US ‘Culture of Mediocrity’ = Need More Foreigners? Breaking Down the H-1B Debate
Vivek Ramaswamy set off a national debate by dissing America's "culture of mediocrity" while defending the mass importation of foreign workers to replace Americans.
Recent comments on X by U.S. Department of Government Efficiency Co-Chair Vivek Ramaswamy about America’s unmotivated youth and a U.S. “culture of mediocrity” have a lot of truth to them, explained journalist and educator Alex Newman on NTD News.
But the answer to this existential threat is not importing foreigners on visas to take tech jobs. Rather, Americans must stop allowing their children to be indoctrinated and dumbed down in government schools that were designed to do just that, Newman explained.
Watch:
Chances are, it'll be a job that doesn't even exist yet. Prepare your child for success not by teaching them what to learn, but how to learn. You can homeschool. We can help.
Exploring The Abrahamic Family House: A Temple to World Religion?
Abu Dhabi — A large temple has been erected in the United Arab Emirates called the Abrahamic Family House, which honors the “interfaith” relationship attempting to be kindled between Catholics, Jews, and Muslims, reports journalist Alex Newman.
The construction of the temple was inspired by the 2019 Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, signed by Pope Francis and Ahmed El-Tayeb on behalf of the al-Azhar Mosque.
The structure has sparked controversy among critics as global institutions like the United Nations have long committed to harnessing religions through a false sense of unity to push a global agenda of communism, progressivism, and the man-made climate change narrative.
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Tell Rama-smarmy to stick to his own job. Doesn't he have enough to do? Americans did NOT develop their own culture of mediocrity. It was enforced on them from all angles. The problem is we were too goodhearted to accuse others of such ongoing sins / crimes / evil intentions / morally wrong, stupid and corrupt actions and intentions. I guess you could say we were naive. Psychiatry played a big roll in our decline.
For what it is worth, here is my experience seeking and vetting senior-systems-engineer and lower-level candidates in the U.S.
We do have talented American candidates. The job sites, however, will flood you with resumes. Some are manifestly unqualified and others outright lie. Many show patterns of short hops across companies, with stays under a year, or large, unexplained gaps of three or more years between jobs. Each give me doubts. Short stints and large gaps are easily filtered, but recruiters, both internal and external, have for the most part no idea how to narrow the field further.
References must be taken with a grain of salt. If a candidate is so great, why hasn't the person giving that candidate such a glowing reference hired the candidate? (When I give references I expressly explain to the hiring manager whatever it is about my situation that stops me from hiring the candidate myself. The most powerful truth I can convey is, "Had I [whatever I would need or justify me] to hire [person X], I would do so, and you would not have the chance.")
Many industry certifications are not worth the paper on which they are printed. I attended a couple vendors' certification trainings wherein the instructors told the class not only the exact test questions but, and here is the rub, that the correct answer would be marked incorrect. Only a specific, incorrect, answer would be marked correct. The only way to get credit for these questions was to attend the costly, vendor-provided training. (Cisco is the great exception to this rule. To this day, Cisco has no formal prerequisite for its flagship certification. Its tests are tough but fair. Thus Cisco's certifications maintain a good reputation: I know I can trust a C.C.N.A., C.C.N.P. or C.C.I.E. to have the corresponding skills.)
At the risk of getting myself deplatformed, I can share a few common issues with H-1B candidates. To be clear, I have met professional, diligent and qualified workers on H-1Bs or who, at one point, were on H-1Bs. I hired a 20-year-old Moroccan gentleman who had just arrived here who worked out great. As a numbers game, however, many will have, at the least, some degree of culture shock adapting to American life. Business culture is not uniform the world over. Dress, email etiquette and annunciation for phone conversations are likely issues. Many countries' education systems are great at preparing students for repetitive, inside-the-box tasks. Few really bread innovation. And, at this point, ours is not particularly great at it either.
Objective, written skills assessments were the one metric that proved effective for me when selecting technical talent. They also allowed me to widen my consideration to a larger number of candidates, because it took only a half hour to test each one. I brought each candidate into a conference room. I had the candidate place his or her cell phone on the table between us, where we could both see it. I gave each candidate the same written skills assessment.
Mine was a tough test. It was designed that way. The highest score I recall anyone ever achieving was 42 percent. A faked or exaggerated resume could not help a candidate. A lack of traditional educational credentials, itself, could not harm one. The high scorers in each round usually surprised the whole hiring team. Predicting results based on resumes, experience and credentials proved, for the most part, a fool's errand.
The tests also gave my company insulation in case its hiring practices were ever challenged. I could demonstrate exactly why we passed over a particular candidate.
This process left me with a few key takeaways:
1) The talent is there, the challenge is finding it.
2) Don't try too hard to filter the deluge of resumes subjectively or try to outsource that task to non-technical personnel.
3) The best talent often does not have the snazziest resume and is often not who you first think it is.
4) Credentials matter a lot less than candidates' internal drives to better themselves.
That Moroccan gentleman I mentioned earlier, for example, had less access to technology than I did growing up stateside. But he loved it. Because he loved it, he spent all the time he could with it and did whatever he could within reason to get access to it. And because of the time he spent pursuing his passion for technology, he had the high score among the candidates for that position.
Most times, however, the high score went to an American. That's not my opinion as much as it's how the cookie crumbled.