Vivek Ramaswamy on American Culture
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... 'Normalcy' doesn't cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent.
The reason that the biggest tech companies in America are begging for foreign-born and first-generation engineers is not because Americans are less talented. It's because American culture is obsessed with normalcy.
We celebrate the prom queen, the sitcom cool kid, the athlete, but not the kid who wins the math competition.
If America wants to compete globally, we need to stop glorifying mediocrity and start celebrating excellence.
The American dream is not about being normal. It's about being exceptional.
These quotes reflect Ramaswamy's argument that American culture should shift focus from social normalcy and leisure to academic and technical excellence, drawing inspiration from the values he associates with Indian-immigrant families.
Sources
I Hope We're Ready for Sweatshops in the West
As much as I agree that the west pushes a "mediocrity" ideal, turning the west into India isn't anything I'll be on the side of.
As a tech worker, there seems to be a massive pull towards turning every tech company into a sweatshop. It seems many project managers would literally want to chain you to your desk for 14 hours a day and run the office as a farm. Screen tracking, minute-by-minute time logging, arbitrary PR and line of code targets. There's no quicker way of getting competent people to immediately leave your company, only leaving the most desperate.
There's a reason every massive tech company runs as an adult daycare. These people are rolling between their 2-hour free lunch on the Google campus in a human-sized hamster ball to their Kombucha sommelier, all while having a 12-hour Soylent suppository in. You hire competent people, pay them well and leave them alone.
The "Work Like Indians" Mentality
It's quite scary to see how often I see this "life would be better if we worked like Indians" sentiment, particularly in the UK. I work hard, I stay late hours, I come in on weekends when we're in a time crunch, but in return I want good pay, trust and respect.
You can't just buy a cheap car and drive it at 200mph everywhere and complain when it falls apart.
