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> sure they can work the young guys harder,

If you are NOT a good manager, that is all that you care about.

Did you fail to plan the rest release? Developers will do extra hours.

Did you miss understood the requirements? Developers will fix it with extra hours.

Did you decide to use the wrong technology for the project? Developers will work extra hours.

A company that hires only people that does what is told and stays longer hours have incompetent management.

> I wonder if it’s a good for efficiency.

Companies that value diversity (age, gender, nationality, etc.) are the ones looking for that high-quality output that makes products work in the long term.

Sweden is as successful as China when it comes to software, even that there are orders of magnitude of the difference of population. The main reason is the respect for family and employees. Even that Sweden also is far from perfect.

Maybe software for international markets. But there's a lot of software produced in China for the huge domestic market. I doubt Sweden has the same software output as China.

Per capita, I'm pretty sure Sweden has a higher output.

Per capita they are also the largest arms dealers in the world. Per capita doesn't say much about a country overall.

It's the only argument that makes sense for disparate population sizes.

The US and UK (and less so Germany, France, Israel and Japan) produce a sizable majority of software products, especially at an enterprise level. At a per capita level, that gap is even larger with China; and countries like Sweden and Norway become top players.

> It's the only argument that makes sense for disparate population sizes.

Or you accept that a comparison simply can't be made and don't make the argument in the first place.

Incorrect.

It’s a meaningless comparison, the median Swedish/Norwegian citizen is far more educated, wealthy, and capable of producing software than the median Chinese citizen.

China’s per capita software production is dragged down by its massive rural population, many of whom have never even owned a computer other than a smartphone. If you don’t account for that, then obviously wealthier/more urbanized countries will have higher per capita production.

China is 55% urban. Its had a massive urban influx, and in fact the largest growth area in population is urban.

However 1 in 5 are 'migrant workers' with no fixed address. I'd guess they are the least educated demographic.

There are dozens of us, dozens!

Judging by any Stockholm coffee shop as well we’re all programmers, so the math checks out.

Sounds like the TSB way to manage things :-P

>A company that hires only people that does what is told and stays longer hours have incompetent management.

Only when quality of end product / developer hapiness is concerned.

Which, lip service aside, are not metrics that managers are usually measured buy.

Do they bring in profit?

>Companies that value diversity (age, gender, nationality, etc.) are the ones looking for that high-quality output that makes products work in the long term.

What’s the evidence behind this assertion?

Googling to me suggests its not as well studied as it could be; there are papers out there (eg: https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/63581/Thesisxx... and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221256711...) but I'm not seeing anything with a lot of solid data out there (though this probably is a hard subject to quantify in such terms).

Intuitively though this position makes sense to me that, as long as the various issues surrounding natural human tribalism are managed, diversity is generally helpful -- as each "tribe" may offer a unique perspective towards problems and solutions.

Having said that, a lot of articles on "ageism in tech" more or less seem to focus on cultures of work that promote "long hours" for long hours sake, over something more balanced (and, in the end, productive and efficient). There's plenty of evidence out there that shows how wrong-headed of an approach "long hours" cultures are, this is not hard information to look up.

> may offer a unique perspective towards problems and solutions

This is my impression on why diversity generally works well. Unique perspectives and experiences often generate more original and creative approaches to some problem which in turn is much more valuable. Additionally, and especially for FAANGs, having the organizational awareness of a diverse set of perspectives allows you to create solutions that are broad and can adequately meet the inherent diversity in the world.

People often want to look at software engineering as this super technical line of work, but in practice it really isn't. How, What, and Why to engineer something varies significantly. Everyone will probably have a different approach to solving a problem. More diversity means a greater net to catch which one might be the most optimal.

Plus, you might want to create services or apps that specifically target a need. I would honestly question how well an app for women might be if is made by all men. I would question how well a app for rural living might be if it was made by people who only lived in a city. I would question how well an app designed for use in America might be for use in Africa. There are cultural differences and use differences, needs and wants, infrastructure, etc.

It would be assumed a highly diverse team would be much more suited to trying to solve those problems. And I would also believe that a highly diverse team would be the result of authentic merit based system anyways.

There is no evidence for this (I am not saying whether or not this could be empirically verified, I have no clue), but it is politically incorrect, especially on this website, to claim anything otherwise

I think this is actually stated in the reverse, based on my experience. Companies that value high-quality output generally tend to become more diverse as they grow. There are obvious places this falls on its face. I used to manage plenty diverse global team of engineers (China, India, Brazil, Mexico, US, and a few in the UK) but that doesn't mean diversity was a cornerstone of our culture. Our CIO just wanted to cut expenses and do as much as possible in low cost locations. Software quality was predictably mediocre, not because there weren't some good engineers but because the short view was valued far more than the long view, and every dev cycle was a series of compromises followed by releases that were series of P0 emergencies.

> I used to manage plenty diverse global team of engineers

To have Chinese engineers in China, Brazilian in Brazil and Mexicans in Mexico is NOT diversity. That is the contrary of diversity. That is to have homogeneous teams.

I have worked for companies in Stockholm that have people from India, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Spain, Ukraine, Poland, ... working together in the same office. That is diversity. All of them were had the same range of salaries and expectations. Of course, it was not fairytale perfect. But it was quite good.

Externalizing costs to a low-cost country has nothing to do with diversity, as I understand it.

So my global, remote team isn't diverse... because they're remote? The shared office doesn't matter IMO.

I believe it boils down to how often they all interact with each other. If they're all part of one team, and are regularly interacting, that's one thing, but if they're all kind of self-contained units that don't interact with each other normally, that's not that diverse.

> To have Chinese engineers in China, Brazilian in Brazil and Mexicans in Mexico is NOT diversity. That is the contrary of diversity. That is to have homogeneous teams.

I'm curious what definition of Diversity you're using that a team of people from all over the world doesn't qualify.

They're saying that if you have one team that's all Mexican and another team that's all Chinese, neither of these teams are diverse. Your company might have diversity if you look at the employees as a whole, but segregation is not part of what diversity is supposed to mean.

Ethnicity is not the only measure of diversity. To boil diversity down to one metric like that is missing the point.

You're right, but I think it's still important to consider. If I had a team of engineers that were from diverse cultures, but all happened to be male, I would feel that lack of (gender) diversity would still be a fair criticism. It's not boiling it down to one metric, it's pointing out that there's an important metric that might have been missed.

I didn't boil down diversity to one metric. I was responding to this:

> I'm curious what definition of Diversity you're using that a team of people from all over the world doesn't qualify.

What you wrote would work better as a response to that than to what I wrote.

Yea i echo this - genuinely different backgrounds, influences on business processes and styles as it pertains to the company is discountes as not diverse because of where they are pgysically located.

Like an office in sf with all genders and colors represented is diverse...even tho they are all impacted by being im sf and sf culture

I should have been clear. People across these teams were working together on projects, so in that context it meets your bar (as far as I'm concerned). That said, when I started at Google there were 7 countries represented in my initial team of 15 people, which is an entirely different situation.

here is a nice piece of article about that: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-mak...

Many management issues you mention are not cut and dry. The fact is early stages of a product development tends to be experimentation and fast iteration. Experienced, heavy hitters don’t work well in this situation, they are great when the product has matured and you need stability and need to fix the last 10% of the issues. Hiring new grads who can code certainly helps in man many situations, but not all.

It's exactly about the company i currently work. They're just adding more and more developers.

I have received results from BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute), which is the biggest genomics company in the world by now which does a lot of genome sequencing and assembly on demand.

They employ a massive amount of undergrad and postgrad students to do their work with a high turnover, complete with living areas right next to the building, since that's cheaper than having people with experience.

>BGI in Shenzhen has a staff of nearly 2700: scientists, lab workers and clerks. The average age is 27, and the atmosphere is university/YWCA/science club. Two-thirds of the employees live in sex-segregated dormitories near the BGI building [...]

>Some geneticists have raised an eyebrow at BGI: noting this army of young and often not formally qualified workers

Source: https://www.smh.com.au/technology/chinese-genome-mappers-bgi...

Somewhat mirrored in the Glassdoor reviews: https://www.glassdoor.com.au/Reviews/BGI-Shenzhen-Reviews-E5...

This is noticeable from the results I've received, as in the quality being all over the shop. Sometimes the results are documented nicely, sometimes there's no documentation. Sometimes a different genome assembler was used, but it's not in the documentation. Sometimes it's really good, sometimes it's complete crap. We've stopped doing business with them as it's simply not reliable.

Makes me glad I ordered prenatal genetic test for my daughter from Roche (Harmony) and not BGI (Nifty).

> >BGI in Shenzhen has a staff of nearly 2700: scientists, lab workers and clerks. The average age is 27, and the atmosphere is university/YWCA/science club. Two-thirds of the employees live in sex-segregated dormitories near the BGI building [...]

Sounds like a nightmare.

I believe it’s simply easier to manipulate younger devs into taking lower salaries, in general. So the tech companies (and apparently in China as well), reinforce this ageism.

> I believe it’s simply easier to manipulate younger devs into taking lower salaries

I agree with this, but just wanted to add how interesting it is that it occurs in a country ostensibly run by a system which is ostensibly about the power of labour.

Isn't this rampant on US as well though?

E.G. shallow perks as ping-pong table, snacks, videogame, beers in the office but totally disfunctional management and work-life balance.

Using the latest shiny tech just because it makes it easier to target these groups and replace the burned out ones.

I see this happening a lot on finance and consulting jobs outside of tech too:

- Offer a reasonable salary for interns/trainees (not reasonable relative to the responsibilities though)

- Promise a huge corporate salary with benefits for the ones that are able to remain more than x years

- Burn all of them out, working overtime, abusing from young inexperienced people

- Promote a couple from dozens of people to serve as an example of successful cases

- Fire or continue abusing the rest

- Rinse and repeat

In the end you acquired a couple of indoctrinated corporate zombies as well as years of cheap hours from the other ones.

Just take a look at every year's trainee program and the mind washing process from banks and corporate consultancies. Do the candidates really believe that the company needs so many trainees each year? The turnover is a feature, not a bug...

Edit: Just noticed my point is not related to your argument, and I actually agree with you.

Replying to ataturk, who make a comment that is accurate (it doesn't deserve to be flagged, and I've 'vouched' for it), yet missed something:

> Communism is not about the "power of labor." Communism is about taking the individual and beating him into the mud until they are a bloody pulp, unable and unwilling to ever resist again.

Yes, that's why I used the word 'ostensibly'. As in they're not even paying lip service to the supposed goal.

Their comment was not accurate, and that's why it was flagged and downvoted. In many areas, you could say the exact same thing about capitalism.

That's a ridiculous comparison, and probably a better example of a comment worth flagging. Capitalism has many faults, but hasn't directly led to the deaths of 100M people.

I would beg to differ on that. Capitalism has brought us many, many harmful things. Oil companies using might to muscle into developing countries, polluting them, and not doing anything to clean up, for one.

If you're going to blame the deaths of 100 million people on Communism, you have to attribute to Capitalism the same deaths caused by companies flouting the law, releasing dangerous products, and market based providing of services. Communism isn't to blame when someone dies because they can't afford healthcare.

Please don't vouch for ideological rant comments; they're off topic here and break the site guidelines every which way. And please don't use HN for ideological battle in general.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I've been on HN for 10 years and am familiar with the guidelines. I don't think "communism directly killed a bunch of people" is much of an ideology as a fact (some sources argue it was 64 rather than 100M people). But I won't reply to s73v3r_ since you've asked me not to.

In that case you know that the value of this site is intellectual curiosity. There's no intellectual curiosity in people bludgeoning each other re 100M vs. 64M mass murders for the umpteenth time on an internet forum. Ditto for "communism vs. capitalism". This simply isn't a medium where anything new can be done with it.

Because it's all so predictable, it's all off topic here. If this is what you want to do, you'll need to do it elsewhere. That's a plural "you", not just you personally.

> There's no intellectual curiosity in people bludgeoning each other re 100M vs. 64M mass murders for the umpteenth time on an internet forum

People aren't arguing each other re 100M vs. 64M mass murders - that's the different sources just for communist uprisings. The same doesn't exist for capitalism because the introduction of capitalism does not coincide with mass murder.

> If this is what you want to do, you'll need to do it elsewhere. That's a plural "you", not just you personally.

Understood. Better yet, can we simply just ban advocates for communism, nazism, genocide, etc?

They're an insignifcant part of the problem compared to people who invoke these labels rhetorically and want to argue about them.

I think you would be very, very surprised at the quality, quantity and cost of engineering talent in China. This sort of ageism is awful but there's no doubt that China is still very much coming online with its engineering workforce. Moreso than in the West landing a good engineering job can be like winning the lottery. It's a prestigious title that can deliver more than just money... heck, in some regions engineers are more desirable than doctors when it comes to marriage. Combine this with significant state support and a huge internal and competitive market and it'll produce a ready, eager and willing workforce. This is all part of the master plan of the CPC to produce a viable middle class and a consumer-driven economy.

Do you refer to just software engineers being more desirable than doctors for marriage in some regions, or all kinds of engineers?

I thought that the bar to enter the engineering profession overall (except in some areas of software development) is still lower than medical. Wondering what the current situation in China is.

Also doctors presumably have professional lives lasting more than eight years.

In my experience, the real desirability in China lies in getting engineering jobs for the popular, growing tech companies (just like in the US). There are millions of engineering jobs in IT departments all over the country that are undervalued and paid minimally.

Well if that's the case Tech companies in China are going to have to learn to adapt, and start hiring older people considering the coming steep decline in the working age population of China. Millions of people are going to be vanishing out of the work force, because of the imbalance that was created by the one child policy. In 2018 alone China's workforce decline is expected by nearly 4 millions people, and this trend will only continue.

https://imgur.com/a/KC2LtLR

I know that without engineers over 30 Amazon Google Facebook etc. would have imploded by now

It's the eternal September with some members of the younger generation.

I don't know about the startup study you're thinking of, but I've seen studies that suggest the main difference between under 30 and over 30 in the workplace is that the over 30 crowd simply spend less effort. That is to say, they both output the same amount, but the older folks don't spin their wheels as much. I'm not sure how much of this is experience at a task, since I'd expect a more experienced worker to need less effort at a given task, and how much of this is physiological. My personal experience is that 20 somethings waste a lot of time on shit that doesn't matter in general, but, again, that could just be that I've wasted enough of my own time to have a better sense as to what's wasted energy.

Where it gets murky for me, is that by 30, the majority of brain matter is now grey, which is great if you're dealing with things that don't change quickly, cause grey matter is smoking fast, but not so good for fast moving areas like tech, because it's not as plastic. I could see a slight argument for ageism in tech, for this reason, but I've been doing it so long, that I'm finally starting to see history repeat itself, and it's really easy to see past the hype of most 'new' technologies, given that they're often just repackaging of some idea from a decade ago, and it's a big mistake not to have someone on the team who can recognize these trends.

Personally I really think it's a mistake in general to avoid diversity though. There are so many diverse tasks in software, that you really need people who are happy doing different things. Also getting different viewpoints and concerns can really round out a product, and can make finding bugs easier.

I guess if you have well-behaved and disciplined people below 30 things might work in favor of them, but the majority of developers I meet in daily life refuse to grow up any time before their 30s. Long days? Sure. Get the product shipped within spec and on time? If they don't get distracted.

But that might only be problem in the West.

Just imagine the sheer difference in size, there are millions every year finishing their higher education in china, chinese cities are bigger than scandinavian countries. When you have this many people labor is cheaper and you have more employees in the big companies. The way og managing people in scandinavia simply cannot happen there. It is like the only thing that can manage such big companies are policies and the chain of command. So for example i imagine if you told your managers to tell their sub-managers to hire senior staff all you would get is higher salaries because people get to where they are not based on merit but because how good they are at politics. So then the only rational choice would be to get naive young people who will believe what the boss say without questioning and cost less.

There are plenty of big companies outside of China that are both big and don't follow military practices for management. You scale big companies like you scale anything: you break down the problem into smaller subproblems and solve those.

You make it sound like only way to scale is by having a dictatorship and a strong chain of command. Historically the more power the peons had, as long as they didn't completely disregard the chain of command, the stronger the organization was.

Also, despite China having 1 billion people, you don't need 1 billion employees to turn a profit. Even the biggest Chinese companies, outside of state owned ones (which have different, more social, objectives) aren't much bigger than other big companies worldwide.

> Ethics aside I wonder if it’s a good for efficiency. I mean, sure they can work the young guys harder, but is the work they are getting good?

Especially with software, which is a creative business. Your first hour of a day is probably a lot more productive than your 12th. That last hour might even be counterproductive, when you create bugs and extra complication that needs to be sorted out later.

Personally, I definitely worked longer hours when I was younger, and was generally more available on weekends, evenings, etc. Now, I'm substantially more productive during the hours I do work. Overall, I'd say my output has increased and improved in quality, but ad hoc, after hours requests (nights, weekends when I'd have dropped what I'm doing to take care of them) take longer.

> Not that you’ll want only experience. A balanced work force is the best in my opinion.

Can confirm. I(college student) work in small remote product development lab with a guy in his 30s and one in his 70s. The rest of the team is 1,000 miles away in San Diego. It’s beeen one of the best learning experiences I’ve had. And they pay generously on to :)

>Ethics aside I wonder if it’s a good for efficiency. I mean, sure they can work the young guys harder, but is the work they are getting good?

That would matter if their success was tied to the quality of the work -- not just rushing it to market, promoting it, and so on.

Which is not usually the case, either in China or here...