“If you get a C or lower, I’ll buy you a present”

It doesn't matter that you are the only sibling graduating, what matters more is that once you've gone PHD you'll (openly/subconciously) put your expectations on display for your kids to see.

As a college-grad, how likely would you tolerate ("welcome"), your kids leaving education with a high school diploma?

It may surprise you to hear this, but I have encountered a lot of perfectionism (the negative kind) in software development.

I have struggled with perfectionism for essentially all of my life, and I find that the uncertainties of this particular trade (the lack of well established standards and the constant barrage of tool choices, to name two) make this a fertile ground for perfectionism hell.

You're spot on (nearly). Seth Godin will tell you[1] that it's a system quite literally built to produce compliant workers for factories during the industrial revolution: https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc

[1]: as will many others. But I like how he puts it in this video.

And then because there are fewer positions that involve strategic planning at the top of the pyramid, the relative status and financial compensation for those positions will be higher. The causality runs from hierarchy -> job descriptions -> pay scales & status -> educational system, not the other way around. As all the folks who graduated college/gradschool with loads of student debt but no positions available know, it does no good for everyone to train to be at the top when the top only has so many positions available.

It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine what the world would look like if we got rid of hierarchy entirely. YC was built on this premise [1]; it will be curious to see if it actually succeeds in eliminating hierarchy or if it just replaces one set of hierarchies with a different one, with different folks at the top.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html

Because it is? That's not necessarily a bad thing, the world only needs so many entrepreneurs.

In all the people I ever hired and worked with over the years (data entry, devs, bizdev, sales or otherwise), attention to detail was the single most predictive trait for good performance. "Conscientious" is a better word perhaps. People who can't be bothered to understand how things work rarely produce amazing "high level" work either. It's a fallacy to assume you can "skip the details" IMO.

It's like inspecting a house: if you see shoddy plumbing and the walls are crooked and all the details are off, it is still possible the construction is amazing in all the attributes you CAN'T inspect so easily. But it's also quite likely the construction company didn't give a shit and were cutting costs left and right, and buying this house would be a safety hazard.

Also, you can pay attention to detail in strategic jobs as well. "Attention to detail" and "complex spaces" are not mutually exclusive.

Perhaps that's because (a) nobody knows how to educate people to become entrepreneurs, and (b) the kind of people who will make good entrepreneurs are the kind of people who won't be very happy in a one-size-fits-all education system like the one we have.

Most employee roles start as assistant roles: someone hired to take the less-important work off someone else's plate, so they can concentrate on the more-important work. Assistants aren't expected to be better at their job than the person hiring them would be—rather the opposite—but are employed anyway, because they have a comparative advantage in doing that thing. They're usually valued by the company strictly less than the person delegating the work to them.

On the other hand, there are specialist roles: people hired specifically to do a particular type of work better than a generalist (e.g. the person hiring them) could have done it; or hired to do something a generalist couldn't have done at all. These people can extract a lot of value from a company if they know their own worth; people like lawyers, trade-workers, etc. can all command high contracting rates.

But corporations tend to think a lot more in terms of the assistant role than the specialist role. There are a lot of jobs in companies that started off as assistant roles, and then kept the low pay and low status even after they became specialist roles. Companies have a hard time noticing that the people in their assistant roles are actually specialists, as long as they don't actively revolt and point out their worth.

This is, I think, a big part of why you can get an average salary as a programmer at a BigCorp "through the front door", but can get a much higher salary from the same BigCorp by building a startup that they acquire. BigCorps hire assistants, but acquire specialists, and that informs how they think of you; what they're willing to pay; and what they'll employ you to do.

Except for the traditional "professions". Everyone wants their doctors, lawyers and pilots to be heavily 'detail-orientated'. Such professions bake in a degree of perfectionism. (I'm suffering it now as I have trouble even posting an online comment without going over it six times for spelling and grammar.)

You have to learn to be a good practitioner before you can progress to a leadership role. The junior-role skills are omitted from the senior role, not because they are no longer required, but because it is taken as read that the senior candidate has already acquired them.

This is typical when designing software: There's limited time and resources available, and you often need to make a difficult tradeoff between the time taken to create something that's (perfectly?) maintainable long-term, and saying "enough is enough, we're losing money every day that we don't release". I get the impression that people are rarely able to keep both of these concerns in mind. Many skilled developers ignore the long-term opportunity cost of taking a long time to write "perfect" code, whereas many managerial types ignore the long-term technical cost of shipping poor-quality, difficult-to-maintain code.

Years ago I read the results of a study comparing teaching approaches in the listed environments, with a very clear conclusion about the intentional training of execution vs. creativity vs. leadership and big-picture thinking.

So it's not clear to me what your challenge is trying to get at. BS is rife everywhere. Maybe you meant, "try being a researcher without having to resort to BS".

The cause lies in their extremely specific moral values as a society. They call it the Japanese spirit (nihon no kokoro, 日本の心) and it embodies discipline, proper procedure, mastery, sacrifice for the greater good, among other things. A good member of society is one that aspires to be an iconic Japanese. And when an entire culture behaves in this manner, they do appear to conform, and to value perfection, and to even act as one. But they're aligned only because they uphold similar values and share common goals.

The Japanese are conformist as much as a good Christian wants to be a good Christian. Christians don't conform to Christianity. They embody it, and hence become similar as a result, not as their motivation.

They are perfectionist as much as an aspiring athlete wants to be like Mike. They aren't looking to master Perfect or become Perfect. They just want to be like Mike.

And we don't say kids playing basketball are conformist for all wearing Jordan or Steph Curry gear, nor do they wear it to conform. They do it because they love those players (just as the Japanese love their country).

Another great Japanese word is kodawari (こだわり). It's the obsessively picky and uncompromising soul of a craftsman. This too could easily be translated as perfectionism, but "perfection (kanpeki)" is not their goal. "Ideal (risou)" is their goal. And kodawari is an emotion, whereas perfectionism is not. And "ideal" is a dynamic and personal target, where as "perfection" is not. Perfection is for amateurs.

You left out one thing: if you do get X grade or Y internship, your chances at a good career are still uncertain. There is no magic bullet.

> A lot of people paint the 1950s and early 60s such that you could do okay in high school and not go to a 4-year college and still manage to provide for a middle class family.

To an extent this was probably true in the US, but the reason was something temporary: there was a huge economic expansion going on in the aftermath of WWII, with new markets being created, and many industries were willing to basically overpay their workers in order to increase production and capture market share. In the US auto industry, for example, most new car sales in the 1950s and 1960s were genuine new sales--families who had never had a car before or who were adding a second (or even third) car they hadn't had before. In that environment, yes, a person with a high school education can have a middle class income, because the cost of his labor is a minor expense compared to the potential value to be captured.

In the current US auto industry, by contrast, almost all new car sales are for replacement of previous cars--the market is saturated. That means there is a huge price pressure being exerted, and hence a huge pressure to drive down wages and to automate jobs that used to be done by human workers in order to reduce costs. In this environment, a person with only a high school education is unlikely to have the skills that would make them valuable enough to a company to be able to earn a middle class income. (Note that I said "unlikely"; it's possible to develop such skills without a college education, but statistically few people do.)

Does that mean things are more uncertain now? I'm not sure. I said the situation in the 1950s and 1960s was temporary; it was also not the same in all industries. So I don't know that one can make a general statement either way.

Not to mention that NYU spends literally hundreds of millions of dollars on financial aid every year. Hardly "almost no financial aid."

I don't doubt many lower income families pressure kids to get merit scholarships, but it's not true that higher income families don't pressure kids as much.

In fact, I'd argue (anecdotally also!) that the American upper middle class has the most pressured kids. It's not always to say that "my kid goes to Harvard" but rather it's some strange attitude that parents have one they reach a "not wealthy enough to not work, not poor enough to get state financial aid" stage.

Probably because it is not at all a balance.

I tend to agree. People have told me that they were only doing something because they started it and 'don't want to be a quitter'. My response is always that the concept of a 'quitter' doesn't really exist to anyone but high school football coaches.

In the words of Kenny Rogers, "You've got to know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, And know when to run…"

Which led me to not starting some things. I'm still learning when some things are "good enough". I still have the drive to do things "correctly". Which is a real pain when you need to speak a foreign language because you moved!

Interestingly, however, I kind of embraced the opposite of "finish what you start" - to the horror of my mother, I'm sure. I tend to work on bits of projects at a time, especially with hobbies. The downside is that occasionally I have a half-finished project that never gets finished. The more I learn to work with it, however, the more I tend to simply have projects (especially art) in various stages of finishing, but they all get finished. Overall, I find my finished projects are better for it.

It sounds like the original interaction you had with her consisted purely of negative reinforcement. That rarely produces the long term results loving parents want, even in very obedient kids.

Your second approach is fine for a child who is either mature or has significant intrinsic motivation. A weekly assessment is a good frequency, but you're leaving it entirely up to her to report, and she seems to have the option to give you no feedback. Can you trust her not to slack off and surprise you with an unacceptable grade at the next test? Maybe you can; I don't know your child. Maybe she's naturally bright in the subject, or can at least pull her act together and study hard enough when test time comes around. Do you expect 100% mastery on each assignment? Not every mistake reflects a gap in knowledge or conceptual understanding, and the smartest children are often the most acutely aware of when they're penalized for careless errors or unnecessary formalism. That's not to say diligence and tolerating unliked procedures are bad lessons to learn either, but a good teacher can distinguish from the nature of the error what kind of feedback to give. I realize I'm raising more questions and factors instead of answering directly, because I'm trying to convey that parents should grow more sensitive in general to the academic behaviors and values their rules encourage. Be ready to iterate on your strategy (maybe 1 month of weekly feedback) make sure you're able to get reliable feedback. If you wanted a more proactive suggestion, why have her demonstrate her knowledge around homework at all? Typical 3rd grade psych. development sees children still interestep in showing their parents their accomplishments to seek their approval across the board. What if when you see her in a good mood, and not engrossed in something else, like around the dinner table in casual conversation, you ask her to teach _you_ something new she learned in class that day? (Maybe start with other subjects if the homework one is too sensitive.) Feign surprise and gratitude, as if she really taught you something new. Having to reexplain content knowledge in one's own words from memory is a very powerful retention technique.

Therefore school vocational activity is socially inferior to school educational activity.

The best (only?) way to teach vocational skills is to practice them. Carpenters do not learn the dovetail joint by reading books but by making a hundred or so by hand. It works pretty well for vocational skills such as carpentry, arithmetic, and coding. But, vocational work is what social inferiors do at school.

Kids on an education path should not be tainted by experiencing prole life such as homework therefore Americans generally don't like homework for social class reasons.

Adding to the fire, higher math is educational, lower arithmetic is vocational grinding. Kids are going to spend most of their school time in "math" doing vocational grinding. Vocational work is prole and we are all socialized by our culture to hate vocational work so obviously the result is "I hate math". Meanwhile people who haven't learned arithmetic in 30 years think of all of math as educational experiences in topology theory in grad school or whatever and mistakenly think kids math is just like their last grad school math class, all deep thought and reasoning and education, therefore vocational grinding is inappropriate, although ironically its the best way to learn that early subset of the field. Its simultaneously true that grinding homework like a prole is an inefficient way to learn topology in grad school and a good way to learn addition in first grade.

All you need to do to change American attitudes toward homework is upend the entire socioeconomic system and how culture views the socioeconomic system. Until then expect to hear a lot of "my kid gets too much homework" and "I don't like math". And people outside American culture will continue to be confused, and American kids will generally graduate somewhat innumerate compared to other cultures that have different hangups. Which results in a lot of crooks selling snake oil that'll fix everything "silver bullet style" if only we put bibles in school or fill in more scantron tests. And much like programming, WRT school and learning there is no silver bullet.

Keep in mind that even though college aged AAs have higher than average suicide ideation, the suicide rate of all AAs is half the national average: http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-...

In fact from the stats, being engaged in the AA community tends to reduce the likelihood of suicide. That aligns with what I've seen myself from my parents and my friend's parents.

To get an MBA, you need to be quite good at math, but hardly exceptional. To go to and elite law school, you don't need to be good at math though of course it helps. To go to medical school, you need to be good enough at math to take first year calculus, often (in many US universities) offered as an easier track separate from the one that most STEM majors take. That's probably the hardest math route taken by large numbers of upper middle class Americans, and it's still considerably easier than what you need to do to get a STEM degree even at the undergrad level.

There are certainly a few jobs requiring advanced math that pay exceptionally well, especially in quantitative finance, though there are plenty of those high paying jobs in finance for people who are "pretty good" at math.

Beyond that... engineering is a fine career choice, but let's face it, from an American (and perhaps British) class-based perspective, the american upper middle class places it below the professions (note that this often isn't the case in many other cultures). Law isn't a great place to be at the middle tier, but the upper middle class americans, the ones who can consistently hit 95%ile and up on standardized tests, don't go to those middle tier schools. They experience a different law grad market.

Beyond that, there's great work to be done in science, but in terms of pay and career stability, a PhD in Science is vastly more difficult than professional school and ultimately doesn't add nearly enough to justify the cost and time. And keep in mind, attrition rates in STEM PhD programs range from 35%-50% (including in elite programs), whereas the attrition rate from elite law and medical programs is typically below one half of one percent.

The incentive just isn't there, and the US has decided to fill these STEM jobs by 1) restricting general immigration to levels much lower than demand, and 2) creating specialized visas that allow people into the US on the condition that they get these degrees and work in this field. While that will fill the positions with high talent people from overseas, it further reduces the incentive for people who already have citizenship to go into these fields.

Being good at math is all benefit, of course, but there are trade-offs. As the effort increases and the marginal value decreases, it turns out there is an optimal point, though that optimal point will differ based on whether you need a specialized visa to access the US labor market.

For those with existing citizenship or residency rights, you maximize your earning potential by getting good enough at math to major in economics, but not by getting good enough at it to major in physics. If you don't have citizenship or a path to it (such as through family reunification), then the marginal benefits to getting really good at math remain positive, as this will gain you a limited right access the labor market in certain specialized fields experiencing a "shortage" of labor (albeit to a lesser degree than what US citizens already possess).