8 ms·

> “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

> “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.
  - lsc 15y ago
    this is what was so hard for me when I was trying to learn 'leadership' or whatever you call it. What most people call 'likability' - I call 'being an asshole' Different people have different behavior preferences, and if you think 'likable' means more passive rather than more aggressive, you are likely going to do the wrong thing in most social situations.
    - Psyonic 15y ago
      Passive isn't likable, it's boring and safe.
      - lsc 15y ago
        I understand that's how most people feel. My point is that for those of us who don't fee that way, this truth is hard to spot. I know for me, I always thought that most passive behaviors were respectful, and most aggressive behaviors were not. Don't take up too much space. Don't interrupt people, and if someone is working, stopping to talk to them is interrupting them. Speak at a reasonable volume. Don't assume people want you around. I mean, I now see that this behavior is self-defeating. Most people prefer my loud, expansive self who assumes that you want him around until you make it very clear otherwise to my quiet, small self who assumes that you don't. If I walk by someone who is working without at least an acknowledgement of their existence, most people feel snubbed. I mean, using the word 'asshole' is a value judgement, which probably made the message come off wrong. My point is that 'likable' is a word that means very different things to different people. To this day, I prefer being around people who are less aggressive, even though I've adapted to a world dominated by people like you, who prefer behavior that I find mildly offensive when directed at me.
        Psyonic 15y ago
        I know exactly what you mean. I'm a convert myself, and while it's mostly natural now, I still fall back into passive mode on occasion.
        15y ago
bluekeybox 15y ago
> The problem, as with white geeks, is that Asian-Americans disproportionately aren't learning how to bs, how to promote themselves and their products Actually it is the attitude like this -- the attitude that equates self-promotion with bullshit -- that causes problems for people with an engineering mindset. Not only does such attitude (1) show that you consider yourself superior (bravo) to people who are doing the hard and often boring job of marketing/campaigning, but it also underscores (2) that you, at a fundamental level, do not value communicating with other people, and therefore do not value other people (marketing, at its basic, is communication), and (3) that you will not make a good leader because you lack the social intelligence needed to observe others, learn from your observations, and to pay attention to the details of your and your company's public image. Social skills are not bullshit; they are intelligence just like everything else. The fact that you only know how to do math does not show that you are intelligent; it only shows that you are specialized. The fact that women prefer men who are good at socializing is, ironically, direct Darwinian selection for intelligence.
- mquander 15y ago
  I reject that set of skills not because I don't value communicating, but because I think it's a terrible way of communicating. The world has an unbelievable, enormous, tedious, completely indefensible surplus of self-promotion and marketing. Marketing fills every public space and enters every public discussion. What good is it? Look, you have made entire hard and boring jobs of it. Are you doing something useful? Who is it useful to besides you? Buying into an obnoxiously self-promotional attitude is defecting in a giant Prisoner's Dilemma. It's enriching you only by taking away from others, and at the expense of filling the world with crap. It serves only to make my life and others' a little worse as I filter through "good self-promoters" to find people who are good at ordinary, interesting, non-self-promotional things, who do and say things I actually want to pay attention to. So no, I don't think people who engage in a bunch of self-promotion are stupid or inferior, just selfish and shameful. I will leave money on the table all day in order to not deal with the crap. Hey, it's relevant to the article: Having glimpsed just how unacceptable the world judges my demeanor, could I too strive to make up for my shortcomings? Practice a shit-eating grin until it becomes natural? Love the world twice as hard? I see the appeal of getting with the program. But this is not my choice. Striving to meet others’ expectations may be a necessary cost of assimilation, but I am not going to do it.

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.
- lsc 15y ago
  this is what was so hard for me when I was trying to learn 'leadership' or whatever you call it. What most people call 'likability' - I call 'being an asshole' Different people have different behavior preferences, and if you think 'likable' means more passive rather than more aggressive, you are likely going to do the wrong thing in most social situations.
  - Psyonic 15y ago
    Passive isn't likable, it's boring and safe.
    - lsc 15y ago
      I understand that's how most people feel. My point is that for those of us who don't fee that way, this truth is hard to spot. I know for me, I always thought that most passive behaviors were respectful, and most aggressive behaviors were not. Don't take up too much space. Don't interrupt people, and if someone is working, stopping to talk to them is interrupting them. Speak at a reasonable volume. Don't assume people want you around. I mean, I now see that this behavior is self-defeating. Most people prefer my loud, expansive self who assumes that you want him around until you make it very clear otherwise to my quiet, small self who assumes that you don't. If I walk by someone who is working without at least an acknowledgement of their existence, most people feel snubbed. I mean, using the word 'asshole' is a value judgement, which probably made the message come off wrong. My point is that 'likable' is a word that means very different things to different people. To this day, I prefer being around people who are less aggressive, even though I've adapted to a world dominated by people like you, who prefer behavior that I find mildly offensive when directed at me.
      - Psyonic 15y ago
        I know exactly what you mean. I'm a convert myself, and while it's mostly natural now, I still fall back into passive mode on occasion.
        15y ago

bluekeybox 15y ago

> The problem, as with white geeks, is that Asian-Americans disproportionately aren't learning how to bs, how to promote themselves and their products Actually it is the attitude like this -- the attitude that equates self-promotion with bullshit -- that causes problems for people with an engineering mindset. Not only does such attitude (1) show that you consider yourself superior (bravo) to people who are doing the hard and often boring job of marketing/campaigning, but it also underscores (2) that you, at a fundamental level, do not value communicating with other people, and therefore do not value other people (marketing, at its basic, is communication), and (3) that you will not make a good leader because you lack the social intelligence needed to observe others, learn from your observations, and to pay attention to the details of your and your company's public image. Social skills are not bullshit; they are intelligence just like everything else. The fact that you only know how to do math does not show that you are intelligent; it only shows that you are specialized. The fact that women prefer men who are good at socializing is, ironically, direct Darwinian selection for intelligence.

mquander 15y ago
I reject that set of skills not because I don't value communicating, but because I think it's a terrible way of communicating. The world has an unbelievable, enormous, tedious, completely indefensible surplus of self-promotion and marketing. Marketing fills every public space and enters every public discussion. What good is it? Look, you have made entire hard and boring jobs of it. Are you doing something useful? Who is it useful to besides you? Buying into an obnoxiously self-promotional attitude is defecting in a giant Prisoner's Dilemma. It's enriching you only by taking away from others, and at the expense of filling the world with crap. It serves only to make my life and others' a little worse as I filter through "good self-promoters" to find people who are good at ordinary, interesting, non-self-promotional things, who do and say things I actually want to pay attention to. So no, I don't think people who engage in a bunch of self-promotion are stupid or inferior, just selfish and shameful. I will leave money on the table all day in order to not deal with the crap. Hey, it's relevant to the article: Having glimpsed just how unacceptable the world judges my demeanor, could I too strive to make up for my shortcomings? Practice a shit-eating grin until it becomes natural? Love the world twice as hard? I see the appeal of getting with the program. But this is not my choice. Striving to meet others’ expectations may be a necessary cost of assimilation, but I am not going to do it.