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Chinese Workers Abandon Silicon Valley for Riches Back Home

219 points by thisisit 9y ago

mozumder 9y ago
And if Trump and the white non-college working class have their way, the US wouldn't even be desirable place to go for higher education. These white non-college working class people really do want to turn America into full stupid, and we need to do everything we can to de-citizenise them and disempower them. A good way to fail is to do what failed people do. Note that there is no possibility of the US dominating tech forever. This is the neoliberal world order that America must come to accept. The rest of the world is industrializing, and we are best when we can stand with them instead of avoiding them. This is also why we need things like TPP and NAFTA. China isn't the only player out there..
- sctb 9y ago
  This is ridiculous and uncivil flamebait. We've already asked you not to post like this, so could you please stop? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
thebokehwokeh2 9y ago
This will be interesting as it seems to follow the Japanese and Korean models of growing talent abroad and returning home. Unfortunately, the home they return to is not an ethnocentric utopia like Japan/Korea. It's an ethnocentric, smog/corruption ridden dystopia that just so happens to now be the world's economic superpower. With America's global standing in the crapper thanks to decades of anti-immigration fearmongering policies lead by the GOP, it'll be interesting to see for how much longer it can stand as the de-facto place for global STEM talent.
- sidlls 9y ago
  I'm struggling to find even a single thing in your comment that isn't a terrible negative generalization or just plain incorrect.
  - sbjustin 9y ago
    You beat me to saying it.
- simion314 9y ago
  People that return from West could also bring change, at least China has the freedom for the citizens to emigrate and study abroad, east european countries were not that lucky.2
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Note that until the 80s freedom of emigration was not allowed by the Chinese government. I believe the same was true with Eastern European countries.
- sctb 9y ago
  Handwavey political trolling is not what this site is here for. Please don't post like this anymore. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
infinity0 9y ago
> Of the more than 850,000 AI engineers across America, 7.9 percent are Chinese, according to a 2017 report from LinkedIn. 850,000 sounds way way too high. > While Chinese engineers are well represented in the Valley, the perception is that comparatively fewer advance to the top rungs, a phenomenon labeled the “Bamboo Ceiling.” American culture does reward asshole-behaviour a lot more than one can tolerate sometimes. It's definitely not just a conservative problem, so don't go blaming it on Trump.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Sociopaths tend to rise to the top in every organization, sadly.
  - sremani 9y ago
    I guess you mean psychopaths, Sociopaths are anti-social, so my guess is they are not charming. It's a generalization but you do not get to the top without being persuasive at decent level and to stay there, you better be good.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      You’ve got it reversed. Sociopaths lack empathy, but are not anti social. Instead they use manipulative social interaction like a knife to get what they want. Psychopaths are just crazy in comparison.
    - dominotw 9y ago
      > Sociopaths are anti-social, so my guess is they are not charming. Sociapaths can be charming as means to their ends.
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      Sociopaths can be charming, neither are clinical definitions.
    - vinceguidry 9y ago
      You've got it backwards. Psychopathy is a particular variant of Antisocial Personality disorder and is characterized by a complete lack of empathy. The brain wiring literally doesn't exist. Whereas sociopathy is a learned willingness to completely subvert empathy to serve personal goals. They do have brain wiring for empathy, which is what makes them effective at subverting it. High-functioning psychopaths generally have to create a 'mask' in order to pass for normal. The mask is quite cognitively expensive and so they tend to prefer solitude. Low-functioning psychopaths tend towards criminality due to poor self-control.
shadowtree 9y ago
Noticeable in our hiring pipeline across iOS/C#/Java stacks. Used to be a pretty diverse mix across Asian and Eastern European candidates, with a rare white US person mixed in. Now it is pre-dominantly Indian. Really don't like single-ethnic teams, so hiring is getting even more challenging in the Bay Area. We've also opened dev centers in the US mid-west and Canada to help with this.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  And in the U.S. it should be predominantly African Americans and European Americans (whites) but it's not. Hmm. Hopefully in the Midwest you'll have better luck hiring African Americans!
- holydude 9y ago
  Are those indians americans or immigrants ? And I am being downvoted...because ?
  - cubano 9y ago
    maybe because native americans would be the term and your question sounds purposefully obtuse and perhaps even discriminatory? just a guess.
    - imron 9y ago
      maybe he's not talking about native americans, but trying to distinguish between people of indian descent who grew up in the US vs people who grew up in india and then moved to the US for study/work opportunities.
    - hhw 9y ago
      I would have interpreted his question as whether they were East Indians with US citizenship or not. Also, I believe First Nations tends to be the preferred term over indigenous, aboriginal, or native american.
      - 9y ago
hokkos 9y ago
> "850,000 AI engineers across America" Seriously ?
- monocasa 9y ago
  It's like they counted up the number of people who know what a linear regression is, and called them all 'AI engineers'.
  - sidlls 9y ago
    In fairness a regression is about the extent of a large number of "machine learning" efforts ever get to (often with good reason, actually). It's worse than what you write, though. I've seen the "AI" and "machine learning engineer" labels applied to jobs where the developer is basically copy-and-pasting some sklearn snippet from an ipython notebook written by an actual ML/Data Science engineer into his "production" pipeline.
le-mark 9y ago
Last paragraph is terrifying, does China not have privacy laws at all? More interesting than prospects for some may be the sheer volume of intimate data available and leeway to experiment in China. Tencent’s now-ubiquitous WeChat, built by a small team in months, has become a poster-child for in-house creative license. Modern computing is driven by crunching enormous amounts of data, and generations of state surveillance has conditioned the public to be less concerned about sharing information than Westerners. Local startup SenseTime for instance has teamed with dozens of police departments to track everything from visages to races, helping the country develop one of the world’s most sophisticated and extensive surveillance machines.
- jedberg 9y ago
  You're not asking the right question. The answer was right in what you quoted: > generations of state surveillance has conditioned the public to be less concerned about sharing information than Westerners They are already so used to being watched that they don't find it odd to be watched.
  - OkGoDoIt 9y ago
    That has been my impression. Sometimes people find little ways to insulate themselves (I know a guy who doesn't put his license plate in the right place so his car can't automatically be tracked when he drives around the country), but in general lack of privacy is just the way it is. Kind of like taxes in the US. People may be annoyed with how much they pay and some people use dubiously clever means of reducing it, and people have concerns about the details, but not many people really think taxes overall are a bad thing and should be abolished or greatly restricted.
- marme 9y ago
  in china nothing is private, not even your medical info. Your employer can see your medical records if they want and often force employees to get yearly medical checks that are forwarded to HR and it is often used to figure out which female employees are pregnant and they will try to get rid of them rather than pay maternity leave. There are laws against all this but not enforced
lostmsu 9y ago
There's one important datapoint in this article: "The Bamboo Ceiling". When the whole fuzz about gender discrimination started, Microsoft and Google published numbers, claiming women got the same pay at the same positions as men. Knowing there's discrimination from personal experience/feeling, I theorized, that women are discriminated in a different way: they don't receive promotions. Under otherwise similar circumstances having children does not feel to be enough to explain why of 100 women hired in tech on professional roles less are promoted to higher positions, than of 100 men. That trend is (at least anecdotally for me) observable even before people become parents. This "Bamboo Ceiling" shows the same effect for another potentially discriminated group of people.
- dominotw 9y ago
  I have the opposite observation, women do tend to get promoted to managerial roles fairly quickly.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Good managers have empathy. Women are traditionally more empathetic. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19476221/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19476221/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5110041/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5110041/
    - tzahola 9y ago
      H-hold on! Didn’t we agree that there’s no difference between the two genders’ inherent capabilities? Stop rocking the boat, thank you!
    - pacala 9y ago
      Consider treading more carefully. Your statement, with gender role reversed, caused people to get publicly fired as recent as 2017.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
ggregoire 9y ago
Why would they stay? China is seeing a huge boom in the tech industry and it's only the beginning. The future is there, not in SV. I'm kinda jealous of my friends who learned Chinese in college and are now working there.
- djroomba 9y ago
  Being only part chinese, I can tell you unless you are full han chinese, you will have a hard time on the mainland, regardless of how much chinese/mandarin you know. Edit: Im not going to share personal stories, I dont want my relatives there to suffer for anything that gets reported back.
  - mylons 9y ago
    i am completely ignorant of why you said this. care to expound on why you'd have trouble?
  - bilbo0s 9y ago
    I can attest to this. Unless you are a 6 foot plus black guy with a wicked three point shot... do not go to China to make your fortune if you are not Chinese. Go to China to ASSIST someone ELSE in making a fortune instead. You'll be a good deal more successful.
  - fredliu 9y ago
    I heard the other side of the story that ABCs could have a hard time in China, because they look just like full han Chinese, but when people find out you are not really "Chinese Chinese", attitudes/expectations/behaviors change. Edit: I guess I should say "attitudes/expectations/behaviors change, for the better or worse"
    - jdtang13 9y ago
      This doesn't seem super true in my opinion, but I could be wrong. I think that a lot of native Chinese actually lower their expectations around ABCs and are pretty interested in asking questions about American culture.
gjkood 9y ago
I am curious what the definition of an 'AI engineer' is. Is it: a) someone with an undergraduate/graduate/doctorate degree in CS with specialization in AI/ML? b) someone with a non-CS degree (Math/EE/CE/Other) who specialized in AI/ML? c) someone who attended an AI/ML course on Coursera? d) other?
- snowpanda 9y ago
  I thought it was a typo with an extra zero. But I could be wrong. It's a bit confusing.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  Basically AI/ML is the new hot thing so everyone wants to be called an AI engineer. If they previously integrated Nuance's speech recognition into a product, they were just an engineer, now they are an AI engineer. Worked on mapping product which does routing before? Well route searching is an "AI" kind of problem so they are an "AI engineer" too, and so on. AI/ML is the new "big data" basically. As soon as "big data" appeared, nobody was doing just "data", they were all of the sudden doing "big data".
  - gjkood 9y ago
    I do remember the days when a database in the 'GB' size range was considered a very large database. But hey, why would you ever need more than 640KB memory?
- ken47 9y ago
  I find it curious that you are trying to define a job based on credentials, instead of defining it based on what the job entails.
junkscience2017 9y ago
for many people on H1B the deal just seems worse they aren't on a path to citizenship...and more often than not they are not on a path to wealth they are gaining some useful experience but losing time without a clear path to citizenship or wealth, it isn't clear why they are better off here
GuiA 9y ago
I don't think this is just Chinese workers, although it's a more noticeable phenomenon just because of the numbers involved. Many of my European colleagues have expressed a desire to move back to Europe soon (<3 years, much less for many of them). It's a mix of a number of things (for many, family is a big component), but really the biggest one is that they don't feel that the opportunities the US offers are worth the sacrifices they have to make anymore. A particular sacrifice that comes to mind is their spouse being able to work - the Green Card process has been a shit show lately. In fact, many of them are realizing that the "American Tech Dream" that was sold to them did not live up to expectations - particularly when it comes to things like being able to afford a house, education for children, healthcare, etc. in the Bay Area. I've been in tech, in Silicon Valley, for 8 years, and this feels like it's really influenced by the Trump presidency (the moment Trump got elected, I have a few friends who left the US). But it's probably been brewing for longer than that, and I was just paying less attention to it at the beginning of my career. FWIW I'm European and intend on leaving the US in <2 years for similar reasons (namely, that I can have a much better standard of life in Europe, be closer to my family, and do work that is as meaningful).
- pedrosorio 9y ago
  "Many of my European colleagues have expressed a desire to move back to Europe soon (...) A particular sacrifice that comes to mind is their spouse being able to work - the Green Card process has been a shit show lately" As another European immigrant, I can give you my perspective. Initially I was apprehensive about my wife not being able to work. In practice, it was less than a year from the moment she arrived until she got an EAD card (work authorization after reaching a certain stage in the green card application). Certainly a sacrifice, but looking back it was worth it. The green card process took ~1.5 years in total (received it early 2017), which pales in comparison to what people from China and (especially) India have to go through. Did it become much worse in the last year?
  - GuiA 9y ago
    Yes. Current waiting times for the final step of the process is 12+ months (it was ~2 months before the current administration according to lawyers). I am currently 2.5+ years in, and late spring/early summer would be the best case scenario according to the lawyers handling it. Same for several of my coworkers. I work at a large, well known tech company.
ryanianian 9y ago
It is understandable why somebody would want to return to their home-country. The "Bamboo Ceiling" the article discusses is incredibly concerning. It's America's loss for sure. I'm curious (1) how much of these people's education or experience was subsidized by the American economy and (2) how common the same situation is in China (i.e. US expats training up in China and taking that expertise back to the US). If (1) and (2) aren't aligned, it could be one of the factors contributing to the growing sense that we pour a bunch of money into higher-ed without seeing much return. I don't mean this from a US nationalist or political perspective - I'm merely speculating on the economics. Are the incentives for coming to the country aligned for both the person and the country? Many companies will pay for employees to go to grad-school but demand repayment if the employee isn't still with the company N years later. Would such a system for college/work visas make any sense to help keep talent?
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  The economics of higher education isn't aligned between personal and societal interest in general. College degrees are a positional good - a good portion of their value is for allocating a job to Peter instead of Paul. Even as people rationally choose more prestigious and more thorough education, we end up destroying value on a societal scale. Like, even if a daycare worker finds it easier to get a job with a college degree, are we better off as a society if more daycare workers have college degrees? I think not.
  - ryanianian 9y ago
    You could say the same thing about almost literally anything that you have to pay or work for. If two candidates are otherwise equal and one had a brand new car, I might use the new car as a tie-breaker. I'd bet having a college degree is much more than a tie-breaker in most cases - it shows a level of work, discipline, and probable intelligence that is genuinely an advantage for most jobs. (This is problematic because it also shows a huge set of advantages that the degree-holder has had. If somebody has enough advantages to have a degree and is applying for a daycare position, it might mean something is very wrong for this person and maybe it should tip the tie-breaker situation the other way!)
xster 9y ago
Shanghai is "smog-choked"? The AQI is the same as San Francisco. The score is easily 10x worse in other cities but specifically Shanghai seems overblown.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Look at the history: shanghai dipped orange and red multiple times in the past few days, while SF just dipped into the yellow. https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/ https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/ http://aqicn.org/city/california/san-francisco/san-francisco-arkansas-street http://aqicn.org/city/california/san-francisco/san-francisco... Keep in mind it’s also night in china ATM while it is noon in SF. Shanghai is much worse than SF on average. It dips into the red zone more often, retreating when it rains. Shanghai is much better than the rest of china barring Shenzhen, Xiamen, and maybe Kunming, but it would still come across to an American visitor as smoggier than they were used to.
- hhw 9y ago
  Have you actually been to Shanghai? On a bad day, buildings right across the street can be hazy.
holydude 9y ago
Money is the king. Seriously there are people that prefer their own familiar environment but a logical explanation is if you can get significantly more money elsewhere why not to go ? After all you can retire early and live wherever you want. You would be surprised how many brilliant engineers work have small coffee shops around the world not caring about money anymore.
asabjorn 9y ago
I am a Norwegian in Silicon Valley that have spent most of my career with Chinese colleagues, both in academia and industry, and my anecdata seem to indicate that my highly talented China-born colleagues are sadly leaving because; - China has great opportunities for riches - Getting a US VISA is hard and painful when you come from a populous country like China or India - My China-born colleagues seem to in general be more conservative, and Silicon Valley has become violently intolerant of anyone that holds an opinion different than the predominant view Only the first reason is somewhat objective, while the two others cause stress in their daily life as their ability to provide can at any time be removed due to what is perceived as arbitrary reasons. Everything being equal, many of them have told me they would prefer the less crowded Silicon Valley.
- cwzwarich 9y ago
  > Getting a US VISA is hard and painful when you come from a populous country like China or India Getting a green card is harder if you were born in China or India, not getting a visa, but once you've been on an H-1B for a sufficiently long period of time, you can only keep that status with a pending green card application. Switching employers at this stage is more difficult.
  - golem14 9y ago
    Aren't there rumblings that the current administration wants to actually remove the opportunity to indefinitely linger on H1B/advance parole status while the green card application is pending ? Sounds credible as far as current administration goes, and would certainly be a huge long term problem for the US, but there we are.
    - cwzwarich 9y ago
      There was a rumored proposal, but USCIS announced the other day that it was unlikely to happen, and also mentioned that if it did happen it would not apply to existing AC-21 holders, as their employers could file extensions in one year increments. The DHS has said that they want to propose the end of the H-4 visa giving work authorization for spouses of H-1B holders.
luminati 9y ago
What is this bamboo ceiling in tech that they are talking about? The last time I checked the CEOs of Microsoft and Google weren’t the stereotypical ethnicity.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  The fact that some South Asians rise to high ranking positions in tech in the US does not mean that Asians in tech overall are not disadvantaged in practice in advancement in the field in the US. (I have no real opinion about whether there is a bamboo ceiling effect in tech, not having done any study of the question, but the two examples you point to are far from even a strong reason to doubt the effect.)
- lurr 9y ago
  For some reason Indians aren't Asian enough to be called Asian.
meri_dian 9y ago
This makes sense by the simple observation that, all other things being equal, most people will want to live and work in what they consider their homeland. For many people who have come to the US, they have come not to find a new homeland but rather to get wealthy and pursue opportunity. This is an admirable thing. But as China develops and grows - conditions becoming more equal between the US and China - it's only natural that Chinese expats will find that they can seek "riches" in what they feel is their homeland. There's nothing wrong with this, and in fact will be good for people of all nationalities as competition increases for talent.
- danans 9y ago
  > it's only natural that Chinese expats will find that they can seek "riches" in what they feel is their natural and original homeland. I can see your argument about returning to an "original homeland" (i.e. for reasons of cultural or social affinity), but "natural homeland"? There's nothing about the nature (air, land, climate, flora, fauna, etc) of China that is uniquely suited to a Chinese person any more than anyone else.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    That's not what I mean by a natural homeland. I say "original" because it's where they're born and "natural" because it's the nation with the culture they're most familiar and presumably comfortable with.
    - danans 9y ago
      > and "natural" because it's the nation with the culture they're most familiar and presumably comfortable with. In that case, the correct term is "cultural homeland", not "natural homeland".
  - lurr 9y ago
    Except they grew up their and the flora, fauna, etc... feels more like home. People who move from California to Seattle complain constantly about how horrible the weather is, for example.
jorblumesea 9y ago
I think it's interesting that many of those same criticisms can be leveled at China. If you're not Han Chinese you'll never get far in any Chinese company. You will get far helping someone else get rich. Getting permanent residency is similarly stressful. In many ways, China is even less open than Western societies and far less accepting of doing things a different way. Might be great for returning Chinese but I'm not entirely sure they will be able to attract a global talent pool like SV has done. Add in censorship and you've got a pretty toxic environment brewing. My guess is they'll run into similar (or worse) issues with their own SV. I don't think that means any of what SV is doing is okay, just interesting that other nationalities there will face the exact same issues that they faced here.
evidencepi 9y ago
Can't say for everyone else, but from my observation, ppl from big china cities are more likely to go back while ppl from small cities are more willing to stay. The reasons is that moving to big china cities is as hard if not harder than staying in SV. For myself, I'd like to stay here even I came from a big city like shanghai as I enjoy the freedom in US and agree with american values. Besides, china is getting worse in every aspect I care about such as speech freedom, news freedom, human rights, food and air safety, etc, under Xi's administration. Unfortunately the waiting time for a green card is too long, I don't want to sacrifice some of the most valuable years in my life just waiting here while I can achieve more if I'm able to work on my own project. So I am moving back as well in the near future and hope someday I can make an achievement and get back to US.
ThrowAway3456 9y ago
I think it's not just Chinese, but pretty much most immigrant have a stronger desire to go back home. Speaking as an immigrant myself,i don't think most of us came to the US because we loved american culture, we came for the opportunity, and as more and more opportuinity open up in culture closer to our native cultures, going back make more and more sense. The other aspect i didn't see mentioned is that dating for an average immigrant man (which are still the majority of the immigration in tech) is a brutal experience; between the skew gender ratio, the ruthlessness of modern/app based dating and increasing intolerance against "conservative values" etc... for anecdotal sample, a large population are just leaving to escape the loneliness and try to start a family
taylorhost 9y ago
No surprise from an opportunity standpoint. Certain research fields are now much better funded in China. That said, reasons for moving home are most-often individual/personal. Throughout this thread, I see a lot of solid reasons for a Chinese Expat in SV to give returning to China thoughtful consideration. That said, one hard negative moving from non-China into China is the availability of modern, standard-practice develop tools. Replicating the tools/DevEv within China is certainly possible, but requires effort and is often frustrating. VPN hot potato is getting more frequent & homegrown China DevEnv tools are often dramatically different from the tools common to non-China business.

219 points by thisisit 9y ago

And if Trump and the white non-college working class have their way, the US wouldn't even be desirable place to go for higher education. These white non-college working class people really do want to turn America into full stupid, and we need to do everything we can to de-citizenise them and disempower them. A good way to fail is to do what failed people do. Note that there is no possibility of the US dominating tech forever. This is the neoliberal world order that America must come to accept. The rest of the world is industrializing, and we are best when we can stand with them instead of avoiding them. This is also why we need things like TPP and NAFTA. China isn't the only player out there..

sctb 9y ago
This is ridiculous and uncivil flamebait. We've already asked you not to post like this, so could you please stop? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

thebokehwokeh2 9y ago

This will be interesting as it seems to follow the Japanese and Korean models of growing talent abroad and returning home. Unfortunately, the home they return to is not an ethnocentric utopia like Japan/Korea. It's an ethnocentric, smog/corruption ridden dystopia that just so happens to now be the world's economic superpower. With America's global standing in the crapper thanks to decades of anti-immigration fearmongering policies lead by the GOP, it'll be interesting to see for how much longer it can stand as the de-facto place for global STEM talent.

sidlls 9y ago
I'm struggling to find even a single thing in your comment that isn't a terrible negative generalization or just plain incorrect.
- sbjustin 9y ago
  You beat me to saying it.
simion314 9y ago
People that return from West could also bring change, at least China has the freedom for the citizens to emigrate and study abroad, east european countries were not that lucky.2
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Note that until the 80s freedom of emigration was not allowed by the Chinese government. I believe the same was true with Eastern European countries.
sctb 9y ago
Handwavey political trolling is not what this site is here for. Please don't post like this anymore. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

infinity0 9y ago

> Of the more than 850,000 AI engineers across America, 7.9 percent are Chinese, according to a 2017 report from LinkedIn. 850,000 sounds way way too high. > While Chinese engineers are well represented in the Valley, the perception is that comparatively fewer advance to the top rungs, a phenomenon labeled the “Bamboo Ceiling.” American culture does reward asshole-behaviour a lot more than one can tolerate sometimes. It's definitely not just a conservative problem, so don't go blaming it on Trump.

mixmastamyk 9y ago
Sociopaths tend to rise to the top in every organization, sadly.
- sremani 9y ago
  I guess you mean psychopaths, Sociopaths are anti-social, so my guess is they are not charming. It's a generalization but you do not get to the top without being persuasive at decent level and to stay there, you better be good.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    You’ve got it reversed. Sociopaths lack empathy, but are not anti social. Instead they use manipulative social interaction like a knife to get what they want. Psychopaths are just crazy in comparison.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    > Sociopaths are anti-social, so my guess is they are not charming. Sociapaths can be charming as means to their ends.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    Sociopaths can be charming, neither are clinical definitions.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    You've got it backwards. Psychopathy is a particular variant of Antisocial Personality disorder and is characterized by a complete lack of empathy. The brain wiring literally doesn't exist. Whereas sociopathy is a learned willingness to completely subvert empathy to serve personal goals. They do have brain wiring for empathy, which is what makes them effective at subverting it. High-functioning psychopaths generally have to create a 'mask' in order to pass for normal. The mask is quite cognitively expensive and so they tend to prefer solitude. Low-functioning psychopaths tend towards criminality due to poor self-control.

shadowtree 9y ago

Noticeable in our hiring pipeline across iOS/C#/Java stacks. Used to be a pretty diverse mix across Asian and Eastern European candidates, with a rare white US person mixed in. Now it is pre-dominantly Indian. Really don't like single-ethnic teams, so hiring is getting even more challenging in the Bay Area. We've also opened dev centers in the US mid-west and Canada to help with this.

muninn_ 9y ago
And in the U.S. it should be predominantly African Americans and European Americans (whites) but it's not. Hmm. Hopefully in the Midwest you'll have better luck hiring African Americans!
holydude 9y ago
Are those indians americans or immigrants ? And I am being downvoted...because ?
- cubano 9y ago
  maybe because native americans would be the term and your question sounds purposefully obtuse and perhaps even discriminatory? just a guess.
  - imron 9y ago
    maybe he's not talking about native americans, but trying to distinguish between people of indian descent who grew up in the US vs people who grew up in india and then moved to the US for study/work opportunities.
  - hhw 9y ago
    I would have interpreted his question as whether they were East Indians with US citizenship or not. Also, I believe First Nations tends to be the preferred term over indigenous, aboriginal, or native american.
    - 9y ago

hokkos 9y ago

> "850,000 AI engineers across America" Seriously ?

monocasa 9y ago
It's like they counted up the number of people who know what a linear regression is, and called them all 'AI engineers'.
- sidlls 9y ago
  In fairness a regression is about the extent of a large number of "machine learning" efforts ever get to (often with good reason, actually). It's worse than what you write, though. I've seen the "AI" and "machine learning engineer" labels applied to jobs where the developer is basically copy-and-pasting some sklearn snippet from an ipython notebook written by an actual ML/Data Science engineer into his "production" pipeline.

le-mark 9y ago

Last paragraph is terrifying, does China not have privacy laws at all? More interesting than prospects for some may be the sheer volume of intimate data available and leeway to experiment in China. Tencent’s now-ubiquitous WeChat, built by a small team in months, has become a poster-child for in-house creative license. Modern computing is driven by crunching enormous amounts of data, and generations of state surveillance has conditioned the public to be less concerned about sharing information than Westerners. Local startup SenseTime for instance has teamed with dozens of police departments to track everything from visages to races, helping the country develop one of the world’s most sophisticated and extensive surveillance machines.

jedberg 9y ago
You're not asking the right question. The answer was right in what you quoted: > generations of state surveillance has conditioned the public to be less concerned about sharing information than Westerners They are already so used to being watched that they don't find it odd to be watched.
- OkGoDoIt 9y ago
  That has been my impression. Sometimes people find little ways to insulate themselves (I know a guy who doesn't put his license plate in the right place so his car can't automatically be tracked when he drives around the country), but in general lack of privacy is just the way it is. Kind of like taxes in the US. People may be annoyed with how much they pay and some people use dubiously clever means of reducing it, and people have concerns about the details, but not many people really think taxes overall are a bad thing and should be abolished or greatly restricted.
marme 9y ago
in china nothing is private, not even your medical info. Your employer can see your medical records if they want and often force employees to get yearly medical checks that are forwarded to HR and it is often used to figure out which female employees are pregnant and they will try to get rid of them rather than pay maternity leave. There are laws against all this but not enforced

lostmsu 9y ago

There's one important datapoint in this article: "The Bamboo Ceiling". When the whole fuzz about gender discrimination started, Microsoft and Google published numbers, claiming women got the same pay at the same positions as men. Knowing there's discrimination from personal experience/feeling, I theorized, that women are discriminated in a different way: they don't receive promotions. Under otherwise similar circumstances having children does not feel to be enough to explain why of 100 women hired in tech on professional roles less are promoted to higher positions, than of 100 men. That trend is (at least anecdotally for me) observable even before people become parents. This "Bamboo Ceiling" shows the same effect for another potentially discriminated group of people.

dominotw 9y ago
I have the opposite observation, women do tend to get promoted to managerial roles fairly quickly.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Good managers have empathy. Women are traditionally more empathetic. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19476221/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19476221/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5110041/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5110041/
  - tzahola 9y ago
    H-hold on! Didn’t we agree that there’s no difference between the two genders’ inherent capabilities? Stop rocking the boat, thank you!
  - pacala 9y ago
    Consider treading more carefully. Your statement, with gender role reversed, caused people to get publicly fired as recent as 2017.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago

ggregoire 9y ago

Why would they stay? China is seeing a huge boom in the tech industry and it's only the beginning. The future is there, not in SV. I'm kinda jealous of my friends who learned Chinese in college and are now working there.

djroomba 9y ago
Being only part chinese, I can tell you unless you are full han chinese, you will have a hard time on the mainland, regardless of how much chinese/mandarin you know. Edit: Im not going to share personal stories, I dont want my relatives there to suffer for anything that gets reported back.
- mylons 9y ago
  i am completely ignorant of why you said this. care to expound on why you'd have trouble?
- bilbo0s 9y ago
  I can attest to this. Unless you are a 6 foot plus black guy with a wicked three point shot... do not go to China to make your fortune if you are not Chinese. Go to China to ASSIST someone ELSE in making a fortune instead. You'll be a good deal more successful.
- fredliu 9y ago
  I heard the other side of the story that ABCs could have a hard time in China, because they look just like full han Chinese, but when people find out you are not really "Chinese Chinese", attitudes/expectations/behaviors change. Edit: I guess I should say "attitudes/expectations/behaviors change, for the better or worse"
  - jdtang13 9y ago
    This doesn't seem super true in my opinion, but I could be wrong. I think that a lot of native Chinese actually lower their expectations around ABCs and are pretty interested in asking questions about American culture.

gjkood 9y ago

I am curious what the definition of an 'AI engineer' is. Is it: a) someone with an undergraduate/graduate/doctorate degree in CS with specialization in AI/ML? b) someone with a non-CS degree (Math/EE/CE/Other) who specialized in AI/ML? c) someone who attended an AI/ML course on Coursera? d) other?

snowpanda 9y ago
I thought it was a typo with an extra zero. But I could be wrong. It's a bit confusing.
rdtsc 9y ago
Basically AI/ML is the new hot thing so everyone wants to be called an AI engineer. If they previously integrated Nuance's speech recognition into a product, they were just an engineer, now they are an AI engineer. Worked on mapping product which does routing before? Well route searching is an "AI" kind of problem so they are an "AI engineer" too, and so on. AI/ML is the new "big data" basically. As soon as "big data" appeared, nobody was doing just "data", they were all of the sudden doing "big data".
- gjkood 9y ago
  I do remember the days when a database in the 'GB' size range was considered a very large database. But hey, why would you ever need more than 640KB memory?
ken47 9y ago
I find it curious that you are trying to define a job based on credentials, instead of defining it based on what the job entails.

junkscience2017 9y ago

for many people on H1B the deal just seems worse they aren't on a path to citizenship...and more often than not they are not on a path to wealth they are gaining some useful experience but losing time without a clear path to citizenship or wealth, it isn't clear why they are better off here

GuiA 9y ago

I don't think this is just Chinese workers, although it's a more noticeable phenomenon just because of the numbers involved. Many of my European colleagues have expressed a desire to move back to Europe soon (<3 years, much less for many of them). It's a mix of a number of things (for many, family is a big component), but really the biggest one is that they don't feel that the opportunities the US offers are worth the sacrifices they have to make anymore. A particular sacrifice that comes to mind is their spouse being able to work - the Green Card process has been a shit show lately. In fact, many of them are realizing that the "American Tech Dream" that was sold to them did not live up to expectations - particularly when it comes to things like being able to afford a house, education for children, healthcare, etc. in the Bay Area. I've been in tech, in Silicon Valley, for 8 years, and this feels like it's really influenced by the Trump presidency (the moment Trump got elected, I have a few friends who left the US). But it's probably been brewing for longer than that, and I was just paying less attention to it at the beginning of my career. FWIW I'm European and intend on leaving the US in <2 years for similar reasons (namely, that I can have a much better standard of life in Europe, be closer to my family, and do work that is as meaningful).

pedrosorio 9y ago
"Many of my European colleagues have expressed a desire to move back to Europe soon (...) A particular sacrifice that comes to mind is their spouse being able to work - the Green Card process has been a shit show lately" As another European immigrant, I can give you my perspective. Initially I was apprehensive about my wife not being able to work. In practice, it was less than a year from the moment she arrived until she got an EAD card (work authorization after reaching a certain stage in the green card application). Certainly a sacrifice, but looking back it was worth it. The green card process took ~1.5 years in total (received it early 2017), which pales in comparison to what people from China and (especially) India have to go through. Did it become much worse in the last year?
- GuiA 9y ago
  Yes. Current waiting times for the final step of the process is 12+ months (it was ~2 months before the current administration according to lawyers). I am currently 2.5+ years in, and late spring/early summer would be the best case scenario according to the lawyers handling it. Same for several of my coworkers. I work at a large, well known tech company.

ryanianian 9y ago

It is understandable why somebody would want to return to their home-country. The "Bamboo Ceiling" the article discusses is incredibly concerning. It's America's loss for sure. I'm curious (1) how much of these people's education or experience was subsidized by the American economy and (2) how common the same situation is in China (i.e. US expats training up in China and taking that expertise back to the US). If (1) and (2) aren't aligned, it could be one of the factors contributing to the growing sense that we pour a bunch of money into higher-ed without seeing much return. I don't mean this from a US nationalist or political perspective - I'm merely speculating on the economics. Are the incentives for coming to the country aligned for both the person and the country? Many companies will pay for employees to go to grad-school but demand repayment if the employee isn't still with the company N years later. Would such a system for college/work visas make any sense to help keep talent?

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
The economics of higher education isn't aligned between personal and societal interest in general. College degrees are a positional good - a good portion of their value is for allocating a job to Peter instead of Paul. Even as people rationally choose more prestigious and more thorough education, we end up destroying value on a societal scale. Like, even if a daycare worker finds it easier to get a job with a college degree, are we better off as a society if more daycare workers have college degrees? I think not.
- ryanianian 9y ago
  You could say the same thing about almost literally anything that you have to pay or work for. If two candidates are otherwise equal and one had a brand new car, I might use the new car as a tie-breaker. I'd bet having a college degree is much more than a tie-breaker in most cases - it shows a level of work, discipline, and probable intelligence that is genuinely an advantage for most jobs. (This is problematic because it also shows a huge set of advantages that the degree-holder has had. If somebody has enough advantages to have a degree and is applying for a daycare position, it might mean something is very wrong for this person and maybe it should tip the tie-breaker situation the other way!)

xster 9y ago

Shanghai is "smog-choked"? The AQI is the same as San Francisco. The score is easily 10x worse in other cities but specifically Shanghai seems overblown.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Look at the history: shanghai dipped orange and red multiple times in the past few days, while SF just dipped into the yellow. https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/ https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/ http://aqicn.org/city/california/san-francisco/san-francisco-arkansas-street http://aqicn.org/city/california/san-francisco/san-francisco... Keep in mind it’s also night in china ATM while it is noon in SF. Shanghai is much worse than SF on average. It dips into the red zone more often, retreating when it rains. Shanghai is much better than the rest of china barring Shenzhen, Xiamen, and maybe Kunming, but it would still come across to an American visitor as smoggier than they were used to.
hhw 9y ago
Have you actually been to Shanghai? On a bad day, buildings right across the street can be hazy.

holydude 9y ago

Money is the king. Seriously there are people that prefer their own familiar environment but a logical explanation is if you can get significantly more money elsewhere why not to go ? After all you can retire early and live wherever you want. You would be surprised how many brilliant engineers work have small coffee shops around the world not caring about money anymore.

asabjorn 9y ago

I am a Norwegian in Silicon Valley that have spent most of my career with Chinese colleagues, both in academia and industry, and my anecdata seem to indicate that my highly talented China-born colleagues are sadly leaving because; - China has great opportunities for riches - Getting a US VISA is hard and painful when you come from a populous country like China or India - My China-born colleagues seem to in general be more conservative, and Silicon Valley has become violently intolerant of anyone that holds an opinion different than the predominant view Only the first reason is somewhat objective, while the two others cause stress in their daily life as their ability to provide can at any time be removed due to what is perceived as arbitrary reasons. Everything being equal, many of them have told me they would prefer the less crowded Silicon Valley.

cwzwarich 9y ago
> Getting a US VISA is hard and painful when you come from a populous country like China or India Getting a green card is harder if you were born in China or India, not getting a visa, but once you've been on an H-1B for a sufficiently long period of time, you can only keep that status with a pending green card application. Switching employers at this stage is more difficult.
- golem14 9y ago
  Aren't there rumblings that the current administration wants to actually remove the opportunity to indefinitely linger on H1B/advance parole status while the green card application is pending ? Sounds credible as far as current administration goes, and would certainly be a huge long term problem for the US, but there we are.
  - cwzwarich 9y ago
    There was a rumored proposal, but USCIS announced the other day that it was unlikely to happen, and also mentioned that if it did happen it would not apply to existing AC-21 holders, as their employers could file extensions in one year increments. The DHS has said that they want to propose the end of the H-4 visa giving work authorization for spouses of H-1B holders.

luminati 9y ago

What is this bamboo ceiling in tech that they are talking about? The last time I checked the CEOs of Microsoft and Google weren’t the stereotypical ethnicity.

dragonwriter 9y ago
The fact that some South Asians rise to high ranking positions in tech in the US does not mean that Asians in tech overall are not disadvantaged in practice in advancement in the field in the US. (I have no real opinion about whether there is a bamboo ceiling effect in tech, not having done any study of the question, but the two examples you point to are far from even a strong reason to doubt the effect.)
lurr 9y ago
For some reason Indians aren't Asian enough to be called Asian.

meri_dian 9y ago

This makes sense by the simple observation that, all other things being equal, most people will want to live and work in what they consider their homeland. For many people who have come to the US, they have come not to find a new homeland but rather to get wealthy and pursue opportunity. This is an admirable thing. But as China develops and grows - conditions becoming more equal between the US and China - it's only natural that Chinese expats will find that they can seek "riches" in what they feel is their homeland. There's nothing wrong with this, and in fact will be good for people of all nationalities as competition increases for talent.

danans 9y ago
> it's only natural that Chinese expats will find that they can seek "riches" in what they feel is their natural and original homeland. I can see your argument about returning to an "original homeland" (i.e. for reasons of cultural or social affinity), but "natural homeland"? There's nothing about the nature (air, land, climate, flora, fauna, etc) of China that is uniquely suited to a Chinese person any more than anyone else.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  That's not what I mean by a natural homeland. I say "original" because it's where they're born and "natural" because it's the nation with the culture they're most familiar and presumably comfortable with.
  - danans 9y ago
    > and "natural" because it's the nation with the culture they're most familiar and presumably comfortable with. In that case, the correct term is "cultural homeland", not "natural homeland".
- lurr 9y ago
  Except they grew up their and the flora, fauna, etc... feels more like home. People who move from California to Seattle complain constantly about how horrible the weather is, for example.

jorblumesea 9y ago

I think it's interesting that many of those same criticisms can be leveled at China. If you're not Han Chinese you'll never get far in any Chinese company. You will get far helping someone else get rich. Getting permanent residency is similarly stressful. In many ways, China is even less open than Western societies and far less accepting of doing things a different way. Might be great for returning Chinese but I'm not entirely sure they will be able to attract a global talent pool like SV has done. Add in censorship and you've got a pretty toxic environment brewing. My guess is they'll run into similar (or worse) issues with their own SV. I don't think that means any of what SV is doing is okay, just interesting that other nationalities there will face the exact same issues that they faced here.

evidencepi 9y ago

Can't say for everyone else, but from my observation, ppl from big china cities are more likely to go back while ppl from small cities are more willing to stay. The reasons is that moving to big china cities is as hard if not harder than staying in SV. For myself, I'd like to stay here even I came from a big city like shanghai as I enjoy the freedom in US and agree with american values. Besides, china is getting worse in every aspect I care about such as speech freedom, news freedom, human rights, food and air safety, etc, under Xi's administration. Unfortunately the waiting time for a green card is too long, I don't want to sacrifice some of the most valuable years in my life just waiting here while I can achieve more if I'm able to work on my own project. So I am moving back as well in the near future and hope someday I can make an achievement and get back to US.

ThrowAway3456 9y ago

I think it's not just Chinese, but pretty much most immigrant have a stronger desire to go back home. Speaking as an immigrant myself,i don't think most of us came to the US because we loved american culture, we came for the opportunity, and as more and more opportuinity open up in culture closer to our native cultures, going back make more and more sense. The other aspect i didn't see mentioned is that dating for an average immigrant man (which are still the majority of the immigration in tech) is a brutal experience; between the skew gender ratio, the ruthlessness of modern/app based dating and increasing intolerance against "conservative values" etc... for anecdotal sample, a large population are just leaving to escape the loneliness and try to start a family

taylorhost 9y ago

No surprise from an opportunity standpoint. Certain research fields are now much better funded in China. That said, reasons for moving home are most-often individual/personal. Throughout this thread, I see a lot of solid reasons for a Chinese Expat in SV to give returning to China thoughtful consideration. That said, one hard negative moving from non-China into China is the availability of modern, standard-practice develop tools. Replicating the tools/DevEv within China is certainly possible, but requires effort and is often frustrating. VPN hot potato is getting more frequent & homegrown China DevEnv tools are often dramatically different from the tools common to non-China business.