I'm also an upper caste male in Silicon Valley. While I largely agree with you in that most people state-side haven't heard of it happening here, that doesn't mean it doesn't subconsciously exist.
The main thing I think the article got wrong is this:
> they're often clever attempts to find out something very specific
I don't think they are "clever" attempts. People aren't that clever, in general. It's very possible that people are just used to asking these very normal questions out of habit (e.g. "are you vegetarian" is a perfectly normal question to ask before going to lunch with someone, to factor that in your suggestions of places to eat). It's just that they may be subconsciously deriving further biases based on the answers instead of taking the answers at face value. If, for example, someone not being vegetarian was originally just a benign question to go out to lunch together, but later subconsciously causes the manager to not give them that promotion, that would be discrimination, and I can't say for sure that that doesn't happen.
The main thing I think the article got wrong is this:
> they're often clever attempts to find out something very specific
I don't think they are "clever" attempts. People aren't that clever, in general. It's very possible that people are just used to asking these very normal questions out of habit (e.g. "are you vegetarian" is a perfectly normal question to ask before going to lunch with someone, to factor that in your suggestions of places to eat). It's just that they may be subconsciously deriving further biases based on the answers instead of taking the answers at face value. If, for example, someone not being vegetarian was originally just a benign question to go out to lunch together, but later subconsciously causes the manager to not give them that promotion, that would be discrimination, and I can't say for sure that that doesn't happen.