Very good and raw article. You can feel the author's angst and confusion about his standing in society and the need for recognition of who he really is rather than being defined by accident of birth. I think the lessons are applicable universally to any individual who feels alienated from their society due to the perceived need for conformance.
I loved this passage;
Someone told me not long after I moved to New York that in order to succeed, you have to understand which rules you’re supposed to break. If you break the wrong rules, you’re finished. And so the easiest thing to do is follow all the rules. But then you consign yourself to a lower status. The real trick is understanding what rules are not meant for you.
"Leadership" in a nutshell!
I think some of the conclusions of the article put the cart before the horse. The writer mentions a few times that if Asian people are X% of an incoming class at e.g. PwC, then of that cohort, about X% should also become partner; but then the author also claims that he doesn't think Asians are intrinsically smarter than other people, just taught to be much better test takers / students. Those two outcomes aren't necessarily contradictory; it could be that focusing too hard on academics causes people to end up in career tracks where they are less suited to the job compared to people who put in less effort but performed similarly.
This is actually a noted phenomenon at Google where competitive programming experience correlates negatively with job performance, because by practicing the measure so much, you can display a stronger signal than you actually have (in other words, you can seem better than you are because you are highly practiced at the tests).
Also I think the author is off the mark with their generalizations of white people. Almost all of the stereotypes about Asian people also apply to e.g. white software developers.
Overachiever is a loaded term. It has many negative connotations. As if someone went so far beyond achieving that they deserve to be despised for it. This type of rhetoric is often used to disparage Asian-Americans. I enjoyed reading the different perspectives in the article, but I do wish they'd be more conscious about such terms.
I think the next generation of AA will be more balanced in how they raise their kids, thus they will break all the stereotypes. Most of the examples used in this article are children of first generation immigrants who were raised in a super chaotic society, enduring poverty (maybe), immigrating to a completely different land. It is normal that they would advise caution and hard work to their children. But make no mistake, i think this tiger parenting stuff is super toxic. No children in America should be raised like a race horse.
How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition
Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritoc...
Recently on HN:
Are there any books our there that strike a balance between being "tiger mom" and the positives of a western upbringing? I've read Amy Chaus book and it seems like some balance of both cultures is the ideal solution for kids in the future. Has anyone tried to cherry pick the best of both worlds/cultures and written about it? It's a question I've pondered as I start to look into how to raise my 2 year old.
This is a pretty gross article. Pickup artists are the answer, really?
From 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506651
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2530663
The part about the hardness of the transition from school to real life is great. The part where, somehow, we're supposed to buy that a path out of the situation comes from Asian American men getting better at "picking up" white women feels pretty ridiculous.
Fuck sacrificing for the future. [...] there are kids out there in the Midwest who can do way less work and be in a garage band or something [...] 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. [...] I didn’t earn more than $12,000 for eight consecutive years.
A rambling slog. Needs a [2011] tag.
They run for president. Yang2020 !!!
Substitute any other race and ny mag would be accused of racism. Asian is the new white. Its time Asians stand up to the blatant racism of the media.
Asians are where we are because of a superior work ethic. Sorry white people
What a racist title.
As a (south) Asian immigrant I found this article trite. To answer the title—what happens after the test taking ends? Asians end up as the highest income demographic in the country. Thank you, tiger mom.
I also don’t appreciate the angsty ranting about Asian immigrant culture. Work hard, keep your head down, raise kids, provide for your family, respect your parents, etc. Those are great values and are as much traditional American values as Asian immigrant ones. It’s the American baby boomers and millennials with their fixation on self-gratification that are the outliers.