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The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
111–120 of 232 posts
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#112Eventually I was able to meet the chief financial officer of my favorite company, Costco. He told me that they don’t hire any MBAs. Everyone starts by pushing trolleys. (I have seriously thought about doing just that. But my wife is strongly against it.) Maybe, I thought, that is why the company is so successful—no MBAs! that's pretty amazing..is this really true? So if someone applied for marketing or accounting, th…
I did some consulting work at Costco. Their IT is all people that were once cashiers/trolley pushers. They pride themselves having staff loyal to the company and in turn take care of them. I would assume it's true pretty much everywhere else around the company.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#113Eventually I was able to meet the chief financial officer of my favorite company, Costco. He told me that they don’t hire any MBAs. Everyone starts by pushing trolleys. (I have seriously thought about doing just that. But my wife is strongly against it.) Maybe, I thought, that is why the company is so successful—no MBAs! that's pretty amazing..is this really true? So if someone applied for marketing or accounting, th…
I don't know about Costco, but...
The MBA was originally designed for people who had worked their way up from the bottom, and needed to backfill the theory.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#114[deleted]
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#115> One class was about strategy. It focused on how corporate mottos and logos could inspire employees.
Probably not intended as such, but I'll take it as a hilarious send up of "strategy" and will recall it whenever I witness "strategy" being used vacuously.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#116Interesting that in one section, he casts doubt on the notion that mathematical models can accurately describe reality, and in another, he uses a heart rate monitor to conclude that he doesn’t have emotions.
I don't think our economic models are comparable in accuracy or reliability to a heart rate monitor.
Nor are heart rate monitors an accurate or reliable predictor of emotion
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#117Probably better titled “Life is a random walk”. I completely agree with his premise - ‘success’ in life, however defined, seems largely a function largely of luck. Those who see the world for what it is - rather than what received dogma teaches - understand this truth.
I study testing of the sort he focuses on, and is at the core of a system he points out is more similar across Chinese and Western societies than people think.
What I've come to realize is that everything he wrestles with in the essay is not hidden away, it's right there within the testing system. It's studied empirically, the markets are there, it's all in plain view. It doesn't require any special wisdom or insight and anyone trying to simplify things either way are wrong.
These tests that are scrutinized bear only a modest relationship with what they are trying to measure, and what they are trying to measure is only weakly related to what people want to know. That is, the best estimates suggest that they're only correlated about .30 or .40 with actual ability or understanding in any deeper sense at most. And this is over the entire range of ability, meaning that it includes comparisons between people who score in the 2nd percentile and those who score in the 98th percentile -- a huge portion of that correlation is surely due to gross comparisons of that sort.
What's sobering to me is that we know this. We know these tests are not only imperfect, but severely so. And yet we fetishize it. The money being put into the testing field is astounding.
The reason of course, is because, while these tests are poor measures, they're the better than nothing. And we know that they tell us something about people, on average, across many people.
I'm not sure why we overrely on these things, why these discussions are often framed in extremes, where either a test is the criterion for success, or react to it with claims that the tests are completely invalid.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#118"... randomness is not merely the noise but the dominant factor. And those reasons we assign to historical events are often just ex post rationalizations. As rising generations are taught the rationalizations, they conclude that things always happen for a reason. " I didn't realize it until contemplating this statement, but this applies to interpersonal relationships as well as nations. It is the root of tolerance an…
"People wind up where they are largely through circumstance, not intention. "
There may be a lot of randomness on the way to becoming, or almost becoming a doctor, but you don't get to be a doctor by randomness.
See what I mean?
You get to be a doctor only with quite a very long term intent and perseverance, by stacking the odds, and rolling the dice a lot.
Though I get what you are saying - I also don't think that most people as of yet realize how much actual control they have over themselves and their lives, and they can possibly make it better. That's still a huge hurdle for a lot of people.
I suppose those that have jumped that hurdle could often learn a little empathy for those with bad dice :)
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#119I find it interesting that the author only considers America from the top down - from the perspectives of institutions (Stanford, Goldman Sachs, Costco) and slogans (American Dream, All people deserve to live healthy lives). Part of me wonders if that’s due to America's own marketing, or due to his upbringing in a more totalitarian government, but for most Americans these perspectives are just as foreign. At dinner t…
This is a good point, but there's an awful lot of post-hoc Just World fallacy wrapped up in those same statements of faith. The really spurious ones - like 9/11 or Katrina being divine punishment - get media coverage but there're more bland ones that are actually more harmful; like disease or disaster being all part of God's plan. It's all good for living a life where you have to cope with what you can't directly con…
"post-hoc Just World fallacy wrapped up in those same statements of faith"
Not really.
We have built a progressively more just world - and it gets a little bit more just and civilized every generation that goes by.
It's only possible when most people have some kind of faith, however crude, as the grind away at it. It does not happen by accident - over the long haul, it requires a Will.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#120The most odd thing for me was the bit about how he didn't understand how 'long-term greedy' would not inspire most people.
Also - we should consider that the kinds of kids who grow up super talented, go to Goldman and top Schools etc. are probably not very representative of the Chinese population.