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Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience?

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Re: Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience?

#131

Post by ArrayList »

dang wrote: post #127
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American citizen I agree with you, but I think that the comparison to China is excessive and inappropriate - and serves as some kind of perverted justification for China's crimes against humanity.

Please stop doing nationalistic flamewar on HN. The denunciatory rhetoric you've been invoking in this thread has no role in the kinds of conversations we're looking for here—it's a different sort of game, for a different sort of website. Since you're an experienced HN user, I'm sure you know this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What that comment said is true though. Does HN not value the truth?

Re: Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience?

#132

Post by awad »

komali2 wrote: post #58
jaxbot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the insights, much appreciated! To be clear, are you a westerner who made this move, or a Chinese native? If the former, how did the startup culture compare to the US startup culture? >of Chinese descent and speak the language What about westerns who speak mando? Is it workable or still too much of a culture shock? Is racism abundant?

>mando Is it a regional norm around you to refer to Mandarin as "Mando?" Never heard of this in my life...

As a counter-point I've always heard them shortened to Mando and Canto (as in, "do you speak Mando, Canto, or both?") amongst Asian-American friends. Never thought anything of it really.

Re: Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience?

#133

Post by chaostheory »

philsnow wrote: post #77
zukunftsalick wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HK has uncensored and fast internet. The language barrier can be a issue but English is still widely spoken, even in remote areas of HK like where I live. I know enough Canto for numbers, food and the rare times I get a taxi. I can't ready anything though. There's a big question mark as 2047 looms closer, which is till when China promised to keep HK the way it is now (capitalism, different currency, open, legal syste…

> There's a big question mark as 2047 looms closer, which is till when China promised to keep HK the way it is now (capitalism, different currency, open, legal system and so on). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests They're not going to wait until 2047. Already many (most?) elementary schools in HK speak Mandarin instead of Cantonese.

> Already many (most?) elementary schools in HK speak Mandarin instead of Cantonese.

Mandarin is far easier to learn and speak than Cantonese

Re: Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience?

#134

Post by bdamm »

refurb wrote: post #87
bdamm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian living in and working in America, I have a similar although less dramatic moral difficulty. The fact is that the American government is curiously abusive compared to your average developed national government.

Yet, you're living in the US. So I assume the positives outweigh the negatives?

My personal experience has been very positive.

Re: Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience?

#135

Post by nodesocket »

maxxxxx wrote: post #76
yibg wrote: post #45

I’ve sort of done the move. If you are not ethnically Chinese and speak the language, there will be a few things to get used to. The degree will depend a bit on where you end up. For example: - pollution can be a big problem. - if Chinese company, work culture can be very different. More top down, longer hours etc. - noisy. Most places you go in big cities you are surrounded by noise. Cars, people, construction. It d…

"- pollution can be a big problem." This would already be a showstopper for me. I have spent a week in Mumbai and never want to be in such an environment again.

I was recently in Seoul South Korea for a month, and there were a few very bad pollution days. At first I thought there must be a fire close. Then the locals informed me it comes from China and their factories. Koreans are obviously not happy about it, and there seemed to be a sense of disdain for China.

Re: Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience?

#137

Post by pmarreck »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #124

My sister-in-law's ex-husband traveled to China for weeks at a time and often. After their divorce, he moved there permanently. Two things happened. Right away, he lost a lot of weight because he didn't like the food. Too many things he would never consider eating but he had to eat something. I don't know if it's the area he was in but he is still too thin today. They divorced because he met a Chinese girl and marrie…

> traveled to China for weeks at a time and often

yeah well... this is a recipe for marriage disaster, people need human contact

Re: Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience?

#138

Post by pmarreck »

wakkaflokka wrote: post #44

I've been considering a move to Japan. My pay would likely be several tens of thousands of dollars less (still very good, relative to the market but less than what I could command in a Western market), but it's also an opportunity to have a very different life experience. Money vs. experience, it's really tough for me to figure out what's more important.

I did 2 weeks in Japan in November for the first time, and it was awesome.

Re: Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience?

#139

Post by pmarreck »

abc-xyz wrote: post #112
captainjustice wrote: post #16

I moved from Europe to China to work as a mobile/backend dev. Pros: - Salaries these days in China's big cities are pretty much same or better than in Europe - Income tax and living costs are significantly lower - Former two combined: your living standards will increase a lot here. - If you live in big cities, life is good and you can live really western life style - Extremely safe and very peaceful. Street crimes an…

More cons: you're directly supporting a surveillance state that has no regard for human rights, that is engaged with concentration camps and medical genocide, and that won't hesitate a second to kick you out of the country and ban you from entry without telling you why or for how long, likely resulting in you losing any type of investment (relationship/financial/etc). It doesn't matter if you've been a good citizen f…

I'm actually surprised that this is the first comment of this nature I've encountered on this page.

China is that country that checked out the show Black Mirror and was actually inspired by the dystopias:

https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/chinas-13-million-discred...

Re: Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience?

#140

Post by bdamm »

wolco wrote: post #102
bdamm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian living in and working in America, I have a similar although less dramatic moral difficulty. The fact is that the American government is curiously abusive compared to your average developed national government.

As a Canadian we can only wish to have some of the freedoms the US offers. Property ownership is a right in America but in Canada it's a suggestion. In America you have freedom of speech in Canada you don't have that right but no one will both you practice. Think Canada could do better as the world's police force? Would have Canada handled 911 differently? Would Canada have invaded iraq? Would the middle east be bett…

It is not clear to me that US foreign policy has been good for the Middle East.
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