> “Wang said the salaries of his 40-person team for two years cost $700,000.”
Good luck with that. If you’re averaging $10k per employee per year over the long term, I guarantee anyone with the ability to be a good engineer is still going to come to the US where they can make orders of magnitude more.
Maybe in terms of total dollar amount, but what happens when you take into consideration the cost of living in each country (including subsidies, etc)? I don't know the answer...just talking out loud. I have no idea how far $10k will take you in China.
A lot of people make a tricky mistake when adjusting for COL: investment power. Because people can save up and then move, being able to save 10% of a big salary is worth a lot more than being able to save 10% of a small salary. That's why people in California can still beat tech workers in other places in the long run even though the local COL depresses their standard of living down to almost nothing (next to what their pay could buy them elsewhere).
> The pay discrepancy between Silicon Valley and China has narrowed since he launched in 2014, especially at top-tier firms. Wang’s engineers now make 70 percent to 80 percent of what they could get in America.
So it was 700k in 2014, but now it's 70-80% of what US people would make.
There are many who know and understand that decision, and still move back, so they must (at least some) be factoring things like this into the decision to move back. Perhaps they feel that they can make a difference or perhaps some other reason, but the numbers in the article show that they are going back.
It's probably because there is a healthy tech industry in China and it's home.
If could take classes in China and possibly get a job making 50% more there, I'd probably come back to the US instead. A 50% raise isn't enough to justify being half a world away from my family.
Until you realize they are 4 times more likely to die in a car accident in China vs the USA. If you are just concerned about survivability, this isn’t a good bet.
Probably has to do with people not wearing seatbelts. I remember years ago the taxis had covers on back seats so you couldn't even reach the buckles. Then Shenzhen enforced belts on all seats and things got better there. I wonder if it spread to other cities.
There is more: bad roads, lack of traffic law enforcement, weird liability laws that make fatalities more appealing than injuries, lack of liability at all in many cases, etc...
As someone not actively involved in crime, gangs, etc. my chance of getting murdered in the US is roughly zero
But I do have political beliefs which would put me under threat in China were I to voice them or act on them. And I would want to raise my children in a place where they won't be discriminated against for being LGBT (although discrimination still happens in the US, at least you can be out and proud. In China, to my knowledge homosexuality is very much "don't ask don't tell")
Healthcare is actually pretty good in big Chinese cities. China is actually getting close to universal insurance coverage. At this pace, it seems like the US might end up being the last country on Earth without some sort of government-backed universal coverage scheme.
Renting an apartment in Shanghai isn't necessarily that expensive, it just costs a lot if you want to buy one.
E.g. here are listings for 1000 yuan per month or less: https://sh.zu.fang.com/house/c20-d21000-n31/ I wouldn't believe any of the other claims made (e.g. the size is probably exaggerated), but behind each of these listings is someone willing to actually offer living space for that price.
The highest price category on that site is 8000 yuan or more, which is $1163.2 according to WolframAlpha.
Real "bottom" for non-shared apartment in Shanghai is ~3000 rmb (~$500) for a smallish place with a 1+ hour commute. Rents in the downtown are around 10000+ rmb.
I paid 1600 RMB per month for 18 m² in Minhang, fully furnished, with cooktop in a corner of the living room and own bathroom. Your "bottom" is not the actual bottom. Those places for 1000 RMB or less are super tiny (as I said, the size on the listing is exaggerated), but they do exist.
If it was just salary, they'd stay here. What's new is the general anti-Chinese climate, where they're suspected of working for Chinese interests, with people reviewing your research and trying to find anything hinting that you might have send files or blueprints to China. I'd also move back if I worked in such conditions. Plus you'd have family and friends back home.
"Wang Meng Qiu, a startup founder who graduated from Stanford University with a doctorate in computer science, held jobs at Facebook and Twitter in Silicon Valley before he moved to the outskirts of Shanghai to launch his own drone company, Zero Zero Robotics.
Wang said the salaries of his 40-person team for two years cost $700,000."
Generously assuming that the full 40-person team didn't onboard until year 2, that's an annual average salary of only 17,500 USD per person. I know the software development labour is cheaper in China, but quick comparisons indicate that something is off with this figure. Maybe most of the 40-person team are on an assembly line?
> that's an annual average salary of only 17,500 USD per person.
That is realistic and in line with fresh out of college Computer Science graduate market rate. I know that because I went to an undergraduate CS degree in China.
Developers are working harder in China too. The famous 996 work schedule has been prevalent in Internet software startups in China.[1] Hence the anti-996 movement.
tsignhua CS grads are either going to study abroad or doing investment banking jobs which pays more at entry level. Same with top tier university grads.
Are they actually productive for 72 hours per week (9am-9pm 6 days per week) though? At some point wouldn't the burnout make them only as productive as someone working maybe 50 hours per week but with time to learn and relax?
But also, if 996 includes things like studying to become a better programmer, taking breaks to get coffee, etc. then maybe a lot of us on HN are working 996, if we include our own time we spend learning.
The most concerning quote: "About 80 percent of Chinese students who get degrees abroad now go back — up from about 33 percent in 2007, according to China’s Ministry of Education. Some 15 percent take jobs in China’s booming tech sector."
Attracting top global talent has always been a competitive advance for America, and it's not a good sign for our economy if we can't retain people that we are educating here.
It's difficult to blame Chinese students for not wanting to stay when they're being met with outright hostile rhetoric from the political establishment. Economic considerations completely aside, no one wants to live and work in that kind of environment.
No want wants to live in that kind of environment?
In the US, Trump says mean things about certain types of immigrants.
In China, you can be jailed with no due process for speaking out about human rights abuses. Also, better hope you're not in a religious minority. Don't say anything bad about the government, because they're watching you!
The hostile environment for ethnic Chinese people (especially academicians) in the US is about more than, and predates, Trump's tweets. https://supchina.com/sinophobia-tracker/
It includes visa restrictions and harassment (e.g., computer seizures, pressuring your job to fire you) from agencies like the FBI and NIH. It also impacts people who have no connection to China, like the Taiwanese Wen Ho Lee.
When I was living in China this didn't bother most of the Han Chinese I met. Most of them were so concerned about lifting their families out of poverty and providing for their future that if you said to them "but you can't speak out about human rights abuses" they'd just look at you like "why the hell would I want to do that".
Maybe they don't talk about it because they know they are not allowed to talk about it.
I knew a Chinese exchange student who would debate all sorts of things, but when you brought up the Chinese government she would come to a hard stop and say "I don't talk about that."
It's probably smart if you're from an authoritarian country.
> I knew a Chinese exchange student who would debate all sorts of things, but when you brought up the Chinese government she would come to a hard stop and say "I don't talk about that."
If she's considering immigrating to the United States at any point in the future, she would be wise to not debate anything that has to do with the United States, in any electronically recorded medium.
All visa/status adjustment applicants now have to turn over their social media identities. It would be prudent for her to not express a viewpoint[1] that might have an adverse impact on her immigration.
[1] What are those viewpoints? We don't know - CBP won't tell anyone. And whatever they will tell, may very well change in the future.
There's a legitimate point to view according to which democracy and the right to vote don't really matter that much. At the end of the day people want to live meaningful, fulfilling lives, and there's little reason to think that living under an authoritarian regime per se has any impact on your life's meaning or affects one's ability to pursue intrinsically rewarding activities (unlike, say, poverty, which does pose a genuine obstacle, because it forces one to become someone else's machine for a big portion of one's life). If anything it may have a salutary effect by discouraging people from pursuing politics or engaging in political conversations (which is the unmeaningful activity par excellence, as additive as video games, while at the same time carrying far more danger because one tends not to feel guilty about wasting one's time on it).
Maybe you should actually spend some time in China before making silly assumptions.
The Chinese government is not overly concerned with individual citizens sharing anti-government sentiment. It's not a problem for most people that aren't activists. Most people are concerned with much more basic aspects of life... supporting their families, getting good jobs, time for leisure...
It doesn't mean it's acceptable, but assuming that every Chinese citizen lives in fear of the government cracking down on their political complaints is totally unfounded. The exchange student you know could just as well have been sick of westerners thinking they know more about the CCP than someone raised in China.
The Chinese government has been actively monitoring [0] all popular online messaging platforms, and shutting down any opinion that is considered by the government anti-government.
There is also some new network security law [1] that enforces companies, from ISP to website operators, to self-censor, and to pinpoint every action from every user, such that officials could collect the data as they wish [2].
The whole process is already well organized and somewhat automated. Now that the social credit score system is being deployed to more major cities, the threat of free speech is climbing to the next level.
You may say they don't fear. But I argue that many Chinese citizens don't even realize why they feel very uncomfortable and insecure to talk about politics. They think people who voice out are stupid.
The reason deep down, is fear.
> In the US, Trump says mean things about certain types of immigrants.
If you think the extent of America's hostility against certain types of immigrants is limited to Dump Truck saying mean things on Twitter, I'm not sure what to tell you. [1]
DT doesn't exist in a vaccum. There's a powerful, xenophobic political movement that has made him president, and there's a mainstream political party that wins more elections than it loses, that panders to that constituency.
[1] I also find it incredibly ironic that you are dimissing anti-immigrant sentiment as 'it's just words' - as in - words aren't a big deal, while in the same breath, pointing out that words are in fact a big deal, because there are many that you can't say in China. [2]
[2] Are 'just words' a big deal or not? You can't have it both ways.
> There's a powerful, xenophobic political movement that has made him president, and there's a mainstream political party that wins more elections than it loses, that panders to that constituency.
So very powerful, winning so many elections, yet they barely made a dent in even just legal immigration - it is still above 1 million per year, and the white population went from 85% in 1960, to 63% in 2010 [1] - a period during which the party that panders to xenophobia won more than half the elections, as you say.
Meanwhile the non-xenophobic China has 1 million immigrants total, and is 91% Han-Chinese [2] - homogeneity and demographic isolation beyond anything depicted in works criticizing fascism like Man in the High Castle.
That the country taking in the most immigrants, and so rapidly changing its demographics, gets labeled as the racist xenophobic one, while the closed ethno-state gets no criticism of its immigration policy, is a sick joke.
> That the country taking in the most immigrants, and so rapidly changing its demographics, gets labeled as the racist xenophobic one,
If you read the entirety of my post, you may notice that I did not label the United States as a xenophobic country.
I labeled a particular, but currently politically powerful subset of the population as a xenophobic one. If you doubt that it exists, you can find a good representation of it at your nearest MAGA rally.
If you have any immigrant friends, I recommend bringing them with you... And ask them what they think of what they'll see. They may find their eyes more persuasive than your assurances that everything is fine.
I'm not saying everything is fine. I am saying that xenophobia hasn't had any political power in the US for the last half century - both legal and illegal immigration numbers can attest to that.
There may be a lot of xenophobic rhetoric, but actions speak louder than words, and what precious little action there was (bans for Muslim countries that account for a negligible number of immigrants, and detention of children at the border) was both very ineffective and very politically damaging - the exact opposite of what one would do if one wanted to limit immigration.
You're missing reductions in visa quotas, detention and strong-armed voluntary deportation of asylum seekers, increased raids and deportation of illegal aliens, significant slow-down in legal immigration processing, an vast increase in demand for supporting evidence in immigration petitions, threats against DACA immigrants, threats of Mexico border closures.
All that was accomplished in the three years that this rhetoric has gone mainstream - and not at 'great expense of public opinion'. I don't think a single American has had their mind changed on this subject, since the last election.
What do you expect 2020 will bring, in the event of another Trump victory?
There's a very clear message to immigrants, here. A lot of people think they are the cause of the country's ills, that they want them gone, and they have just gotten started on this project.
All these things I am missing, yet they haven't put a dent into any immigration numbers I was able to find [1]. In fact, "The number of people who became U.S. citizens reached a five-year high in fiscal 2018" [2]. As for the increased deportations: "In 2017, the Trump administration deported 295,000 immigrants, the lowest total since 2006." [3]
So to answer your question, in the event of another Trump victory, I expect immigration to the US to continue at near-record rates, while they continue to be called xenophobic.
This statement seems true without context but false with context.
Allow me to provide the context:
If you're a Chinese internantional student living in the USA where the #1 guy in the country uses Identity Politics as its arsenal to win and lead the country, you, as an outsider, will feel insecure w.r.t of races.
If you're a Chinese international student coming back home to your country of origin, you're used to the situations there: that's what you were born with and that's your culture that you're used to for 18 years of your life. I mean, you're still free to roam the streets, eat any food, continue with your life as-is. It's not like you live in a jail.
If you're a typical Americans who doesn't like the government to limit virtually anything (yes, I'm dead serious, Americans want everything and they don't like rules), you probably look at other countries as some sort of un-democratic, nazi-like state. I've seen a few people here criticized Singapore! If you go to Singapore, there's only a limited number of citizens who dislike the leaders.
Context is very important when comparing two countries/cultures.
For example, I live in a no-gun country so I scratched my head hard whenever I see mass-shooting in the US every week killing your children just because folks love their guns. That's just... crazy.
Step inside a land/house by accident and gets killed by the homeowner's M14 is just... nuts (yes I know I'm exaggerating a bit).
Probably a case of the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Within the past 100 years we had internment camps for Japanese Americans so if I were an outsider from a country that we have a shaky relationship with, the thought of that or being accused of spying probably wouldn't be too far off in my mind.
In any country, every body say something about human rights but at the end of the day countries implement human-right laws/regulations as they see fit.
What about those drones the Americans sent to kill random people?
What about police brutality?
Per-individual base, human also tend to use phrases like "human rights" to cover up their problems. I find it interesting that in the US, the people argue a lot about Abortion vs Right-to-Live meanwhile in California, they glamorized Sex for all ages. American Pies and a bunch of other chick-flick/high-school football movies that often highlights sex-on-prom-day. Social pressure of having sex between unmarried couple. I wonder if those contributes to the need for abortion just because they're not ready.
Fun fact: Chewing gums do not rot as they are rubber like car tires. And usually it is not allowed to throw car tires on the streets (learned that from a kids show recently!!)
While there is most definitely a gun issue in the USA, that Wikipedia article said less than 200 have actually died in all of those mass shootings this year. As the third most populated country with over 320 million people, the chances of being involved in a mass shooting scrape is still astronomically small compared to keeling over from a heart attack due to too much McDonalds and CNN.
"while there's an issue, but only 200 out of 300 mill people died".
You count the number of people who got killed. You should also included the number of people who "almost" got killed (paralyzed), traumatized, etc.
Somehow your statement also made the whole thing looks "insignificant". I'm not sure why that is because in other countries, there will be a huge uproar leading to change in laws and regulations to the point of banning.
And nearly 800 have been shot in mass shootings, that's wild for a country as developed as ours (and that's ignoring individual instances of gun violence, and how easy and catastrophic it makes suicide and domestic violence).
"70% gun deaths are suicides" => THIS is propaganda, give me drill-down numbers. Do you consider mass-shooting as ONE incident? how do you count the victims?
So if hundreds died due to repeated mass-shootings and only 30% of the incidents that makes gun to be a non-issue in the States? because the other 70% gun-deaths are suicides? So just because the largest piece of the Pie-chart is for "non-violent" gun-death then there is no gun-issue?
What about domestic conflicts that leads to shooting? (glad they missed ... )
Damn...
I saw Dana Loesch went on CNN one time and I saw her speaking in some sort of Townhall. She's really good at her job and the NRA should pay her TONS of money. That lady can sell you anything including MySpace.com today.
You should talk to the victims of mass-shootings and learn the truth.
Most people make decisions based on how the environment affects them personally.
The type of Chinese immigrants who are likely to get Ph.Ds and work in high tech are generally not religious minorities (if they were, they likely wouldn't have gotten that far in the educational system). They're also not particularly interested in getting involved in politics or speaking out about human rights abuses. Usually if they get to that level of education and have the choice between staying in the U.S. to work for a tech company or research lab or going back to China, it's because they've devoted their life to mastering a specific scientific or technical subject. For someone in that position, likelihood of facing employment discrimination or being deported is generally a much bigger threat than lack of political freedoms.
Selection bias is the most powerful force in nature. The U.S. benefitted very significantly from dictatorships in the 1930-80s that actively repressed academics and educated people, because it forced all of them to move to the U.S, where we welcomed them with open arms. Most of these governments wised up (or rather, facing selection bias, they were overthrown by the consequences of raping their own nations), and now most of the rest of the world is quite welcoming of people with scientific and technical knowledge. The U.S. risks going down the same path if it adopts the same attitudes that didn't work for our competitors.
I feel China's government embodies enlightened authoritarianism.
Many authoritarian governments of the past made the mistake of trying to tinker too hard with economics, with horrible results. China is run by technocrats who know how not to sabotage the money supply.
In all honesty it's even kind of going beyond that right now. You could end up being the poor innocent chinese patsy that they arrest for God knows what in some tit-for-tat power display. No one wants to be the dummy sitting in a foreign prison for 10 or 15 years while China and the US argue over their dick sizes.
As an American I'd think very carefully about working in China right now for the same reason. No matter where you are in the world, you're always breaking some law, and they can pick you up and throw the book at you to make a PR point whenever they please. Same as for a Chinese person in the US.
Feel bad, because the guys travelling to work or study really do just want to meet each other and have interesting idea exchanges, maybe make some friends, etc.
But then the political type people get involved, and it just gets a bit too complicated and you start weighing the potential risks differently.
There is literally zero precedent for what you’re talking about. Immigrants jailed in the US because of import taxes? Because of a trade rework? Never. We interred Japanese after Japan commuted one of the largest terror attacks in US history, that’s it.
>There is literally zero precedent for what you’re talking about.
That's not exactly true. While China doesn't detain US citizens (yet!) it detains several Canadian citizens presumable because the Huawei's CFO has been arrested in Canada by a US request. See https://time.com/5626289/china-canada-arrest-yantai/
Which makes things even worse - you may become a hostage due to US/China conflicts even if you happened to be a citizen of a US ally.
Would you please not create accounts to do political battle on HN? That's against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We want thoughtful conversation here, not flamewars.
No dang, I won’t stop because what I’m doing is not against the rules. This is not a political issue, it’s an issue of facts that happens to be about a political topic.
> We interred Japanese after Japan commuted one of the largest terror attacks in US history, that’s it.
1.) "We" did not inter Japanese. Those who made the rules and followed them during that time did. If by "We" you mean "Americans" then that leads to the next point...
2.) Many of the "Japanese" you say were interred were Americans. They were put into camps not because of any actual reason than how they look and where their ancestry hailed from.
3.) Imprisoning people who have done nothing wrong and have lived their lives in this country should make painfully clear the quote, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
I appreciate you replying to that poster. I don't think of it as feeding the trolls, but performing a public service. That kind of disinformative and malicious content is infectious, and it's been to everyone's detriment that it's been allow to fester in so any corners of the internet. It deserved to be called out for being morally and factually wrong.
This is just as true with Indian students. Most people don't know how hard, how expensive, and how long it takes for someone to become a naturalized citizen. Combined with hostile rhetoric towards immigrants - and staying away from politics as much as possible, this is a big factor and not always precisely targeted to "illegal" immigration, the US is just not as attractive for knowledge workers as it was 5-10 years ago.
Name a single time that Donald trump has said that he wants to prevent highly intelligent, highly educated people from other countries coming here. Name a single instance of it. I defy you to.
A quick Google search on "Chinese grad student restrictions" yielded an article [1] from December 2018 with the headline "US Considers New Restrictions on Chinese Students". The source is the US government's own news outlet, Voice of America.
If your user name is accurate then I should be welcoming you because I’ve been here a decade. Good job, you actually responded in a rational way. I hadn’t heard of this. Still, this is not what I asked for. This is not hateful rhetoric. Furthermore, it is not a statement by trump or his administration that highly skilled and educated people are not to immigrate here. It’s an expression of intent to stop Chinese people specifically from committing espionage. It has nothing to do with letting people immigrate here who actually intend on immigrating here and nothing else. The reason I’ve never heard of it is because Chinese espionage is a real problem and doesn’t fit well into the liberal dogma.
A friend's brother from India chose to study CS in Canada over the US due to the hostile political climate. He said, while he got into US schools and probably wouldn't have had any problem the idea that something could change a year or two down the line was a looming specter he'd rather just avoid.
This number does not mean much. In the old days, more Chinese students rely on full scholarship to study in the US. Now, more and more rich Chinese kids (mostly come with very poor academic background) can study in the US.
So the overall number does not reflect "brain drain", because not all international students can be counted in "global talent". A more meaningful number should only count those graduated from good universities, or having scholarship etc.
No, what parent is saying is that there is a huge difference between a rich Chinese kid studying political science and a workin class Chinese kid studying computer science on a PhD stipend. The former has boomed in the last 10 years while the latter was pretty constant for the last 20+.
Working class Chinese family in many cities now could also afford a two year master program(e.g Stony Brook U only cost me about RMB 300k for the entire Master with a decent CS program). My family is just normal working class with yearly income about 100k RMB. It’s not quite accurate to attribute all masters to “Rich” because ordinary income has been flying in China
True, but then I bet those students are still more into studying STEM than their richer counterparts who are more likely studying liberal arts or biz subjects.
I mean, this speaks to the one child policy as well as the value put on education in Asia. From a western perspective having to spend 3x annual household income on a masters degree would be absurd.
China has a very high savings rate and often a dearth of investment opportunities for that money (a bubbly real estate market or a insider trading heavy stock market), education abroad can provide pretty good returns comparatively.
I know plenty of really bright, talented and hardworking Chinese grad students who have a preference to stay in the US but the current visa situation is appalling. RFEs (request for evidence) which were once rare have become standard practice, making the wait to start a new job go up by months, with lots of stressful uncertainty as to whether or not you will be allowed to stay in the US.
There's lots of VC money in China right now and most talented Chinese tech people have offers waiting for them in China that are both very high level positions with very high compensations. So even if you want to stay in the US on the one hand you have people back home offering you insane opportunities and trying very hard to incentivize you to return, and you have the US government essentially trolling you to make a point about how unwanted you are (from their perspective).
The fact that the current US policy is effectively working hard to drive away very talented people who want to be here but have plenty of good offers elsewhere will do plenty of long term harm (for the US).
Came here with very similar stories in mind. I knew multiple graduate students from Asian countries who would've loved to find work in the USA, but they were not given nearly enough time to search, nor were they comfortable with the uncertainty and current admin's hostility to foreigners. Around half of these students quickly found jobs back home after months of failed searching here.
We are doing real harm to our aging economy by not facilitating these bright young minds to stay here.
Except the article doesn't say anything about visas or better salaries back home. Its whole slant is that apparently Chinese graduates are moving away from Silicon Valley because those darn US labor laws mean they can't work nine hours a day, six days a week, for lower wages.
The article is such a pathetically transparent piece of anti-labor rights astro-turfing: China is going to out-compete the US unless US workers can be forced to accept equally shitty working conditions, that I cannot believe Hacker News is taking it seriously.
The article does discuss increasing salaries in China.
The issue with the pace of development bring quicker doesn't just come down to labor rights. Shenzhen is the world's biggest electronics manufacturing hub, so it can be easier to iterate quickly with manufacturers there. The article does indeed interview someone who complains about Americans supposedly not working long enough hours, but that's actually a pretty widespread view in China about Westerners.
I'm sure it's a very widespread view, amongst "entrepreneurs" benefitting from a ready mass of overworked and under-compensated workers, and workers one generation past poverty who have been culturally indoctrinated with a belief that accepting extreme workloads is a sign of virtue. That doesn't excuse it being uncritically repeated by others rather than treated as the toxic and exploitative sentiment that it is.
Remote work will take it even further with remote salaries exploding.
Being underdog in expensive 1st world country vs living like a king while telecommuting from mother's country - no brainer. And human rights become a minority problem. Harsh but real.
What imhoguy said, with particular emphasis on networking. Once you go remote it's hard to stay remote -- networking and having contacts is a must.
The take away from the networking thing is Trust. You need to be able to demonstrate you can be trusted, that you're not secretly a bunch of kids in a trenchcoat or a fake, Western-sounding name that's a front end for a few Vietnamese kids putting out shit-tier code.
I see the trend in my coworkers at a big-four ad tech firm as well. At least a couple of them have gone home in the last six months (one of them had her H1B approved less than a year ago as well; and another one already is nearing her STEM OPT extension of 18 months).
I came to the US in mid 2000 to study at a fairly well-known liberal arts college (with full scholarships). I worked at a start-up in SF after graduating in late 2000--earning a decent wage of 72K/yr at that time. The CEO didn't want to go through the trouble of applying for H1B for me, so I--at the end of 18 months' OPT STEM extension; after ~2.5 years of working at that start-up---had to apply for a PhD program and started it in 2010's to keep myself in legal status. I finished my PhD in less than 5 years, and joined my current company with OPT (an extension of F1 student visa for practical training in one's major that s/he graduated from) earning low six-figure salary. When my company applied my H1B visa in 2016, it received request for evidence (the USCIS asked me to prove more that my work--data engineering--is related to computer science, which is what I studied my PhD on. I wrote up 3 pages of explanation and finally got it approved in late 2016. Because I worked pretty hard, I was able to convince my company to apply green card for me. But because of the more stringent regulations applied by Trump administration (and partly because my company acquired standard--not premium--service from the law firm that is working on my case), even after 2 years of the process, I am still at the very first step of the application process where the company is waiting for the department of labor (DoL) to provide prevailing wage determination (pretty much stating how much average worker with my salary is earning in the region where I work). I cannot move jobs when this process is pending because my H1B is tied to my employer and employers that are willing to sponsor employees green card aren't that plenty.
If I want to go back and visit my old and widowed mom in my home country, I would have to go through the interview process at the US embassy of my home country to get a new H1B stamp on my passport (the stamp expires within a year of issued date; some countries, such as India, have better deal with the US and their citizens usually get stamps valid for like 5 years or so if I remember correctly). It carries the risk that I might be denied either by the embassy or the port of entry immigration officer (none of the three that I have met so far treated me nicely--in fact, two of them were quite rude--despite me being courteous and nice to them) when I re-enter the US with H1B visa, not to mention that the cost of renewing the visa costs about $400. So, the ability to go back to home to revisit my mom as frequently as I like (without much hassle) AND the freedom to move to another job are why I really want to get permanent residency.
This is a common path for someone who goes through legal (hardcore) means to become a permanent resident in the US. I only put up with such extremely long journey to become a green card holder because my home country is not China. If it were China, I would be back there by now (I said the same to my departing coworkers). There are easier (in terms of effort/time required) ways like marrying a citizen; seeking asylum (but most of the asylum seekers are doing so for economic reason, meaning they are mostly fake although the success rate of getting approved in democrats administrations are quite high); winning Diversity Visa lottery; and having an immediate blood-relative who submitted application for your green card a decade ago. But none of them are eligible for me or I'm not interested in playing pretend-asylum seeker or paying a US citizen to marry me temporarily.
Throughout the years I've been in the US, I worked hard; paid all my taxes; never even have a minor violation such as traffic citation; donated and volunteered at various charities; donated blood more than a dozen times...
Where did you see that? USCIS in its bulletins never releases the number of years only the year it is processing. If you extrapolate the EB-1 wait for Indians, it is closer to 9 years, but most people are in EB-2/3 which is 50yrs out.
The August bulletin currently lists April 2010 for India EB-3 (October 2017 for EB-1).
If you go back through the last few years of bulletins, this 9 year wait has been relatively stable. Unless you believe there's been a massive spike in applicants in the past few years, there's no reason to believe the current wait for new applicants is 50 or 70 years.
I don't think that's quite right. Have a look at Indian EB-2 . The August 2014 bulletin [2] lists the current year as 22JAN09 which has moved to 02MAY09 in the August 2019 bulletin [1]. This means that in the last 5 years, they have moved from Jan09 -> May09. Very stable!
That is true. As a side note, I also empathize with the cries from citizens of the US who have been residing here since they were born and have been facing competition from global economy and migration.
But I think that is going to be the norm going forward (unless we come up with a better alternative to capitalism); none of us are promised abundant freedom and opportunity unless we strive and work hard to take it. In other words, prosperity does not come easy in this competitive age...
I'm a bit late to this thread, so I don't know if you'll see my comment, but I was wondering about this:
> even after 2 years of the process, I am still at the very first step of the application process where the company is waiting for the department of labor (DoL) to provide prevailing wage determination
According to the DOL website[1], the processing time for PWD (Prevailing Wage Determination) is currently (as of June 2019) is 122 days. How is it possible that they don't have the PWD done even after 2 years?
The primary beneficiary of educating foreigners in the US, is the US because of the tuition that those students pay the schools.
The so called "brain drain" is just a ploy to make you think there's a talent shortage. Companies always want cheaper labor. In actuality, US citizens will benefit from more foreigners returning to their home countries because there's more jobs available for US locals.
the simple fact is that there are more students from China to US over the years because more students can afford the tuitions, while the H1B visa quota remain the same; also there are more and more students from global as well to compete on the H1B quota.
so most of the students have to go back simply because there is not enough visa for them to stay.
while usually <20% of H1B visa goes to people from China.
https://www.vox.com/2017/4/13/15281170/china-india-tech-h1b-...
so, each year, it's probably around 10K to 15K students from China can get H1B visa, compared to a total of 300K students in China, that basically means about 90% students will have to go back.
it's more about fast growing number of students from China, also working in US requires H1B visa.
I wonder how much of this has to do with relationships?
If I was Chinese man who came to America for school and was single, I'd move back to China too. Study after study shows that the dating game odds are not good for that particular demographic in the US.
If we are to believe the charts from the article, about half of the unmarried men are illiterate. That's insane. Back to your point, Chinese who worked in the US are educated (fairly rich too) and will do just fine.
Also, don't be surprised by prices going up ten fold over a decade. Inflation in developed countries can be 2 digits per year, everything is going up crazy quick.
In the case of India, the men seek arranged marriages and bring their wives. Women (parents) express preferences like they want men settled abroad, or that they studied nursing and got the English certifications to work abroad, or are in the process of getting a permanent residency. Bad dating prospects != dying lonely.
I'm from the nordics and I when I was younger I thought of the US as the ultimate place to be.
Now, having been there quite a bit, I must say that it really doesn't impress.
The impression I got visiting the US in general (NY, Seattle, San Fran, LA), is that it all seems quite ran down, full of inequality and social problems, and lacking soul, mainly from being so consumerist.
And although I would concievebly earn a lot more working over there, the total cost of living would probably more than make up for that increase. Especially considering having kids.
My friend who is a US citizen with a well-paying engineering job in the LA area, is considering moving back. The work culture is quite hectic, and the amount of trouble they've been through with child care, insurance issues etc are making them reconsider. Not to mention that the area is super-busy and you spend a large portion of your free time in your car.
This obviously doesn't describe the entirety of the United States, but sometimes I wonder if people from the US are aware of living conditions in other western countries. I'm not so sure that the US is coming out on top any longer.
I talk to quite a lot of Americans online and many of them really are not aware, as they are programmers they generally earn good (by UK standards very good) money but then you start talking to them about what good health insurance for a family of four costs and suddenly things start to look different.
I think in some respects the US has coasted on it's former economic glory - I mean sure Silicon Valley is a mecca for folks like us but then you look at things outside of the those types of Nexuses and its a very different picture.
In Europe the UK is often regarded (sometimes appropriately) as US-lite but we are still an ocean away literally and figuratively from them in so many ways.
Given a lever between moving our politics closer to Nordic countries or the US I know which way I'd push it, I'll take a more equal fairer society with better outcomes for more people over a decrease in the already tiny chance to be super rich - its not really something I've ever really thought about as an end goal anyway - the increase in freedom would be nice but I can't imagine I'd still work insanely hard for that second billion, I'd probably potter about the world learning about history and art and working on open source.
Typically, only partially. I don't even remember what I pay now, but it's more than a couple hundred per month. And that still has out of pocket costs, deductibles, etc. It's a giant scam.
It's generally not that much money if you're single. Where it's really awful is when you have a family with kids; even with employer-based insurance, the out-of-pocket costs are very, very high. The employer will cover a lot of your insurance cost if you're single, but not so much for the rest of your family.
The US is a good place to make a lot of money if you're a single tech worker and can live cheaply and save, but it's not a good place to raise a family at all.
> I think in some respects the US has coasted on it's former economic glory - I mean sure Silicon Valley is a mecca for folks like us but then you look at things outside of the those types of Nexuses and its a very different picture.
This is not intended as a political statement or a commentary on current politics. But its often said that Americans vote against their own interests and I think this is particularly true in issues surrounding the social safety net, like universal healthcare, parental leave and other things that some other first-world countries have already figured out.
Unfortunately, this puts us at an ever growing disadvantage with the rest of the world as the only people who can attain these benefits in the US are FAANG, some fortune 500 and other megacorp employees. This also exacerbates inequality between the FAANGs and FAANGnots. (horrible pun, I know)
>The impression I got visiting the US in general (NY, Seattle, San Fram, LA), is that it all seems quite ran down, full of inequality and social problems, and lacking soul, mainly from being so consumerist.
As an American citizen, I completely agree. We can't get local infrastructure built, we can't house or feed the homeless, our roads are mostly all awful, we still have major clean water issues in a lot of places around the country, and culture is definitely being pushed out as larger cities are gentrified and sort of "segregated" by inequality.
I'd move to another country if I was wealthy enough. Taking a real look at American society by moving around, ripping off the mask of indoctrination, USA doesn't look so well and neither does its future economy. Just because we have technological gadgets coming out of every direction doesn't mean we're the ultimate place to be anymore. That consumerist fetishism has put blinders on American society.
Infrastructure is a huge one. Our transportation infrastructure is down-right third world and there is powerful opposition to doing anything about it. America is still run by a generation that worships the car and thinks any infrastructure other than roads is communism.
> The impression I got visiting the US in general (NY, Seattle, San Fran, LA), is that it all seems quite ran down, full of inequality and social problems, and lacking soul, mainly from being so consumerist.
Having lived in at least two of the cities listed above I can confirm.
Thinking about this point, some of the most valuable US based companies make gadgets and consumer items for us to play with, or services to entertain or glue us to our screens… Apple, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon (Alexa, etc).
While I can’t seem to live without my iPhone I wonder if our innovation is somewhat misdirected. Where is high-speed rail, broadly adopted forms of alternative energy, new feats of engineering in bridges and infrastructure, ambitious national projects that improve the lives of citizens and bring a higher standard of living not just to coastal cities?
Its worrying, but I wonder if we are here now, where will the US be in 20 years? No doubt the US will be still generating significant shareholder value but have a widening social inequality, crumbled infrastructure and disappearing coastal geography.
>Where is high-speed rail, broadly adopted forms of alternative energy, new feats of engineering in bridges and infrastructure, ambitious national projects that improve the lives of citizens and bring a higher standard of living not just to coastal cities?
It's in other countries. Western Europe and Japan and China have high-speed rail, with the most extensive network in Japan. Germany has an incredible amount of solar energy capacity installed, despite being pretty far north. Japan has the world's longest suspension bridge. etc. etc.
American educated Chinese could help to improve the economy and governance in China which in turn would help with trade and international relations. China coming on line as a platform for professional success with strong internal markets is potentially a very good thing for all global trade partners.
We're quite far from the scale tipping in that direction, but it makes me curious about whether the US government has the legal authority to say "educating foreigners is no longer in the national interest, therefore it is no longer a valid reason to remain in the United States" and decimate the foreign student population essentially overnight.
likely only for tenured professors and possibly universities. professors hold immense power and likely benefit greatly from someone motivated to finish + move back and earn massive sums relative to rest of population; the university i'm guessing benefits to some extent financially/prestige of said research group/professor.
edit: losers are general public, whose taxes go to public universities who then train up a generation of students who won't contribute those benefits back to the country. private universities have different funding models of course, so not so clear there.
Especially PhD students are ultra-cheap professional work force that drives forward US academic research.
Furthermore, a big reason why so many return to China, is that even if you graduate in the US, staying in the US is quite hard. The environment is not welcoming in to the newly graduated US educated foreign origin PhDs.
>Especially PhD students are ultra-cheap professional work force that drives forward US academic research.
I'm not necessarily doubting it as this is not my area of expertise, but what % of students really do "ultra-cheap professional work force that drives forward US academic research"... that anyone else can't?
Professors tend to act more as managers/grant proposal writers/reviewers. The vast majority of individual contributor work is performed by grad students and post docs. This work is often intellectually challenging (well, in as much as moving science forward is), so there is a strong benefit for selecting the best prepared candidates. Chinese students that come to do their PhDs in the US tend to be very well prepared/selected (especially once you look at non-ivy league research universities, it is easier to get a super qualified chinese student vs a US native student). Now, there might be a price point at which you could attract more locals to go pursue a PhD, but right now it is just not a very financially attractive proposition. PhD students typically get a stipend in the 30-40k range, but perform the kind of work that on the outside would pay 100-200k (let's say for people after masters). Similarly post docs make 40-70k range, but if they went into industry they would make 100-300k (depending on field).
Not to mention while they're studying aboard, they contribute to the local economy (goods & services). For masters and PhD candidates, they may also contribute significantly to projects led by professors; advancing a certain field
Yes, but that also means they drive up the price of tuition and the academic requirements of admission for American students just by existing as consumers of the "student slot at university" product.
Foreign students usually pay at a higher tier. They effectively subsidize the local students at schools that have been actively courting Chinese money.
They are already planning to gut the OPT (Optional Practical Training) program which will all but ensure that students that do their Masters or Ph.D here will not be able to take their time to find a job. They'll need their H1-B visa available by the time they graduate or go back home.
The government can do whatever it wants when it comes to setting immigration laws. It's an enumerated power.
F-1 (student) visas are already nonimmigration visas. After you graduate, you have a few months of "optional practical training" (OPT) and then you're expected to go home. Hopefully, you can get an H-1 (another nonimmigration visa) to stay for at most six years, which is about how long it takes to get a Green Card (permanent residency)[+].
I had heard that the reason why F-1s are nonimmigration is because back in the 1960s it was seen as foreign aid with Cold War benefits. Encourage people from third world counties to come to the United States, see how great it is, and then go back and build up their own countries. A decade or two out, you now have a country friendly to US interests.
Maybe that made sense in the 1960s, but it seems like it stopped making sense sometime in the 1980s, and certainly by the 90s.
We make it too hard to immigrate to the US. If I was king for the day, I'd make F-1 visas immigration visas, or at least be able to fast track F-1s into an immigration visa. The glacial pace, and the difficulty to immigrate is a reason why people go back. I know people that ended up giving up on getting Green Card, so moved to Toronto, and already has gotten Canadian permanent residency.
[+] If you want to fast track your Green Card, marry a US citizen. You get it in a couple of months.
Indeed. The "big picture" is that regardless of how long it takes, be it twenty or fifty or a hundred years, eventually there won't be a technology gap between China and the United States. If we want the US to have any hope of competing against a country of 1.4 billion people we have to turn the borders into factories for making and integrating new Americans, and the sooner we do it the better. 1.4 billion vs 500 million is a better equation than 1.4 billion vs 327 million.
You're not supposed to apply for a green card on a non-immigrant visa though.
I graduated from a top US university with an engineering degree (actually, rated the top university at the time). Felt like the federal government was looking for any excuse to accuse me of being an illegal immigrant and throw me out of the country, so I decided to go ahead and leave of my own accord.
When I studied computer science (for my Master's degree), I was one of three US citizens in the entire program. If the US gets rid of foreign students, it gets rid of upper-level CS, at least.
The people who voted for the current administration would be perfectly happy to get rid of upper-level CS. They complain all the time about California anyway, and wish it would fall into the ocean.
It already does that, just after graduation rather than before. I don't know how many non-Americans I've met who came here to study but couldn't find a post-graduation job fast enough to get a new visa.
And only those who don't value personal freedom. (read Tiananmen square, Uighur camps as your starting examples). Sure the US loses out on some talent, but that will always happen and once we move past the current administration we will pick up talent from elsewhere if need be.
It doesn't make sense for America to educate its rivals. We should also be wary of Universities turning into backdoor immigration schemes - this has already happened in Australia and lead to a massive reduction in education quality.
The focus should be on training Americans to fill American jobs - and any immigration scheme should be arranged with military, economic, and cultural Allies only (UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea).
If China can continue this growth, this trend will continue. But China's financial system is a house of cards and it's unclear if they will make it out of the next recession without significant damage. There's serious strategic threats including opaque financial system, improper banking controls massive "market rigging" and government corruption. No one knows the true state of the Chinese economy, including China itself.
I wonder how many of these employees will make it back to the West eventually. Big if obviously as there are many unknowns.
More than that: the US gov't has declared their own tech giants a threat. Meanwhile, the Chinese gov't is supporting theirs as a potential goldmine on all fronts: national security, foreign policy, economic.
Good point, I've never thought about it that way. We usually see US tech firms supporting the govt (and the resulting protests from their employees). But I wonder how the climate were to change if the govt was proactive in supporting the local tech firms instead.
It's slightly concerning that in the US there is increasing pressure to force tech companies to not support our government in its military needs, but the Chinese military is fully supported by theirs.
Does anybody know how hard it is for non-Chinese citizens to live and work in China?
One of the competitive advantages of the US has been its ability to draw top talent from all over the world and not just its own citizens. Chinese citizens leaving the US is not a good thing, but it is just one nationality. If China manages to draw talent from everywhere, then the US has a real problem ahead of it.
For example, my team in the US only has a few US citizens on it, most of us are foreigners who moved here for the opportunities. While a few are Chinese, the majority are from countries other than China and the US.
Very hard, especially for non-ethnic Chinese, as there is about 1 million immigrants in China, total (that's 0.07%):
> He said the policies, much like those of Japan and South Korea, were “predicated on a very strong nation-state that defines itself as the home of a particular ethnic and cultural group that wants to maintain its purity and wants to let in only what it really, really desperately needs.” [1]
Its very difficult to get any type of semi-permanent/permanent work visa for foreigners in China. A lot of foreigners who go to Shenzhen to work on a hardware start-up, are doing it illegally in technical terms. They are all on business visas on which you can't start a business in China. And beyond just work, civil liberties are extremely limited in China. You are good as long as you don't get the government looking at you.
And to add, Shenzhen is a special economic zone (SEZ), which has relatively less harsh attitudes towards enforcing visa rules.
It felt like an extremely capitalist city when I visited a few years ago - everyone is trying to make a buck. I did see hundreds of cops get bused in to deal with some sort of street vendor fight (which at the time reminded me of when I visited South Lake Tahoe one night).
To help narrow its chip gap, Beijing looks east to Taiwan
"There are no official numbers about how many Taiwanese are working at tech companies on the mainland, but a widely cited statistic suggests that about 9 per cent of the island’s population, or 2 million people – including businessmen, managers, students and their families – are living on the mainland."
> Does anybody know how hard it is for non-Chinese citizens to live and work in China?
It used to be easy... My first work visa to China took just 1 week to get: no criminal check, no work history check, no academic credentials check, you just get it.
Now people are saying it takes from 1 to 3 months.
Dark skinned people have hard time in China. Fat people, even worse.
Shenzhen looks like a totalitarian fairyland — a hard to convey impression. It is one of the best cities by quality of life in Asia, but... you get those 1:00am police visits, ID checks everywhere, and you, being a foreigner, are a magnet for all kinds of "overly ambitious" policemen.
Shenzhen is a pretty international city, but even today it is hard to avoid crowds of onlookers, and unsolicited selfie requests.
Jobs... I'd say better than nothing for a foreigner. It is one of the best places in China where a foreigner can get a meaningful job, but even that doesn't make it a lot. Old links are essential here.
You had to come to the city like 10 years ago, to have a chance to network with local businessmen. Not so much today. Rich businesspeople around are much more insular these days.
A friend of mine once worked for Duan Yongping in nineties, and knew him personally. 20 years later, that link still keep earning him top jobs to this day.
The expat commune here is way smaller than it appears at first glance. I keep bumping into people I met like 10 years ago, when I worked as a translator/interpreter in a Singaporean sourcing company.
Dating scene. Kinda very, very random. Not so many local women will consider a foreigner, and those who will are from two fringes of socioeconomic spectrum. You can date a factory owner today, and a literal village girl tomorrow.
The city is very young by Chinese standards. It was the one and only big city in China with an average age below 30 in recent history. A lot of youngsters still come from all over China, blindly seeking luck. It becomes harder and harder for such types to establish themselves here with each year.
Shenzhen gets more expensive with each year and is about to outrun Shanghai as China's most expensive city. The city turns less and less of a manufacturing hub, and more and more of a "Dubai of the East"
The famed manufacturing industry today is a shadow of its former self. Newcomers to Shenzhen ask me how it could've even been possible for the manufacturing to be bigger than the cyclopic scale it is on now. I say to them that the famous Huaqiang road market sprawl in its best years was spreading for many city blocks, and on some days was reaching the central park. This is how it was during the "Shanzhai" boom of 2008-2012. Since then, the industry has been on the unending downward trend.
Transport, and getting around: much better than any US city, but there are rough corners to the system. Gas scooters are banned, bigger electric scooters are in grey zone. Only electric mopeds are allowed, and even that is not given. Owning a car is more expensive in absolute terms than in US or Canada.
Food — very good, cuisines from all over China. Probably with exception of northeast.
Weather — typical tropical weather. Nothing to add to that.
Now last one, having fun. Very much like Dubai — the place is damn boring. Just like Dubai, a lot of glamour doesn't automatically mean a lot of fun.
2. Just for any engineering job in China there is a personal "middle income trap" of around net CNY25000-30000 per month. You reach it, and your career progression stalls, possibly for a decade or so.
Progress past the formal "senior" level is a rare, rare luck.
At 30000 net a month, you can live very very well in China.
Should be the same. Just because of their size there should be more space to grow for a senior, but in general they can afford to pay less then the market rate because they think that the talent will keep coming to them because of their big name.
In China, the salary distribution is very very homogenious, unlike in the West. Any kind of seniority, experience, or performance component will rarely contribute to more that 30% of your salary.
That is why China looses out to the West when it comes to retaining super senior level specialists. They either start their own business, or move to the West
If you can afford a house in London, you can probably afford a house in XYZ
The reverse doesn't usually follow (unless XYZ is Monaco :p)
So "global" is relative but if in my personal view "global" everyone in SV, or NYC or Dubai or London is competing with you on purchasing power and general access to resources so local quality of life is only half the picture.
Unless of course you choose to completely sign out of the "chase" which is a viable strategy and its own set of tradeoffs
Nobody is competing globally. If you're Chinese (or wherever) you can only work legally in a few places in the world and you won't be treated as well as the locals (lower compensation too). Moving abroad also means abandoning your friends and family and culture and inheritance, with financial and non financial effects.
Working in an high costs of living area for a few years -if at all possible- is of course a viable strategy to save some money before going back home.
Did I read it correctly? Threatened 'brain drain'? So 'brain drain' to US is being viewed as a positive thing?
I think the idea is to send people back to build their countries, not to stay here to build America. This is indeed a good news that we are spreading the talents and knowledge and eventually prosperity more evenly across the globe. US has enjoyed this monopoly over talents for too long, and that is probably not a good thing and definitely shouldn't be taken for granted.
Quality of life (e.g. security, stability, happiness) for the average citizen in the US seems to be on a downward trend. I imagine that is a big factor for foreign tech workers leaving the country. It's not all about money.
Talent will follow opportunity, so this shift in sentiment may reflect the relative outlook on the level of opportunity that US provides relative to China, at least for those who are able to work in China.
As an aside, the American immigration system leaves a lot to be desired in terms of its efficiency, and may be a contributing factor.
I am sure that this is part of it. However, I speculate that China may also be pressuring students and their families at home...just as they've been reported to do to expats and exiles.
I think america is putting more money on trying to have natives fill these jobs over making the immigration policy more efficient.
There is tons of potential being wasted in America and we really should focus on our native citizens. Its been a while since america has been dominant in the strength of our workforce and much of our current wealth is because of past generations not the current one.
We should focus on changing that before relying on other nations to provide us with skilled labor. It a national risk short and long term.
Our natives can't do a lot of jobs because they don't have the educational background, and that isn't going to change any time soon with the way we fund schools.
The other thing we don't do is provide low-cost high-quality healthcare to our citizens, and there again, there's not much effort to fix this, and instead the party in power wants to remove healthcare from poorer people.
As a three time immigrant, I have diametrically opposing viewpoints. My view is that immigration mostly benefits nations, and emigration always hurts them. Immigration increases the labour capacity, and nations that utilize this resource in a pragmatic manner are net beneficiaries.
My earlier point was around the fact that US isn't very efficient at managing this resource (letting arbitrary people through the physical border, while holding up highly educated folks in immigration queues for years).
I think a majority of voters would like the immigration system to be better enforced and more focused on highly skilled immigrants but there are powerful interests who like the status quo.
Silicon Valley has changed a lot in the last 20-30 years.
The ability to physically design and create things has basically disappeared. I'm not only talking about chips, but mechanical, electrical engineering and all the miscellaneous disciplines associated with creating something in one place.
That used to be the strength of the valley.
If you want to do software, ok, but that's arguably less location dependent.
It is? Doing what? The hardware work has mostly left the area, and when that happens, skilled people either leave the area or go into different industries. They don't just sit around waiting for the jobs to come back.
The reason that industry was lost was because China was willing to subsidize it in their territory and the US government enabled them because they thought it would bring democracy and freedom.
World has changed a lot in last 20-30 years, as cold war and USSR did end in 1991 and lot of things changed in Europe and Asia since then.
Valley will never be what it was in terms of global influence, especially if we look 40-50 years back. It's, no doubt, still a boiling pot for next-big-thing companies, but world around the US has grown significantly, especially in the last 5-10 years and there's a big demand for a skills that was not there 10-20 years ago.
Hometown is almost more attractive if other factors considered to be irrelevant. You have your native language, your family around, the food and just familiarity of things, as comparing to be a foreigner in a country that constantly put your status at risk.
> China’s tech sector has its own shorthand to describe the hours that employees work in the country: “9-9-6,” meaning from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
> “Our factories are still talking to us at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., sometimes well into midnight. They’re working on weekends, so things get done much faster,” Gui said. “Whereas back in San Francisco, after 5 p.m. people won’t respond to your emails and you can’t get anything done until the next day.”
If that is the price of fast innovation, I rather be a bit slow.
Eh, as a third culture kid with a US passport and 50%+ friends being international/TCK - it's honestly because the VISA process is appalling.
Out of a sample of 10 international students I went to school with at Stanford 20 years ago (I just eyeballed my FB friend list and took 10, totally biased anec-data I know):
• 4 are now citizens - all their green card processes took 7+ years, except the one person who got it via marriage
• 2 are STILL in the green card process
• 1 intentionally went home for opportunity
• 3 left due to VISA expiration issues. 2 went to Europe, 1 went to Canada. 2 are CS grads, 1 has a PhD in ML.
It massively sucks. We're talking about amazingly resourceful people who got raised at whatever sheep farm in Kenya and Uzbekistan, made it all the way to Stanford via merit-based scholarships and what not, and then got ejected from the US because national policy... and now some other country with friendlier VISA policies got 'em.
I don't see why this "massively sucks". Obviously, the American people, and the government they elected, don't really want these smart people in their country contributing to their economy, so there's other countries (the ones with friendlier visa policies) where they're more welcome and they should go.
You can claim that Americans are shooting themselves in the foot with these policies, and electing people like Trump, but if that's what they want to do...
Trump has said many times that he wants a more meritocratic immigration system. A combination of big business and pandering to minorities keeps Congress from changing immigration from chain-migration to merit-based immigration.
This is just as true with Indian students. Most people don't know how hard, how expensive, and how long it takes for someone to become a naturalized citizen. Combined with hostile rhetoric towards immigrants - and staying away from politics as much as possible, this is a big factor and not always precisely targeted to "illegal" immigration, the US is just not as attractive for knowledge workers as it was 5-10 years ago.
Well of course they're leaving, I'm seeing firsthand how hard it is for them to stay here. Employment authorization takes so long that I've seen students lose the internships and job offers they have lined up. That's on top of all the culture/language differences and whatnot. I don't blame them one bit for going back home.
If the Chinese can be prevented from exporting their version of the prison state, this could be a good thing in the near-medium term. (The U.S. imprisons the most per capita)
China needs smart people there to transition the economy. India has been massively slowed down by the brain drain to the U.S.
An interesting tidbit for non-Mandarin Chinese speakers. The sea turtle doesn’t refer to analogy of grown sea turtles returning to their home when young, but it’s a homonym to 海歸 (same sounds as sea turtle 海龜), that roughly means “return from sea (ie. abroad)”.
A lot of these conversations miss two aspects completely:
1. Smart STEM people are more inclined to having a family. Constant uncertainty is not conducive to family. That will cause a lot of smart people to be sea turtles.
2. The most significant drawback of smart people congregating elsewhere is that future American companies are fucked. There is just going to be a lot more competition for products globally. Future Apple will have to fight Chinese companies in India. Mariott will have to fight Oyo in China. Future Tesla will have to fight BYD in Europe.
A LOT of our stock wealth is because other companies couldn't innovate as rapidly because the US was draining those countries of this talent pool. With this reversal, American companies will have a smaller pool of talent and will get whacked everywhere. Its super unfortunate.
>1. Smart STEM people are more inclined to having a family. Constant uncertainty is not conducive to family. That will cause a lot of smart people to be sea turtles.
Also, even for the well-compensated, it's financially very difficult to afford the 'ol house & car dream in what I would expect are top locations for immigrants (SF bay area, New York, Boston, Seattle, LA, ...). Certain parts of China also have absurdly expensive real estate (Shanghai, Beijing), but rent tends to be much more affordable and if you have family nearby the whole housing situation becomes much easier.
As long as people keep coming to the US to get an education, that helps the economics of academia; out-of-state tuition paid for by somebody else (usually, countries or rich families) is $$$$. Maybe the problem is the US isn't as welcoming socially, politically or bureaucratically (visa process) as it once was? That's a PR image problem that the current political climate tarnished through inept and ignorant messaging.
IMHO, there's no need to delay or wait.. contradict and break this undesirable image by demonstrating positive and welcoming actions towards visitors of all kinds at every opportunity. I hope and make the future better by taking as many actions now to ensure it as I'm able.
>Maybe the problem is the US isn't as welcoming socially, politically or bureaucratically (visa process) as it once was? That's a PR image problem that the current political climate tarnished through inept and ignorant messaging.
This isn't correct at all. It's true the US isn't very welcoming any more, but this isn't through "inept and ignorant messaging", it's not inept at all: the US voters clearly don't want foreigners here, and they proved it by the way they've voted, and now they have an administration that clearly reflects the wishes of the electorate. Stop trying to sugar-coat the reality of how American voters really feel.
There's an argument that the "American Voters" who voted in the current administration do not represent the same people who care about the "brain drain" and effects of said drain on tech/STEM in the US. The average Trump voter isn't competing with foreigners for PhD positions.
I don't think you need to make an argument for what you wrote, I think that's pretty obvious.
But the people who care about the brain drain are being outvoted by the voters who support this administration, and are honestly happy about the brain drain.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 256 ms ] threadGood luck with that. If you’re averaging $10k per employee per year over the long term, I guarantee anyone with the ability to be a good engineer is still going to come to the US where they can make orders of magnitude more.
> The pay discrepancy between Silicon Valley and China has narrowed since he launched in 2014, especially at top-tier firms. Wang’s engineers now make 70 percent to 80 percent of what they could get in America.
So it was 700k in 2014, but now it's 70-80% of what US people would make.
If could take classes in China and possibly get a job making 50% more there, I'd probably come back to the US instead. A 50% raise isn't enough to justify being half a world away from my family.
I want to raise my kid in a place where you can speak out about human rights abuses and not censor yourself because the government is listening.
But I do have political beliefs which would put me under threat in China were I to voice them or act on them. And I would want to raise my children in a place where they won't be discriminated against for being LGBT (although discrimination still happens in the US, at least you can be out and proud. In China, to my knowledge homosexuality is very much "don't ask don't tell")
IMO this is a quickly growing competitive disadvantage for the US.
If you're hiring developers you're not going to put your offices in the countryside just like the US isn't hiring many programmers in rural Missouri.
E.g. here are listings for 1000 yuan per month or less: https://sh.zu.fang.com/house/c20-d21000-n31/ I wouldn't believe any of the other claims made (e.g. the size is probably exaggerated), but behind each of these listings is someone willing to actually offer living space for that price.
The highest price category on that site is 8000 yuan or more, which is $1163.2 according to WolframAlpha.
Real "bottom" for non-shared apartment in Shanghai is ~3000 rmb (~$500) for a smallish place with a 1+ hour commute. Rents in the downtown are around 10000+ rmb.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangdong-Hong_Kong-Macau_Gr...
It took me awhile to get used to the Bay Area being used in Chinese news sources to mean something entirely different from in the USA.
Wang said the salaries of his 40-person team for two years cost $700,000."
Generously assuming that the full 40-person team didn't onboard until year 2, that's an annual average salary of only 17,500 USD per person. I know the software development labour is cheaper in China, but quick comparisons indicate that something is off with this figure. Maybe most of the 40-person team are on an assembly line?
That is realistic and in line with fresh out of college Computer Science graduate market rate. I know that because I went to an undergraduate CS degree in China.
Developers are working harder in China too. The famous 996 work schedule has been prevalent in Internet software startups in China.[1] Hence the anti-996 movement.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
But also, if 996 includes things like studying to become a better programmer, taking breaks to get coffee, etc. then maybe a lot of us on HN are working 996, if we include our own time we spend learning.
Attracting top global talent has always been a competitive advance for America, and it's not a good sign for our economy if we can't retain people that we are educating here.
In the US, Trump says mean things about certain types of immigrants.
In China, you can be jailed with no due process for speaking out about human rights abuses. Also, better hope you're not in a religious minority. Don't say anything bad about the government, because they're watching you!
It includes visa restrictions and harassment (e.g., computer seizures, pressuring your job to fire you) from agencies like the FBI and NIH. It also impacts people who have no connection to China, like the Taiwanese Wen Ho Lee.
I knew a Chinese exchange student who would debate all sorts of things, but when you brought up the Chinese government she would come to a hard stop and say "I don't talk about that."
It's probably smart if you're from an authoritarian country.
If she's considering immigrating to the United States at any point in the future, she would be wise to not debate anything that has to do with the United States, in any electronically recorded medium.
All visa/status adjustment applicants now have to turn over their social media identities. It would be prudent for her to not express a viewpoint[1] that might have an adverse impact on her immigration.
[1] What are those viewpoints? We don't know - CBP won't tell anyone. And whatever they will tell, may very well change in the future.
The Chinese government is not overly concerned with individual citizens sharing anti-government sentiment. It's not a problem for most people that aren't activists. Most people are concerned with much more basic aspects of life... supporting their families, getting good jobs, time for leisure...
It doesn't mean it's acceptable, but assuming that every Chinese citizen lives in fear of the government cracking down on their political complaints is totally unfounded. The exchange student you know could just as well have been sick of westerners thinking they know more about the CCP than someone raised in China.
The Chinese government has been actively monitoring [0] all popular online messaging platforms, and shutting down any opinion that is considered by the government anti-government.
There is also some new network security law [1] that enforces companies, from ISP to website operators, to self-censor, and to pinpoint every action from every user, such that officials could collect the data as they wish [2].
The whole process is already well organized and somewhat automated. Now that the social credit score system is being deployed to more major cities, the threat of free speech is climbing to the next level.
You may say they don't fear. But I argue that many Chinese citizens don't even realize why they feel very uncomfortable and insecure to talk about politics. They think people who voice out are stupid. The reason deep down, is fear.
[0]: https://twitter.com/0xDUDE/status/1101909112131080192
[1]: http://www.hk-lawyer.org/content/china-passes-network-securi...
[2]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinas-cybersecurity-law-updat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
If you think the extent of America's hostility against certain types of immigrants is limited to Dump Truck saying mean things on Twitter, I'm not sure what to tell you. [1]
DT doesn't exist in a vaccum. There's a powerful, xenophobic political movement that has made him president, and there's a mainstream political party that wins more elections than it loses, that panders to that constituency.
[1] I also find it incredibly ironic that you are dimissing anti-immigrant sentiment as 'it's just words' - as in - words aren't a big deal, while in the same breath, pointing out that words are in fact a big deal, because there are many that you can't say in China. [2]
[2] Are 'just words' a big deal or not? You can't have it both ways.
So very powerful, winning so many elections, yet they barely made a dent in even just legal immigration - it is still above 1 million per year, and the white population went from 85% in 1960, to 63% in 2010 [1] - a period during which the party that panders to xenophobia won more than half the elections, as you say.
Meanwhile the non-xenophobic China has 1 million immigrants total, and is 91% Han-Chinese [2] - homogeneity and demographic isolation beyond anything depicted in works criticizing fascism like Man in the High Castle.
That the country taking in the most immigrants, and so rapidly changing its demographics, gets labeled as the racist xenophobic one, while the closed ethno-state gets no criticism of its immigration policy, is a sick joke.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China
If you read the entirety of my post, you may notice that I did not label the United States as a xenophobic country.
I labeled a particular, but currently politically powerful subset of the population as a xenophobic one. If you doubt that it exists, you can find a good representation of it at your nearest MAGA rally.
If you have any immigrant friends, I recommend bringing them with you... And ask them what they think of what they'll see. They may find their eyes more persuasive than your assurances that everything is fine.
There may be a lot of xenophobic rhetoric, but actions speak louder than words, and what precious little action there was (bans for Muslim countries that account for a negligible number of immigrants, and detention of children at the border) was both very ineffective and very politically damaging - the exact opposite of what one would do if one wanted to limit immigration.
All that was accomplished in the three years that this rhetoric has gone mainstream - and not at 'great expense of public opinion'. I don't think a single American has had their mind changed on this subject, since the last election.
What do you expect 2020 will bring, in the event of another Trump victory?
There's a very clear message to immigrants, here. A lot of people think they are the cause of the country's ills, that they want them gone, and they have just gotten started on this project.
So to answer your question, in the event of another Trump victory, I expect immigration to the US to continue at near-record rates, while they continue to be called xenophobic.
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2017/tab...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/number-of-people-...
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/key-finding...
Allow me to provide the context:
If you're a Chinese internantional student living in the USA where the #1 guy in the country uses Identity Politics as its arsenal to win and lead the country, you, as an outsider, will feel insecure w.r.t of races.
If you're a Chinese international student coming back home to your country of origin, you're used to the situations there: that's what you were born with and that's your culture that you're used to for 18 years of your life. I mean, you're still free to roam the streets, eat any food, continue with your life as-is. It's not like you live in a jail.
If you're a typical Americans who doesn't like the government to limit virtually anything (yes, I'm dead serious, Americans want everything and they don't like rules), you probably look at other countries as some sort of un-democratic, nazi-like state. I've seen a few people here criticized Singapore! If you go to Singapore, there's only a limited number of citizens who dislike the leaders.
Context is very important when comparing two countries/cultures.
For example, I live in a no-gun country so I scratched my head hard whenever I see mass-shooting in the US every week killing your children just because folks love their guns. That's just... crazy.
Step inside a land/house by accident and gets killed by the homeowner's M14 is just... nuts (yes I know I'm exaggerating a bit).
In the present day, if you're a black American you may also have a different perspective on life in the US than if you're white.
Just like Americans can’t stop Middle Eastern civilians from being drone striked, Chinese can’t stop their government either.
What about those drones the Americans sent to kill random people?
What about police brutality?
Per-individual base, human also tend to use phrases like "human rights" to cover up their problems. I find it interesting that in the US, the people argue a lot about Abortion vs Right-to-Live meanwhile in California, they glamorized Sex for all ages. American Pies and a bunch of other chick-flick/high-school football movies that often highlights sex-on-prom-day. Social pressure of having sex between unmarried couple. I wonder if those contributes to the need for abortion just because they're not ready.
"human rights"
Best not be so serious: You're mistaken.
Is a whipping a proper punishment for chewing gum left on a Singapore sidewalk?
> Step inside a land/house by accident and gets killed by the homeowner's M14 is just... nuts (yes I know I'm exaggerating a bit).
Does the dead seriousness lead you to believe Americans approve of this nutso reaction?
The last time I stepped in chewing gum I felt the answer was an unequivocal yes.
70% of gun deaths are suicides. The majority of the rest are inner city unlawful gang-on-gang violence.
Most people never even see a gun in the US in their lifetime. Stop spreading misinformation and fear-mongering propaganda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
You count the number of people who got killed. You should also included the number of people who "almost" got killed (paralyzed), traumatized, etc.
Somehow your statement also made the whole thing looks "insignificant". I'm not sure why that is because in other countries, there will be a huge uproar leading to change in laws and regulations to the point of banning.
So if hundreds died due to repeated mass-shootings and only 30% of the incidents that makes gun to be a non-issue in the States? because the other 70% gun-deaths are suicides? So just because the largest piece of the Pie-chart is for "non-violent" gun-death then there is no gun-issue?
What about domestic conflicts that leads to shooting? (glad they missed ... )
Damn...
I saw Dana Loesch went on CNN one time and I saw her speaking in some sort of Townhall. She's really good at her job and the NRA should pay her TONS of money. That lady can sell you anything including MySpace.com today.
You should talk to the victims of mass-shootings and learn the truth.
The type of Chinese immigrants who are likely to get Ph.Ds and work in high tech are generally not religious minorities (if they were, they likely wouldn't have gotten that far in the educational system). They're also not particularly interested in getting involved in politics or speaking out about human rights abuses. Usually if they get to that level of education and have the choice between staying in the U.S. to work for a tech company or research lab or going back to China, it's because they've devoted their life to mastering a specific scientific or technical subject. For someone in that position, likelihood of facing employment discrimination or being deported is generally a much bigger threat than lack of political freedoms.
Selection bias is the most powerful force in nature. The U.S. benefitted very significantly from dictatorships in the 1930-80s that actively repressed academics and educated people, because it forced all of them to move to the U.S, where we welcomed them with open arms. Most of these governments wised up (or rather, facing selection bias, they were overthrown by the consequences of raping their own nations), and now most of the rest of the world is quite welcoming of people with scientific and technical knowledge. The U.S. risks going down the same path if it adopts the same attitudes that didn't work for our competitors.
Many authoritarian governments of the past made the mistake of trying to tinker too hard with economics, with horrible results. China is run by technocrats who know how not to sabotage the money supply.
In the US, Trump says mean things about certain types of citizens.
As an American I'd think very carefully about working in China right now for the same reason. No matter where you are in the world, you're always breaking some law, and they can pick you up and throw the book at you to make a PR point whenever they please. Same as for a Chinese person in the US.
Feel bad, because the guys travelling to work or study really do just want to meet each other and have interesting idea exchanges, maybe make some friends, etc.
But then the political type people get involved, and it just gets a bit too complicated and you start weighing the potential risks differently.
That's not exactly true. While China doesn't detain US citizens (yet!) it detains several Canadian citizens presumable because the Huawei's CFO has been arrested in Canada by a US request. See https://time.com/5626289/china-canada-arrest-yantai/
Which makes things even worse - you may become a hostage due to US/China conflicts even if you happened to be a citizen of a US ally.
> We interred Japanese after Japan commuted one of the largest terror attacks in US history, that’s it.
1.) "We" did not inter Japanese. Those who made the rules and followed them during that time did. If by "We" you mean "Americans" then that leads to the next point...
2.) Many of the "Japanese" you say were interred were Americans. They were put into camps not because of any actual reason than how they look and where their ancestry hailed from.
3.) Imprisoning people who have done nothing wrong and have lived their lives in this country should make painfully clear the quote, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
No more nonsensical visa stuff to worry about; I live my current life and plan my future in peace.
Actions speak louder than words here.
A quick Google search on "Chinese grad student restrictions" yielded an article [1] from December 2018 with the headline "US Considers New Restrictions on Chinese Students". The source is the US government's own news outlet, Voice of America.
[1] https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/trump-administration-c...
So the overall number does not reflect "brain drain", because not all international students can be counted in "global talent". A more meaningful number should only count those graduated from good universities, or having scholarship etc.
There's lots of VC money in China right now and most talented Chinese tech people have offers waiting for them in China that are both very high level positions with very high compensations. So even if you want to stay in the US on the one hand you have people back home offering you insane opportunities and trying very hard to incentivize you to return, and you have the US government essentially trolling you to make a point about how unwanted you are (from their perspective).
The fact that the current US policy is effectively working hard to drive away very talented people who want to be here but have plenty of good offers elsewhere will do plenty of long term harm (for the US).
We are doing real harm to our aging economy by not facilitating these bright young minds to stay here.
The article is such a pathetically transparent piece of anti-labor rights astro-turfing: China is going to out-compete the US unless US workers can be forced to accept equally shitty working conditions, that I cannot believe Hacker News is taking it seriously.
The issue with the pace of development bring quicker doesn't just come down to labor rights. Shenzhen is the world's biggest electronics manufacturing hub, so it can be easier to iterate quickly with manufacturers there. The article does indeed interview someone who complains about Americans supposedly not working long enough hours, but that's actually a pretty widespread view in China about Westerners.
The take away from the networking thing is Trust. You need to be able to demonstrate you can be trusted, that you're not secretly a bunch of kids in a trenchcoat or a fake, Western-sounding name that's a front end for a few Vietnamese kids putting out shit-tier code.
I came to the US in mid 2000 to study at a fairly well-known liberal arts college (with full scholarships). I worked at a start-up in SF after graduating in late 2000--earning a decent wage of 72K/yr at that time. The CEO didn't want to go through the trouble of applying for H1B for me, so I--at the end of 18 months' OPT STEM extension; after ~2.5 years of working at that start-up---had to apply for a PhD program and started it in 2010's to keep myself in legal status. I finished my PhD in less than 5 years, and joined my current company with OPT (an extension of F1 student visa for practical training in one's major that s/he graduated from) earning low six-figure salary. When my company applied my H1B visa in 2016, it received request for evidence (the USCIS asked me to prove more that my work--data engineering--is related to computer science, which is what I studied my PhD on. I wrote up 3 pages of explanation and finally got it approved in late 2016. Because I worked pretty hard, I was able to convince my company to apply green card for me. But because of the more stringent regulations applied by Trump administration (and partly because my company acquired standard--not premium--service from the law firm that is working on my case), even after 2 years of the process, I am still at the very first step of the application process where the company is waiting for the department of labor (DoL) to provide prevailing wage determination (pretty much stating how much average worker with my salary is earning in the region where I work). I cannot move jobs when this process is pending because my H1B is tied to my employer and employers that are willing to sponsor employees green card aren't that plenty.
If I want to go back and visit my old and widowed mom in my home country, I would have to go through the interview process at the US embassy of my home country to get a new H1B stamp on my passport (the stamp expires within a year of issued date; some countries, such as India, have better deal with the US and their citizens usually get stamps valid for like 5 years or so if I remember correctly). It carries the risk that I might be denied either by the embassy or the port of entry immigration officer (none of the three that I have met so far treated me nicely--in fact, two of them were quite rude--despite me being courteous and nice to them) when I re-enter the US with H1B visa, not to mention that the cost of renewing the visa costs about $400. So, the ability to go back to home to revisit my mom as frequently as I like (without much hassle) AND the freedom to move to another job are why I really want to get permanent residency.
This is a common path for someone who goes through legal (hardcore) means to become a permanent resident in the US. I only put up with such extremely long journey to become a green card holder because my home country is not China. If it were China, I would be back there by now (I said the same to my departing coworkers). There are easier (in terms of effort/time required) ways like marrying a citizen; seeking asylum (but most of the asylum seekers are doing so for economic reason, meaning they are mostly fake although the success rate of getting approved in democrats administrations are quite high); winning Diversity Visa lottery; and having an immediate blood-relative who submitted application for your green card a decade ago. But none of them are eligible for me or I'm not interested in playing pretend-asylum seeker or paying a US citizen to marry me temporarily.
Throughout the years I've been in the US, I worked hard; paid all my taxes; never even have a minor violation such as traffic citation; donated and volunteered at various charities; donated blood more than a dozen times...
Per the state departments August 2019 bulletin, the actual backlog to file for an EB-3 green card is currently 3 years for China, and 9 for India....
If you go back through the last few years of bulletins, this 9 year wait has been relatively stable. Unless you believe there's been a massive spike in applicants in the past few years, there's no reason to believe the current wait for new applicants is 50 or 70 years.
[1]https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
[2]https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
But I think that is going to be the norm going forward (unless we come up with a better alternative to capitalism); none of us are promised abundant freedom and opportunity unless we strive and work hard to take it. In other words, prosperity does not come easy in this competitive age...
> even after 2 years of the process, I am still at the very first step of the application process where the company is waiting for the department of labor (DoL) to provide prevailing wage determination
According to the DOL website[1], the processing time for PWD (Prevailing Wage Determination) is currently (as of June 2019) is 122 days. How is it possible that they don't have the PWD done even after 2 years?
[1] https://icert.doleta.gov/index.cfm?event=ehGeneral.dspProces...
The so called "brain drain" is just a ploy to make you think there's a talent shortage. Companies always want cheaper labor. In actuality, US citizens will benefit from more foreigners returning to their home countries because there's more jobs available for US locals.
the simple fact is that there are more students from China to US over the years because more students can afford the tuitions, while the H1B visa quota remain the same; also there are more and more students from global as well to compete on the H1B quota. so most of the students have to go back simply because there is not enough visa for them to stay.
https://www.uscis.gov/news/news-releases/uscis-reaches-fy-20... 2018 H1b visa total quota is 85K in total for all students from all countries.
while usually <20% of H1B visa goes to people from China. https://www.vox.com/2017/4/13/15281170/china-india-tech-h1b-... so, each year, it's probably around 10K to 15K students from China can get H1B visa, compared to a total of 300K students in China, that basically means about 90% students will have to go back.
it's more about fast growing number of students from China, also working in US requires H1B visa.
If I was Chinese man who came to America for school and was single, I'd move back to China too. Study after study shows that the dating game odds are not good for that particular demographic in the US.
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2017/11/23/a-distor...
Also, don't be surprised by prices going up ten fold over a decade. Inflation in developed countries can be 2 digits per year, everything is going up crazy quick.
Now, having been there quite a bit, I must say that it really doesn't impress.
The impression I got visiting the US in general (NY, Seattle, San Fran, LA), is that it all seems quite ran down, full of inequality and social problems, and lacking soul, mainly from being so consumerist.
And although I would concievebly earn a lot more working over there, the total cost of living would probably more than make up for that increase. Especially considering having kids.
My friend who is a US citizen with a well-paying engineering job in the LA area, is considering moving back. The work culture is quite hectic, and the amount of trouble they've been through with child care, insurance issues etc are making them reconsider. Not to mention that the area is super-busy and you spend a large portion of your free time in your car.
This obviously doesn't describe the entirety of the United States, but sometimes I wonder if people from the US are aware of living conditions in other western countries. I'm not so sure that the US is coming out on top any longer.
I think in some respects the US has coasted on it's former economic glory - I mean sure Silicon Valley is a mecca for folks like us but then you look at things outside of the those types of Nexuses and its a very different picture.
In Europe the UK is often regarded (sometimes appropriately) as US-lite but we are still an ocean away literally and figuratively from them in so many ways.
Given a lever between moving our politics closer to Nordic countries or the US I know which way I'd push it, I'll take a more equal fairer society with better outcomes for more people over a decrease in the already tiny chance to be super rich - its not really something I've ever really thought about as an end goal anyway - the increase in freedom would be nice but I can't imagine I'd still work insanely hard for that second billion, I'd probably potter about the world learning about history and art and working on open source.
The US is a good place to make a lot of money if you're a single tech worker and can live cheaply and save, but it's not a good place to raise a family at all.
This is not intended as a political statement or a commentary on current politics. But its often said that Americans vote against their own interests and I think this is particularly true in issues surrounding the social safety net, like universal healthcare, parental leave and other things that some other first-world countries have already figured out.
Unfortunately, this puts us at an ever growing disadvantage with the rest of the world as the only people who can attain these benefits in the US are FAANG, some fortune 500 and other megacorp employees. This also exacerbates inequality between the FAANGs and FAANGnots. (horrible pun, I know)
As an American citizen, I completely agree. We can't get local infrastructure built, we can't house or feed the homeless, our roads are mostly all awful, we still have major clean water issues in a lot of places around the country, and culture is definitely being pushed out as larger cities are gentrified and sort of "segregated" by inequality.
I'd move to another country if I was wealthy enough. Taking a real look at American society by moving around, ripping off the mask of indoctrination, USA doesn't look so well and neither does its future economy. Just because we have technological gadgets coming out of every direction doesn't mean we're the ultimate place to be anymore. That consumerist fetishism has put blinders on American society.
Having lived in at least two of the cities listed above I can confirm.
Thinking about this point, some of the most valuable US based companies make gadgets and consumer items for us to play with, or services to entertain or glue us to our screens… Apple, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon (Alexa, etc).
While I can’t seem to live without my iPhone I wonder if our innovation is somewhat misdirected. Where is high-speed rail, broadly adopted forms of alternative energy, new feats of engineering in bridges and infrastructure, ambitious national projects that improve the lives of citizens and bring a higher standard of living not just to coastal cities?
Its worrying, but I wonder if we are here now, where will the US be in 20 years? No doubt the US will be still generating significant shareholder value but have a widening social inequality, crumbled infrastructure and disappearing coastal geography.
Possibly we're the first instance of an 'Overlay Empire', with its magnificent gleaming Imperial City hidden somewhere in the clouds ..
It's in other countries. Western Europe and Japan and China have high-speed rail, with the most extensive network in Japan. Germany has an incredible amount of solar energy capacity installed, despite being pretty far north. Japan has the world's longest suspension bridge. etc. etc.
I don't have a position on this, I'm just wondering.
edit: losers are general public, whose taxes go to public universities who then train up a generation of students who won't contribute those benefits back to the country. private universities have different funding models of course, so not so clear there.
I would be amazed if I could find a US accredited institution of higher education that offered subsidized education to non-nationals.
> professors hold immense power
Nothing to say about this other than "lol nope".
Furthermore, a big reason why so many return to China, is that even if you graduate in the US, staying in the US is quite hard. The environment is not welcoming in to the newly graduated US educated foreign origin PhDs.
I'm not necessarily doubting it as this is not my area of expertise, but what % of students really do "ultra-cheap professional work force that drives forward US academic research"... that anyone else can't?
Something like this wouldn't surprise me at all, given the current political atmosphere.
If they should or what is another story, I really don't know the answer.
F-1 (student) visas are already nonimmigration visas. After you graduate, you have a few months of "optional practical training" (OPT) and then you're expected to go home. Hopefully, you can get an H-1 (another nonimmigration visa) to stay for at most six years, which is about how long it takes to get a Green Card (permanent residency)[+].
I had heard that the reason why F-1s are nonimmigration is because back in the 1960s it was seen as foreign aid with Cold War benefits. Encourage people from third world counties to come to the United States, see how great it is, and then go back and build up their own countries. A decade or two out, you now have a country friendly to US interests.
Maybe that made sense in the 1960s, but it seems like it stopped making sense sometime in the 1980s, and certainly by the 90s.
We make it too hard to immigrate to the US. If I was king for the day, I'd make F-1 visas immigration visas, or at least be able to fast track F-1s into an immigration visa. The glacial pace, and the difficulty to immigrate is a reason why people go back. I know people that ended up giving up on getting Green Card, so moved to Toronto, and already has gotten Canadian permanent residency.
[+] If you want to fast track your Green Card, marry a US citizen. You get it in a couple of months.
Ha! Unless you're are an Indian or a Chinese, in which case it's more than 10 years (which is being quite optimistic)!!
I graduated from a top US university with an engineering degree (actually, rated the top university at the time). Felt like the federal government was looking for any excuse to accuse me of being an illegal immigrant and throw me out of the country, so I decided to go ahead and leave of my own accord.
The focus should be on training Americans to fill American jobs - and any immigration scheme should be arranged with military, economic, and cultural Allies only (UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea).
I wonder how many of these employees will make it back to the West eventually. Big if obviously as there are many unknowns.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/2173461/c...
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2016/03/08/china...
https://www.ft.com/content/961b4b32-3fce-11e9-b896-fe36ec32a...
One of the competitive advantages of the US has been its ability to draw top talent from all over the world and not just its own citizens. Chinese citizens leaving the US is not a good thing, but it is just one nationality. If China manages to draw talent from everywhere, then the US has a real problem ahead of it.
For example, my team in the US only has a few US citizens on it, most of us are foreigners who moved here for the opportunities. While a few are Chinese, the majority are from countries other than China and the US.
> He said the policies, much like those of Japan and South Korea, were “predicated on a very strong nation-state that defines itself as the home of a particular ethnic and cultural group that wants to maintain its purity and wants to let in only what it really, really desperately needs.” [1]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/asia/china-green-ca...
It felt like an extremely capitalist city when I visited a few years ago - everyone is trying to make a buck. I did see hundreds of cops get bused in to deal with some sort of street vendor fight (which at the time reminded me of when I visited South Lake Tahoe one night).
I was stuck by this statistical from a recent article in SCMP:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3016657/he...
To help narrow its chip gap, Beijing looks east to Taiwan
"There are no official numbers about how many Taiwanese are working at tech companies on the mainland, but a widely cited statistic suggests that about 9 per cent of the island’s population, or 2 million people – including businessmen, managers, students and their families – are living on the mainland."
China is not an immigrant country. If you don't look like Chinese/Asian, then you are an outiler.
Diversity isn't something China, or East Asia values in general, uniformity instead.
It seems to be on the way out in the USA also, at least among followers of a certain orange-tinted politician.
It used to be easy... My first work visa to China took just 1 week to get: no criminal check, no work history check, no academic credentials check, you just get it.
Now people are saying it takes from 1 to 3 months.
Dark skinned people have hard time in China. Fat people, even worse.
Shenzhen looks like a totalitarian fairyland — a hard to convey impression. It is one of the best cities by quality of life in Asia, but... you get those 1:00am police visits, ID checks everywhere, and you, being a foreigner, are a magnet for all kinds of "overly ambitious" policemen.
Shenzhen is a pretty international city, but even today it is hard to avoid crowds of onlookers, and unsolicited selfie requests.
Jobs... I'd say better than nothing for a foreigner. It is one of the best places in China where a foreigner can get a meaningful job, but even that doesn't make it a lot. Old links are essential here.
You had to come to the city like 10 years ago, to have a chance to network with local businessmen. Not so much today. Rich businesspeople around are much more insular these days.
A friend of mine once worked for Duan Yongping in nineties, and knew him personally. 20 years later, that link still keep earning him top jobs to this day.
The expat commune here is way smaller than it appears at first glance. I keep bumping into people I met like 10 years ago, when I worked as a translator/interpreter in a Singaporean sourcing company.
Dating scene. Kinda very, very random. Not so many local women will consider a foreigner, and those who will are from two fringes of socioeconomic spectrum. You can date a factory owner today, and a literal village girl tomorrow.
The city is very young by Chinese standards. It was the one and only big city in China with an average age below 30 in recent history. A lot of youngsters still come from all over China, blindly seeking luck. It becomes harder and harder for such types to establish themselves here with each year.
Shenzhen gets more expensive with each year and is about to outrun Shanghai as China's most expensive city. The city turns less and less of a manufacturing hub, and more and more of a "Dubai of the East"
The famed manufacturing industry today is a shadow of its former self. Newcomers to Shenzhen ask me how it could've even been possible for the manufacturing to be bigger than the cyclopic scale it is on now. I say to them that the famous Huaqiang road market sprawl in its best years was spreading for many city blocks, and on some days was reaching the central park. This is how it was during the "Shanzhai" boom of 2008-2012. Since then, the industry has been on the unending downward trend.
Transport, and getting around: much better than any US city, but there are rough corners to the system. Gas scooters are banned, bigger electric scooters are in grey zone. Only electric mopeds are allowed, and even that is not given. Owning a car is more expensive in absolute terms than in US or Canada.
Food — very good, cuisines from all over China. Probably with exception of northeast.
Weather — typical tropical weather. Nothing to add to that.
Now last one, having fun. Very much like Dubai — the place is damn boring. Just like Dubai, a lot of glamour doesn't automatically mean a lot of fun.
What kind of salaries are developers of 5ish years experience earning?
2. Just for any engineering job in China there is a personal "middle income trap" of around net CNY25000-30000 per month. You reach it, and your career progression stalls, possibly for a decade or so.
Progress past the formal "senior" level is a rare, rare luck.
At 30000 net a month, you can live very very well in China.
30k rmb isn't bad for being in China but also isn't great at global level...
Should be the same. Just because of their size there should be more space to grow for a senior, but in general they can afford to pay less then the market rate because they think that the talent will keep coming to them because of their big name.
In China, the salary distribution is very very homogenious, unlike in the West. Any kind of seniority, experience, or performance component will rarely contribute to more that 30% of your salary.
That is why China looses out to the West when it comes to retaining super senior level specialists. They either start their own business, or move to the West
The currency conversion gives 38k-47k euros. It's about the top compensation you could get in Europe, ignoring London and Switzerland.
The reverse doesn't usually follow (unless XYZ is Monaco :p)
So "global" is relative but if in my personal view "global" everyone in SV, or NYC or Dubai or London is competing with you on purchasing power and general access to resources so local quality of life is only half the picture.
Unless of course you choose to completely sign out of the "chase" which is a viable strategy and its own set of tradeoffs
Working in an high costs of living area for a few years -if at all possible- is of course a viable strategy to save some money before going back home.
They're literally refusing visa because people are fat?
I think the idea is to send people back to build their countries, not to stay here to build America. This is indeed a good news that we are spreading the talents and knowledge and eventually prosperity more evenly across the globe. US has enjoyed this monopoly over talents for too long, and that is probably not a good thing and definitely shouldn't be taken for granted.
As an aside, the American immigration system leaves a lot to be desired in terms of its efficiency, and may be a contributing factor.
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-uses-family-members-to...
There is tons of potential being wasted in America and we really should focus on our native citizens. Its been a while since america has been dominant in the strength of our workforce and much of our current wealth is because of past generations not the current one.
We should focus on changing that before relying on other nations to provide us with skilled labor. It a national risk short and long term.
Our natives can't do a lot of jobs because they don't have the educational background, and that isn't going to change any time soon with the way we fund schools.
The other thing we don't do is provide low-cost high-quality healthcare to our citizens, and there again, there's not much effort to fix this, and instead the party in power wants to remove healthcare from poorer people.
My earlier point was around the fact that US isn't very efficient at managing this resource (letting arbitrary people through the physical border, while holding up highly educated folks in immigration queues for years).
The ability to physically design and create things has basically disappeared. I'm not only talking about chips, but mechanical, electrical engineering and all the miscellaneous disciplines associated with creating something in one place.
That used to be the strength of the valley.
If you want to do software, ok, but that's arguably less location dependent.
Valley will never be what it was in terms of global influence, especially if we look 40-50 years back. It's, no doubt, still a boiling pot for next-big-thing companies, but world around the US has grown significantly, especially in the last 5-10 years and there's a big demand for a skills that was not there 10-20 years ago.
Hometown is almost more attractive if other factors considered to be irrelevant. You have your native language, your family around, the food and just familiarity of things, as comparing to be a foreigner in a country that constantly put your status at risk.
Why America if it is hostile? What for?
> “Our factories are still talking to us at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., sometimes well into midnight. They’re working on weekends, so things get done much faster,” Gui said. “Whereas back in San Francisco, after 5 p.m. people won’t respond to your emails and you can’t get anything done until the next day.”
If that is the price of fast innovation, I rather be a bit slow.
Out of a sample of 10 international students I went to school with at Stanford 20 years ago (I just eyeballed my FB friend list and took 10, totally biased anec-data I know):
• 4 are now citizens - all their green card processes took 7+ years, except the one person who got it via marriage
• 2 are STILL in the green card process
• 1 intentionally went home for opportunity
• 3 left due to VISA expiration issues. 2 went to Europe, 1 went to Canada. 2 are CS grads, 1 has a PhD in ML.
It massively sucks. We're talking about amazingly resourceful people who got raised at whatever sheep farm in Kenya and Uzbekistan, made it all the way to Stanford via merit-based scholarships and what not, and then got ejected from the US because national policy... and now some other country with friendlier VISA policies got 'em.
You can claim that Americans are shooting themselves in the foot with these policies, and electing people like Trump, but if that's what they want to do...
If the Chinese can be prevented from exporting their version of the prison state, this could be a good thing in the near-medium term. (The U.S. imprisons the most per capita)
China needs smart people there to transition the economy. India has been massively slowed down by the brain drain to the U.S.
The more people out of poverty, the better.
1. Smart STEM people are more inclined to having a family. Constant uncertainty is not conducive to family. That will cause a lot of smart people to be sea turtles.
2. The most significant drawback of smart people congregating elsewhere is that future American companies are fucked. There is just going to be a lot more competition for products globally. Future Apple will have to fight Chinese companies in India. Mariott will have to fight Oyo in China. Future Tesla will have to fight BYD in Europe.
A LOT of our stock wealth is because other companies couldn't innovate as rapidly because the US was draining those countries of this talent pool. With this reversal, American companies will have a smaller pool of talent and will get whacked everywhere. Its super unfortunate.
Also, even for the well-compensated, it's financially very difficult to afford the 'ol house & car dream in what I would expect are top locations for immigrants (SF bay area, New York, Boston, Seattle, LA, ...). Certain parts of China also have absurdly expensive real estate (Shanghai, Beijing), but rent tends to be much more affordable and if you have family nearby the whole housing situation becomes much easier.
This isn't correct at all. It's true the US isn't very welcoming any more, but this isn't through "inept and ignorant messaging", it's not inept at all: the US voters clearly don't want foreigners here, and they proved it by the way they've voted, and now they have an administration that clearly reflects the wishes of the electorate. Stop trying to sugar-coat the reality of how American voters really feel.
But the people who care about the brain drain are being outvoted by the voters who support this administration, and are honestly happy about the brain drain.