I *don’t believe* it should be discussed out in the open within a “for profit business”. Leadership should acknowledge the issue, state their direction clearly and end the conversation.
I have Indian colleagues and a one of them became a good friend. I asked him once or twice about castes and how it worked etc. He said it’s all bullshit and it didn’t matter and I felt like it was a topic he was felt awkward discussing so I made a mental note not to ask him about it.
I Googled around and found his surname was from basically the 2nd highest caste. A few years later a young Indian woman joined our company and I was very impressed by her.
She was confident, eloquent and seemed eager to make an impact. I told my friend something like: “man the newbie is here to kick ass isn’t she?! Loved how she spoke at that meeting”
To which he made the only comment on castes I’ve ever seen him make, something along the lines of: “She’s a brahmin bro, she thinks we all work for her”.
That’s when I knew it wasn’t “all bullshit”.
There’s a lot of disengaged Googlers specially in the traditional AdTech part of the business.
Career progression is very slow and the performance review process which has been in place for god knows how long was so damaging to individuals, on top of consuming an amazing amount of time 2x a year as people desperately tried to piece together “packages” proving they’re better than mediocre, that it’s been completely replaced with a new system.
My point being, there’s lots of people bored, feeling like they can’t “win” and with a high degree of uncertainty as to what metrics will have an impact on their career prospects or the company.
combine that with a culture of speaking your mind and potentially a feeling of superiority for being special enough to work a Google… you get some very disparaged but entitled people who I think consciously or not, are trying to denigrate the company.