Clearly all women within a 50 mile radius have gone to great lengths to slip under your radar. You must have one hell of a reputation!

Asking -- do you - especially those of you in college currently, but also those in the work place -- see various trends in education and career choices? i.e. WHO is going to school, are there trends as to who is in business school versus "hard sciences", etc? My experience is that the best and most predominant software engineers, for example, tend to be Asian -- or at least those are the ones looking for work

The next question: If, for example, US citizens are not pursuing Engineering degrees, for example, should we, as a society, do something to push more people into the development sciences...the technology that drives the future economy?

It's not too hard to figure out. Asians usually come from complete families where the parents don't tolerate bad or even "average" grades. That gives them (or anyone with a similar family background) the foundation to succeed. Of course, my experience is when an Asian stops caring they REALLY stop caring. My college had a sorority full of Asian psychology and communications majors who were always the most fun at Greek events.

@Invictus -- I completely agree...but if *I* stated the obvious, I'd be called a racist....lol

But it is more than just Asians -- what are people observations regarding other cultures and gender?

Is this a new development? It's not my field, but it seems to me like for the past 20+ years fields like computer science have been dominated by East Asian and Indian males, college major-wise.

Werll, for one, it is easy forengineers from India and China to get work visas here, and they will work for a LOT less than our American born engineers, so why get into a field, where you will be unemployed most of the time.

I forgot where I saw it, but American born engineers were suffering huge unemployment numbers against the natinoal average, i will see if I can find it again, it was a while ago i read this.

For trends, I am a Logistics Analyst, and I notice that a lot of Eastern Europeans and Indians are becoming truck drivers. I also notice some VERY distinct differences between these 2 groups.

The Russians are much easier to make follow DOT rules, the Indians really just dont give a flying fuck. I have seen them running down the road with their trailer doors open, which even if empty is against the law, but these guys had full lloads back there.

Thank God DOT will shut those idiots down fast, and if you report them, DOT will get them.

And should society be doing something to influence and guide people / society ?

I enjoy the implication from Krellin that people with the last name of 'Liao' are not American citizens.

"it is easy forengineers from India and China to get work visas here" 100% wrong.

stating the obvious is NOT racist, it is making a observation on personal experiences. My goodness.

@Friendly -- when most of their resumes say "H1B visa" it's not an assumption, dumbass. Nor did I say they are not US citizens...but to deny that Liao is not an "American" name is to stick your head in the sand, moron

@Stresed -- oh, you can state the obvious based uon real world experience and still be called a racist by this bunch, trust me.

I have talked to our HR person about this, and she said 100% getting an engineer on a H4 or H1B is the usual way now. Companies now start hiring them before they need the,.

I am sure of this, as our company just hired 2 enigneers from India, and it took them less than 4 months from start to finish to get them here, if I remember exactly.

H1Bs are EASYYYYYY to get for some fields, like...engineering.

friendly, yes, if they have an H1B visa though, i thought they are restircted to working for the Sponsoring companyONLY. Has that changed? They should not be posting resumes if they are here on a H1B

"My experience is that the best and most predominant software engineers, for example, tend to be Asian"

"If, for example, US citizens are not pursuing Engineering degrees"

You made no mention that the resumes had "H1B visa".

In any case, my point was not to call you a racist, but rather to point out that even if, in a crazy hypothetical world, no white ango-saxons (or 'Americans', if you prefer :P) went into Engineering, there are plenty of Asian-Americans and Asians who will become citizens. America continues to attract the best and brightest from around the world, so it's really not a problem.

I'd argue that there's nothing that could be said to not be an "American" name since immigration from a variety of sources is such a part of our history, but I'd also say it's fair to assume that many people with the surname "Liao" were likely not born here, although it doesn't truly matter in the grand scheme of things.

For myself, I recently was back in college to take a few classes and I found a large group of African-Americans in the engineering program of my university. I had a student job as a part of a scholarship I was receiving (had to work x amount of hours for the school), and every single one of the dozen or so African-Americans I worked with...both male and female...were in engineering of some form, many of them electrical engineering. Meanwhile, a lot of the whites were in political science or business. Hardly anyone of that group was an education major, even though that was the main specialty of the university as a whole.

This wouldn't show on resumes, though, since none of the African-Americans I worked with had particularly African names...they were Leonard, Fred, Angela...etc.

My additional reason for posting was of course to give krellin a reason to fly off the handle into a 'leftists are terrible racist ignorant hypocrites' tirade. It's reliably adorable.

The problem is cultural. Westerners are made of two generations - the "Me" generation (e.g. hippies) and the offspring of the Me generation. What this means is that Westerners, particularly Americans, no longer see any virtue in challenging themselves. Engineering and science, for example, require the sort of discipline that isn't needed to sell insurance or to be a logistics manager for a grocery store, even though both of those jobs are likely to pay in the same range as the engineering disciplines.

If it makes you feel any better, you're probably not part of the problem - this Diplomacy game is very challenging, much more so than something like Diablo 3, for example. Personally I'm glad that I push myself to try difficult tasks. I feel that my life is much more rewarding. I feel bad for young people who have had no role model to teach them that exertion, effort, ambition, goals and tenacity are all virtues or pleasures in their own right.

Of the 11 sentior level developers on my team, 10 are typical American males (one black, nine white) and one is an atypical white American female. Not an Asian or Indian amongst the bunch. Our engineering group (I'm in system's integration where we make our software integrate with and compliment/enhance our customers' existing systems) has one Indian man, one Norwegian man, one Brit man, a couple of white American females and a bunch of typical white American males. No Asians there either.

But the reason Krellin saw what he did is the name choice was clearly an Asian name. Now, I will say that Asian's in this country predominately have degrees in higher education. You don't see many of them above 25 working as a manager at a Kroger store. But that just means their culture pushes education. It doesn't mean that they dominate the tech or engineering worlds or any other given field.for that matter. But they are more likely to be in a professional field than not because their culture supports and promotes higher learning and places honor in doing well in business and life.

@Al - there are more than just the Me and the children of the Me. Some of us in our 40s aren't either generation. My parents pre-date the baby boomers (the hippie Mes) and I predate gen X (the Mes' kids). My mom and dad were raised when the war was on and they didn't get to see their fathers until those fathers came home, if at all. so they understood hardwork and sacrifice and instilled it in their children, thos eof us born in the early to mid 60s as opposed to the late 60s and 70s as a result of some hippie free love.

"...there are plenty of Asian-Americans and Asians who will become citizens. America continues to attract the best and brightest from around the world, so it's really not a problem..." Wrong again. Someone else stated his company hires H1B all the time. I can't find enough qualified americans to fill the technical openings we have....so clearly there is an absence of US citizens in technical fields...THAT is why we import talent so often.

And...given that the country is still predominantly White...and certainly a vast minority is Asian (as opposed to other ethnicities) then there is still the possibility / probability that we will fall shy of technical talent in this country.

Along the same lines, I have seen multiple articles recently talking about the pending shortage of medical Doctors in this country.

I think someone up there hit it ont eh head: American youth culture (and a damned too many of you on this site...) are of the "I'm OWED it..." generation, instead of the "I will EARN IT" mentality...

[quote]
I can't find enough qualified americans to fill the technical openings we have....so clearly there is an absence of US citizens in technical fields...THAT is why we import talent so often.
[/quote]
As far as my experience goes, the reason why recruiters cannot find skilled technical people is because they:
a) require the person to be senior in the particular area
b) at the same time the applicant needs to be very young, so the manager can can 'mold' him as he sees fit
c) get paid rediculously few.

Well, you don't get a senior/experienced, just out of university, who will work for minimum wage:) That's my view as to why companies fail to get proper employees (at least where I live).

Also, the most important reason to not get into engineering is all the layers above engineers get paid much more, while not having to compete with cheap-labor countries from the east.

I agree with the entitlement generation, I've had many conversations with my cousin about the "value of failure". Failure is good. It helps you learn. You shouldn't aim for it, but you also shouldn't let it completely destroy you.

I also had a conversation yesterday that's somewhat relevant. I was at a playground with my kids, and there was another woman there with her kids, and she actually reprimanded her kids for doing things that were antisocial or unsafe, things like climbing up slides and such. My kids know beyond a shadow of a doubt that climbing up the slide is going to get them in some form of trouble, but I routinely see other kids, even kids with parents there, just do it constantly and act dumbfounded when I tell my kids not to do it. So I had a conversation with this woman about how astonishing it is that parents absolutely don't give a shit about such a basic courtesy and safety measure and how happy I was that there was someone else in this area that would actually...you know...try to give their kids even a modicum of direction.

Yes, clearly we climbed up slides when I was a kid, everyone has done it. But even when I did it, I knew it was wrong, and I knew that doing it in front of my parents was a Bad Idea. I don't understand why there's so many kids, and I'm not talking 5 year olds, I'm talking 10-12 year olds, who are dumbfounded that there would be anyone who would have an issue with that. And I'm even more lacking in understanding about why other parents look at me like I'm some kind of dick for making my kids enforce the playground etiquette.

I mean, it has nothing to do with engineering...except...that if you have no discipline, ever, you're not going to succeed at college. College requires discipline.

"As far as my experience goes, the reason why recruiters cannot find skilled technical people is because they:
a) require the person to be senior in the particular area
b) at the same time the applicant needs to be very young, so the manager can can 'mold' him as he sees fit
c) get paid rediculously few."

Your experience bears little resemblance to current reality.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/31/employers-struggle-fill-jobs-manpower_n_1559482.html

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/28/they-aint-making-any-more-of-them-the-great-engineering-shortage-of-2012/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/29/us-manpower-talent-idUSBRE84S03C20120529

And the list of articles with the same sentiment goes on...

Engineering is boring

And as usual you are a drunk idiot. Despite the massive chip on your shoulder, it isn't racist to say that Asians succeed because Asian American culture gives them the tools to succeed. It is racist and idiotic to say Asians succeed because of some RACIAL wiring that makes them better at X Y or Z. So, no you aren't being edgy despite how hard you try.

I wonder if another option for why those were the resumes that you saw is reflected in another reality. My wife worked in HR for an engineering company for some time including the beginning parts of the recession, and her company's diversity goals made it so that a female engineer or a Hispanic engineer was incredibly more likely to be retained because there's not a lot of diversity candidates of those groups compared to white males. If you let a female or Hispanic engineer go, you were incredibly unlikely to get another one, so companies who seek diversity in those positions make more efforts to hold onto them. I have a female friend who is an engineer who has benefitted from this as well, so it's pretty widespread. You're not getting female engineering resumes because the bulk of female engineers are in positions where they aren't looking for a job.

Then again...if there were a lot of Hispanic or female engineers, there wouldn't be as much pressure to hold on to the ones you had.