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I suspect at the start he would have done code reviews because otherwise he couldn't know if the other party [the consulting firm] was a competent entity. I'm

I suspect at the start he would have done code reviews because otherwise he couldn't know if the other party [the consulting firm] was a competent entity. I'm sure once he figured out their level of competence and how far he could trust their agency [e.g. How much direction they needed to succeed], I suspect that is really when the slacking started. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the second or third consulting company he had tried. Honestly, I doubt that process took more than 3-6 months. Do you find most Chinese programmers don't know written English?

thaumasiotes 12y ago
All (recent) chinese people are supposed to know English (it's a mandatory subject at all levels of schooling), but fluency levels vary widely. It's generally not a big focus for engineers. At the startup I worked at last year, the founders had decent english and the employees knew almost nothing. The college students I know can communicate at an acceptable level, but (a) they are still highly prone to misunderstandings unless I make the effort to use simple phrasing and (b) there's a huge selection bias in which people I'm on speaking terms with. I do find that for almost all the chinese people I know, it's more effective for me to communicate with them in written chinese (but, sadly, spoken english, as my spoken chinese is appalling). So summing up... there might be a decent population of chinese programmers who can communicate in written english, but there's a much, much larger population that can't.
- opendais 12y ago
  Fair enough. :) I guess the much, much larger population is going to make less money if they do outsourced/consulting time work since they have to deal with a middleman because of it [who will take a cut and do project management/sales].
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    Also, this may sound weird, but jobs speaking english can pay better than programming jobs, which will cut down on the number of english-speaking programmers.
    - opendais 12y ago
      That sounds very weird but different job markets I suppose. Why do you think that is?
      - thaumasiotes 12y ago
        Jobs speaking english involve serving english-speaking foreigners, who have money.

thaumasiotes 12y ago

All (recent) chinese people are supposed to know English (it's a mandatory subject at all levels of schooling), but fluency levels vary widely. It's generally not a big focus for engineers. At the startup I worked at last year, the founders had decent english and the employees knew almost nothing. The college students I know can communicate at an acceptable level, but (a) they are still highly prone to misunderstandings unless I make the effort to use simple phrasing and (b) there's a huge selection bias in which people I'm on speaking terms with. I do find that for almost all the chinese people I know, it's more effective for me to communicate with them in written chinese (but, sadly, spoken english, as my spoken chinese is appalling). So summing up... there might be a decent population of chinese programmers who can communicate in written english, but there's a much, much larger population that can't.

opendais 12y ago
Fair enough. :) I guess the much, much larger population is going to make less money if they do outsourced/consulting time work since they have to deal with a middleman because of it [who will take a cut and do project management/sales].
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  Also, this may sound weird, but jobs speaking english can pay better than programming jobs, which will cut down on the number of english-speaking programmers.
  - opendais 12y ago
    That sounds very weird but different job markets I suppose. Why do you think that is?
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      Jobs speaking english involve serving english-speaking foreigners, who have money.