Vivek Ramaswamy, who is all set to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Elon Musk in the next Donald Trump administration, has weighed in on hiring trends across the tech sector in the US. The former Republican presidential candidate's comment came amid an intense discussion on Indian immigrants moving to the US and making it big.
Asking others to confront the truth if they were "really serious about fixing the problem," Ramaswamy noted that the American culture had "venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn't start in college, it starts YOUNG."
"The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over "native” Americans isn't because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture," Ramaswamy said in a lengthy post on X.
The post came as a surprise, with several Trump supporters throwing their weight behind the "America First" banner.
Ramaswamy, a first-generation US citizen whose parents immigrated from India, added that a "culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers."
He then gave examples of a few characters in Boy Meets World, Saved by the Bell and Family Matters, claiming he knew multiple sets of immigrant parents in the 1990s, who actively limited their children from TV shows that "promoted mediocrity". He added that "their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates."
"More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of 'Friends'. More math tutoring, and fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less 'chillin.' More extracurriculars, less 'hanging out at the mall,'" he added.
"Most normal American parents look skeptically at 'those kinds of parents.' More normal American kids view such 'those kinds of kids' with scorn. If you grow up aspiring normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve."
Seeking a "brutally honest" answer, Ramaswamy asked people to close eyes and visualise one model versus the other.
"'Normalcy' doesn't cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we'll have our a***s handed to us by China," he said.
In the end, Ramaswamy called it "our Sputnik moment," claiming that "Trump's election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up."
He then called for a culture that prioritises "achievement over normalcy, excellence over mediocrity, nerdiness over conformity, hard work over laziness."
"That's the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I'm confident we can do it," he concluded.
Earlier, Canadian musician Grimes, the former partner of Elon Musk, also addressed the anti-India rhetoric on social media and said, “Suddenly concocting anti-Indian energy out of nowhere is embarrassing y'all. Also, they were clear they planned to do this.”
Noting her step-father was an Indian, she added, "I had a fire childhood in a half-Indian household. Indian culture jives very well with Western culture."
