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There is much truth to it. Indian managers (on average), while brilliant, are held back by their culture of deference to the experienced and cultural incentives to not rock the ship. 200 years of being Bureaucrats to the British, and they remain Bureaucrats in even independence.
No one can meet quarterly goals quite like a Bureaucrat. No brings a golden goose down to a halt quite like a Bureaucrat. The "Hindu rate of growth", insulting as it was, pointed fingers squarely at the Bureaucracy for it's relative stability and sorry growth.
Microsoft is the counter example. the work that Satya has done at Microsoft consistently impressed people through the last decade. Indian careerists make terrible business leaders. But Indian businessmen are an entirely different ballgame. Sadly, both groups don't fix.
Can you elaborate on this? As the descendant of intermarried Scots, I'm curious what you mean.
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Razib has written a lot about this. Both groups are some of the most endogamous groups dating back (around 1500 yrs) further than even Ashkenazi jewish endogamy.
You can't forget the trader class (Marwadis, Sindhis) if we are talking about comparing them to people whose caricatures are money-lenders with exaggerated features. The Parsis are also incredibly similar. Rich, endogamous, genocided and now flourishing in their new refugee liberal home. The Parsis need to learn from the Orthodox Jews and start having unprotected sex. They're going extinct.
While the I would love to take south-asian over-representation on this forum as an indicator of high verbal-IQ, I think there is another factor at play here : Colonialism. Most Indians on here are 1st generation immigrants. A lot of the top comedians are either 1st gen immigrants (Kumail, Hasan) or grew up away from 'white America' (Nimesh in NJ).
2nd gen immigrants (Indians and east-asians) are desperate to integrate into normie white culture. They will never end up in a place as transgressive as this. The 1st gen is best suited to hang out here, but the 1st gen east-asians simply do not speak great English. I do believe east-asian conformity doesn't lend itself well to forums like ours, but to me, the other 2 factors play a bigger role in their absence.
Ah, while my parents are also in the UK I wasn't born here, I came with them to this country during my early teenage years and I think my basic mental view of the world had part formed before I stepped foot on Western shores. A significant part of my schooling took place outside the UK. So I'm not really second gen (but equally not really first gen either).
If you were to ask me what I see myself as I would without a doubt reply that I am Hindustani and not English.
No matter how I dress or talk, or the way I interact with other westerners in the end phir bhi dil hai Hindustani. And I am and will always be proud of it.
Clearly. Your dislike, and secular arguments against, western modernity sound about as genuine as qutb's, or bin laden's complaints of american imperialism.
Interestingly I have very negative opinions of both those people. I dislike violence on aesthetic grounds and it is almost never necessary to deploy it to achieve your goals. There are often much kinder ways to get what you are after. See how the British used violence to conquer my country, but now we are going to conquer them with love (by having more kids and letting mathematics do its job). No violence or threats needed, only love.
Sure you don't like them. Islam spread by force of arms, and as soon as war took more than riding a camel/horse/elephant into battle, they sucked at it. Changing strategies might be a good idea if they were capable of it. Left to their own devices they degenerate into isis or at best pakistan. Anyway that's not the point. No matter how many West-critical studies you quote or disgust you express at this or that western quirk, those things are not your true objection. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Pray tell, what is my true objection?
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Satya is a clear counterexample, yes (or as you say, he comes from a different career track? Both him and Pichai started out as hard engineers and pivoted into management, both come from higher-tier Brahmin lineages… @2rafa, do you know anything? I've only heard that Pichai has great… mediating skills).
I am thinking of some other high-ranking manager who has departed recently; but his name can't escape the tip of my tongue. Maybe some Ramakrishnan.
In general I am curious as to the reason for people like Pichai's meteoric careers. It can't be that easy to become CEO of a trillion-class corporation with major strategic value, the competition must be immense. Why have Brin and Page, with Schmidt's input, decided to leave him in charge?
As the best people are wont to do. Very little beats strong technical ability combined with good people skills.
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Google's board was heavily influenced by Bill Campbell, a Svengali-like figure in Silicon Valley. He like the cut of Sundar's jib and chose him as the bright young thing that should be promoted. Most of Google's board was in awe of Campbell, so gave the nod to Sundar when it came time to put a PM in charge of Chrome, replace Andy at Android, replace Alan as boss of all engineering, and then replace Larry as CEO. It is difficult to capture quite how much influence Campbell had on Google's promotion decisions. Even after his death, Google's board would ask "What would Bill say?" Why Campbell liked Sundar is another question entirely. Sundar is not technical at all - his undergraduate and masters is in materials science, which has nothing to do with IT (well, outside of chips). Bill liked non-technical, slightly unpolished people. It may be that Sundar was the one he met that day.
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I don't know your mother, who may well speak softly and authoritatively, but I don't think Sundar is like that at all. He always managed up, and once he achieved positions of power, completely ignored his reports. No-one claims that Android was more successful under Sundar than it was under Google. Then, when Sundar ran all of engineering, I don't think anyone can point to something achieved during that time, other than the huge success of AI research. It is hard to give Sundar credit for that, since he completely mismanaged bringing that work to product, and let Google, who did most of the research, be eclipsed by OpenAI. Since he became CEO in 2015, it is hard to point to a successful new Google endeavor or product. This contrasts with Satya, who meets with perhaps too many people. If Sundar is known for anything, it is being indecisive and failing to make decisions. On the other hand, not making any decisions turned out quite well for Google for at least the first five years of his tenure. We will see if Sundar's unwillingness to act resolutely is Google's undoing.
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