> interests, hobbies

I don't ask about these in interviews, and don't use them to make decisions. You like My Little Pony or have a massive collection of guns? Or both? I literally could not care any less, it's none of my business.

> mannerisms

I'm not really sure what you'd see here in a regular interview beyond being literate and maybe nervous. The signal here is murky at best -- other than red flags, you shouldn't be measuring here.

So, to reiterate: it is absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by social status.

Mannerisms could be anything from how articulate the candidate is and the depth of their vocabulary, to how they dress and the types of questions they ask.

I’m not saying it’s okay to discriminate candidates by it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Go to any finance firm on Wall Street and tell me how many people employed there grew up on food stamps.

- Mannerisms could be anything from how articulate the candidate is and the depth of their vocabulary, to how they dress and the types of questions they ask.

Those are all qualitative things that tell me about the person's intelligence, social acumen, experience, worldliness, etc. Those things usually matter for hiring. Has nothing to do with caste or race or gender or identity or age or sexual orientation any other protected status.

Or it tells you how much time they've put into trying to suppress their individual characteristics they developed as they grew to adulthood in favor of ones perceived as more palatable to those hiring.

You could say they're smarter because they're doing what's needed to game the system... but that's only needed because people are judging them on those aspects. Chicken or egg?

Does a thick German or Scandinavian accent count against them? What about Mexican/Spanish? What about Ebonics/Black English? That has well understood rules for how it's used, even though many people don't realize it.

Presumably what you actually care about when hiring is their ability to work well with their peers and managers, and how well they accomplish the work they are given. If so, you are using mannerisms to help inform about these attributes you actually care about because you think those mannerisms correlate in some way. But what do you have to go by to actually support this evidence? If it's from personal experience, how rigorous have you been in making sure you note the data, and didn't subconsciously discount or ignore instances counter to your expectations?

At my current company we're actively discouraged in training from making small talk during interviews for exactly this reason. Even asking how their weekend was can lead to something like "Oh you played a few rounds of golf? I play golf too!" and you'll end up subconsciously judging them differently.

>> It's absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by something like caste, or social status

> Caste no, social status? Absolutely, happens all the time. It’s very easy to proxy social status based on interests, hobbies, mannerisms, etc. Those that don’t pass the sniff test, are deemed “bad culture fits”.

Isn't that pretty much the definition of caste-based discrimination?

Only if the social status is inherited, like people of color in the United States.

So are you just saying it's already common, or that you are in support of social status profiling?

Yes it’s already common. Look at the concentration and over representation of Ivy League schools in industries like finance. It’s very unlikely those places would even bother interviewing someone with low social status (I.e. poor and grew up on food stamps).

I don’t think it’s great that this happens, it insulates elites from those with working class backgrounds and accelerates inequality.

> Ivy League schools in industries like finance

This also has to do with the fact that, in consulting and finance, it is the perception of intelligence by the customer that is much more important than the actual intelligence. Managers would rather hire the team of consultants from the Ivy League and rich people would rather pay the management fees for the Ivy League team to manage their money.

In industries that are more directly merit based and less "customer perception" based, you don't have as large of an over-representation.

This doesn’t justify the practice. If my clients were racist, should I be allowed to only hire white people?

To be very clear, I'm not claiming the practice is just. It isn't. My only claim is that this doesn't arise just because of bias of the interviewers.

If you have racist clients, I'd expect that this would manifest more as assigning the "right" demographic of employee to the clients and keep the "wrong" ones far away from those meetings, as opposed to a straight-up hiring restriction.

I don't think GP was trying to justify the practice, but noting that this exists in domains like finance because the product is an image, not actual performance.

Most companies look for "cultural fits"? Isn't that a form of caste discrimination? People from similar social background have similar taste hence fits well culturally.Isn't that obvious?

If racial discrimination doesn't exist why Blacks are economically poor across in west?

I mean there are two effects:

1. Ongoing discrimination 2. Different starting points + law of large numbers.

If you start one racial group off in a country with property and let them acquire wealth for a few hundred years, then free another racial group from slavery with absolutely nothing - even after a long while those wealth differences will persist.

I agree completely. The Question is what is being done to erase that difference?

IMHO trying to find cultural fit is a form of ongoing discrimination[1] and it strengthens the effect of different starting points[2].

India is countering [2] by enforcing a 50% quota in education, Jobs, and politics. AFAIK West on the other hand is wishing it to vanish without doing anything concrete.

India is taking right steps in the right direction and I am hopeful this will vanish as generation born with caste concepts die off slowly.

It's odd - often when I talk with international people, they seem to be under the impression that affirmative action doesn't exist outside of their own country.

I was recently talking with someone in China who claimed that the Uighurs could not be oppressed because they are given advantages in hiring/education, and that America would never do the same for black people.

Suffice to say, the US does engage in extensive aff action in education and hiring (although neither are directly legally mandated).

Comparing treament of Uighers to caste situation in India is unfair.

Yes there is discrimination but India is fighting it on policy and social level. Reserving 50% in education and jobs is one such big step. India's constitution was written by a a Dalit. Many people from the held high offices. Current prime minister and president are from the same community.

> Suffice to say, the US does engage in extensive aff action in education and hiring (although neither are directly legally mandated).

Is it measured? If not than how you know?

> Comparing treament of Uighers to caste situation in India is unfair.

Absolutely, not my intention by my comment - more just recounting a similar phenomenon in a different discussion.

> India is fighting it on policy and social level

I'm not contesting that either! But of course there is still more work to be done.

> Is it measured? If not than how you know?

Affirmative action is quite well known in the United States. You can see the documents from the SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit, for instance, to see how the SAT score cutoff differs by race & ethnicity.

> You can see the documents from the SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit, for instance, to see how the SAT score cutoff differs by race & ethnicity.

Thanks I didn't knew that. Having said that Harvard and Stanford is last rung. Those who are able to reach those places are already prevailed I would argue. Is there similar affirmitive action in place on lower levels as well?

India has it across the board which help more IMHO. Some communities have used it so much that now debate within the lower sections have started that reservation should be taken away after 3 generations.[1]

[1] https://youtu.be/spm5k5IrRDw

Yes, it occurs across the board. Rather than asking me about it, just google "affirmative action in the US."

Given that 90% of people from India in SWE seem to be from higher caste (I don't really know the exact statistic but it is something like that), then it seems like the reservation is still needed.

Caste system is not that simple for example Jats are under reservation in one state but considered upper caste in adjacent state and gets no reservation.

Yes Reservation is still needed. India is big and people who got oppressed under colonial rule would take a few generations more to come up.

Bigger issue is exploitation of caste lines for politics.