Excited
So I got this email, and saw the tweet:
Being Asian can prevent you from ascending the corporate ladder. Our seminar, presented with EMC Asian Circle, can tell you what to do about it.
You’ve done all the right things, top marks from perhaps a top school and top job performance. Why haven’t you reached the top as an executive? Learn from a renowned Asian exec who has been there and done that.
Business Professor David Lum will explore the fundamental reasons for why Asians/Asian-Americans have such difficulty in reaching those coveted positions. In addition to exploring the root causes, this seminar will also give clear and practical guidance on what you can do to prepare your career now for the long-term.
I read that and thought, “Wow.”
And that was the end of it. Total jaw drop. I’m not even sure what to say to this considering some facts, but more to that in a second. Let’s backtrack a little bit: I belong to a chapter of NAAAP, the National Association of Asian American Professionals. And obviously with any business organization, there is favoritism and so on, but seriously? We’re going to play the “we don’t get promoted because we’re Asian” card?
While I don’t know where this business professor came from, he apparently used to work for the same corporation as myself, and I never saw any inkling of Asians not being able to get promoted. Perhaps we didn’t work in the same division, but I never saw it within my corporate culture at least. And in my circle of friends and family, there are people that are in middle management all the way to senior management of their respective corporations; I never heard any complaints about promotions being blocked because of being Asian.
Maybe it’s just me, but this type of promotional email doesn’t exactly make me want to hear this speaker ever. Call me crazy, but I just can’t help but shake my head with this one.
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Consider yourself lucky if you haven't experience any form of oppression. Look at the statistics from this paper:
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:ZcSLWlxya4...
I live and work in California's technology industry where Asians make a large percentage of the population. I have jumped from corporation to corporation and have seen very few Pacific Asians (not Indians) even reach middle management. I don't recall any East Asians in upper management at the large corporations that I worked at. For the most part, East Asians are hired and expected to be work horses. I personally come from a top 5 computer science school, graduate with top marks, exceeded performance expectations and have proven leadership. After 8 years, I'm yet to make it into middle management. In my current company, East Asians make up over 20% of the employees, but I know of only 3 East Asian managers: two women and 1 man. Politics are hard to play because there is a lot of silent discrimination. I find many people just aren't interested in befriending an East Asian unless you're an attractive Asian woman.
Whenever I step up in a group situation at work such as making suggestions, egos starting flaring and irrational criticism follow. East Asians are expected to be submissive subordinates. They're suppose to keep their mouth shut, and just follow orders. It's a very depressing environment to be in for an East Asian if you have any ambition.
Seems to me the real issue here is your definition of "promotion." The initial blurb quoted in the blog post, and the study referenced in the SJ Mercury News discuss high-level positions, not just being promoted through the ranks. Having a "ceiling" means a point past which you cannot go unless you are white and male. Maybe the room is getting taller, but there's still an upstairs many of us cannot go.
(not Asian, but female)
Seems to me the real issue here is your definition of "promotion." The initial blurb quoted in the blog post, and the study referenced in the SJ Mercury News discuss high-level positions, not just being promoted through the ranks. Having a "ceiling" means a point past which you cannot go unless you are white and male. Maybe the room is getting taller, but there's still an upstairs many of us cannot go.
(not Asian, but female)
Ha, well take your pick from any of these..
http://www.bored.com/findquotes/cate_845_Stupid...
Part of me wishes you had found an appropriate quote by some dead white guy to say the say thing.
Do not rely on your own personal experiences to make a definite claim on whether APIs face racial discrimination. The fact that you blanketly deny that it happens at all is very harmful to many - APIs and non-APIs alike.
This is by far the worst string of replies in internet history.
Whatever. Good luck with your view of the world.
u00e2u0080u009cIn order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.u00e2u0080u009d
- Albert Einstein
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
- Abraham Lincoln
Given our limited virtual interactions in the past, I doubt we will ever see eye-to-eye on many things.
"The good of man must be the end of the science of politics."
- Aristotle
Personally, I think that your comment is well on the spot.
Mainly because, if you cry discrimination, where does it stop? Every single group from a social standpoint can cry discrimination at pretty much anything. Which is why I think the entire thing is bunk and doesn't help the AA community.
This is very true. In the South, it's called the "good ol' boy network". And believe me, it exists on every single level and in every geography. Who you know, and what backs you've scratched plays a lot more into promotions in pretty much every aspect of corporate life. Don't get me wrong, not saying that hard work doesn't pay off.
But the larger the corporation, the more the chance to play corporate politics.
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."
- Martin Luther King, Jr
Management and senior management are two different scenarios. At the executive level, most people only care about the bottom line. Thus, the majority of your players at the top level have money dealing type degrees. And yes, business school is a money dealing type degree.
In the end, the entire thing is amusing since everyone is calling the race card when it really doesn't have to do with it. You want senior management type of plays? I can re-tell stories that have been told to me for longer than I can remember. There isn't any need to play the race card. They have so many different things to throw at you without using race since it's just nasty corporate politics.
The way I look at it? The world isn't fair kiddies. And you're jumping into a pool of sharks as fresh meat and praying that they think that you'll be treated equally. Last I looked? Fresh meat gets eaten. And if you never take that particular type of attitude in, then you wouldn't last two seconds in a senior mgt. position.
I worked for the second largest pharma company in the world. The R&D division which had a sizeable population of Asians and Americans of Asian descent as chemist and bench scientists but when it came to managerial, director and VP level, there were less than 5%. I worked in Corporate and couldn't get promoted no matter how hard I worked yet my colleagues that didn't work as hard got regular promotions. I was happy for them but sad for me. For those of us that get promoted and make it, I am very happy for you but there is a bamboo ceiling or bias against some of us that penalizes us as well. Good luck!
It's not up to you to decide what can be discussed in the comment threads. My comment was well within the confines of the topics this post touched upon. If you don't like something I've said, either make a constructive response to it or just ignore it.
Big deal about the Silicon Valley companies? I really don't know what your beef is. A lot of engineers get promoted through the executives ranks, especially those with MBAs (at least historically in the past). I'd say most of the executives at Google, Intel, etc. have engineering backgrounds and then moved into management.
And what planet are you living on? There are PLENTY of Asian Americans in finance in Silicon Valley. Plenty in accounting too. Plenty of Asian Americans in every field actually. And that is the point. There is a good pool of Asian Americans in all fields, especially in the Bay Area and in California.
The cognitive dissonance is increase more and more over time. If the best and the brightest in California are going to the UC's, and about 30% to 40% of them are Asian Americans (and many of them major more than in engineering & science). Overtime, people are going to realize, why there are so few in corporate leadership positions.
Ben: After reading your responses to others' comments, I have to agree with the first poster "vincent_tk799" that you're relying on your limited personal experience. Just because you, your family, your extended family and everyone else you know growing up have made it so far in America, doesn't mean that every other Asian American has. And yes, there's evidence, of _unbiased _ (extra emphasis) statistics and research to _back up_ the statement that Asian Americans have a glass ceiling when it comes to jobs. You may casually dismiss these statistics as "damned lies", but that's up to you.
When I read your line "Most Asians don't go into finance" I actually laughed out loud! What part of the U.S. (or Canada or wherever) are you from? Because where I'm from, Asians are in every facet of the workforce, especially finance. If you'd like me to refer to you to a friend of mine who recently graduated from NYU Stern as a finance major, who might be able to tell you exactly how many Asians were in his class, let me know.
I'm not looking at statistics. I'm also not talking about racial bias in elite university admissions. You're digressing from the point of the blog post. Ben's article is about a seminar which claims to explore why Asian Americans "have such difficulty in reaching those coveted positions."
And yes, I am prepared to hear it from every other group in society. Every group should point out discrimination when and where it occurs, even if it doesn't affect them. Prejudice and discrimination should not be tolerated in today's society.
Last time I checked, my comment wasn't about Jews.
The point of the comment is that if we're going to look at statistics and immediately cry discrimination, then we should be prepared to hear it from every part and group of society, from elite university admissions and makeup, to Asian and white guys in the NBA, etc.
Do you have a problem with Jews? Last time I checked, this was a post about Asians not being able to climb the corporate ladder.
Yo go Ben!
Tell it like it is!
Jokes aside, if the coporate environment is the same in the Bay Area as in Southern California, then I have to say that connections...aka kissing ass...plays a huge role in promotions. Not all of them but a lot of positions.
But see... that proves my point. If you're going to play that card, then I can also say the same of... you're in the wrong field. Most Asians don't go into finance. If you look at most of your top executives in pretty much any sort of field on a general level, senior management has finance experience.
So based on that "statistic", we're going to assume that engineering or computer science degrees are also being discriminated against?
Which is why I've said it before:
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Big deal about the Silicon Valley companies. And you can say the same vice versa on the other side of the world. It plays that way because it does. If we're all going to just sit around and discuss whether or not we're being discriminated against instead of asserting yourself in the workplace and moving up the chain, then my question would be.... how exactly did the "speaker" of this series even make it to a Director position?
I mean let's be frank. If it's not working out, then what's he doing there? I'd be curious what my dad is doing as a CTO too. Personally, I think it's bunk playing statistics. For every single argument you base off with statistics, I can also play against it using numbers. Even total lies. Just look at studies done on whether or not cell phones cause brain cancer. Both sides have plenty of numbers to prove or disprove the argument.
Which is why, show me something solid. Or else, it's really unconvincing.
Despite their success, Asians not rising to heights of Silicon Valley's corporate world
The San Jose Mercury News. 05/19/2009
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_12404879
"But an eye-opening first-of-its-kind "census" of local executives shows that while Asians make up more than a third of the work force at some of Silicon Valley's biggest tech companies, they are far less prominent in the boardroom or the highest executive offices: Asians represent about 6 percent of board members and about 10 percent of corporate officers of the Bay Area's 25 largest companies.
Among the 25 largest Bay Area companies by revenue, 12 had no Asian board members, and five had no Asian corporate officers, according to the new study. Despite the growing prominence of Asians at Silicon Valley tech companies u00e2u0080u0094 Asians are least 23 percent of the work force at Cisco Systems, Intel, Sun Microsystems, eBay and Advanced Micro Devices, according to a Mercury News review of documents filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission u00e2u0080u0094 they have made no gains in the share of seats on the boards of large tech companies since 1999."
Well, if you look at statistics you'll find that Asians are overrepresented at Harvard, while the other groups are underrepresented. And a similar pattern is found at other elite colleges.
The ethnic makeup of Harvard's undergrad population is as follows: Black 8%, Hispanic 8%, White 48%, Asian 18%. The ethnic makeup of the US population consists of Black 13%, Hispanic 15%, White 74%, Asian 4.5%.
And if you break down the White population at Harvard, you'll find that Jews are around 30% of the Harvard undergrad population, which means that non-Jewish White Christians are about 18% of the Harvard undergrad population. Jews are around 3% of the US population, whereas non-Jewish White Christians are about 70% of the US population. And again this pattern seems to hold at other elite colleges.
So as far as representation is concerned, broadly speaking Asians are overrepresented while all other groups are underrepresented at elite colleges. To be precise, Asians and Jews are quite dramatically overrepresented, while the other groups are underrepresented, with non-Jewish White Christians most underrepresented out of all.
Based on these statistics, Blacks, Hispanics, and non-Jewish White Christians could cry "discrimination" as well as far as elite college admissions are concerned. And non-Jewish White Christians could claim that they are "discriminated" against most of all.
Yup, but this can be easily broken..it's reality that makes perception, but that perception can be broken by an individual who is not timid and who can be assertive..
This isn't something new... racial discrimination in the workplace. The stereotype is that Asians are timid and not assertive enough to be leaders, which is why they're overlooked during promotions. That's the glass ceiling for Asians.
It's not a limited personal experience. It's everyone else's. If there are actual issues with promotions, then none of my family, extended family, or anyone else I know growing up would be in the positions they are today. Many minorities pull the... "we don't get promoted" card, but having the AA community do it is just pretty low imho.
And you hit on a great point. It is "my opinion". But with that, bamboo ceilings haven't existed where any of my family works for years. Like I said, call me crazy... but there's enough differences that you can hold people back on based on achievements alone without playing the race card.
As for statistics, there's only one thing for me to say there:
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics."
My feeling is that the externalities of being Asian, not necessarily being Asian itself is what prevents promotions. People want executives that are more like themselves, which generally entitles more white men, and you'll usually find that Asians are on the opposite end when it comes to cultural fits.
The stereotypes of Asians being timid, failing to take initiatives, and less social than others have held true in places I've worked at, and it's a combination of these types of things that prevent Asians from being seeing promotions in great numbers.
Theres evidence from statistical and sociological research to suggest that ethnicity as well as gender can influence management decisions regarding promotions. For Asians its called the bamboo ceiling. Maybe you could research this term and then state your opinion, rather than just relying on your own limited personal experience and denying the reality of a very real issue facing the AA community.
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[...] to cry at every single turn about discrimination in the work place. Apparently, this happens to the Asian American community too and I’m sure it does. But to even have a term called the “bamboo ceiling”? I mean [...]