If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
An alternative is to find a different article that's more focused on the point you think is important. For example the link that FirmwareBurner found (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/jensen-huang-and-lisa-su-f..., via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36956184) would have been a better submission in this case.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/jensen-huang-and-lisa-su-f...
Still, I always loved how immigrants to the US always ended up in high level positions, starting or leading top US companies, something that never/rarely happens here in Europe where maintaining the status quo and the "natural order" gets priority at all cost.
Most of the money here is old money. There are dozens of implicit rules. In France having a teacher as a parent is a better indicator of whether you'll get into a top school than being rich. Because you have to know all the tricks in the book to get anywhere. From my POV getting into Ivy League seems as simple as getting a high SAT, applying, getting approved for a loan. In France, most immigrants kids don't even know the possible paths to get into a top school.
Also yes, salary plays a big role, if you're part of the top 1% of your country intellectual elite, I'd bet you'd rather cross an ocean for 6 figures than for 2000 euros a month and free healthcare.
Your POV is simply, factually, wrong; more people get high SATs and apply to the Ivy League schools than they can admit by a wide margin, and there are a lot of tricks (many of which leverage accidents of birth, wealth, and social circle) beyond that which go to getting to the top of the list.
The bigger ones involve the hyper rich buying buildings, and the merely very rich engaging in bribery which is higher risk when discovered, but legacies, padding applications with extracurrriculars for which opportunities are very much not equal, etc., all play a role.
I don't doubt your characterization of the situation in France at all, and there are certainly a plethora of great universities in the U.S. that have reasonably accessible admissions, but the "top" schools (Ivys, MIT/Caltech, etc.) are certainly beyond the reach of many, and favor those who know how to play their game.
Here's a different view. More than 2 million people take the SAT each year. The top 1% score between 1550 and 1600. They number more than 20000 people each year. You can have straight As K-12, achieve a 1570 on the SAT, be president/captain of three clubs/teams, play two musical instruments, be a National Merit Scholar, serve on the board of some national organization, win 12 state championships, and still not get accepted to an Ivy League school. Or you can have a B here and there, score a 1500 SAT and get accepted.
My point is that it is not as simple as getting a high SAT, applying, and getting approved for a loan.
In France having a teacher as a parent is a better indicator of whether you'll get into a top school than being rich.
What do you mean? As an immigrant to France when I was in 3rd grade [0], I knew in a couple of months that I had to go to a good high-school, to get into a good prep school, to get into a good grande école. Everybody knows this. And everybody knows how to get there: be good at math, and have good grades in general.
[0] In France, school grades are "reversed". Grades 6 to 3 are "collège" / middle school / junior high. Grades 2, 1, "terminal" are high-school.
Not true.
What happens, and not only in France (it's like that in the UK as well), is that primary and secondary schools that are in not very good areas are not ambitious for their pupils. They'll say average is fine, going to a technical college is very good, etc. so in the end those pupils do not think of taking the "high road" because they've been convinced it is not for them.
On the other hand, if your parents are highly educated and you go to one of the top secondary schools you'll be pushed and told that you should work hard and that you can get into a top university.
It's more like the teacher in France example, except you also have to be rich.
One other difference is that all the major companies in Germany are very old, and around half of them are either privately owned, or state companies. BionTech, the last company to really rise to the major players was actually founded and is being led by immigrants.
You are right about this being different:
> On the contrary, here in Germany these positions are usually filled through either familial connections or company-internal mentorships.
Some government jobs are notoriously products of nepotism and inbreeding, but private industry is, in my experience, invested in recruiting the best candidates available to them.
It’s hard to explain in a comment, and it’s easy for locals to take it for granted, but private industry in the US incentivizes speculation (risk-taking). It feeds into how we start companies, how and when we invest, where we live, our liquid financial markets, and I think we idealize hiring not from academic titles or genes but from merit. This idea that we settle on the same things for the 30 years is somewhat antithetical to that.
I bet you're correct with other industries such as investment banking or finance though.
this is a myth. even if you just look at asian immigrant groups alone, many groups do very poorly economically - the burmese, hmongs, nepalis etc are all poorer than the average american. in fact, i think the only asian ethnicity that is over-represented in business leadership are not the chinese nor the japanese but the indians, and i don't even think that's true specifically for first-generation or even second-generation americans of indian origin.
It is using a very well established (i.e., has been used for a long time) terminology to describe familial relationships.
The "first" refers to how many horizontal genealogy lines are crossed (self -> sibling -> first cousin -> second cousin -> etc.) the "once" refers to the vertical, so the "first cousin once removed" refers to either your cousin's parent or child, and as we refer to our cousin's parents as aunt or uncle, we usually conclude that your "first cousin once remove" is your aunt/uncle's grandchild, ergo your [first] cousin's child.
do people just not know how to Google things these days?
Difficult to get the exact stats because it is illegal to measure demographic breakdowns in many European countries.
Maybe so, but even Sony and Nissan had non-Japanese speaking CEOs for a while and Japan is not really know for its openness and progressiveness to foreigners.
Also, we're talking about global tech companies which reap profits from the global economy, so fluency of the local language that's only spoken by 5% of the world's population shouldn't matter that much, when those mega-corps hire teams of cultural and language experts for each market anyway.
I'd say it's more culture, mentality and protectionism of the status quo, than the language itself.
It was already there, but depending where you're from, "first cousin once removed" might not mean anything to you, especially if English is not your mother tongue. Seeing a family tree makes it clear for everyone regardless of language or culture what the relationship is.
Few of my friends that launched startups, despite being based in Europe, working from Europe, and everyone being European, incorporated in Delaware anyway.
US is simply friendlier to ambitious and greedy people. You can be so anywhere in the world but you won't get the same benefits you get in the United States.
European society is constructed around sharply defined ethnic groups, often identified by name and appearance. Ethnicity cannot be changed.
Curiously, Indians and Chinese nationals tend to do well in the USA because their motherlands are poor. This means that only the most well off can even contemplate moving to the USA. Obviously, these folks do well relative to poorer immigrants. Europe's other problem is that it attracts mostly low skilled, older immigrants.
First cousin means they share a grandparent, second cousin means they share a great-grandparent, etc. Once removed means they’re offset by 1 generation, so one person’s grandparent is the other’s great-grandparent. There is a directionality; the person who is “once removed” is the one whose parent is first cousins with other other person.
This kind of harkens to the optimality surrounding meritocracy based systems.
I read an interesting point recently: Austria's 100 wealthiest families have two thirds of the country's wealth, and zero have earned their money from technology; they've all inherited it.
How different would the same list be for Germany? One, perhaps two families earned their fortunes from tech?
That's not a thing unique to Europe. Same goes for almost every Asian company with Korean, Taiwanese, etc. roots.
It even goes further then the Asian continent. For example the president of Samsung Benelux is June Young Park.
In addition, for immigrants from Europe/Asia/Africa, the US has almost complete power to pick and choose candidates whereas Europe is physically attached.
One last factor I noticed as an immigrant is that newer societies, like the US and Canada, are easier to fit into. For older ones like in Europe, it's just harder to change your identity and gain acceptance. This isn't a fault on Europe's part, it's probably just natural progression.
I felt that doing things “differently” or having unique background is more often perceived positively in the US than in the EU. In the EU, the norms force you to fit in, whereas in the US, you are allowed to pave your own way, whether that means success or failure.
I'd say it is, considering they/we have decades of data on what makes immigrants successful and what not.
What's your definition of "always" ?
You and your children are first cousins. Your children and your cousin's children are 2nd cousins. Your children and your cousin's children's children and 2nd cousins once-removed.
The English PM is the son of Indian immigrants though
It's a young country built on the premise of immigration and kicking out the natives, that might be part of it.
Yea, we are all tech CEOs over here
Completely ignore the family cartel thingy and focus on the American dream.
The US lets people rise to higher heights, but income mobility is better in many parts of Europe. That is, the odds of moving from low or lower-middle class parents to the upper-middle class are higher in most major European countries (e.g. UK, France, Germany, Scandinavian). For that matter, it is also better in Japan, Australia and Canada. [0]
Or maybe what I saw is flawed and biased. I haven't spent a lot of time confirming it. I definitely have seen the claim pop up from time to time. It makes intuitive sense that society could prioritize either goal but that policies that help one hurt the other.
[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...
got it. so here in the US, the overachieving immigrant stereotype is an assumption that is waning in popularity, specifically because it further marginalizes all the immigrants that are not overachievers and do not have the cultural or socioeconomic support system, while other residents assume those immigrants don't need support simply by factor of looking similar to another immigrant.
the phrasing is important. its fine to admire that there is a frequency of visible acceptance and elevation into high level positions. your words say you don't realize how rare that is.
Very friendly and down to earth personality. He said that Nvidia had tough competition when he started (there was only on chip graphics acceleration in 1994) and literally no market for his product because no applications/games supported external graphic acceleration. Still, he and his team were convinced that general purpose computing (CPUs) for everything is not as good as providing a dedicated, specialized computing unit (in this case for graphics). So they just built it and made it. Even though they were nearly bankrupt for multiple times, they survived until 2023 and established themselves as a leader in their field.
He basically worked on this for 30 years. Not many founders show the same endurance.
At the very least, we can agree that using "uncle" like this is incredibly easily misinterpreted.
EE is hard to take on for kids born in US, life is comfortable why bother? so immigrants and their kids filled the vacancy, could this be a possible reason of it?
First of all, I never said it did. More importantly, though, they weren't able to flee the revolution with all their money, as most of it was confiscated by the Iranian government.
These types of folks are quite privileged, but not in ways that are often presented in arguments like the one you gave, i.e. "they were just born into money". Their main privileges are connections, their inherent confidence and belief that they have the power to be successful, and a deeply ingrained work ethic.
https://observer.com/2018/10/uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-moth...
Lisa Su saved AMD – Now she wants Nvidia's AI crown