China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
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 name in China. This isn't a 'tech talents' specific issue but 'tech talents' have more chances to emigrate.
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.
3. Chinese society is relation-oriented. Tech workers hate that. For example often the promotion goes to the guy who has the closest relationship to the manager.
4. Primary/secondary education in China is very, very cruel. Many people don't want their children go through it if possible.
5. Pollutions etc.
Could you elaborate? Based upon what I see here in Canada, chinese immigrants maniacally push their children to all functions that can be found around. And it's considered good when there're many chinese children in your kid's class.
1. http://hechingered.org/content/a-day-in-the-life-of-chinese-...
I attended a very competitive high school in China, and under pretty high peer pressure, books were stacking up on my desk. The final goal is getting high score in "SAT" like test(also much harder) and attending good university. Some of my classmates get medal from International Olympiad and have higher chance to get in to good universities.
I think the historical reason for putting education in such high level is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination.
That's a common situation in Chinese high school. I'd say most Chinese high school are equally competitive. I am in a not so high-ranked school in Shanxi. And I literally have less than 1 day of rest each week. Each day it's from 6am to 9pm. Early self-study, day lecture, and night self-study, all in classroom...
How much are you learning and more importantly, are you retaining this information? What subjects / topics are you studying?
The reason that I ask, is that I work in IT. If you spent this amount of time devoted to learning a programming language, web design, etc... you would be in an excellent position to work remotely for a company like mine. If you spend 6-9 learning everything under the sun, I think it is kind of a waste.
I noticed literally no difference between my Canadian students and Chinese/Korean students as a TA at a top university here, other than the international students being more likely to plagiarize/copy work. Also, the international students were way more likely to be smokers - not sure if that's a cultural thing, or if it's caused by being stressed the fuck out because of the ridiculous education system there.
Also, depending on how "top" your university, it may have been easier for these students to get into your university than the top universities in China (e.g. they have lower test scores than their peers at the top unis in China).
NCEE is an exam, which means you get one shot, offline, off books.
Now imagine you need to write a website, with pen and paper, without internet or reference books.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Higher_Education_Entr...
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 parent(s) and the teacher.
In China things do not work this way. Every test - and there are a lot of them - is publicly ranked. There will be a very large poster at the back of the classroom with the ranking on it. The parents' meeting is a meeting for all parents of that class together. A teacher will read the ranking aloud on the stage to all parents. The top pupils will be invited onto the stage and receive praise, which is alright. But the bottom pupils will also be invited onto the stage and receive criticism - in front of all peers and their parents. The idea here is to motivate them work harder to avoid the shaming - or to motivate their parents to push them harder to avoid the shaming. It may work for some. But I see more harm done than good here.
And of course. Some teachers won't shame pupils at all. But the rankings are always public. No one can change that.
Maybe not Silicon-Valley-type innovation, but there have been plenty of innovations out of China's very long history.
Even in more recent times, I remember reading an article about Chinese research into floor tiles that can identify people as they walk via weight and shear. This was 6-10 years ago, I don't know whatever happened to that project.
Edit: I will posit that the people who take risks in the Valley do so not because of 'culture', but because they are well-off and/or well-connected and can afford to fail in terms of time and money.
There is nothing inherently in Chinese culture that prevents innovation. Innovated people gonna innovate, when they got the resources they need.
Poor country usually aren't very innovative, and China has become much richer at national level. To bet, there will be more innovations from China than not for the next several decades.
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 hypercompetiton, and "everyone gets a trophy" mentality. I feel like the US has swung far to one side and china the other. Best would be some where in the middle. Maybe have a live list of the top 10-15% of student scores.
I am a parent, and don't want to hurt my daughter, but at the same time a little pain and suffering makes you stronger.
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.
I was just pointing out that cruel has a very negative connotation ie - inhuman, barbaric, sadistic, evil, abominable etc. Applying it in the previous use case seemed excessive and implied a more radical tone than I believe the author (as he mentioned) wanted.
This is not true.
A) It's ludicrous to wrap 'personhood' and 'identity' out of how well someone is able to study and write arbitrary tests. Completely wrong.
What if some kid learns better visually, than orally? And he's actually much smarter?
What about the kids that are smart, but poor at taking tests?
What about the kids who have massive advantage over others (i.e. tutors) - does that make the other kids dumb?
'In the real world' - there's no such thing as 'someone being better at taking a test' than others. It makes no difference in the 'real world'.
A) That's only the tech world, which is not 'the world'
B) White board interviews are not 'contrived' - they are reasonable. They just are not perfect.
C) I'll bet that whiteboard interviews and academic success are only somewhat loosely correlated.
Yes. Praise can be more damaging than criticism in many cases.[1][2] Certain types of praise in the form of encouragement can be very good things. Certain types of constructive criticism can be empowering.
> a little pain and suffering makes you stronger
What is "stronger"? More emotionally resilient? In my opinion, suffering just results in risk aversion. There is not a lot of positive that emerges from it. Note that I'm not referring to establishing boundaries, which may be what you're referring to with your daughter.
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/smart-moves/201411/the-...
Executive jobs wherein you can get fired for losing to your competitors compensate you for this risk by paying fuck-you money on a yearly, sometimes even daily basis. If the CEO of Exxon is fired for failing to overtake BP, he could never work again and still die with more in the bank than I will ever earn.
Ranking in academia does not reflect real-world conditions.
Yes, I think that this is very counterproductive.
Finnish kids don't even go to school until age of 7 - and they do as well as the top chinese students.
It was "cruel" retrospectively and perhaps from the point of American society. Yet it was not really "cruel" when I was "in it". It was not a burden entirely carried by individual students. The entire class was working hard. Everyone was more-or-less tired after class. Teachers and parents accommodated my needs and gave encouragement as long as I was striving to do well in school. Thus it might be ignoring the context to simply push one child in the US to Chinese level of school-work without considering the society around.
I agree to an extent, but ...
> it was not really "cruel" when I was "in it"
I can't speak about your particular experience, of course, but generally children tend to accept their experiences as the norm. They don't have other experiences, are naturally in a very subordinate position, and are powerless. They can't really deny or hate their parents: the child's actual survival, as well as their welfare and happiness, depends on their relationship with their parents. Consider how many adults won't challenge their bosses (the great majority); now imagine a child's powerlessness, lack of confidence, and even lack of understanding of their own situation matched up against the authority, capability, and power their parents. Even adults in such situations tend to accept their fate and deny the possibility of anything better.
I also disagree that cruelty is just a relative term. It is to some degree, but pain and suffering have absolute values. When you break your arm or your loved one dies, the suffering is essentially the same whether you are in New York or Shanghai.
I doubt you mean it this way, but claims that other cultures don't value life or suffering have been used as a justification of brutal treatment.
>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) got married without owning a property.
>Primary/secondary education in China is very, very cruel
How can education be cruel? You may say it's hard or ineffective, but cruel?? What happened to you in your child life?
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.
With the skewed male:female ratio, that would seem to be the least of your worries http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8451289.stm
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 big cities circa 1970. It took the US about ten years after the Clean Air Act to clean that up. Li Keqiang claims that fixing this is one of his top priorities. He has the authority, and the technology is known.
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.
1. Yes - Housing is a problem. I think it is a salary problem. As tech corps in US earns money from the whole world, most Chinese tech corps can only attract Chinese customers. So the value generated from a same piece of code, is better in US. This makes US engineers' salary and status relatively higher in the society than those in China.
2. Yes - people are working 996. But I won't blame the law. I'd blame the culture, or the competitive nature of Chinese tech industry. Union doesn't do anything in China, but labour law does. It is written in favor of workers and executed properly, ask any entrepreneur in China. The problem is, I never seen anyone sued their employer. And there are a damn lot of people that actually working 996 voluntarily without asking by their boss, making the normal ones less competitive if they don't do this.
3. No, I don't agree here. - In tech companies of both countries, I found no difference, relationship does not matter that much even Chinese employees do have a closer personal relationship than US employees. And in other industries like finance, there are no difference either, b/c both countries are 'relation-oriented' in these industries.
4. Yes - I would not say its cruel tho. India, Korea, Singapore are all like this. Its just very competitive due to the limited educational resource and the amount of people who wants to use it. But yea I wouldn't send my child there (If I have one).
5. Pollutions - Sad, Beijing is not a human-habitable place anymore... Shanghai is still okay.
Again, I think the facts you provided are main reasons that stop people going back. Those in the article are slightly wrong(Github, VPN .etc) or not important(foreign business entry barrier) for individuals like me.
1) pollution - Since the Disneyland has opened, things are improved. But above the regular days, it is depressing when finally the weekend came and you can't leave the 4 walls.
2) overpopulation - I don't mean the large population, but the overpopulation. There is no space for cars, yet everybody is buying, sometimes a two lane road becomes barely one, because one lane is completely blocked by parking cars and bikes going randomly. Parks are small and spare in the city. There is barely playground for children only expensive indoor ones.
3) People.. I know I know, but it drives me mad, you can only queue up like once in a year when nobody will come to the front to you. I can't count how many times I've seen that cars just blocking the ambulance in rush for no reason. When you stop with your car because the road is blocked, it's guaranteed sby from the back will try to overtake you either from left or right. My friend had a light accident with a motorcyclist (50%-50%), he brought him the hospital and paid everything. Few months later he was dragged to the court and was charged for 28K RMB (~$4K) (including the bills he paid in the hospital, fortunately he kept the cc receipts, the repair of the bike cost like a new one etc. even if it is mostly paid by the insurance, very depressing to see this amount of fraud). And so on.. Of course you can meet nice and good people, but still the daily routine will be different (also gave up counting how many times i was almost hit by a car or motor).
4) The first green is like 4 hours driving. And not easy drive but bloody fight. Have to be fully alert, people even overtake you on the shoulder of the road + I can't recall I ever could drive without seeing accidents, see barrels or other things on the road.
5) internet - after 7-8pm it is basically cut, so overloaded, no website loads that is not hosted in the country. You have to use some kind of vpn for everything! ... your gray hair is granted. No form of video-chat works beside wechat. Skype though exists, in the current year, was really painful communicating with my parents.. as my experience goes only works during working hours or on mobile net. In this year when i go home, I started to consider it as an offline zone.
.. sorry to be honest, no pun intended. It is how it is (My wife is Chinese so Im halfway there also :)... and things are improving with time, just way too slowly, Except 2. and 4. that can't be really fixed. (can't imagine anytime soon that it will be a dream destination..)
Is this really the case? I can't imagine a country having to limit educating students because of lack of resources. I hope they're not doing it artificially just to have a gradient.
What I've heard about India is that there are a few (15, IIRC) prestigious Engineering colleges and everyone wants to go there. So high school students have to outdo each other to get a place, meaning a lot of study & completion. The gradient is not intentional
Back to your question, China is not limiting education. But the education is limited by the nature of a lack of resources problem. Lets say we are in a university called US. We have 10 students and 10 Profs in US. Then every student could easily get into the course they want. An entry test might be placed only to make sure the student has knowledge required for this course. But in another university called China, they have 20 students but only 5 Profs. So a entry test is placed on those 20 to select the best 5 students for classes. So these 20 students need to study damn hard for the chance to get into the course they want. For here, prof is a 'limited resource.'
I tend to think that US is able to suck up of large portion of talent from all around the world like vacuum cleaner because laws are race and culture blind. When I look at winners of Nobel prize or Field medalists or Pulitzer price winners or popular movie directors or music performers or entrepreneurs, it doesn't escape to me that immigrants or their children make up disproportionate number of these people while all other countries bloodlet their talent.
China, or PRC, has issued fewer than 2000 green cards to foreigners every since its foundation, and most of them are issued to people who have Chinese ancestry.
Race. Chinese people are pretty...racist to TBH. But if you are White, it is probably going to benefit you. Good luck if you are people of colors. People hate PC here, but you will hate China for zero PC as well. A part that I really don't like about China, is a lot of people seem to judge others like it is their own damn rights, unacceptable.
Religion. Not really a lot people care, not even the government does, if you just practice yourself. But you are openly advocating about that, people will frown upon you, and will keep you distance.
Having lived in an oppressively religious area (in the American South) this is one of the things I like best about China. It's a relief, compared to how it is in super religious areas.
Religion is not a taboo in China, as is not welcome.
If I felt like talking to someone about religion I'd have to go out of my way to do it. The urban areas in the South are no more or less religious than the North unless you are in a few cities (portland).
The PRC on the other hand has actively persecuted religions/cults (the Falun Gong are a prime example).
But Falun Gong is 'persecuted'. It is different from other religions. Now, it seems to be an peaceful religion, but Back when it was operating in China, it is not. It seeks political status, motivate its people for illegal activities, and people lost they lives because of it.
I understand you cannot believe me. But ask other Chinese from mainland china, shouldn't be hard to find some if you are in tech industry. (They might refuse to share their opinion because they know the answer might offend you.)
Yeah... that definitely has not been my experience of urban areas in the South (mostly Atlanta, Dallas, and Galveston, assuming the latter two are considered "South").
It's subtle enough that I don't doubt that it isn't particularly noticeable from the inside, but as an outsider it was obvious to me.
Along with the general religiosity, there is also this pervasive assumption that everyone is a Christian that feels rather oppressive. I've only found Utah worse in that respect (the only state where I'm a gentile).
That said, Data is not the plural of Anecdote, and my personal experiences could certainly be far from representative.
[0] http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21710264-worlds-risin...
If you have the marriage visa you can do this after 3 years residence - it's 5 years residence with a work visa
https://taiwanease.com/article/46/Turning_Taiwanese_A_Step-B...
Some more: 1. food security, this is also terrible 2. lots of people don't follow rules like run the red light and cutting into the line 3. Health care, it's cheap, but the quality is poor, especially in small cities.There's more than 10 medical accident among my relatives
While you're there, if some company dumps chemicals in your backyard, somebody with a badge hounds you, or your employer refuses to pay you, good luck getting your day in court. They'd be doing this knowing they have rank and/or connections and you don't. There is no real rule of law in China. That makes it hard to be an attractive destination, regardless of how "hot" the local IT sector wants to look to the rest of the world.
Especially these days, where a quiet but massive purge is under way, and the regime's current propaganda is to push a heavily racialist/manifest-destiny style narrative, as a "welcomed immigrant" not having Youtube access would be the least of your worries.
Yes.
That's a bit misleading cause fascism is just inherently bad while communism has had some implementation problems.
In fact, Marx claimed that capitalism in advanced economies has contradictions that would eventually lead to its being overthrown by the workers, but that has never happened. Instead communism has always been installed through violence on the part of a small group or imposed from without, and usually in states that were not economically advanced.
All of those have been Leninism or its descendants, which break strongly from Marxism. Starting with the required starting conditions.
> In fact, Marx claimed that capitalism in advanced economies has contradictions that would eventually lead to its being overthrown by the workers, but that has never happened.
It's happened in basically all of the countries that were capitalist at the time, where capitalism (that is, the 19th century system that Marx was pointing to) has been overthrown (largely, through democratic means) due to opposition from the working class and replaced with the modern mixed economy which retains some of the basic structures of capitalism, but many features of socialism applied to directly to mitigate the effects of capitalism which can critics from the time the system was named have targeted. (Many of those sytems even call themselves socialist, and the rest of them are labelled that way by their capitalist critics.)
(As for the rest: let's hope that the term "modern mixed economy" continues to spread. Calling the postwar Western system "capitalism" has led to a lot of confusion.)
I have read that Social Democracy arose in part from the failure of the working class to revolt and overthrow capitalism. In the communist movement at the end of the 19th century there were two different responses. One, lead by Eduard Bernstein, decided instead to turn to electoral politics and try to move the economy to socialism in gradual steps, and so they joined the other groups that had formed the Socialist Democratic movement.
The other group, lead by Lenin, decided to change the party into an elite group that would lead the working classes to revolution, and this lead to the communism movement as we know it and all the totalitarian states it produced.
All totalitarianism is evil.
I'm not sure how you can claim that, unless you consider anything other than Direct Democracy to be illegitimate.
Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, mother to Donald, was born on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland in 1912, emigrated to the US in 1930, married an American in 1936, naturalized 1942.
The president's father was never an immigrant. An immigrant is someone who comes to life permanently in a new country. He was a foreign student with a wife in Kenya and eventually returned to Kenya with an American third wife upon the completion of his studies.
Several presidents have been a child of an immigrant: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Chester Arthur, Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover.
It is easy to get a working visa in tech, that's for sure, and if you have a company that jumps through all the hoops for you, it can be relatively painless.
The country actually has more billionaires than non-Vietnamese refugees.
This isn't true in the US, if you learn the language.
So this "advantage" you mention is somewhat double-edged depending upon where you are.
> It's almost as if we welcome you with open arms.
Perhaps there is something being lost in cross-cultural language or sarcasm, but I don't think "We might be racist to you, but we're way worse racist to this other group, so you have it good, really" should be expressed as "..as if we welcome you with open arms" and "You have an advantage...". Both of those are traditionally very positive expressions and you are applying them to fairly negative actual events.
... Norway, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Spain...
The US immigration rate (immigrants/year/1000 pop) is significantly lower than all of the above. Norway and Spain are the top two in terms of rate. Australia is 21% foreign-born (excluding Brits and Kiwis), and NZ is not far behind. The US is only 14% (with no exclusions) - not much more than the UK's 12%.
I realise that these are 'just numbers', but the experience stacks up as well. NZ in particular is famous for its very welcoming attitude to migrants - they actually have a problem in that people use the easier-to-get NZ citizenship to 'hop' to Australia, where there's a better economy and hence jobs; thus NZ spends a lot of resources training new citizens in things like English skills, only to have them 'brain drain' away.
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.
The problem would be much smaller if they used a non-tonal language with a manageable alphabet or abjad (like Cyrillic or Arabic)
Arabic has some marks and different start/middle/end forms but it is simpler
It's an "artificial" alphabet, meaning that it wasn't born organically over hundreds of years but created by a group of koreans. It's very simple by design, as it was created to allow the general populace to write and read (until then they were using some kind of chinese dialect, too complicated for those in the working class).
Case in point: http://ryanestradadotcom.tumblr.com/post/20461267965/learn-t...
Source: my korean teacher back when I did a year of study in korea. So I might be fuzzy on some details.
>>Arabic [has] different start/middle/end forms [...]
As far as I'm aware, Korean doesn't have different characters (forms) for the same sound, and doesn't omit vowels in the same manner that written Arabic does sometimes.
However, in the grand scheme of things, China has invested too much culturally, traditionally and publicly to walk away from their (relatively recently) simplified writing system and language.
(Reply biased a little based on my own experience reading both languages, but still should be pretty factually correct for most)
Also, converting spoken Korean into text can be tricky for non native speakers (e.g. 맛 is pronounced 'Mat' although the spelling would indicate 'Mas')
Latin America -> computadora
Spain -> ordenador
Did you put an inordinate amount of time in or do you think your methodology was just that good?
I spent maybe an hour or two a day, a few days a week. That was my most productive study method for calligraphy and pronunciation. Grammar and other subjects had to be studied in separate ways, but keeping the Chinese tv stream on helped either way.
IMO Mandarin is pretty difficult since it has both tones and weird vowels/consonants - I feel like in English most people struggling tend to only have significant trouble with articles and the "th" sound.
...Gough also took aim at Sir Winton Turbull when the rural MP shouted: 'I am a Country member'. Whitlam quickly responded with 'I remember', which earned an applause from both sides of the house.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American#Gliding_vowel...
For example, the 'i' in 'bright' is a dipthong that sort of glides from 'uh - aye' very quickly.
Many languages have very few dipthongs -- e.g. Japanese and Spanish come to mind, and Mandarin has some, but they're mostly different from English. If you go from a language that has 5 pure vowel sounds like Spanish to something like 15-20 in English (depending on the dialect), it's hard to keep track of them all and pronounce them correctly [1], especially since English orthography hinders rather than helps you, whereas dipthongs in Spanish are pronounced exactly as they're rendered (e.g. cauda is like ca-u-da spoken fast).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong#Spanish
Your example would be /kau̯.da/, with the a and u merging into a single syllable diphthong.
No matter how you cut it, English's vowel phonology is much more complicated than Spanish or Japanese. One misconception that native English speakers have is they think their language is simple to pronounce, when it really isn't.
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.
I'd put English at around Russian difficulty, hard, but easy to get going. English also has the advantage of having a simple character set (less letters than Russian, French, etc) and English also has a ton of cultural artefacts (songs, movies, etc) to sink your teeth into.
My problem with Russian (unlike say, French, which I've also studied) is that I can't even find music to listen to that's anywhere close in production value to English and there are a couple of good movies (Leviathan, for example) but you can only watch them so many times. I don't know of a single Russian TV show that is anywhere close to HBO or Netflix quality. I'd love a recommendation though if someone here knows of one.
Regarding movies, you can always go for a huge layer of Soviet films. They take some using to I suppose, but then the supply is endless.
A native English speaker, I have always been perplexed by the tendency of foreigners to use "the" incorrectly. A space ship orbits "the Earth" but not "the Mars", for example. But then I tried to find a guide to using "the"...it is one of our most mysterious words.
As for filler words in English: I totally agree it's madness. The word "set" has like 20 definitions. But you can mess them up and people will still understand you. "I break into car" (the way a Russian learning English would say it) vs "I'll break into the car" are both understood the same; whereas in Chinese if I mess up a (to my ears minor) tone, the information is completely lost.
Mistaken tonality is more like saying "tree" instead of "three".
Tonality is another feature of a speech sound like aspiration or voicing. Although it is not easy for English speakers, there no reason in principle to single it out as especially difficult.
The toughest phoneme is th (ð/θ)
Compare this with the nasal vowels in romance languages and some of them have very subtle differences https://soundcloud.com/brian-8962868/vent-vin-sans-sain-rang...
As an American I find it very difficult to under British, Irish, and Australian accents. The inflections really throw me off. But the remedy is easy--ask the speaker to slow down. When they speak slowly, I don't need to rely on inflection. (Except in Cork, Ireland. My Spanish is horrible, but I found it easier to converse with people in Guadalajara, Mexico than in Cork, Ireland. At the bus station in Cork I didn't understand a single word coming out of the clerk's mouth. I know she was speaking English--and not Irish--but beyond that I was clueless.)
Likewise, when I've traveled in Asia and South America, understanding somebody with only basic English skills is relatively easy as long as they speak slowly. As long as I can identify the stream of words, I can reconstruct meaning with high fidelity. English grants huge freedoms in terms of inflection, word order, and grammar. Lurk on any linguistics forum and you quickly learn that it's _really_ difficult to commit a bone fide, uncontestable, error in English. Most of the rules in English are basically regional preferences. I suspect that half of what is taught in ESL classes aren't rules, per se, but merely an attempt at the formalization of the contemporary American English accent (i.e. television speech). The added structure missing from the vague rules of English aids the process of instruction. Much the same can be said for English instruction in primary and secondary school in America.
By contrast, after 15 years of hearing Cantonese on a regular basis I still can't make heads or tails of it. I learned some Korean phrases while on the plane; I still have trouble saying Happy New Year in Cantonese.
It's really difficult for people who have a good ear for tones (whether or not they're musically inclined) to understand what it's like for the rest of us. Many people don't even realize they have a good ear for it, probably because they nonetheless had to work hard at it. But the objective research suggests that if you're a native English speaker who picked up a tonal language, you're not normal, no matter how hard you had to work at it.
One thing I have learned in my cross-cultural experience is that Americans, British, and to some extent Australians heavily abuse sarcasm and cultural references.[1] It's only relatively recently that I've realized how sarcastic I can be (which is less sarcastic than many Americans), and how much confusion and miscommunication it has caused with foreign borne co-workers, friends, and family. And maybe part of the reason Americans rely on sarcasm and cultural references so much is because it's difficult to reliably encode signals in English speech. Emphasizing certain syllables, for instance, often only works regionally. The manner in which a New Yorker draws out a vowel to signal emotional content might actually be the normal mode of articulation in the Deep South. And so almost all Americans, even ones who don't abuse sarcasm, have become adept at recognizing secondary meaning based purely on the word content of speech, not the manner in which it is spoken.
[1] I suspect Germany and maybe even France might be similar in that regard. I doubt the phenomenon is unique to Anglophone countries; it's probably partly a function of modern Western culture. But the nature of English probably plays a part, too. Anyone care to confirm or contest?
> [1] I suspect Germany and maybe even France might be similar in that regard. I doubt the phenomenon is unique to Anglophone countries; it's probably partly a function of modern Western culture. But the nature of English probably plays a part, too. Anyone care to confirm or contest?
The British make more use of sarcasm or irony than the Germans on average, I think this is were the stereotype that Germans have no humour originates. Still sarcasm is used here quite a lot, too, the Germans just have a harder time witching contexts. I have read an interview with a British guy living in Germany once (unfortunately forgot who it was) and he noticed in Germany, humour almost always is presented by some sort of a clown, so the audience can switch easier.
It can be difficult to tell how much of a cue (or "clown" as you mention) is required/necessary for the joke to be understood. For example, even American comedians often deliver the punch-line in an overt/exaggerated way.
I've noticed (possibly broader) Chinese and Dutch humour depends much more on slapstick and stereotypes. Of course I probably wouldn't even register the more subtle humor from those cultures.
I've often wondered if there are unique (semantic & syntactic) qualities of the English language that lend themselves to more to particular kinds of (deadpan or sarcastic) humour, such as semantic ambiguity (cf. double entendres), variations in phrasing & tone), etc.
Even the German language can be abused for a similar purpose, as the following quote from [2] illustrates:
> Kafka often made extensive use of a characteristic particular to the German language which permits long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences then deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop—this being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is due to the construction of subordinate clauses in German which require that the verb be positioned at the end of the sentence. Such constructions are difficult to duplicate in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same (or at least equivalent) effect found in the original text.
This is only partially true. A speech therapist could train you to hear and make those sounds. The training is usually called accent reduction.
first is to notice the difference of the pronunciation for foreign languages, I believe same as music singer, for word "Porshe", french will read "e" as "ei", English just mute, German says in the middle, but that's hard for me to memorize it in the middle, Chinese has same sound as "ei". Brain is not getting use to the iconic differences of the sound.
second is to correct pronounce the sound, pronunciation of "th" took me one week to practice, because Chinese does not have "th", only "s", that's why lots of Chinese says "sank you" instead of "thank you", that muscle to pronounce that is simply not trained since was born.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics)#Register_to...
In Chinese, a different tone actually is a valid word with its own meaning, so it's a bit harder for you to get your point across.
Half of Korean vocabulary is Chinese, with pronunciation based on ancient Chinese pronunciation, but Korean has no tones and their writing system has recently become more or less completely phonetic. Disambiguation is still not a huge problem for them.
Source: took two years of Mandarin and lived in Taiwan for a few months
- 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.
That said, as a native-English-speaking Chinese learner I don't find the tones of standard Mandarin to be particularly hard (Hokkien, on the other hand…). Standard Mandarin phonology is also pretty easy (some parts are tricky for native English speakers like contrasting aspiration but not voice (English is the opposite), but overall it's not terribly complex).
Actually, the mess that is English orthography is hardly more "manageable" than Chinese script. There are loads of phonetic elements in Chinese characters.
That's all well and good, but phoentic implies the other way around too. After hearing a word, you'll have to be able to write it. For instance, "kill", "sand", and the "shark" word in the phrase "shark" all have exactly the same tonal pronunciation, but with completely different ways of writing it.
And don't get me started on traditional vs. simplified.
Note that the last one, 鯊 is composed of two components 沙 and 魚.
So the top component is the phonetic hint and the bottom is semantic, as 魚 means "fish". Many characters for types of "fish" (I use "fish" loosely as things like whales 鯨魚 are considered fish) use the fish radical, as the characters are called when used as a component of a character.
鯉魚 carp the 里 is phonetic 鮑魚 abalone 包 is phonetic
Of course, this is just a small sampling and there are plenty of things that are inconsistent. I typically just use it as a mnemonic.
And to the point of tones, I leave 傻 [sha3], which means stupid.
Without any context, or meaning, you should be able to write a word just by hearing it. Similarly, without any context or meaning, by seeing a word, you should be able to pronounce it.
Now, of course it's a sliding scale.
But I think Chinese is on one end of the scale, where if you're just given the phenome shā without context or meaning, it's literally impossible to figure out how to write the word.
In English and all romance languages, you can try to spell it somewhat, and then give it to a native reader to see what it means. This helps a lot when you're reading subtitles for television programs or listening to the radio. If you're reading subtitles, you can sorta figure out what matches up to what. If you're listening to the radio, you can make a best guess on how to spell a word and ask somebody what it means.
"Yes!" "Yes?" "Yes..."
1. You are usually effective and comfortable in the language you were educated in.
2. If you want to do business with a person in another language, you usually both default to English because it is usually second language if it is not their first.
I mean look at your own situation. I assume that you are fairly well educated (on Hacker News, decent grammar, and asked a good question). Suppose you had to leave the US, where would you go?
Your top choices might be other English speaking countries (Ireland, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand).
Your next set of choices would be places you could do business in English (Berlin perhaps).
Globally, a lot more educated people know English than Chinese. Its not impossible but it is a far larger barrier to entry than, say, blocking youTube.
I'd consider Germany and France to be third-tier in that sense because they have large native-speaking populations and a greater expectation that people know their language.
Too late to edit this now but I meant to say Mandarin, not "Chinese."
Mea Culpa.
What I am saying is that China attracts talent who live in China and why don't communicate with others in Mandarin? Learn Mandarin isn't a binary choose for these talents who live in China -- they can still learn stuffs in English and do business with other people around world in English.
From my experience that learn English is not only about helping me to communicate with others, but also, help me to learn a different mindset and culture.
So why would I want to learn Mandarin, which I've been told is super hard to learn and is for most purposes, useless elsewhere in the world?
The concept of "Chinese" is fairly inaccurate anyways. I'd like to flatter myself that my mandarin is ok (I won't starve and I generally can make myself understood) but I can't understand most Cantonese. Cantonese is classified as a dialect of Mandarin, but it's really not mutually intelligible.
Centuries ago, the same thing happened with Chinese; and that is why a Chinese can visit Tokyo and find their way around the train station without knowing any Japanese. Maybe it can happen with Chinese again. Many Asian people learn a little Chinese; and more western people learn it now, too.
Outside censorship, the working culture of China is also quite different. It's quite common to do overtime in China. work-life balance is less respected. People accept it as the normal and are proud of it.
My friend worked for an accounting company. In busy season, she had to work till 5a.m. in the morning of the next day and present her report to her supervisor at 8 a.m.
she took her toothbrush, pajamas, sleep bag to the company because it doesn't make sense to go home at 5 a.m. and back at 8 a.m. as commute takes long time too.
There is another friend working for Alibaba. Once they wanted to release a messenger app to catch up wechat. The entire team was shipped to a different city during Chinese new year, they are disallowed from leaving until the product is shipped.
I also went to a talk by Xiaomi at standford, they were very proud of having official 6 day work week.
In terms of this particular example, Goldman would not attempt to do that because 95% of the affected employees would quit on the spot.
Although more extreme, is this really much different from Google, Facebook, Apple or other SV/NY firms offering "perks" designed to make your extended office existence more tolerable?
I've never heard of one of those shipping a whole team off, during the holidays, and telling them they can't leave until a stupid fucking app is done. Read that again. It was not a vital piece of infrastructure, or an important breakthrough for science. It was a stupid fucking chat app. For that, these people were held and denied the ability to celebrate a holiday.
Goog/Face/App/Soft are offering you completely voluntary perks. You are free to not eat dinner at Google and go home. In fact, you can just eat dinner at Google and then go home immediately. Or even grab takeout at the cafeteria on the way to your car! Lets just say we are not comparing the same things.
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.
Cultural, social, language, and food differences are all superficial reasons not to go to, or stay, in China. They can be dealt with an open, understanding mind. However, the salary or career benefits don't make up for it when your children and spouse are breathing that air.
I'm not sure why the Bloomberg article started from quoting a Chinese person about immigration and then shift into talking as if China is going to recruit non-Chinese. Maybe it was taken out of context, maybe it doesn't fit the narrative the author wants to convey.
My family came from Taiwan, and my father and my mother earned their Ph.Ds in the 90s. My father was one of the top scorers on the Taiwanese National Exams. Yet here in America, the only people who respect that are other Taiwanese (and other Chinese if both groups remembered this used to all be one culture). My grandparents are proud of my father; they were farmers. Growing up, there was always an anxiety about having to leave the US because the student visa is up. You can't work in the US with a student visa. Things only got better when US-based company owned by Taiwanese offered to hire him and pay for getting him a permanent residency. That gave him the negotiating leverage to get help with that in his postdoc position. Even so, he stayed as a post-doc for a long time (which, I get that right now, that's the way it is for a lot of academics, immigrants or otherwise), before becoming a professor for a short time. He was never on the tenure track.
People came here because they didn't want to be back in their birth country. I can tell you, if he had been offered a position in Taiwan with a research budget, that would have very tempting.
So when the Bloomberg author was quoting the Chinese guy about being able to recruit more people, having this background, I know the Chinese guy is likely talking about being able to recruit Chinese ex-pats who earned advanced degrees in American universities, and not feeling welcomed here.
By that measure, the senior developer on a 'special projects' team reporting directly to a CxO could be quite high status. Similarly, the US National Security Advisor only has a small staff reporting to them, but their influence on US policy is as great or greater than the Secretary of Defense and/or Secretary of State.
I think another part of it is a lack of understanding of what developers actually do - people perceive developers as manual laborers that just type stuff into a computer based on what a higher-up has designed/created. They attribute the actual creative/engineering output to the manager.
It's also a low-paying job in a materialistic society. There's a feedback loop of Low pay -> no respect -> low pay that's hard to break out of.
But that's almost everywhere.
As an example....I'm an ex-Silicon valley developer, but I am currently living in the Southeast USA and developers are scarcely understood or appreciated here, either.
I must always be measured when I introduce myself, only mentioning my managerial responsibilities when I can tell the person does not understand what I actually do.
The other reply seemed to mention the same thing - "management of other people" is a key determinant of social status in some places.....I wouldn't say everywhere.
Many people in the South (USA) still havent divorced themselves from the notion that the generic, ambiguous, and overused term "IT" or "IT guy" of the 90s - which ranged from "following a recipe" computer maintenance to very high-level sysadmin work - applies to everyone in that industry and your career can be reduced to the following:
1) Fixing a computer 2) Connecting a computer to an internet or printer.
A stark difference compared to my days in SV when the average person would know the distinction between a web/software developer, or a UX engineer or a frontend developer.
That's because control of other people is the primary status marker in much of the US.
[1] Grice's maxims, which I find helpful for gauging my contributions to conversations: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html
I'm hardly pro china, but the society has been pretty aggressive in courting SEs and paying them well (if they are good, of course, there is a huge low end that is quite different).
Now, there is a lot of pressure to move into management, from family and peers; this reduces the number of senior practicing SEs dramatically, and is a huge problem, but a different problem.
Programmers are literally 程序員, where 程序 means program, and 員 means worker. People also call them 程序猿, where 猿 has the exact same pronunciation as 員 but means monkey. So basically programmers are also called code monkeys in China.
"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.
Boston is the second biggest location in the U.S. for startups, but as a tech worker, it was a much worse place to be status-wise. Boston is teeming with doctors, corporate lawyers, management consultants, investment bankers, etc., who generally have much higher status (and typically earn much, much more money) than a developer there.
Hm, wonder why smart people with plenty of options wouldn't want to live under a totalitarian government like that.
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 Californian stronghold of technology.
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.
That and infrastructure here is absolutely frustrating. Everything in California was structured around car culture. While much of China is now the same way, there is still plenty of excellent public infrastructure as well. Some might argue it's worse than the US, and I can definitely see how the large crowds in subways, the constant construction, and the some of the cheaper buildings are ugly and poorly designed... but California's ultra-expensive, 20 year major projects consistently are less effective in sheer results than China's quick-and-dirty development.
And lastly, I think it needs to be said that China as a culture, nation, and civilization is ancient! Its deep roots and environment create such a fascinating mix of old and new. Here in California, we paved over our past forcefully, and what past there is left to observe is often depressing at the core; nothing to be proud of.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the countryside. California is beautiful, but China is so entirely different geographically that just being there feels so shockingly wonderful.
Don't get me wrong. I love California at the end of the day and would find it hard to ever leave, but I'm simply explaining my statement. :)
My friends in China all use at least 30Mbits connection, now there is a promotion for 100MB for the same price.
For the slow speed between US and China, Jap (and other asian countries), I think that's the nature issue for oversea Internet connection. You can use this website (http://ping.chinaz.com/, you may need google translator) to test how speed looks like as you connect to other country from China.
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.
As a native born American, I see a surprising amount of small business owners who are successful are not from America. Even in the small town (Nicholasville, KY population ~20,000) I'm from, most of the convenience stores and gas stations are owned by a single middle eastern family that is super friendly to everyone. I went to school with Charlie, one of their sons, who was the first to be born and raised in the US. I see so many Americans who were raised in relative ease and comfort simply being out hustled by immigrants and "foreigners" who have more drive.
You know what, that is great! The healthy mix of diversity is what makes America (already) great. If a family legally comes from Mexico and wants to hustle their way into success, I'm all for it. Immigration is not a bad thing.
Source: Friends of me who want to move to the USA. I'm talking people with rare qualifications with a company ready to take them at $200k base salary and the layers to do all the paperwork for the H1B. They just can't get a fu----- VISA.
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.
China happens to be neither communist or democratic
The "communist" part of the system I was born in actually worked somewhat. What didn't work was absence of democracy, which means there was one hierarchy of power. This was the cause of nepotism, corruption and pollution, just as it is in China.
The US needs to clean up its act, as well, as it is losing many of the most desirable Chinese immigration candidates to Canada now.
Which is why the immigration volume into the USA is more than 10 times greater than China?
> There are many Chinese who stay in US after finishing their studies there. China wants those educated people back.
Sure China wants those people back, but those people want to avoid the smog and are rather happy with the public education system for their (more than one) kids. China has a lot of problems to fix before it can stem the brain drain.
Do you mean their Chinese talent? Because for everyone else it's practically impossible to make long-term decisions about staying in China. Your work visa will always be tied to a company and a marriage visa doesn't entitle you to work. The mythical "green card" visa for all intents and purposes doesn't exist.
If you look at China in a realistic way, its pro/cons are very obvious:
Pro:
1. Chinese market is huge
Cons:
1. This market is very competitive. Local giants are not far from their US counterparts, and they learn(copy) quickly.
2. Pays are high comparing to other jobs in China, but not living up to US level(but on par with Europe and Japan).
3. Long hours and no play.
4. Air pollution.
5. Language barrier for Westerners. You cannot go too far if you don't understand Chinese.
6. Foreigners, even if they want to, have nearly zero chance to be a permanent resident. (Extremely anti-immigrant policy, but the reason is actually consistent. CCP think China is too crowded, so they don't need extra people, they don't even let its own citizens to have more than 2 kids! :P)
How hard is that to figure this out? However, this article is just making everything looks like it is about their cherished liberal ideology. No, if China has money to dig, people will go. But it is not for foreigners, and probably not worthy it.
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.
https://codingvc.com/the-effect-of-location-on-a-startups-li...
Though what that does not account for is the ratio of equity given for capital raised; my understanding is that on average per percent of equity that the amount of capital raised will be double that of anywhere else; means that really, amounts shown for the Bay Area should be double due to the value of that capital in a deal.
Perhaps it's different for West Coast Asians, but when I grew up in in the States, I went through a period of self-loathing due to my race. With no AA role models, it took a really long time for me to come to terms with who I am.
Add to that the constantly accepted jokes about Asians, and it really caused an inferiority complex growing up. Something that I don't see in native Asians/Chinese.
So when a Chinese company started to recruit me, I jumped at the chance.
Perhaps because I'm Chinese, already married, and I speak Mandarin, the only issue for me in that list is the pollution factor. Everything else isn't that big of a deal.
I also disagree with the Chinese tech industry is any more relation-oriented than the US tech industry. Just like how Asians can beat the "bamboo ceiling" by using soft skills and mingling with the executives, foreigners can as well in China.
I would also add that for hardware tech talent, there really is no better place than China. People lament the IP issue, but for a hardware startup, this openness is a blessing.
http://gizmodo.com/why-its-easier-to-innovate-in-china-than-...
https://www.facebook.com/andrew.ng.96/posts/1213277725394799
Also, I will state without proof that the Chinese government are more knowledgeable in stimulating technical innovations than your average Bloomberg columnist.
And to call him "the" top guy in ML is a bit of a stretch, though he's certainly one of many.
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).
Like government work in the USA, but much higher pay and prestige.
Many of those students will likely hang around. And Russia has a green card system. Not sure how it works, but it's available.
rbth.com/business/2016/12/12/how-russian-universities-are-profiting-from-foreign-students_655731
does China have it's own Github "clone"?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12626090
It gets a positive response in terms of usability, technical capabilities, etc.
These are more towards team collaboration. imo China doesn't have the ecosystem for open source. Too many people just take the code, rebrand and market it as their own product...
It's actually becoming an issue when using the search functionality.
That being said, US reporters write these stories all the time. This journalist doesn't quote any data on Chinese emigration and seems to go off gut... seeing as his bio doesn't mention he speaks Chinese and he only lived in Shanghai, I wouldn't trust his intuition about what Chinese outside of Shanghai think
Even if everything you say is 100% correct, posting this way sets a terrible example for lesser users, so you're pushing this site closer to the wasteland either way. And nobody bats 100.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168013 and marked it off-topic.
Same thing in America.
> So labour abusing is normal.
Same thing in America.
> Many tech workers are 'voluntarily' working 996 on a 955 pay slip.
Same thing in America.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168197 and marked it off-topic.
First, your purpose from first blush is to stifle the discussion, not enhance it.
Second, and more disturbingly, you make the implicit arguement that if you're not a minority living in the US you don't have anything to say on the matter, either because you can't possibly know what it's like, or because your (implicitly) white opinion is invalid when it comes to the case of minorities. This argument has been moving through academic and now progressive circles for the last few years, and while its initial purpose was noble - empower minority groups to tell/own their own histories as opposed to being told what/who they are by the existing power structure - I think it has been taken to an extreme that is as radical as it is intellectually hypocritical.
In making the argument - that unless you are a minority, you can't have any meaningful statements about being a minority in America - you're arguing against the idea of a universal human experience, against empathy, and against reason. If what you say is true, why should I bother reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's run of Black Panther[1], or Sylvia Plath, or any of MLK's letters? My ability to understand these figures would be curtailed to the point of meaninglessness by my whiteness, my middle-classnes, my sex. This is patently untrue. There is something uniquely human in us that is touched by these issues. I will never be targeted by police because of my skin tone, but I am still outraged by it. I will never live these problems but I can still see them, and can still work to fix them. Your argument denies that, and I defy it.
[1] It's excellent by the way. Highly recommended.
The US immigration system is far from ideal (especially from the perspective of prospective and not categorically barred immigrants.) It's also much, much better for actual admitted immigrant and non-immigrant foreigners than systems in most of the rest of the world.
EDIT: Looks like I'm wrong, I did the wrong conversion while on glassdoor. Salary in china are way lower than SV
My point is that people move where the money is, when the salary are gonna be higher, people are gonna move there