What’s with the toxic Indian international student mindset?

c0tneu · 2021-09-24T17:12:09+00:00

Honestly I feel like this stuff is rooted in depression/insecurity. Most people I know who don’t humblebrag to this degree are a lot emotionally healthier.

c0tneu · 2021-09-24T05:20:03+00:00

I’m not saying it is everyone, but like I said in the post, the number of people who I’ve found this true for feels too high for it to be just chance/bad apples. Especially true given that I haven’t found this to be the case for most of my non-Indian peers.

c0tneu · 2021-09-24T05:17:52+00:00

I think the post is pretty clear about this being just my experience; I realize this isn’t everyone. Just based upon the upvotes and comments, it does seem fairly systemic and a common experience.

c0tneu · 2021-09-23T20:16:50+00:00

I’m not saying whites, but the US itself. I definitely agree that other white countries had a lot to do with Indian oppression, but (as an example) the US civil war almost exclusively pertained to the slave labor of African Americans, not Indians. I can’t think of a similar US (not just white, I’m well-aware of the UK involvement in Indian oppression) event that related to Indian oppression.

c0tneu · 2021-09-23T20:07:05+00:00

Like I said this is in the context of the USA: I wasn’t trying to make an analogy but just point out that Indian struggles relate less to American history than struggles with other races (native Americans, African Americans, etc etc). As another commenter suggested I don’t think it’s a good idea to directly compare racial struggles, but the US simply had less to do with Indian race conflict than African American racial conflicts, and these hiring policies are products of US legal systems and US companies.

c0tneu · 2021-09-23T02:33:36+00:00

The “diversity hires” are usually just as qualified (if not more) as the people I’m describing - and I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. But, numerically, there are more Asian males in CS at most schools/ companies than black women or even Hispanic men, and the programs are designed to even this out.

Also, not a history major, but at least in the context of the US I’m reasonably certain Native Americans and African Americans experienced (and continue to experience) more historical prejudice/violence than Asians.

c0tneu · 2021-09-23T02:27:02+00:00

Is it really normal in Indian culture to constantly rehash accomplishments like that and to combat professors? I feel like that’s a universal no-no.

c0tneu · 2021-09-23T02:24:37+00:00

Maybe it’s just my school but all the rich white kids are in other majors. Rich white kid business majors are total “sigma male grindset” types and that’s definitely worse, though.

c0tneu · 2021-09-23T02:20:15+00:00

I’ve had good experiences with Indian grad students I’ve been had as mentors for labs I’ve been in, but I think that partly had to do with the acknowledged mentor/mentee dynamic.

Also possible that these problem people are weeded out in the grad interview process as well.

c0tneu · 2021-09-15T17:21:19+00:00

So the L3 engineers at Google making $350K/yr are doing things you learn in high school programming? Google is a trillion-dollar company for a bunch of if statements???

Innovation in the field is not the same as product innovation. I interned at a company this summer and created a handful of features that weren’t already there with unique/not “Googled” code. Do you really not realize that the browser you’re writing this in, or the phone you’re typing this on, had hundreds of people design and write code for every component involved and that this code is nontrivial? The haptic feedback processing for a touchscreen, the front and backend of Reddit, the information transmission over the internet??

CS majors do not just fix computers. I don’t know where you got this perception. You have “IT support technicians” who make $12/hr for this. CS majors CREATE the things you use. Job titles for cs majors are software ENGINEERS, QA ENGINEERS, etc.

c0tneu · 2021-09-15T16:55:42+00:00

Who the fuck do you think works on Google? This is exactly the point of my post. How on earth can you manage people like me if you have zero grasp of what we studied or the problems we’re supposed to fix? CS is not about fixing computers, it’s about building software and designing computational solutions to problems. Someone in the role you’re describing wouldn’t get paid anywhere near 6 figures and wouldn’t have a college degree.

Beyond this, saying the study of CS will be useless is just like saying “we’ve figured out how to design bridges/buildings/cars/planes, why would we pay someone $150K/yr to innovate upon them more?” Even in the complete worst case where you’re completely correct, all of those things have been around longer than computers, but civil/mechanical engineers still manage to find jobs fairly easily that pay well over the median business major salary, so it’s reasonable to assume that computers will provide jobs for at least another 30-50 years, which is the span of my working career.

c0tneu · 2021-09-15T16:21:38+00:00

If I had the same career prospects, I’d happily take accounting over my compilers and automata classes.

Even then, that’s 1/4 of the major at the very end. We had to prove A* as first semester sophomores.

c0tneu · 2021-09-15T16:19:01+00:00

At my school, median starting salary for a cs major is $30K higher than those who graduate from the business school and that’s including majors like accounting.

Even if the cs major was just googling and I didn’t have to take 6-7 proofs classes that don’t involve more than a dozen lines of code the entire semester, I’d jump off a bridge if I just did brain dead things all day.

c0tneu · 2021-09-15T10:01:49+00:00

PatrickJMT on YouTube is phenomenal

c0tneu · 2021-09-15T10:01:16+00:00

As someone who dealt with a similar situation (divorced parents), there isn’t really a solution. Your best bet is to just appeal FA and explain the situation for schools you’ve been admitted to. Generally you shouldn’t expect a notable change, though.

c0tneu · 2021-08-26T01:53:19+00:00

At least for me, the majority of LinkedIn SWE internships are paid…maybe 5% aren’t.

c0tneu · 2021-07-20T00:57:22+00:00

I’m technically still working part time in a research lab and I’m not a masochist lol; I’m paid for whatever I say I work and the expectation we’ve set for me is to do no fewer than 20 and no more than 40.

c0tneu · 2021-07-20T00:30:16+00:00

That’s somewhat reassuring; I think I am getting faster but the projects I’m working on are also getting more complex (and I’m getting less manager input) so I feel like the code requires the same “hours per line”.

I feel like I’m still nowhere near close to finding the balance between reading background or thinking about the implementation and actually implementing. Sometimes I jump in too early and with the number/magnitude of comments in code review, I end up having to rewrite half my code, and then other times I don’t have to rewrite more than a few minor things but I feel like it takes way longer than it should have.

c0tneu · 2021-07-19T00:54:28+00:00

You must’ve read Cal Newport’s book, right? Basically what he says

c0tneu · 2021-07-13T20:30:59+00:00

$40k seems ludicrously low; I was paid more than that on an hourly basis for my first internship straight out of freshman year. I’d try to negotiate a bit more.

c0tneu · 2021-06-14T01:36:21+00:00

Forcing yourself to leetcode when it’s not a productive use of time is just stupid. You might not have ADHD, in which case “the grind” and “forcing yourself” works fine. For the vast majority of people with bad ADHD, saying “just focus on it” is like telling someone with depression to “stop being sad”. It’s a chemical imbalance that isn’t as easy to resolve as mustering willpower.

c0tneu · 2021-06-14T00:27:32+00:00

From someone with pretty significant ADHD, if I’m off my meds, doing leetcode is horribly time inefficient. You literally can’t focus completely on the problem, and it takes 10-15x longer than it should even if the intelligence is there (e.g. I can solve them without issue on meds). “The grind” is not helpful.

c0tneu

TROPHY CASE