Posted on 12/28/2024 6:39:57 PM PST by conservative98
There’s a raging debate on X right now about H1B visas and Vivek Ramaswamy is getting slammed for suggesting American culture is bad and thus can’t product high level talent that top tech companies want.
Let’s start back from the beginning:
THE HILL – Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, co-chairs of President-elect Trump’s new “Department of Government Efficiency,” are defending the tech industry’s reliance on foreign-born engineers as the incoming Trump administration prepares to crack down on immigration.
Musk and Ramaswamy both pointed to a lack of engineers stateside.
“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk wrote in a Wednesday post on his social platform X.
When another user suggested the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was denying opportunities to Americans, Musk argued that the poster’s understanding of the situation was “upside-down and backwards.”
“OF COURSE my companies and I would prefer to hire Americans and we DO, as that is MUCH easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process,” the tech billionaire said. “HOWEVER, there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”
This is where Ramaswamy steps into it, blaming tv shows that promote ‘mediocrity’ on a culture that can’t product top talent:
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.
This didn’t go over well with everyone…
Even Nikki Haley chimed in, saying there is nothing wrong with American culture…
The press secretary for DeSantis also suggested the problem isn’t American culture, but mass immigration and quoted Governor DeSantis:
Vivek isn’t wrong that we have a problem with American culture but it’s not what he suggests. It isn’t TV shows and movies that produce mediocrity. No, this has a lot to do with the breakdown of the family, with the inability or unwillingness of parents to push their children to excel academically instead of endlessly playing video games or sitting in front of a TV. Also many of our schools have big problems producing excellence as well. But I think it all starts with the breakdown of the family, ie. fatherless children and single mothers working multiple jobs to make ends meet while their children are at home doing whatever they want. And this is a product of the Godless left.
But that being said, I don’t know how much that really plays into this problem of top-level talent. It may have some effect, but I also agree with fact that mass immigration is a big culprit, in that it provides the cheap labor that companies want. This is a battle we’ve been fighting for decades, not just against the left, but against the Chamber of Commerce types in the Republican party for decades who want the left’s version of immigration so they can reap the benefits of cheap labor.
Look, I have never disagreed with merit-based immigration, especially when it comes to top level talent. We want the best and the brightest no matter where they are from as long as they are willing to assimilate. But we want it on our terms.
Let me quote the Great Mark Levin from over a decade ago:
"And what do we the people want? We want our border secured. And let me go even further. Let me make it absolutely clear to every foreigner outside this country.
This country belongs to us; it doesn’t belong to you. It doesn’t belong to the 7 billion other people all over the world.
You see the way it’s supposed to work is we decide who gets to come here. We decide the standards. We decide the requirements. We want to know who you are. We want to know what you’re going to – (ready for this one?) – contribute to this society, not take from this society.
You see because I want to make it very very clear to the left, to the media and even some ‘Repubicans’ and even some TV and radio hosts.
There’s nothing compassionate about the downfall of America! There’s nothing compassionate about the hollowing out of our society! There’s nothing compassionate about bankrupting our children and grandchildren, destroying our school system, destroying local law enforcement and hospitals, what’s been built up over 200 years.
It’s one thing to export our viewpoints, our economic ideas, our governing ideas. But it’s quite another to import the views, the culture and the destitution of the third world. Because that is national suicide. And any thinking person who is not playing politics, who’s not a demagogue, who’s not a propagandist, any thinking person regardless of party, ethnicity, or anything else knows I’m right!
This isn’t about voting as far as I’m concerned. This isn’t about pandering to this group or that group as far as I’m concerned. This is about preserving what’s left of this Republic."
There was a post the other day that stated only 6% of the jobs “created” by the Biden Admin went to White men.
There’s sever problems here = most of our colleges are substandard when compared to other nations, Big Tech, and others prefer to pay 10-2-% less by displacing Americans with foreigners...DEI and other leftist racist movements say color is more important than ability...and, as a result, too many are too stupid and/or lazy to do their jobs
Elon and Vivek say we need H-1B and they are correct - but they also add that we need only accept the best of the best to bring their unique brains/qualities to our Country - it was a large dose of genius foreigners that led us to the end of WWII...those are the brains Elon and Vivek say we need to bring in...
The quality of the graduate degree will depend on the quality of the faculty, especially whether they any industry experience.
I can’t say that most of mine did, although the electronic packaging guy sure did. However, my school is top 25 - it may be top 20 now.
We’ve also abandoned “gifted programs” in elementary schools, as being racist (because too few blacks got in). We need to put back tracking in education, and stop thinking that putting slow or disruptive kids in the same classroom as bright kids will help anyone.
“Asians have higher average IQ.”
They tend to be homogeneous societies.
Exactly.
He’s a grifter.
You left out the fact that you’re a troll.
Spoke the foreign troll.
The US govt. is $35 trillion in debt.
What’s the business case for SpaceX for non gevetment customers?
I had another thought: . . . BUT THEY ARE CHEAP!
Working 6 AM to 9 PM to keep international teams on track is a perfect scenario where you and another engineer would have overlapping shifts. You would work 6A to 2P and the other engineer would work 1P to 9P. Your overlap would be to catch each other up with where things were.
Because you needed to have someone fully spun up on everything in the event you were sick, injured, or died. The company just didn't want to pay for it.
Gee, I thought we were doing great with the DEI program.
And the rats have been working so hard to bring as much narcotics into our nation as possible in order to keep the price down to affordable levels......don't you think so... (?)
You left out American Robert Goddard who was the father of rocketry.
Ignoring Goddard is a common habit of those denigrating America.
The destruction of AP and honors programs in schools because they were overpopulated by Asian and Whites to the exclusion of Blacks is another sign. We need to get away from this equality of outcome nonsense that infects this country. No one even hints at applying those standards to areas where Blacks excel over others. It’s only in the areas, mostly academic, where Blacks lag that we are not allowed to award excellence. That needs to stop. If Blacks need better educational opportunities or need a change in the attitude about the value of a good education work to make that happen but don’t punish others for their hard work and achievement.
And we also need to effect a change in the attitude and culture of many White kids who think it’s cool to emulate the ghetto culture. There are few things that frost me more than to see suburbs White kids walking around with their pants hanging down trying to be Black. There is nothing of value that comes from the ghetto culture. There was a time when young inner-city Blacks who wanted to succeed tried their darnedest to emulate White WASP culture and its work ethic. We need to get back to that, and its starts with ending DEI, AA and other racist give-away programs that reward skin color over competency.
Cheap universal telecom, cheap energy, scientific advances - REALLY long baseline optical radio and infrared interferometers, testing of space drives, ultimately asteroid mining and such “science fiction” things. The end of material scarcity.
Musk has solved, or started to solve, the Earths gravity well problem, which has been the main obstacle in letting humans be a space-faring species. Thats the significance of 400 tons a week.
Go watch “The Expanse” for some ideas on this stage of human development, for better or worse. Musk has put that scenario within practical reach. Ideas at this point will come from expanding the edge of science fiction. Yes, really.
The nature of technological progress is copying and cross fertilization. Von Braun and the German rocket enthusiasts were happy to give Goddard credit, and then build their tech at a 100x scale, solving the problems that come at that level.
I’m with Vivek
He is spot on
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