furiouslysleepy

There are two things here:

1. Microsoft does not make decisions (mostly) based on fairness to prospective employees. It DOES make decisions based on having a good public image, part of which is being seen as diverse and inclusive.

2. The reason being diverse and inclusive is seen as good is because of a ton of research showing that being diverse is good for companies, good for employees, and good for entire underrepresented communities.

So it's not fine, but the fineness or not does not exist in a vacuum. The two situations are not arbitrary, and therefore, not analogous.

What about YouTube? Or Zynga? Or Facebook for its photos?

I think when people hear the phrase "digital media", they think of it has traditional-media-delivered-digitally. But I think the internet enables entirely new variations of traditional media, tailor-made for our hypersocial, crowdsourced, and attentionless internet society.

China is less socialist than India? Citation?

I'm a professional programmer who feels like he maybe shouldn't be. Articles like these are encouraging, even if never wind up quitting.

Just one really shitty cubicle.

C'thulu?

Perhaps... I'm not entirely sure why this is the way things are. The histories of specific Indian communities are often completely fascinating, and I wish there was more literature on the subject and I had more time to read it. :)

Ok, I looked it up, you're right.

I've never lived in a village, my perception of Panchayats was wholly informed by the news.

Well, I mean, obviously. Not that it's passable, but do you want to spend energy bringing every pickpocket to justice or do you want to spend energy bringing justice to ONE man who scammed the country out of as much money as HALF IT'S POPULATION makes in a YEAR?

I mean, prioritize.

I especially love the part about Panchayats losing their authority -- those old fucks need to all resign, and quickly.

I'm not being anti-tradition or whatever. Panchayats routinely carry out horrific human rights violations against women and lower casts. This barbaric system has to be replaced by actual courts.

Let's not forget the slave trade.

No, resource strip-mining was a HUGE problem, and was compounded by the fact that India missed the Industrial Revolution at least partially because the British willfully sabotaged Indian attempts to gain technology.

(It was in the interests of the British to force India to sell them raw materials at low prices, feed it to industries in Britan, and sell it back to India as a finished product. In those days, gold was money, and India had a lot of gold.)

I take those literacy and poverty numbers with a grain of salt -- they're manufactured by the govt to make itself look good. While literacy and poverty have both been addressed somewhat, it's a far cry from the official numbers. And frankly I'm worried that the population is growing faster than people are falling out of poverty.

That's a nice observation, and definitely true in India's case.

Out of curiosity, is this a robust thing? Is corruption a good indicator of 'brain-drain'?

Ironically, I agree with the comment you're replying to but not with you. Political hypocrisy favoring people you like is seen everywhere. Even if that were NOT the case, I find it difficult to get less worked up about 1,72,00,00,00,000 rupees than maybe 5-10,00,000 rupees.

The middle-class attitude to not risk much is also something we should not blame Indians for -- remember that most of the middle class (that's in the 'service' sector) is actually Bramhin, which means that it's a step down in status from what their ancestors enjoyed. And when you look at the looong way down you can fall in India socioeconomically... it's hard to blame someone for being risk-averse.

Well, most people around the world are averse to business. Is there really a bigger proportion of Chinese or Russian or Egyptian businesspersons than Indian? (In fact, India has a handful of extremely business-minded communities -- the Marwadis and the Gujaratis, and to a lesser extent the Punjabis, Sindhis and Malayalis. If anything, India does relatively well on this metric.)