Source
r/aznidentity•
ulkram

Self-imposed bamboo ceilings

Self Improvement

I know that racism against Asians is real, but there are two self-limiting behaviors that I've seen over and over (I'm guilty too).

  1. Asians are much more likely to turn down promotions. Climbing the corporate ladder sucks, I get it. But IMHO, most of the time, it's either because 1) they've been conditioned to think they aren't good enough for the role (imposter syndrome) or 2) they are uncomfortable being in a position of power, even though they were objectively the best candidate. But now look what happens, the team and company suffers because they didn't step up. So now instead of having a good conscientious boss, everyone's gotta take orders from some unqualified, power hungry douche.
  2. Asians are bad at mentorship (both giving and receiving). By mentorship, I don't mean fake ass shit like "networking". It's about developing personal relationships and talking about life. I've noticed that young Asians don't seek mentors (oh, he/she is too busy or I don't know what to talk about) and old Asians don't seek mentees (these young ppl will ask me if they need help).

Mentors, you (as the more experienced person) need to reach out to brothers and sisters and drive the conversation because they don't know how! If you see a young bro/sis, setup lunches just to chat about school, family, life, whatever. Hell, it doesn't even matter what age they are, often I've found the older ones feel the most trapped, and most scared to talk about it.

​

Anyway, the bamboo ceiling is real, but these behaviors aren't helping. I'd love to hear people's thoughts and experiences.

Posted Nov 11, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC · edited

2616
kawaiixhapa•
  1. Low confidence. American raised AMs have much lower self-esteem than Asian raised AMs.
7
ZaitonerBeTexan•

Interesting point. Would you like to elaborate why and what might have caused that?

1
[deleted]•

The self-imposed bamboo ceiling in the west is reinforced by the lack of positive Asian representation in western media. I have never seen a hollywood film in which an Asian man, regardless if Americanized or from Asia, taking lead ahead of whites.

6
Redditor215267•

The closest was big trouble in little China (over 30 years ago) , but they had to make the main villain a frigging eunuch and the rest just soulless henchmen so that definitely washed out any good representation it had.

2
samueldon2020•

The bamboo ceiling is very real, but its not an accurate term. There are many attributing factors such as race hate, nepotism, stereotypes and array of other factors. It's good being positive, but you have to be aware of the traps that you could fall in. You can be very successful if you pick and choose your own people, but if you work with one rotten apple it will contaminate the entire barrel. Listen to those that have been through it.

5
archelogy•

Good stuff. It's important for us to be self-critical in thoughtful ways that lead to improvement.

3
aureolae•

I've definitely been guilty of No. 1 (part 2) but not of No. 2.

The missing part of 1, at least in my case, is that even if you're qualified and the best candidate, you have to sell yourself twice as hard and coon twice as hard to convince them to let you into the ol' boys club.

The company definitely suffers.

3
Gluggymug•

Keep blaming yourself. Just like women who aren't "leaning in" hard enough. OR "If only women were more supportive of each other..."

One or two token women made it to the top therefore all the others must not work hard enough.

The bamboo ceiling is the parallel of the glass ceiling.

3
AstronomicalDouche•

Indians are dominating Silicon Valley top positions. Look at org charts for FAANG. There's also plenty of Vietnamese / Koreans / Japanese / Filipino / Hongkonglers in top ranks in Google and other tech companies from my experience. So it's not Asian-specific but rather more common among those who think of themselves as Chinese.

They did some research in HR in our company and there is a tendency of Chinese-identifying folks to limit their circles to other Chinese-identifying people. So when you limit your circles you also limit your career opportunities, effectively self-imposing a bamboo ceiling. As a counter example, Indians in Silicon Valley tend to eagerly mix with other ethnicities, at work an in social setting. So they really flourish when they come here. You have to be able to get along with all sorts of people if you want to succeed in an increasingly globalized economy.

Note that the HR say "identify as Chinese" instead of "Chinese" because there's no such thing as being Chinese from the scientific point of view when you look at phylogenetic trees (unless you're talking about PRC citizens).

0
azn_superwoke•

Name some Japanese, Korean, Filipino or Vietnamese American executives at publicly listed tech or industrial companies in the US. If there's so many, should be easy.

The reality is, at North American industrial conferences in areas ranging from semiconductor to heavy industry to AI, other than white names, the second biggest contingent is Chinese names.

And funny to say Chinese identification, but then talk about Filipino or Indian.

2
AstronomicalDouche•

The identification part applies for those other ethnicities as well. There's so much generic variance among people originating from India, for example.

1
azn_superwoke•

Care to say anything about the rest?

Where are all these Korean, Viet, Filipino, Japanese industrial or tech executives in NA you're talking about?

So how do you know who identifies as what? Your HR is psychic? What do these Indians, Koreans, Viets, Filipinos, Japanese identify as and how do you know that?

1
AstronomicalDouche•

It's based on HR data from one of the FAAMG companies with 100K+ employees that I worked for.

They estimate "ethnic identity" based on a bunch of heuristics like the explicit survey responses, languages spoken, last names, education, country of origin (if not US), group memberships, and their workplace connections. Then they look for clusters in org charts, and compare how many are in the top ranks relatively to overall population in the org. They also look at how much each group tends to cluster together versus mix with others. So they found that only those who identify as Chinese are the big outliers in terms of being underrepresented in top management, whereas others were more evenly represented (with exception of "Indians" who tend to be slightly overrepresented). At the same time, they found that "Chinese" tend to heavily cluster with each other and isolate themselves from others, i.e. "Chinese" managers strongly prefer to hire other "Chinese", use separate groups for social communication, etc.

It sounds pretty obsessive that they do these analyses but then again US tech companies are obsessed with their diversity quotas so they think a lot about it. HR people told me the trends they see match what other companies see too.

1