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The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

nytimes.com

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Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#151

Post by luddaite »

dleslie wrote: post #13
40acres wrote: post #2

I've been struggling with dream fulfillment vs. pragmatism for weeks now. The dillema is this: I only have a finite amount of time on the weekends and after work -- should I work on this side project idea that I want to turn into a start up or dedicate the time to study for interviews and secure my future with a high salary. Its been gnawing at me for weeks now and I think after reading this I've made my decision.. m…

I've made a career of chasing other people's dreams: I look for opportunities at well-funded or well-positioned small companies and insert myself into the opportunity to help others achieve their dreams. It's fun, and sometimes it's fortuitous, but most of the time it just pays the bills and keeps my life interesting. The key is that it pays the bills and remains interesting. If I were to chase my own entrepreneurial…

I am just entering the job market and I would like to try and make this my career as well. I'd like to go from early stage company to early stage company and help the founders build something cool. Any tips or advice?

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#152

Post by Majestic121 »

User23 wrote: post #137
Majestic121 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have sources about diversity driving positive economic income ? It seems to go without saying for you, but it's not that natural for me. There are several examples of very homogeneous countries, such as Japan or Korea, doing economical prowess.

http://news.mit.edu/2014/workplace-diversity-can-help-bottom... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/ruchikatul... There are many many other studies, all easily queried. There’s also the largest and richest country in the world as a case study.

The largest country in the world is Russia, and the richest is Iceland. Do you mean the US ?

If so, what makes you think the US got successful because of diversity instead of other factors ?

Similarly, there are studies showing that skill diversity is important, but not bio diversity. For example this meta-study[1] : "Support was found for the positive impact of task-related diversity on team performance. In contrast, bio-demographic diversity had no relationship with team performance"

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228389271_The_Effec...

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#153

Post by YinglingLight »

pm90 wrote: post #110
laumars wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's trendy to run your own start up but honestly I'd rather work for an established company on a decent wage and have my startup idea as side projects for fun. If they become profitable then I get a little extra pocket money. However more often than not it's just something to scratch a personal itch so I'd rather just give it away to the open source community since it has already been so generous to me and my career…

Startups and regular jobs are really different experiences; some people enjoy the thrill of being weeks away from running out of cash, or crunching hours after hours to get the product out to the market and potentially making a ton of money in a short period of time. Others like to have a more regular schedule which for them is more productive. So people kinda naturally gravitate towards either kind of job when they…

Life is suffering. And I don't mean that in some existential sense. The lifestyles people choose is summed up by how they want to suffer.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#154

Post by ptaipale »

k__ wrote: post #133
ptaipale wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a smaller generational gap here: my father was born in 1920, my uncle in 1918, at time of civil war in my country (Finland). The family was not the poorest but getting food on the table was a concern. Boys went to work in the forest at the age of 12. Uncle went through prisoner of waonr camps in Russian in 1940, father spent 1941-1944 the front, looking for bread crumbs in the pockets of any Russian KIA he'd fin…

My grandparents always forced us children to eat up. I had to sit hours on the table.

The joke's been around for a long time, I was not very old when first time hearing sarcastically "eat your plate empty, because if you don't, some kid in Biafra will starve".

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#155

Post by isk517 »

kilburn wrote: post #105
wozniacki wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead we get celebrities and players and self-made rich critters out there to catch the limelight and flak. And family, the key base to aristocratic wealth and power, is played down as unnecessary, because a meritocratic system needs no more than individual prowess to succeed. Terrific observation! Although I think I get what you mean by this I'd love for you to expand on it. I'm sure you have dwelled as I have and…

> Were aristocratic families the object of scorn back then? All the attention they received from society eventually led to bad stuff? Bad actors? Not scorn, but definitely resentment. Worst case for that aristocracy was... the french revolution ;)

French revolution was more of a bad case scenario, I think the Russian revolution was more of a worst case.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#156

Post by fhood »

cbhl wrote: post #33

One of the least useful pieces of start-up advice I received in college was, "if your startup fails, don't worry, you can go live in your parents' basement." Well, fine, if your parents owned their home, the worst you have to deal with is the shame of failing. If I did a start-up and it failed, it's probable that my parents wouldn't even have a basement for me to return home to.

This is a really great point. "Following your dreams" tends to come at the expense of your parents and not yourself. Which is fine if your parents can afford it I guess, but the idea that following your dream is a noble and brave act is seriously flawed.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#157

Post by x0x0 »

icefo wrote: post #145
sturgill wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both my wife and I grew up quite poor (for US standards). We didn’t quite fit in at university and had a hard time relating to our peers who grew up with money (my wife’s parents encouraged her to not go to school but just stay and marry local). We’re doing well for ourselves, but still don’t really fit in among our peers. We’ve coined a phrase for it: “your poverty is showing.” It doesn’t matter how much I make: at…

I'm not a parent so take this advice with a grain of salt but I think holding your kids accountable for their actions can go a long way. Like if they break their phone you give them an old flip phone so they are still reachable but they have to earn money (mowing grass, do the chores...) to pay for a new one (even if paying them a new phone doesn't make a dent in your budget).

It's not the same.

My parents grew up very poor. We were comfortably middle class until my dad died while I was young. I helped my parent with bills from the time I was 18.

Even in me, you can see the difference that never going hungry makes vs my mother, who regularly went hungry growing up. And will still drive 45 minutes across town to save $2 on gas.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#158

Post by tvanantwerp »

spyckie2 wrote: post #47

The harsh reality of 1st or 2nd generation Chinese is that while many of us went to the top universities and grew up with a modern, 1st world mindset, we can't escape the fact that our financial and family background is from the developing world, and we live in both worlds at once - our mindset is modern, but the issues and problems of the developing world are still very much things we have to deal with. I first enco…

I don't think this story is particularly limited to immigrants. I remember that when my grandfather died, I didn't know about it for two months because I was studying abroad and my mother "didn't want to upset me". Our family has been living in the Americas since the 1600s.

Coming from a smaller Southern town that existed to produce textiles--none of which are produced in the US anymore--I grew up relatively poor and without guanxi or even any role models and mentors to advise me. Only in the past decade since leaving college and living in a large US city do I see the huge deficits in my understanding and network that such a background creates.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#159

Post by bodas »

TomMarius wrote: post #143
pavlov wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m Finnish too. My entirely anecdotal experience of both Finland and USA is that America is about 40 years behind in responding to poverty. To see men sleeping in trash boxes in freezing weather, you only need to walk a few blocks around midtown Manhattan in the winter.

Or maybe USA has way more people or other factors that make it a harder problem. Some homeless people can't be helped since they have mental illnesses and break away from hospitals (USA has 70 times more people and homeless people are concentrating themselves in population hubs - that could make the problem more visible), and so on. Let's not assume things without proper analysis.

Something I've noticed about developing countries, people never attribute poverty to a character failure. People in developing countries come face to face with poverty every day, they have poor friends and poor family members, so the idea that poor people are unintelligent or not hard-working, never occurs.

When countries become rich (it's not just America), people lose their connection with poverty and start to blame poor people for being poor. This lets them justify voting against social security programmes because they believe "it will never happen to me, I'm not the kind of person who becomes poor".

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#160

Post by strken »

sametmax wrote: post #86
spyckie2 wrote: post #47

The harsh reality of 1st or 2nd generation Chinese is that while many of us went to the top universities and grew up with a modern, 1st world mindset, we can't escape the fact that our financial and family background is from the developing world, and we live in both worlds at once - our mindset is modern, but the issues and problems of the developing world are still very much things we have to deal with. I first enco…

Your testimony reminds me of a kid I met in Mali. The guy was our guide, and he spoke 6 languages, including 4 local dialects, french and english. He had a cellphone and knew how to drive a 4x4. He drove us to the desert, in a place at the north of Bamako known as the Dogon's country. There, he asked us if we were ok to take a detour by his parents village, and we agreed. His parents were living with no electricity,…

Without being too much of a prick, my dad grew up in a first world western country in a house with a dirt floor, had no power until after 1970, ate a diet of mostly potatoes a few months before they were due to be planted and 10 months since they were picked, slept with the cows because it was more comfortable than sleeping in a bed with the other male children, and ended up a comparatively wealthy amateur entomologist only because he got a free studentship and became a teacher. They used to store meat in a Coolgardie safe before they bought a kerosene fridge.

Anyone in a developed country has an insane level of wealth even compared to our parents, for the most part. I'm reading High Output Management right now, and it's basically the opposite of every strike and industrial action my parents found themselves in. There's an inherent tension between a stable life and a rich life that I find hard to resolve.

I dunno.

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