Comment #98: Singaporeans Have Figured Out How Indian Work?

Hi, this is X writing from Singapore and thanks a lot for taking the time to compile this survey.

Singapore is undergoing a similar situation as the H1B situation in the US as Singapore had signed a free trade agreement with India (also know as CECA). CECA has been a hot topic in every general election in Singapore and many Singaporeans have used the H1B situation in the US as a case study of what might happen in Singapore if the situation is not rectified. The government had accused the local Singaporeans of being racist and xenophobic even though Singapore’s work force is almost 40% foreigners (the definition of foreigner excludes those who had gotten a long term pass in Singapore aka Permanent Resident (PR) or received a Singaporean passport).

It is no surprise that the support for the ruling party had declined sharply from 80%+ to 60% in a span of 2 election cycles. The decline in support for the ruling party is cushioned by the growth in economy in Singapore and Singaporeans are willing to turn a blind eye towards this issue. However, this issue has been raised up again and when times are bad (i.e Covid) and the government has been trying very hard to please the local population as the once perceived untouchable ruling party has a chance to lose to the opposition in the next election. In fact, the most recent statistic by the Singapore government shows a sharp spike in the proportion of employment passes (EP) going to India Indians (approximately 3x increase YoY) and it has led to a huge public outcry on social media about the ongoing discrimination in the last decade or so in Singapore.

A Cultural Upbringing of Cheating

With regards to my own experience, I do generally agree with all the previous comments and I strongly believe it is due to their cultural upbringing in India. I do work with international colleagues from US, Europe, China and India and it seems that the toxic behavior is very much only prevalent in Indians who grew up in India and not so much for Indians who had spent at least 5/6 years studying abroad e.g. Australia. It seems to me that the Indians knew that their own country/government is corrupted and they have this mindset of “everyone is cheating and you will lose if you don’t cheat as well”.

Indian Insecurities

In addition, despite what the Indians talk about, it seems like they are extremely insecure and have an extremely fragile ego and they are currently being egged on by their current ultra-nationalist government (who shares the same characteristic of over promising and under delivering).

Why Indians Say More Indians Should be Imported

It seems to me that all of them are programmed with the same excuses of 1) Indian-Americans are the richest Asians in the US 2) Many of the CEOs of tech companies are Indians 3) Indians invented abacus 4) Half of NASA’s workforce is Indians 5) We should hire more Indians as they will make you rich / China’s growth rate is slowing down etc.

How Indians Target Non Indians

From my own personally experience, it seems like the Indians will try to get rid of the non-Indian Asians first before getting rid of the Caucasians. Some of the things which I have seen is based on 3 different stages of presence of Indians in the company.

Stage 1 of an Indian Takeover

Stage 1 is where you have 1 or 2 India Indians as your colleagues. They will be forced to work with non-Indians and they will try to get a sense of who is loyal to them / who are their potential competitors. Some of the things which they might do at this stage is talking to the management behind their competitors’ back about how lucky they are and how it is so hard for Indians to have the same opportunity and how Indians would have done so much better if they had the same opportunity. They will also use this opportunity to potentially get information and sabotage their competitors by convincing the management to get them more resources / divert resources away from their competitors / providing false information purposely. In addition, they will try to appear to be “proactive” and overpromise the management on deliverables (that is essentially done by the non-Indians) and tell the management about how they (Indians) want to be a “leader” just like them.

Stage 2 of an Indian Takeover

Stage 2 is where the management is somehow convinced that the Indians are capable and they are being promoted. At this stage, the Indians will be more blatant in their discrimination against non-Indians. They will not hesitate to speak about it openly rather than behind their competitor’s back e.g. I have heard comments about how they talk about US is dangerous, London is old, Paris smells like piss and Singapore is shit in front of everyone (despite them being willing to migrate to any of these places in a heartbeat if given the choice). They will also comment openly about how the non Indian Asians have ""poor"" accents as well. The Indians will also try to convince the management that they are willing to “assist” in the interviews and it will always result in the interviews being rigged / interview questions being leaked as a “sample Q&A” before the interviews. Essentially, the interview process will keep on dragging until another Indian gets the job.

Bribing One's Way to a Job

My previous firm was looking for a strategy person and we have more than 20 resumes from ivy league MBA schools alone – we ended up with a random guy from India who happens to be a friend of the India Indians in my office (i.e bribed his way through to get a job. I believe the market rate is around 2-3 months of salary). At this point of time, most non-Indians will a little bit common sense can tell where the company is going and you start to see them leaving before shit hits the fan.

Stage 3 of an Indian Takeover

Stage 3 is where the India Indians become the majority of the office of an international firm. The hard truth is they think they are the best and will never ever accept any non-Indians. At the point of time, majority of the non-Indians would have left / get fired for random reasons such as poor fit. Those who stay behind are usually the Caucasians / family guys who would tolerate such bull shit for the sake of putting food on the table for their family. The general business would have suffered tremendously by now as a lot of these Indians are not qualified / not the most efficient way of deploying resources (e.g. 3 or 4 Indians to do the same job as a non-Indian). The Indians will proceed to tell all their friends that the non-Indians left as they are “not good in their jobs” and the management has chosen them instead. In addition, they will convince their all their Indian colleagues to post fake reviews on Glassdoor in hide what they are doing.

Where Has the Discrimination by Indians Been Brought Up?

This issue of discrimination against non-Indians has been brought up to the government by the Japanese, Koreans, Europeans, Americans and almost everyone else and the government tries to brush it off as just xenophobia and racism. There is rarely any similar complaints against the other Asians as well (including mainland Chinese surprisingly). From the perspective of a non-Indian Asian, I think the biggest reason why people are willing to tolerate this bull shit is due to them believing that India is “the future” and that couldn’t any further from the truth when it is so much smaller than both US and China (the original forecast was overtaking US in GDP by 2015). In fact, I think SEA is growing rapidly and a lot of offshore IT jobs are going to both Eastern Europe and Philippines as well. "