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

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

#151

Post by user5994461 »

cylinder wrote: post #133
SEJeff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on your idea of "unfriendly to foreigners". If you're referring to countries where the US has icy relations with, getting a visa might be problematic, otherwise, I think your experience is a bit off. As a native born American, I see a surprising amount of small business owners who are successful are not from America. Even in the small town (Nicholasville, KY population ~20,000) I'm from, most of th…

No offense but I don't think you really have a grasp of the US immigration system. It's very difficult to immigrate or even get a temporary work visa. It's easier if you are the relative of a US citizen, but even then if you are mainland Chinese born or Indian you have to wait in a long queue unless you are the spouse of a US citizen.

Very difficult is an understatement. It's basically close to impossible to work in the US for a EU or russian citizen.

Source: Friends of me who want to move to the USA. I'm talking people with rare qualifications with a company ready to take them at $200k base salary and the layers to do all the paperwork for the H1B. They just can't get a fu----- VISA.

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

#152

Post by smallnamespace »

s4vi0r wrote: post #49
Symmetry wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just curious, what are some examples of difficult/weird vowel or consonant sounds that you think English has? And why do you think Spanish is easy in terms of sounds? IMO Mandarin is pretty difficult since it has both tones and weird vowels/consonants - I feel like in English most people struggling tend to only have significant trouble with articles and the "th" sound.

In American English, a lot of vowels are gliding dipthongs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American#Gliding_vowel...

For example, the 'i' in 'bright' is a dipthong that sort of glides from 'uh - aye' very quickly.

Many languages have very few dipthongs -- e.g. Japanese and Spanish come to mind, and Mandarin has some, but they're mostly different from English. If you go from a language that has 5 pure vowel sounds like Spanish to something like 15-20 in English (depending on the dialect), it's hard to keep track of them all and pronounce them correctly [1], especially since English orthography hinders rather than helps you, whereas dipthongs in Spanish are pronounced exactly as they're rendered (e.g. cauda is like ca-u-da spoken fast).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology#Vowels

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

#153

Post by user5994461 »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #42
Buetol wrote: post #23

The salaries in china are getting way higher than in silicon valley as far as I can see and that's gonna make people move. Especially with more and more layoffs in SV and the european market lacking jobs. EDIT: Looks like I'm wrong, I did the wrong conversion while on glassdoor. Salary in china are way lower than SV My point is that people move where the money is, when the salary are gonna be higher, people are gonna…

I really doubt the salaries are higher than Silicon Valley. Do you have any proof?

And higher than Wall Street too, please.

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

#154

Post by justicezyx »

yzard wrote: post #131
ar15saveslives wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Primary/secondary education in China is very, very cruel Could you elaborate? Based upon what I see here in Canada, chinese immigrants maniacally push their children to all functions that can be found around. And it's considered good when there're many chinese children in your kid's class.

As a Chinese, Chinese culture think taking the education is the best way to be success. Honestly, most think that's the only way to do it, no matter they are poor/rich, or even under educated. if they(including me) want their kids to live better in the future, the fundamental thing is education. I attended a very competitive high school in China, and under pretty high peer pressure, books were stacking up on my desk.…

> books were stacking up on my desk

That's a common situation in Chinese high school. I'd say most Chinese high school are equally competitive. I am in a not so high-ranked school in Shanxi. And I literally have less than 1 day of rest each week. Each day it's from 6am to 9pm. Early self-study, day lecture, and night self-study, all in classroom...

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

#155

Post by chillacy »

LAMike wrote: post #72

IP isn't enforced there, technology companies are comprimised from the start, "failure" isn't seen as a stepping stone to success, basic personal freedoms for its citizens don't exist. Hm, wonder why smart people with plenty of options wouldn't want to live under a totalitarian government like that.

The lack of IP enforcement is going to be better for startups. Patents exist only to prevent others from doing what you do, so that tends to be painful for startups who can't cross license or even afford lawyers and legal battles. Of course once you get big then you switch sides on that issue.

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

#156

Post by finid »

aub3bhat wrote: post #70
laurent123456 wrote: post #22

The article doesn't mention that but another possible factor is that life is not that great over there either. If you are not Chinese, you'll always be a foreigner there, even if you spend ten years in the same city, so that makes it difficult to integrate. You'll also have to deal with the Chinese administration for the visa, residence permit, etc. which is quite a pain. It's definitely a great place to visit or eve…

I agree, having arrived in USA 7 years ago, I have seen that its much easier to integrate in United States, especially if you live on East Coast or SF/LA. Sure there are visa and green card hurdles, but as a society Americans are probably more accepting of immigrants than any other country, except maybe Canada. Of course my experience is as a relatively well-off indian studying in United States, other will have a dif…

This is my observation: If you're Indian, being "relatively well-off" is not your only advantage: (White) Americans tend to view you in more favorable terms. It's almost as if we welcome you with open arms.

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

#157

Post by mtw »

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.

It is true. However there are valid reasons for most of us to learn mandarin, or at least for our children. You cannot ignore 1/5 of the world's population.

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

#158

Post by guard-of-terra »

3pt14159 wrote: post #78
huherto wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd always though of English and China as examples of hard languages in terms of sounds Glad you mention this. I don't think most native English speakers are aware how complex English phonetics are. There are subtleties that only native speakers can distinguish. That is why many not-native speakers mispronounce some sounds. It is not that we are dummy. Our brain is just unable to hear (and produce) the exact sound.

English is a strange language, but I wouldn't say especially difficult. Chinese is much harder to learn because it's so inconsistent between what you're supposed to say and the way people actually talk. In addition to using tones that are very unfamiliar and then you also need to learn the written language which is very difficult and requires a Chinese-Chinese dictionary for strange words like manticore and sometimes…

I can try and guide you around good Russian music, drop me an email to alamar at my.com or friend ilyak on last.fm - that's me. Note that I'm a fan of all things DIY, production value doesn't mean as much to me as actual content.

Regarding movies, you can always go for a huge layer of Soviet films. They take some using to I suppose, but then the supply is endless.

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

#159

Post by hawflakes »

jimmywanger wrote: post #101
raverbashing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The problem would be way way smaller if the language were more phoenetic. I've gotten into arguments with Chinese language speakers, and they insist that the language has phoetic elements, with certain ideograms giving clues on how to pronounce words. That's all well and good, but phoentic implies the other way around too. After hearing a word, you'll have to be able to write it. For instance, "kill", "sand", and the…

In this case parent is referring to the phoneme [shā] which map to the characters 殺，沙，and 鯊. (using traditional) and mean "kill", "sand", and "shark" respectively.

Note that the last one, 鯊 is composed of two components 沙 and 魚.

So the top component is the phonetic hint and the bottom is semantic, as 魚 means "fish". Many characters for types of "fish" (I use "fish" loosely as things like whales 鯨魚 are considered fish) use the fish radical, as the characters are called when used as a component of a character.

鯉魚 carp the 里 is phonetic 鮑魚 abalone 包 is phonetic

Of course, this is just a small sampling and there are plenty of things that are inconsistent. I typically just use it as a mnemonic.

And to the point of tones, I leave 傻 [sha3], which means stupid.

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

#160

Post by zhemao »

stevesun21 wrote: post #86
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.

If US attracts talent and they are all speak English, what reason you think that China cannot attract talent who are going to speak Chinese?

Because the talent the US attracts started learning English before they came to the US. English is the lingua franca of global communication and is taught in almost every country. The same cannot be said of Chinese.
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