Anand Iyer - Life in the Field, Racism in the Tech Industry, and More... | Rory

eagle

Rob Jackson did the MSDN Talks in NY/NJ for two years and at the Windows Vista Launch Steve Ballmer called him on stage to do a demo. The two of them acted as if they were old friends and we cheered Rob on as Steve smiled, then we all had a good laugh with pleanty of hugs and handshakes afterwords.

keithcombs
Eat my plasma

Racism sucks. I know, I've lived in Texas all my life and have seen it over and over. India certainly isn't the only country the racists have targeted. Mexico got its share during NAFTA and after. China has been the brunt of comments for decades, maybe centuries. I always wonder if it will EVER end.

Anyone that would make a comment to Anand in a racist manner, doesn't have a clue about him. Which reminds me, he tagged me...

SecretSoftware
Code to live, but Live to code.

The people who are racist against individuals because of the place they came from , or the religion they adhere to or the heritage they come from, should be dealt with firmly. This kind of low level racism needs to be cleaned from society.

Racism is real, and the people who commit it think they are better than everyone else, just because they think their race is better than other people's races.

Same thing with religion. People who defame other religions by attributing falsehoods to it. (like saying such and such religion is not peaceful or such and such God is .....) hurts people's feelings and it should not happen.

Not in a country like the USA, which was the lightening beacon for Justice and freedom and equality among all races, religions and sexes, for all other countries.

I want to thank you Rory for this video.

Best Regards,

SS

Massif
aim stupidly high, expect to fail often.

If people are awkward when the camera points at them, how about mounting it in the head of one of those big C9 guys?

Of course, that would leave Anand feeling awkward because he was talking to a giant plastic man, instead of just feeling awkward because he was talking to a camera.

I've always been in awe of trainers, because I struggle to talk for 2 minutes in public. (But those two minutes are good! Really!) And these guys end up talking all day.

Massif
aim stupidly high, expect to fail often.

Yeah, just finished the video, feeling mortally offended by Anand's V-sign. Big Smile

Here's an interesting thing, you get what appears to be a lot of acceptance for low-level racism now from reasonable rational (and non-racist people). People transfer their genuinely frustrating experiences from offshored call-centres (it can be really hard when the connection is bad and the accent is think.) into a lack of disapproval of the "Indians stole my job" rationale.

Apologies if that makes no sense, but I'm trying to say that instead of people getting slapped for such assertions, the people around them who may well have spent an agonising hour trying to explain to someone in Mumbai why the train they're suggesting is a nonsense, find themselves agreeing with them. As this trend (the call-centre thing) is unlikely to reverse immediately I think we're going to have low-level racism continue for a long long long time.

Meh...

I'm blathering now, so I shall stop. I think I had another thought too, but can't remember what it was.

daSmirnov

foxbar wrote:
Until Indian tech stops seeing the west as a cash cow to be exploited for bad service, there is no reason not to be weary.

Well you've got things backwards. It's western companies exporting jobs to India or other countries. So they can reduce costs. It's called capitalism.

As for comments on foreigners "stealing" jobs, that's also nonsense, I mean come on you don't own that job, a capitalist "owns" that job, go talk to them. I notice this issue has cropped up in the US a lot with people from Latin America, and in the UK press with people from the new European Union countries lately, so we're going through yet another wave of it. But it is utter nonsense.

Think of it this way, don't have kids because they're going to take your jobs. Increasing the population (by any means) increases the size of the market it doesn't have any long-term effect on job availability.

Cast your minds back to the 1930s, when all the press were slamming the Jews for stealing your jobs, the 1950s when it was the Indians, then the Africans, and now the Poles and Romanians. Of course all its doing is shifting the blame from those responsible, the capitalists, onto a scapegoat.

It's easy now to look back and see it as nonsense, but people always fail to make the same connection to what's going on now, same problem just blaming somebody else.

Karl Marx wrote:
the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere

If you don’t want a global market, go back to feudal society.

Good interview Rory, looking forward to the next part.

artificialignorance

keithcombs wrote:

Racism sucks. I know, I've lived in Texas all my life and have seen it over and over. India certainly isn't the only country the racists have targeted. Mexico got its share during NAFTA and after. China has been the brunt of comments for decades, maybe centuries. I always wonder if it will EVER end.

Anyone that would make a comment to Anand in a racist manner, doesn't have a clue about him. Which reminds me, he tagged me...

Yeah, and you were supposed to respond to the blog-tag thing with a blog post, not with a comment... Embarassed

ai

artificialignorance

Massif wrote:
If people are awkward when the camera points at them, how about mounting it in the head of one of those big C9 guys?

Of course, that would leave Anand feeling awkward because he was talking to a giant plastic man, instead of just feeling awkward because he was talking to a camera.

I've always been in awe of trainers, because I struggle to talk for 2 minutes in public. (But those two minutes are good! Really!) And these guys end up talking all day.

It's always awkward when you're talking to yourself. For a few seconds there when Rory abruptly left me to moisten his lips, I thought I'd start singing to the camera, but wisely decided against it.

ai

artificialignorance

Foxbar,

foxbar wrote:
http://www.dellideastorm.com/article/show/61833/No_India_Call_Centers - India has built quite a bad reputation for itself as far as IT goes. This is not racism or the fault of consumers or tech managers. Until Indian tech stops seeing the west as a cash cow to be exploited for bad service, there is no reason not to be weary.

See, this is what irks me a little... I wonder why we've started discussing call centers as a part of this discussion. I understand people's frustrations with call centers, trust me - I go through the exact same frustrating experience, every now and then. But THAT experience does not have to translate to racism here.

ai