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25 Years Old and an Offshore IT Manager
dcblogs writes "The Chinese outsourcing market, at $1.7 billion last year, is growing at 38% a year, according to research by the Everest Group. This is creating opportunities for Westerners who want to go to China, learn the language, and help these Chinese offshore companies reach overseas markets. There are job opportunities for people with management experience or who are young and willing to gamble. Here's the story of one 25-year-old who started learning Mandarin on his plane ride over to China, three years ago, and is now an international development manager for an IT offshoring firm."
Learning the Chinese language isn't enough.
You have to learn the culture too.
The good news is that being white is a free status booster.
The bad news is that being dark skinned means the exact opposite.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
My wife and I were unemployed about a year and a half ago and we decided to take several very decent classes on 21st century job hunting presented by our state job service. The thing is, it was mandatory networking/extroversion to introduce yourself in some detail each time. I'd say probably 1 in 20 was just back from teaching English on the Mainland (2), Taiwan (1) or Thailand (1). Who'da thunk, because how often are you free to survey a room full of the unemployed?
Note, however, that they were _back_ from those jobs looking for something else so that should hint that Asia wasn't paradise.
I'm located in South America (AR) and i charge $150 (in our local currency, which is pesos) an hour for my work.
For other companies living in the same country as me that's an outrageous amount of money, but for an offshore company with a currency worth 3 times more (or 5 times, if it pays in euros) is very cheap.
That the currency is favorable for us, third-world countries, is not our fault, nor it demonstrates a lack of "expertise" nor "quality" in our fields.
Oh, and one more thing. I've been programming for 9 long years but i have never earned a degree but when i work with engineers or computer scientists from my country or others that are less experienced they usually don't know what they are doing very well. They usually have a lot of problems understanding that theory is VERY different from practice.
But i have to tell you though, even i agree that it's a very dumb thing to do to put a 25 year old as an IT Manager.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
My experience has been that these guys perform unbelievably poorly, mostly because of their ignorance of the region and lack of language skills. East Asia is NOT the US, or even Europe. There are cultural differences, and then there are differences. The most markedly schism is between the Chinese and Japanese.
Trying to manage the reigon as if it was the same as anyplace else is a recipe for disaster, but these young managers never figure that out until its too late.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I am an American who currently lives in China and can assure you, while there are success stories, and certainly fortunes are being made here, the idea that Americans can pop on over to China and be masters of the universe is a red herring at best.
Some reasons that it is not all you might think it is:
1) The salaries are often lower. Much lower. It used to be that multinationals paid Western wages for work in China, but that is not always true today. You'll be told that the standard of living is lower, so that makes up for it, but even though you can live like a king in many areas for $10,000 / year, you aren't going to be saving much for retirement at that level.
2) The salaries are not necessarily going up for Westerners. A lot of foreigners are drawn by the oft-repeated story of the boom economy in China. As a result, there is downward pressure on salaries for Westerners in many sectors with companies offering less to people who they perceive as having a desire to live in China. When I was talking to a friend who has been here for some time about working in China, he said if you express a desire to work in China, they'll offer you Chinese wages.
3) There is a very real glass ceiling.
- Few foreigners really learn the language. It takes about 3-4 times as long to learn Chinese as another European language, and that's if you're really trying. Most foreigners come to China thinking they'll learn the language by osmosis and ultimately return home several years later knowing how to give directions to a cab driver and not much else.
- Moreover, the cultures are vastly different, and it's difficult to establish the kinds of quality relationships that you need to progress in business. And certain concepts such as honesty and integrity are very different here, resulting in many foreigners under the impression that they are establishing sound business relationships and friendships getting screwed in the end.
- There is still a very nationalistic "us versus them" kind of attitude among Chinese nationals, and this bias makes it difficult for a foreigner to be treated as an equal, even if they speak Chinese, in terms of promotion and opportunities for advancement.
While there are certainly opportunities here in China, I would recommend anyone thinking of making a career move to China doing extra due diligence before they dive in.
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
a company that exists in America whose success rests mainly on the largess of the infrastructure that *MY* tax dollars maintain; then yeah, I do feel Americans are entitled to jobs from that company. Many large corporations in the US rely on major tax breaks from the gov. This means that my taxes make up the difference. In short while you may think I am not entitled to *jobs* , I don't think someone in India is entitled to *my tax dollars*, because to some extent this is what happens when a company outsources. Think about that next time you trot out the argument that "Americans are entitled". Given that our taxes help drive and maintain many of the economic giants in our country can you blame us if we would like to keep the jobs that those companies generate?