Not acknowledging gender only makes sense when there has been no discrimination against that gender in the past. Women in STEM and especially in India have accomplished their successes in spite of heavy odds against them. Women in India (traditionally) have been expected to stay at home and take care of the family, not send rockets to Mars.
As such acknowledging their accomplishments while acknowledging their gender is not a bad thing.
I wish they could be asked, though. Some people really do not like explicitly acknowledging their special status, and wish that everyone would just focus on their accomplishments instead of their traits.
>Is Garrett Camp an immigrant? Sure sounds like it. But is that really in the spirit of "founded by immigrants"?
Yes, Garrett Camp is an immigrant. He just happens to be white and from Canada and is thus perceived less as "those other people" and more "American" because he blends in. If he came from Sudan would you consider him to be "more of an immigrant"? Your own comment implies this bias even if you didn't mean for it to sound that way.
>Your own comment implies this bias even if you didn't mean for it to sound that way.
I see your point, but I disagree in this situation. If there was no context around the discussion, you'd be exactly right. But there is context, and the context is the immigration ban put in place by the president. That immigration ban excludes people from specific countries. This article was very obviously written to show how important immigration is as a way to counter the reasoning that bore the immigration ban, but I feel it cheapens the point when you include immigrants who are not part of the ban.
Basically, if the point of the article was just "immigrants are good", then yes, you're right. But since the point of the article is "this immigration ban is bad!", it makes sense to restrict the discussion to people from countries actually listed on the ban.
To put it another way, what if the article mentioned Canadian immigrants, South African immigrants, German immigrants, British immigrants.... but no Iranians? No Syrians. No Iraqis. The conclusion of the article could then be portrayed as "see? muslim immigrants don't do anything useful anyway! ban them!" For every immigrant you put in the article that isn't affected by the ban, the case for the ban becomes stronger. That's why I think we should limit our conversation to the context implied by the article's conclusion.
> But there is context, and the context is the immigration ban put in place by the president.
Yes, your point only makes sense if the context of the immigration topic was limited to a travel ban in the countries that the Trump administration is currently focused on. But there is an even larger context of this administration's statements regarding immigration. If you are looking to apply larger contexts then keep in mind Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions' statements regarding immigration:
-- Steve Bannon:
"When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think... A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society." (He dislikes Asian executives in SV).
-- Steve Bannon:
"Don’t we have a problem with legal immigration? Twenty percent of this country is immigrants. Is that not the beating heart of this problem?" (He dislikes legal immigration from any country, not just muslim majority countries).
-- Jeff Sessions:
"The H-1B program is a “tremendous threat” to American professionals." (He wishes to curb visa programs for highly educated and professional immigrants).
At the end of the day, an immigrant is an immigrant. If Steve Bannon or yourself are accepting Canadian and South African immigrants' contributions, but wish to isolate those contributions from those of Sudanese, Muslim or Asian immigrants then there is a deeper bias problem that must be talked about. The current travel ban might be of 6 muslim majority countries, but you cannot ignore the very real statements by the Trump administration about their intention to stop legal immigration from as many sources as possible.
When you keep that context in mind, it makes less sense to add nuance to the situation and start isolating contributions of immigrants based on the countries they are from.
The Trump administration has stated it might cap H1B visas further. This move will directly impact academia and the Tech industry and the influx of top talent. By combining the issue of illegal immigration with legal high value H1B visas, the Trump administration and its supporters are not helping their own argument. There is a nuance there which the parent comment was correctly mentioning. You want the best of another country to come to the US as they have been or risk the slow spiral of insignificance that Germany faced.
H1B is currently randomized lottery, benefiting sweatshops cluttering the pipeline, Current administration is not eliminating it but at least from their talk its about restoring their original intent, to bring in extra-ordinary talent. Which might actually be good news for SV, depending on how it is implemented?
Google, Microsoft, Netflix & Facebook benefit directly from H1B visas and are most certainly not "sweatshops". Even when you consider companies that pay less than the top tech companies, no one would consider them sweatshops. So hyperbole aside, and keeping in mind that H1B also brings academic talent to universities, the hate towards the H1B program seems more rooted in a hate of immigration than a worry of the program not realizing its "original intent".
If you don't want 85,000 of the best talent in the world per year to power US companies' and academia's growth, that's fine. Go ahead and limit the visa program and risk that talent going elsewhere.
If you know where to find these H1B "sweatshops" on US soil, please take those charts and company names to the Department of Labor and report the wage crime or occupational hazards you are implying with your hyperbole. Otherwise, your statements are deeply exaggerated. Here's a link to get you started: https://www.dol.gov/whd/howtofilecomplaint.htm
"When Spiegel travels between his company's scattered outposts, he normally has a Range Rover with a private driver transport him from building to building. The former employee described it like the president arriving: a black car would pull up and Spiegel would hurriedly pop out with his security detail."
Johnny Depp spends "Over $150,000/month on full-time security for his children" according to current revelations. So $900K/year for someone who's not very famous isn't unreasonable I suppose.
It's easy to work out the cost of full time security. Lets say you need 2 people on rotation, they do 12 hours per day each (doable because they get to relax while client is at home etc.) then multiply by a reasonable salary for skilled labor like 70k then you get to 140k per year per person easily.
Lots of Venice Beach locals are not happy that Snap is buying up prime property / increasing rents / bringing in yuppies etc. I wouldn't be surprised if he's received threats and is most focused on security while in and around the office.
If Snap Inc. IPOs at their expected 25B value, Spiegel will be valued at nearly 5 billion (21% ownership), so ~1 million in security per year is not too far-fetched.
This author woke up on the wrong side of the bed before writing this article. If Nintendo can achieve $4M in mobile sales in 1 day as it did with Super Mario Run -- does it really matter if the company is conservative or revolutionary?
See: Hollywood in recent years and its constant need to do sequels because they guarantee a successful and profitable venture.
I bought Mario Run, but, subjectively, it doesn't feel like a success. This article captures the nebulous subjective experience fairly well. We don't need a thinkpiece to cover the sales numbers - those are obvious.
