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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

#281

Post by grzm »

dilemma wrote: post #265
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)

All languages have tones. See how the 'a' sound is different in 'car' and 'can', or 'make'?

That's not the same thing. That's an inconsistent mapping of sounds (phonemes) to symbols (and one of the reasons English can be so frustrating to learn). Tones when referring to linguistics are changes in pitch to distinguish words. Given that these differences in pitch (tonemes) are created with the same system (mouth, tongue, lips, vocal chords, &c) as phonemes, you can argue that they're the same, but it's an important enough distinction that linguists find it meaningful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics)

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

#282

Post by [deleted] »

grzm wrote: post #281
dilemma wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All languages have tones. See how the 'a' sound is different in 'car' and 'can', or 'make'?

That's not the same thing. That's an inconsistent mapping of sounds (phonemes) to symbols (and one of the reasons English can be so frustrating to learn). Tones when referring to linguistics are changes in pitch to distinguish words. Given that these differences in pitch (tonemes) are created with the same system (mouth, tongue, lips, vocal chords, &c) as phonemes, you can argue that they're the same, but it's an imp…

[deleted]

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

#283

Post by gbraad »

lacampbell wrote: post #276
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…

Another thing is that it's practically impossible for a non-chinese person to get citizenship or even permanent residency - even if you marry a chinese citizen. At the end of the day the Chinese government (and maybe its people as well) does not want foreigners living their long-term.

There has even been a recent circular to not issue indefinite contracts to foreigners works. They are only allowed to employ the person for a maximum of 5 years (although extension of contract is possible). Not so sure what the deal with this is.

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

#284

Post by argonaut »

dragonwriter wrote: post #277
argonaut wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are only right the USA has no unions for tech . In other industries unions are still there (public sector and manufacturing mostly). The USA has labor laws, and they are enforced. And they affect Silicon Valley worker lives daily . Non-competes are near-unenforceable in California because of California labor law. There was also a thread a while back about how CA law allows you to retain IP over side-projects unre…

> The USA has labor laws, and they are enforced Some of them. Lots of programmers are misclassified as FLSA exempt when they don't meet the standards for such exemption, but because of lack of organization and because of the status signalling that goes with FLSA exemption, they rarely challenge this, so it's poorly enforced.

I've almost never seen a programmer in SV whose job duties and pay mean they fall under FLSA. What are you referring to? Maybe a student programmer, I guess.

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

#285

Post by lacampbell »

Haydos585x2 wrote: post #257
hguant wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

David Moser wrote an essay telling people to focus more on Pinyin and not stress about characters until much later. I totally agree with him. Maybe one day the CCP will force everyone to Pinyin and I can finally read without having to look up half a sentence. http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

I'll put in a vote for Zhuyin:

- more consistent (no confusing between the two sounds for "u" for example).

- better IMEs - you can filter characters by tone, impossible to do with Google Pinyin for example.

- can be used to type Simplified and Traditional

- no interference/preconceptions from other languages written in the latin alphabet.

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

#286

Post by smallnamespace »

Haydos585x2 wrote: post #257
hguant wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

David Moser wrote an essay telling people to focus more on Pinyin and not stress about characters until much later. I totally agree with him. Maybe one day the CCP will force everyone to Pinyin and I can finally read without having to look up half a sentence. http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

Moving everything to pinyin probably would introduce a different set of difficulties for a foreigner: while a native Chinese speaker knows the spoken language and context well enough to disambiguate homophones, it's unlikely a Chinese learner would have the same ability.

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

#287

Post by fornever »

Cerium wrote: post #251
suanmeiguo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Chinese and I moved to US 5 years ago. Some of these are not true at least when I left China (I still go back every year and don't feel these at all). >BTW: you have very little chance to be able to get married without a property under your name in China. This is exaggerated. I've only seen such thing on news or from rumors. But in real life, a lot of my friends, classmates and colleges (both male and female) g…

One way education is cruel is the one-shot at college thing. My wife's from China and her family is amazed that it is possible for her to go back to university in the USA.

Yes, presumably they meant cruel as in merciless or unforgiving (which is acceptable usage). This is a constant in everything from documentaries like the last train home or the biggest chinese resturant in the world and even a theme in major movies like aftershock.

People say that China is 10 years in the future and 10 years in the past, but in many ways it's 50 years both ways.

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

#289

Post by sethammons »

ComteDeLaFere wrote: post #85
sethammons wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in seeing data on successful start ups vs location.

The Effect of Location on a Startup's Likelihood of Success https://codingvc.com/the-effect-of-location-on-a-startups-li...

Neat, thank you! The graphs use this nebulous "signal" metric. It is hard to tell if that includes start up valuation and/or exits, which I posit are more important than some of the markers they mentioned like advisor or investor popularity. Neat data point though.

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

#290

Post by suanmeiguo »

junnan wrote: post #255
illuminati1911 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You miss a point bro, that is, foreigners in China are warmly welcomed and respected. I think that compensate the social status of IT workers. BTW, by foreigners I mean white male

To the point..
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