Comment

Comment by opportune

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.

parent opportune 7 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton