Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 372 posts

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

#191

Post by blacktulip »

cesarbs wrote: post #185
blacktulip wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a book. There are of course extreme workloads from both the schools and the parents. But to me there is something worse - the public shaming culture. I live in the UK now. Something very odd to me at the beginning is that I can never know how good my kids are doing compare to their classmates. The teachers would politely refuse to answer such questions. And the 'parents meeting' is private to one pupil's…

Are test scores calculated relative to the top performer - so that there will always be bottom performers - or is there a bar that everyone could clear so no student would be shamed?

That's the teacher's call. If consistently underperform pupil once underperformed less he/she may even get praised. On the other hand. If a top 3 pupil ranked 10 once, he/she may receive some shaming. Different teachers have different styles

And of course. Some teachers won't shame pupils at all. But the rankings are always public. No one can change that.

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

#192

Post by mratzloff »

blacktulip wrote: post #173
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.

It would be a book. There are of course extreme workloads from both the schools and the parents. But to me there is something worse - the public shaming culture. I live in the UK now. Something very odd to me at the beginning is that I can never know how good my kids are doing compare to their classmates. The teachers would politely refuse to answer such questions. And the 'parents meeting' is private to one pupil's…

Yes. One can draw a direct line between shame-based cultures and an unwillingness to take risks for fear of failure. The most harmful outcome of this is lack of innovation.

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

#193

Post by hguant »

Symmetry wrote: post #34
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)

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.

For me, it wasn't the tones or sounds that made Mandarin tricky - once you get used to letting your mouth/tongue make shapes/be places you've trained it not to be the vowle/consonants aren't that bad, and fi you've ever played an instrument/sung, tones are manageable. It was the stupid pictographs. You're literally just memorizing shapes that didn't correspond to anything was the absolute worst. It got better once you learned to recognize the basic forms that were getting composed into parts of other characters, but that really discouraged me/was the hardest part. I basically gave up on written Chinese and focused on pinyin, because that made sense to my head.

Source: took two years of Mandarin and lived in Taiwan for a few months

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

#194

Post by serge2k »

vtange wrote: post #167
__derek__ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's striking about this description is that a number of would-be Western leaders seem to be looking at the situation and saying, "Wow, that looks great. I want my own."

But can you blame them? For years China's mantra to the West was, "Look at how great our economy's doing! Look at how divided and problematic democracies can be, they are not even that much better than China on human rights! The 21st century is not for idealistic democracies but for China."

> But can you blame them?

Yes.

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

#195

Post by cylinder »

user5994461 wrote: post #151
cylinder wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, even in a situation like that, it still comes down to, literally, a lottery (one with zero transparency). Compare with the independent skilled migration systems of Australia, Canada and NZ.

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

#196

Post by serge2k »

snambi wrote: post #112
louhike wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The american administration is bad too for foreigners, so I think it can be summarized by how attractive the country is.

I'm an indian immigrant, this is totally not true. There may be edge cases, but in general, cannot agree with this statement.

what? The american immigration system is pretty awful. H-1B to employer sponsored green card is a really lousy system.

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

#197

Post by mtgx »

__derek__ wrote: post #126
Hasknewbie wrote: post #98

The article is avoiding the elephant in the room: the lack of openness and information access is merely a consequence of having an illegitimate regime where everything is ruled by coercion, corruption, and political connections. While you're there, if some company dumps chemicals in your backyard, somebody with a badge hounds you, or your employer refuses to pay you, good luck getting your day in court. They'd be doi…

What's striking about this description is that a number of would-be Western leaders seem to be looking at the situation and saying, "Wow, that looks great. I want my own."

UK, especially, seems to want to rebuild itself in China's image (total surveillance from multiple levels of the government, censorship, etc).

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

#198

Post by cylinder »

nerfhammer wrote: post #144
cylinder wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those stories are rare in the US professional world - GP did not say that's happening every day there. Also, the 40-hr work week is a relatively new development even in advanced nations. China is newer to this game so yes a six day work week will be considered an achievement.

I'm not sure what it means to be shipped to a different city and not being allowed to leave means, but even junior investment bankers on wall street don't have to do that.

"Not being allowed" means you're fired if you don't stick to your post. How is that different to any career here where you are transferred to a different branch office? Clearly if Goldman Sachs transfers you to their Salt Lake City office and you stop showing up to work you'll be terminated.

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

#199

Post by summarite »

rahrahrah wrote: post #188
blacktulip wrote: post #68

As a Chinese I would say that the points in this article, though true, are not among the driving reasons. If you ask me, I would present this list: 1. Practically, there are only 4-5 cities suitable for 'tech talents' in China. The properties prices in these cities are comparable to the ones in NY and SF while the salary isn't. BTW: you have very little chance to be able to get married without a property under your n…

Yeah. I come from the academia, and I can't see a scientist not being able to do his job just because he has to take one extra hop by using a VPN.

It's an arms race though. You'll never know when they start to block the VPN you're using. And then the one after that and then your internet access.

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

#200

Post by st3v3r »

cnxhk wrote: post #13

I have to say that most problem is not true. Most Chinese don't prefer youtube and even for the university student knows how to pass the block by vpn and other softwares. Also in some university Google is not blocked.

Why would I want to deal with that hurdle, though? A hurdle that, at any time if they wished, could either come closing down, or get me kicked out?
Post reply on HN