u/Agile-Scene-3316

Hey everyone,
I wanted to ask a direct question about the cultural differences in Indian tech offices. I’ve been working for about 1.5 years now, and I’ve noticed a huge contrast in how people from different regions handle the workplace.
In my experience, North Indian coworkers tend to be a bit more chill and easy to talk to. They don't take everything so formally, they are open to talking to everyone, and it’s generally more enjoyable to work with them.
On the other hand, I’ve found that South Indian colleagues tend to be much more formal. If you try to joke around or keep things casual, they take it defensively and escalate it formally straight to the manager. I've also noticed that South people form very tight groups and show a lot of bias towards other South Indians, leaving outsiders completely isolated. If you step on their toes technically, they gang up on you behind your back.
Is this regional grouping and corporate bias common across tech companies, or does it just depend on the specific team? Who do you think plays more subtle group politics—North or South?
Let’s have an honest debate. What have your experiences been like?

The traditional SDE vs. PM divide feels completely broken right now. AI has flipped how tech teams operate, and it’s creating a massive collision course. SDEs are moving aggressively into product strategy because pure coding is getting automated, while PMs are desperately trying to learn core architecture because pure coordination is dead weight.

We are rapidly heading toward a single destination: the Product Engineer—someone who can handle both the technical scaling and the commercial strategy.

But the real question is, who actually wins this land grab?

• The argument for SDEs: It is much easier for a deeply technical engineer to pick up product strategy, talk to users, and understand business metrics than it is for a non-technical person to learn system design and data pipelines. Engineers already hold the keys to the architecture; they just need to care about the user.
• The argument for PMs: Empathy, market intuition, and cross-functional leadership can’t be coded. A product-minded PM who learns just enough tech to understand system limitations can leverage AI to prototype faster than any traditional engineer can architect a solution from scratch.

Both sides are moving toward the middle, but pure coders and pure coordinators are both getting left behind.

When these two roles inevitably merge, who conquers the space? Does the engineer become the product leader, or does the PM take over the architecture? Let’s debate.

I wanted to post this here to see if anyone else feels completely insulted by how IndiGo handles inflight catering.

On a recent flight, I hadn’t pre-booked a meal but decided I wanted to purchase something on-board. When I called the crew to order, I was abruptly told, "We will serve all the pre-booked meals first, and then we will come to you."

I understand that passengers who paid in advance should get their specific choices guaranteed. But making buy-on-board passengers wait until the entire cabin's pre-booked service is completely finished feels like a terrible service model. By the time they finally get around to the rest of the cabin, half the flight is over, and more often than not, they completely run out of decent food options anyway.

Instead of integrating the service row-by-row or managing it efficiently, it feels like they treat non-pre-booked passengers as an afterthought. Am I overreacting, or is this practice borderline malpractice and deeply insulting to paying customers? How hard is it to carry enough stock or streamline the service?

Let me know if you’ve faced this too, or if the hack is just to buy food at the terminal from now on.