I passed the initial screening interview and earned the opportunity for the big onsite interview, a series of three interviews. I prepared extensively. During each interview, I was assessed by two different individuals. What I noticed was that in each pair of interviewers, there was always a representative from one South Asian country (always the same country) and another person who did not belong to that nationality. In every interview, the interviewer from this nationality was consistently the "bad cop," asking extremely difficult and convoluted questions, not typically encountered in a regular job. Their demeanor was not always polite, which added significant pressure and stress during the interview. The other interviewer, who did not belong to this nationality, was consistently the "good cop." They were more polite, calmer, and their questions were more reasonable.

During my conversation with the recruiter after all the interviews, I realized that the feedback provided by employees of this specific nationality was predominantly negative. On several occasions, I noticed this negativity seemed unwarranted, as if they were fabricating criticisms.

My fourth interview was with the hiring manager, who also belonged to this particular nationality. Therefore, the majority of my interviewers for this role were from that one country, though they now reside in the US.

I have a significant question: Dear Cisco! I understand your commitment to promoting diversity. However, this situation is far from it. I believe everyone should be evaluated fairly, without the creation of artificially negative comments.

Furthermore, this group at Cisco extensively utilizes statistical machine learning, yet they appear to violate fundamental statistical principles. When sampling new data points from a large population (hiring new employees from the entire pool of professionals), if your existing employees conducting interviews belong to one distinct group and are excessively strict with individuals outside that group, the selection of new employees will be severely biased. This is not diversity; it is the opposite of diversity. I have never experienced such blatant bias as I did during my interviews for this role.

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