Indians prefer to hire their own, this is very well known. And because this can’t even be discussed honestly, US corporations are powerless against this preferential treatment.
If we're giving anecdotes, I'll dish out some too. Maybe you're getting at something - communities looking out for their kind. It might be seen as good or bad depending on the situation. I've seen academic research labs that are heavy on certain ethnicities. I've seen heavy tilt of Chinese students with a Chinese PI, similarly for Iranian, Turkish. Heck, I've seen silicon valley teams that are Indian heavy, Turkish heavy, Filipino heavy.
Yes, in fact currently I am working in a team which has a disproportionate percentage of Iranians. They too like to hire Iranians. I wouldn’t have any problem with any of this if eg it was OK for Americans to prefer Americans too. If we’re going to play games, let’s at least all play by the same rules.
> Yes, in fact currently I am working in a team which has a disproportionate percentage of Iranians. They too like to hire Iranians. I wouldn’t have any problem with any of this if eg it was OK for Americans to prefer Americans too.
In the US, it is no more OK, legally, to discriminate in hiring on the basis of nationality for any nationality compared to any other.
There is an exception for work that must be done by US citizens though. No country permits foreigners to do certain security-sensitive jobs, generally.
There are places where firms are compelled by regulations to hire people who are currently US citizens, sure. That's not really employer-discretionary (and I really should have said ethnicity or national origin, and not nationality, anyway.)
But even then, it is not, as suggested upthread, more OK for Iranians to hire Iranians than for Americans to hire Americans, whether talking about nationality, national origin, or ethnicity. (Fir nationality, there are narrow cases where the latter is mandatory and the former is prohibited no matter who is hiring, sure, but that's the opposite of what was suggested.)
US citizens come from many historical nationalities.
I would wager that conditioning on US citizenship is less restrictive than conditioning on any other citizenship when seeking diverse historical nationality.
There are exceptions to everything. But only native-born US citizens are eligible for some jobs, e.g. in the military. Other countries may be even more particular and require your parents to be natives too. This is not discrimination but plain old common sense. What foreigner or foreign-adjacent person can really be trusted? If there is an exception to be made, the trust extended must be minimal.
> But only native-born US citizens are eligible for some jobs, e.g. in the military.
There are exactly two jobs where that is required, and only one is kind-of in the military, in that it is legally the apex of all military chains of command.
(There are other security-related, especially in the military, jobs where actual or potential dual citizens, the latter more commonly being an issue when people have foreign born parents, may be required to renounce any other citizenship than American.)
It is absolutely discrimination, but legal (and legally-mandatory) discrimination. That it may be “common sense” does not change that it is, absolutely, discrimination.
I think it's de facto required to be a US citizen (and preferably by birth) in more jobs than you think. It makes lots of sense. We have had scientists come from other countries to infiltrate our nuclear program, and we may not have even caught them all. This type of espionage is expected, and it is righteous to stop it. "Discrimination" or not, it is entirely reasonable for nationality and background to rule people out for any nationally sensitive job. I don't think you can find any country outside the West where the legitimacy of this criterion is questioned on the basis of fairness.
Is it because of bias, or because there are just a lot of Indians in our industry? In my case, I have more than a few levels of managers from India, but there doesn’t seem to be any favoritism going on (I was even asked once if I was interested in people management, and said no).
I watched a company go through lawsuits because of layers of Indian middle management. Turns out, they had essentially recreated a caste system inside of a massive American corporation. At the bottom was a staggering number of female engineers from North India who got a handsome payout on the other end. This is just another anecdote. I'm not saying that's what is happening where you work. But the signs where I worked were abundantly clear for anyone who happened to look in the direction of that specific department.
I've worked at Silicon Valley startups that were that way. I remember thinking this is really odd how high the concentration was (probably about 70% Indian). Didn't really bother me because it was a great team and honestly one of the best companies I worked at.
It didn't really seem like they discriminated in hiring and I never felt discriminated against at work. It was just that coworkers referred people they already knew.
Some people will hit each other up for paid references. The guy doing the referral can get paid by the new hire and the company. Idk what threshold of acquaintance is enough for a referral, but the worst things you can imagine have been done and are even routine in some places.
I'm sure that is also true. But I know the other thing happens too. I've heard about it and read it. Some Indians even asked me for a referral, as a stranger.
Referrals are encouraged by internal recruiters in most companies...and they incentivize it with a few thousand dollars for a successful hire. Why are you making it sound so nefarious?
It's normal for companies to pay for referrals based on personal familiarity, but not for candidates to pay for fake recommendations. Outside of a fully disclosed consultancy-type arrangement, it is unacceptable for the candidate to pay anything to the referrer.
Never a popular topic on HN, but I’ve been through some appalling diversity training as a white man that seems a-ok in the broader culture. I’ve left one high paying prominent fintech job over such nonsense.
Sadly, I feel this is the result - if we’re not going to be colorblind as a rule everyone is going to “wise up” (and I use the phrase loosely) and start attacking everyone else.
Sorry to hear that. I find those kinds of trainings rather distasteful as well, and I'm not even white. I'm lucky I can ignore that kind of crap for the most part. Except when people start inventing nonsense to libel Indian people with.
Broadly speaking this is undeniable, and as an Indian you know it. This is precisely what I meant when I mentioned this can’t be honestly discussed: you’re denying reality to score some grievance points. I do personally know Indians who do not play these games. They exist, you might even be one of them. Congrats!
But do consider the following statistics: 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Indian, and one third of all Silicon Valley engineers. While India represents a large talent pool, eg China represents an even larger pool, and yet we do not observe a large percentage of Chinese managers or CEOs. Care to theorize why that is?
> China represents an even larger pool, and yet we do not observe a large percentage of Chinese managers or CEOs. Care to theorize why that is?
I think one reason is that Indians are culturally much closer to Americans than East Asians are, specifically in terms of attitudes toward selling and self-promotion. I think language also has something to do with it. English is not only mandatory in Indian K-12, it’s widely used even among Indians. For example, the main India government web portal (India.gov.in) goes to an English site. You need to go to India.gov.in/Hi to access the Hindi site.
Exactly this. What OP sees is likely survivorship bias. Indians are the biggest population compared to China who have learnt English pretty much as a first language. It makes a big difference, especially for managerial positions in American companies.
But do consider the following statistics: 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Indian, and one third of all Silicon Valley engineers.
First of all, I'm pretty sure that number is NOT 30%. I want a citation.
Second - English has been taught to generations of primary school students throughout India. English is the language of business. It makes sense that business people with a good grasp of English make it to the top levels of business in Silicon Valley, which almost exclusively transacts in English. I know that English was not widely taught in China (maybe things have changed) - because China wasn't ruled by the British for almost 100 years. As for the engineers, see above stats - there is an enormous talent pool to filter the best from.
It seems like you had some experiences where you observed what appeared to be preference for Indian candidates. Maybe some of those observations were of an Indian person selecting another highly-qualified Indian person for a job. I don't know. Maybe it's also preferential treatment in some cases. I don't know.
Just because you think something is happening, doesn't mean you get to grab a hold of an Indian person and shake them down for a confession. I can make any number of generalizations about your race of people, and demand your justification. But I don't, because I try not to be a shitty person.
You want an honest discussion, there it is. The world is a lot more complex than you think it is. Indian-Americans are not sitting here committing transgressions against you. They are smarter, more educated, and more qualified than the typical American STEM graduate. Step up your game or find a different career with less-qualified people to compete with.
>Sure - it's because Indian people coming from India represent the top cut of a workforce that has an extremely high level of engineering training.
That is a small percentage of incoming Indians IMO. Most are average or worse.
>The world is a lot more complex than you think it is. Indian-Americans are not sitting here committing transgressions against you. They are smarter, more educated, and more qualified than the typical American STEM graduate. Step up your game or find a different career with less-qualified people to compete with.
Indians themselves tell me all the time that they only do software because that's socially desirable in a way that Americans simply don't experience. If they could come to the US with a BS or less, they would, because salaries are so much higher here.
Even if this skill thing was true, it is a privilege for Indians to come here. The US government has a duty to not ruin the lives of US workers by importing the entire world, no matter how many of the foreign workers are believed to be better than average. Your claims about average Indian students is generally wrong but I will give you that most Indian imports have a MS or something, because that is about the minimum requirement to stay here. That doesn't mean they are more talented than US students who pay 10x to get their requisite 4 years of education.
Numbers differ. Some sources say 30%, some say 12%, could be there’s weighting by revenue or something idk (Indians run two of the six multi-trillion dollar companies, including the top most valuable one), but I think you’ll agree that whichever way you run the numbers their share is quite disproportionate for a minority comprising 1.3% of the country’s population (4.4M people).
I'll take the downvotes. I've seen enough Indian cultural nonsense play out at several industries and businesses that the answer is yes: first generation Indian immigrants recreate their obnoxious cultural problems within American businesses and cities.
And stereotypes are typically rooted in truth. I have no qualms about calling out the cultural problems of India which are rampant be it sexism, caste system, or worse: personal hygiene.
When it's a one or two indians, the problems aren't there. But when an indian manager gets hired or there becomes a critical mass of first Gen indian immigrants watch out, because the same cultural nonsense gets perpetuated out.
The worst part is I sometime see the sins of the parents in the 2nd generation children.
This is just a guess, but I think the problem appears more among low-level employees and managers. Maybe CEOs look the other way but I doubt they have anything real to gain by referring strangers who only look like them.
