring internal talks about employee grievances/ possible workplace discrimination/discrimination outside the workplace (which one was the talk going to be about!?) is not a good look on Google - given that they've always tried to paint an image a company that lets its employees openly discuss anything for the most part.
You forgot the most important statement from which is clear casteism is a rising problem:
>"T.G.: There was my own obvious background. My parents immigrated from India in the early nineteen-eighties. I was certainly familiar with the topic. In September, 2021, two employees approached me. I hosted D.E.I. office hours every week where people could come in and talk about these topics, confidentially, and multiple Google employees came into my office and reported that they had faced discrimination when trying to talk about matters of caste in the workplace. There was already a public condemnation of caste discrimination at Google from the Alphabet workers’ union. They had put out a press statement when the Cisco case broke. There were reports from at least twenty Google employees as well. [In June, 2020, California sued Cisco and two of its managers for engaging in caste discrimination. Afterward, Equality Labs received complaints from more than two hundred and fifty tech workers, including twenty Google employees.]"
>reported that they had faced discrimination when trying to talk about matters of caste in the workplace
Your quote doesn't say that casteism is a rising problem. It only says some people allegedly got pushback for talking about matters of caste. It's possible they were talking about caste politics in India or whatever, and got reprimanded for bring up non-work related controversial issues.
> They seem to focus on this blanket ban against discussing this issue at Google, as the discriminatory act - rather than alleging that actual caste discrimination is being perpetrated at Google
Seems weird to me that a ban on talking about discrimination wouldn't automatically be seen as being discriminatory rather than somehow the reverse.
Previous thread on a similar topic (2022): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799
And another (2020): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083
---
One good resource (imo as an outsider) from the recent one is this:
"As a Dalit myself, I wrote a Dalit 101 for non Indian audience. https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101" by user thelit (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595663)
Yes. Related:
Google cancelled a talk on caste bias - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 - June 2022 (946 comments)
Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 - March 2022 (543 comments)
India’s tech sector reinforces old caste divides - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 - Jan 2022 (5 comments)
The Casteism I See in America and American Tech Companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 - Nov 2021 (5 comments)
How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March 2021 (195 comments)
Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley's richest tech companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct 2020 (322 comments)
India’s engineers have thrived in the tech industry. So has its caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 - Oct 2020 (6 comments)
How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 - Sept 2020 (47 comments)
Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 comments)
Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 - Aug 2020 (14 comments)
California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 - July 2020 (56 comments)
California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592 comments)
Ask HN: There is caste system in the Silicon Valley? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 - Feb 2017 (6 comments)
(Outside looking in perspective. I am not Indian.)
When I worked as a software engineer are capital one earlier in my career, thus was a very noticeable trend.
You had entire teams/groups (and to some extent geographical regions given the way the capital one workforce was split between Richmond Virginia, McLean Virginia, and NYC) where particular castes grouped together.
It became particularly acute when you took into account who was on visa/sponsored and who was not.
Saw this at American Express. In many cases, VPs and Directors were actually cousins or even siblings. This was a decade ago. Fast forward to now, and they are at the top of many NYC banks running IT divisions, the same group that worked together so many years ago. Theres an invisible network in many large corporations and none of the jobs are available to employees of those corporations
It seems like you are describing the norm. The prime advice for everyone is networking, networking, networking, isn’t it? And it’s not what you know, but who you know. Going to the right schools to be able to make the right friends, etc.
No I'm saying a group of relatives from India methodically only hire eachother and use vicious politics to climb the ladder in american corporations. I watched it occur over a decade and still see the hiring updates on LinkedIn, "I am proud to announce we have hired XYZ from other big corp as the new head of data and governance."
This is very common/normal. My last company got eaten in a merger (acquisition) most of the senior leadership from the old company, are now at a competing company. They did not all end up there by random chance. Network network network. It's self reinforcing, because those people know who will get the job done, and make them look good doing it. It's often better to hire a known good person, rather than roll the dice on someone new.
What you and the parent are describing are two different things. The parent is talking about ethnic nepotism which isn’t just “network network network”.
It is if you're not talented — these people are here, commenting now, that think solely "meeting people" and convincing them to give you things is enough of a life skill to go off of.
Ethnic nepotism is not normal. It's one thing to hire people you know, it's another thing to discriminate and hire members of your own family.
There's quite a difference between hiring old coworkers and hiring family, though
This is only common and normal in corrupt countries.
Networking and having a reputation among peers for doing good work is one thing. Ethnic nepotism is a different thing. It's a massive failure on the part of many of these companies that this is allowed to happen.
Nepotism is a failure, and working against it is definitely a worthwhile effort. But I have also seen non Indian nephews/nieces get hired into internships because their relative knows someone in the decision making process, etc.
We very openly have universities in the US that favor admitting children and relatives of alumni. Hell, we just had a US President that installed his own kids and son in law in various government capacities, and then pardoned his son in law’s dad.
I guess my comment is to question whether Indians are doing something that different to what non Indians are doing.
It seems like a very gray area. Of course, Indians could be doing it to a shade of gray closer to nepotism than others.
No, what Indians are doing is not unique to them. Americans discriminate against black people, notoriously so. I’m sure the Indians who support these caste systems would merely say it’s meritocracy in action, same as all the whites/asians opposing any governmental rule that tries to level the playing field for black people in America.
(This comment will of course be downvoted heavily and/or flagged)
No downvotes, but I haven't yet figured out why racial quotas for Jews were bad and racial quotas for Asians are good.
Asians don’t have a representation issue in education.
When Jews were being discriminated against they were nowhere near a majority of the student population or squeezing out the representation of other groups.
If you don’t think representation matters then all of this will seem very silly to you.
Filipinos are hugely underrepresented in elite US schools, and we are using racial quotas to make the problem worse.
> When Jews were being discriminated against they were nowhere near a majority of the student population or squeezing out the representation of other groups.
So like, it wasn't okay to discriminate against Jews because there weren't that many of them in absolute terms, but it's ok to discriminate against Filipinos? There are about twice as many Jews as Filipinos in the US, by the way.
Filipinos do not have the same history in the USA as Black Americans. If there is an anti-Filipino bias then I’m all for correcting it. Are Filipinos disproportionately filling our prison system? Were their ancestors enslaved? Do they have social networks where nobody in their entire network has gone to college?
Are you really trying to grapple with the problem here, or is it as simple to you as “we should never take steps to affirmatively correct past racial injustices”? Your deep concern with Jews being treated too well makes me suspect you aren’t arguing from a genuine place of concern about injustice, but carelessly lobbing white supremacist talking points. They would indeed argue that we need to restrict Jewish admissions because Jews are replacing “true whites” in Universities.
> Filipinos do not have the same history in the USA as Black Americans. If there is an anti-Filipino bias then I’m all for correcting it. Are Filipinos disproportionately filling our prison system? Were their ancestors enslaved? Do they have social networks where nobody in their entire network has gone to college?
I thought we were talking about why racial quotas for Asian people were good, not some other topic.
Filipinos' ancestors were placed in human zoos in America in the 1900s. After the Japanese surrender in World War II, Americans continued bombing their villages. The US has bankrolled a dynasty of looters who have overseen the decline of the country in the postwar period and, recently, the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people flimsily accused of being affiliated with organized crime.
A lot of this is fairly typical of the US's treatment of any country where the US fought a war between World War II and the Vietnam War or any country where the US has had a preferred political party, so I don't have any particular argument for correcting injustices carried out by the US against Filipinos that does not also apply to a slight majority of South American countries. We do not currently have a program of racial quotas for South Americans though.
> Are you really trying to grapple with the problem here, or is it as simple to you as “we should never take steps to affirmatively correct past racial injustices”?
Perhaps it would help if you could reply to what I wrote, and not to what I did not write?
> Your deep concern with Jews being treated too well makes me suspect you aren’t arguing from a genuine place of concern about injustice, but carelessly lobbing white supremacist talking points.
Maybe you're thinking of some other comment you read elsewhere? I'm honestly not sure what to say. Maybe I could randomly impugn your motives as a proponent of the reinstatement of Japanese internment or whatever, if this is your preferred way to chat with people, and you are trying to show me how you would like to be treated.
To be clear, I am not concerned with Jews being treated too well. Jews seem to be treated appropriately now, as far as US college admissions go. They were treated unfairly in the past. We rightly see the way they were treated in the past as an injustice. Why do we not see it as an injustice when we apply the same rules to different minorities? That is the question I originally posed. So far you chose to reply to "It was wrong to do discriminate against Jews. Why is it right to discriminate against Filipinos?" by calling me a white supremacist.
It seems I got bait and switched somewhere in this comment chain. It started with Asians and somehow we're talking about Filipinos. I will go back to my original statement and repeat it:
Asians don’t have a representation issue in education.
If you think representation doesn't matter, that we live in a pure meritocracy, that only grades and tests scores matter, then attempts to fix injustice will seem silly to you. The smallest minority is the individual, so if you insist on breaking down racial-subcategories enough, you will always find "winners" and "losers" in attempts to redress injustice.
Where do you draw the line? White Gentiles are the majority population of this country, yet dramatically underrepresented in the Ivy League. White Jewish students of comparable ability are roughly 1,000% more likely to be enrolled at Harvard and the rest of the Ivies.
Does their representation matter to you? How about South Asian students versus Chinese, or (perhaps most concerningly) wealthy Nigerian immigrants versus poorer African-American descendants of slavery? The former often benefit from affirmative action aimed at the latter.
I’m repeating myself but I’ll post it again.
Asians don’t have a representation issue in education.
If you think representation doesn't matter, that we live in a pure meritocracy, that only grades and tests scores matter, then attempts to fix injustice will seem silly to you. The smallest minority is the individual, so if you insist on breaking down racial-subcategories enough, you will always find "winners" and "losers" in attempts to redress injustice.
Because one is 'at least' and one is 'at most'?
They're both 'at most.'
No the issue is that high caste Indians are every bit of vicious nepotists as WASP whites but for some reason only the threat of the WASP whites is taken seriously. My local laws literally treat caucasians and non-caucasians differently because they were written by white people who literally could not imagine themselves not being on top.
I also absolutely think there is a double standard in regards to how seriously allegations of racism against white and non-white managers are taken.
In my experience, it’s very uncommon for this to happen in big corporations at such a frank level. Like yes maybe your buddy from work years back gets tapped for a leadership position, but not your actual brother or cousin, or your childhood friend from the same small town. And if it does happen it’s more of a 1:1 thing and not a huge cluster of your extended family (again, in big corporations. I’m sure it happens a lot in smaller, private family companies).
At some point there’s a line between networking and overt nepotism, which is what’s being described as being crossed here.
One company I worked at in a major US city allowed individual teams to perform their own hiring. The division I was in had employees mostly from outside the US, and the autonomy given to each team led them to form their own to ethnic enclaves. There was a team of Indians, Chinese, Koreans, etc. When I first started, I couldn't believe it. That doesn't happen merely by change, at least not that pervasively and consistently.
It sounds like this is occurring everywhere.
I’ve seen this at the two FAANGs I’ve worked at as well. The company may be diverse but teams are homogeneous.
I wonder if anti-bias training for Indian hiring managers have would any effect? Or would taking the hiring of Indians need to be made by non-Indians in order to avoid this bias?
Additionally, there is some selection-bias as well. In other words, do we measure against the Indian pop in the US (or Canada, etc) or against the proportions in India itself and when doing so raw numbers, or number of graduates or graduates from the IITs?
I am curious to know.. how did you know of their caste? Its not something that comes up in office conversations
It is if you talk with Indians. Id sit and eat with my Indian coworkers and they would describe the lay of the land.
I see.. In my experience, I don’t think this is topic of everyday conversation over lunches among indians. You seem to have rather chatty colleagues!
As someone doing management in a company that hires many Indian workers, both in on-shore and off-shore teams, this is a highly relevant topic for me.
I'm a native western european so I'm likely blind to some extend for these issues. Like the article says, this sounds like harmful class-ism that silences or disadvantages specific groups, but not in an "obviously" racist manner based on skin color.
Anyone care to share some real life experience? Was this a problem in your workplace? How did you detect this was going on, at all?
> but not in an "obviously" racist manner based on skin color.
There is plenty of colorism within India too (everywhere in fact). I think you should definitely read about forms of discrimination.
He didn't say there wasn't. He said this, i.e., caste bias, is a form of discrimination that is not made obvious by being based on skin color.
Higher cast Indians have lighter skin color in general (compared to lower cast Indians). There are exceptions, of course.
Isn't being blind to caste distinctions the optimal way to avoid discrimination? It's like a blind audition.
Yeah, sure! I however want to understand if something untowards is happening between team members. I might be blind, others amongst eachother might not necessarily be.
Maybe if you and your peers and all of the higher-ups are equally blind, ya. Otherwise your blindness might prevent you from seeing what's going on.
Somehow in $current_year, blind auditions are also racist:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220725001219/https://www.nytim...
The article does not make such a claim.
Yes and no. It's great to not have that inherent bias, but it's important to be able to see where the bias exists.
Part of it is to do with emigration from India to the US (where money talks) during the communist Cold War era when there was discrimination against upper castes in India (and note that an upper caste person may not have much money). In the UK and other English speaking countries, immigration was varied and across a much longer time period with predominantly middle class and skilled people.
I've read the details of the original california lawsuit against cisco, and it seemed to be a blatant attempt by the accuser to get back at his colleague and manager, in the guise of caste discrimination. It was subsequently sensationalized by the media.
- The accuser was hired to a coveted project by the manager, where every member was among the highest paid employees in Cisco (millions in total take home). Even among those people, the accuser was among the highest paid.
- The accuser was supposedly discriminated by not getting a $5,000 raise after the annual performance appraisals.
- The accuser was passed over for promotion, but the person appointed as the leader / successor by the manager was also of the same, supposedly discriminated caste.
- The accuser and the manager went to school together, studied every class for 4 years together, and the accuser was hired to this coveted position by this supposedly discriminatory manager.
If someone wants some more background information.
A few decades ago during the Cold War, there were several large scale anti-caste movements, and this caused a lot of the moneyed upper caste (note that many of the upper caste are poor) to flee to the US where money often open doors. The immigration to the UK and the other English speaking countries tended to be more varied and more middle class based on skills (doctors, engineers, etc...).
It's widely known within India that a notable portion of the upper caste are based in the US, but in India the IT industry is one of the most caste-blind industries in India, along with how the majority of the IT industry is based in South India where casteism is traditionally less.
I've also heard rumors about discrimination by Indian managers against non-Indian employees at the largest employers in my city. I'm inclined to believe this is true as I've heard from multiple people who worked there that most of engineering management consists of upper caste Indians now but that group represents a relatively small minority of engineering as a whole.
I wonder if these two things are connected. In some cases is this going beyond just caste discrimination and becoming something like a recreation of a caste system within the company itself? And why are we incapable of even discussing whether or not these things are happening despite them being blatantly illegal?
> Indian managers against non-Indian employees
This happens all the time in Canada. When you have a large ethnic majority and they start identifying with the language and start bringing toxic work culture with management fully aware of the issues and exploiting this.
For example for a startup I worked for in Vancouver had a large Chinese/Russian majority in the development team. They would stay behind past working hours and require me to do the same. When I left early they reported me. They also started to bully and talking only in Chinese or Russian.
It was absolutely a shock and not a surprise why Canada has a brain drain going on. I don't even have any beef with these groups since I have friends from those community that grew up here but for whatever reason, those guys at that startup specifically chose to isolate ppl that didn't speak their language.
It was a modern day sweatshop and it was weird seeing even Taiwanese engineers who also grew up here for less than a decade participate in this toxic behavior.
My mistake was expecting Canadian work culture and expecting others to follow it and the management who were white canadians knew exactly their culture and exploited it.
Just more and more reasons to leave Vancouver. Happened to my friend who were with Indian engineers too, funny thing is they discriminate based on caste which confuses a lot of Indians from island nations, south america.
"not a surprise why Canada has a brain drain going on"
As a fellow Canadian, I really doubt this is the reason Canada is having "brain drain" problems. I'm in Toronto, not Vancouver, and I have never heard anyone leaving the country because of bad management. It's usually just for money.
It’s likely part of the problem. I stomached making less in Canada, but I couldn’t stomach making 50% less in Canada and being poorly managed by a racist.
(I’m a Canadian too, speaking from my own experience border hopping for work.)
Sounds like you had a terrible experience at an awful company but I've never seen anything like this in my 15+ years of working in tech in Vancouver and I'm not sure we should take your experience to be extrapolated to a greater Vancouver or Canada trend in general.
Canada and multi-ethnic diversity go hand in hand. I've always worked at companies with plenty of people of Asian and South Asian heritage. Never noticed any cliques myself. Maybe because I've only worked at relatively smallish companies that are sub 400 people?
The thing is this is not limited to the tech industry but in all areas of life in Vancouver which contributes to low social trust and lack of belonging or a commonly shared identity.
The Canadian multiculturalism model is broken and increasing number of immigrants, PR and Canadian citizens are leaving Canada in record numbers.
One positive of a melting pot culture is that there are common boundaries that define what is and what isn't. In Canada we do not have this and the post-state ideology that Trudeau dynasty has pushed resulted in a highly fragmented, silo'ed, patchwork of cultures that live separately and do not identify with Canadian values.
If you've only worked in tech, you won't get to see the entire picture of this city and nation like I have done starting with blue collar work. I've had relatives who were bullied and working conditions worsened on purpose simply because they didn't speak the same language as their counterparts who didn't bother using English at work with an indifferent management that were exploiting the cheap labour to suppress wages. Nobody wants to work in this type of environment very long and who wants to keep paying taxes to a broken system for less pay and more stress?
Still water runs deep and you won't know if you can't know.
This rings somewhat true but I have no proof. What I do know is that when I was searching for a new job recently is I had nearly 100% success making it to a full loop interview with non-Indian hiring managers/tech screeners, and I never advanced in the hiring process when the initial manager screening me was Indian.
I've seen something similar from the other side except it appeared to be religious discrimination. We had a new CTO who was Pakistani and not a single candidate we interviewed made it past a phone screen with him who wasn't Muslim. They were primarily Pakistani as well but also Iranian. It was a very bizarre thing to watch and my coworker who reported this to HR was reprimanded for "racism" and let go soon after.
Happened at one of my previous jobs too. We called them the Indian Mafia because it was like Cosa Nostra minus the crime.
I think we sort of ignore this as an industry because we still look at DE&I primarily through the lense of representation and proportions and not in terms of actual power being wielded for the benefit of an in-group at the expense of the out-group. You don't need to be an outright majority to wield political power like that. And it can easily go against industry wide trends in the context of a specific company too if cliques like this form.
In the US diversity is also seen through an oversimplifying lense of "race".
Serbs, Croats and Bosnians are all "white", but there's a good chance they won't get along.
Similarly, Pakistanis and Indians are both "South Asian" etc etc
It's also because it's not exactly racial discrimination. They didn't hire almost all Indians because they thought white/black/hispanic people were inferior. At least I don't think they did. It was more network based and as immigrants their network were mostly other immigrants.
Plus there's a lot of discrimination going the other way where American born developers got the preference. Again, not really due to racism (at least AFAICT) but more because of culture & language barriers.
It's abundantly clear that any discrimination against non-favored groups is ignored and in cases promoted/celebrated. Heck, I live in a country with anti-white and pro-black laws/regulations. Minorities here plainly get denied jobs due to the color of their skin and no one bats an eye.
I'm all for fairness for all, no matter their race, but seeing what I've seen in person is very eye opening. I no longer have sympathy for DEI and other such initiatives because they will always be targeted against white people and males, no matter the state of equity/fairness in the world.
white + male is still obviously the best build for life and it still needs more nerfs, but the devs are all playing white male and think the balance is fine
At Google, whites are underrepresented in engineering roles. In 2022, 36% of tech hires were white, about half their national population. Asians on the other hand, made up 55% of tech hires despite making up 6% of the population [1]. Why do an underrepresented group deserve a "nerf" while vastly overrepresented groups do not?
Certainly, there are demographics influences at play: higher Asian concentration in California, higher rates of graduation in tech fields. But all this DEI talk really makes one wonder if race-based hiring isn't at play here. It's really interesting how often people claim there's bias in hiring, but opposed anonymized hiring and other measures that eliminate the ability to discriminate between applicants.
1. https://about.google/belonging/diversity-annual-report/2022/
Google isn't exactly hiring from the national population. They're hiring from a population of engineers, but they're not limited to the US national population of engineers, they also hire from abroad, sometimes directly, other times by hiring in overseas offices and then transferring.
I'll just casually mention here that in the last week or so someone on hn claimed very insistenly to me that they, as an asian man, were the primary "victim" of modern dei policies and that white people weren't harmed by them. And that this was why dei was bad and that I was engaging in white supremacy to suggest anything to the contrary.
You cannot both be correct in the reasons you dislike dei. They're contradictory. (You could both be wrong, but you can't both be right).
It's entirely possible for both to be right: different companies have different DEI policies. At Dropbox from 2015-2019 we had 4 diversity categories, from most to least desirable:
* Double diverse: Black or Latin + female
* diverse: white or Asian female, or Black or Latin male.
* standard: white male
* Negatively diverse: Asian male
So it definitely is the case that asian males are even more undesirable than white males at some companies. I can attest to that myself. But each company is different, some categorize Asians as diverse.
Great grandparent said nothing about "companies", but "life", so the fact that different companies may discriminate in different ways is irrelevant to their point, is it not?
The entire context of this thread is bias in employment at Google. If the parent comment wants to clarify what they're talking about, I'll let them do it rather than have other speak on their behalf.
That guy was wrong. He's also looking at it from a binary perspective when that is not how any of this works.
Not where I live. If you're plain average and not in in-demand roles/fields, as a white male your options and opportunities are limited employment wise. That's what I've seen first-hand and in some cases experienced.
Are you saying that the Indians are acting as though they're 'White Males'?
Parent comment said:
> I no longer have sympathy for DEI and other such initiatives because they will always be targeted against white people and males, no matter the state of equity/fairness in the world.
> The Google spokesperson told The New Yorker, "We made the decision not to move forward with this proposed talk which was pulling employees apart rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness."
If the talk was standard DEI fare (shitting on white men) I'm sure any complaints would have been ignored.
lol claims of white people being the victims are so not ignored that it's common discussion fodder right here on this board, and Oracle has been sued for not hiring white people in certain roles
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/labor-department...
I doubt the complaints would be ignored. It'd be fair to assume that the complainant might face consequences for not going along with the program.
That's very true. The retaliation would go against the complainants instead of the person who wanted to put on the talk.
Attendance at the talk would have been mandatory
I don't know why Google (or really all the tech companies in SV) aren't taking this far more seriously. I feel like it opens them up to lawsuits and with the weight they hold, a company like Google can easily institute a zero tolerance policy against it. Send a message that if you do this, you're getting kicked to the curb.
Caste is not a protected class in US employment law. Arguably there might be a basis for a suit if you could show that it reasonably projects onto an existing protected class, but it's not clear to me that you could.
Not to say that this is authoritative, but an article in the Harvard Law Review argues that "caste discrimination is a type of racial discrimination, religious discrimination, and national origin discrimination — all covered under Title VII".
Nonetheless, my hunch is that legal or not legal, this kind of discrimination would be extremely unpalatable to most Americans across the political spectrum.
https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/06/title-vii-and-caste-dis...
An ongoing lawsuit against Cisco claims that caste discrimination is a form of national origin discrimination. Cisco's attempts to throw out the lawsuit on the grounds that caste discrimination isn't illegal were unsuccessful. There's a good shot that a judge will rule that caste discrimination is covered by national origin discrimination.
I'm optimistic but that could also open the door to many more lawsuits where someone felt prejudiced because of what side of town they grew up on or what state they are from.
Having an Indian CEO makes Google a lightning rod for this discussion. You are right to suggest that it needs to be taken more seriously at all tech companies.
I am ashamed to say I did not have an appreciation for its perniciousness when one employee from India made caste-based comments about another one, a decade ago, in my presence.
>I don't know why Google (or really all the tech companies in SV) aren't taking this far more seriously
The CEO of Google being a Brahmin is a pretty good reason. Either (1) he knows there's discrimination but he won't pursue because it calls into question his own legitimacy or (2) having risen through the ranks since 2004 as a Brahmin he knows there's no real problem with discrimination.
I take no position on the broader issue of the article, but I was shocked to see that Isaac Chotiner (a repeat India-related article writer at New Yorker) failed to mention that Narendra Modi is an OBC in the context of describing the BJP's caste base. Truly, an egregious oversight and one that misleads readers.
I reread that piece but fail to see why you think it misleads readers, given the focus of the article?
What do OBC and BJP stand for?
OBC - Other Backward Class [1]
BJP - Bharatiya Janata Party (the current ruling political party of India)
OBC stands for "Other backward classes". It is a caste classification created by the Indian government based on certain criteria of people who are economically/educationally backward but who do not fall under the main backward class group (Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes - SC/ST).
OBC: "Other backward class" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class
BJP: Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the right wing Hindu nationalist party that is in power in India (of which Modi is a part of) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatiya_Janata_Party
He also says
> “The right-wing Hindu movement in India has historically not been associated with people from underprivileged castes, and those people have generally been less supportive of the movement“
My understanding is that BJP has come to power under an OBC wave, both in UP in 2022, and in the North 2019.
Both your quote and your response can be true, depending on "historically". For example in the US -- the rust belt used to be solidly democratic. Politics & groups can frequently realign.
India is going through a ethnic nationalist revival. That creates a victimhood complex in which criticism is taken as animosity towards the group, whether that be all Indians or Hindu Indians.
So I can see someone who is not themselves discriminating on the basis of caste taking offence to someone suggesting it exists. Add Google’s elitist culture (nothing wrong with that per se, but it creates blind spots) and I can see how reasonable people may conclude the problem doesn’t exist.
That said, internal activism is unlikely to be effective. By the time it worked for e.g. racism, it was an established problem in popular opinion and the law. Companies generally aren’t at the vanguard of social change.
We need legislation and case law. In that respect, firing the organiser was a strategic blunder—it frees her to meaningfully penalise Google.
Here’s my take:
It seems an increasing disbelief in politics and democracy has moved these discussions from public forums to private companies. This is problematic, as it’s not in a private company interest to promote discussion (even if it’s pretending to do so, for PR or legal reasons), neither is it a power equilibrium since a company can just fire you at will.
> not in a private company interest to promote discussion
Isn't it in a company's interest to nurture an environment where everyone they hire can thrive?
>Numerous employees within the company expressed the view that any talk on caste discrimination was offensive to them as Hindus, and made them feel unsafe.
>You don’t get to claim or hijack one form of discrimination to perpetuate another form.
And yet from the Hindu's perspective, this is exactly what Gupta is doing. The only instances of caste discrimination Gupta can recall are anecdotes of "coded speech". Meanwhile, I'm sure that many Hindus feel that anti-caste-discrimination is coded speech. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that using feelings as a rationale for argument is completely counterproductive.
The DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) forum is pretty unambiguously the forum to talk about caste discrimination. What forum is Gupta "highjacking" to talk about caste in your opinion?
The lesson to be learned is, if you are offended by someone saying they experienced oppression/discrimination, really, look inward.
If your platform champions people's subjective experience, and Indians at Google feel that Soundararajan is discriminatory herself, then they have a right to oppose her talk without being labelled as caste bigots.
Caste discrimination is not a "subjective experience", however much your subjective experience maybe telling you so.
Like I said, their only example of caste discrimination at Google is "denial of caste discrimination" and "coded conversation", which is very much subjective. A Hindu can make the same case that "denial that caste is used as a dog whistle for Hindu discrimination" or "accusing Hindus who are opposed to a caste talk as being bigoted" as forms of Hindu discrimination.
From the article:
> when you’ve got people who are caste privileged and caste oppressed, the people who are caste oppressed start to be given inferior assignments, get treated differently, left out of meetings, which are certainly things that I heard from Google employees within the company.
> Asking things like “What’s your last name? I’m not familiar with it.” Then, when the manager hears that last name, they’re, like, “Oh, so you’re from this caste—no wonder you have these leadership skills.” Things like that. And somebody else in the room is, like, “What the hell?” It’s those different types of experiences that I’ve seen or that have been shared with me that show that caste discrimination is happening in the workplace.
What about those that felt discriminated? Where is their forum to talk about what happened to them?
Might I add, if you weren't a party to an experience, an off handed observation that those are just subjective experiences, is frankly not yours to make.
Google's reaction was the Damore memo was that it didn't matter that Damore felt discriminated against. People felt attacked by the memo, so his opinion wasn't welcome. If they want to be consistent, they had to reject the caste talk. It's that simple.
>Might I add, if you weren't a party to an experience, an off handed observation that those are just subjective experiences, is frankly not yours to make.
Do you share the same opinion about the white activists who are supporting Gupta? Why are you calling me out for expressing a nonzero disagree of sympathy towards her opposition who also claim they are discriminated against? I'm not Indian, but I've seen fairly egregious examples of caste being used to attack Indians. Admittedly, it was on 4chan, but I'm sure weaker forms of this attitude exist in real life as well.
There might also be employees who spend their personal time on stormfront dot org and feel that all sorts of DEI language is coded speech, but we generally don't regard their opinions as valid.
As a US born individual with immigrant parents, I had NO idea how many times I got scoped for my caste. It’s quite amazing how routine simple questions have ulterior motives behind them.
Now that I am a more senior in my career, I’ve made it my mission to always call it out when it happens.
I hope others start doing it as well.
I'm an unworldly white boy in a sea of Indian immigrants, probably several generations in. How can I help prevent that kind of discrimination from going on? I don't know what to look for and how to not take part in it.
What kinds of questions would people ask to scope out your caste?
What's your last name? Where did you grow up? What did you parents do for a living?
The simplest solution from a company perspective is to not hire activist type employees. It just never ends well. You may very well find the activist's point valid and just, but it still won't end well in most cases.
Other than the fact that perhaps they should spend time on actually working, the typical activist method cannot ever succeed. It starts with some sweeping assertion affecting a large group: men oppress women, this cast has a bias to this cast, white people discriminate against black people.
So it starts with a sweeping accusation. Which is presented as fact. The accused can't bring forward any counter point as this confirms the accusation, according to activist logic. Instead, you need to sit down and be "educated" and humiliated on things you don't even agree you did, as an individual.
We shouldn't be surprised that this approach makes people angry and creates even more division. Activism, DEI and its struggle sessions are wildly unpopular and ineffective.
Recently there was a good article (a serious one, I promise, from a progressive research institute) concluding the same: DEI in corporates is a massive failure. It's done nothing to progress any cause, instead deepened division. In extremer cases it even ends in a shouting/bullying match.
Vague sweeping claims do not work. If you have a case of discrimination, document it the best you can, have a good story with tangible evidence. And then take it forward.
Consequently, to filter out the potential troublemakers, for short a period of time encourage “bring your whole self to work”, “open and honest conversations” etc. See who starts to raise issues and then put them on PIP for purely “technical” reasons.
If anybody would say "bring yourself to work" my first response would be "are you really sure"?
They're collective lies. Things we tell each other to make us feel better about ourselves. Same for "open and honest conversations" which really means a tiny subset of allowed conversations fitting ideology.
If the system for reporting and handling these cases on an individual basis actually worked then there wouldn't be a problem. The entire point of discussing this is to make those systems work better. Presenting counter arguments is fine, but trying to prevent the discussion from happening does suggest that you benefit from the status quo.
I agree that you need a solid reporting structure and complaint handling. Likewise you need a solid case. It's a two way street.
Preventing counter arguments is NOT fine, that's the issue with generic claims. You can read in the article itself the extreme annoyance the activist experienced when there was a pushback.
Think of it this way, would it be fine in this situation if an additional speaker was brought in, one projecting the exact opposite of her claims? Absolutely no way that would happen, which means it's not a discussion. It's an accusation with a fixed outcome.
"but trying to prevent the discussion from happening does suggest that you benefit from the status quo."
I know this language is normalized but saying that people benefit from some status quo is a wild claim. You need extraordinary evidence. And even then it means nothing to the individual. People will keep throwing around demeaning stuff to generalize entire demographics like it's nothing, but it will never ever work.
This is why progressive politics is so broken. It builds enemies instead of allies. It burns bridges instead of making new ones.
These are all good & fair points. I think in this case "but trying to prevent the discussion from happening does suggest that you benefit from the status quo." would also apply equally to someone trying to silence any dissent or criticism of the ideas they themselves were putting forwards. Either a fair and open discussion needs to happen about these things or they shouldn't be part of a workplace at all. And any standards that are created need to be applied universally too -- you can't just label some as protected groups and tell everyone else to go fuck themselves if they're experiencing a problem, which is basically how things work today.
And that's where my complaint about silencing this topic at Google stems from. If others have been able to do it and get special privileges for themselves than preventing further discussion along these lines only further cements those advantages and the disadvantage of others. It either needs to be eliminated entirely or allowed to continue to evolve.
"Either a fair and open discussion needs to happen about these things or they shouldn't be part of a workplace at all."
Fully agree, where "these things" also include topics the typical activist may not agree with.
Personally, I think it's a myth for such truly open truth-seeking debates to be possible at all, at work even less so.
It's wild to me how much of right wing rhetoric on Hacker News is portrayed as "simply how it is" and "activist logic" is portrayed as always wrong, a failure, and counter-productive.
None of the situations described in the parent has ever happened. Nor do any of the scientific studies agree with the positions above that are implied to be facts. However, because it is written dispassionately (even condescendingly) the flaws will be ignored and the sentiment applauded.
Even wilder to call it right-wing, given that I'm a moderate leftist in a social democracy (western Europe). Makes me pretty close to a "commie".
Pushing back against government overreach is now also right-wing, as is defending free speech.
But hey, hard to argue with California logic where the top 1% earners of the world working for harmful neoliberal companies spend their time telling themselves they are victims and oppressed, and doing the "right" thing.
I said you were spouting right-wing rhetoric, not that you were right wing. You can be a useful fool.
It is not shocking to me that you can't understand the difference while talking about the things you talk about.
We spend so much time talking about the traditional race and class struggles in the United States that we don't really have the capacity to properly deal with and address the issues inserted into race by other world countries. It bewilders me to this day to think of all the different dynamics that old world thought subtly imposes on the painting that is now...
Just the other day I remembered how as a young guy I was once dating a Korean girl in college and how our relationship fizzled quickly the minute I met her parents... And how I was working long hours on a job and being so stressed by management that I was grinding my teeth in my sleep, even though I was a manager myself, while 2 colleagues I was supposed to lead got away with constantly not being technical enough to support a project at all.
It's something special to be referred to by a sitting president (meant to reflect and represent everyone) and hear him say the words "My African American", and to observe memes that creatively play with a word that was used as my family members and ancestors have historically been abused to, or to see even things like Juneteenth Ice Cream coming from huge corporations that don't hire people like me to consult them time after time to properly address the issues...
It's also not surprising that discrimination is ingrained in many things in our world, and that so many people would easily say they are against hate and division, but are unaware of how it is upheld and sustained by apathy towards the micro aggressions that are embedded in it.
It is truly epic when someone of dark skin tone can navigate through and overcome the adversity created by old world ignorance, and it's even more special when they see it as an opportunity to represent everyone properly despite the adversity they encountered. It's also rare to find people that truly aren't bound in their word and actions by some sort of historical and psychological bias in terms of the dark history of this world... It's an every day struggle which rarely gets talked about, and an internal conflict that many people deal with, and more often reason out irrationally. This bias also translates into company policy, into platform algorithms, into service delivery, into everything.
If your company photos from leadership levels to the development room don't truly reflect diversity, the people in charge often end up multiplying the blindness to cultural bias in everything they do until it makes the news...
It works in both and all ways, and screws everything about a company, product, and service up... Royally.
> If your company photos from leadership levels to the development room don't truly reflect diversity, the people in charge often end up multiplying the blindness to cultural bias
In traditional American Black/white photos, you are flat-out right. Many of the problems you allude to cannot be fully addressed until leadership is diverse.
In the context of caste, it is challenging for non-Indian Americans to discern the caste differences in such photos.
Everyone has the opportunity to learn about the dynamics of race within our world. In the corporate world, continual education and awareness of cultures and bias should be an expectation of every employee.
So many people study history and economics, but only the parts that are relevant to them... Learning outside of our own experiences actually helps greatly to increase chances of success in life by connecting with others outside of our normal culture and experiences...
It's a challenge that can be very rewarding if it is ritually practiced by all individuals not just in companies, but in life... Different cuisines alone that I've been exposed to (by new friends outside of my home culture) have been life altering in a great way. I understand context of current events and even TV shows and movies far better than I used to because of my exposure to cultures and languages beyond my own.
It's unfathomable to me how anyone could be resistant towards cultural learning, empathy, understanding, and growth outside of their own. It's a big reason why bias keeps resurging, because of that ingrained resistance (in this world) towards understanding and learning about each other.
The Indian caste system is Google's problem to solve?
Let's talk about Google's caste system.
There are at least two main castes at Google: The "Googlers" who get all the perks, and the support staff who do all the work and get far fewer perks. The upper caste gets meals, those nifty buses, medical care, etc. The lower caste does not get all those things (I think they get meals, but not in the same cafeteria) and they are specifically trained not to get familiar with the upper caste. In fact, they can get in trouble for fraternizing with the "real" Googlers.
It's worth noting that the upper caste is made up mostly of white, Chinese, or Indian folks while the lower caste is mostly Mexican (in CA that means anyone from south of the border from Mexico to Chile and Argentina), Filipino, and some Arab people. (There are very few black people working at Google.)
Google is progressive in the sense that they don't hate their servant class, but they are just as caste-conscious, if you will, as Indian culture.
I think what you are describing is class based rather than caste based. Caste is explicitly based on heredity and is unchangeable. The fact that the two classes are made up mostly of different ethnicities is probably caused by a confounding variable, such as different educational opportunities, as well as discrimination of course.
> I think what you are describing is class based rather than caste based. Caste is explicitly based on heredity and is unchangeable.
You're right, of course, and that's a valuable distinction to make. Anyone in one class at Google could move to the other and they would be accepted.
> The fact that the two classes are made up mostly of different ethnicities is probably caused by a confounding variable, such as different educational opportunities, as well as discrimination of course.
In California at least the racial component is pretty clearly due to history: The Spanish took CA from the Indians, and then we took it from the Spanish (and now the Latinos are gradually taking it back in a largely peaceful demographic transition.) Throughout the state, even in the most progressive enclaves, there's this racial/class system. (Come to think of it, would that count as a caste system?)
To me the weird thing isn't that progressives don't want to hang out with "the help". That's hypocritical but unsurprising. The thing I find strange is when other nationalities/ethnicities come into the picture and they slot into the system in different classes.
"support staff who do all the work and get far fewer perks", what do the support staff do? Are they also engineers, or are they the ones doing the non-product work at Google. Since you said they do all the work, I guess they're directly working on the products as well?
They do all the physical work, janitor, maintenance, cooking, cleaning, etc. Everything that isn't sitting at a desk typing on a keyboard.
How would a non Indian person even tell? Is it really all in the last name? I've worked with a fair amount of Indian folks with a wide variety of names - how would you even go about determining someone's caste? Based on this article it sounds like most people who end up in Big Tech will be upper caste.
It’s done through seemingly simple questions.
Usually dealing with what city they are from, what city are your parents from, are you vegetarian, are you having dessert?
I've never experienced or seen the thread searching. Larger person grabs your shoulder to see if the thread is there. But that wouldn't surprise me at all.
Thats bs.. none of those questions tells you anything caste related
From my name and city origin you can determine my family's caste.
Anecdotal at best. No way this can be generalized.
Of course it is. Why is why I (and many others) changed their names to hide it.
This is interesting. I believe vegetarianism is higher caste but dessert is a tricky one.
For an outside observer, what's the significance of dessert here?
What does dessert have to do with it? I have never heard about that.
Well most people that immigrate not trough the south border or diversity visa are usually middle class or up in their country of origin.
The easiest way to get to live in the US is to have money.
The southern border is the new ellis island trough which the great unwashed can enter.
Assuming caste maps to socioeconomic status, the situation is the same for Indians and non Indians around the world.
> Numerous employees within the company expressed the view that any talk on caste discrimination was offensive to the
That’s one way to play the system - outvictim the victim! Well done. Who can prove they really felt unsafe or just wanted to keep the issue hidden and perpetuate caste discrimination.
It's not just Google. As a non-Tech non-Indian that previously worked at AmEx, I was shocked to see how many indians there were at AmEx. I was even more shocked to learn that they discriminate based on caste.
For a moment I thought this was going to be more like "allegorically" about castes than about actual castes, since Google also has a history with the former, as highlighted by Andrew Norman Wilson in his 2007 art piece "Workers Leaving the Googleplex"
Sidebar: Anecdotes and personal experiences aren't sufficient evidence to make conclusions about DEI efforts and whether discrimination is occurring, where, to what extent, for or against whom, etc.
The number of people in this HN thread without the critical thinking skills to understand that is astounding.
> The first thing is denial. Saying this doesn’t even exist. That is a form of discrimination. There were messages on e-mail threads that talked about how this isn’t a problem here. If you replace the denial of caste discrimination with the denial of the Holocaust or something like that, it instantly clicks where other people start to realize, “Oh, something’s wrong if people are denying this.”
It seems like if you said there was discrimination against tall white men, people would also deny that.
fact is we live in a tiered society. no matter how many times we repeat to ourselves that "we are all equal" (before the law).
as I see it, such phrases are a goal, an intention, more than they are a reality.
we need to keep working perpetually in pursuit of such an ideal goal, but just pretending we do not live in a caste (or tiered) society does not really do anything to achieve this goal.
this is the my point: to pretend that tiers (or castes) do not exist does not move us any closer to the stated ideal goal.
the more direct action I can think of is to dissasociate what somebody does to earn a living from their social status.
This is not true of traditional American families. In many traditional American families you will have some people that are widely successful and many others that are not. Yes, there are the elites, they are a different class for sure, but the middle and lower classes of American society are not tiered in the way a caste system is. In a caste system, your family is your destiny. Confusing the two is dangerous because it normalizes the caste system, a system that is very economically damaging to a country.
Archived: https://archive.ph/bAsma
We need to stop calling this a "caste-bias problem" and call it what it is: racism. Just because they're not a distinct ethnicity doesn't mean it's not racism, and the people looking down on others because of their caste are no different than the white guy yelling the n word in traffic. Neither should be tolerated, and if you find yourself working with one, they should be fired. It is antithetical to an open society.
It can all be abstracted into “tribalism”.
When someone can look at a pair of parents and tell you their kid’s “tribe,” the difference between tribe and race becomes purely semantic.
Yes, that is my point. Everyone is constantly evaluating everyone else and placing them in different tribes with different priorities. All the way from parent child relationships to neighbors to country level and even global level.
Skin color, wealth, relatives, philosophies, habits, and infinitely more characteristics are used to determine who will and will not benefit you or not benefit you and it can change with every scenario.
I agree with comparing caste-ism to racism, and very well may be the same. It is very similar in that they classify someone as part of a tribe because of their ancestors. But it is also quite similar to classifying someone based on their accent, which side of town they grew up in, or what university they attended, because they all end up being a function of who one’s ancestors are also.
> it is also quite similar to classifying someone based on their accent, which side of town they grew up in, or what university they attended, because they all end up being a function of who one’s ancestors are
This is fair. The salient difference for me emerges in immigration. The fact that someone can look at an Indian American speaking American English, dressed in Western garb and educated in America and determine something about their parents' caste puts caste closer to race than e.g. wealth, religion or sexual orientation.
I find "race" is not very useful as a concept once you start getting into the weeds.
When I try to get to the root cause of why people want to categorize others, I often find it is about utility. Surely, it can be evil too such as someone wanting to punish others or getting a feeling of superiority from viewing others as being below. But it can also be about going with who you think will have your back when the situation gets hairy (which can include covering up your misdeeds), or simply someone who will help you.
In that sense, an Indian American speaking American English, dressed in Western garb and educated in America who is likelier to have many cousins and family who are engineers/doctors/lawyers/business owners could be more useful than a visually identical Indian American who is not as likely to have that family background.
The compounding effects of networking really hamper efforts to increase equality of opportunity.
Not really, there are a lot of non-racially based "tribes" out there that can be told apart by clothing and other attributes. Quakers, Muslims, hippies, the Amish etc. come to mind.
I agree, if only for the purpose of avoiding ignorant comments like "America has a caste system too, rich vs poor" which we often find in these discussions
To be fair, (Brahmin) Communist Chief Minister of West Bengal used to say the same thing about Bengal.
Isn't racism based on race or ethnic groups. Caste bias can be like a white person judging another white person because one grew up in the Bronx while the other is from New Jersey. That is not racism but classism maybe mixed in with some religious discrimination.
I disagree. Normal classism can be overcome to a much greater degree than Caste. An upper class person may have 4 working class grandparents. A person with 4 lower caste grandparents will never be an upper caste, just like someone with 4 black grandparents will not be seen as white.
The caste system has been enforced strictly enough to even have an imprint on the DNA:
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/Caste-system-has-l...
In other words, casts differ from each other in ways that are similar to how Jews differ from other Europeans. And I would definitely label anti-Semitism as racism, even if it is usually difficult to identify a Jew by appearance.
Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste has a really good overview of the caste system in India and how it’s very distinct from class issues.
You're missing the cultural insight needed to understand caste. For example, two people from New Jersey may tolerate each other even if one of their ancestors are from other places. Castes on the other hand, carries on from generation to generation. It's extremely hard to get rid of the caste label you're born with. Another factor is the level of discrimination involved. Caste is widely used to judge academic and professional proficiencies. It's extremely hard for lower caste people to rise up even if they work hard. They get denied and often demotivated in public. It gets much worse within India. Lower caste people are kept away from good residential areas, many commercial establishments and even village wells.
caste-bias is a subset of racism.
I can understand why Hindus would be resistant to being labeled the “oppressor” in an “oppressor/oppressed” dynamic. Instead of discussing individual discrimination and behavior these discussions always result in the “reverse” hatred where the oppressed group is vilified. See white people in discussions of racism and Christians in discussion of LGBT issues.
> If you replace the denial of caste discrimination with the denial of the Holocaust or something like that, it instantly clicks where other people start to realize, “Oh, something’s wrong if people are denying this.”
Seems a bit extreme. Even questioning whether caste discrimination in the US or Google is a large problem is enough to get you lumped into Holocaust denial territory.
> People can absolutely discriminate based on caste by essentially denying it and not wanting to learn about it.
What makes discrimination bad is the arbitrary nature. If you don't know the arbitrary classifications of groups, and you're making decisions on something tangible that presumably affects the person's skill set, then is it discrimination if it correlates with some arbitrary distinction you're not aware of?
Sounds like you are a Brahmin mad about Dalits messing with your status.
>If you don't know the arbitrary classifications of groups, and you're making decisions on something tangible that presumably affects the person's skill set, then is it discrimination if it correlates with some arbitrary distinction you're not aware of?
The problem was clearly stated to be discrimination from other Indians against lower class Indians, NOT white managers unknowingly discriminating against low class Indians.
> Sounds like you are a Brahmin mad about Dalits messing with your status.
I don't know what these two are and I'm fairly certain I don't belong to either one of them.
The efforts from the article made it sound like its an education effort. Presumably the parties discriminating are very much aware of the class distinction so education might not be the right call, more enforcement of existing anti-discrimination policies. Or throw the decisions to unbiased third parties.
Deleted because it’s clear I won’t change anyones mind. People who want to believe that Google is guilty, will believe they are guilty no matter what.
Please don't rage-delete comments. It renders the discussion unreadable because the context is gone.
Believe me, I understand how impossibly frustrating it can be to represent a minority/contrarian view in an internet discussion on an inflammatory topic, but turning over the chessboard and storming off—which is what deleting comments and leaving spiteful remnants in their place amounts to—is not a positive contribution.
If you haven't experienced something, and think someone else claiming that they experienced it is stupid, I really don't know who is stupid.
If person A slaps person B and person C goes "I didn't experience anything. There are no slaps in this company", does that sound reasonable?
Deleted
Your assertion that it's not, is not sufficient. Especially when the very idea of having a talk caused so much tension. If it's a non existent problem, this talk would've been given no more attention than a presentation about bigfoot.
Such (pro)active denial usually indicates the denier has something to hide. Now that may not be the case here. But assuming you're right about this not being a Google problem but just small pockets like sexual harassment and racism.
Doesn't google still hold talks about racism & sexual harassment? I'm pretty sure they do. So why the voice against this talk, and this issue specifically?
Deleted
Once again, your assertions are yours to make. The policy of the company, as evidenced by their actions, points the other way.
What role did Google hire you for? PR?
If something bad is occurring inside Google, then of course it is Google's problem.
Whether or not it's ocurring I don't know, but to think that just because they have training materials saying something is bad and absolutely not to be tolerated means that it's necessarily in practice not tolerated is very naive!
I could play the same game and say perhaps you didn't read the article.
The article doesn't suggest it is a problem unique to Google. It suggests that Google's efforts at DEI, which you are telling us are industry best, have a blind spot on this subject, as evidenced by the way they handled this situation. A story that sounds plausible to me.
sorry, but I'm with the others here - one's personal experience does not negate the experience of others, and it also doesn't inform the question of whether this is a "google problem" or an "industry problem" (which btw, I'm inclined to believe). It's just a single random datapoint among (literally) 300,000.
If Google doesn't have a blind spot towards caste bias than why where they unable to even have a talk about it? It seems like it's a topic that cannot be discussed and as such I really doubt it doesn't represent a problem
I'm guessing that Google is also unlikely to host a topic about black-on-black violence. I'm not saying that this is a fair comparison, but that's what many Indians how caste is used. If you're going to place high importance on people's subjective experiences, you can't only do so when it's politically convenient.
Not only is it not a good comparison but there's not even a good thing to compare it to, which would be some other form of discrimination happening within the work place that can't be discussed. What you're saying sounds to me like this problem does exist and it's so bad that even talking about it should be off limits. That's fundamentally unfair to the people potentially being discriminated against.
Fair enough. I probably could have chosen a better example like an Asian speaker speaking out against affirmative action.
I suppose you could make the same comparison with whites as well, I get that there is somewhat of an issue there because it's so inflammatory to discuss whether these things are fair or even effective at helping people etc.
I think the discussion should be had anyways. There might be some value that comes out of it. Like in my own case, I'm on the losing end of these policies in theory despite having very serious disadvantages in my life that aren't on the list of things to account for. Broadening the definition of diversity could alleviate feelings people have that they're not being treated fairly. But because we aren't willing to have difficult conversations about this stuff we have a supreme court case about it instead.
"Google is doing more about any type of inequality than any company on this planet"....
cough...'wealth inequality'...cough
An AP analysis finds that most foreign workers with H-1B visas are paid less than their American counterparts. But for most non-computer science occupations, foreigners are paid more.
"most foreign workers" says nothing about Google or Google employees
> An AP analysis finds that most foreign workers with H-1B visas are paid less than their American counterparts.
paid less than X is one thing, but they are probably paid more than in any other company they could work. People always tend to go for the glass half full despite the fact they are better paid than probably 99% of other occupations out there.
> AP analysis
give me a break, you don't do an analysis of medians without comparing the sample size. Medians out of context mean absolutely nothing. If you want to do such an analysis, it needs to be statistically accurate, and also account for the potential bias in reporting or non-reporting, the years of experience and all potential factors that can account for differences in pay.
A friend once showed me the internal Google meme page and it was so safe and PG that it was unintentionally funny as hell in how lame it was. But I understand it has to be this way in any large company
Just like I can't blast my music tastes on others, not everyone should be subjected to insane Eric Andre humor
It wasn't always that way...it got sanitized a few years ago. I specifically remember the demanding Asian dad meme template being banned because it offended someone. And the overly attached girlfriend template, often used to make fun of our product design (things like today's YT premium trial nags).
There is a team called Community Policing at Google that sends requests to take down memes. If you don't comply they complain to your manager and HR. The folks running this team are super-woke and totally unaware of things like historical racism (like in Europe) while bending over backward to accomodate their favored groups.
It was much better when memegen was a force for positive google culture, such as when somebody exposed just how bad hello.com's static content was or how dumb google+'s policies were.
How do they cope with the current memes regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war? Some of them are (quite literally) fairly visceral.
I would expect Google to have a non-negligible Russian and Ukrainian community.
Isn't the whole point of edgy humor that it's unsafe? If it's humor you can deploy in any situation without fear of durably offending people, it's not edgy; it's safe, practically by definition.
In the extraordinary effort google does for equity and fairness, is caste bias ever addressed directly, with explanations, the same way gender/race discrimination is?
I can't speak for Google or what goes on there, but one thing that I've learned over my career in this industry is that minority groups, especially those that speak non-English languages, very often have things going on that are not at all visible to non-speakers and those not part of their community.
I've had fellow team members subject to extreme verbal abuse by managers who would stop by their desk and say absolutely horrible things to them in their native language while maintaining otherwise perfect composure. Threatening their visa status, threatening their family reputation, or just threatening to fire them. I've also learned of the out-of-work social pressure they can face because their communities are smaller and insular and so they interact with these folks outside of work, and there can be power dynamics extending to those places that are just not at all visible to other employees or leadership within the organization.
Those peers have had to suffer quietly some of the most abusive workplace relationships I've ever been adjacent to.
Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Another thing that I've learned, is that companies very often talk to the most about the things they suck at the most. For example, one firm that I worked for touted how everything was based on Teamwork. There were teams for everything. Every employee was expected to be on at least 5 teams. 3 "position related" and 2 "organizational" (e.g. The Birthday Part Team). Your annual evaluation wasn't based on your direct manager at all, it was entirely based on feedback from your "teams".
Needless to say, I've never seen a less team-oriented culture in my life. Every single team was entirely dysfunctional. Nothing got done. Epic levels of in-fighting over every little thing.
Anyhow, people usually talk the most about their insecurities. So, just because it's being talked about, with tons of posters and "trainings", doesn't mean anything truly effective is being done. Probably just the opposite.
ps. As a fellow fan of "edgy" humor, you just gotta learn that work isn't where your edgy sense of humor belongs. Even in the "edgy humor" industry, you'll find that people don't like it mixing with "the job". It's how you get fired or have your career ruined. Regardless of Google's internal HR policies, you're gonna need professional references at some point, and if you've annoyed or creeped everyone out, it's going to be a self-limiting behavior. It doesn't matter if you work at Google, or a truck stop, or a comedy club. Be professional, be inclusive, be friendly. I know a lot of people are going to disagree, but the simple fact of the matter is that you aren't as funny as you think you are, and you probably don't have the ability to "read a room" the way a world-famous entertainer does. Even they get it wrong.
No offense, but your perspective does not sound open minded.
I'd recommend being open to other, unexplored (by you) possibilities, since one person cannot be everywhere at once, nor understand the experiences of everyone at Gigantic Mega Corp (100k+ people).
I think having a perspective closed to unexplored possibilities is arguably a good definition of naive.
"na·ive /nīˈēv/ Learn to pronounce adjective (of a person or action) showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment. "the rather naive young man had been totally misled" (of a person) natural and unaffected; innocent."
That said, I think you have good intentions-- You appreciate your employer. But that said-- this likely also results in certain biases.
Just because you've worked at Google for "a few months" and you haven't seen it, it doesn't make the assertion not true.
So to think that Google has a blind spot towards caste bias is simply stupid.
Follow the money. Google has a lot to lose if they discriminated against black people or gay people. Google has, or at least had, little to lose by allowing discrimination against dalits. Never forget that all major corporations are essentially money-generating psychopaths and if they stood to make a buck by building death camps for left-handed people they would break ground tomorrow.
You don't have to put up with it. Lots of great companies great out there that create a safe space for normal adults like you and I.
Vote with your feet and leave.
> Vote with your feet and leave
Would you say the same thing to someone facing racism at work? To Oliver Brown?
yes. but in that case, maybe also voting with "lawyer getting you a bag"
What people dont realize is that leetcode problem style testing is a very eastern/asian approach to hiring. Memorization for a test with a large body of problems ends up selecting for people that grew up in those cultures....
One of the best features of homesourcing, one that everybody is thinking about but nobody is discussing, is that it completely sidesteps the need to arrive at a universal, global workplace monoculture.
People can be truly diverse, including in ways that other people find offensive, objectionable, or unacceptable, when they're not forced to share the same physical spaces.
The question of how google should solve the complex and confusing world of indian caste politics is a stupid question. Google should fix their search results and leave fixing India to Indians.
But supposedly the problem also exists in the United States because many people who work in America come from India.
Whether an Indian is in India or Indiana, his participation in the economy shouldn't be contingent upon his discarding his ancient culture in exchange for a tacky workplace monoculture that was concocted last thursday.
While sharing physical space requires arriving at a least common denominator culture (watered down western culture), sharing virtual spaces requires far fewer and less intrusive compromises.
Personally, I think work and open source should be done like it was in the nineties, where everybody has an IRC handle and you don't know enough about who they are or where they're from to discriminate against anybody or be offended by anybody's lifestyles and cultural quirks.
Caste based discrimination is so subtle, that it is extremely hard to detect by Non-Indians
Why shouldnt the talk be allowed?
What harm could it do to raise awareness about this very practical issue that Dalits face day in and day out for centuries.
Google employees who had this talks cancelled are ultimate COWARDS and should be ashamed of themselves.
I'm pretty sure the modern world has a Caste problem - Meritocracy and castes just don't go together and it's pretty obvious to me which of those two I'd prefer for myself.
No, castes are primarily a phenomenon from the Indian subcontinent and surrounding areas. It is becoming a larger problem in the world due to Indian emigration.
I always find it funny how there are massive east asian only groups in all major corporate entities. This is not diversity, this is racism. Nice work FANG.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Flamewar and ideological battle are what this site is for, and destroy what it is for. Please don't create accounts to do those things with.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32425607.
What? This is a very real subject. Have you worked at a FANG company and been to any lunch room?
Note that word 'repeatedly'. I banned you not because of one comment but because of your account history, which was clearly breaking the site guidelines.
This has zero to do with demographics at companies or any of the other topics you've been breaking HN's rules about.
I literally just reviewed my history. I am not peddling a narrative or attacking anyone or breaking site rules. This is a very real tech world problem. Your attacks on silencing people who are critical of your racial group are landing you in the realm of direct corporate abuse and I am filing a complaint within the company. People like you don't deserve to be a professional.
In my university I find that a lot of the Indian and Asian students like to group together and form their own groups.
But they also have a big language barrier: they don’t speak English well and in their groups they always communicate natively. They also have a culture barrier as well, combined with the language barrier this makes them seem awkward.
So I don’t blame them.
Define "East Asian only group". Do you mean a division that's only East Asian? Or a social group within the company that is exclusively for East Asians? And how would that come about organically? East Asians aren't really homogeneous, there is a lot of ethnic strife between the different East Asian groups (HK vs Mainland, Mainland vs South Korea vs Japan). So I can't really see how they'd naturally be a closed off clique.
Do you see Ukrainians vs Russians in an 'ethnic strife'? Serbs vs Croats vs Czechs vs Poles? Are Eastern Europeans homogeneous?
Maybe, but it could also be the reverse. I few years ago, I was hiring for some Data Engineering positions in a European country, and highly disproportional part of the most qualified applicants were Chinese, but with below average language skills. (Chinese people are a VERY small minority in the general population in my country.)
I would expect many companies to not consider many of them, due to the communication limitations. That would mean that those who ignored those issues could get a LOT of them, and possibly at a lower-than-average salary, for their technical ability.
and they get there through working their ass off but that is totally off topic as far as what op was asking.
Or in the case of [big tech company] interns, getting matched to a team purely for being Chinese. For a while there was a big Mandarin-only mailing list that coordinated this type of ingroup selection within [big tech company]. HR found out and shut it down. It was unclear whether those running the list realized what they were doing was highly illegal.
If they had just waited a few years it would still be illegal, but also the open practice of nearly every big hiring department. "We especially encourage AAPI, BIPOC, neurodiverse, nonbinary and LGBTIA+ candidates to apply." That's quoted nearly word-for-word from job listings I'm reviewing. Wonder what that means for my application, as someone who falls outside those boxes and didn't go to an Ivy. Really gets me thinking about politics.
Why don’t you fit in any of those groups?
You could easily declare yourself “mildly autistic” and “agender” and become neurodiverse and queer.
Which is what every entrenched group of racists claims is the reason for their control over an entity. The 'other' is lazy and we're hard workers. Nope, no bigotry involved, just our innate superiority over other groups.
Similar claims that are used a lot, except for by cis-straigh-white-men (for now), is that their favoritism is a form of "Robin Hood" behavior (Literally referencing Robin Hood). Basically, they feel that their particular identity group has been discriminated against in the past, and justify their otherwise unethical behavior as "restoring justice" by "stealing from the rich/those that have much" to "us that have less". A similar statement I've seen is "It's our turn now!"
You will find this everywhere from pickpockets in Thailand, credit card scammers in India all the way to top universities.
Do they? Or do they arrive due to denial of opportunity for equally or greater hard working folks?
Why did you want to join Google, and what did you feel about the place when you did?
tanuja gupta: I started working at Google in 2011. I had been working as a program manager in engineering and software for about a decade, but Google was top of the top. Of course you want a career at a great company. That was a product that I used day in and day out. It was a great opportunity
i would be surprised of the contrary
Friendly reminder that white people are shot by cops at a very high rate and yes, all lives do matter.
Regardless of what the New Yorker thinks.
Edit: Bring in the downvotes, I welcome them. It’s clear to me that white lives don’t matter to the HN crowd, but that doesn’t surprise me at all considering the main people who come here are white people from California who grew up in completely white society and now have a savior complex. That’s an American caste system nobody wants to talk about right there, the way coastal whites treat everyone else.
> white people are shot by cops at a very high rate
If you think that cops target white folks then you must probably be an avid supporter of reforming law enforcement.
Yes, I am an avid supporter of reforming our increasingly militarized police force, why wouldn’t I be?
And to be clear, I don’t think cops “target white people” just like I don’t think cops “target black people”. Cops have an aggression problem, are trigger happy, and poorly trained.
> I don’t think cops “target black people”.
This. Here lies the core of the disagreement. Data suggests otherwise.
From https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z
“By one estimate, Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime. And in another study, Black people who were fatally shot by police seemed to be twice as likely as white people to be unarmed”
And
“Data from California show that police stopped and used force against Black people disproportionately, compared with other racial groups, in 2018 (see go.nature.com/2bgfrah). A December 2019 paper reported that bias in police administrative records results in many studies underestimating levels of racial bias in policing, or even masking discrimination entirely”
Etc.
I am reposting PaulHoule's (flagged) comment because it was a very good one:
> *I have wondered if the high Asian population is one reason why San Francisco has such conspicuous homelessness. Western religion has some egalitarian ideas such as “The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
> On the other hand if you think a person's fortune now depends on karma they got from past lives then you might think it is a virtuous thing to perpetuate people's misery.
It's not a very good one. Western philosophies and religions can definitely show this type of bias.
Some branches of protestantism do believe in predestination. It's also common to see (bad) Christian takes that suffering is a challenge from god (often backed by Job's trials) and thus a thing that may not need changing.
I believe Max Weber also covered this concept sociologically in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Isn't the idea that all suffering is a challenge of god key to Abrahamic religions. I always hear it from anyone religious when discussing that rational of why there is suffering the world when God can end it. And from my quick read of Job's story, it seems that it does exemplify that.
While the loving Father metes out punishment as a correction to his wayward children, the Son has authority on earth to forgive sins, and has given very specific instructions to those who would be his followers:
> If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven
> He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.
Whereas per the great Eastern religions, the material world is Maya, all is the Self (tat tvam asi), righteous action is its own reward, and the Abrahamic concepts (despite many overlaps) seem rather peculiar.
Or to quote Sadhguru:
If you take in too much input from everywhere, the karmic process becomes very complicated. And the strategy evolved for your karma will not work if you keep mixing it up with someone else’s all the time. Why some who are in serious sadhana withdraw into a solitary cave or the like is because they do not want to complicate things. They understood the complexity of their own karma and do not want to complicate it anymore.
That is why you do not step over anyone. You can go around them. It is also a mark of respect. And apart from that, it would disturb that person if you step over them. If you disturb their energy body, they may not immediately wake up, but internally, it disturbs them.
All this comes from a fundamental understanding about life. No matter what you were doing – you were running a business, you were married, bearing and raising children, fighting a battle – for anyone who was born in this land, there was only one goal – ultimate liberation. Mukti was the only goal. The whole culture was structured around this. Many strategies were evolved so that you do not trip over someone else’s karma. You do not want to acquire anything new because you know the complexity of what you already have. If you undo your own puzzle, it is good enough. You do not want to complicate it.
Two intellectuals, three opinions. Jesus was impeccably clear in his orders. Even (or, especially) the communists, who deny Him, understood Him.
"perpetuate people's misery" may have been sloppy & incendiary editorial work, but the theological structure of PaulHoule's argument is sound.
Maybe i'm being ignorant, but why don't you just not work for the company that has few or no Indians? Because other nations of course don't know about which last name means which caste or would ever care about it, you won't be a subject for discrimination. And besides, these places will probably pay better anyway.
Because they are American citizens and deserve the same opportunities as everyone.
Because they are employees of American companies and they deserve the same opportunities as every other employee.
Better wording, thank you. This includes all workers as not all workers are citizens.
But discrimination comes from people, not companies. Also, indeed, why not work in places where there are no other Indians? It's not like with black people: no one who's not from India may have a slightest idea of a caste to discriminate based on it. AND it will also mean making more money.
It's up to the companies to make sure that their employees are not experiencing duress at the workplace.
May be it should be the other way around.
If they have problems to work with lower caste people, they should change their company.
People should not have to curtail their life choices in order to bow to unjust systems or experiences.
I'm all for acknowledging my ignorance and charging forward with a bad idea in technical situations (if nothing else it gives somebody more experienced something to tee up on), but generally I try to avoid it on discrimination issues.
because this is an American company and American cultural norms should be expected
If you don't want to experience Racism just don't live near Racists. Lol what?