[fakedang]

Easy on the fellow. OP doesn't feel great at the moment because of feeding the "lies" about merit to his daughter, the same "lies" they fed all of us back in our day that doing everything by the book pays (Lies in quotes because there's obviously a ton of substance in those statements still). You don't need to push him down further. While the lack of any celebration is not the best idea (assuming OP is still reasonably well-off), a stern rebuke won't help either.

As I mentioned elsewhere, companies are hiring. We're in Europe with a US office and we're hiring, in spite of being in a country that's practically in recession mode. But the main issue is connecting the talent to the company. That's what's messing up hiring these days. Inbound is finished and outbound isn't scalable.

[throw65434t]

Maybe because I grew up as an Asian immigrant in America during the 80’s (during the Japan scare), but I was never fed the lie that effort means success,

My parents would tell us kids to expect discrimination, so no matter how good you are, sometimes it doesn’t even matter.

They also told us how important building connections are, and it was one of the main reasons we were able to immigrate to America in the first place. That and luck.

I find myself telling my kids similar things, but in a slightly lighter manner.