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."
You can choose not to believe me, but it doesn’t make it false.
The same goes for journal impact factors.
Education and hard work isn’t enough. The secret sauce for making new companies here is the fact that if you make a mistake as an engineer, you learn from it and move on. In Germany, and in Japan, where I have also worked extensively, if you make a mistake as an engineer, your boss will remind you of that for the next twenty years, and you’ll be gun-shy about the next idea you have. Here in America, many top engineers have a wall where they put their failures, and trust me, I have many. But no boss here has ever said I can’t try something new as a result of those multitudinous failures. As long as you learn from them, the next ideas will likely be better. American culture allows that to happen, Asian culture definitely does not, and European culture has a few pockets where it is allowed, but generally you can’t rock the boat there either.
Yeah, I’ve been noticing the journal and article impact factors. Seems like that’s a rigged game.
“Sod off, troll.” LOL! Such an effective intellectual argument! smh
“Define “Asians”. Really? You can’t be serious!
I had to reach down to your level.
I guess I still aimed too high.
Vivek is correct in that our culture sucks the will to excel out of our young people - it’s obvious from what has been happening at our “elite” colleges. He is not correct in thinking that truly exceptional people cannot overcome the cultural handicap and succeed. Give Americans the first shot and get out of their way. And any company that cans Americans for no other reason than to replace them with cheaper foreigners should be prosecuted for discrimination.
Why are you spamming this to half the comments on this thread?
The truth hurts.
This is eye-opening.
Why do the trolls pass on the lies of the billionaies and RINOs without ceasing?
How many are actually working in their fild, atvyhe wages the University Communist Admi istrators promisedbwhen charging an arm and a leg for tuituon?
The company lives by passing on all risks and costs to its employees and customers.
Troll.
The hate whitey ex-President of Harvard is still getting $900,000/yr in some do-nothing job.
Confiscate Harvard’s endowment.
You’re swallowing the lies wholesale.
If the Americans wete as incompetent as the greedy executives always claimed, tbey would have been unable to train their replacements.
If a white employee dud half the incomprehensible muttering, excuses, and mangled writing of a typical Indian, theu nevet would have been hired, let alone lasted more than a week.
In other words you are part of the problem, thinking you ate entitled to work people half to death and destroyingbtheir home lives just so the greedy executives above you can earn enough wealth to make robber barons blush.
In other words you are part of the problem, thinking you ate entitled to work people half to death and destroyingbtheir home lives just so the greedy executives above you can earn enough wealth to make robber barons blush.
And a legal immigrant, you are part of the problem.
Another troll.
If they’re unemployed, where specifically would you be running into them?
“Nobody *I* know voted for Nixon.”
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