Ask HN: How to deal with Indian people?
I joined this company based on its reputation and the impact this company is making on day-to-day basis. Before you brand me as a racist,please hear me out.
I work in the engineering department of the company and it is quite expected or in fact a norm now-a-days to expect Indians. I am baffled by their behavior in general, lack of long term vision, speaking in Hindi language regularly. Every single day, there is smell of Indian food in the kitchen on most the floors from 12 to 2. Many people speak while eating, which I sincerely frown upon.
Majority of these people are unwilling to listen. It's incredibly hard to convince them that their solution is wrong or doesn't scale or make sense in the long term. It seems to me most of these people started as database or informatica developers and they carry same mindset for every problem at hand. We are doing migration to aws platform right now and one person kept same data warehouse design structure in redshift as if it was oracle. Majority of the managers are also Indians and unwilling to listen. I now see that most of complexities are artificial and in fact there are no major technical challenges.
I think I got hired for a lower position than I deserved. I plan to stay here for a while because I made a big move from the another city.
What is effective strategy to deal with Indian people in general? How to convince them and help them understand to listen to others? This is first time I am dealing with majority of Indians even though this is an American company.
How did you manage to deal with Indian people?
Edit - This is not a troll post. I am genuinely curious.
18 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 53.1 ms ] threadThanks for the comment. I apologize if I did not express my frustration in proper way. I have been here for 5 months only. It will look bad on my resume to abandon ship in the middle. Do you have recommendation for adapting my communication style or dealing with feeling my of annoyance?
What you need to do, is start being a bit more tolerant.
I get it. You don't think these guys are at your same skill level.
So what.
Follow your project managers lead, do you part, and try some tikka masala - Indian food is pretty good.
remember, you are a weirdo, the exact same way they are.
We, or our ancestors, were able to assimilate into the US because enough of our society was accepting of people from other cultures, with other social norms, other perspectives, other histories, etc. We're basically all from some other country.
You need to clearly separate ethnicity (cuisine, preferred language) from technical approaches to engineering. In doing so, the way you work with any engineer will be the same, no matter their ethnicity. After all, you'd like them to afford you the same professionalism.
It takes two sides to have a meaningful communication. No matter how well I understand (or don't) something, the other person has to have the ability to step outside of where they're at in order to meet at some common ground.
In the generalized case you can't unilaterally blame a single side in a multi-party conversation.
i am proud indian heritag and kick ur ass everday
you not good racst white pigskin i poo on u i fuck ur famili
Same way you deal with any people in general--by treating them as individuals, each with their own ideas, prejudices, background, etc. Just like you.
I currently work with some amazing (cultural) Indian developers. They know their shit, they're easy to work with and they're sticklers for well designed stuff with little technical debt. I've worked with some Indians who were utterly incompetent developers and I was surprised how they made it through University.
Same with Chinese people (both in American and in Australia -- some were amazing, a few were terrible).
It sounds like you work at a shit company. It probably has shit managers who hire the wrong people. It has little or nothing to do with their ethnicity or cultural heritage.
Go work somewhere else. Stop blaming an entire race and/or culture for your personal bias.