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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

#81

Post by irrational »

Symmetry wrote: post #34
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)

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.

The difference is, I grew up learning English ;-) Seriously though, I tried learning Chinese, but for the life of me I couldn't tell the difference between the tones. They all sounded the same to me. I don't know if it's related, but I don't have an ear for music (Music does nothing for me so I have never listened to it by choice). Spanish on the other hand is amazing. I know an handful of languages, but Spanish by far had the fewest oddities. It is amazing how regular it is.

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

#82

Post by loudmax »

Symmetry wrote: post #34
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)

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 that sounds correct to your ears, but native Chinese speakers give you blank stares, it's not that they're being obtuse or dense. They really have no idea what you're trying to say. Also there are relatively few sounds in Chinese, so if you make a mistake, you're likely to actually say something different from what you intended.

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

#83

Post by duaneb »

louhike wrote: post #61
laurent123456 wrote: post #22

The article doesn't mention that but another possible factor is that life is not that great over there either. If you are not Chinese, you'll always be a foreigner there, even if you spend ten years in the same city, so that makes it difficult to integrate. You'll also have to deal with the Chinese administration for the visa, residence permit, etc. which is quite a pain. It's definitely a great place to visit or eve…

The american administration is bad too for foreigners, so I think it can be summarized by how attractive the country is.

You mean how the child of an immigrant is President?

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

#84

Post by duaneb »

officialjunk wrote: post #62
laurent123456 wrote: post #22

The article doesn't mention that but another possible factor is that life is not that great over there either. If you are not Chinese, you'll always be a foreigner there, even if you spend ten years in the same city, so that makes it difficult to integrate. You'll also have to deal with the Chinese administration for the visa, residence permit, etc. which is quite a pain. It's definitely a great place to visit or eve…

A minority in the US could make that same exact argument...

Minorities are not treated like foreigners or alien.

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

#85

Post by ComteDeLaFere »

sethammons wrote: post #32
saycheese wrote: post #18

Something ironic about an "open" culture being critical of a "closed" culture. Reality is the American's tech cultural is at its core a very closed community. Even within America, trying to create a startup outside of the Bay Area, which is insanely expensive area to do business, will require exponentially more effort, luck, etc.

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...

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

#86

Post by stevesun21 »

inputcoffee wrote: post #2

I believe the author should have explored another reason: English. One of the legacies of the British Empire is that a lot of the educated people in the world use English. Even in Europe, it is the lingua franca for business and academia. (In mighty Germany, the top institutions publish in English). I think the applications and work would have to be done in English for China to effectively attract global talent.

If US attracts talent and they are all speak English, what reason you think that China cannot attract talent who are going to speak Chinese?

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

#87

Post by divbit »

stevesun21 wrote: post #75
divbit wrote: post #60

I just spent a month living there, and while I enjoy the country(food in particular is amazing), internet speed is terrible, and basic developer needs like being able to download a docker image, is like an overnight download ( because the internet will throttle down to low kb/s on such a download). Doing full time startup work from there would require working on something fairly lightweight I think.

I think you used the Internet provider from a different one, which is cheapist one -- whole community share one bandwidth. My friends in China all use at least 30Mbits connection, now there is a promotion for 100MB for the same price.

It's likely that I wasn't on an optimal connection - but I also tried coffee shops, various different hotels, and several different vpn / proxy strategies and all were like this (once or twice a proxy configuration would get me about the speed you are saying for a day, but then would be not working the next day), so whatever the optimal connection is, it wasn't easy to find.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

divbit wrote: post #60

I just spent a month living there, and while I enjoy the country(food in particular is amazing), internet speed is terrible, and basic developer needs like being able to download a docker image, is like an overnight download ( because the internet will throttle down to low kb/s on such a download). Doing full time startup work from there would require working on something fairly lightweight I think.

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by tupshin »

ommunist wrote: post #73

Thank you for sharing. But tech China is not only mainland China. Taiwan is also tech.

Except that the source article is exclusively about the problems with tech in China, largely due to government and cultural reasons that have very little to do with Taiwan, and the fiction that there is actually a single China, inclusive of Taiwan, is totally irrelevant.
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