Back in May, I pointed out that tech startup maven and superb advice essayist Paul Graham had revealed, approvingly, that Silicon Valley venture capitalists discriminate ruthlessly against would-be entrepreneurs with thick foreign accents. This suggests that the claim by billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg that the real reason they want more H-1B visas is to increase competition for themselves is even more dubious than it sounds prima facie.
Business Insider is now tut-tutting over this:
Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham gives a lot of great startup advice, and he shared some of it with Inc.'s Issie Lapowsky in a recent interview. But one quote about startup founders with accents sent the tech world spinning.
The interview starts out fine, with Graham's usual level of spunk and insight. "One thing I know about startups is that, internally, they are all train wrecks," Graham said.
And later: "Maybe half a percent of people have the brains and sheer determination to do this kind of thing. Start-ups are hard but doable, in the way that running a five-minute mile is hard but doable."
But when asked how he can predict a startup's success or failure, Graham stumbled.
I'm fascinated by how the media regularly denounces people for not being boring enough.
"One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent," Inc. quotes Graham as saying. "I'm not sure why."
He goes on to say that it's difficult to communicate if you have a strong accent and that "anyone with half a brain would realize you're going to be more successful if you speak idiomatic English, so they must just be clueless if they haven't gotten rid of their strong accent."
Henry Kissinger must not have half a brain ... Different people have different capabilities for changing their accents. I knew an Indian who arrived in the U.S. at about age 20 and somehow taught himself to speak like Jack Nicholson. His American bosses found him cool and quickly promoted him to Executive Vice President. But the accent-changing window tends to close rapidly around puberty. (Dr. Kissinger's two-year younger brother, a business tycoon, has an American accent. "I am the Kissinger who listens," he explains.) But the typical H-1B visa coder doesn't have much chance of becoming a Silicon Valley sensation.
The implication that founders are less successful – or worse, "clueless" – if they haven't ditched their accents created an uproar on Twitter. Graham, who's a big supporter of the immigration reform initiative FWD.us, found himself the lead story on Gawker's Valleywag. ...
From Graham:
The problem is not having an accent per se. A lot of the most successful founders we've funded have accents. The problem is having an accent so strong that people have a hard time understanding you. Empirically, those founders do worse. I'm not sure exactly why, but it doesn't seem a stretch to imagine ways that could be a problem for a startup.
A lot of what a startup CEO does is selling. Not just in the literal sense of selling to customers, but also selling the vision to current and future employees, investors, and the press. Often the "sale" hinges on some subtle distinction, so any difficulty in communicating is going to be a significant problem. That's why for example people prefer to have these conversations in person if they can.
In other words, Zuckerberg's FWD.us billionaires are less interested in importing new rivals for themselves than in importing low salary workers for themselves.
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I wonder if this differentially impacts Chinese immigrants?
Zuckerberg's FWD.us billionaires are less interested in importing new rivals for themselves than in importing low salary workers for themselves.
And they are even less interested in importing low salary workers than they are in sweet, succulent growth.
Because as horrific as paying a 40k salary is, if our quarterly revenue estimates become a casualty, I think that's worse.
Some actors can convincingly do different accents even though they obviously didn't learn them as a child, but they may be outliers.
Kissinger moved to the US at 15.
It's my impression that pre-WWII Hollywood moguls tended to have strong Yiddish accents.
Nathan Rothschild, the most successful banker of the 19th century, operated from London. He spoke English with a strong German-Jewish accent which was mocked in contemporary cartoons.
It's a marker for people with different "value systems." Used widely for screening in all facets of life.
It seems like there is a concerted effort on the part of indians to destroy any resistance to their displacement of american workers, and this is the same gawker desi who was whining about sexism last week (pretty rich i know).
It does strike me that the ability to pick up accents is one of those cognitive traits that is probably both measurable and mostly independent of IQ.
It's a little weird that people go all gaga over the idea of "multiple intelligences", but so little research seems to have been performed to really understand any of those abilities, and how they relate to other abilities.
The ability to draw seems largely independent of most other abilities; likewise a sense of pitch or rhythm; likewise the ability to mimic.
But what do we really know about any of these traits, and how they may relate to each other if at all?
Next to nothing, so far as I know.
So, a lot of talk about multiple intelligences, but no action. I suppose its only real role is to deny that IQ really means anything.
I bet Kissinger calculated that the accent would help him. For example, if Kissinger had mimicked waspish speech patterns of Nixon, N might have suspected K of using his wiles to decieve his boss.
He's just saying he's not going to give his money to some guy he doesn't know anything about. Hell, you can't know him, how can you trust him?
As for the rest of us, Shut up!
I've read that Kissinger doesn't really have much of an accent and that who talks that way in public for show.
"So, a lot of talk about multiple intelligences, but no action. I suppose its only real role is to deny that IQ really means anything."
And that being the case, they really have little incentive to study them scientifically. After all, everyone already thinks that there are multiple intelligences, and that (as you said) abilities like artistic talent are completely independent from IQ. What if they studied them and found that they aren't, that there's a 'g' for all kinds of talent, and those other types correlate to some extent with IQ? That could only hurt their cause; better to stick with the current situation where everyone "knows" they're right.
Disappointing that Graham supports FWD.us. I'm not surprised that he supports open borders on principle; smart people often assume we'd be better off if talent could go wherever it's needed. But he's also smart enough to see that the push by FWD.us's corporate backers to expand the indentured servitude -- er, "guest worker" -- program isn't about that.
Paul Graham is overrated as and advice essayist. He advises kids to ignore "money and prestige" and go work in Silicon Valley like he did. He was "fooled by randomness" to use N. Taleb's expression. Although perhaps not the case when he was a young nerd, he got in the game during the early stages of a multi-decade boom in tech, which has ironically turned out to be the most lucrative and glamorous thing a bright young person could do. At least for those big entrepeneurs Will it be in the future? Who knows...it's a risky and competitive field. Kind of like getting into fashion or Hollywood in some ways, where a few will hit it big and many get knocked on your ass. It might be equally sound advice to encourage younger relatives to set goals in the conventional paths to careers as accountants, doctors, engineers. Young people entering more traditional fields have done just fine, contra Graham.
As an essayist his biggest weakness is he doesn't know what he doesn't know. But one thing he does know is venture capital, and he carefully chose his words: empirically, those with heavy accents tend to fail when given the opportunity. He started with the evidence, and THEN speculated as to why.
Valleywag doesn't deserve mention except to say that it's a Gawker property that thrives on generating controversy.
"Who knows...it's a risky and competitive field. Kind of like getting into fashion or Hollywood in some ways, where a few will hit it big and many get knocked on your ass."
Silicon Valley is super risky for angel investors, but for workers or entrepreneurs playing with other people's money? Not so much. If you are young and smart, there are really worse things you can do than get a job at a VC-funded startup. The odds of getting a big equity windfall from working at a startup aren't high, but those odds go the longer you're at it, and you're getting paid well along the way.
Angel-backed start-ups are a bit different. But founders who raise angel money seem to end up on their feet even if their startups go bust (as they usually do). I know a 40ish woman (not a programmer) who started a social media startup a few years ago. It went belly up, as most do, but she raised angel money from some prominent female investors, and leveraged her status as woman startup CEO to get speaking slots at various industry conferences. Now she's got nice corporate gig with one of the largest software companies in the country.
I think you are wrong about billionaires' motives Steve. Zuckerberg, for instance, is above and beyond any considerations of cheap labour. His main worry is that the world does not think him a rich little shit. I think he and the rest of the big name billionares are just trying to show they are nice people. Lending their names to a campaign for open-door immigration is like giving to charity; rich people do it as an image polishing exercise.
There is something about being very clever that makes people tender-minded, it's the outcome of a genetic pacification type process over the generations, which means the most economically successful types are just different in their visceral reaction to immigration. They think closing the doors is a sign of a base and low-class mindset. Profit is not the motive for people like Zuckerberg, though there is no question the wider business class do profit from cheap labour and subscribe to what he is articulating.
Next thing you know, this bigot will be claiming illiterates can't run start-ups.
Those who are having a tizzy over Graham's comment are quite likely hypocrites. If they attended a University and had to take Chem 201 or something taught by a foreign graduate student TA, they probably complained about how hard it was to understand him.
Not that they will recall that when presented with an opportunity to suffer fainting spells over this newest teapot tempest.
Accents are weird. The ability to recreate them convincingly is, as noted by above, somehow tied to artistic/musical talent. Although, I think with concerted effort, careful listening, and constant practice, it is possible to do it with intellectual brute force - even in the end result lacks a certain subtle grace.
However, I am sympathetic to people trying to eliminate the heavy overtones of their native tongue. Even people speaking the same language have problems emulating different dialects in a totally convincing manner.
In fact, there is something that I once thought of as "BBC American Standard Dialect", because it is how a Britsih actor playing, say,
the role of "Mysterous American Businessman" on a BBC TV show sounded. It has this real flat and nasal quality, the inflections are kind of weird, and it sounds "off." Ofttimes, it will sort of have a frenetic rhythm, but I think that may be derived from how folks in the U.K. think Americans talk. For years, I thought it was that British actors were working off the same dodgy "How to Do an American Accent" tape.
However, after subjecting myself to 3 seasons of "Torchwood" or, as I came to think of it, "Big Gay Al Fights for Earth and Get His Friends Killed", I noticed Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman, had a similar accent and figured him for a Brit. When I checked out IMDB - it seems I was correct. However, something did not fit within the confines of my theory. See, Barrowman moved to Illinois from Glasgow when he was 8, and lived in the US for years. He took up the accent to avoid being picked on. (Although, I suspect the teasing might not have just been about the accent).
Anyway, I sort of came to the conclusion Brits just HEAR the American accent differently due to the way language is wired into their brain and that perhaps the way the muscles of their face form when learning to speak plays a part. (One way to tell if a person is British, look at their face, it is, for a lack of a better word, tighter.) Whatever the reason - in the absence of a real talent, a Brit doing an American accent will never sound right.
On the other hand, there is some common linguistic affinity between Australian English and American English that makes switching back and forth between the two dialects not terribly difficult. Australian actors can replicate a constant and convincing American accent in a way the British can't. I watched "Chuck" for a few seasons until I realized Yvonne Strahovski was Australian. Another good example, would be Simon Baker from "The Mentalist".
AND it also works the other way around. Now, I am sure most iStever's have better things to do, but if on international "Speak Like an Australian Day" you crack open a Cooper's IPA and watch Season 1 of "Sea Patrol" on Hulu and repeat the dialogue, trying to match the accent, it will come to you. It is really not that hard to do, even if you don't do accents and you will have cool new party trick to impress chicks or, in the alternative, irritate your spouse.
(More on point, it is interesting how people respond to accents in much more homogenous societies and how insane in the brain, insane in the membrane, our society (and I use that term loosely) has become when it is now hate, hate, hate speech even to so much as intimate a heavy accent is a detriment in business. It is perfectly natural in other places of world to try and speak like the natives. I lived in Ireland for a while and the instant I opened my mouth, I marked myself as being from somewhere else. I didn't like it at all - and, while I didn't adopt a brogue, I tried to capture the Irish cadence, rhythm, volume, and vernacular in my speech, just so I did not draw so much attention to myself.)
Kissinger has an accent but his English is fluent and understandable (compare him to the average India-educated Indian).
I'm shocked. Shocked that there is self-interest going on in this establishment.
Here in Silicon Valley one of the most depressing sights is the local Barnes and Nobles in San Jose on Saturday night.
I took my daughter there to get a book one night and it was filled with lonely H-1B guys gazing into their laptops. It made the guys in the white hats and boots dancing to rancheria music look well-adapted.
I agree that another NON-correlate to IQ is the ability to mimic accents - using my own inability as my datum point.
I remember well the TA who tried to teach me "Wektor Analysis" in engineering school. I had to repeat the class!
Incidentally, why is Henry Kissinger being cited as an example of an intelligent person here? It's my understanding that virtually everything he has done has turned out to be a colossal failure. He was also instrumental in bringing about one of the worst genocides of the 20th century in Cambodia.
Sean said:
"I think you are wrong about billionaires' motives Steve. Zuckerberg, for instance, is above and beyond any considerations of cheap labour. His main worry is that the world does not think him a rich little shit. I think he and the rest of the big name billionares are just trying to show they are nice people. Lending their names to a campaign for open-door immigration is like giving to charity; rich people do it as an image polishing exercise."
This is absolute nonsense. If Zuckerberg were primarily concerned about making the peasants love him he wouldn't have jumped into an extremely contentious and heated political debate and then proceed to take, by far, the least popular position in that debate humanly possible. Nor, for that matter, would he have strongly double downed on his stance when the inevitable and massive torrent of criticism came in, much of it from people who are nominally allied with him on this issue.
If Zuckerberg just wanted love from the American masses he would have done generic charity work as Bill Gates has done over the last decade - purchase a few anti-malarial mosquito nets for Africans and fund some college scholarships here at home. Getting involved in an emotionally fraught political dispute is a horrible means of earning respect, as the sharply negative response Zuckerberg has received in the last few months demonstrates.
Your second contention isn't really valid either: while Facebook may not itself use much low cost labor many of the other business in his political coalition certainly do, particularly hospitality, retail, and agribusiness; in any case Facebook stands to benefit from the massive expansion (~900,000 per annum) of legal immigration (much of it skilled workers) in the bill.
"There is something about being very clever that makes people tender-minded, it's the outcome of a genetic pacification type process over the generations, which means the most economically successful types are just different in their visceral reaction to immigration. They think closing the doors is a sign of a base and low-class mindset. Profit is not the motive for people like Zuckerberg..."
So Zuckerberg's ancestors back in Eastern Europe have been genetically selected for centuries for political passivity and out-group altruism, and that's why he does what he does. Ok.
You really think we're idiots, don't you? Every post of yours on this site I've read is like this, a matter-of-fact and banal restatement of conventional GOP-er wisdom that, for some reason, you expect us to still believe here in 2013. Odd.
"This is absolute nonsense. If Zuckerberg were primarily concerned about making the peasants love him he wouldn't have jumped into an extremely contentious and heated political debate and then proceed to take, by far, the least popular position in that debate humanly possible."
I don't think Zuck knows or cares what lumpen views are. This isn't about appealing to the proles but doing what all the smart people in Silicon Valley know is right (even billionaires can be conformists).
Anon:
"I don't think Zuck knows or cares what lumpen views are. This isn't about appealing to the proles but doing what all the smart people in Silicon Valley know is right (even billionaires can be conformists)."
Well, that's certainly true in theory but that's not what happened in this particular case as the response even from other Silicon Valley eminences was on balance overwhelmingly negative. Some of them thought he was pushing too hard and too fast and therefore was risking a backlash, arguably most thought he was compromising far too much ground to the "nativists" and should have pushed even harder. That was entirely expected; involve yourself in a tense political battle such as immigration policy and watch as you alienate yourself from everyone else for one minor reason or another.
In any event, Sean's theory on Zuckerberg was a stupid one that was common among naive conservatives (people who listen to con-men like Limbaugh and Hannity) in the 90's and a good chunk of the 00's, namely that the elite are ruining the country because they're softhearted liberal pansies who just want to be loved, or something along those lines. Thankfully, I've noticed this claim less and less from mainstream conservatives over the past few years; maybe they're slowly wising up to what the ruling class in this country really wants.
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