Vivek Ramaswamy got quite a strong reaction from conservatives when he tried to explain hiring trends across the tech sector in a culturally-charged social media post on Thursday.

In an extended post shared on X, the tech entrepreneur wrote about how “top companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans,” claiming the imbalance “isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation)” but rather because of differences on the societal level.

“A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture,” Ramaswamy continued, before telling readers, “Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH.”

The CEO-turned-politician’s assessment? That “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”

Ramaswamy suggested that entertainment has had an outsized impact on shaping mainstream American values “at least since the 90s and likely longer.”

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he claimed.

Comparing and contrasting characters from several popular ’90s sitcoms, Ramaswamy went on to say, “A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers.”

His solution? “More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.’”

While Ramaswamy’s point about pop culture seemed reasonable enough, the entrepreneur’s diagnosis veered into problematic overgeneralizations when he claimed the difference boiled down to families’ cultural and geographic backgrounds.

“Most normal American parents look skeptically at ‘those kinds of parents,’” he wrote. “More normal American kids view such ‘those kinds of kids’ with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.”

“Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other,” Ramaswamy goaded. “Be brutally honest.”

Turning back to America’s supposed inclination toward the average, he said, “‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent” and that “if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.”

Ramaswamy then tried to rally readers to help shift the status quo by envisioning a future where America “once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.”

While he pinned demographic disparities across the tech world on supposed cultural differences, the imbalance is more likely about dollars and cents.

In 2020, a study by the Economic Policy Institute found that employers that rely on America’s H-1B visa program to recruit temporary employees with “highly specialized” skills and technical education often pay those workers well below the market wages.

Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Google, Apple and Facebook have all made robust use of the program to fill job shortages.

With President-elect Donald Trump preparing to implement a draconian deportation strategy when he assumes office next month, conservatives still seem to be at odds over how to approach the labor shortages troubling many of America’s biggest and most profitable businesses.

Though Tesla CEO Elon Musk, like Ramaswamy, has vowed to be behind Trump’s harsh immigration policies, on Wednesday he posted that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” and the country needs “to recruit top talent wherever they may be.”

But Ramaswamy and Musk’s reasoning really seemed to rub some of their conservative peers the wrong way.

Trump’s former rival for the 2024 Republican presidential candidacy, Nikki Haley, reposted Ramaswamy’s message saying, “There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”

Far-right firebrand Laura Loomer invoked the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory in her criticism, where she claimed, “It’s not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policies I voted for. I voted for a reduction in H1B visas. Not an extension.”