Indian American entrepreneur and politician, Vivek Ramaswamy, delivers a scathing take on why big tech companies tend to hire immigrant engineers over native born American employees:
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
the nerdy Steve Urkel vs Stefan, his hip alter ego.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.
Very interesting take. As someone who spent most of their childhood in the US, I can attest to the point that he’s making. Mediocrity and “Normalcy” was touted as a desired goal to strive for in most of the media I was exposed to, and very few people questioned it. In a way, America had probably gotten complacent after WWII and said complacency is what has led us to where we are today, where companies like Boeing are starting to be known for shoddy engineering rather than being the best in their field as they used to be.
I wonder if there can’t be a middle ground to strive for, though. The sort of normalcy and balanced lifestyle being preached for in 90s media was comfy in its own way. Being hyper competitive is not a good state of mind for the human animal to be in at all times, as nations like South Korea, with their high suicide rate and low birthrates, can demonstrate. Either way, it will be interesting to see how the world as a whole adapts to the matter of hyper competition.
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