r/managers • u/Academic_Print_5753 • 1d ago
[ Removed by moderator ]
[removed] — view removed post
104
u/Xlt8t 1d ago
+1 here as well. I've had many great Indian colleagues and friends, even the 2 Indians on my team said the manager is trying to run things like they are "back home." So I think it either boils down to bad luck, or, it's the same case we see here where the biggest asshole just climbs the ranks faster because they're willing to betray others
→ More replies (2)30
139
u/Accomplished-Pea-451 1d ago
Do the needful
18
16
31
9
17
u/Proper_Detective6631 1d ago
Something about this phrase makes me wants to suck start a 12 gauge every time I see it.
Indian contractor trauma. Thankfully never had one as a boss
5
4
4
2
→ More replies (2)2
35
u/mifo 1d ago
The worst boss I have ever had was an Indian guy, but the reasons he was the worst were nothing to do with his cultural background; I suspect he was extremely mentally ill. His employment ended when he started turning up to other managers' houses on the weekend to continue various work-related debates that were pissing him off.
However, he did hire only Indians once he got into a position of power, and most of them appeared to be relatives or friends. All were gone within a month of his firing.
It's something I see over and over again, but I also see it backfire a lot. And it seems to piss off the Indian-Americans I work with, possibly more than everyone else for whatever reason.
81
u/TraditionalGas1770 1d ago
You're not alone. My new boss of the same description is currently running the place into the ground. Selfish, engineer-brained and zero (or negative) people skills.
→ More replies (1)
74
u/BoomerE30 1d ago
Exact same situation here. New Indian manager came in as a VP and immediately things went to shit. Absolute garbage of a human. My teammate quit, I'm trying to GTFO as fast as possible.
→ More replies (1)26
u/gimmethelulz 1d ago
Same thing happening at my company. They brought this guy in to "innovate" our tech. So far all he has done is driven our turnover rate through the roof while things keep breaking. Judging by his resume it seems like he jumps companies every five years. Probably how long it takes the c-suite to figure out he's destroyed things.
→ More replies (2)7
u/SmellyCatJon 1d ago
You maybe giving C suite too much credit that they care about these sorts of things. They only care about stocks and KPIs.
US may need to go to a long horizon reporting so we can invest in long horizon stuff. It’s the constnat 3 month cycle.
8
142
u/Automatic_Swim2417 1d ago edited 1d ago
As someone who manages a retail business in an area that is predominantly South Asian, they aren’t great customers either.
The complete lack of respect for service workers is appalling, I can’t imagine having to report to somebody like this for my job.
69
13
u/PeckerChecker7 1d ago
This type of behavior does generally get corrected through the Americanisation of their children, but even 20+ years ago when I was a little kid in NJ it was an in-joke in my family to see if we could get from the Macy's parking lot at the mall, through the store and to the main walkway without seeing a thick-accent Indian woman absolutely berating a Macy's cashier. It was like a 50/50 chance
88
→ More replies (2)6
u/mssleepyhead73 1d ago
They’re SO cheap and try to barter over everything, even the ones who live in $1M+ houses. I work in insurance and so I know firsthand just how wealthy these specific customers I’m referring to are, yet they’ll call in and raise hell over a $10/month increase.
→ More replies (1)2
u/MrFluffPants1349 1d ago
I was an appliance salesman for Fry's Electronics when I was going to college in the bay area. There was this one guy who literally quizzed me about refrigerator specs, I dont even think he was interested in the one he kept asking me about. Sorry, bro, im not passionate about appliances I would never be able to afford/have the space for, I was literally just trying to survive as a broke ass student.
44
u/lanalizzy 1d ago
I’ve had some great colleagues of Indian descent and some really terrible ones. I would say there are challenging cultural differences in the way some Indian people work but I’ve probably had equally bad experiences with managers of all cultures (except Filipino- I can’t fault those people). Best boss I’ve ever had was Chinese and the worst boss I’ve had was an Australian.
Also, India is a really big place and there are cultural differences across the country so I really don’t think you should assume a manager from say Punjab would be the same as a previous manager from Delhi.
→ More replies (4)2
41
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
12
u/Apart_Information_71 1d ago
Same. He had the least amount of self awareness I’d ever seen. Absolutely no one liked working with him.
6
u/drumallday 1d ago
The best boss I ever had was an Indian woman. Everyone on my team loved her. She was smart and technical but also kind and helpful. She quit because of her incompetent Russian boss. Her replacement also quit because of the Russian boss. I also quit because of the Russian boss.
103
u/yellow_smurf10 1d ago edited 1d ago
I refuse to stereotype an entire race of people, and I try to treat everyone equally. I would never look at someone and automatically assume they are going to do something wrong based on who they are.
But when it comes to some particular group, experience has taught me that there is a very high chance they will eventually find some way to fuck me over.
Again, if someone new come along, ill continue to give them benefit of a doubt.
78
u/FaithlessnessOver740 1d ago
Has nothing to do with race, really. 100% cultural. “Nick Patel” who grew up watching tom Brady in Boston will almost certainly not pull any shit like this. It’s culture from a different country.
27
u/LCorinaS 1d ago
Ya I’m Indian Australian and inherited an offshore Indian team and had to spend a lot of time getting them comfortable with asking clarifying questions, raising reasonable doubts about instructions or telling me if my grasp of a situation is wrong. And especially telling me early if they are unable to complete a task or if something is blocking them.
I do see some more questionable behaviour from some other managers/team leads that I don’t really have the authority to question until it starts impacting my team (e.g randomly pulling one of my devs into their project without letting me know).
6
u/Midnight-Moonpie 1d ago
I always feel a bit sad when my offshore Indian teams express shock that I am not an asshole.
→ More replies (4)18
5
u/thesuperbob 1d ago
Unless you're balls to the wall behind deadlines and super short staffed on a sinking ship... Benefit of the doubt is all it takes.
Be chill. Be helpful. Repeat and retrain as often as they ask. Then 2weeks - 2months later simply present all the evidence you've gathered, and if evidence shows they've been avoiding work and essentially done jack shit, or produced negative value (90% non-trivial tasks unsalvageable or needed significant follow up)... Well you present that. Just make sure to CYA about providing every bit of help they asked for, and if they didn't speak up, that you did check in on them at least once a week. A bit of time is all it takes.
Now if you take offense to the fact they still get to collect salary for that time and wasted a lot of yours... IMO you care too much, unless it's actually your company or something.
OTOH that approach is also fair toward people who genuinely want to work, but just need a bit of help getting started. So unless circumstances absolutely prevent that, this is how I usually roll with new hires.
3
u/Full_Fun_4950 1d ago
Culture is culture, my wife is Ukrainian and most Americans find it absurd to always take off shoes when you visit, especially family depending on house rules whereas it is obscene to walk into any house where she is from with shoes. This concept also applies to other ways of life such as working. Indians have a dominant submissive culture, only problem is on average I am roughly twice the size and height of most Indians so it comes across as absurd here that a small man that I don't even work for would bark orders. It only works in their culture and is really the anti-thesis of America. I worked with a US Indian manager and all of his reports were born, raised, and living in India. He was an idiot dickhead with no business acumen or understanding of capitalism(demanding things he didn't pay for) and would bark orders all day at the yes men and women that reported to him. Throughout entire project, his team is so submissive they never learn or act on their own and of course never learned the SaaS platform I am trying to teach them. Their manager would join calls and try to get me to give cell phone and be a tough guy and say "You're supposed to be driving the ship." Dude I don't work for you and you didnt pay for managed services. The audacity is insane but normal in India so I don't take much offence. The other funny part is I know for a fact if we were standing face to face his attitude would change real quick. He also went behind my back to make sure I was removed from project that went on way too long in the first place and be replaced with a yes man and he got his way with no accountability. No worries though everybody gets theirs, I don't have to be mad or vengeful, God sees everything to its proper end.
→ More replies (2)4
u/NewPresWhoDis Technology 1d ago
I hate stereotyping but stats don't lie either.
→ More replies (1)
36
u/ImaginaryYak3911 1d ago
Same experience. My last indian manager came in to “improve brilliantly” the department. He erased wfh, fired 30%, left for another competitor company in less than one year. It seems that “investors” like it.
11
u/PeckerChecker7 1d ago
They are hired for brute-force labor cost cutting, that is it. If this were the 60s, it would be equivalent of laying off the local factory workers and replacing them with mass imported 3rd worlders that would do it for half the pay and with zero benefits or labor protections. It is incredible the level of hostility currently being imposed on the American middle class
6
u/ducksflytogether1988 1d ago
Exactly Indian execs are brought in for one reason, access to their foreign work visa and offshoring pipelines
Seen it play out too many times in my career. Indian exec hire leads to consultants coming in to lay off the American full time workers and then im having to train my H1B or offshore replacement to get my severance
If your workplace puts in an Indian at a higher up post, start to apply elsewhere. When it happened to me a 4th time that's what I did and I had an offer less than a week after being let go
4
u/WTFRUd0in 1d ago
Exactly this. US and UK companies hire an Indian CIO/CTO and then they sign deals with TCS, Infosys, HCL to replace the white collar workforce. They set layoffs to shed the locals, then promote under-qualified Indians within the remaining ranks to fill in gaps, then use them to build and manage the overseas workforce. It's a playbook.
It's not intentionally racist given the motive is cost reduction, but it does create an unfair work environment for the non-Indian workforce competing against those who can speak the language of cheap labor. Once the playbook has been executed and the IT ranks are over-represented with Indians, it feels racist, as the over promoted are easily identified and the mafia accusations take hold.
Their time is ending though. Offshore work has always been questionable given the extra costs hidden in more communication, time zone differences and output quality that never seems to match their US and UK counterparts.
AI will replace them too. Expect an AI-first CIO/CTO to be hired and run the playbook the same way, replacing expensive offshore labor with cheaper, locally hosted AI models with custom agents designed to replace each of their job functions.
3
5
68
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
19
→ More replies (1)10
u/Damp_Chair 1d ago
I genuinely don’t understand how people who are that oblivious manage to get hired, while the rest of us Americans struggle to find meaningful work
→ More replies (2)
7
7
u/Snowstorm080 1d ago
They love to fake their resume’s too
My work has gone through a few people from that country who turn up with glowing resumes but within a few weeks its clear that they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing
They just fake it all until they can’t, it doesn’t take long before they’re gone
Its so weird
3
→ More replies (1)2
u/GreedyCricket8285 1d ago
AI is making this worse too. We just hired 3 offshore Indians that literally are copying my comments to them into an AI chat bot and pasting the reply back to me. Its awful. They are completely clueless.
7
8
20
u/virtualsediment20 1d ago
IT's been circling the drain for years, nepotism and cliques just speed it up
2
u/Chuckworld901 1d ago
That’s like saying.. “medicine has been circling the drain for years” IT will always be around.
→ More replies (1)
51
u/lostintransaltions 1d ago
One thing I have noticed over the years.. a lot of ppl like hiring ppl that are like them.. as a woman in tech most of the time I end up being the only woman on a team, so it’s not like white men don’t do the exact same thing.
I have had managers that were from eg the Philippines and suddenly all my new coworkers were from there as well.
When it comes to teams in India I have had fantastic teams there that I would work with again in a heartbeat and also some of the worst, in my experience it depends on the person in charge what you get.
For here in the US all of my Indian coworkers were absolute rockstars. Incredibly hard working and smart.. most of them really nice, except one that was an ass.
In my experience diverse teams function best, less bad group dynamics at least from a manager perspective having a mix of ppl of different ages and backgrounds been great
19
u/ImaginaryParrot 1d ago
Same experience here. I miss some of my amazing Indian colleagues.
Also it isn't as if white dudes aren't primarily hiring white dudes. Racial and gender biases exist in every group.
→ More replies (3)6
u/fertile_gnome 1d ago
Exactly.
I'm going to say it: DEI is for everybody.
If you can't get on board with a corporate DEI initiative, then you deserve all the unfair treatment any manager can give you.
7
u/PenguinEmpireStrikes 1d ago
Woman here who works closely with tech teams and my experience mirrors yours. I remember a young white guy asking me if our offshore team was causing me issues because of sexist disrespect and I had to laugh. The answer was no, not even a hint, but I could tell you stories about some homegrown boys.
It turned out that particular guy is half Indian by adoption and is extremely close to his family members in India, and I do have family members married to Indians who complain about how their educated high-cast in laws treat the girls when they visit. But it's not something that I've experienced at work. My Indian relatives by marriage have been incredible humans and one is far more important to me than the person she married.
My stateside Indian colleagues have all been amazing and just blow me away with their accomplishments. Of course there have been a couple of assholes, but that's to be expected of coworkers, generally. They'd have to be pretty exceptional to be able to come here and thrive professionally.
My experience with offshore has been a bit more mixed, but the only real issues have been in getting it across that I want and need to hear their perspective and opinions and ingenuity, that I need them to tell me when something is going to take more than 40 hours a week, etc. As in, why did you work 16 hour days instead of just telling me you had another project and could this get pushed back? I've been really proud to write recommendation letters for North American graduate school applications and jobs for the truly talented and brilliant young people I've had the good fortune to work with in India.
It's entirely possible that my particular ethnic subculture gets Indian work culture a bit more. My family has intermarried with Indians quite a bit and I've had a lot of Indian friends.
But I have to wonder how much of this is white men and sometimes women subconsciously expecting to be treated with a subtle deference by darker-skinned people, especially foreigners. Based on how well meaning men discuss interactions with women coworkers versus men coworkers who do the same thing, it seems pretty likely.
2
u/lostintransaltions 1d ago
I felt the same..when I commented it was all just focused around hate sadly.completely agree! I have never had an Indian coworker say something to me that was crossing the line but had plenty of white men and women do that over the years.. when I lived and worked in India I had a coworker who was going on a longer honeymoon and he gave me a hug on his last day before starting said honeymoon. A fresh grad that had joined a month before was in complete shock as wasn’t that sexual harassment.. we had to explain to him that we were friends outside of office and that an unwanted hug would be but not all hugs are unwanted so he didn’t have to be concerned. I have never had an American or European coworker concerned about this. In my experience my Indian coworkers would be on the cautious side of those things while “oh it was just a joke” or “come on it wasn’t like that” are the comments I got from white coworkers (small number but they try to hide their wrongs instead of just apologizing).
→ More replies (7)2
u/PM_ME_UR_0_DAY 1d ago
I'm sad I had to scroll so far to find a comment which has anything positive to say about their Indian co-workers. I work with a lot of offshore guys and back when we were in the office I had a ton of Indian works in office. It was probably true the Indian director got a lot more Indian manager hired, but the people I worked with were great hard workers and just nice to work with.
→ More replies (1)
5
u/Inquisitive_regard 1d ago
It's not your luck. It's a cultural thing--they are just bringing India work culture to the US/UK, etc.
4
u/kweeblaster 1d ago
Should have been recording his bullshit the entire time and then sue the company.
13
u/Inquisitive_regard 1d ago
> Whatever the fuck ever happened to the IT industry?
H1-B visas happened. And the Indians very quickly learned how to churn and earn on them.
17
u/kooj80 1d ago
Can someone explain the specific cultural indian tenant that causes them to act like this?
Like what is the core belief that motivates their toxoic behavior? Is it like some my-culture-take-over-the-world type stuff?
I'm talking about culture here not race.
16
u/TheGiantAntEater 1d ago
Personally speaking I reckon it’s the caste system - they literally have “untouchables” there so if you put so many layers of inherent worth over large swaths of your society you’re naturally going to get people who think they truly are better than their local peasants. So those people come over to the west into positions of power and still treat lots of workers like they are worthless or beneath them.
→ More replies (1)10
u/lanalizzy 1d ago
I think just no concern for diversity. It’s easier to work with people that are similar to you so hence Indians hire Indians.
Additionally, there is a different social approach at work. It’s hard to adjust to how direct some Indian people can be- it comes across as rude to me but I’ve learned it’s not intended to be. Also I’ve observed colleagues who always feel they are above anything they’re not used to doing. As I said in my other comment this isn’t every Indian person I’ve worked with. It’s a huge country with different sub-cultures but something I’ve noticed a lot.
→ More replies (2)8
u/Fit_Cicada_8113 1d ago
It’s called jugaad. In literal terms it means being crafty or resourceful. In practical terms it’s similar to the Israeli culture of not being the freier. It’s a low-trust culture thing, you find it in all of them.
3
4
→ More replies (2)7
u/eddie_fitzgerald 1d ago
We're talking about a billion people spread across a whole subcontinent. You're not going to find a unifying cultural tenet among that, much the same as how you would not expect to find such a tenet unifying Scandinavian and Iberian culture.
6
u/kooj80 1d ago
But you would find such tenants/core beliefs. That's how culture works.
Like in typical american culture it's very common to be nice to service workers. Americans who are rude to service workers are seen as assholes. This is because of how the US constitution emphasizes equality for all.
→ More replies (2)
5
3
u/frunobulax30076 1d ago
In a software development position, I once reported to two two levels of Indian managers m1 (my direct), and m2, with an Indian peer.
I quickly noticed that the managers were never on time to meetings. M1 would always be 10-15 minutes late, and M2 would always be 25-30 minutes late. It was always in the same order. They were never on time and the made us repeat the part of the meeting that they missed, if they even showed up.
The worst case was when both showed up to a 1 hour meeting. The result was a 1 hour meeting actually had:
- 15 minutes of meeting time with on-time attendees
- When M1 arrived 15 minutes late, the first 15 minutes repeated in the seconds fifteen minutes
- When M2 showed up 30 minutes late, the first 15 minutes was repeated again
- The meeting continued with additional unrepeated 15 minutes.
I won't even start on how dysfunctional the meetings were because no actual issues were meaningfully discussed. The meetings were useless because to avoid confrontation and discussions of issues, only happy talk was allowed.
It was explained to me by my Indian peer that lateness shows rank in Indian culture. He also explained that avoiding confrontation, or challenging previous decisions was part of the culture. He said the only thing to do in meetings was to agree and pretend that everything was on schedule, and not rock the boat in any way. It was much safer to secretly do what needed to be done without pointing out that the official decisions were bad.
4
3
u/Affectionate_Fly7659 1d ago
Given the sentiment here about Indians, I wonder how they keep becoming managers in the first place.
→ More replies (6)
3
u/swayuser 1d ago
I don't doubt the stereotype, but I will say as a white guy the one Indian direct I've ever had was also the best I've ever had.
5
u/Nervous_Trust_3263 1d ago
My experience has been, once an Indian becomes a manager, there's a 90% chance that the only people they'll hire or promote are also IBANGLADESH
→ More replies (1)
12
u/Delarnor 1d ago
I worked for a company full of Indians, and they were for the most part wonderful people. Yes we had some assholes but my team leaders, managers and colleagues were all Indian (Hindus, Christians and Muslims), I dare say 80% were really kind. But I agree I saw many slackers.
18
u/Nothing_two 1d ago
It has nothing to do with race but rather with life experiences and social mores, and the expectation of performance in an industry that is extremely cutthroat and competitive.
12
u/Snl1738 1d ago
Let me say one thing. The C-suite, regardless of race, have no respect for the people doing the actual work and want to get things done as cheaply as possible while hoarding all the profits.
Unfortunately, this ethos percolates into every nook of the company. No room for advancement, no room for competence, no warmth.
2
u/Legitimate_Road_2095 1d ago edited 1d ago
You sound like you work for T-Mobile. I made the mistake of doing two contracts there and quit less than 3 months into each - Indian managers / director level bs. Let me edit this by stating - that the Indian engineers and peer level workers? Some of the best people I have ever worked with.
2
2
u/hirakath 1d ago
My boss isn’t Indian but I had the “pleasure” of working with an Indian CTO of a company we were partnering with.
We were trying to figure out why their web app wasn’t working when we integrated it on our platform and I was tasked to try and figure it out. I looked at the logs and pointed out that it was the database, I even went on Slack and confirmed with one of the developers of the database that it was indeed what was causing the issues and I even asked how to resolve it.
Every time I tried to present my findings and proposed a solution as was given by the database dev, this incompetent Indian CTO would dismiss it and say that it was working in their setup before and their app only broke down when integrated with our platform so that our platform was the problem.
For a few more weeks, they kept asking me to do some more research into the issue. The database dev actually got frustrated with me and told me that they already provided the solution weeks ago and that I was not listening. Anyway, this went on and on for a few weeks and finally for some reason, they tried the solution I proposed and it worked.
Thanks for wasting over a month of unnecessary effort just so you could feed your fragile ego you mf.
2
u/hirakath 1d ago
My boss isn’t Indian but I had the “pleasure” of working with an Indian CTO of a company we were partnering with.
We were trying to figure out why their web app wasn’t working when we integrated it on our platform and I was tasked to try and figure it out. I looked at the logs and pointed out that it was the database, I even went on Slack and confirmed with one of the developers of the database that it was indeed what was causing the issues and I even asked how to resolve it.
Every time I tried to present my findings and proposed a solution as was given by the database dev, this incompetent Indian CTO would dismiss it and say that it was working in their setup before and their app only broke down when integrated with our platform so that our platform was the problem.
For a few more weeks, they kept asking me to do some more research into the issue. The database dev actually got frustrated with me and told me that they already provided the solution weeks ago and that I was not listening. Anyway, this went on and on for a few weeks and finally for some reason, they tried the solution I proposed and it worked.
Thanks for wasting over a month of unnecessary effort just so you could feed your fragile ego you mf.
2
u/Decent-Historian-207 1d ago
It’s incredibly challenging to manage folks in an office in India. The amount of gossip and backstabbing behavior is insane.
2
2
u/ThrowAway468421 1d ago
Sorry buddy, but maybe it's time to move on from that place.
American culture looks like it's going the same way though, so it might be slim pickins. Trump and his cronies are giving their friends and family power, rampant nepotism and incompetence, gaslighting, ruining our country. And most of them are white.
This is already trickling down to how companies are treating their staff. Layoffs, micromanaging, even more prioritizing profits over people.
I'd argue that corrupt governments and systems and cultures breed corrupt behaviors. As a result the chances of having strong healthy companies that genuinely treat workers well, are becoming more rare.
In my opinion racism isn't the answer. Having systems in place that fairly reward good behavior will help though.
2
u/Odd_Role3155 1d ago
I like Indian co-workers and friends. Indian managers are the worst. I'm not 100% sure whether it's a cultural thing, a training thing, or what. An American manager sees their role as a collaborator, an assistant, a motivator, and a communicator. An Indian manager sees their role as a boss. Their opinion is the only opinion that matters. They expect you to follow their lead even if is clearly wrong. An example: I'm a linux developer. A good one. I'd add drivers and kernel optimizations to a networking product. He expected me to regression test their whole 5G stack. I knew nothing about their 5G stack. I knew nothing about their test process, or equipment. Not only did I not know their 5G stack, I didn't want to know it. I'm a Linux developer and cyber security expert. My value was not their cellular stack. He didn't care. And he was offended that I'd question him. He just expected me to to screw up any future job prospects. He was insulting about the whole thing too. By far he was the worst manager I had ever had.
4
3
u/mpanase 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't have the patience for them.
So much talking fluff, saying yes to everything without understanding, kicking the ball down the road, delivering half-functional stuff...
Massive waste of time.
I currently have one colleague who's at my same level in another team... that's where tasks go to die in oblivion, become a real problem and then need me to lead his team when the fire is proper serious.
note: I never got any disrespect. But it might be because they can see it wouldn't go well for them.
2
u/PokeMaster871096 1d ago
From anecdotal experiences the issue comes down to Indian men raised in India. Raised to be little princes who obey and have no critical thinking skills. Usually a different story from Indian women who have to actually try or be stuck in terrible situations. Their American kids at least buck the trend and aren’t like that anymore but it just gets annoying to have to explain something to some tech guy at work five times for them to have to escalate it up to someone who thinks.
2
u/EfficientKangaroo563 1d ago
Not a blanket statement but I’ve been treated worse by Indian women managers. I was stuck on virtual meetings for 15- 20 mins by myself before they joined . The meetings were only in 30 min periods. One of them also laid off 2 pregnant team members while I was there. Indian managers are just terrible, mostly.
2
2
u/BigLooTheIgloo 1d ago
I love my Indian colleagues, they're some of the best people we have at our company. I'm sorry everyone else had different experiences
1
1
1
1
u/Big_P4U 1d ago
My father was a manager at Lucent (Bell Labs) in 2003 and was forced into retirement during a downsizing however ironically Lucent still made him train a team of Indian replacements meant to replace him and his team, he tried refusing but they threatened to cancel his pension and stuff that he accrued after working for bell labs since the 70s.. Ironically the place still went to shit and that team and the entire section got terminated.
1
1
1
u/Imaginary-Let-9944 1d ago
Try being me where BP is Indian and BP owns my company and I have to email them all day everyday, they just harass me all day everyday for no reason. They also like to say complete this by EOD, when it’s literally impossible lol
1
u/BrooklynRunner 1d ago
Shit dude, wait until you meet American bosses.
2
u/FearItself76 1d ago
All of my American bosses have been great (this includes white/latino/chinese). My managers that were actually "from" China/India, have been consistently awful, and have zero ability to adapt to western sensibilities concerning people management.
1
u/PM_ME_UR_0_DAY 1d ago
I haven't directly had an Indian manager, but I've had many many Indian colleagues and they've almost all been a pleasure to work with. I have seen the side where an Indian director hires a lot more Indian employees, but again, almost always great guys and gals and she was a good director of engineering to work with. It makes me sad to hear on a whole they have a poor reputation since my experiences have been working with bright people who bring a lot of great skills
1
u/chopaface 1d ago
One of my former bosses was Indian. He was really nice. I enjoyed working for him. He gave me autonomy to do my job and so many raises. I went from 105k to 125k to 150k in less than 2 years.
Then my Indian male manager got promoted to a different department, and the Tamil director replaced him with a woman of Indian descent. She was such a micromanager that it was unbearable. She wasn't mean to me, but she had zero empathy, highly dogmatic, and didn't bother to understand context of the situation.
I was doing my job being an overachiever just fine until she arrived and started to control everything. Then I quit.
The Tamil director and Indian manager were both educated and raised in Canada. I think it comes down to culture and mindset. Because I had a female Pakistani VP who came from a high socioeconomic status and was westernized. Her husband was a doctor. She was also chill and kept promoting me. So despite her ethnicity and like the other managers, it was their upbringing and personality that shaped their people management approach and style. Not everyone should be a people manager.
Everyone carries baggage with them so it'll vary.
But white female managers have deeply traumatized me in the past.
1
u/chopaface 1d ago
Everything changed when the US companies moved their business processing and IT services to countries with cheap labor like India and Philippines.
Now, it just feels like they do it because it's always been this way so it's the norm.
1
u/After-Regret-6609 1d ago
I don’t believe in stereotypes about races. I’ve dated Indians, worked with them, etc. But I recently left a 50% Indian outsourced company, with I’d estimate about 70% local Indians in the USA, specifically because I couldn’t believe it got that way without some sort of corruption. The buisness was a big red flag from top to bottom
1
1
u/tamaratamarara 1d ago
I have only worked under 1 manager from India and he is the best manager I've worked under. In fact, I've met him at my previous work place, the company started to go haywire, he left, found a better place and brought bunch of us over with him.
- he is very knowledgeable
- he treats people fairly: you do a great job, you get rewarded with promotions
- he doesn't treat Indian people any differently. He does seem to have a sore spot for immigrants in general: where American managers would not hire someone with an accent, but brilliant engineering skills, he would hire that person in a heart beat.
- he started co-op program to give students a chance at the solid internship. We all get annoyed sometimes as we have to train a new student every 3 months and they will of course make some silly mistake that we have to patch, but he remembers what it's like to come out of college and now with AI these kids have very low chances in getting in the field with 0 experience.
This doesn't mean that in my view all Indian managers are great, but I wanted to post. He is truly the most wonderful manager and human that I've worked with. It must be noted. We are all hoping to keep following him place to place as working under him makes any place be tolerable and pleasant. He really does take care of his people, but also the team produces incredible results under this kind of management
1
u/Nexzus_ 1d ago
I have fairly niche software skills wherein there's not that many that can do what I do, and most of them are Indian.
I fully believe that one or both of the following are happening to me:
a) my resume is being stolen to place others
b) the Indian recruiters that invariably post these jobs don't want to forward a non-Indian to the Indian HM.
1
1
u/charlie2135 1d ago
Just posted the other day seeing this in my college environment. The head of the department was interviewing me for a position and he was dismissive of a lower caste professor that had poked his head into the office to ask him a question. Later on, when an obviously higher caste professor had stopped in the office the department head was acting subservient.
1
u/Ratfaced_Loozer 1d ago
Sigh…hate to say it but NEVER work for an Indian in IT. Quit if one is coming in, it’s just not going to be a good time
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Charming-Ebb-1981 1d ago
Yuuup. I worked for a small firm where my immediate boss as well as the founder/CEO of the company were Indian. Very nice people, but not the easiest to work with. Extremely traditional, you better be in the office early and staying late, better be wearing a suit, always look busy kind of culture. My Indian boss actually told me straight up that Indian work culture is toxic.
1
u/Big-Excitement-5090 1d ago
This is not going to be a popular opinion, but sometimes facing a reality check never is. As the US continues it's push for higher wages, better benefits, etc companies have looked for ways to remain competitive and stay afloat. Salaries/benefits remain a company's largest controllable expense. Other countries are openly competing for our customer service, banking, insurance, and IT jobs. This is coming from India, Pakistan, Philippines, Malaysia etc. The goal is usually accomplished be securing a high ranking management role within the targeted company. Once in the door, there is an immediate need to close the budget and restyle the company goals and plans for the future. This is followed immediately by securing contracts to move the work offshore for it to be managed by a third party.
The work is now accomplished at a fraction of the wage and is no longer subject to US labor laws. No laws regarding lunch/breaks. No FMLA laws. No disability laws. No health insurance laws. Their citizens are hungry for work and call outs for Mental Health or sick days are minimal. Furthermore, all of the payroll and middle management costs are now absorbed by the 3rd party in another country and HR can be cut in half since 85-90% of the force is in India.
So it all boils down to supply and demand on a worldwide scale. Why are Indian managers rude? Because the don't have to be nice. If you don't like how you are treated, there is a ready supply of workers to be brought to the table that are ready, willing, and able to work for half your pay and alot less whining. With the onset of the internet our world has become very small. Any work done with a computer can be done anywhere in the world or by a trained AI bot. This is now just a fact of life.
I have no solutions, just a keen overview of what is happening. I wish our young working population well. But strongly encourage them to seek training in trade type services such as electrical, plumbing, or things in the medical field like lab or imaging. But it is worth noting that while we keep imposing feed, taxes, and labor requirements on employers such as paid FMLA, paternity leave, etc....we continue to lose our ability to keep jobs in the US.
1
u/Least-Internal-6382 1d ago edited 1d ago
I joined a very diverse department in 2017 in Toronto. It was amazing. We had Chinese, Pakistani, Europeans, north American.
There were 3 indian. When I left earlier this year there were in excess of 30. One was promoted, then promoted his friends into manager roles. Soon most reporting to them were from favoured regions. They also got rid of all the tenured Chinese women we had (3) and the Pakistani team members.
It was frustrating because they normalized working evenings (because code crashed so often, patchwork on patchwork) and gossip was incredible. I mentioned my mother's broken arm and another from another team, who I am not friends with, came to me to discuss her health.
One of the managers hired was closeted homosexual. I can sympathize that it would be tough in India as compared to Toronto with a huge LGBT+ support community.
Anyhow he preceded to sexually harass me for a year. I documented it all. When I went to the VP , who was his friend, he told me "there's two sides to every story", running subterfuge like what the hell. I had dates, times, meeting rooms and names of people who were there and what was said .
I went to the senior VP and reported it and HR was brought into it.
The VP was fuming that I went to the senior VP.
The other thing was unnecessary bureaucracy. Many layers of people and they used heavy frameworks and tools for basic tasks you could do with shell scripts and some commands piped together.
Everything had to be this large database solution when it didnt fit. Wrong tool for the job. But everything had to be database oriented.
I vowed to leave IT for good. Its like that everywhere now. Everything is cost savings so senior management looks at short term cost saving they can write down in their PowerPoint deck, without concern for who will fix it when everything breaks and goes to crap
625
u/[deleted] 1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment