[quote=sdduuuude]The fact of the matter is – your career ends just below the manager level if you don’t know how to deal with people. If I’m hiring people and I need an engineer to work long hours, not get paid very much and do an excellent job implementing tedious crap – I’m going to hire the “Asain” guy. But if I need someone who is creative, who knows how to get others to work hard, to secure funding for a project, to design or manage others (i.e. to do a higher level job), I’m going to hire the guy who learned how to be social, friendly, persuasive, tactful, creative, etc. If being stuck doing tedious crap is your idea of success, then have at it.
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You have some good points. But I think you underestimate the glass ceiling effect. A person of different cultural background WILL have a much more difficult time getting into management, period. It’s not necessarily discrimination but people always feel more comfortable around people who look like them and share a similar cultural background. That’s natural. Management is an exclusive club that takes a lot of things going right simultaneously technical or not, for a person to get into. The hyperthetical “asian” in your example WILL have a much lower chance EVEN if he has all those people skills.
On the other hand, look around, how many of your main stream non-asian managers are “creative” and “good with people”. Give me a break.
