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Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

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Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#111

Post by yorwba »

justicezyx wrote: post #88
rawnlq wrote: post #68

Another interesting cultural bit from the same author on chinese collaboration: > You know how overseas Chinese students in America all copy each others work to get answers? This workflow scale. How we work when older too. So if I have a question I open up QQ and have a few hundred friends. We all help each other with whatever. Many are engineers or work in factories here in Shenzhen. Most of the electronics in the w…

She was calling out common traits for people then trying to label them Chinese, and readers, like you, suddenly feel "interesting"... > how overseas Chinese students in America all copy each others work to get answers? Student colluding is any special? I was college ta before, I do not think there is ever a class students do not copy each other.

I speak a bit of Chinese and have Chinese friends who were studying in Germany and one time I got to sit in on their copying session. I was quite surprised when a lot of Chinese showed up whom I'd never seen before.

Turns out some of them were seniors who had brought their homework from previous years. It wasn't like everyone just copied the work either, there was plenty of discussion about the points they had trouble understanding. (But my Chinese wasn't quite good enough to pick up on most of it.)

So if I may generalize from my anecdote, I'd say that Chinese students colluding is special in that they form a tightly knit community abroad, helping each other out.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#112

Post by anovikov »

aleyan wrote: post #87

> Even now, engineers are not held in anywhere near the same regard in China as they are in the West. I have to respectfully disagree with the author on the esteem of engineers in China versus the West. I am not Chinese, nor an expert on their culture, but I do live in the West so I understand half of the equation. Current President of China, Xi Jinping was educated as a chemical engineer[1]. His predecessor Hu Jinta…

This is because China is not a democracy. In a democracy, someone who speaks well is likely to win - and lawyers by definition must be able to speak very well. In China there is a merit-based system which as every merit-based system, has a lot of flaws - so someone able to work through the top of it must be a real hacker. Engineers win hands down over lawyers.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#113

Post by chris11 »

bm1362 wrote: post #41
booleandilemma wrote: post #24

Since we are on the topic of idiom, this one rings true: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down”. Unless you’re the boss of the company you rarely stand to profit from problem solving or creative thinking — and usually speaking up will be detrimental to you in some way. Are American companies that different? The few places I've worked software engineers didn't get bonuses, only the people in sales did. Software…

Two NYC startups I've worked at have bonuses in the contracts. 10/20% based on performance with modifiers each way.

How is performance generally measured for dev positions though?

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#114

Post by Sacho »

yorwba wrote: post #111
justicezyx wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was calling out common traits for people then trying to label them Chinese, and readers, like you, suddenly feel "interesting"... > how overseas Chinese students in America all copy each others work to get answers? Student colluding is any special? I was college ta before, I do not think there is ever a class students do not copy each other.

I speak a bit of Chinese and have Chinese friends who were studying in Germany and one time I got to sit in on their copying session. I was quite surprised when a lot of Chinese showed up whom I'd never seen before. Turns out some of them were seniors who had brought their homework from previous years. It wasn't like everyone just copied the work either, there was plenty of discussion about the points they had troubl…

Again, is that special to the Chinese? Isn't US history filled with examples of foreigners forming tight-knit communities based on nationality or ethnicity?

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#115

Post by theWatcher37 »

samirillian wrote: post #97
aleyan wrote: post #87

> Even now, engineers are not held in anywhere near the same regard in China as they are in the West. I have to respectfully disagree with the author on the esteem of engineers in China versus the West. I am not Chinese, nor an expert on their culture, but I do live in the West so I understand half of the equation. Current President of China, Xi Jinping was educated as a chemical engineer[1]. His predecessor Hu Jinta…

It's the technocracy! I also think that's what Americans didn't like about Hillary Clinton (among other things). She seems to look at governing much more like an engineer.

HRC is the farthest from an engineer you will ever see. I'm not sure how anyone with a professional background in engineering could suggest this.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#116

Post by bonzini »

chris11 wrote: post #113
bm1362 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two NYC startups I've worked at have bonuses in the contracts. 10/20% based on performance with modifiers each way.

How is performance generally measured for dev positions though?

Mentoring, helping with customers issues, architecting new features, etc.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#117

Post by Iv »

aleyan wrote: post #87

> Even now, engineers are not held in anywhere near the same regard in China as they are in the West. I have to respectfully disagree with the author on the esteem of engineers in China versus the West. I am not Chinese, nor an expert on their culture, but I do live in the West so I understand half of the equation. Current President of China, Xi Jinping was educated as a chemical engineer[1]. His predecessor Hu Jinta…

Lawyers are advantaged in a democracy where you rise by convincing people. Engineers are advantaged in a meritocracy or in a system that sees itself as a meritocracy as we are probably better at optimizing for an important metric.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#118

Post by vacri »

theli0nheart wrote: post #42
wanderingjew wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so everyone is aware, the argument that blog post makes is extremely tenuous at best, and blatant disinformation at its worst. The argument is, basically, 'someone on reddit was doing stuff in China, then stopped a few years ago. A few years ago, Naomi Wu a.k.a SexyCyborg started using reddit.' Here's that same argument again: Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of stuff, then he stopped. Around the same time he stopped, I…

> I'm just going to tell you, OP, and everyone who agrees with you right now: fuck off. There's nothing inexplicable about a woman being able to use tools. The fact that your comment was voted up to the top in this Hacker News submission says a lot about Hacker News itself. Go feel shame, because you deserve it. Regardless of what your opinion is of anyone on this forum, using profanity is inappropriate and uncalled…

Profanity is not synonymous with abuse. People use profanity all the time here. Similarly, the mods will still take a dim view of you if you keep it clean while abusing someone.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#119

Post by yorwba »

Sacho wrote: post #114
yorwba wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak a bit of Chinese and have Chinese friends who were studying in Germany and one time I got to sit in on their copying session. I was quite surprised when a lot of Chinese showed up whom I'd never seen before. Turns out some of them were seniors who had brought their homework from previous years. It wasn't like everyone just copied the work either, there was plenty of discussion about the points they had troubl…

Again, is that special to the Chinese? Isn't US history filled with examples of foreigners forming tight-knit communities based on nationality or ethnicity?

My only other experience with large groups of foreign students from the same country was when I stayed in China as an exchange student and met a lot of Pakistanis.

They definitely hung out with each other more often, but they didn't seem to actually study much together. I had a few email me with questions on the same exercise, so at least those three hadn't exchanged notes.

Of course there might have been some Pakistani-only homework sessions I was simply never invited to, but I don't think that was the case.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#120

Post by vacri »

timaz wrote: post #43
wanderingjew wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so everyone is aware, the argument that blog post makes is extremely tenuous at best, and blatant disinformation at its worst. The argument is, basically, 'someone on reddit was doing stuff in China, then stopped a few years ago. A few years ago, Naomi Wu a.k.a SexyCyborg started using reddit.' Here's that same argument again: Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of stuff, then he stopped. Around the same time he stopped, I…

There's nothing inexplicable about a woman using tools. The main thing I take issue with is someone literally parading a girl around in less-than-underwear for their own profit. Low profile in their home country.. like showing your face and naughty bits on camera and attending conventions? Like I said, this really makes no sense when you add things up. Tools are cheap in China for the Westerner, but not for the avera…

I don't understand your problem with someone having a mentor. I've been a sysadmin for approaching a decade now and I have a mentor, and no-one's ever called me a fraud at any stage. So what if she has help from someone more skilled than her? She clearly does at least some of the work herself, from her time-lapse videos.

Why is it that women in tech aren't allowed to have intermediate technical skills without copping shit for it? "What, you had help? Such a fraud!"

> Bucking this stereotype... is what China needs

Perhaps one way to buck it is to not try on every little excuse you can find to discredit someone, birther-style?

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