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!
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).
> “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.
> 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.
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.
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".
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?
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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
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.
>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.
Oriental not a PC term, but many Americans cannot tell the difference between Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Filipino, etc by language, appearance or other factors.
So instead of sitting through millions of awkward moments, whomever makes up these things came up with "Asian", which basically can apply to anyone.
“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.”
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.
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.
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)
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...
Good luck. "Soft skills" are usually interpreted as a way to favor white people. If it isn't measurable, you're getting sued. And even if it is measurable, you're getting sued if advocates don't get what they want.
(Although poor social skills are not limited to any ethnic group.)
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.
"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.
[+] [-] bluekite2000|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aphexairlines|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bluekeybox|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] wallflower|15 years ago|reply
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".
[+] [-] flipside|15 years ago|reply
This closes the loop to create the "asian circle of life".
[+] [-] DrJ|15 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] bo_Olean|15 years ago|reply
"I did everything you told me to do, thanks grandpa!"
[+] [-] rayiner|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajkessler|15 years ago|reply
>>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.
[+] [-] jinushaun|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] potatolicious|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Jun8|15 years ago|reply
I wish similar pieces would be written by and embraced by African-Americans. Sadly whenever such thoughts are expressed, they are met with negativity.
[+] [-] michaelf|15 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] wan23|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidwparker|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spiritomb|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kin|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ikono|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] zasz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mavelikara|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vacri|15 years ago|reply
Why does "American" almost always ignore all the non-USA countries on the two 'America' continents?
[+] [-] Aloisius|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Duff|15 years ago|reply
So instead of sitting through millions of awkward moments, whomever makes up these things came up with "Asian", which basically can apply to anyone.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bo_Olean|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hartror|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] BornInTheUSSR|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brendano|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxwin|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aloisius|15 years ago|reply
I'd also suggest adding ethics, but that's another conversation...
[+] [-] forkandwait|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] potatolicious|15 years ago|reply
I'd be interested in knowing how. You can't learn soft skills out of a book.
[+] [-] Duff|15 years ago|reply
(Although poor social skills are not limited to any ethnic group.)
[+] [-] alexsb92|15 years ago|reply
"How Rich Kids Have Already Won The Career Game" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2296550
[+] [-] joshhart|15 years ago|reply
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.