[battle-racket]

> Eventually Chang is approached by a manager who tells him that he could eventually rise to the position of Vice President of R&D, but to do so he would need to get a phD, and that TI will pay for Chang to get one ... Chang applies and is accepted into Stanford’s electrical engineering graduate program. He again works hard and graduates in 3 years

3 years for a EE PhD is extremely impressive.

[creer]

> 3 years for a EE PhD is extremely impressive.

Sure, but to this day, it depends on the school. At some universities that's right out, at Stanford that's common (after a Master or two).

That wasn't the case for Chang but I feel that for some foreign students, it's due to them simply not recognizing that they could actually take their time and enjoy life and the out of this world campus and region. Some students feel pressure, of funding, of potential missed opportunity, of legal status, of acting on a bet that's WAY out of their home professional path, etc. Meanwhile some US students with no major funding problem often feel that there is all the time in the world, if only the university would let them.

For that matter, I bet Chang felt pressure to not be away from this career track at Texas Instrument for too long. He was doing this PhD as a requirement for a specific promotion.

[hinkley]

At my college if you were rich and driven you could get a Masters in around 1/2 or more reasonably 2/3 the normal time. The thing was most people were spending half their time on a research assistantship, which traded a ton of brain cells to a professor’s agenda in exchange for a heavy discount on tuition. You spent half your time working on the professor’s ideas and half taking classes.

[huijzer]

> it's due to them simply not recognizing that they could actually take their time and enjoy life

Ah sure he went on to work extremely hard and build a whole foundry business just because he didn’t recognize that he could actually take his time and enjoy life? I think you’re sort of right but also wrong. Telling an extremely ambitious person to “just enjoy life” is, I think, like telling an autistic person to “just be social”. It’s not as simple as that.

[creer]

Did you miss my "That wasn't the case for Chang"?

Chang had a specific reason to be quick anyway: his promotion at Texas Instrument would wait only so long.

As for other more common, younger foreign Stanford students - they can be autistic but they can also simply be young and not made aware of what the options really are. Believe it or not but university programs (credit system, years allowable for this or that, costs), school stipends, TA-ships, available scholarships, school schedule, even credit and banking or friendship expectations are completely different in their home country. They didn't think to find a mentor and nobody sought them out to point out what they really should be aware of. So yes, "simply not recognizing".

[markus_zhang]

Many people do enjoy hard work over simple pleasures. It is very prominent in Asians I think.

[486sx33]

That’s pretty racist. What does race have to do with personal preference?

[winwang]

"P(hard-work-pleasures | asian) >= P(hard-work-pleasures | ~asian)"

I'm not sure if that's true, but it's presumably what the other person was saying they observed. Though I think in casual conversation, the reality is that P(racism | <such a sentence>) is likely higher than "baseline", I'd prefer to give the benefit of the doubt on HN.

Also, much prefer a place where mentioning "race" doesn't immediate trigger strong reactions. "Race" being in quotations, because I think the original sentence has more to do with the culture of (certain parts of?) Asia rather than actual race.

A side analogy: I think that Asians are more likely to like Hello Kitty than non-Asians.

[samatman]

I cannot stress hard enough how tired every sensible human being is of this kind of crimestop knee-jerk anti-contribution to discussions.

Stop working so hard to make the word racist useless. We need that word. Thank you.

[markus_zhang]

I don't think this is racist. Why do you think it is a negative thing? I'm Asian myself and I admire those who achieve. Way better than spending youth in BS activities.

[winwang]

Although I agree, I think there is a mild hazard with the label of "model minority". Not saying a reaction like that is really warranted in this case, though.

[gaoryrt]

We Asians would take that as a compliment.

[LAC-Tech]

I get the impression one year masters, 3 year PHDs, etc, were much more common in the mid 20th century.

I presume financial incentives dragged out how long degrees like this take now. That, or everyone is dumber, which seems unlikely.

[CorrectHorseBat]

Or there's more to learn now and all the "easy" PhD subjects are already taken?

[LAC-Tech]

Yeah that could be it. (I'm idly speculating without any knowledge or research. It's just unlike a lot of people here I admit it)

Maybe there's some ideal ratio between "current novelty levels" and "number of PhD candidates".

[rvba]

That paragraph also sounded a bit like they wanted to get rid of him

[creer]

They did pay for the PhD - perhaps even in addition to his salary. He was also rather successful and useful at TI.

[hinkley]

Exploitation can look like rejection if you have self worth.

[wslh]

I think the world unique TSMC 3nm technology is even more impressive though.