[killjoywashere]

> India

Ok, so, I have a friend who works big tech and he has no chill for Indians (SWEs, PMs, etc). Is there a grain of truth to the “lazy Indian” trope? I always assumed, especially first generation immigrants, would be working balls-to-the-wall. Am I wrong? Is there some sort of incentive misalignment in the H1B program? Is it cultural (e.g. like “island time”, which I’ve learned is at least partially attributable to the futility of working harder under the tyranny of distance)?

I’m not saying Indians are Lazy. I’m asking is there a perceptual issue due to some factor that’s obvious to the typical Nth-generation American?

[screye]

Huh, my experience is the opposite. Indians work themselves to death, while Americans have very clear boundaries on when they stop working. Chinese Americans & Indian Americans work about the same as Americans, but 1st generation Chinese immigrants easily take #1 for the most hours put in.

> Is there a grain of truth to the “lazy Indian” trope?

I wonder if it has to do with out-sourcing farms. I have been lucky enough to work with Indians who were all full-time employees and generally my equals. The typical Indian who works at an outsourcing farm makes so little, that they don't exactly care to work hard.

> no chill for Indians (SWEs, PMs, etc).

I'll be honest. I occasionally run into people with very strong and vapid opinions about entire countries based on 1-2 anecdotal experiences. I haven't seen this issue with other fields. It is oddly CS specific. In no other field have I met people who are so obsessed with the productivity of their peers, when the entire organization works on making ads software 5% faster.

[tock]

For context: your average outsourcing companies like Infosys pay their new hires ~$4500/year. And before you say thats a lot for India: it's not. That's paycheck to paycheck life in cities where these outsourcing companies have offices.

[next_xibalba]

> 1st generation Chinese immigrants easily take #1 for the most hours put in.

My experience echoes this. I worked with a guy who basically built every important thing the company depended on and he seemed to be available 24/7. I’d get on calls with him at 12am and then hear he’d been on with someone the following morning at 7am. He was also notoriously prickly (possible bc he was working so damn much!). I distinctly remember him screaming at me, in his broken English, “WHO HERE IS THE ENGINEER!?”* when I had the temerity to question a minor technical decision of his. Nevertheless, I walked away respecting the hell out that guy and still get a chuckle out of the memories.

*I was a mere data analyst at the time and thus a barely functioning human in his eyes.

[quadrifoliate]

> Ok, so, I have a friend who works big tech and he has no chill for Indians (SWEs, PMs, etc). Is there a grain of truth to the “lazy Indian” trope?

Indian here. First generation, naturalized American, et cetera. I'll be honest and say that my initial response was, “Ugh! Your friend is a big old racist”.

Moving on from that reflexive thought, I'll attempt to answer your question of:

> I’m asking is there a perceptual issue due to some factor that’s obvious to the typical Nth-generation American?

Well, perhaps. There are a bunch of factors:

- The H1B program is terrible in that it ties your immigration status to your current employer. Couple this with the “you can be legally fired because your boss doesn't like the color of your shoes” climate in the US and you have a pretty stressed-out bunch of people. - A lot of consulting companies seem to pay just enough wages that attract Indian H1B employees of a average to low caliber of talent, and hire them out for random software projects. The Americans on the other side of those contractors get mad at the contractors, who happen to be all Indian. - There is a genuine cultural gap where Indians are more deferential to someone they perceive as having higher authority. It is sometimes possible that a young Indian employee might call you “Sir”, because that was how they addressed superiors.

So...all these are perceptual issues of the sort you are looking at. But honestly, these sorts of cultural misunderstandings are not exactly uncommon among Europeans and Americans as well. Big Tech tends to have far fewer of the issues above. Salaries are high (I don't even work in Big Tech and my salary as an H1B was verifiably higher than some of my American coworkers), and IMO there isn't a huge difference between Indians and the N other cultures that make up the boiling pot of tech.

But then that brings me to the part about “friend who works big tech and he has no chill for Indians”. Like, Indians period? What does he think about Sanjay Ghemawat? What about Vinod Khosla? How about Amit Patel, who came up with Google's “Don't Be Evil”? What about the engineers/PMs/etc. in big tech to whom those issues don't apply?

All of this leads me to conclude (this time after some reflection) that your friend is actually just a...big old racist if he has a problem with all Indians in general, especially those working in Big Tech.

Take from that what you will. Hope you find better friends :)

[logicalmonster]

> But then that brings me to the part about “friend who works big tech and he has no chill for Indians”. Like, Indians period?

I very much like a lot about Indian culture and people, and I've met a couple of very sharp Indian programmers who I'd gladly work with again, but I think it's understandable that some tech workers in countries like the US have a reflexively negative impression of working with them even before considering some of the cultural differences in the workplace.

* I feel very bad in these interactions, but it is an immense struggle to understand some very thick accents that some Indians have. To be frank, remote work has made this communication even tougher, as any imperfection in the audio makes already difficult communication very awkward. There's only so many times you can say "I didn't quite catch that" or "Can you please repeat that, the audio glitched out" before it becomes obvious that you just can't have a normal discussion with them.

* Many peoples' experience with Indians is through very low-quality recruitment sweat shops. Traits these recruiters exhibit include being bad communicators, pushy, disrespectful of social norms, have questionable motives, barely understand anything about the tech they're recruiting for to the point of even getting the names of technologies they're looking for wrong, and are rarely worth dealing with.

* I don't blame Indians for doing this out of their own self-interest, but nepotism seems to be rampant. Any company that gets a few Indians in positions to hire eventually seems to focus on hiring their own people first. Not good for your future in a company if you're not in that group.

* I don't blame anybody for trying to seek the best deal they can in life, but the H1B program has shitty properties for both immigrants as well as the existing workers in countries who get displaced. The main beneficiary of the H1B program is companies that use it to drive wages down. Hard to have reflexively pleasant feelings about this circumstance, despite it not being their fault.

[klibertp]

> It is sometimes possible that a young Indian employee might call you “Sir”

There's nothing wrong with that - it's awkward the first 3 times, a non-issue ever after.

My problem is with the use of flowery, deferential language to mask misunderstandings. My sample count is 3, so I'm not going to say anything about a 1bln+ nation (I somehow don't want to self-identify as the GP's friend) - I'm just noting it happened more often with those 3 guys. I have no idea, even, in what part, if any, it was intentional, so - again - just noting it happened.

What's interesting is that it somehow went away after ~1/2 to 1 years. My guess is that it takes people a while to internalize drastic changes in assumptions they make. I know it takes me around 2 weeks to start pronouncing people's names correctly (sorry!), which requires an effort looking like a rounding error compared to moving countries and cultures.

[quadrifoliate]

Yep, being a first generation person who moved cultures from India to the US, I am pretty sure I was a lot more deferential, if not flowery when I began working here. It took me a while to internalize the “No, I think you're wrong” or the “No, there's no way I can do that by Tuesday, sorry” confidence that seems to come naturally to even new grads at their first job in the US. I also suspect that this held me back a bit early in my career.

[robertlagrant]

> The H1B program is terrible in that it ties your immigration status to your current employer

I thought it was a temporary working visa more than a route to immigration? I understand the temptation to go for it (I did something not entirely dissimilar working in another country for a few years under temporary visas) but not the mindset that doesn't take into account the reality of the arrangement, which is well known up front.

[preciousoo]

Officially it is, and if you present to USCIS that you have plans to go beyond the limits of H1B, technically they could take action. In practice however,

[forty]

Thank for your comment, it's important to call out this kind of racist remarks, even it if hides behind a "it's not for me, it's for a friend".

[adharmad]

Nitpick but it was Paul Buchheit who came up with “Don’t be evil”.

[quadrifoliate]

It looks like there are multiple stories [1] — some crediting Amit, others Paul. I guess I'd heard or read the one crediting Amit previously.

----------------------------------------

[1] https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/2/16/22280502/google-dont-be...

[alephnerd]

What company were you at and what were you paying? Did you directly hire or use 3rd party contractors/bodyshops?

If you underpay talent anywhere they'll do their bare minimum.

I've hired and (product) managed Indian employees and they're equally as capable as our Israeli, Eastern European, and SV employees - we just pay them market rate in Bangalore/Gurgaon/Hyderabad.

Depending on the age of your friend, they might just not be as used to dealing/communicating with non-American background people? I remember some assholes like that when I was a kid and my dad was working in the industry in the 90s and 2000s.

It's gotten better but you still see some dicks here on HN.

[moneywoes]

how do you hire and find quality remote?

[alephnerd]

For those located abroad, a mix of referrals and also basing hiring criteria on a mix of where you worked previously, where you studied, a very rigorous panel interview, and having EMs and PMs who have cultural competencies in regions like Israel, Eastern Europe, and India.

An American isn't gunna jive with the work culture in those regions - it's more cutthroat and productive IME - but luckily there are plenty of diaspora Israelis, Indians, and Eastern Europeans who are fine returning to the old country to act as a GM or Director while earning a $100-200k salary in countries where the median income is $40k, $20k (Czechia), and $2k respectively.

[solardev]

Anecdotally, the Indian people I've worked with have been incredible. One of them (my manager) annoyed me to death and I eventually quit because of him, but I never doubted his work ethic. If anything it was my American coworkers who would frequently take off early, goof off at work, etc.

There was a bit of a communication barrier with some of the Indian colleagues, depending on their skill level, but as a rule they worked hard and were approachable.

[fxtentacle]

Yes, I believe perception is skewed due to how people categorize their experiences:

If someone speaks perfect English, gets all the in-jokes and is in general great to work with, you'll think of them as a "team member", even if they happen to be from India. But if someone has problems with the language, doesn't get the jokes, and/or has a vastly different timezone, you'll remember them as distinctly "Indian".

That means if someone asks you to remember experiences with Indian coworkers, you might be more likely to recall the people that didn't work out well, because they stood out more strongly.

[busterarm]

I used to loudly proclaim, given previous work experience, that companies that offshore basic internal services like HR and Desktop Support across the world are companies in their bad times & willing to abuse their own employees.

Then my own employer did exactly that after a rough few years and layoff rounds. Some of my Indian coworkers are my best ever, but dealing with sensitive personnel issues (HR & IT type work) while facing time zone and cultural barriers is still prickly.

Remote offices in other countries don't always feel "same team".

[unmole]

> "lazy Indian” trope

There is no way this is actually a trope.

[screwturner68]

I have no issue with my Indian coworkers but my company has all but said they are trying to replace me with off shore workers. I do a lot of quotes for services and while the off shore guys are much cheaper they pad the crap out of their bids, where they will take 250 hours, we'll do it in under 100h, that difference makes us almost the same price. So then it's up to the to decide do they want it cheap or fast. But I can see the clock on the wall ticking.

[ido]

Every Indian colleague I had here (Berlin) was a ruthlessly ambitious workaholic (sometimes a reform workaholic that realised they shouldn’t work that hard or they’d burn out), quite often very competent and always very driven. Just as another piece of anecdata.

[rewmie]

> Is there a grain of truth to the “lazy Indian” trope?

There is none. I worked at a big tech company where a big chunk of positions were moved to India, and the teams in India were constantly overworked and under pressure.