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I'm curious, as you seemed to have brought up being bilingual several times -- are multilingual (human lingual) programmers rare? I have the impression that the

I'm curious, as you seemed to have brought up being bilingual several times -- are multilingual (human lingual) programmers rare? I have the impression that they're exceedingly easy to find. Or, are you only talking about "foreigners" (who look foreign) who speak the host language?

patio11 18y ago
It depends on the language combination. A lot of people told me to study Chinese -- economy of the future and all. My feeling is that there are a lot of Chinese people who speak acceptable English. However, in a major metropolitan area like Nagoya, you could fit all programmers who are functionally bilingual in a room the size of my kitchen. (It might have actually happened once. Three in one place, crikey.) There is a certain benefit to having one token white guy around who speaks Japanese, too, but I've got higher ambitions in life than being the token white guy. Besides, every organization only needs one token white guy, but e.g. my employers would hire twelve clones of me for bilingualism if they could. [Edit: which reminds me. Here's my algorithm for ranking language choices for anyone looking for career prospects: sum(trade between your country and of all countries speaking that language) / sum(number of Americans who speak the language better than you + number of relevant foreigners who speak English better than you speak their language). The languages that consistently top this heuristic are Korean, Japanese, and maybe Chinese. If you're looking for employment in government, Arabic and possibly Russian are good bets, too. I'd stay away from Spanish for career purposes. I love being able to speak it, don't get me wrong, but you're asking to compete with literally millions of natively bilingual American Hispanics and competing with millions is not the point of the exercise.
- whacked_new 18y ago
  Interesting perspective; still surprising: I am trilingual in two languages that you have listed, and somehow I feel that there are plenty of people like me, such that if there was any demand at all it would have been easily and quickly filled. The programmers who are functionally bilingual in your kitchen, were they all white? Frankly my feeling is that a Japanese, fully bilingual with English, would still be at a disadvantage to a Caucasian who speaks English and passable Japanese. That is to say, P(speaks English + Japanese | Japanese) > P(speaks English + Japanese | Caucasian American), which makes the latter more expensive, or am I mistaken? I was once advised that to make myself competitive with multilingualism I should study law, and I thought, if that's really what it takes, then, whatever.

patio11 18y ago

It depends on the language combination. A lot of people told me to study Chinese -- economy of the future and all. My feeling is that there are a lot of Chinese people who speak acceptable English. However, in a major metropolitan area like Nagoya, you could fit all programmers who are functionally bilingual in a room the size of my kitchen. (It might have actually happened once. Three in one place, crikey.) There is a certain benefit to having one token white guy around who speaks Japanese, too, but I've got higher ambitions in life than being the token white guy. Besides, every organization only needs one token white guy, but e.g. my employers would hire twelve clones of me for bilingualism if they could. [Edit: which reminds me. Here's my algorithm for ranking language choices for anyone looking for career prospects: sum(trade between your country and of all countries speaking that language) / sum(number of Americans who speak the language better than you + number of relevant foreigners who speak English better than you speak their language). The languages that consistently top this heuristic are Korean, Japanese, and maybe Chinese. If you're looking for employment in government, Arabic and possibly Russian are good bets, too. I'd stay away from Spanish for career purposes. I love being able to speak it, don't get me wrong, but you're asking to compete with literally millions of natively bilingual American Hispanics and competing with millions is not the point of the exercise.

whacked_new 18y ago
Interesting perspective; still surprising: I am trilingual in two languages that you have listed, and somehow I feel that there are plenty of people like me, such that if there was any demand at all it would have been easily and quickly filled. The programmers who are functionally bilingual in your kitchen, were they all white? Frankly my feeling is that a Japanese, fully bilingual with English, would still be at a disadvantage to a Caucasian who speaks English and passable Japanese. That is to say, P(speaks English + Japanese | Japanese) > P(speaks English + Japanese | Caucasian American), which makes the latter more expensive, or am I mistaken? I was once advised that to make myself competitive with multilingualism I should study law, and I thought, if that's really what it takes, then, whatever.