13 ms·

What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?

321 points by gamble 15y ago

JasonMoyMN79 15y ago
This is what I never understood about Asian over-achieving kids. My high school in Minnesota was full of them. They were trying so hard to be perfect, forced by their parents to take violin and piano lessons, score perfect SAT scores, get into Harvard and MIT. But what happened to them? I've been to my high school reunions, and the truth is, none of them turned out to be anything remarkable. None of them are particularly wealthy or famous. They all got regular jobs and are slaving away in corporate America. Not that that's a bad thing. It's just not that different from anyone else.
- wizawuza 15y ago
  perhaps, but how many of them are poor? Not defending anyone here, just playing devil's advocate
  - tyng 15y ago
    I can tell you from my experience that, parents of the current 2nd gen Asian-American children were mostly very poor, parents of the current 1st gen Asian-American kids (who just immigrated in recent years) are mostly wealthier than the average family in their home country (some are equivalent to a middle class American family, some are super rich)
- slackerIII 15y ago
  The metric the families probably care about is how the childrens' careers compare to the parents. Dirt poor immigrant to corporate America in one generation sounds pretty good to me.
  - christopherslee 15y ago
    I think to really get at this you need to understand that eastern culture is not about glorification of the individual like western culture is. Couple that with the above comment, I believe that a large majority of immigrant parents, who came to the US with a few hundred dollars and barely speaking english, want their children to live stress free lives. They took a lot of risk coming to the US, and worked harder than most of us will probably know. We are the benefactors of their hard work. If you had next to nothing for resources and don't have old family wealth, how would you try to help your children live a better life? I don't think you'd go teach them the Lean Startup method. You'd probably use what you had available to you. Go to school. And since you're there, you might as well make the most of it. One thing you can make your children do is study hard. Don't understand something? repeat it as many times as necessary to memorize it. I don't think necessarily it's about what the "best" way, but rather the most reliable way. I would probably guess that those who worked really hard in school, got outstanding grades, and went to good schools, they are all moderately successful, if not at least comfortable. Maybe very few hit a home run, but very very very few struck out.
    - jinushaun 15y ago
      This needs to be repeated. Asian parents in America aren't pushing their kids to be millionaires. They push them to guarantee they have a good life at a comfortable white collar job. That is the goal--not starting the next Facebook or being an all star athlete. Remember, these immigrant parents typically came to America with nothing working low-paying blue collar jobs.
    - rubashov 15y ago
      Let's play silly pseudo evolutionary psychology. Asians come from long over-populated, labor intensive cultures. Rice paddy agriculture is one seriously backbreaking way to earn a living. The Chinese world also has a millennia old exam culture. I really think the Asian grind mentality is a product of thousands of years of history. There were different pressures in East Asia. White nations historically maintained much lower population densities, leaving things less competitive. Whites have pursued more capital intensive, less labor intensive ways to earn a living (e.g. massive thousand year old stone barns for dairy cows and cheese making). So asians come here to this white nation with the built-in grind mentality. It doesn't work. What I don't understand is why our overlords are so hell bent on turning this nation in to an overpopulated, hyper-competitive place where everyone has to grind. Stop letting people in, please.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- baguasquirrel 15y ago
  There is truly and honestly a crab mentality going on, and it's because of guys like this. Personally, I'm getting tired of all this raging against the stereotype. What if some of us actually like math? What if some of us actually like coding all day? I often get the impression that past school, it is no longer acceptable to overachieve. Corporate America will do just fine. Is the Tiger Mom thing a problem? Yes. But this is not the answer.
  - noname123 15y ago
    The issue is when your parents and peers judge you based on your math and earning/technical abilities not because they actually enjoy intrinsically math or coding - but for what they stand for symbolically in the Asian American community, tokens you collect so you could get into MIT or get a six-figure job in Corporate America. Late-night hacking marathons is very different from cramming SAT test exams because of the external pressure imposed by your parents to get their approval. Hacking up a machine learning project is very different from slaving away at your cubicle coding up an accounting module because you need to meet a benchmark to make a certain amount of money to be deemed "normal."
    - realitygrill 15y ago
      Not to mention wider society - it's difficult to countersignal that you are intrinsically driven.
- svrocks 15y ago
  As someone who fits that profile with scary accuracy, I can maybe elaborate on the phenomenon. Asian-American children grow up with much external motivation, which gives them a sense of purpose and work ethic. The problem is, external motivation alone can only help in accomplishing mechanical goals that require little creativity or thought and have clear cut evaluation systems. This is not a problem for taking tests, banging out classical piano pieces with no expression, gaming the college admission system, or editing financial models. But of course after the shelter of academia is left behind, we find ourselves in a world that has no strict system of evaluation. This is where Asian-Americans seem to struggle. I know I do. What makes a trend take off? What does success even mean anymore? I think this is what makes Asian-Americans grasp for job options that are able to provide external motivation and reward which manifests itself in a more conservative attitude.
- brandall10 15y ago
  Remarkable success tends to have some correlation with taking chances. Doing phenomenally well in school might coincide with a risk averse approach toward life.
- VladRussian 15y ago
  >It's just not that different from anyone else. from the article: "They earn a higher median family income than any other ethnic group in America, including whites. " that isn't so small of a result considering that corporate environment doesn't automatically translate better educational achievements into higher salary. Or does it?
- muhfuhkuh 15y ago
  "I've been to my high school reunions, and the truth is, none of them turned out to be anything remarkable." 80% of Asian kids in America go on to higher (+12) education. 53% degree attainment (other races are less than 30%). Comprising less than 10% of the population, Asian populations at the Ivy League are ~25%+ (nearly or more than 30% at Stanford and MIT). Asians in America make more on average than all other races. Asians seem to be attaining alot in a country where they are less than 10% of the population and objective metrics of achievement are even possible. There could be something about the "bamboo ceiling", but Asians are doing objectively better, on average, than the average white, black, or hispanic person.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    Yea, if you measure success in terms of going to Ivy League schools. Hate to break it to you though, attending an Ivy League does not equate to success in life, nor does it always result in success. The whole point of the article is, what happens AFTER they get that degree?
    - muhfuhkuh 15y ago
      I answered that, they earn more money on average than whites, blacks, and hispanics. What other markers are there "in life" than earning money to measure success? It's not like they're just adrift in an ocean of nothingness delivering lunches, whipping lattes and mowing the corporate office lawn. They are achieving more in academics and cash than other races. What's more to "success in life" than education and cash? I guess it's not the achievement, it's the expectation. Asians achieve more, yet are looked upon as still inferior by others arbitrarily moving the yardstick from "make more money" to "be CEO". So, when Asians do get there (either by founding their own companies or moving into it) it'll be "yeah, but can they dunk a basket or sing like Britney". I think I detect a higher expectation from simply being born a certain way. I guess simply being Asian is alot to live up to.
      - sliverstorm 15y ago
        I think it is only fair to warn you, you should probably not pursue a degree in mind-reading. You are not very good at it. What actually happened was my eyes missed "Asians in America make more on average than all other races", so what I read was a comment purely about academic successes equating to life success. Anyway, I think you need to quantify just how much more, on average, if you are going to use that as the metric that proves the academic success really brings success in life.
aphexairlines 15y ago
> “If you’re East Asian, you need to attend a top-tier university to land a good high-paying gig. Even if you land that good high-paying gig, the white guy with the pedigree from a mediocre state university will somehow move ahead of you in the ranks simply because he’s white.” That's false. The mediocre guy moves ahead of white geeks too. The problem, as with white geeks, is that Asian-Americans disproportionately aren't learning how to bs, how to promote themselves and their products, how to become salesmen. See Jobs vs Wozniak, etc.
- mquander 15y ago
  You cherry-picked one quote, but he spent the entire rest of the piece making your exact point.
  - rubashov 15y ago
    > insidious nature of the Bamboo Ceiling [...] the discrepancy in these numbers is a matter of unconscious bias. The author spends plenty of time trying to claim there is some sort of racial discrimination going on. Much more plausible is that less likable people aren't getting ahead, and it just so happens that Asians tend not to be likable, or have "leadership potential" if you prefer.
    - mquander 15y ago
      No, he spends time discussing a variety of explanations, the least of which is any kind of conscious racism. If you expand the part that you elided, it says: Part of the insidious nature of the Bamboo Ceiling is that it does not seem to be caused by overt racism...More likely, the discrepancy in these numbers is a matter of unconscious bias. Nobody would affirm the proposition that tall men are intrinsically better leaders, for instance. And yet while only 15 percent of the male population is at least six feet tall, 58 percent of all corporate CEOs are. Similarly, nobody would say that Asian people are unfit to be leaders. But subjects in a recently published psychological experiment consistently rated hypothetical employees with Caucasian-sounding names higher in leadership potential than identical ones with Asian names. To become a leader requires taking personal initiative and thinking about how an organization can work differently. It also requires networking, self-promotion, and self-assertion. It’s racist to think that any given Asian individual is unlikely to be creative or risk-taking. It’s simple cultural observation to say that a group whose education has historically focused on rote memorization and “pumping the iron of math” is, on aggregate, unlikely to yield many people inclined to challenge authority or break with inherited ways of doing things. Then the author spends the rest of his time identifying specfic kinds of social skills and leadership qualities, like confidence, risk-taking, and shamelessness, and contrasting how Asians and Westerners frequently approach the development of those skills.
hartror 15y ago
I am always slightly astounded by people who are completely cut off from their cultural roots. Likely because I am a white Australian guy with English parents and am envious of those around me with (to me) more interesting and varied cultures.
- hasenj 15y ago
  Once in high school, I asked a few Asian looking guys about where they're from, they said "We're Canadians". I went "wtf?" in my head, and instead asked them about where their parents are from. What astonished me is how the seemed to "reject" their roots. Or at least that's how I interpreted it. I would seriously hate it if my children rejected their origins. EDIT: To clarify, I'm not white myself.
  - barrkel 15y ago
    As an Irishman, taking my "roots" for granted, I and my countrymen find Irish Americans visiting quite amusing in how much emphasis they put into this "identity-seeking" behaviour. Perhaps your astonishment is only reflecting a lack, or insecurity, in this area, of yourself.
    - bane 15y ago
      As an American with some Irish roots, I know someday I too will make the pilgrimage to the motherland...please don't laugh too hard as I look for pubs with resident fiddlers and set dancers.
    - marshray 15y ago
      You guys over there get a bit invested in your identity too, you know. :-) I think for most Americans of European descent, it's a mildly-romantic curiosity at most. Keep in mind, to us in the US a "really old" building is 100 years old. Visiting almost anywhere in Europe is like going to an ancient history museum. When we have great-grandparents that came from other places, they often came when they were young, or for whatever reasons didn't want to talk much about what they left behind. But on some other side of the family there may be names, letters, and pictures going back hundreds of years. So yeah, for a lot of families it does seem like big parts of the binary tree are unbalanced.
kin 15y ago
This was a very interesting and long read as an Asian American Tiger child myself. There are things that I agree with and things that I disagree with. There are a lot of numbers tossed around in the article but definitely not enough numbers. I can say with confidence that the reason behind Asian Americans not saturating the CEO population in fortune 500 companies is not related to how we were raised. Off the top of my head, gather the age and experience of current fortune 500 CEO's, gather the age of the current generation of Tiger children, and then you can see where I'm going from there. One thing is for sure, the author doesn't know what it's like to be a Tiger child and his interviews feel very one-sided. There's a lot more to this story.
- ikono 15y ago
  >I can say with confidence that the reason behind Asian Americans not saturating the CEO population in fortune 500 companies is not related to how we were raised. Don't take this the wrong way but why? The age argument, if true, simply says that the current numbers don't mean anything. It doesn't say anything about why the future is going to be different though. I also think the story is one sided in terms of portraying all "Tiger children" as being socially inept but I do think it did a relatively good job of presenting the complexity. It was certainly a better article than I was expecting having read the title here on HN. No doubt it played on a stereotype but stereotypes do tend to be an exaggeration of the truth rather than complete fabrications.
  - kin 15y ago
    You're right it doesn't say anything about the future. But my point was simply that he drew conclusions from numbers that shouldn't mean anything yet.
- zasz 15y ago
  What makes you say he doesn't know what it's like to be a tiger cub, and what more would you say there is to the story?
  - kin 15y ago
antidaily 15y ago
The last 45 minutes of 'Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle'?
brendano 15y ago
This is why Asians are underrepresented in tech startups --- wrong set of cultural values and inclinations. (I am Asian)
- maxwin 15y ago
  Though I don't have data to back up my point, my impression is that there are actually a lot of Asian tech founders. (a well known example is Yahoo Co-founder). If you consider the population ratio to tech founder ratio, asians are probably doing a better job than some other non-white groups. Of course, if you compare the over-presentation of asians in elite universities with their presentation in startups,there could be a lot more asian tech founders. (i'm asian too)
  - muhfuhkuh 15y ago
    A preponderance of the founders and/or principle engineering teams in the most popular and promising web properties are Asian. Naveen Salvaduri at Foursquare, Steve Chen at Youtube, all three main engineers at Quora, Bill Nguyen at Color, even Euwyn Poon at YC S10 Opzi.
    - abi 15y ago
      "All three main engineers at Quora" is an extremely inaccurate statement.
      - muhfuhkuh 15y ago
        http://www.quora.com/about/team http://www.quora.com/about/team Kevin Der, Tracy Chou, Albert Sheu, and Shreyes Seshasai are all listed directly below the Co-founders on the aforementioned page. How is that an inaccurate statement? Because I said three instead of four?
        Locke1689 15y ago
        There's no indication that that list is in direct order of importance at Quora. To assume so is a little rude, at best.
jinushaun 15y ago
The fundamental fallacy of this article is that being the founder of the next Facebook or CEO of a large Fortune 100 company equals success. These Asian parents simply want their children to do better than they did when they came to the US, which pretty much means a comfortable white collar job over a back-breaking blue collar job.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  But what is doing better? As an Asian immigrant myself I have no shortage of people in my circles who are absolutely miserable being upper-middle class white collar workers. Asian upbringings do not optimize for happiness, nor even physical well-being. It seeks to maximize income - and it does quite well at that. We're taught from a young age that we must work hard in school. Why? So we can test well and make it into a good high school (it works that way in much of Asia). Then we must study hard - to make it into a good college. Then we must study ever harder - to excel and be considered for a well-paying job. Then the progression stops, and the advice runs out. All your life the entire raison d'etre for you has been The Next Step, but now there is none. You've done it, you've hit the end, trumpets are supposed to blare, and... and... And then what? You have an entire generation of people who pushed, prodded, and hauled their entire existence to work hard so they may have a good life - but in that process they were never taught what a good life was. I found myself in that position going through college. I sacrificed socialization in exchange for raw academic performance, and found myself unable to connect with the people around me. I was making six figures out of college, but had nothing to spend it on, save gadgetry and fast machines - tools that allowed to bury myself in a world where I wasn't a mostly socially-retarded 20-something that had stunted social skills, no artistic or creative inclinations, no hobbies, and a circle consisting mostly of equally lost young professionals like myself. It's taken every ounce of effort and time (and a not insignificant sum of money) to start digging myself out of this hole - and I suppose my warning to people is to never dig that hole in the first place. If you're going to waste away your teens just so you can waste away your twenties catching up to the rest of the world, don't.
  - wattsbaat 15y ago
    > Then the progression stops, and the advice runs out. All your life the entire raison d'etre for you has been The Next Step, but now there is none. You've done it, you've hit the end, trumpets are supposed to blare, and... and... And then what? You must have either seen this or you don't need to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
wallflower 15y ago
A friend from high school - he got top grades, got into a great school, got a MD and a PhD, married a beautiful, smart wife, became a surgeon, and had a healthy son. After all of this, he went back to his grandfather overseas (who was very old) and told him, "I did everything you told me to do".
- DrJ 15y ago
  so he didn't want to be a Doctor? He didn't want a wife? who was smart? beautiful? He didn't want to be wealthy? He didn't want a family? I don't get what you are trying to say here... Maybe you are trying to say that he wasn't happy? If you get all of that and you aren't happy, what will make you happy? being unemployed? being famous? maybe infamous?
  - pyre 15y ago
    With the emphasis on 'did,' I would assume that the grandfather was still acting like he hadn't done enough and, "I did everything that you asked me to," is the rebuttal to that. Sort of like this scary Asian dad that my wife encountered on the subway once (yelling at his ~7 year old kid): This is not perfect! It must be perfect! Not 80%. Not 90%. That's not perfect! Must be perfect!
    - wallflower 15y ago
      The gist was that his grandfather had pushed him very, very hard to study and work very, very hard from a very early age. And he was finally able to tell his grandfather that he could no longer tell him what to do/order him to work hard - he had done it all - he had done everything that the grandfather had pushed him to do. It is a sense of closure, more than anything but still very significant. My friend had ulcers in high school, if that is any indication of how hard he studied.
      - phishphood 15y ago
        Don't mean to hijack the thread but ulcers have nothing to do with how hard you study or how stressfull your life is; it is a misconception that really needs to be put to rest. Most ulcers are caused by h. pylori infection (and sometimes by over-medication in childrens cases). Your friend most likely ate unshashed fruits/vegetables overseas, or had access to someone who did
spiritomb 15y ago
It sounds like they are only meta-gaming. They aren't doing anything because they are genuinely inclined to do so. It is hard to show heart and passion when your only ambition is to attain a level in society for the sake of levelling. It's called -> you're trying too hard! Weird that Asians behave like this given the wealth of zen philosophy in the east : ‘A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.’ ~Lao Tzu
- long 15y ago
  Lao Tzu was a Taoist. "zen" refers to Zen Buddhism. The two are completely different things.
  - gruseom 15y ago
    Indeed they are. As I commented on here recently, it's difficult to imagine Lao Tzu beating disciples with sticks. Nevertheless the GP raises the interesting question of why the Asian stereotype is to "attain a level in society for the sake of levelling" when a wealth of Asian religious traditions teach just the opposite. (Taoism and Buddhism aren't so different as not to have this in common.) I suspect part of the answer is that these traditions are not that widely practiced.
    - spiritomb 15y ago
      thank you gruseom. Afterall, little-z zen was meant to cast a wide net - not any specific school of thought. Tzu's quote is zennish, yes? Addtionally, it should be said that Asians are not the only folks guilty of this - they're just the best at the meta-game (e.g. preferring to learn about playing the system over learning about the material itself).
mavelikara 15y ago
Off-topic, but when mainstream American press uses the word "Asian", why does it typically mean the yellow half of Asia?
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  What do you consider to be the non-yellow half?
  - barkingcat 15y ago
    maybe brown skinned 1.15 billion people? Or the blue eyed, blond haired northern Asians who live in northern China (who are ethnically Chinese) or in Russia? Those are asians too.
  - w1ntermute 15y ago
    He's referring to South Asia. The answer to his question is that "Asian" implies "East Asian" in American English because the majority of Asian Americans are East Asian. In the UK, "Asian" implies "South Asian" (for the same reason).
  - 54hh 15y ago
    India, Russia, etc.?
  - weicool 15y ago
    Russia?
  - underwater 15y ago
    Americans and Australians only refer to people from east Asia as "asian". I've noticed those from the UK call people from the Indian Subcontinent "asians". I never noticed how they reference people from East Asia.
  - Pooter 15y ago
    Large swaths of Russia, Central Asia, and most of the Indian Subcontinent?
  - 15y ago
Aloisius 15y ago
So make social and leadership skills part of the entrance exam to elite high schools/colleges and watch every one of these cram schools add soft skills to their lesson plans. I'd also suggest adding ethics, but that's another conversation...
- forkandwait 15y ago
  Start with toastmasters, for chrissake. It isn't rocket science.
  - bane 15y ago
    This guy's blog goes into this in some depth http://leeskoreablog.blogspot.com/ http://leeskoreablog.blogspot.com/
- potatolicious 15y ago
  > "and watch every one of these cram schools add soft skills to their lesson plans" I'd be interested in knowing how. You can't learn soft skills out of a book.
  - Aloisius 15y ago
    Tell that to the authors of the thousands of self-help books that line your local bookstore, many of which are dedicated to soft skills. And you wouldn't necessarily have to learn it out of a book. The posted article cited several examples of programs to teach people soft skills.
  - jerf 15y ago
    Did you get to one of the parts of the article where they talked about the classes to learn soft skills? It's a few pages in. It is true they don't learn it out of a book, though, it's much more like a tutoring session, followed by a practical.
  - forkandwait 15y ago
    How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Don't tell anyone, but get yourself a copy and read it. Twice.
bane 15y ago
They party a bit, then go back to being normal average everyday people -- except some slightly higher percentage lands slightly higher paying jobs at the start with a decreasing pay differential over time with their peers.
Jun8 15y ago
This is one of the best descriptions of minority life in the US (or anywhere else) that I've read in quite a while. I wish similar pieces would be written by and embraced by African-Americans. Sadly whenever such thoughts are expressed, they are met with negativity.
- wan23 15y ago
  Just like how at the beginning of this piece the author talks about how different his own experience is from what he is describing, many African Americans who grow up to be writers (or read HN for that matter) have had a different experience than the majority.
- michaelf 15y ago
  Are you really suggesting that similar pieces haven't been written by African Americans? To my mind, the first several paragraphs were practically an homage to Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man." And Yang mentions Baldwin by name. It seems to me that when those authors were writing (and earlier poets like Langston Hughes), the problems of assimilation and alienation were both more apparent (as in "WTF!!!") and at the same time more vague (as in "WTF???"). It demanded the attention of artists. It was the same era that included the most creative period in the development of Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement itself. I wonder if Asian-Americans find themselves at something of a similar juncture. Ultimately, and unfortunately, I think the direction of African-American cultural identity ended up following in the direction Yang has set for himself. Yang says: "The first step toward self-reform is to admit your deficiencies. Though my early adulthood has been a protracted education in them, I do not admit mine. I’m fine. It’s the rest of you who have a problem. Fuck all y’all." He's obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek here, since earlier he wondered if his "defiance is just delusional, self-glorifying bullshit that artists have always told themselves to compensate for their poverty and powerlessness." I'm sure he's (ironically) comparing himself to African Americans (otherwise, why the black vernacular "Fuck all y'all"?). Something he touches on but doesn't really flesh-out is the problem with defining yourself in the negative -- that is, defining yourself in terms of things you won't do because you've already established a social identity where you aren't that thing. When he says "I love this hard and unyielding part of myself more than any other reward the world has to offer a newly brightened and ingratiating demeanor, and I will bear any costs associated with it," I hear the the constant refrain in the African-American community to "keep it real", where what this really means is "don't range widely." And incidentally, this is also recognized by African-Americans -- see Dave Chappelle's sketch "When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong." (btw, I'm an African American software engineer, so issues of race and culture are unavoidably fascinating to me)
stretchwithme 15y ago
what happened to all those racist underachievers?
- Deestan 15y ago
  They went into politics.
davidwparker 15y ago
1 page print version, for convenience: http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/ http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/asian-americans-2011-...
BornInTheUSSR 15y ago
I have a feeling that this article resonates with the majority of Americans who, for whatever reason, feel themselves among the minority
bluekite2000 15y ago
How I did it: 1. quit my corporate software engineering job (it was slowly killing my soul) 2. went surfing in maui for 2 weeks then bali for a month. when there was no waves, there were parties on Kuta beach 3. opened an English bookstore in Southeast Asia(highly risky considering I knew nothing about the local market or government censorship) Everyone I knew thought I was crazy. But I DIDNT care! For the first time in my life I was doing something meaningful, to me and to society. 4. met tons of babes (locals, other asian babes, europeans, americans) by going out every single night for 1 year straight (averaging 4 5 clubs per nite). Plus did tons of traveling around asia, south america and north america. Trust me you are forced to socialize when EVERYONE at the hostel was happy go lucky young backpackers. And the bookstore also attracted lots of girls (which was NOT the reason why I opened the store :) 5. Now I m back in Silicon Valley and guess what it is still the same (nice guys toiling away in front of their laptops while life, and hot babes, are passing them by) And I smile to myself. It is me who has changed!
- roel_v 15y ago
  How old were you when you did this? It sound like you were beyond the typical early 20's backpacker age - weren't you the weird old guy around? (I feel like this in many situations already, I'm 31).
  - bluekite2000 15y ago
    I was 27. I quit after 3 years out of grad school. But you are right. I dont think its just age. It is also the differences in the backgrounds. You just need to adapt and mirror the other person. It is easier said than done but my social skills improved a lot because of that.
  - erikpukinskis 15y ago
    If you're relatively socially aware you should be able to tell the difference between being the weird older guy who is nonetheless awesome to have around, and the creepy older guy who can't tell when someone wants him to leave them alone.
bo_Olean 15y ago
“Listen,” he told Hong, “I’m going to be honest with you. My generation came to this country because we wanted better for you kids. We did the best we could, leaving our homes and going to graduate school not speaking much English. If you take this job, you are just going to hit the same ceiling we did. They just see me as an Asian Ph.D., never management potential. You are going to get a job offer, but don’t take it. Your generation has to go farther than we did, otherwise we did everything for nothing.”
ajkessler 15y ago
I found the last two sentences to be the most telling part of the whole piece: >>There is something salutary in that proud defiance. And though the debate she sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone’s happiness, and to dare to be interesting.<< Degrees and certifications certainly don't make you interesting. But neither does wallowing in your own self-pity while yelling "fuck the system". Passion makes people interesting. It doesn't matter if you're passionate about making pork buns or writing code. Huang (pork bun guy) sure sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than the author does. The best way to find your passion is to get out there and do things. Set goals. Accomplish them. If you focus on being miserable and espousing things like "fuck humility and hard work", how the hell are you ever going to be passionate about anything. And, so, how the hell are you ever going to be interesting? Yang makes some decent points about Asian culture, but his idea that he's somehow the squeaky wheel or the loudest duck is laughable. He's the miserable whiny guy who everyone ignores, who decidedly isn't interesting. Guys like Tony Hsieh, the guys who don't shut up until they accomplish their goals, they're the only ones who ever get any grease.
joshhart 15y ago
"Even if you land that good high-paying gig, the white guy with the pedigree from a mediocre state university will somehow move ahead of you in the ranks simply because he’s white." Going to Harvard doesn't and shouldn't guarantee that you'll be a CEO at 55. Proving yourself in the real world is what matters and that skill set is different than the one needed for a high GPA.
Hisoka 15y ago
I think the author has the "grass is greener on the other side" mentality. Guess what? Those white kids who slacked off at high school, and didn't care about getting the A+? Those kids also have issues in life - instead of wondering why they overachieved, they're wondering what the heck to do with their life, and why they didn't focus on their future in school.
code_duck 15y ago
Probably they get hired at Google, and overachieve there.
rayiner 15y ago
It's become pretty popular these days to devalue asian immigrant culture, but most of the commentary misses the point. The intro piece to the article states exactly the facts that "Tiger Moms" are concerned about: Asians are more educated and make more money on average. Asian parenting is about downside management. Yeah your kid might not end up a top CEO, but he's also less likely to end up as a plumber. There are worse things than ending up in middle management at IBM making six figures... Also, as someone who went through the whole "asian education treadmill", I'll make two observations: 1) The point about Stuyvesant is dead-on. My high school was also a public magnet school and the culture was the same way: the people at the top were both pretty and smart. However, the take-away isn't really what what the author makes it out to be. The popular white kids weren't gunning any less hard than the asian kids. They socialized then went home and studied just as hard. The problem isn't that asian parents emphasize hard work in lieu of socialization, it's that they just emphasize hard work, largely b/c coming from a different culture socialization isn't something they can really help their kids with. 2) The PWC example is also dead on, but again, the takeaway is different than what the other concludes. In a law, accounting, financial firm, you don't get pigeon-holed for being a hard worker. The white guy who makes partner (or managing director or whatever) works every bit as hard as the asian guy, but plays the politics on top of that. Being "too good for bitch work" is a sure way to get yourself fired at a law firm or an investment bank. At the same time, schmoozing with a partner to get better assignments is absolutely not at odds with working hard and being the guy who can get things done. These articles consistently manage to misunderstand both asian culture and american culture. Succeeding in America does not require rejecting asian work ethic. Americans work as hard as anyone. That high school football star has a dad who pushes him to practice just as hard as any "Tiger Mom" would. Succeeding in America does require a forthrightness and social perceptiveness that many asians choose not to develop, but that is absolutely not at odds with an asian upbringing.
alexsb92 15y ago
There is a previous post on HN, which talked about how rich kids have already won the career game. There are quite a few similar points raised in that article, and even a few answers to questions raised in this article. Reading both will definitely add to the perspective. "How Rich Kids Have Already Won The Career Game" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2296550 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2296550

321 points by gamble 15y ago

This is what I never understood about Asian over-achieving kids. My high school in Minnesota was full of them. They were trying so hard to be perfect, forced by their parents to take violin and piano lessons, score perfect SAT scores, get into Harvard and MIT. But what happened to them? I've been to my high school reunions, and the truth is, none of them turned out to be anything remarkable. None of them are particularly wealthy or famous. They all got regular jobs and are slaving away in corporate America. Not that that's a bad thing. It's just not that different from anyone else.

wizawuza 15y ago
perhaps, but how many of them are poor? Not defending anyone here, just playing devil's advocate
- tyng 15y ago
  I can tell you from my experience that, parents of the current 2nd gen Asian-American children were mostly very poor, parents of the current 1st gen Asian-American kids (who just immigrated in recent years) are mostly wealthier than the average family in their home country (some are equivalent to a middle class American family, some are super rich)
slackerIII 15y ago
The metric the families probably care about is how the childrens' careers compare to the parents. Dirt poor immigrant to corporate America in one generation sounds pretty good to me.
- christopherslee 15y ago
  I think to really get at this you need to understand that eastern culture is not about glorification of the individual like western culture is. Couple that with the above comment, I believe that a large majority of immigrant parents, who came to the US with a few hundred dollars and barely speaking english, want their children to live stress free lives. They took a lot of risk coming to the US, and worked harder than most of us will probably know. We are the benefactors of their hard work. If you had next to nothing for resources and don't have old family wealth, how would you try to help your children live a better life? I don't think you'd go teach them the Lean Startup method. You'd probably use what you had available to you. Go to school. And since you're there, you might as well make the most of it. One thing you can make your children do is study hard. Don't understand something? repeat it as many times as necessary to memorize it. I don't think necessarily it's about what the "best" way, but rather the most reliable way. I would probably guess that those who worked really hard in school, got outstanding grades, and went to good schools, they are all moderately successful, if not at least comfortable. Maybe very few hit a home run, but very very very few struck out.
  - jinushaun 15y ago
    This needs to be repeated. Asian parents in America aren't pushing their kids to be millionaires. They push them to guarantee they have a good life at a comfortable white collar job. That is the goal--not starting the next Facebook or being an all star athlete. Remember, these immigrant parents typically came to America with nothing working low-paying blue collar jobs.
  - rubashov 15y ago
    Let's play silly pseudo evolutionary psychology. Asians come from long over-populated, labor intensive cultures. Rice paddy agriculture is one seriously backbreaking way to earn a living. The Chinese world also has a millennia old exam culture. I really think the Asian grind mentality is a product of thousands of years of history. There were different pressures in East Asia. White nations historically maintained much lower population densities, leaving things less competitive. Whites have pursued more capital intensive, less labor intensive ways to earn a living (e.g. massive thousand year old stone barns for dairy cows and cheese making). So asians come here to this white nation with the built-in grind mentality. It doesn't work. What I don't understand is why our overlords are so hell bent on turning this nation in to an overpopulated, hyper-competitive place where everyone has to grind. Stop letting people in, please.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
baguasquirrel 15y ago
There is truly and honestly a crab mentality going on, and it's because of guys like this. Personally, I'm getting tired of all this raging against the stereotype. What if some of us actually like math? What if some of us actually like coding all day? I often get the impression that past school, it is no longer acceptable to overachieve. Corporate America will do just fine. Is the Tiger Mom thing a problem? Yes. But this is not the answer.
- noname123 15y ago
  The issue is when your parents and peers judge you based on your math and earning/technical abilities not because they actually enjoy intrinsically math or coding - but for what they stand for symbolically in the Asian American community, tokens you collect so you could get into MIT or get a six-figure job in Corporate America. Late-night hacking marathons is very different from cramming SAT test exams because of the external pressure imposed by your parents to get their approval. Hacking up a machine learning project is very different from slaving away at your cubicle coding up an accounting module because you need to meet a benchmark to make a certain amount of money to be deemed "normal."
  - realitygrill 15y ago
    Not to mention wider society - it's difficult to countersignal that you are intrinsically driven.
svrocks 15y ago
As someone who fits that profile with scary accuracy, I can maybe elaborate on the phenomenon. Asian-American children grow up with much external motivation, which gives them a sense of purpose and work ethic. The problem is, external motivation alone can only help in accomplishing mechanical goals that require little creativity or thought and have clear cut evaluation systems. This is not a problem for taking tests, banging out classical piano pieces with no expression, gaming the college admission system, or editing financial models. But of course after the shelter of academia is left behind, we find ourselves in a world that has no strict system of evaluation. This is where Asian-Americans seem to struggle. I know I do. What makes a trend take off? What does success even mean anymore? I think this is what makes Asian-Americans grasp for job options that are able to provide external motivation and reward which manifests itself in a more conservative attitude.
brandall10 15y ago
Remarkable success tends to have some correlation with taking chances. Doing phenomenally well in school might coincide with a risk averse approach toward life.
VladRussian 15y ago
>It's just not that different from anyone else. from the article: "They earn a higher median family income than any other ethnic group in America, including whites. " that isn't so small of a result considering that corporate environment doesn't automatically translate better educational achievements into higher salary. Or does it?
muhfuhkuh 15y ago
"I've been to my high school reunions, and the truth is, none of them turned out to be anything remarkable." 80% of Asian kids in America go on to higher (+12) education. 53% degree attainment (other races are less than 30%). Comprising less than 10% of the population, Asian populations at the Ivy League are ~25%+ (nearly or more than 30% at Stanford and MIT). Asians in America make more on average than all other races. Asians seem to be attaining alot in a country where they are less than 10% of the population and objective metrics of achievement are even possible. There could be something about the "bamboo ceiling", but Asians are doing objectively better, on average, than the average white, black, or hispanic person.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  Yea, if you measure success in terms of going to Ivy League schools. Hate to break it to you though, attending an Ivy League does not equate to success in life, nor does it always result in success. The whole point of the article is, what happens AFTER they get that degree?
  - muhfuhkuh 15y ago
    I answered that, they earn more money on average than whites, blacks, and hispanics. What other markers are there "in life" than earning money to measure success? It's not like they're just adrift in an ocean of nothingness delivering lunches, whipping lattes and mowing the corporate office lawn. They are achieving more in academics and cash than other races. What's more to "success in life" than education and cash? I guess it's not the achievement, it's the expectation. Asians achieve more, yet are looked upon as still inferior by others arbitrarily moving the yardstick from "make more money" to "be CEO". So, when Asians do get there (either by founding their own companies or moving into it) it'll be "yeah, but can they dunk a basket or sing like Britney". I think I detect a higher expectation from simply being born a certain way. I guess simply being Asian is alot to live up to.
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      I think it is only fair to warn you, you should probably not pursue a degree in mind-reading. You are not very good at it. What actually happened was my eyes missed "Asians in America make more on average than all other races", so what I read was a comment purely about academic successes equating to life success. Anyway, I think you need to quantify just how much more, on average, if you are going to use that as the metric that proves the academic success really brings success in life.

aphexairlines 15y ago

> “If you’re East Asian, you need to attend a top-tier university to land a good high-paying gig. Even if you land that good high-paying gig, the white guy with the pedigree from a mediocre state university will somehow move ahead of you in the ranks simply because he’s white.” That's false. The mediocre guy moves ahead of white geeks too. The problem, as with white geeks, is that Asian-Americans disproportionately aren't learning how to bs, how to promote themselves and their products, how to become salesmen. See Jobs vs Wozniak, etc.

mquander 15y ago
You cherry-picked one quote, but he spent the entire rest of the piece making your exact point.
- rubashov 15y ago
  > insidious nature of the Bamboo Ceiling [...] the discrepancy in these numbers is a matter of unconscious bias. The author spends plenty of time trying to claim there is some sort of racial discrimination going on. Much more plausible is that less likable people aren't getting ahead, and it just so happens that Asians tend not to be likable, or have "leadership potential" if you prefer.
  - mquander 15y ago
    No, he spends time discussing a variety of explanations, the least of which is any kind of conscious racism. If you expand the part that you elided, it says: Part of the insidious nature of the Bamboo Ceiling is that it does not seem to be caused by overt racism...More likely, the discrepancy in these numbers is a matter of unconscious bias. Nobody would affirm the proposition that tall men are intrinsically better leaders, for instance. And yet while only 15 percent of the male population is at least six feet tall, 58 percent of all corporate CEOs are. Similarly, nobody would say that Asian people are unfit to be leaders. But subjects in a recently published psychological experiment consistently rated hypothetical employees with Caucasian-sounding names higher in leadership potential than identical ones with Asian names. To become a leader requires taking personal initiative and thinking about how an organization can work differently. It also requires networking, self-promotion, and self-assertion. It’s racist to think that any given Asian individual is unlikely to be creative or risk-taking. It’s simple cultural observation to say that a group whose education has historically focused on rote memorization and “pumping the iron of math” is, on aggregate, unlikely to yield many people inclined to challenge authority or break with inherited ways of doing things. Then the author spends the rest of his time identifying specfic kinds of social skills and leadership qualities, like confidence, risk-taking, and shamelessness, and contrasting how Asians and Westerners frequently approach the development of those skills.

hartror 15y ago

I am always slightly astounded by people who are completely cut off from their cultural roots. Likely because I am a white Australian guy with English parents and am envious of those around me with (to me) more interesting and varied cultures.

hasenj 15y ago
Once in high school, I asked a few Asian looking guys about where they're from, they said "We're Canadians". I went "wtf?" in my head, and instead asked them about where their parents are from. What astonished me is how the seemed to "reject" their roots. Or at least that's how I interpreted it. I would seriously hate it if my children rejected their origins. EDIT: To clarify, I'm not white myself.
- barrkel 15y ago
  As an Irishman, taking my "roots" for granted, I and my countrymen find Irish Americans visiting quite amusing in how much emphasis they put into this "identity-seeking" behaviour. Perhaps your astonishment is only reflecting a lack, or insecurity, in this area, of yourself.
  - bane 15y ago
    As an American with some Irish roots, I know someday I too will make the pilgrimage to the motherland...please don't laugh too hard as I look for pubs with resident fiddlers and set dancers.
  - marshray 15y ago
    You guys over there get a bit invested in your identity too, you know. :-) I think for most Americans of European descent, it's a mildly-romantic curiosity at most. Keep in mind, to us in the US a "really old" building is 100 years old. Visiting almost anywhere in Europe is like going to an ancient history museum. When we have great-grandparents that came from other places, they often came when they were young, or for whatever reasons didn't want to talk much about what they left behind. But on some other side of the family there may be names, letters, and pictures going back hundreds of years. So yeah, for a lot of families it does seem like big parts of the binary tree are unbalanced.

kin 15y ago

This was a very interesting and long read as an Asian American Tiger child myself. There are things that I agree with and things that I disagree with. There are a lot of numbers tossed around in the article but definitely not enough numbers. I can say with confidence that the reason behind Asian Americans not saturating the CEO population in fortune 500 companies is not related to how we were raised. Off the top of my head, gather the age and experience of current fortune 500 CEO's, gather the age of the current generation of Tiger children, and then you can see where I'm going from there. One thing is for sure, the author doesn't know what it's like to be a Tiger child and his interviews feel very one-sided. There's a lot more to this story.

ikono 15y ago
>I can say with confidence that the reason behind Asian Americans not saturating the CEO population in fortune 500 companies is not related to how we were raised. Don't take this the wrong way but why? The age argument, if true, simply says that the current numbers don't mean anything. It doesn't say anything about why the future is going to be different though. I also think the story is one sided in terms of portraying all "Tiger children" as being socially inept but I do think it did a relatively good job of presenting the complexity. It was certainly a better article than I was expecting having read the title here on HN. No doubt it played on a stereotype but stereotypes do tend to be an exaggeration of the truth rather than complete fabrications.
- kin 15y ago
  You're right it doesn't say anything about the future. But my point was simply that he drew conclusions from numbers that shouldn't mean anything yet.
zasz 15y ago
What makes you say he doesn't know what it's like to be a tiger cub, and what more would you say there is to the story?
- kin 15y ago

antidaily 15y ago

The last 45 minutes of 'Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle'?

brendano 15y ago

This is why Asians are underrepresented in tech startups --- wrong set of cultural values and inclinations. (I am Asian)

maxwin 15y ago
Though I don't have data to back up my point, my impression is that there are actually a lot of Asian tech founders. (a well known example is Yahoo Co-founder). If you consider the population ratio to tech founder ratio, asians are probably doing a better job than some other non-white groups. Of course, if you compare the over-presentation of asians in elite universities with their presentation in startups,there could be a lot more asian tech founders. (i'm asian too)
- muhfuhkuh 15y ago
  A preponderance of the founders and/or principle engineering teams in the most popular and promising web properties are Asian. Naveen Salvaduri at Foursquare, Steve Chen at Youtube, all three main engineers at Quora, Bill Nguyen at Color, even Euwyn Poon at YC S10 Opzi.
  - abi 15y ago
    "All three main engineers at Quora" is an extremely inaccurate statement.
    - muhfuhkuh 15y ago
      http://www.quora.com/about/team http://www.quora.com/about/team Kevin Der, Tracy Chou, Albert Sheu, and Shreyes Seshasai are all listed directly below the Co-founders on the aforementioned page. How is that an inaccurate statement? Because I said three instead of four?
      - Locke1689 15y ago
        There's no indication that that list is in direct order of importance at Quora. To assume so is a little rude, at best.

jinushaun 15y ago

The fundamental fallacy of this article is that being the founder of the next Facebook or CEO of a large Fortune 100 company equals success. These Asian parents simply want their children to do better than they did when they came to the US, which pretty much means a comfortable white collar job over a back-breaking blue collar job.

potatolicious 15y ago
But what is doing better? As an Asian immigrant myself I have no shortage of people in my circles who are absolutely miserable being upper-middle class white collar workers. Asian upbringings do not optimize for happiness, nor even physical well-being. It seeks to maximize income - and it does quite well at that. We're taught from a young age that we must work hard in school. Why? So we can test well and make it into a good high school (it works that way in much of Asia). Then we must study hard - to make it into a good college. Then we must study ever harder - to excel and be considered for a well-paying job. Then the progression stops, and the advice runs out. All your life the entire raison d'etre for you has been The Next Step, but now there is none. You've done it, you've hit the end, trumpets are supposed to blare, and... and... And then what? You have an entire generation of people who pushed, prodded, and hauled their entire existence to work hard so they may have a good life - but in that process they were never taught what a good life was. I found myself in that position going through college. I sacrificed socialization in exchange for raw academic performance, and found myself unable to connect with the people around me. I was making six figures out of college, but had nothing to spend it on, save gadgetry and fast machines - tools that allowed to bury myself in a world where I wasn't a mostly socially-retarded 20-something that had stunted social skills, no artistic or creative inclinations, no hobbies, and a circle consisting mostly of equally lost young professionals like myself. It's taken every ounce of effort and time (and a not insignificant sum of money) to start digging myself out of this hole - and I suppose my warning to people is to never dig that hole in the first place. If you're going to waste away your teens just so you can waste away your twenties catching up to the rest of the world, don't.
- wattsbaat 15y ago
  > Then the progression stops, and the advice runs out. All your life the entire raison d'etre for you has been The Next Step, but now there is none. You've done it, you've hit the end, trumpets are supposed to blare, and... and... And then what? You must have either seen this or you don't need to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

wallflower 15y ago

A friend from high school - he got top grades, got into a great school, got a MD and a PhD, married a beautiful, smart wife, became a surgeon, and had a healthy son. After all of this, he went back to his grandfather overseas (who was very old) and told him, "I did everything you told me to do".

DrJ 15y ago
so he didn't want to be a Doctor? He didn't want a wife? who was smart? beautiful? He didn't want to be wealthy? He didn't want a family? I don't get what you are trying to say here... Maybe you are trying to say that he wasn't happy? If you get all of that and you aren't happy, what will make you happy? being unemployed? being famous? maybe infamous?
- pyre 15y ago
  With the emphasis on 'did,' I would assume that the grandfather was still acting like he hadn't done enough and, "I did everything that you asked me to," is the rebuttal to that. Sort of like this scary Asian dad that my wife encountered on the subway once (yelling at his ~7 year old kid): This is not perfect! It must be perfect! Not 80%. Not 90%. That's not perfect! Must be perfect!
  - wallflower 15y ago
    The gist was that his grandfather had pushed him very, very hard to study and work very, very hard from a very early age. And he was finally able to tell his grandfather that he could no longer tell him what to do/order him to work hard - he had done it all - he had done everything that the grandfather had pushed him to do. It is a sense of closure, more than anything but still very significant. My friend had ulcers in high school, if that is any indication of how hard he studied.
    - phishphood 15y ago
      Don't mean to hijack the thread but ulcers have nothing to do with how hard you study or how stressfull your life is; it is a misconception that really needs to be put to rest. Most ulcers are caused by h. pylori infection (and sometimes by over-medication in childrens cases). Your friend most likely ate unshashed fruits/vegetables overseas, or had access to someone who did

spiritomb 15y ago

It sounds like they are only meta-gaming. They aren't doing anything because they are genuinely inclined to do so. It is hard to show heart and passion when your only ambition is to attain a level in society for the sake of levelling. It's called -> you're trying too hard! Weird that Asians behave like this given the wealth of zen philosophy in the east : ‘A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.’ ~Lao Tzu

long 15y ago
Lao Tzu was a Taoist. "zen" refers to Zen Buddhism. The two are completely different things.
- gruseom 15y ago
  Indeed they are. As I commented on here recently, it's difficult to imagine Lao Tzu beating disciples with sticks. Nevertheless the GP raises the interesting question of why the Asian stereotype is to "attain a level in society for the sake of levelling" when a wealth of Asian religious traditions teach just the opposite. (Taoism and Buddhism aren't so different as not to have this in common.) I suspect part of the answer is that these traditions are not that widely practiced.
  - spiritomb 15y ago
    thank you gruseom. Afterall, little-z zen was meant to cast a wide net - not any specific school of thought. Tzu's quote is zennish, yes? Addtionally, it should be said that Asians are not the only folks guilty of this - they're just the best at the meta-game (e.g. preferring to learn about playing the system over learning about the material itself).

mavelikara 15y ago

Off-topic, but when mainstream American press uses the word "Asian", why does it typically mean the yellow half of Asia?

sliverstorm 15y ago
What do you consider to be the non-yellow half?
- barkingcat 15y ago
  maybe brown skinned 1.15 billion people? Or the blue eyed, blond haired northern Asians who live in northern China (who are ethnically Chinese) or in Russia? Those are asians too.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  He's referring to South Asia. The answer to his question is that "Asian" implies "East Asian" in American English because the majority of Asian Americans are East Asian. In the UK, "Asian" implies "South Asian" (for the same reason).
- 54hh 15y ago
  India, Russia, etc.?
- weicool 15y ago
  Russia?
- underwater 15y ago
  Americans and Australians only refer to people from east Asia as "asian". I've noticed those from the UK call people from the Indian Subcontinent "asians". I never noticed how they reference people from East Asia.
- Pooter 15y ago
  Large swaths of Russia, Central Asia, and most of the Indian Subcontinent?
- 15y ago

Aloisius 15y ago

So make social and leadership skills part of the entrance exam to elite high schools/colleges and watch every one of these cram schools add soft skills to their lesson plans. I'd also suggest adding ethics, but that's another conversation...

forkandwait 15y ago
Start with toastmasters, for chrissake. It isn't rocket science.
- bane 15y ago
  This guy's blog goes into this in some depth http://leeskoreablog.blogspot.com/ http://leeskoreablog.blogspot.com/
potatolicious 15y ago
> "and watch every one of these cram schools add soft skills to their lesson plans" I'd be interested in knowing how. You can't learn soft skills out of a book.
- Aloisius 15y ago
  Tell that to the authors of the thousands of self-help books that line your local bookstore, many of which are dedicated to soft skills. And you wouldn't necessarily have to learn it out of a book. The posted article cited several examples of programs to teach people soft skills.
- jerf 15y ago
  Did you get to one of the parts of the article where they talked about the classes to learn soft skills? It's a few pages in. It is true they don't learn it out of a book, though, it's much more like a tutoring session, followed by a practical.
- forkandwait 15y ago
  How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Don't tell anyone, but get yourself a copy and read it. Twice.

bane 15y ago

They party a bit, then go back to being normal average everyday people -- except some slightly higher percentage lands slightly higher paying jobs at the start with a decreasing pay differential over time with their peers.

Jun8 15y ago

This is one of the best descriptions of minority life in the US (or anywhere else) that I've read in quite a while. I wish similar pieces would be written by and embraced by African-Americans. Sadly whenever such thoughts are expressed, they are met with negativity.

wan23 15y ago
Just like how at the beginning of this piece the author talks about how different his own experience is from what he is describing, many African Americans who grow up to be writers (or read HN for that matter) have had a different experience than the majority.
michaelf 15y ago
Are you really suggesting that similar pieces haven't been written by African Americans? To my mind, the first several paragraphs were practically an homage to Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man." And Yang mentions Baldwin by name. It seems to me that when those authors were writing (and earlier poets like Langston Hughes), the problems of assimilation and alienation were both more apparent (as in "WTF!!!") and at the same time more vague (as in "WTF???"). It demanded the attention of artists. It was the same era that included the most creative period in the development of Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement itself. I wonder if Asian-Americans find themselves at something of a similar juncture. Ultimately, and unfortunately, I think the direction of African-American cultural identity ended up following in the direction Yang has set for himself. Yang says: "The first step toward self-reform is to admit your deficiencies. Though my early adulthood has been a protracted education in them, I do not admit mine. I’m fine. It’s the rest of you who have a problem. Fuck all y’all." He's obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek here, since earlier he wondered if his "defiance is just delusional, self-glorifying bullshit that artists have always told themselves to compensate for their poverty and powerlessness." I'm sure he's (ironically) comparing himself to African Americans (otherwise, why the black vernacular "Fuck all y'all"?). Something he touches on but doesn't really flesh-out is the problem with defining yourself in the negative -- that is, defining yourself in terms of things you won't do because you've already established a social identity where you aren't that thing. When he says "I love this hard and unyielding part of myself more than any other reward the world has to offer a newly brightened and ingratiating demeanor, and I will bear any costs associated with it," I hear the the constant refrain in the African-American community to "keep it real", where what this really means is "don't range widely." And incidentally, this is also recognized by African-Americans -- see Dave Chappelle's sketch "When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong." (btw, I'm an African American software engineer, so issues of race and culture are unavoidably fascinating to me)

stretchwithme 15y ago

what happened to all those racist underachievers?

Deestan 15y ago
They went into politics.

davidwparker 15y ago

1 page print version, for convenience: http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/ http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/asian-americans-2011-...

BornInTheUSSR 15y ago

I have a feeling that this article resonates with the majority of Americans who, for whatever reason, feel themselves among the minority

bluekite2000 15y ago

How I did it: 1. quit my corporate software engineering job (it was slowly killing my soul) 2. went surfing in maui for 2 weeks then bali for a month. when there was no waves, there were parties on Kuta beach 3. opened an English bookstore in Southeast Asia(highly risky considering I knew nothing about the local market or government censorship) Everyone I knew thought I was crazy. But I DIDNT care! For the first time in my life I was doing something meaningful, to me and to society. 4. met tons of babes (locals, other asian babes, europeans, americans) by going out every single night for 1 year straight (averaging 4 5 clubs per nite). Plus did tons of traveling around asia, south america and north america. Trust me you are forced to socialize when EVERYONE at the hostel was happy go lucky young backpackers. And the bookstore also attracted lots of girls (which was NOT the reason why I opened the store :) 5. Now I m back in Silicon Valley and guess what it is still the same (nice guys toiling away in front of their laptops while life, and hot babes, are passing them by) And I smile to myself. It is me who has changed!

roel_v 15y ago
How old were you when you did this? It sound like you were beyond the typical early 20's backpacker age - weren't you the weird old guy around? (I feel like this in many situations already, I'm 31).
- bluekite2000 15y ago
  I was 27. I quit after 3 years out of grad school. But you are right. I dont think its just age. It is also the differences in the backgrounds. You just need to adapt and mirror the other person. It is easier said than done but my social skills improved a lot because of that.
- erikpukinskis 15y ago
  If you're relatively socially aware you should be able to tell the difference between being the weird older guy who is nonetheless awesome to have around, and the creepy older guy who can't tell when someone wants him to leave them alone.

bo_Olean 15y ago

“Listen,” he told Hong, “I’m going to be honest with you. My generation came to this country because we wanted better for you kids. We did the best we could, leaving our homes and going to graduate school not speaking much English. If you take this job, you are just going to hit the same ceiling we did. They just see me as an Asian Ph.D., never management potential. You are going to get a job offer, but don’t take it. Your generation has to go farther than we did, otherwise we did everything for nothing.”

ajkessler 15y ago

I found the last two sentences to be the most telling part of the whole piece: >>There is something salutary in that proud defiance. And though the debate she sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone’s happiness, and to dare to be interesting.<< Degrees and certifications certainly don't make you interesting. But neither does wallowing in your own self-pity while yelling "fuck the system". Passion makes people interesting. It doesn't matter if you're passionate about making pork buns or writing code. Huang (pork bun guy) sure sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than the author does. The best way to find your passion is to get out there and do things. Set goals. Accomplish them. If you focus on being miserable and espousing things like "fuck humility and hard work", how the hell are you ever going to be passionate about anything. And, so, how the hell are you ever going to be interesting? Yang makes some decent points about Asian culture, but his idea that he's somehow the squeaky wheel or the loudest duck is laughable. He's the miserable whiny guy who everyone ignores, who decidedly isn't interesting. Guys like Tony Hsieh, the guys who don't shut up until they accomplish their goals, they're the only ones who ever get any grease.

joshhart 15y ago

"Even if you land that good high-paying gig, the white guy with the pedigree from a mediocre state university will somehow move ahead of you in the ranks simply because he’s white." Going to Harvard doesn't and shouldn't guarantee that you'll be a CEO at 55. Proving yourself in the real world is what matters and that skill set is different than the one needed for a high GPA.

Hisoka 15y ago

I think the author has the "grass is greener on the other side" mentality. Guess what? Those white kids who slacked off at high school, and didn't care about getting the A+? Those kids also have issues in life - instead of wondering why they overachieved, they're wondering what the heck to do with their life, and why they didn't focus on their future in school.

code_duck 15y ago

Probably they get hired at Google, and overachieve there.

rayiner 15y ago

It's become pretty popular these days to devalue asian immigrant culture, but most of the commentary misses the point. The intro piece to the article states exactly the facts that "Tiger Moms" are concerned about: Asians are more educated and make more money on average. Asian parenting is about downside management. Yeah your kid might not end up a top CEO, but he's also less likely to end up as a plumber. There are worse things than ending up in middle management at IBM making six figures... Also, as someone who went through the whole "asian education treadmill", I'll make two observations: 1) The point about Stuyvesant is dead-on. My high school was also a public magnet school and the culture was the same way: the people at the top were both pretty and smart. However, the take-away isn't really what what the author makes it out to be. The popular white kids weren't gunning any less hard than the asian kids. They socialized then went home and studied just as hard. The problem isn't that asian parents emphasize hard work in lieu of socialization, it's that they just emphasize hard work, largely b/c coming from a different culture socialization isn't something they can really help their kids with. 2) The PWC example is also dead on, but again, the takeaway is different than what the other concludes. In a law, accounting, financial firm, you don't get pigeon-holed for being a hard worker. The white guy who makes partner (or managing director or whatever) works every bit as hard as the asian guy, but plays the politics on top of that. Being "too good for bitch work" is a sure way to get yourself fired at a law firm or an investment bank. At the same time, schmoozing with a partner to get better assignments is absolutely not at odds with working hard and being the guy who can get things done. These articles consistently manage to misunderstand both asian culture and american culture. Succeeding in America does not require rejecting asian work ethic. Americans work as hard as anyone. That high school football star has a dad who pushes him to practice just as hard as any "Tiger Mom" would. Succeeding in America does require a forthrightness and social perceptiveness that many asians choose not to develop, but that is absolutely not at odds with an asian upbringing.

alexsb92 15y ago

There is a previous post on HN, which talked about how rich kids have already won the career game. There are quite a few similar points raised in that article, and even a few answers to questions raised in this article. Reading both will definitely add to the perspective. "How Rich Kids Have Already Won The Career Game" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2296550 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2296550