China Mines Silicon Valley for Tech Talent

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-mines-silicon-valley-for-chinese-tech-talent-1530028118

by raleighm • 8 years ago

50 56 8 years ago

wsj.com

neonate• 8 years ago

http://archive.is/5jGgO

suhastech• 8 years ago

Bypass the paywall: http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/chi...

rhapsodic• 8 years ago

Open that link in a private tab to insure that it works.

beilabs2• 8 years ago

China has been doing this for a long time now.

To get a leg up in the solar industry China provided research grants to the very best in the field as a way to lure them over. Chinese investments in science and tech has skyrocketed in the last two decades.

* I was one of those people who moved to China for a few years to work in software over a decade ago.

ainiriand• 8 years ago

How, if ever, you felt the lack of information freedom? Is it so polluted as it looks?

donttrack• 8 years ago

How, if ever, you felt the lack of information freedom?

Never really thought about it except those times I forgot to pay my VPN

Is it so polluted as it looks?

Cleaner than my home town in Scandinavia. Was living in South part of China.

beilabs2• 8 years ago

Had a personal VPN back then so I never had any problem there.

Felt very polluted in Shanghai when I first moved there. Lived in Dalian which is one of the cleaner cities and had no issues. Moved to Beijing (before the olympics) and experienced no real issues either. I've lived in much more polluted cities since then.

jjcc• 8 years ago

Just back to Canada from China a week ago.Commercial VPN providers like StrongVPN, PureVPN are blocked now. But there's no problem using your own VPN or any private company VPN if that's an option.

Environment is improving in general. Now local governments would give up economic benefit in exchange for environment protection which is quite different mindset than a decade ago.

bigmanwalter• 8 years ago

Where would you advise someone to search for a software role in China? I figure Shanghai would be the central hub but I am curious if you had more specific advice!

fubwert• 8 years ago

I worry that measures by the US government aimed at stopping the sale of companies and IP undermine property rights. When the government says “they are stealing our technology,” it implies that the tech, companies, and IP are owned by the state rather than the company and inventor.

im3w1l• 8 years ago

I don't think it's a binary. The state claims some power over over it, and it claims a fraction of the profit. But not all of it. So you don't fully own it, but you kind of own it. Same goes for real estate where they reserve the right to tax it and impose restrictions on what you can do with it.

fapjacks• 8 years ago

Are you implying that there are property rights beyond those permitted by the few individuals who control the organizations whose names are sewn onto the shoulder patches worn by the men in black uniforms with automatic weapons?

l5870uoo9y• 8 years ago

And simultaneously the US mines Europe for tech and science talent. 15.000 Germans work in Silicon Valley. Imagine the boost they would give Germany if they returned or stayed home. It could result in 3000 highly qualified persons for each of the 5 biggest cities in Germany. It's a well known problem for Europe:

Studies of the best physicists in the world show that the Europeans working in North America are some of the most renowned in their fields. In 2014, an expert panel warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the country was losing its best scientists, and a recent report from the Institut Montaigne, a French think tank, argues, “The academics who leave France for the United States are the best, the most prolific and the best integrated on an international scale.”

Source: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/2016-01-05/eu...

gaius5• 8 years ago

It's a well known problem for Europe

No, it’s a meta-problem. The real problem is the structural underpaying of STEM workers in Europe. I mean we can go down the path of “sacrifice your own interests for the good of your country” but no one, particularly Germany wants that. So pay is the only lever. And every business manager actually knows this.

afsina• 8 years ago

So it is not really a "problem" for workers after all.

toomanybeersies4• 8 years ago

Is it a structural underpayment of tech workers in Europe, or a structural overpayment in the USA?

Software engineers in the USA are paid an abnormally high amount compared to similarly qualified professionals in different fields. The median wage for a software engineer in the USA is about $20k higher than that of a mechanical engineer, despite having the same level of qualification and a similar qualification (in my opinion, mechanical engineering actually is a lot harder than software).

If you're a software engineer in Western or Northern Europe, it's not like you're hard done by and struggle to make ends meet. You make a perfectly acceptable wage, similar to any other professional. You also get the benefit of superior social services, more time off, and job security, which are certainly not to be sniffed at. One of my friends was offered a year of salary to leave her job (not in tech) because they couldn't make her redundant. I know of plenty of Europeans who have been able to take anywhere from 6 to 18 months off work for a sabbatical/backpacking trip around the world, knowing that their job will be waiting for them when they come back.

Income disparity is just a lot lower in Europe than in the USA. German mechanical engineers make similar wages to software engineers. German software engineers make roughly twice the median income, compared to 3 times the median for the USA. In Australia, software engineers only make roughly 1.5x the median income, as Australia is a high wage economy.

titanix2• 8 years ago

It’s not only the pay by the way. I study and worked a bit abroad and the difference with my country’s labs are noticeable: there is way less battleling with accounting do get things done abroad. In France you need ton of papers to get your money back for professional spending and if you got it at all it comes months after the fact. I did some work for a professor there and it take a year to get the money in my pocket. I also worked for someone in Japan and I had my money two weeks after and in one case on the spot. So it makes a huge difference when working on any project that need a bit of money. Imagine having to wait a year to get a domain paid by the university or having to send a student take a whiteboard marker from another room at the beginning of each class because there are not enough for every room. That’s how shitty it is working in public research in France.

walshemj• 8 years ago

But European companies regularly play the national interest card and block foreign takeovers.

France famously used that with Dannone a yogurt maker to block a take over :-)

tw1010• 8 years ago

To Americans reading the parent comment: don't get too full of yourselves, there are smart people in abundance in Europe, no cry fest necessary ;)

EZ-E• 8 years ago

The title is "China Mines Silicon Valley for Tech Talent" but according to the article, they are recruiting Chinese engineers working in USA. That's an important distinction.

From my experience it's true, unless you are ethnic Chinese, most of the Chinese companies won't be interested in hiring you

baybal22• 8 years ago

The case of Qian Xuesen instantly comes to mind:

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-02-06/us-trained-scientist-...

tjpnz• 8 years ago

As much as I dislike the Chinese government I'm struggling to see an issue in this. Chinese companies are not the only ones recruiting abroad and in this particular case they seem to be only targeting Mandarin speakers. If people are concerned about a brain drain shouldn't they be more concerned with companies in countries that are actively going after English speakers? I'm a software dev in Japan, domestic tech companies here are beginning to do just that.

segmondy• 8 years ago

X mines Y for talent [ IS EQUAL TO ] X pays much better than Y.

ryandrake• 8 years ago

A company I used to work for several years ago (technically American, but effectively a Chinese company), offered very tempting and lucrative “work in China for 6 months” incentives. Like US salary and subsidized housing in Shanghai. If I wasn’t married with a kid, I’d have jumped at the chance.

China Mines Silicon Valley for Tech Talent

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