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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

#231

Post by bonzini »

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.

If a sponsor employer would give them that salary, and they have rare qualifications, maybe they should apply for O1 rather than H1B. I helped a guy with a recommendation letter for O1, and it wasn't hard. He basically gave me a template that I customized with data specific to work we had done together. I am not even American.

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

#232

Post by blacktulip »

fil_a_del_fee_a wrote: post #216
justicezyx wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Serious question from a concerned American.. How much are you learning and more importantly, are you retaining this information? What subjects / topics are you studying? The reason that I ask, is that I work in IT. If you spent this amount of time devoted to learning a programming language, web design, etc... you would be in an excellent position to work remotely for a company like mine. If you spend 6-9 learning eve…

The one and only goal of any and all pre-university education in China is NCEE[1].

NCEE is an exam, which means you get one shot, offline, off books.

Now imagine you need to write a website, with pen and paper, without internet or reference books.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Higher_Education_Entr...

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

#233

Post by allendoerfer »

wahern wrote: post #111
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.

Yes, but English is still phonetic. If the speaker slows down it's much easier to understand the person, even (or especially) if they speak in monotone, and even if they don't insert breaks in their speech. Inflection in English primarily serves to assist rapid processing, but especially in business communication it can be dropped entirely. Something similar can be said for word order, and to a significant degree eve…

> One thing I have learned in my cross-cultural experience is that Americans, British, and to some extent Australians heavily abuse sarcasm and cultural references.[1]

> [1] I suspect Germany and maybe even France might be similar in that regard. I doubt the phenomenon is unique to Anglophone countries; it's probably partly a function of modern Western culture. But the nature of English probably plays a part, too. Anyone care to confirm or contest?

The British make more use of sarcasm or irony than the Germans on average, I think this is were the stereotype that Germans have no humour originates. Still sarcasm is used here quite a lot, too, the Germans just have a harder time witching contexts. I have read an interview with a British guy living in Germany once (unfortunately forgot who it was) and he noticed in Germany, humour almost always is presented by some sort of a clown, so the audience can switch easier.

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

#235

Post by flyinghamster »

loudmax wrote: post #82
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.

Maybe "hard" isn't exactly the right word, but it's certainly different. The sounds aren't hard to make, but using the wrong tone is like using the wrong vowel. You _have_ to speak each syllable with the correct tone or people won't understand you. This can be frustrating when you're learning the language because the difference is very subtle if you haven't grown up speaking a tonal language. If you say something tha…

One thing that I've always wondered about tonal languages is whether they would be easier for musicians to learn (especially if they have perfect pitch) than for non-musicians.

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

#236

Post by Animats »

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…

2. There is no union nor labour law in China (well technically they both exist but..). So labour abusing is normal. Many tech workers are 'voluntarily' working 996 (which mean 9am-9pm, 6 days a week) on a 955 pay slip.

The US is headed that way. Uber, etc. Trump's new Secretary of Labor is a CEO from the fast-food industry and wants to abolish the minimum wage.

5. Pollutions etc.

Yes, China's big cities look like US big cities circa 1970. It took the US about ten years after the Clean Air Act to clean that up. Li Keqiang claims that fixing this is one of his top priorities. He has the authority, and the technology is known.

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

#237

Post by ctchocula »

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.

To clarify, the word is 码农 and the literal translation is code peasant (similar to how we call programmers code monkeys in US).

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

#238

Post by jdmichal »

smallnamespace wrote: post #152
s4vi0r wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sou…

Maybe theoretically Spanish has no diphthongs. But rapid speech definitely sees diphthongs develop as sounds merge together -- a very much Spanish thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong#Spanish

Your example would be /kau̯.da/, with the a and u merging into a single syllable diphthong.

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

#239

Post by kevinskii »

__derek__ wrote: post #187
jerf wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Control over others of their species is a primary status marker in mammals. Even calling that a "human" trait is being waaaay too specific.

Given that I responded to a comment about social status among people in the US South, it would be odd if I said that. While true, it fails to be specific enough to be relevant.[1] [1] Grice's maxims, which I find helpful for gauging my contributions to conversations: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html

Your comment suggested (probably unintentionally) that this characteristic is somewhat unique to U.S. culture. jerf's comment was therefore relevant.

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

#240

Post by c23gooey »

robocat wrote: post #209
cjslep wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In English in The South in the USA, often "can" and "can't" are pronounced the same ("can") with a minor difference in the way the "a" and "n" are held.

And just as badly, "can't" and "cunt" just vary the vowel length without changing the vowel or consonant sounds (in some English accents). Many languages don't use vowel length to signify changes in meaning, and it is obviously hard to teach.

This reminds me of Gough Whitlam, former Australian Prime Minister ~1975:

...Gough also took aim at Sir Winton Turbull when the rural MP shouted: 'I am a Country member'. Whitlam quickly responded with 'I remember', which earned an applause from both sides of the house.

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