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We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science
- axismundi 8mo agoCome to Europe, we have cookies ;)
- saagarjha 8mo agoWe know, the law requires you tell us of this if they’re for marketing purposes.
- grumpymouse 8mo agoIt’s actually a cookie experiment
- deepsun 8mo ago[flagged]
- rubyn00bie 8mo agoOh yeah, and just wait until you see you have to pay the US taxes on your income too. Tax system for US citizens living abroad is insanely bad.
- KK7NIL 8mo ago> Oh yeah, and just wait until you see you have to pay the US taxes on your income too. No, you don't. You still have to file but you get "Federal Tax Credits" for income tax paid abroad and seeing how a EU country's income tax will almost certainly be higher than the US', you'll end up paying nothing. There's also tax treaties to avoid double taxation in other ways.
- rubyn00bie 8mo agoI’ve seen plenty of videos covering it from expats stating they still do in fact pay taxes back to the US. Maybe the info is outdated or things have changed recently, but a cursory google makes it seems like that “No, you don’t,” isn’t true. It looks like the Federal Tax Credit only covers up to $130,000 per year of income. Then you pay on whatever you make over that (assuming you don’t have other credits).
- KK7NIL 8mo ago> I’ve seen plenty of videos covering it from expats stating they still do in fact pay taxes back to the US. "Expats" living in Europe? I ask because "expat" usually refers to someone who moved to a lower cost of living country that may also have significantly lower income tax compared to the EU. > It looks like the Federal Tax Credit only covers up to $130,000 per year of income. $130k/yr is absolute bank in Europe. From a quick Google search, that would put you well in the top 5% of earners in Berlin, just as an example. So, this shouldn't be much of an issue.
- deepsun 8mo agoNot a tax advice, but AFAIK, if you had to pay $1000 to US IRS, and already paid $800 to another country, then you owe US $200. The country must have a tax treaty with US, so they exchange the info about your taxes in background. But many countries in EU has higher tax rates than US, then you owe $0.
- deepsun 8mo agoOnly the difference.
- nathan_compton 8mo agoI feel like if you care about taxes on capital gains you are rich enough not to care about taxes on capital gains.
- yacthing 8mo agoIf you want to comfortably retire, then one of the following is probably true: 1. you have a solid pension 2. you should care about capital gains taxes 3. you're REALLY rich and don't care.
- deepsun 8mo agoNo, I'm not rich, I'm just an entrepreneur, so most of my income is from capital gains. And most (almost all) of my expenses is paying salaries and vendors.
- yladiz 8mo agoSo you have a business with no revenue that you fund through capital gains? I'm not sure I get the connection between the two.
- deepsun 8mo agoWith revenue of course, how else would I be able to pay the salaries and bills? But I'm not going to move to a country if I know that every quarterly dividend would leave me with 25-50% less money on my bank account.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- nathan_compton 8mo agoI wrote a snarkier reply originally, but a more tempered summary would be: I can't imagine really caring about this. You cannot take it with you.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- m4rtink 8mo agoAnd original bottle caps on all plastic bottles! (Like seriously, it turns out to be pretty useful in practice. :) )
- dietr1ch 8mo agoI'd love to, but where to? The Swiss are trying to cap population, the Germans elected the AfD, the UK no longer counts.
- Winblows11 8mo ago> The Swiss are trying to cap population > the UK no longer counts Well the Swiss are not in EU either, but both are still in Europe
- dietr1ch 8mo agoWell, it's hard to freely speak my mind about the Brits w/o getting downvoted, but they created a large problem and let their dogs out on whoever complains about it.
- operation_moose 8mo agoIreland is solid, especially for any sort of biotech/medical. Strong critical skills immigration path, good wages, pretty much every major company has a facility there (many rivaling the US sites in size), friendly and welcoming place. Housing is a bit of struggle, mainly for renters. I made the leap this year. No regrets.
- sublimefire 8mo agoIrish infra is not great if you compare it to many advanced European countries. I hate they still do not have a train/tram connection from the airport to the city. Taxes also make you weep. Not to mention an immense risk of losing all those corp taxes and industry if US pushes ahead and creates barriers for companies to trade. It is great at many things but also has some downsides.
- hn_acc1 8mo agoTell me more. As someone with dual Canadian/US citizenship (former EU citizen that I gave up 20+ years ago) - how hard is it to get in?
- readthenotes1 8mo agoDoes that mean Europe will get a sustainable lead on irreproachable Science?
- ProjectArcturis 8mo agoNo, the US still spends 5x what Europe does on biomedical research, measured as a percent of GDP.
- tensor 8mo agoFor now. US science is still in decline. Major works by places like Moderna have been denied permission to continue, for example. You can't assume that funding will not continue to decrease at a rapid rate in the US.
- cogman10 8mo agoEven if it continues, there's been a huge amount of reputational damage done and no political will to do what must be done to reverse that damage.
- ronnier 8mo agoNo. Europe is in decline. Asia will.
- tensor 8mo agoI think that depends on a lot of factors. E.g. will there be a turn around in the US, and if so how fast? Will Europe and other nations increase science funding to account for all the new talent that wants to come? Will that funding be permanent, not just a one time effort? Also, if the US restores their democracy and also decides to value science again, will the salaries for scientists abroad compete enough to prevent scientists moving back. To maintain a sustainable lead the money and investment has to be substantial and long term.
- cogman10 8mo ago
- Ericson2314 8mo agoFrankly, if the places that dominate at healthcare delivery efficiency also dominate at research, that could be good for the world. The US having a dogshit healthcare delivery system but so much research means that good vertical integration is not possible. Conversely a more integrated EU — continent scale welfare state — could do really interesting "integrated OpEx and CapEx" medical research in ways that are simply impossible in the US. Remember the Danes making Ozempic is making something that is fundamentally far more useful for Americans than Danes (of course the money is good for Danes). Most non-American drug research today probably chases the lucrative American market, but ideally that would change.
- shimman 8mo agoYou're making a lot of assumptions: that providers are healthcare providers, that providers want to provide more healthcare, or that providers are incentivized to pay for better healthcare. I'm sure the system you want would exist if healthcare providers had one customer to worry about: the US government. I can't think of a single doctor, the ones that actually want to help people and not cash a phat check, that likes the current system of filling out paperwork or begging to do surgeries for patients from insurance companies. Most actually want to just provide care. Get rid of the middle man, get rid of the profit motive, and you'll get a system that society can actually shape.
- alistairSH 8mo ago[flagged]
- KevinMS 8mo ago> In the normal trajectory of a life in science, Morgan would be planning to set up his own laboratory conducting groundbreaking research designed to win the war on superbugs. But with an ongoing hiring freeze at NIH, his options are limited. That seems a bit too optimistic to be a valid argument.
- Retric 8mo agoMorgan (or someone else) The hiring freeze stops everyone not just that one specific person. A 4 year pause on new researchers is meaningful even if this specific person wasn’t going to start a lab.
- Avicebron 8mo agoTrue. Morgan could also end up running pipettes and 96-well plates in Foster City for $45000/yr.
- ProjectArcturis 8mo agoWell, he might be planning to set up a lab. Probably wouldn't, though, statistically.
- idoubtit 8mo ago> That seems a bit too optimistic to be a valid argument. I think you misunderstood, since that's not about optimism. Years ago, smart students from all over the world could hope for a successful career in American research. Now, in the USA many doors are closing in most academic domains, and few (potential) researchers dare plan any success story.
- jorblumesea 8mo agoIt's not surprising. smart, educated people are a direct threat to the current administration and in general the US right has had academia in its sights for awhile. Ultimately it's bad for the country but how the US has been trending. Similarly, US education funding and the content of it has been politicized and it's producing a negative feedback loop. Political goals and what's good for the average person are completely disconnected at this point.
- cael450 8mo ago[flagged]
- reenorap 8mo agoI think the US draining other countries of their best and brightest is why many countries have been left behind in terms of economic development. Other countries need to take up the mantle of research and they can't do that if all of them go to the US. I think this is overall good for the rest of the world, because relying on the US and the sociopathic companies that exploit public research for personal gain is bad for the entire world.
- zaptheimpaler 8mo agoYes, Canada has already seen a large uptick in researchers and doctors coming in from the US and other countries have too. It's good for everybody for research to be more decentralized so that it can better withstand shocks in single countries.
- nubinetwork 8mo agoI had to find a new doctor recently, and the temporary one that was assigned to me was a guy from Texas... he said he came here because they didn't have room for him and he heard we needed the doctors. Why Canada over any other US state? Hard to say, but I'm not going to complain.
- ProjectArcturis 8mo agoThis kind of Level 1 analysis misses what is really going on. "Brain drain" is not really a concern. There is a tremendous glut of talented biomedical researchers. We have been overproducing them for decades. Even before the cuts, it was incredibly hard to go from a PhD to a tenured professorship. 5-15% would achieve that, depending how you measured. The cuts have made things worse, but European/RoW funding is even stingier. It's not like there's a firehose of funding drawing away researchers. There may be a few high-profile departures, but the US is still the least-bad place to find research money. We need to produce fewer PhDs and provide better support for those we do produce.
- tensor 8mo agoThis kind of analysis isn't much better. First, many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]). Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no longer safe for a great many of the scientists that would normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that aren't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US has suddenly become a very undesirable place to live if you value these things. Third, scientific freedom is under attack in the US. And there is nothing scientists value more than the freedom to pursue their research. My take is that most Americans can't imagine a world where they are not number one. But that is a very naive idea. [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-development/news/2025/12/government-of-canada-launches-new-initiative-to-recruit-world-leading-researchers.html https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-develop...
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 8mo ago>scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal two election results in the past ten years have apparently failed to teach y'all wholesome folx that many people around you are secretly unwholesome.
- engineer_22 8mo agoWhat do you recommend
- tehjoker 8mo agoI understand that the government is now too coarse to use soft power, and maybe it wasn't even working as well as it used to, but it is bizarre to undercut the sciences when their military capability is derived almost entirely from high technology since they can't field or lose lots of soldiers. I get they want to be Rome 3.0 or some bullshit, but Rome was famous for investing in engineering. A bunch of dunces. Or perhaps they are so far up their own assholes that they think AI is going to do research by itself with no funding from now on. Ironically enough, the guy that coined the term "soft power" recently died. He did his doctorate with Henry Kissinger.
- zaptheimpaler 8mo agoThey're happy to fund the military, they have a list of words [1][2] that they use to flag grant applications, including "female", "bias", "political" and others. Cuts seem to be directed at biomedicine, health and social studies. [1] https://grant-witness.us/ https://grant-witness.us/ [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-fede...
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- tehjoker 8mo agoThat's true, I've seen it in action, but at the same time... the number of grants and the rate of grant issuance has been very slow. They aren't using a scalpel to eliminate all the "woke". They are also attacking Harvard, the number 1 science university in the US. There's a scandal at Harvard last month where the Dean of Science was fired because he was protesting against eliminating graduate students in the sciences (they eventually settled for something like firing him and 50% cuts to my knowledge). I have no love for Harvard by the way, I never thought I would be defending them.
- Joel_Mckay 8mo agoThe Harvard budget alone is larger than most other countries. Some things are more important than grant money, and don't necessarily improve with larger budgets. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lai9QhBibk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lai9QhBibk
- beloch 8mo ago>"Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired." ---------------- Scientists go where science is funded. A large proportion of U.S. scientists are also immigrants, who will tend to go where immigrants are welcomed.
- inglor_cz 8mo agoNot everything is about money. The killer app of the US used to be that the US was rich and welcoming to foreigners and politically quite free. China or Saudi Arabia can wave their money around, but at least some people will be repulsed by the obligation to keep their mouths shut and praise the Dear Leader. Their cultural insularity does not help either. You can live in China, but you will never be accepted as Chinese. The US was quite unique (together with Canada, Australia etc.) that it was able and willing to accept you as an American even with a funny accent, as long as you wanted to be one.
- dheera 8mo ago> Not everything is about money. It is when researchers can't make enough money to eat and live, which is an actual reality in the US right now. Researchers at top institutions often make less than Uber drivers. There are other countries where you can live on less and the government isn't dipping their hands into your pockets every 5 seconds.
- inglor_cz 8mo agoSome people will switch careers, but I do doubt that in an economy with very low unemployment amongst qualified people, any actual scientist will literally starve and become homeless.
- hsuduebc2 8mo agoWell yea, but I suppose that exceptional molecular biologist can use his potential somewhere else better than as a lower manager in a corporate.
- raffael_de 8mo agoWhat country is it attracting then?
- Mars008 8mo agoIt's hard to tell. The Guardian is UK based, but for some reason the use word 'we'. But actually China and India may be retracting some of their talents back. Unlikely many go back to EU/UK socialism.
- Joel_Mckay 8mo agoAnywhere else is a low-bar... probably shouldn't go searching for it =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdVB-R6Duso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdVB-R6Duso
- agumonkey 8mo agoIt's also repelling their own citizen. Lots of videos of people being fed up with the ambient angst in the US any time they come back from another country.
- roughly 8mo agoThis is a thing that you don’t notice until you experience it. No more compelling argument that we’re doing something wrong as a nation than that first time stepping onto an American street after visiting a civilized country.
- robk 8mo agoI live in a civilized European country and gravely miss the freedom of speech I had in the USA that I don't here. I'm terrified one tweet will get me jailed for 30 months.
- seattle_spring 8mo agoConsidering the degree of "hate speech" a Tweet would have to contain to land someone in jail includes direct incitements of violence, I'm scared to ask what sort of opinion you'd like to share that you feel you legally cannot. The claim that you get thrown in jail in London "just for sharing your opinion" is a myth, unless your opinion is, "round up everyone of race X, put them in a hotel, and burn the hotel down."
- juniperus 8mo agothe amount of people arrested for online activity in England is not the best example to use if you're arguing that such events are rare. otherwise, your incredulity to such a belief is why the far-right continues to gain a constituency in Europe and elsewhere. so instead of dismissing the concern, which fuels the far-right, you could just acknowledge it is a real thing people are experiencing, and that it doesn't help a liberal free society to criminalize thoughts that are unsavory to the political elite.
- wewewedxfgdf 8mo agoIt's incredibly inexpensive for countries to import that top talent into their own universities. But governments just don't see the value, for the most part.
- jeffbee 8mo agoIt is not a "brain drain" when you declare war on science and fire all of your scientists. There must be some other phrase for that.
- pesus 8mo agoBrain flush?
- layer8 8mo agoBrainwashing? ;)
- SanjayMehta 8mo agoBrain douche.
- lgleason 8mo agoIf you create an economic incentive to go into math an science you will have no trouble attracting good people. But, for years, it has been a race to the bottom where the US over-produced researchers, scientists etc.. But then to put salt in the wound it also imported more of them to drive the wages down further. As more people have flooded in to STEM at bargain basement prices, the quality of the research has also gone down. All of this was by design so that big corporate interests could get cheap labor and increase profits. Since the US government is for sale to the highest bidder, and the corporations have no loyalty to the country, they will feed off the host until it can no longer sustain itself and then look for another host to feed off of.
- pitched 8mo agoThis is the most interesting part of the way the US government is structured. Where the federal government has very little power compared to the states, each state is competing for talent. Like how Texas is more conservative and California is more liberal. May the best policies win. People will move to whichever set of laws better produces success. I don’t think that as true as it once was though.
- servo_sausage 8mo agoI don't think it works out in practice; people voted based on identity but move based on economics. And identity is mostly upbringing... You don't get mostly neutral people moving around to the best system, you get opinionated people trying to bring their preferred system to the better opportunity.
- lvl155 8mo agoI am pretty sure we are still attracting top talents. We are not, however, attracting good to mediocre talents. Is that a good thing? What’s going to happen to all these mediocre graduate programs spread out all over the country where they simply existed to satiate foreign demand?
- xiphias2 8mo agoUSA is still one of the top countries for scientists. Just as an example Europe had a few years of exporting the best GLP-1 drugs (finally something in which Europe was leader in science), Eli Lily quickly took it over. In software San Francisco is still the top for AI research: even when Peter Steinberger didn't know what he will do with OpenClaw, it was clear to him that the only place to move to was USA. Terrence Tao was a good example of what happens when an exceptionally smart person stops getting funded by an American University: not moving to another country, but got VC money and created a new company. USA politics is looked at so closely, because it matters and changes and still more democratic than most countries in the world even though democracy is a mess (as it's supposed to be).
- nerevarthelame 8mo agoTerrence Tao expressed sentiments are at odds with you and which align with the article: > The U.S. used to be sort of the default, the no brainer, option. If you got an offer from a top U.S. university, this was like almost the best thing that could happen to you as an academic ... If it's just a less welcoming, atmosphere for science in general here, the best and brightest may not automatically come to the US as they have for decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skWt_PZosik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skWt_PZosik
- xiphias2 8mo agoNot really, one is complaining, the other (which the article's title says) is voting with their feet. He could have gone to literally any country/university in the world and he chose not to. Also in the USA you just wait 4 (or 8) years and you have a new president. In many other countries you don't have that luxury.
- shadowofneptune 8mo agoThat is also the curse of the US now. If your funding will only last a single presidential term, you can't ensure a livelihood. The instability of US budgeting and the wildly different priorities of incoming presidents is a huge source of uncertainty and cost.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- dlev_pika 8mo agoMeanwhile I’ve been getting Migrate to Canada ads in my IG feed…
- te_chris 8mo agoNationalists are all the same and all hate the country as it is vs how they imagine it to be - see the uk brexiters ignoring science and the creative industries. Most of all they hate intelligent people as they see their schemes for what they are.
- ghostclaw-cso 8mo ago[flagged]
- panny 8mo ago>As Trump slashes science funding, young researchers flee abroad. Without solid innovation, the US could cease to have the largest biomedical ecosystem in the world. Oh no. We might lose the largest most expensive medical system in the world. I would sure hate to have an affordable lightweight medical system. I mean, aren't we doomed if we can't spend another five trillion dollars on a covid shot. Think of the poor pharma companies.
- lateforwork 8mo agoIn all important areas such as clean energy, fusion energy, biotechnology and AI the Chinese government is heavily investing in and pushing Chinese companies to lead the world. China Is Outspending the U.S. to Achieve the ‘Holy Grail’ of Clean Energy: Fusion See: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/climate/china-us-fusion-energy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/climate/china-us-fusion-e... America's lead in biotechnology is slipping, while China has made synthetic biology a national priority. In the iGEM international competition, only one American school finished in top 10, seven were from China. See: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teens-may-have-come-up-with-new-way-to-detect-treat-lyme-disease-60-minutes-transcript/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teens-may-have-come-up-with-new... Or watch video: https://youtu.be/VEj5I4CBbgU https://youtu.be/VEj5I4CBbgU
- mr_00ff00 8mo agoBut related to this article, is China winning in terms of accumulating talent? I don’t think people all over Europe/Asia/Africa migrate to China. If they succeed, it’s purely with their own talent. The US still has that advantage even if it has less of it, unless I am mistaken.
- conception 8mo agoWell, China has a tremendous pool of people to pull talent from. Do they need immigrants? Or just continue the path of “building it in-house”?
- rayiner 8mo agoChina’s pool is smaller than it seems. China has pursued a development trajectory that focuses on the leading provinces first. That is reasonable. Better to get Beijing and a few other key places to the leading edge first, instead of trying to incrementally move all 1.4 billion people together at the same pace. But the flip side of that is that China’s talent pool is a lot smaller, in practice, than 1.4 billion. Because vast swaths of the country are still basically the third world. Tellingly, China does not participate in the international PISA assessment across the whole country: https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/are-chinas-students-really-number-one https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/are-chinas-students-re.... It released scores for four wealthy provinces back in 2018. They were very high, but there’s obviously a reason China doesn’t test and publish scores for the whole country.
- Herring 8mo agoHurting yourself to hurt others is a well-established political practice in America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_in_swimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_in_swimming
- claudeomusic 8mo agoBut we’re great now I thought?
- newfriend 8mo agoFor an American startup/technology forum, this place is remarkably anti-America, anti-capitalism, anti-AI, anti-crypto.
- deaux 8mo agoGee, wonder what caused that change over the last decade. Really can't think of a reason. And just in case you truly believe it's something like "Russian bots" - and I hope you don't - you need to check out the change in the bigger public's opinion on big tech companies, and why it has changed. It's far from just HN.
- lugu 8mo agoI would say quite the opposite. Have you considered the position of the general population in your assessment?
- ozgrakkurt 8mo agoI don’t think many educated and working class people are pro- those things at this time
- alistairSH 8mo agoThere’s a massive difference between being patriotic and being pro-Meta or pro-Google. And given recent bribes from tech leaders to Trump, I’d argue being anti-BigTech is actually patriotic.
- chmorgan_ 8mo ago[dead]
- mjcohen 8mo agoTrump is clearly winning his war on America.
- shynome 8mo agonow chinese know kill line in us, chinese will not go to us again.
- black_13 8mo ago[dead]
- dash2 8mo agoThe article provides absolutely no data to support any claims of a brain drain away from America, towards Europe or anywhere else. You’d think they would have found evidence if there was any. So after reading this, my prior on substantial numbers of researchers moving to Europe has gone down. There is an obvious plausible reason why there might not be much brain drain to Europe: salaries are much lower there, because Europe is poorer. Academics love to believe they don’t care about money, and Guardian readers love to believe that the US is doomed by its moral failings. I’ll believe both those things when I see evidence for them.
- frm88 8mo agoThe article provides absolutely no data to support any claims of a brain drain away from America, towards Europe or anywhere else. There are no actual numbers for emigree PhDs. Government losses across all agencies are some 10900 scientists [0] or ~14%. Whether they retire, emigrate or no longer do science doesn't matter for the outcome. [0]https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-government-has-lost-more-10-000-stem-ph-d-s-trump-took-office https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-government-has-l...
- dash2 8mo ago... It matters for Europe! Also, do we know they aren't still in the US university system doing science?
- pvaldes 8mo ago> You’d think they would have found evidence if there was any. Maybe somebody closed all public scientific databases, all government science webs, and harassed or fired thousands of scientists. That would explain the lack of public scientific data. > salaries are much lower there, because Europe is poorer. Salaries are just a number and should be always taken in the context of coast of living. Europe is diverse, with poor places and rich places. You can live like a king with a worse salary in many places. In the more expensive ones you will pay more taxes, but receive more services in exchange. You will enjoy 30 days of paid holidays a year, and a very diverse continent to roam free on that time. You will enjoy also universal healthcare, affordable groceries, a near to zero expectation of your children being murdered at the school, and much more options to choose a political party that suits your own interests if you don't like the current situation. Europe has many problems and lots of idiomatic and cultural walls, of course; but at this moment US just looks like a terrible place to live or even visit. The government is purposely doing all that they can to fleece every citizen and burn down the entire place.
- dyauspitr 8mo agoIt’s less brain drain and more brain blockades. For now smart people still want to come here. We have to end our insane policy of preventing them from doing so.
- niemandhier 8mo agoI keep meeting Stanford grads that interview for jobs in Germany, most are women or non-Caucasian. Germany is not even an attractive country to work in at the moment, so I assume it’s even more pronounced elsewhere.
- randomNumber7 8mo agoI think it's not that simple. If science comes to the conclusion that there are 36 human genders the top talent might also look for s.th. more sane.
- iriisatremotely 8mo ago[dead]
- pixelsub 8mo ago[dead]
- smashah 8mo agoWell deserved.
- dennysora 8mo agoI’ve heard that, at companies developing AI right now, the core R&D staff are mostly ethnic Chinese. I’m not sure whether that’s accurate. I’ve also heard that meetings are conducted in English, but that all private discussions happen in Chinese, so managers have no idea what they’re talking about. That said, Chinese really is hard… In contrast, English is simple enough, so it’s more efficient to learn, and it’s easier to attract talent. As for whether this “stifles” anything, I think China mainly relies on its own people. Most of the talent who go to China still speak English anyway. On top of that, China’s speech control is genuinely annoying. Though I also find it annoying that Threads arbitrarily suppresses speech, too. In areas like energy, semiconductors (Taiwan—although some production/deployment is currently in China, but it’s hard to say what might happen and when), and AI, China does feel unsettlingly powerful right now. In democratic countries, just getting approval for a new energy facility can turn into years of arguing; in China, they can build several in the same time. By the way, I’m Taiwanese.
- _DeadFred_ 8mo agoIn the 1990s we used to build great talent out of randos from other industries. It was why we used to white board tests, to see who had the right logic capabilities to be trained up in computer programming.
- metalman 8mo agoAmerica had the best talent, because they grew there own, from the best educated and funded research institutions and paid them well, and there were many large companys founded and run by engineers and scientists. Also they educated foriegn students, the brightest of the bright who were happy to stay and contribute as it was by far the best personal option to stay and enjoy the results of high tech society, safe, clean, prosperous......sane. Now there are more better options everywhere else, and as america is very strongly tilted towards maximum profit at any cost to society,so they are getting a lot of people comming who think thats great, and have lots of ideas and energy to put into maximising the money, now, right this very second, more money!,aaaaaand now,more!