A growing conversation around workplace diversity has surfaced at Google, whwere employees are voicing concerns over cultural homogeneity within teams, particularly in engineering and technical roles. One employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity on Team Blind, described a noticeable shift in team composition over recent years. “My manager is Indian, my skip-level manager is Indian, and even their manager is Indian,” the employee said. “My team is split between India and other regions, but nearly all my teammates are Indian, except for what seem like a few hiring anomalies.”
While emphasising that the concern is not about individuals or ethnicity, the employee shared feelings of cultural disconnect and a loss of the team diversity that once made collaboration enjoyable. “There was a time when our team had people from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds, it made the environment more vibrant, open, and fun. Now, I often feel like an outlier.” The employee also suggested that this dynamic has impacted their sense of inclusion and belonging at the company, and shared that they are currently planning to leave the organisation.
“There are only 2 Americans on my team”
The Internet swiftly reacted to the post. A user said, “In a world of woketards, it’s a rather avant garde perspective, but it doesn’t have to be.” Another noted, “You can still have fun with Indians.” Every fifth person in the world is Indian. Deal with it,” noted a user. A netizen claimed, “I am in California. All the employees in the company are Indian. The neighborhood I lived are all Indian. Sometimes I don’t know if I am in India or United States.”
“There are only 2 Americans on my team, the rest are all Indian. My pillar up to the VP is only 3% Americans. And I choose to use the term “Americans” bc i’m not hyper-focused on the team being white, I actually want to see legit diversity on our teams (race, ethnicity, gender, etc). I’m more concerned that we work for an American Company and make up a tiny fraction of the headcount. And it has absolutely nothing to do with capability/intelligence, and everything to do with ethnic empire building on the inside,” added a user.
A user claimed, “What is it with west’s obsession about having forced diversity? Like why does an engineering team or a company needs to be diverse over meritocracy? What purpose does diversity serve? Tiktok in China was built by 100% Chinese and it got adoption all over the world, so don’t say diversity is required for creating a global product. Few decades ago, US created many global brands with just Americans working for those companies.”