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Why China Can't Lure Tech Talent (bloomberg.com)
China may have been hoping to attract tech talent to its nation, but it is unlikely that people in the tech industry will move there. A columnist at Bloomberg explains why: The biggest problem is government control of the internet. For a software developer, the inconvenience goes well beyond not being able to access YouTube during coffee breaks. It means that key software libraries and tools are often inaccessible. In 2013, China blocked Github, a globally important open-source depository and collaboration tool, thereby forcing developers to seek workarounds. Using a virtual private network to "tunnel" through the blockades is one popular option. But VPNs slow uploads, downloads and collaboration. And it isn't just developers who suffer. Among the restricted sites in China is Google Scholar, a tool that indexes online peer-reviewed studies, conference proceedings, books and other research material into an easily accessible format. It's become a crucial database for academics around the world, and Chinese researchers -- even those with VPNs -- struggle to use it. The situation grew so dire this summer that several state-run news outlets published complaints from Chinese scientists, with one practically begging the nationalist Global Times newspaper: "We hope the government can relax supervision for academic purposes." The cumulative impact of these restrictions is significant. Scientists unable to keep up with what researchers in other countries are publishing are destined to be left behind, which is one reason China is having difficulty luring foreign scholars to its universities. Programmers who can't take advantage of the sites and tools that make development a global effort are destined to write software customized solely for the Chinese market. The author has raised several other reasons to make his case.
I would never have thought that people with good educations and job prospects wouldn't want to move to a country with totalitarian control of your daily life. Next you're going to tell me North Korea has similar problems.
I went to Beijing and it was pollution hell. Couldn't see further than 50 feet in front of you somedays.
The real reason is that no one wants to live in China. They also have been offering huge amounts of money to athletes. Any athlete with any other option won't go. The pollution alone will lower your lifespan.
I am not sure they are really trying too hard in the first place. I speak Mandarin (have been studying for many years), have a good resume and appropriate technical background, and spent substantial time in China to have a general idea of how things are - yet I have never been able to attract interest of any Chinese company. Given what I know about their local tech workforce, that's not at all surprising. They have excellent pool of well qualified candidates.
That's not to say that article does not bring good points - internet use in China is encumbered and painful. But that's has little to do with "attracting tech talent".
Tone-based languages are a terrible idea; now, add to that a logographic writing system, and you've got a real cluster fuck!
The Information Age has no time for such nonsense.
So pay people more than the competition. People will do just about anything for money.
Communism is the reason why few want to move there.
I lived in China for a year. I loved it. I love the culture, I love the country side. Even the pollution can be handled with a decent apartment with good window seals and air scrubbers. They people are fine (let's face it, all countries have great people and terrible people). But, the reason I, as a software engineer, won't go back: no green cards and you can't own property or start a business. Maybe when your 25 years old, the lack of unfettered internet is the worst thing you can think of. But, as you get older, you become more risk adverse. Why would I invest a life in a country where I cannot be granted permanent residence, even if I marry a citizen? I wouldn't; that's foolish.
the country sucks?
I mean, this is China. They just copy the talent they already have. :)
*ducks and runs*
Guys, I think it's time for some brownie theory.
As long as stackoverflow isn't blocked I can still get everyone else to write my code, so I'm good!
From what I heard it is impossible to be treated like one of them if you don't look Chinese, even if you speak perfect Mandarin, socialize and marry a local, etc...
Permanent visas, let alone citizenship, are extremely difficult to get and some places don't accept foreigners.
I suppose this gets on your nerves after some time.
I suspect the people being recruited are concerned that the goal is to transfer the expertise they have to Chinese engineers/scientists. Once that transfer is done the foreigner will no longer have any value.
and that you can't get a permanent visa, and the air quality, and the manners, but mostly the language. If the way Chinese speak and write English is any indication, Mandarin isn't an expressive language.
1. People don't like to move.
2. People especially don't like to move someplace far away.
3. People especially especially don't like to move someplace far away in another country.
4. People especially especially especially don't like to move someplace far away in another country where they don't speak the language and they have a completely different cuisine and culture.
5. People especially especially especially especially don't like to move someplace far away in another country where they don't speak the language and they have a completely different cuisine and culture.and where you have to live in a tiny apartment in an overcrowded city with really bad air pollution.
To me, that seems like that should be enough reasons. But okay, sure:
6. People especially especially especially especially especially don't like to move someplace far away in another country where they don't speak the language and they have a completely different cuisine and culture.and where you have to live in a tiny apartment in an overcrowded city with really bad air pollution AND the government won't let you go to all the internet sites you might want to.
No sane person would subject him- or herself to living under an authoritarian regime with little freedom of speech, which is horribly overcrowded, and where breathing the air can literally kill you, where the food is generally horrendous, where grown adults spit all over the place, and where children have slits cut into the crotches of their pants so they can piss and shit in the street. (And no, I am not kidding about that last one. Look it up.)
I spent six weeks backpacking China in 2006 and it was an absolute nightmare. I imagine it's worse now that the pollution is truly out of control.
Hong Kong is good. Taiwan is good. Mainland China is a nightmare. (Shanghai is not the worst place on earth either. But that's only because the rest of China *is* the worst place on earth.)
You assume American talent goes to China, but that is confused.
They can hire in the US to work in the US. Why move their office to China, why not just export the end profit?
They can hire non US talent to work in (best place for that person). Why move foreign talent?
They can hire non US talent to China for cases where China is a better option.
Would you work in Hong Kong for DJI?? I bet you would. Some Chinese companies are world class, whatever you situation you move to work for the leader in a field.
It's just more complicated that this confusion between work location and main employers country.
Obama's legacy: EU was the largest trading block in the world, far bigger than NAFTA just after Bush. After Obama, USA is the largest trading block in the world, even without the rest of NAFTA. A competent leader returns a successful trading block.
Meanwhile back in Trumpalumpa land, he's still planning "commander in chief perfume".
Wonder if Omnity and Jupyter is blocked?
https://www.omnity.io/
http://jupyter.org/
If the government can't survive while still allowing the society to be free, I see no reason whatsoever in providing my services to said government, especially if in doing so I have to live in the very society that is NOT free.
The very first thing I ask myself when I apply to a new IT position is "can I breathe the air and drink the water in that city?"
In China, that answer is no. Also you'll get arrested for doing basically anything. That's a bit of a downside as well.
I worked for a US company, as a software developper, that decided to block all the "shareware" "freeware" open source" and al websites, so we had no access to github, stack overflow, forums or anything interesting for developpers. We had to fight HR (it seems HR head had the decision to unblock site, try to explain what open source is...) to access them. It was a true nightmare, they were control freak of the web. The number of times you did a search, click on the answer you were looking for and bam! blocked! We had bypass using different DNS or 3G on our phone, etc.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Daily life in China is freer than in the USA only because the government in China lacks the resources to apply its oppression more pervasively; freedom is the ability of the common man to evade or resist imposition.
Quote: "The biggest problem is government control of the internet."
WRONG! (properly capitalized)
The biggest problem is that China is a country with a dictatorship and that shit in Human Rights.
(Real) example: I'm gay. If I go there to work I'm not allowed to live (if I go to the street and kiss my couple, or even f**k at home, both get killed and the Government send the bullets bill to our families).
China is not at the forefront of anything. They're in the middle of the 21st century version of the Industrial Revolution with all the social instability that creates. So if you like reinventing the wheel (which is essentially what they are doing) you can go to China.
There are, as described above, many reasons...but I think the "main" reason for any particular person will depend upon the person.
I was once contacted by Huawei about becoming an executive at their organization, in Beijing. Now..this is curious to me since I neither speak Mandarin nor Cantonese. I find it hard to imagine that I would make a very effective VP in a technical role, without even a basic conversational grasp of their language. (And don't even think about reading...)
However, interestingly enough, I also have a background in doing cyber security for the military in which role I got access to quite a lot of things. So...yeah. NO WAY was I going to entertain the job offer, for even a millisecond.
But you know what? Even without that creepiness, I wouldn't have considered it because of the air pollution. I can't imagine exercising outdoors in a place where the air is so filthy you can taste it. Hell no.
For some people, a reason not to go would be the culture shock...but for me, that's actually a plus. Or maybe the food? Nope...I love exploring new cuisines, and have always been fantastically happy getting authentic local food in any country I've visited. The crowding? Uh uh...I'm a hardcore urbanite. But for some others, these would be downsides instead of upsides...it all depends on the person.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What was that Truth?
Politicians are Ruthless?
Pizza is made from babies?
China has Government Mandated Fake News.
China will own the 21st century, despite whatever futile attempts the U.S. tries. The writing's been on the wall for a decade at least, and the country becomes more and more attractive each year that goes by. You can't stop change with BS articles, period.
Thankfully I remembered to download the entire Internet to a blank CD before I left for Chin++++NO CARRIER
Fuck China.
CAPTCHA: tyranny
You know - vpn to your dev servers and work? You can even do windows pc's in the cloud if you want. Compile your shit and bring it local if you need that for some reason. Bet you could even set up your own vcs service, vpn in and sync from that to your local overnight or something.
Seriously, 'poor access to the internet' THAT's the reason why China can't attract foreign scholars....perhaps being a communist dictatorship might have just a LITTLE more to do with this than the difficulty using the internet. The latter is simply a symptom. I might go visit China some day but you couldn't pay me enough to live there.
This is what we get when you 'normalize' trade with a country like China, low level excuses for why its not a good place to live. We have to stop pretending that everything is 'A ok'. The Chinese government controls far more than the Internet, we need to call them out for what they are, if & when they give their people real freedom then we can get back to things like the internet to worry about.
As the subject suggests both the US and China benefit from Chinese students in Ph. D. programs in US universities. US Ph. D. programs in the hard sciences (chemistry, physics, etc.) and the various engineering disciplines are stocked with Chinese nationals on student visas. These graduates go back to China and either work for government agencies or as university faculty. Those who graduate from elite US universities end up at elite China universities. Their non-resident tuition in US public schools will likely be paid by China. All this benefits the US universities because of the free labor provided to the professoriate at the US schools in programs hard pressed to get highly qualified grad students. And of course these grads take with them all that knowledge and experience needed to extend it in China even though they may be limited in keeping up with progress in other countries. Then again, the Internet isn't the only source of information which includes, among other things, technical journals and international conferences.
It would be interesting to know how repatriated graduates of US and European universities feel about the restrictions imposed in China on their access to the kinds of information they had easy access to in the west and how it affects their ability in creating new results.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
kind of stupid question is that? Totalitarian, violently oppressive, culturally backwards, and an environmental shithole. What person with "tech talent" would be attracted to that?
Want Tech talent? Pay in US dollars at 4X the rate of the highest paid tech job in the USA. Plus give us special status equal to your government officials that make us exempt from your laws like they are.
Then you will get a lot of talent coming there, that would be enough for us to put up with the rampant bullshit we see coming from your companies in design failures and trying to work people to death.
$2.2million per year paid in US dollars with a 20% increase yearly and a $20million balloon payout after 10 years. Plus all the Gong Bao Chicken I can eat.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've got rooms of PhD developers in Beijing, all of whom make almost Silicon Valley salaries, are smart enough to understand tunneling and VPN's like most everyone except maybe hairstylists and bicycle mechanics.
PMI China isn't a chapter of the Project Management Institute... it is a use of the PMI license and part of the communist party... and is patrolled during meetings by the PLA. That is a significant discourager of talent.
In God we trust, all others require data.
I lived in China for 2 years and there is a lot to both like and hate.
The good:
- The people are generally nice, easy to get on with.
- It is generally safe, I was never worried about where I went or when, within reason.
- The food is good, once you learn the gotchas.
- The electronics markets are the best in the world.
The bad:
- The Internet is truly horrible. I spent half my spare time curating VPNs to try and stay online. It is genuinely holding back China's tech sector. I was so glad when I returned home where the Internet just worked.
- Bureaucracy is a pain, everything is way more complicated than it needs to be. It took me a full day to change the ownership of my car when I sold it and I mean a full day, not just a few hours. Back home this take less than 5 minutes.
- Driving on China's roads is very stressful because of the lack of rule enforcement. I will never complain about drivers back home again.
- Pollution can make you feel unwell, much like having a cold. This was only a problem in the big cities, in small cities it is low enough to not affect you directly.
It has been a couple of years now since I lived there and from what I hear the Internet and pollution have both got worst since then.
Furthermore I think one of the largest shortcomings in the USA/Europe's handling of China is the lack of 'enforcing the most conservative laws symmetrically.' The most direct example of this being that Chinese nations, neither directly nor indirectly should be allowed to own more than 49 percent of a company in foreign nations trading with China, unless China provides the same unrestricted ownership of corporations/companies inside of China itself.
Most of the problems with the current globalization climate is high level operators either not looking at the full ramifications of different legal frameworks, or not caring, because they're being bribed/making enough that it doesn't matter to them short-term. The problem being that China has been viewing the long game for decades and the longer people let them play by some of their key rules, the weaker their greedy 'competitors' get on the international stage, with the endgame being British/European style colonialism under a 'final' Chinese colonization. Not unakin to what Russia did to Crimea decades ago and reaped the benefits of recently.
There have been several recent cases of China imprisoning Canadians for over a year, falsely accusing them of spying. It's hard to trust that the Chinese government/system won't turn against you.
People like to breathe.
Sure i'd pack my bags for the communist Red China first chance I get.
Programmers who can't take advantage of the sites and tools that make development a global effort are destined to write software customized solely for the Chinese market.
Hmmmmmmmmm...
Plus I have that Asian fetish.
China has it own university students who then go on to create things and teach the next generation.
If they want they can learn in the West and bring back ideas and concepts as they are been created in Western universities and think tanks, research labs.
The Communist Party and mil does not need some foreigner wondering around for years asking questions, looking at things, learning about local issues.
Not many people in the West have anything that China needs. If China sees a product or service it wants it has a few options:
Buy the lab in the West and staff it with trusted staff in the West to extract the needed information.
Surround the West's best academics with students who will bring the emerging skills back to China in real time.
Invite the company into China and get a good understanding of the product, prototype and then produce it locally. Export the product to the world under a local brand.
All that can be done in China with people the Communist party can trust.
China is also aware of the skill sets of the CIA and MI6, well funded western NGO's backing protesters and dissidents.
Why even risk a CIA or MI6, NGO front just to bring in a Western student or engineer with a great cover story who could then "travel" all over China and be a constant risk to China.
No Western academic or staff has any skill that is worth that long term risk to China. Buy or get their tech in the West and if they really have to enter China then on very short term contracts, tours, visits.
China was surrounded by the NSA and GCHQ (Demos-4, Little Sai Wan, Chum Hom Kok). Letting in Western teams will just allow ever more CIA and MI6 in to wonder around China making contacts, spying and collecting information. The spread of Western propaganda, support and funding for protesters, more spying is the only result. Any student or academic in the West can have their skills bought or accessed in the West and China can then access the same advancements as needed. No risk, no issues, no foreigners wondering around spying and making contacts for years.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Maybe if Github wasn't a protecting socialists at fault, then it wouldn't be blocked in based China.
Yay, bloomberg.com is censored. No news, no problems, everything fine within the wall
I'm using a 50Mbit/s connection writing this in China. Slashdot worked on the third reload and I'm usually struggling to watch video online. Websites inside China work well, everything outside is painstakingly slow. China has their own self-contained internet, most of my usual websites need vpn.
I salute you sir, for your patriotism. They are looking for egoistic and selfish Americans to sell the trade secrets and eventually to own America without firing a single shot.
"The biggest problem is government control of the internet."
Another problem is that Mainland China is a yawning shit-hole on the ass of the planet.
That's too bad. China as a country has many promising aspects. They are a hard-working people and value education highly. It's too bad that an oppressive government locks down the internet so that people can't get much work done. Oh well.
China is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism regime
Thinking out-of-the-box is prohibited.
Casteism
get the fuck out of here and discover what truly corrupt government is. Thanks to assholes like you, Cunton, and Obama, we're not far behind.