As a Somali, this person's life is likely absolute hell in Kuwaiti prison. The Middle Eastern countries are incredibly prejudiced against people of Indian Subcontinental and African origins as many come to the peninsula in order to work on construction/menial jobs. Family friends (I am of Indian origin) have horror stories of passports being confiscated, police blackmails, and blatant racism.
Its truly sad that the U.S. has let a citizen be treated like this by a state, especially a state where the U.S. has as much influence.
They are more likely to be in the public eye. More visibility = more chances of being attacked for being sexist/discriminating = more programs and "support" to hire females, underrepresented minorities etc.
A startup is working hard just to survive. This is a survivorship bias often ignored by media and report likely because its not politically correct.
Could it be that once you reach a certain level of size in any organization bureaucracy and complexity turns up? The reason why Amazon might have "terrible engineering" while the sleekest app startup doesn't is because Amazon is really, really big.
Look I understand degrees and IQ really don't mean much by themselves. Most of my friends attend "elite" colleges (as society deems it). Some are brilliant. Some aren't. However, the numbers show that "smartness" and particularly an "obsession" with smartness matters. Amazon is really successful. Google is really successful. D.E. Shaw is notoriously successful. Facebook is successful. Teach for America is super successful. The defining theme to all of these organizations is a focus on hiring the best talent possible. And often times the best talent happens to be at those top schools.
Think of the timeline of hiring. These companies often target people in the 22-27 age bracket. That is just 4 to 9 years away from their high school when college decisions were made. Work ethic, ambition, and a determination to get things done is pretty damn autocorrelating in its nature. Someone mentioned how PG noted in an essay that he was underwhelmed by MIT, Harvard, Stanford kids. But look at the YC startups. The number of startups funded by YC by alumni from MIT, CMU, Stanford is far more than what it would be if there was no correlation-causation.
I think drawing broad conclusion from a criminal enterprise like Enron is a poor way of doing things. Just because Enron touted their smartness and failed doesn't mean that is the norm. On a large enough sample set, I will still bet you that the McKinsey conclusion is right in that "talent" and the drive to get the top talent is still a big part of the most successful organizations.
Definition of holier than thou: Exhibiting an attitude of superior virtue; self-righteously pious.
Gladwell tries to come off from a moral high ground where he preaches about certain concepts (in this example the benefits of talent) by self-selecting evidence.
I really find it funny how the entire employee grading process has become a huge area of contention amongst arm chair quarterbacks. Recently, there was another article where it talked about Wall Street's excessive competitiveness as having caused the crisis. Gladwell and similar authors forget the one company (and the one manager) credited with popularizing this entire concept: General Electric and Jack Welch. I like the off-handed way Gladwell mentions a specific quote from a G.E. exec without talking about the success G.E. had with this approach I can use Welch and G.E. in order to argue against this entire article. In fact, Welch's biographies do the job. Not only did he grade employees into three tiers, he graded entire businesses into tiers. If a business wasn't #1 or #2, its shuttered. I will bet I can actually construct a better argument for supporting the quest for talent.
Enron blew up because upper management was a bunch of liars. What does talent have to do with it? In fact, Enron failed at following the "promote talent" concept. If they did take this philosophy to heart, they would have fired the international heads that bled billions of dollars from Enron's bottom line. In fact, Skilling and the top protected those sub-par managers and execs leading to the shady accounting to hide the carnage. The talent they picked up in their energy trading department was (and is) great. Go into any of the nation's energy trading floors and Enron alumni enjoy great reputations.
As for the record, I think Gladwell goes well beyond being "a bit contrarian". ;)
God, this is classic Gladwell. Skip critical details to come out as a "holier than thou" contrarian.
Kitchin's qualification for running EnronOnline, it should be pointed out, was not that she was good at it. It was that she wanted to do it, and Enron was a place where stars did whatever they wanted.
EnronOnline was one of the most successful units of Enron. In fact, UBS picked up the platform and now many of the techniques developed at EnronOnline was picked up by the electronic energy trading platforms.
Kitchin is still considered one of the foremost authorities in the world of energy trading and finance. I believe she is a MD at Deutsche Bank in the field of energy structuring and got her development of the business turned into a Harvard Business School case study.
Clearly not only was she good at organizing the business, she succeeded at it. This is exactly what I really dislike about reading Gladwell's stuff. His job is to find a previously successful story-line that has hit snags, in order to act as an armchair quarterback. He is just like most other journalist and historian - seemingly wise because of post-hoc analysis but incapable of actual prediction.
I completely agree with the sentiment expressed in this post. Too many kids in my school (top-10 undergrad or whatever that means) ended up in banking, consulting, and law school because that was what seemed "prestigious".
However, don't dismiss the fact that there aren't people passionate about finance. I am personally involved in this industry and I hustled since I was in high school to work in the industry. I spent 2 straight years of high school working part-time and full-time summers at trading firms and realized this is exactly what I want to do.
What we need is shut down this "prestige whoredom" prevalent across all elite colleges in America and have graduates try different careers to figure out what in the world they want to do with their lives. Sadly, a lot of the current generation of college degree holders will slave away their lives doing things they don't like doing - not that its different from any previous generation to be honest.
We operate in an integrated, global financial system now. For the last decade, our entire country has been funded by Chinese funds for crying out loud!
Foreign banks such as UBS, CS, some of the reinsurers, as well as the ECB (and by extension the mammoth French banks) all cast such a wide net over the entire world that one of them failing would be enough to jeopardize the U.S. system.
This article forgets that Lehman was (after Bear) the smallest of the global players. If say a bank like Deutsche, or BNP Paribas failed, the effects would be even bigger than Lehman.
To get the benefits of globalization the world must accept the cost of globalization. These types of articles are typically written towards audiences who don't understand this concept.
How many times have the history books flamed the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government for not doing enough to save the nation from the Great Depression? Would they be saying the same if the Fed had not helped the banks?
Considering the sheer breadth of knowledge Wikipedia makes available to the public for free, I think we can all afford the millisecond it takes us to scroll away from the banner ad. Better yet, I think we can all throw in some money towards the project.
As for him being an ambassador to a watch company, its a pretty common concept as most Swiss luxury watch makers support everyone from athletes to humanitarians. Even if he makes money off of it, it isn't his obligation to donate it all to Wikimedia. In fact I think its a pretty smart concept to showcase Wikipedia to the type of clientele who might actually buy such watches.
This is probably the soundest advice to dealing with bullying I have ever seen. As a kid that has been to 7 different schools in 2 different countries (and learned English in '99), I assure you "hugging it out" with the bully will lead to you getting humiliated.
They do not respect loving them.
They do not respect constructive dialogue.
Your peers will not respect you for trying to reach out to them. In fact they will see you as a kiss-ass, or worse a "bitch" (sorry but that's the term).
I moved to the US in '02. Attended a great Catholic school for 8th grade. Was accepted despite the funny accent and funny name. Went to high school and had a miserable 1st month of school thanks to a group of jackasses. One of them had the gall to touch me after which I took a lunch tray to a kids face. God my butt handed to me but guess what? No more bullying. Hell I got elected to the student council, dated some great girls, and had a great high school experience.
Stand up for yourself. It might hurt but you will get respect. Kids/teens are animals. No need to go cerebral on them.
Its truly sad that the U.S. has let a citizen be treated like this by a state, especially a state where the U.S. has as much influence.