India: Facebook recruiting from the IITs; attractive offer

You probably grew up in a Western democracy where racial discrimination was illegal and socially radioactive for most of your life. There are people who do not share that experience. Assume you had grown up in a hypothetical totally-not-India nation where government was known to be pervasively corrupt and where discrimination happened as a matter of course, and you knew in dealing with foreign countries that you were not in a position of strength vis-a-vis your negotiating partner. Would you necessarily expect them to treat you fairly?

Story time, with particulars elided: Japanese companies often pay employees in a fashion determined by an algorithm. It came to the attention of a supervisor of an Indian employee that information relevant to the employee's salary had not been communicated to the company and, as a consequence, he was not being paid his expected wages and had not been in some time. The employee was unaware of this and the error was in the company's favor. The company was totally blameless for the error happening.

The supervisor immediately went to the employee, apologized, and informed him that he would be paid appropriately going forward. He then asked the employee to wait for a few minutes while they figured out what to do about the six months of wages. The employee said it was OK, he understood that the company would not pay him.

Not five minutes later, the supervisor came back with the division chief and the head of HR. All three repeatedly apologized to the employee. They then presented him with an envelope: six months of the difference, in cash, accurate to the yen. It had been drawn from the petty cash drawer, and I have it on good authority that if the petty cash had been insufficient the division chief would have made good on it from his personal accounts within the hour.

The Indian employee was flabbergasted. I was mildly surprised. But this totally makes sense in a particular mindset here. The Indian was totally ready to believe he would be cheated out of wages -- it wouldn't have been the first time. I was ready to believe the company or HR would drag its feet. From the perspective of a particular brand of Japnaese megacorp, though, both those expectations are not just wrong but so outlandishly outside the realm of possibility that they wouldn't even occur to anyone.