The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know multiple sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.
I'm skeptical. Dad, who was a double-agent in the 2nd WW, ostensibly on the American side, used to say w scathing sarcasm, "Americans think culture is a hamburger."
The veneration of mediocrity has been going on a lot longer than the '90s.
A country that elects an avowed pussy-grabber deserves what it gets. Now that I'm playing the stock market, I'm looking forward to Trump lowering or DOING AWAY WITH!! the tax on capital gains.
MAGA! MAGA! MAGGOT!!
LET's GO!!!
WAY TO HUSTLE!!
Let 'em eat cake.
My parents did nothing with me. I was left to run amok and that's what I did. I was a smart little kid. I was bored all the time in school and got in trouble a lot and no one thought to have me tested for a gifted program and no one thought to work with me and give me opportunities in life.
ReplyDeleteI wonder where I would be now if I would have had parents that were more invested. Instead, I had a cowboy dad and a mom that was so miserable she continuously worked and was never home. She was brilliant. Why couldn't she have recognized that in me? Little by little, I just fell into the "you're nothin' special" trap, I and I believed it.
This is Rie commenting.. It won't offer me to choose my profile for some reason.