[torginus]

> When I went up to staff at GitHub, it helped that I had been the kernel of a small APAC-based engineering team

This is giving me major white savior vibes, as in management didn't want to talk to those foreginers who acted and spoke English funny, so he became the Western face of the team, and took all the credit. All of which is sadly a thing.

[wakawaka28]

>This is giving me major white savior vibes, as in management didn't want to talk to those foreginers who acted and spoke English funny, so he became the Western face of the team, and took all the credit.

Heaven forbid that a good communicator get promoted to deal with people, or that people be proficient in the language of the land. The promotion couldn't have been because of seniority, clear communication, or high competence. No, there's no possible explanation besides racism and xenophobia.

>All of which is sadly a thing.

There are at least as many places that refuse to promote white people because of the possibility that it might be seen this way. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a white manager. Managers often appear to get more credit than their subordinates, for better or worse. The combination of a US native worker (who can stay here forever by the way) plus management does not add up to racism.

[Mc91]

Corollary: This role can also be filled by someone of Asian heritage who was raised in the US, and who speaks English very well, as well as some Asian language proficiently.

[torginus]

Yes, but:

- That still doesn't address the core issue which isn't inherently racial. It's that if you come from a certain part of the world, there's an effective glass ceiling for you and all of your achievements and hard work has to go through a Western person, whose only attribute is being more palatable to Western tastes. Not hard work, not technical expertise, not spending sleepless nights getting the blocker bugs fixed so that the product can ship on time. What do you think that does to morale? And is it morally right to run a company this way?

- A person named Sean Goedecke probably isn't that person anyways.

[oblio]

It's fine, India and China are rising and soon we'll start seeing the opposite.

It's already happening.

[wakawaka28]

If you go to China or India and work there you can see it now. I doubt the whole phenomenon in question is real in the US, but I do believe that you would see this kind of crap in Asia.