
Ask HN: How to deal with Indian people? - urigagarinulti
I work for very a famous company in north west part of US. We have a very large number of Indian employees. Most of them are here on the h1b visa. I am from eastern europe, but I have lived in the US for 10+ years now.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Majority of these people are unwilling to listen. It&#x27;s incredibly hard to convince them that their solution is wrong or doesn&#x27;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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>How did you manage to deal with Indian people?<p>Edit - This is not a troll post. I am genuinely curious.
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11thEarlOfMar
2% of Americans identify as partly or entirely American Indian. That means
that like you, 98% of the rest of us have an ethnic heritage as immigrants to
the US.

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.

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thejay
From my experience this typically happens with a mediocre engineering team
working on a new project/technology. Unless you have immense patience and
communication skill to overcome this over time, look elsewhere. I have been in
a similar situation with mostly white colleagues.

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urigagarinulti
Hi there!

Thanks 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?

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davelnewton
How should you deal with "Indian people in general"?

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.

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ankurdhama
If you cannot convince someone of something then it basically means you
yourself don't understand the concept/idea well enough and concretely.
Generally people won't get convince about something if you just keep speaking
abstract, hand waving ideas which is prevalent in Software Engineering
folklore. Show them "real stuff", show them how approaching something in a
specific way will lead to something tangible and useful for them and the
project as well. And yeah, it has nothing to do with any specific group of
people, it applies to everyone.

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davelnewton
> If you cannot convince someone of something then it basically means you
> yourself don't understand the concept/idea well enough and concretely.

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.

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xorox
I am from Europe and I've worked in the past with Indian, I have to say that
they αρε short-tempered ανδ always acting like children. I remembered once,
one of them was welling and whining at everyone because he got a parking
ticket. They're a nightmare...IMHO

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djsumdog
I'm Indian. Now I was born in America, raised here, and more than one of my
ex-girlfriends has told me "You're not Indian" or "You're not culturally
Indian."

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.

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abeTom
By the way, you should know that my experiences with indians are similar to
yours but you speak of them as though you or your kind are somehow better. no
your not!!! Get off that fricken judgement seat of yours. A little bit of
humility might help.

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abeTom
Need I go into the backstabbing, rude self important behavior of
slavic/eastern euros. The ones I have met think they are Gods gift to mankind,
and what they lack in coding ability they often hide by distraction. Taking a
shower on occasion seems beyond their ken. So stfu you are no better.

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empressplay
Epic troll lol

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shakiba
:)

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ryanspeaks
Look dude, you are a guest here. These Indian guys...they are guests as well.

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.

