
Bring Me Your Accents. Immigration Fuels Innovation - antr
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/08/29/bring-me-your-accents-immigration-fuels-innovation/?utm_source=t.co&utm_content=awesm-publisher&awesm=bothsid.es_cFK&utm_campaign=&utm_medium=bothsid.es-twitter
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OoTheNigerian
I will state my position unlike those afraid to speak so they can have deal-
flow or perhaps enter YC.

I do not doubt that there may be correlation between people who have performed
poorly in YC and "very strong accents", it does not mean causation. Such a
statement from someone whom people hang to his every-word should not be put
out without clarification.

The defense of "accents so strong you cannot understand" holds no water. It
was an after thought. What about people that are dumb and cannot speak at all?
Nothing could have stopped him from saying "people who do not communicate well
make bad CEOs. As an example, thick accents, stammering, unclear minds can be
the cause.

Instead of clarifying the context which I assume to be "With a strong accent
you will find it to raise money on demo day which is very important" or
expanding it, Paul Graham goes "Don't say things people _want to_
misunderstand"

It is insulting at best. Heaping the blame/responsibility of understanding on
the readier/listener. How ironic considering the topic.

I hope his position does not lead to default bias in YC companies. "He has a
strong accent, I cannot ask him to be my co founder". Or "His strong accent
means he will be a bad CEO so why employ him at all"

This tread will soon disappear. But I will end with a Martin Luther King quote
from the I have a dream speech 5o years ago yesterday. "Our lives begin to end
the day we become silent about the things that matter"

~~~
sliverstorm
_I do not doubt that there may be correlation between people who have
performed poorly in YC and "very strong accents", it does not mean causation._

pg is an investor. From the point of view of angel investing, causation is not
important. Correlation is enough. If some trait historically shows the company
will be half as likely to succeed, why _should_ an investor put money in that
company, causation be damned?

~~~
OoTheNigerian
You sir, have just described pattern matching.

e.g Thee cliche white male that attended an Ivy League school was successful.
therefore, to be safe I go that way all the time. This then goes ahead and
pollutes your data-set because it would be built on that bias.

Now, I am not saying that those that patten match are bad, but they should at
the very least try not to make their 'findings' influence other people who
might have the chance to to start a new data set without bias.

~~~
dylangs1030
If being male, being white, and attending Harvard are all positively
correlated with being successful in a startup, then there's actually nothing
wrong with selectively looking for those qualifiers.

Does it make it more difficult to get a foot in the door if you're female,
Ecuadorian and went to a community college, despite being a phenomenal
programmer with a great idea? Yes, it does make it more difficult, but that's
not their problem. They are choosing where to invest their money, and using
math to do so should be encouraged.

If they don't have a spreadsheet in front of them, then at the very least they
should understand that prestige is prestige for a reason.

Does that make it impossible to succeed without those qualifiers? No, but it's
not unfair that it's more difficult to do so without them. You can't play a
fair game all the way through. Sooner or later something's going to happen
that's not in your favor.

~~~
cglee
I think you just rationalized discrimination. Nice work.

~~~
dylangs1030
I think you just disregarded my entire argument using a cultural taboo. Nice
work.

See? I can play at that game too. The problem is, doing that doesn't get
anywhere, because I'm still convinced of my point, and you're still convinced
of yours, and there's no dialectic to compromise our ideas.

~~~
saraid216
Why would he treat your argument fairly when your argument is that life is
unfair?

~~~
dylangs1030
The ridiculous logic that statement employs aside, he has no obligation to
treat it fairly. But if that's the case then whatever he says will just be
disregarded. I won't treat his unfair dismissal as fair either. Okay, so we're
where we started, with my point _still standing._

Again, being snarky like this leads nowhere. If you're going to give a solid
rebuttal, good! If you're not, then you're not achieving anything.

~~~
foobarbazqux
My guess is that if you're using words like dialectic then secretly you aren't
an extremist. (By extremist, I mean someone who adopts a polarized position,
which you freely admit.)

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defen
This whole "controversy" is so stupid. It consists of people taking pg's words
out of context and assigning the maximally stupid interpretation to them. I
mean, are there any examples of successful U.S. based founders who have
accents that are so heavy that you struggle to understand what they are
saying? I'm genuinely curious.

~~~
nanijoe
What part of what he said was taken out of context? Up until a few years ago,
there were no examples of successful black Quarterbacks in the NFL.. IF
everyone just looked at that "fact", there would still be none. Data can be
used to justify anything you like, as long as you are already sufficiently
biased.

~~~
dylangs1030
Bad example. There is nothing intrinsically different between a black QB and a
white one, all other things being equal.

All other things being equal, there is a lot of difference between what an
eloquent speaker can achieve and what a heavily accented speaker can achieve
in the role of CEO.

This has nothing to do with preconceived bias. This has to do with Paul
Graham's examination, over the course of funding over 500 different startups
and his experience in that entire domain as a whole, that foreign accents are
not desirable. The data is there; _your_ bias prevents you from seeing it
because you're misinterpreting it as discriminatory.

~~~
auctiontheory
You present "eloquent" and "heavily accented" as if they were diametrically
opposite. In fact, they are on different axes.

~~~
dylangs1030
I suppose I could have said "coherent and articulate" instead of "heavily
accented" so you're right. But I think my point stands.

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rvivek
I am an immigrant founder (from India) and part of the YC summer batch of
2011. I think PG's statement has definitely been taken out of context and
blown out of proportions.

I did have a foreign accent but thankfully not so thick to make it non-
understandable. I received a similar feedback from PG before the demo day and
I worked on it.

As an entrepreneur, you can do two things - either take it as an insult and
leave it or as constructive feedback and work on it. In fact, I setup an
office hour with Garry to just work on this.

For eg: in India, the word programmer is pronounced as prograamar (the stress
is at the end) vs pro-grammar in US. And similarly, path is pronounced as
"paath" as opposed to "p-a-th" (stress on 'a') here. These are definitely
minor things that you have to tune (and I'm sure PG was referring to a much
more thicker accent people had) which will make it easy for people to follow
what you are saying.

If you didn't work on this, the investor would miss what you had said and then
after a couple of seconds would realize.. "oh. you said programmer, okay", the
train of thought is lost, you continue with the slides and it repeats again.
And that's not okay.

After you have identified a product-market fit in your startup, I have
realized everything is about convincing, every damn thing. \-- convincing the
guy to join your company \-- convincing the customer to buy your product \--
convincing a new investor to make a bet on your company \--
negotiating/convincing for compensation and pay package \-- convincing someone
to continue to stay in your company and so on..

It's almost like I can prefix a huge percentage of my work with the word
"convincing" and it would all make sense. When that's the case, it's better to
ensure at least your statements are eloquent and of high clarity that doesn't
require repetition (unless of course the person wasn't listening). You are
just going to improve the odds and that's what a startup is all about - do
things that increase the odds of success.

It's a constructive feedback that I believe entrepreneurs should work on for
their own good. It's not equivalent to sounding like an american but if you
have a foreign accent (which you will if you aren't born here), please work on
it to ensure what you say comes off clearly. That's it.

And YC clearly has no bias based on accent. I know _tons_ of immigrant
founders who are part of YC. In fact, 3 of my classmates (all from India) are
a part of YC.

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parennoob
I guess this might be a good place to ask -- are there any good places people
can recommend for accent training? I can write English pretty decently (in
fact, probably better than most of the American people I have seen - but I
guess Dunning-Kruger might be involved.) But I still retain the accent of my
native country, which somewhat hampers me in the US (specially if PG thinks
people like that are clueless.)

So, can people recommend any good online courses / institutes where I can
improve my accent to bring it more in line with the standard American one?

~~~
roadg33k
[https://www.udemy.com/american-accent-training-for-it-
profes...](https://www.udemy.com/american-accent-training-for-it-
professionals/)

~~~
parennoob
Ugh. First think I clicked on there told me to prounounce it "Ennerprise" and
"innegrade" :)

Seriously though, thanks. Will check it out.

~~~
samatman
Innegraded ennerprise sofware. Not a t to be heard. Good luck.

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snitko
Slightly offtopic: The whole idea of the immigration restrictions is
ridiculous. There is not a single justification for it. Unless of course you
believe that somehow your people deserve better than everyone else.

When people bring up the fact that it drives down wages and residents lose as
a result - why don't they also mention that residents win by getting a cheaper
product or a service?

When people bring up the welfare question and the fact that foreigners might
take advantage of it, why don't they think of a simple solution: not providing
it?!

The US was built on the hard work of immigrants. People seem to forget this.

~~~
ahamilton
> The US was built on the hard work of immigrants.

The US was built by the descendants of Europeans who nearly wiped out the
existing native population. How did immigration work out for the Native
Americans and their descendants?

~~~
snitko
The reason the native population was wiped out was primarily because of the
diseases brought by Europeans, not because Europeans were particularly brutal.
In fact, Indians were as brutal to the colonists as colonists were to Indians.
The first colonists themselves died in large numbers, mostly due to hunger and
malaria. Also, Indians were technologically behind Europeans. Modern western
countries, to which immigration is desirable, are more technologically
advanced and we certainly don't have a problem with immunity to diseases - at
least you can't call it an equally serious problem.

So, comparing colonists and indians to the current immigration problems is
simply unfounded.

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dylangs1030
So, he's _not_ criticizing Paul Graham for making the statement (and admits he
understands Graham isn't anti-immigrant or anti-foreigner), but is instead
criticizing him for not taking responsibility for how his words might be taken
out of context by everyone else? Is that it?

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jh73
There is nothing in the article that suggests that accents lead to innovation.
I'm not fully aware of the PG controversy but maybe he's privileged to some
data that we aren't. Stating stats shouldn't be rebutted with fluff pieces.

~~~
skylan_q
_There is nothing in the article that suggests that accents lead to
innovation._

That's besides the point. The point is that this is a fluff piece upvoted by
people with white guilt in order to alleviate that guilt. :D

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analyst74
Linking this to racism is absurd.

The main reason why racism (or other discriminations like sexism) is bad, is
because the disadvantaged person cannot change it.

Accent can be changed, culture differences can be learnt, connections can be
made.

The world is not a fair place, but as long as individuals have ways to improve
their situation, it is fair enough.

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the_watcher
This controversy is so manufactured it is painful. PG is one of the biggest
proponents of the Founder Visa, but he hates immigrants? People really need to
stop reading Valleywag (or at least taking it seriously)

------
kenster07
These discussions are always rife with political undertones and ethical
hazards.

------
skylan_q
Immigration also increases the size of the labor pool, driving down wages.

~~~
tokenadult
It's empirically false that high rates of immigration lead to lower real
wages. International comparisons show that it is actually the other way
around. The "lump of labor fallacy" is still very persuasive to people who
have never studied economics, but people who have traveled around the world
notice examples like Hong Kong (high immigration, high wages for region) and
reflect that new people in a place leads to more innovation and more demand in
the local economy.

~~~
skylan_q
I've studied plenty of economics and have been around the world and back.
Bringing in more labor increases the supply of it and there's also the added
effect of immigrants willing to work for less than the local population. To
deny this is to deny supply & demand and data.

~~~
tonyarkles
I don't know that it's that cut and dry. People don't exist in a vacuum. New
people show up, and they still need to eat, live, buy TVs. Some of them will
probably start companies and increase the labour demand. etc etc.

I'm not an expert by any means, but it didn't take much to find an article
that supports this idea:

\--cut--

We find that the increased supply of non-EU low skilled immigrants pushed
native workers to pursue more complex occupations. This reallocation happened
mainly through movement across firms. Immigration increased mobility of
natives across firms and across municipalities but it did not increase their
probability of unemployment. We also observe a significant shift in the native
labor force towards complex service industries in locations receiving more
immigrants. Those mechanisms protected individual wages from immigrants
competition and enhanced their wage outcomes. While the highly educated
experienced wage gains already in the short-run, the gains of the less
educated built up over time as they moved towards jobs that were complementary
to those held by the non-EU immigrants.

\--cut--

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/08/29/immigration_a...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/08/29/immigration_and_wages_in_denmark.html)

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cruise02
> I’m with MLK.

That is so brave.

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dud1983
The racism of pg is subtle, but still racism, not so much from him but from
his acolytes and zealots who even now in this thread can be seen taking his
word as gospel and demote anyone who fits their interpretation of pg's words
as an _untouchable_

Now these new _untouchables_ will be rejected from many other accelerators who
do nothing but copy whatever YC does in the vain hope that they too can land
the next dropbox and airbnb, and rejected because _they talk "funny"_

At the same time expect to see a lot of teams made mostly of either foreign
and domestic engineers who aren't "that good" when it comes to public speaking
being indirectly coerced into accepting a dumb white bro as CEO just to get
past the initial selection process of any accelerator.

