<p>Oldfort-
I noted in my post about the IB world about information security, that leads to things like the need for firewalls between departments and the like. However, I can also tell you, from my wife’s own experience and from my own time working in an investment bank, that the bankers also have to worry about the other bankers, and I have heard that from people who work at other banks who handle things like the security on laptops and IT systems. Obviously, with deals going down, keeping it quiet is critical, including from other branches of the same company, and often deals have been leaked because of what is in the garbage…that said, bankers also view each others as competitors from what I saw, and they would be only too glad to steal information from another banker to score a coup…it could be your experience is different, I don’t know, but my information comes from a number of the top banks. </p>
<p>I think also you misplace what the idea of competition is, or the nature of it. If someone’s goal is to rise up the ranks, they can do it one of two ways. They can either work their tail off, collaborate with other people as needed, build networks of support, and otherwise excel in their job, and move up because they show talent and also have the respect of other people, both below and above them. Their goal is to rise, maybe even make CEO or whatever, and there is nothing wrong with that, if they work towards it. </p>
<p>Then there are those that everyone has met and seen, who far too often do rise, and they are the ones that are poison. They are what we call “the takers”, those who see everyone else as an enemy to be squashed, who rather then working as a team player (I know,a misused term), someone looking out for the company to succeed or his/her division to succeed, is looking out only for themselves to be #1, which is frankly the Chua methodology. When someone is primarily out for me, which is what we are talking about, they often do things that are contra to the good interests of the company, but they believe will move them up. Things like stealing subordinates ideas and passing them off as their own (think the Sigourney Weaver character in “Working Girl”, which is not an unknown phenomena). It is also people like this that end up taking down a company, that through their own inflated sense of self worth or the need to be #1 (want a classic example? Mike Miliken built Drexel Burnham into a powerhouse,the guy was making 500 million a year,legitimately, but because his goal was to be #1 i.e make even more money, he got tied up in the insider trading scandal of the late 80’s and ended up in jail, and DB went under)…Bernie Madoff is a pretty good example of what happens as well, he is a case study of someone who apparently grew up/learned the idea that everything was about being #1, part of the problem being that what are you willing to do to get there? How would an academic be viewed if they were granted tenure and then because they were obsessed with being #1, stole the work of another person or grad student and claimed it as their own, or plagiarized some of their papers and such? </p>
<p>Obviously, there is competition, and as you ‘move up the ladder’, through the ranks it becomes harder and harder and yes there is competition. My son is a serious music student, probably on the most competitive instrument there is, and as a profession it is a competition of incredible proportions, when you try out for a slot in an orchestra there can be 150 other people trying out, for example, and if you want to be a soloist the odds are literally a million to 1…but what any person in music will tell you, you get there by improving yourself, on making yourself the best that you can be, find teachers that work for you and work hard, that you can’t change others, you have to work on yourself to be your best and let the chips fall where they may. You strive for the best, but treating everyone else basically as an enemy is not a good way to do it. Among other things, people who go by that "#1 is everything’ mentality are like the bad corporate citizen, they get a bad reputation early on and it hurts them. </p>
<p>In music, I see the kids who were raised by parents like Chua, and the ones who intend to go into music (as opposed to the many using it on their path to #1 in whatever), and they have big problems. They have been conditioned by their parents that being #1 is everything, and because their parents don’t know squat about music, these kids believe that winning competitions and being a soloist is "the only thing’, that anything else is “lesser”, “not worth it”, etc. The problem? Music is a collaborative and artistic form, and for many going into it it is a passion, and they are happy simply to be in music, to be able to do it. Most music is done in an ensemble, whether it be orchestra or chamber, and the real #1 is making it into something and being part of it, working musicians do everything they can to make it, but they also collaborate. </p>
<p>The kids raised “#1” and think that means treating everyone else as the enemy get a bad reputation fast, and when they get out of music school they run into trouble. Even if talented and musical enough to be soloists, their attitude is so bad that the orchestras they would play with don’t want to be around them, and if going for gigs or trying to get into orchestras and chamber, their attitude that this is a let down from “#1”, and in the end they fail.</p>
<p>As far as this being a path immigrants feel their kids can achieve in, of course, and it is nothing new. Jews in their time knew that to achieve, they had to be better then anyone else, same for people in other groups, and yes, doing well in school and such is a path that achieves that success, there is no doubt about it. However, the problem with the ‘immigrant view’ (which if kind of funny in Chua’s case, since from what I can tell she was born and raised here, and her husband is native), is it is often one that doesn’t pick up the realities. For example, in the workplace a lot more then academic success gets you to the top, you should know that. If a kid is brought up as Chua has, where everything is about purpose, how do you relate to other people? In upper level management, a lot of the success on the job is based on people skills, you can come in and give a presentation in a roadshow on a potential M and A deal, have all the powerpoint slides in the world, all the projections and analyses and so forth, but often those deals are made by social networking and going out to dinner or in many cases, a strip bar, over drinks. How adept is a kid so narrowly focused as Chuas going to do there? While that is an extreme example, that kind of skillset is critical in any kind of business, these come down to human interactions, all the numbers from a spreadsheet are only the beginning.</p>
<p>In music it is interesting.Many of the students today in classical music are Asian, either kids of immigrant parents or from ‘the old country’. One of the problems those kids are having is that they and their parents don’t fully understand the nature of music. First of all, classical music is a western form and none of the Asian countries own music is anywhere similar to it, and that is a struggle (for example, knowing the difference between playing Haydn or Beethoven stylistically), especially since their instruction often is about the technical mastery because they and their teachers don’t feel comfortable with the musical side of it. Many of these kids, here in the US and overseas, believe that there is this magical formula, that if you get into a high level conservatory, win all these competitions, you become a great musician, and it doesn’t work like that. In effect, they are translating the academic model (get great grades, get into great college, do well there, you get a great job) into music, where there is even more outside the basic ‘do well’ needed to succeed. The narrow focus here, like with Chua and her type, does lead to a certain kind of success, but it often doesn’t translate into the big picture. </p>
<p>My point about your focus on success being narrow reflects the fact that you defined success as being getting a high paid position as an IB, consultant or working for a high price law firm, and obviously that is a measure of success, but it isn’t the only one. What if instead of becoming a front line doctor, for example, a kid wanted to go into research, which isn’t nearly as lucrative as being an MD. What if a kid becomes a doctor, but wants to work for doctors without frontiers or in a clinic someplace, rather then being a plastic surgeon in beverly hills? What if a kid, rather then being an IB, wants to be a musician or poet, even if you don’t make a lot of money at it? If we applied your idea of success as being the only real one, there wouldn’t be any musicians or composers, since very few of them make the big bucks, same with people working at non profits, teaching, and so forth.</p>
<p>Yes, if you want to work for a top consulting firm, if you want to work for a white shoe law firm, or a top IB firm as a banker, you need the kind of creds you are talking about. But there are other paths, in trading you don’t need to be a 4.0 from an ivy league school, there are tons of successful lawyers who went to second tier schools, there are plenty of judges and politicians who didn’t go to HYP, and so forth. There are heads of big companies who never got a harvard MBA or the equivalent, so even in the money ranks that path isn’t the only one. </p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is questioning Chua’s motives, most parents, in part or full, care and love their kids and want to do the best by them,but it doesn’t mean they are necessarily doing the right thing or is a method guaranteed for a broad measure of success. Beethoven’s father was a controlling SOB, as was Mozart’s father, and frankly both of them achieved their success when they broke from the grasp of the controlling parent, not when they were in the clutches (just using an example). What is disconcerting about Chua is she is not an immigrant, as I pointed out, she is someone I assume is fully aware of American society yet maintained the viewpoint, often clouded, of immigrants trying to adapt to a different culture then the one they grew up in. She knows well that unlike China or Japan or Korea, in most circumstances where you went to school doesn’t have the influence here that it did back home, that in most professions, especially after you are out there, where you went to college becomes an afterthought, it is what you do, and that is quite different then in Asian countries for example, where the first thing hiring managers still do is look where you went to college (I have run into that here, with managers who looking at a resume were like “I want only people from top 10 schools”, they generally got a mouthful from HR and other managers, because with experienced positions that college means bupkus to most people, plus they tended to hire people based on what college they went to and hired some real schmucks).</p>