I had two separate conversations with a black male coworker and a Persian male coworker (The Persian one, NGL, has a white first name, and I did think he was white), and both talked about how Indian (and East Asian) men are perceived to have the same power /influence as white people at work and that they are privileged.

I'm an Indian-origin woman. And we all work in tech.

I was flabbergasted. Both of them brought up separate individuals who were Indian (one was a woman), and how everyone agreed with them, whereas the same grace wouldn't be given to a black man or a Persian man.

But then I pointed out, that those individuals had A+ backgrounds (the BEST schools, the BEST company experience, etc.). I also pointed out that there were white people (including women) who did not have the same pedigree who were in parallel positions. For example, the Indian Sr Director went to MIT for comp sci, and has been doing AI papers with other notables, etc. where as the White Woman Sr Director did the Classics deg, and then went to a bootcamp. I also pointed out examples of Indians in the company with better pedigree who were reporting into white folks with less pedigree.

I feel like some groups just think we magically got our place at good schools, in leadership positions and it's like -- no, we have the hard skills, and performed at the highest level to get these jobs. The black coworker was like, "but there is a lot of cultural assimilation of Indians, esp. Indian men in the workforce" -- and I'm said -- "eh, we have funny names, and funny religions...like we do not have much in common with white people. In fact, I'd argue culturally black people are closer."

It was just interesting to see our accomplishments so downplayed.

I’m a dental student, and lately I’ve been struggling with this feeling that I’m just… forgettable.

It feels like none of my faculty members remember my name. I try to interact with them, make conversation, participate, and build relationships. I make an effort to be friendly and engaged, but somehow, I still feel like I fade into the background. I watch other students seem to develop relationships with faculty, get recognized, and be remembered, while I feel like I’m just another face in the room.

I can’t help but wonder whether being brown and having a name that isn’t traditionally American plays a role in this. Is it harder to be remembered when your name is unfamiliar to people? Is there an unconscious bias that makes some students more recognizable or approachable than others? Or am I overthinking this and taking something personally that happens to everyone?

The hardest part is that I do try. I’m not someone who deliberately keeps to myself. I make an effort to engage, and yet I still feel invisible sometimes.

I know that faculty members have dozens of students to remember, and I don’t expect everyone to know my name immediately. But when it feels like a consistent pattern, it starts to affect how you see yourself. You begin to wonder whether you’re doing something wrong, whether you’re not memorable enough, or whether people simply don’t see you the same way they see others.

I just got an offer today (engineering) and wanted to discuss culture and comp because I’m not too sure what to make of it.

I have some other competing offers that on paper seem like they have better upside but Anthropic is white hot right now and worried if too much is already priced in?

I’m also just looking to connect with ABCDs inside the company too :).

Dm me if you’re there and can chat pls!

Any other Desi students studying an unpopular field or a field considered “less employable”? Would love to hear more about your experience. I’m a Philosophy major 😂

Hi all, I have a 4 year old child who will be attending public school in NC in a year or two. We are in a position to buy a new house now and I’m wondering if it’s better for child to be in a school district with other Indian kids or is it better for them to be in a school district with almost no Asian population. My wish for him is that he should understand diversity and be able to assimilate better into American culture. I wish to see opinions from kids who studied here. Thanks in advance.

Hey, so due to my career I might have to move to a different country soon. I’m looking at what would be best for me career wise and im debating between countries such as UK, Canada, Australia, USA, UAE (Dubai).

These are all places that have a high amount of brown people and it seems that all of them are experiencing a sharp rise in racism and discrimination (some more, some less). I’ve lived in Italy my whole life where there’s not that many indians so ive not really experienced living among others like me and being perceived as “part of some group”. So im kinda worried.

How bad is it? Is it just online? Which countries have it worst?

edit: US is the one im considering the least. Glad to know its not that bad racism-wise. Please focus on the other countries, thanks.

I’m 24M got a job rn in tech and it’s kinda dead end in bumfuck nowhere in the Deep South. I make decent though for the area, but in my hometown or whatever I would’ve been fucked lol. I moved down here for a temp job but ended up getting remote jobs and now hybrid jobs and stayed here. Super bumfuck nowhere, I know I complain about this a lot, and the county next to mine, their Sheriffs office flies a Confederate flag above the American flag. Anyway, I am the only Desi guy in miles it feels like minus the occasional gas station uncle.

So I actually don’t hate the area all that much, but there’s a lack of opportunities here. I currently work hybrid and commute 40 mins to the nearest big city(which isn’t even really a big city tbh) to work for some company that has its HQ here purely cuz it’s a tax haven lol. Anyway, I want to do more meaningful work and actually do more with my career rather than just rot away in this remote role. Even if the money is decent for the area, I have no job satisfaction. Plus I would like more money and shit, I recently made the reckless purchase of a sports car, and shit only takes 93 gas too lol and with the mpg that a V8 brings, it’s rough lmao.

And tbh, the money rn is only okay cuz I live kinda frugally. I cook at home 95% of the time, and my only luxury expenses are my car and PC. But if I ever wanna go back on the dating market or anything, I am FUCKED(or rather not) so this is not sustainable.

So I wanna leave the area and find a better job, but even with 2 years of full time experience here, holy shit, I have been applying for 3-4 months and I legit have 300+ rejection emails in my inbox rn. I have been doing certs and other shit too, but goddamn nothing helps.

Am I the only one my age getting cooked by this market? Any other early to mid twenty ppl relate?

Work in marketing, and sick of all those "you're doing nothing important" jokes, just because I'm not in a traditional field like medicine or law. I've worked hard to be where I'm at, and those jokes seem to be in bad taste. Also everyone just assumes that your parents must be disappointed like??? Stop projecting?!

Sorry for the rant but it's pissing me off (yes I'm that petty)

The west has been sleeping on soft skills forever. This is partially what happens when you're well educated AND raised in community. Improving work culture has compounding impact on performance and profits. Westerners are used to living isolated and are work oriented. Yes, Indians can be obsessed with work as well, but we still have a strong communal system that teaches us how to navigate different personalities.

https://blog.venturemagazine.net/why-are-indian-ceos-taking-over-the-world-6c3e5926aa6c

As an Indian myself who’s only ever worked in companies where we don’t have large groups of Indians in management, I cannot relate. I love that in America we have groups from almost every race in tech companies and working with diverse people and understanding their views is one of the parts of my job I like most. So it’s sad when I learn that Indians create groups in management and only hire others based on whether they’re part of the same group.

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I have noticed that some ABCDesis are often treating their fellow ABCDesi or Indians from mainland like trash, in the workplace. This has been my experience over time.

First of all, I don’t even understand this as it implies they view ABCD’s as competition. Second, there are millions of Indian people all over the world. Why be in competition with someone simply because they are working there?

It’s done in a covert way so other people from the outside will not be able to tell.

At the same time, the same ABCDesi are extra nice to Caucasian colleagues. They are bending over backwards.

Is this due to self loathing or something?

There are very few people who treat everyone with respect, regardless of ethnicity / race.

I want to investigate if there had been any changes from stereotypical pressures or still remain.

Often they study stuff like Maths and Further Maths, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Computer Science, Law, Accounting and sometimes Economics.

Gender roles persist so I assume British Asian girls would do Biology, Chemistry or Law.

For me, I do not do any of such combinations as I study Politics, Business and Sociology as male Brit Asian student hoping to be a spcial or home affairs news reporter, social worker or accountant, though th climbing, but overlooked issue of nepotism and cronyism do seem to make STEM jobs as the most "viable" ones in this economy.

I wonder if you still have the stereotypical combination of STEM subjects or if you have more unique combinations and I want to know what careers you hope to pursue

I am Indian-American in tech. It is disprop Indian esp Indians from India. But some meetings are majority or supermajority Indian. Remaining are usually Whites w/ non-Indian Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics.

I cannot help but wonder if some Whites 100% secretly hate Indians and other POC. To be clear, I never ever got that vibe from anyone at work, but I still overthink that lol. I also think about this when I socialize with Whites outside work.

Anyone else? I wish I knew how to stop overthinking it lol. It is just cuz I have seen online that some Whites are secretly WNs, but just hide their power lvl for $.

Not really pre-law so much as polisci the discipline (Comparative Politics, IR, Political Theory, American politics, Political Economy, Formal Theory, Methods, etc.). Seems like there's so few of us around despite the growing interest for the subcontinent in the discipline. Would love to hear the perspectives of anyone in academia/policy/think tanks about your views on the discipline and what the future of South Asian area studies is as quant methods reign supreme

Hi all! I’m an Indian (born & brought up) immigrant living in the US. Should I try to sound more American? I absolutely do not have anything against my accent, but sometimes at work I feel like it’s holding me back. From making friends to leading meetings, I feel like talking in an American accent would make me blend in. I have also read opinions where ABCDs, and by extension White Americans, can clearly tell if someone is faking an accent. I don’t want to be the person who’s trying too hard, but I also don’t want to be left out.

For context, I speak fluent English, and I’ve already softened my t’s and r’s. People can understand me and I don’t have the thick Indian accent either. I’m somewhere in between. The thing I’m struggling with is, trying to convert my British pronunciations into American.

• Whose Job Is It Anyway? Coethnic Hiring in New U.S. Ventures
• DO LARGE EMPLOYERS TREAT RACIAL MINORITIES MORE FAIRLY? A NEW ANALYSIS OF CANADIAN FIELD EXPERIMENT DATA (Asian means Indian, Pakistani, or Chinese in this study)
• Is there a glass ceiling for ethnic minorities to enter leadership positions? Evidence from a field experiment with over 12,000 job applications
• Whitened Re´sume´s: Race and Self-Presentation in the Labor Market
• Ethnic Penalties and Hiring Discrimination: Comparing Results from Observational Studies with Field Experiments in the UK - Wouter Zwysen, Valentina Di Stasio, Anthony Heath, 2021
• Are employers in Britain discriminating against ethnic minorities?
• Ethnic minorities and the leadership glass cliff: Insights into a field experiment - Adamovic - 2025 - Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society - Wiley Online Library (One is in general, the other is for leadership positions)

If you look at cupertino, sunnyvale, and neighboring suburbs, you’re seeing a lot of American born folks leaving and they are being replaced with overachieving desis. But it’s not just desis alone. It’s a lot of Asian immigrants too.

It’s gotten to the point where the Bay Area and specifically the South Bay has become way too cut throat for everything.

Buy a house? Minimum a million dollars. But still expect to be outbid by another workaholic desi who works at apple and who happens to be a dual income techie household where the other person works at another tech company.

Want to get a job that pays enough to live there comfortably? Grind out four rounds of leetcode plus a three hour panel interview. It’s not just tech alone. The same cut throat behavior is in medicine, law, finance, and other white collar fields. Though techies take the cake as it’s called Silicon Valley. But also, it’s not enough if one person makes that kind of money. It takes two people making six figures each to survive long term there.

Go to school in the South Bay? You gotta outcompete hundreds of desis who had no life as kids except to study study and study and be overachievers at some ec. And be looked down upon if you don’t go to an Ivy League school or Stanford. Go to a UC school? Oh you’re too basic.

It’s not just school or jobs or housing. It’s even in desi culture. It’s become a culture of showing off how much you spend on your cultural events. $100k for an arrangatrum. $200k for the big big event with 1000 people.

The Bay Area specifically the South Bay used to be a place where you were accepted for your individuality. Not anymore. It’s become as cut throat as living in india or living in China.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview with a top semcionductor company based in Southern California, and I would say my experience was horrible.

After they rescheduled interviews and didn’t even inform me what each round would entail, I ended up wasting 3 hours of my time (and even more for prep LOL) - 1 hour each interviews -each with an Indian unc (from the southern states), where they spent the entire time grilling me on each and every concept within the domain. I went through with it thinking the end is in sight. For my final interview, I would be finally speaking with someone (managerial level also indian) who may have had more insights on the team for me... Surprise! The meeting got cancelled an hour before, with no reasoning.

After I reached out, they said they already "chose" someone for the role and cancelled remaining interviews. What even is this - them interviewing people when they have someone on H1b to prove they couldnt find someone else? the interviewers asked me where im "from" - in hindsight I shouldnt have answered. Im visibly Indian but they wanted to know specifically which state i assume.

I am reading about Indian history, and it says the history of Aryans is India is widely debated. I noticed there are members of this sub who are very knowledgeable. I hope this isn’t a controversial subject, but I wanted to hear brief (brief!) opinions on Aryan history in India. If this is controversial, pardon my ignorance and feel free to delete it.

Hi all,

I recently got a full-time Software Engineer job offer at Apple (in an org that’s not considered great though), which I’m supposed to start this summer. It’s paying 135k base, It was really hard to get and felt like a huge achievement… but now I keep seeing posts on Reddit saying “don’t join CS,” “the market is oversaturated,” and that it’ll never get better. I don’t want to struggle forever. I want whatever work I do to actually pay off and not depend all the way on some market that’ll never improve.

It’s messing with my head — I also got into a premed postbacc program that I deferred, and now I’m wondering if I should just go that route instead of starting this job. I am already 23 and genuinely want a stable and fulfilling career, and while I’ve enjoyed tech, I’ve always had some part of me that wondered about medicine too. I’ve also sometimes felt like an imposter in tech though.

Is it stupid to turn down Apple right now in favor of a complete career switch? Or are these doom posts overblown?

Would really appreciate honest perspectives — especially from people who’ve been in CS for a while or med or made similar decision.