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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

#241

Post by kmicklas »

yvsong wrote: post #207
vtange wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I wonder how many have studied Herr Führer's record on German economy. The 2 major mistakes of mankind in the 20th century are fascism and communism.

> The 2 major mistakes of mankind in the 20th century are fascism and communism.

That's a bit misleading cause fascism is just inherently bad while communism has had some implementation problems.

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

#242

Post by kevinskii »

Animats wrote: post #234

Well, the US lost the top guy in machine learning, Andrew Ng. In the US, he was a professor at Stanford, not even the head of the department, with a few grad students. Now he's Chief Scientist and VP at Baidu.

The U.S. didn't lose Andrew Ng. [1]

And to call him "the" top guy in ML is a bit of a stretch, though he's certainly one of many.

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

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

#243

Post by kmicklas »

js8 wrote: post #27
throw12313221 wrote: post #10

For people from Russia or other countries China could be attractive option. Take-home money can be good, especially with low taxation. US is not really a competition, it is relatively unfriendly to foreigners, very hard to move there. But I think China wants to mainly increase talent retention. There are many Chinese who stay in US after finishing their studies there. China wants those educated people back.

"But I think China wants to mainly increase talent retention. There are many Chinese who stay in US after finishing their studies there. China wants those educated people back." They should consider democracy, then. Educated people like that. I was born in a communist country. It's not surprising to me that smart people want to leave.

Communist != undemocratic

China happens to be neither communist or democratic

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

#244

Post by Qantourisc »

blacktulip wrote: post #227
_audakel wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cruel def: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about it. Shaming is undesirable, but I wouldn't say publicly knowing how you rank compared to others would constitute "cruel". Its really how the world works - in sports you see exact stats of how your do, publicly traded companies/CEOs are meticulously analysed publicly on how they perform etc. etc. There does need to be a balance btwn h…

I agree with you here. I used the word cruel since I couldn't find a better word - as a none native speaker my vocabulary is limited :( . I have the same feelings about the UK public education. Competition is basically non-existence. I wonder why people can't settle in a middle ground.

> def: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about it. willfully: check; suffering: check (the shaming); no concern: check. Actor: state/school as a whole. So I think it applies.

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

#245

Post by zhemao »

zpallin wrote: post #145

I agree with the article. I've spent a little bit of time in China, and I find it enjoyable despite its obvious detractors. In many ways, the Chinese lifestyle is refreshing to someone who has spent their life in California. The problem is going to be with the Government being so hostile to open information. That and the salaries are not going to be as competitive. And I predict Trump will do little to shake the Cali…

> In many ways, the Chinese lifestyle is refreshing to someone who has spent their life in California.

Could you expand on that? I was born in China, but grew up in the US and currently live in California. I can't think of many ways in which China is better and plenty of ways in which it's worse. My mother (who obviously has a closer connection to the country) tells me she strongly prefers life in the US.

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

#246

Post by stonemetal »

huherto wrote: post #55
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.

> 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.

>It is not that we are dummy. Our brain is just unable to hear (and produce) the exact sound.

This is only partially true. A speech therapist could train you to hear and make those sounds. The training is usually called accent reduction.

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

#247

Post by zhemao »

Animats wrote: post #234

Well, the US lost the top guy in machine learning, Andrew Ng. In the US, he was a professor at Stanford, not even the head of the department, with a few grad students. Now he's Chief Scientist and VP at Baidu.

> Now he's Chief Scientist and VP at Baidu

He's Chief Scientist at Baidu Research, which is based in Sunnyvale. So he's not really "lost" to the US, just lost to Stanford (and, I guess, to Google, since he was working with them before).

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

#248

Post by illuminati1911 »

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.

My background: Finnish SE born in Finland

"developers have a low social standing in China"

You couldn't be further away from the truth. I used to live in Shanghai studying CS and also working there as a developer and I'd say it's one of the best professions to have in terms of social status.

When you tell you are a Developer/Software Engineer etc. in the minds of Chinese people that often means: educated, intelligent and rich which is pretty much the complete toolset to succeed in (Asian/)Chinese society.

In terms of dating pool I had to say I was quite surprised that when I told some local girls what did I do for living and they got more attracted. What in the west (ignorant) people see as "geek" or "nerd" in China and many other Asian countries is seen as intelligence and success.

I'd say that the social status of developers world wide has been getting better because of the recent tech boom but in China it never was underappreciated.

Edit: Speaking money-wise: Also the relative salary in China for SEs is really good.

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

#249

Post by lambdasquirrel »

Animats wrote: post #236
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…

On point 2, a lot of startups run that way to their own detriment.

The other cultural and pay issues seem a bigger deal to me, if true. So many of the best people I've met over the 10+ years in the valley care about things other than owning a home, for example.

Owning a home is nice but it can't be emphasized enough that their heart was in the work, and everything else followed.

I understand that that attitude may be one of privilege but it is what it is.

What is tech culture — at least the bits that other people want to replicate? It's about being at the edges, pushing what's possible. Or the value-add, if you're an economist. :P It's worth noting that even in the Bay Area, it's just a minority of the scene that truly aspires to this ideal. There's a lot of hanger-ons, even here. What's different about the Bay Area is that non-conformism allowed those weirdos to actually lead.

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

#250

Post by Cerium »

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?

Doesn't matter which way they are calculated. Names are listed in order of performance. Additionally, at least some schools place students into classes based on previous years rank.
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