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For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

(www.bloomberg.com)
677 points saeedjabbar | 11 comments | 16 Jun 20 15:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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ibudiallo ◴[16 Jun 20 22:05 UTC] No.23544856[source]▶
I usually choose to believe in "the honest mistake". It happens, two people walk in, one of them is the CEO, you assume it is the one on the right. And then when you realize it is a mistake, you apologize. We are only human.

But when it happens over and over and over, you can't help but feel frustrated. You realize that people natural instinct is to think you are the subordinate. One second your are on stage at Techcrunch (I was in 2017), where you have clearly introduced yourself. You get off-stage, they greet your colleague and ask him the questions as if he was on stage.

I was often in the interview room waiting for my interviewer, only to have him show up, and tell me I must be in the wrong room. A simple "Hey are you XYZ?" could have avoided this frustration.

I've written an article about my experience working as a black developer, I'll post it here in the near future. You wouldn't believe how lonely it is. In my team of 150 people, we were two black people.

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1. forgot_user1234 ◴[17 Jun 20 06:31 UTC] No.23548422[source]▶
Why doesn't this ever happen to indian ceos. Sundar, Satya, ibm's ceo, or bazillion other companies
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2. churchillracist ◴[17 Jun 20 07:37 UTC] No.23548840[source]▶
It happened to Sundar. There was an incident at a tech conference where he was walking through the booths and some people started asking for selfies with him. The "booth guy" who had condescending look grabbed Sundar's nametag slightly tugging on his neck without requesting his permission to see who he was. People were shocked at how rude the physical contact was. More ought to have been made of that. That booth guy should have been at least reprimanded for doing that to anyone, let alone Google's CEO.
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3. forgot_user1234 ◴[17 Jun 20 08:59 UTC] No.23549315[source]▶
I haven't heard about this incident BUT it still doesn't shows why there are so many indian CEOs.

I really doubt that it's the norm.

Look at the numbers not the anecdotes.

There are disproportionate number of Indian CEOs. It would have been impossible with racism and what not.

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4. churchillracist ◴[17 Jun 20 10:05 UTC] No.23549695{3}[source]▶
Multiple of these incidents have happened to Sundar.

""What are you, press?," asked the Samsung representative. After being let in - Pichai was inquisitive about Samsung's new smart fridge. The profile reveals similar incidents happened multiple times over at CES."

"Even after looking at the name on his badge, the rep had no clue that this curious, friendly inquisitor was one of the most powerful people in technology. "

https://magazine.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/spring-summer-2020...

> It would have been impossible with racism and what not. It would have been impossible with racism and what not.

Please explain the reasoning of why it would have been "impossible".

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5. scrollaway ◴[17 Jun 20 13:13 UTC] No.23550934{4}[source]▶
It sounds like a lot of these are just people being clueless who Sundar is, not necessarily biased to thinking "he's Indian, so he can't be one of the most powerful people in tech".

I don't know Sundar well enough to recognize him in the streets or at a press event if I haven't spoken to him first. Same goes for a lot of CEOs of various ethnicities.

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6. churchillracist ◴[17 Jun 20 14:12 UTC] No.23551613{5}[source]▶
Is it normal to have someone you've never met pull your lanyard like that without asking for permission first?
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7. scrollaway ◴[17 Jun 20 14:42 UTC] No.23552001{6}[source]▶
No, that guy just sounds like a dick. It doesn't matter where you're from.
8. Throwsfnabf04 ◴[17 Jun 20 15:08 UTC] No.23552339{3}[source]▶
STOP. This is so racist, you generalized all Indians into once category. Kashmiri's who faced genocide? What about the Punjabis for faced a genocide?

You don't realize it, but all indians in one category is a white thing, created by WHITE people.

So stop with "so many Indians", it's not equivalent.

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9. dang ◴[17 Jun 20 18:23 UTC] No.23554822{3}[source]▶
That's a non sequitur and flamebait. Please don't post like that to HN. It's only going to lead to worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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10. cutemonster ◴[17 Jun 20 22:49 UTC] No.23557736{4}[source]▶
(Now sounds to me as if you're yourself generalizing about others based on their skin color and grouping them all together)
11. forgot_user1234 ◴[23 Jun 20 07:15 UTC] No.23610782{4}[source]▶
Hey Dang,

In guidelines it says "have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents"

tbh, I am really curious about the situation.

Why do Indian-Americans have a disproportionate numbers of High paying jobs i.e founders, CEO, CTO etc?

Why do indian-americans have a median salary of 120k?

What are they doing right?

I could have framed it in a better way but the question still stands.

Thanks!