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China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon

bloomberg.com

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Re: China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon

#31

Post by monsieurbanana »

raverbashing wrote: post #21
jsjohnst wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Korean's alphabet is simpler than both you listed imho, but that's just my take.

I disagree, because the Korean alphabet requires composition of glyphs Arabic has some marks and different start/middle/end forms but it is simpler

The Korean alphabet can easily be learnt in a few hours.

It's an "artificial" alphabet, meaning that it wasn't born organically over hundreds of years but created by a group of koreans. It's very simple by design, as it was created to allow the general populace to write and read (until then they were using some kind of chinese dialect, too complicated for those in the working class).

Case in point: http://ryanestradadotcom.tumblr.com/post/20461267965/learn-t...

Source: my korean teacher back when I did a year of study in korea. So I might be fuzzy on some details.

Re: China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon

#32

Post by sethammons »

saycheese wrote: post #18

Something ironic about an "open" culture being critical of a "closed" culture. Reality is the American's tech cultural is at its core a very closed community. Even within America, trying to create a startup outside of the Bay Area, which is insanely expensive area to do business, will require exponentially more effort, luck, etc.

I'd be interested in seeing data on successful start ups vs location.

Re: China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon

#33

Post by justinhj »

lsjdfkljdfwkwdf wrote: post #20
aantix wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for WeChat? Wasn't there an article a while back touting how WeChat is ahead of Facebook in terms of user experience?

Is this supposed to be a joke? I hardly see any non-Chinese using wechat....

I don't think it's a joke. Wechat is a highly usable app, but more importantly it is integrated with many parts of Chinese life so you use it for many things. Perhaps most importantly of all it made headway into getting people to trust online payments in China. It's not perfect but it is ahead of Facebook in some respects

Re: China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon

#34

Post by Symmetry »

raverbashing wrote: post #7
inputcoffee wrote: post #2

I believe the author should have explored another reason: English. One of the legacies of the British Empire is that a lot of the educated people in the world use English. Even in Europe, it is the lingua franca for business and academia. (In mighty Germany, the top institutions publish in English). I think the applications and work would have to be done in English for China to effectively attract global talent.

Correct The problem would be much smaller if they used a non-tonal language with a manageable alphabet or abjad (like Cyrillic or Arabic)

Is learning tones much harder than learning all the weird vowel and consonant sounds that English has? I'd always though of English and China as examples of hard languages in terms of sounds and languages like Spanish and Japanese as easy in terms of sounds.

Re: China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon

#35

Post by vostok »

raverbashing wrote: post #7
inputcoffee wrote: post #2

I believe the author should have explored another reason: English. One of the legacies of the British Empire is that a lot of the educated people in the world use English. Even in Europe, it is the lingua franca for business and academia. (In mighty Germany, the top institutions publish in English). I think the applications and work would have to be done in English for China to effectively attract global talent.

Correct The problem would be much smaller if they used a non-tonal language with a manageable alphabet or abjad (like Cyrillic or Arabic)

Cyrillic is not an abjad as far as I know. I'm a native of a country that uses Cyrillic, but it's possible that I misunderstood the meaning of "abjad".

Re: China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon

#36

Post by magic_beans »

billconan wrote: post #17

this is very much true. Outside censorship, the working culture of China is also quite different. It's quite common to do overtime in China. work-life balance is less respected. People accept it as the normal and are proud of it. My friend worked for an accounting company. In busy season, she had to work till 5a.m. in the morning of the next day and present her report to her supervisor at 8 a.m. she took her toothbru…

Wow. That's pretty horrifying.

Re: China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon

#37

Post by ginko »

SEJeff wrote: post #28
raverbashing wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, because the Korean alphabet requires composition of glyphs Arabic has some marks and different start/middle/end forms but it is simpler

Bonus points that everything in Arabic is phoentic. Something is spelled like it sounds (unlike english) and there is little ambiguity.

Arabic is plenty ambiguous since it omits vowels.

Re: China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon

#39

Post by matt_wulfeck »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #5
basseq wrote: post #3

TLDR: Tech success is driven by openness of ideas and people, and China's control and oversight of the internet and other data stifles the ability of companies to execute quickly or with confidence (e.g., security, IP).

The looming cloud of deadly pollution doesn't help attract talent either.

Or the 12-hour a day, 6 days a week work schedule.

Re: China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon

#40

Post by Helmet »

erics32 wrote: post #12

One cultural factor is the fact that developers have a low social standing in China (sometimes referred to as 马工). This leads to low pay, reduced dating pool, lack of respect from people you meet etc.

Can you comment on why this is? Speaking broadly, software development tends to attract intelligent, hardworking, and educated people - not always obviously, but I think more so than a most other "office" jobs. What is contributing to the low social standing?
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