Myspace Sold User Data Too - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43bbbn/myspace-tom-viant-time-inc-facebook-cambridge-analytica <comment><USER2> There's a difference between selling user data and using user data to target ads to specific user groups.

It's not like I get an Excel file with user data if I advertise on FB. All I can do is use FB's interface to select interests, age or an array of other information to target my ads.

The ones selling user data are Equifax and friends.

<comment><USER3> Ironically, the popular media has historically been the one of the largest sources of consumer data for ages through magazine subscriptions. They sell their data to brokers like Axciom (and many others) who package it and literally sell it for cash for anywhere from a few pennies per record on up depending on what features you want. Just addresses, addresses and phone numbers, number of cars owned, family make-up, age, etc.

Facebook is honestly quite humane in comparison. No one knows this stuff exists except direct marketers, which is why it doesn't get any attention.

Facebook gets much larger quantities of mundane information like you clicked on a news article, or you went on vacation to a certain place, etc. It also has social graph information that data brokers don't typically have like "is close friends with a woman with an upcoming birthday." That is a real ad targeting example you can do on Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stupid title, every free service sells user data.

<comment><USER5> False assertion.

I once operated a free service with 10Ks of users. When I sold it I refused to sell the user data. This dropped the value of the transaction to a fraction of the original offer.

So, maybe _a lot of_ , but not _every_.

<comment><USER6> Bravo, good sir! The world needs more people like you. A friend asked why I was in computer science if I thought so many tech companies were doing evil things. My answer was that being a conscientious objector, I might be able to make a difference. Thank you for showing it can be done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most of the free apps on the App Store or Google Play, are probably selling your data left and right.

The little "My Digital Life" app (that just happened to exploited a bug in Facebook's platform at the time) is probably a drop in the pond. Who knows what other apps there are that's not even connected with Facebook that have been selling for all these years and are probably still doing so today?

</comment><comment><USER8> OMG. How many times does Zuckerberg have to tell everyone they don't sell data before this old trope isn't pulled out?

<comment><USER9> Yes, they give it for free with the prism program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh my god. Facebook did not sell data to Cambridge Analytica. Can we just all learn that please?

</comment><comment><USER11> whataboutism

</comment><comment><USER12> > In the wake of Facebook's privacy debacle, Myspace Tom has emerged as an > unlikely hero.

What? Why? They all sold data, they all still do. It's fucking Silicon Valleys Business Model to sell their users' data!

What the fuck is going on, why do people behave like they are on the Internet for the first time. We all know this. We all knew this - for years.

You've got to be completely oblivious of any facts to still think any player in the modern web is any good or intents to do act good.

I can't wait for IPFS and Ethereum to ripe. Those two things combined will create the truly decentralized web and all those big, data selling, companies can fuck off.

<comment><USER13> Um... if there's a social network based on Ethereum you can just scrape all their user data and not need an equivalent of the Facebook third-party developer platform at all.

<comment><USER12> In an open platofrm you will always be able to abuse in some form or another. But what will end is the platform abusing your data. And that is the point here. If I want to sell my data (or hand it to someone, whatever) I will be able to do this. But there won't be any central party selling my data. And that is all we can ask for.

To be more specific, I could make my data available only to those who I allowed to see it by including their public key in my list of authorised keys. Therefor no scraping.

<comment><USER14> Anybody who you trust can then use My Cool Quiz App and let it read anything they can see about _you_ , too.

Reality is not required to cooperate with coinwank.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beidou: Isomorphic framework for server-rendered React apps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alibaba/beidou <comment><USER2> The one problem with server side component rendering is that the cost is massive compared to simple string based templates. Gatsby seems like the most sane way to do server rendering of react, you can render content into HTML offline and then publish the static HTML.</comment>


The science of ultra pure silicon - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-science-of-ultra-pure-silicon/ <comment><USER2> The comment from the security guard paints a big terrorist target on the facility!

</comment><comment><USER3> How are 5 year non-compete clauses remotely legal?

<comment><USER4> They are legal because the actual wording of the agreement has to be as narrow as possible. So you would be barred from competing in the same industry, in a certain geographical region, etc. It all has to be very specific. Otherwise it just gets dismissed in a court.

If I sell you my self driving tech company and tomorrow I'm founding a new one, right next door, ideally even stealing all the former employees back, that's competing. If I move across the ocean or start building self sailing yachts that's probably good.

Basically the limitations can only go as far as needed to protect the legitimate interests of the parties. There's of course some grey area where those interests overlap but I think overall 5 years isn't necessarily exaggerated.</comment></comment>


Is ycombinator news indexed by goolge/yahoo search engines? - <AUTHOR>

A lot of time I have to re-read something on ycombinator. Does ycombinator news have search or is it searchable from yahoo/google? <comment><USER2> [http://www.google.com/search?q=Is+ycombinator+news+indexed+b...](http://www.google.com/search?q=Is+ycombinator+news+indexed+by+goolge%2Fyahoo+search+engines%3F)

<comment><USER3> Ha, looks like the spiders have made a home here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can use Google try

site:news.ycombinator.com: _SearchString_

PS: Why post a question vs testing it?</comment>


Zoom corrects usage numbers: says it has 300M daily meeting participants - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21242421/zoom-300-million-users-incorrect-meeting-participants-statement <comment><USER2> I don't want to imply too much here, but I'm surprised by all the people here saying Zoom "just works" whenever Zoom is mentioned. It's a recurring mantra.

I've had various really annoying issues (completely blank settings windows, sound devices not getting recognized or used properly, crashes). All of these I've experienced both historically and during the past month. Neither Ubuntu, Arch or NixOS, all on three different laptop models, have been free of show- stopping issues.

When a customer wants to use Zoom for a call, it's been about 50/50 that we can do the call without issues.

I just find it suspicious that all the top comments are "it just works" when my experience has been the complete opposite, in various environments.

So far Google Meet and Whereby (formerly Appear.in) have been the least hassle-free in my experience (probably due to being web-based). Looking forward to trying Jitsi when I have the time and inclination, it looks really promising.

<comment><USER3> Zoom for Ubuntu client works perfectly fine. Been using for past 4 months on Ubuntu 18.04

Yesterday our team gave a shot to Google Meet but it does not allow screen sharing on Firefox (seems IE6 errr Chrome only feature)

<comment><USER4> Huh, I'm able to screen share via Google Meet on Firefox! Running OS X 10.9.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've listened to multiple major podcasts lately that suspiciously mention Zoom during the show in obvious "organic" ads.

Most recently was Conan O'Brien's "Connan Makes a Friend" podcast where they have what are obvious potted mentions of Zoom on the show.

In one instance, Conan pretends that he accidentally minimized the video conference app they're using. And finally his co-host is like "just click the Zoom icon to bring it back!" Like, that would obviously be cut if it was real.

In another instance, Conan says he's really bad with tech but has been getting better now that he has to figure out his laptop without employees around to help him. And then he adds that once the quarantine is over, he'll probably forget everything... except how to use Zoom, of course.

Just thought it was somewhat relevant here since it seems Zoom is doing some massive marketing campaigns. Not to mention how it seems in ubiquitous use and everyone online is constantly mentioning it. Pretty damn impressive.

<comment><USER6> Aren't the FCC in the US pretty strict about requiring you to specifically tag paid material?

This could just as easily be paid advertising as a joke (zoom is getting most of the news cycle for 'meetings' atm, so it's the topical product to joke on). And in some countries I'd more easily believe it's paid but I see a lot of work even creators/youtubers have to go into to explicitly declare sponsorship's I'd just be surprised.

If that's not the case please let me know!

<comment><USER7> No, the FCC is not at all strict about having to tag paid material. You may mean the FTC, but as far as I know there is nothing that says that TV shows have to disclose any sponsored segments

<comment><USER8> Don't know about TV, but if this is a v/podcast, then you need to disclose

[https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/ftc...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly Zoom just works how you expect it to.

Other applications do exist and they're bad from a usability perspective.

Google hangouts maxes out my CPU. Teams is a horrible electron app which I'm loathe to use.

So the negatives are that it's unencrypted, traffic might be routed through China sometimes and unknown participants can join if they have the meeting link with password.

For the majority of people they're not too bothered.

I'd argue that security is about having an understanding of the risk and mitigating it accordingly. And for a lot of cases zoom is fine.

<comment><USER10> Is it really that much better than it's open source alternative jitsi-meet?

<comment><USER11> No it's not, I'd say Zoom is demonstrably worse; at least in the experiences of people I've worked with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Still they are winning with their branding and their free 45 min tier ... people don't talk about telecon anymore but rather they are having a Zoom meeting.

But their UI really could use some rework ... it is really crappy.

<comment><USER13> My SO has to use a multitude of tools, because all her university teachers use different tools, because there was no standard up front.

She (and I have to agree sitting next to her) states that Zoom by far has the best usability and user experience. It is easy to use, features are quite detectable and stuff like virtual raised hands are great for teaching bigger groups.

So I would say it is the best tool out there currently.

Personally I prefer Google Meet - but that is because I use it daily for work and it became free only days ago.

<comment><USER14> I am suffering through Zoom at university and I had no idea about virtual raised hands existed, the UI could be improved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> All conferencing platforms have had issues. Zoom does seem to be fairly responsive when it comes to vulnerabilities and security patching.

As for 'state actor' interference, that is generally called 'lawful interception' when you drop the hype and FUD. I'm sure Zoom does/will comply with those regulations just like all the others.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like how they say that they're sorry they referred to them as people.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have had very few problems with zoom over the last 2 years. My company has always used it, with people connecting from various linux, windows, and apple machines. We are all remote, and have pair-programmed via screensharing for hours with zero issues.

As government contractors we'll most likely have to switch due it to being banned by the pentagon [0] (bad optics), so I guess we'll use jitsi, but it's quite unfortunate.

All of the DnD people I know are switching to it because it... just works. We haven't had any issues there either, but I can't speak about calls with ~15+ people.

I don't really like any of the alternatives: gotomeeting, chime, bluejeans, webex, discord, or god forbid, skype.

[0]: [https://www.stripes.com/news/us/zoom-for-official-use-is- no-...](https://www.stripes.com/news/us/zoom-for-official-use-is-no-longer-an- option-for-dod-personnel-report-says-1.625973)

</comment><comment><USER18> Whenever I'm using Zoom I'm astounded by how it works. Seriously. What black magic are they performing? It works remarkably well. Just like magic.

I've used Skype, Google hangout and others. They are like 1-2 years behind Zoom.

Poor encryption? China? Security issues? Whatever. It just works unlike others.

<comment><USER19> >What black magic are they performing?

They run all the traffic through their servers to avoid the inevitable NAT issues. So the magic is probably having a while lot of money to buy enough server capacity and bandwidth so that they never run short.

<comment><USER20> and then they combine that with an insistence on using their un-sandboxed app. Well, seems like the same magic, the yahoo-toolbar used back in the day...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Regular folks don't care. Zoom is currently, waaay better than anything else, although may be not for long. But venture capitalists and investors have their egos. It's funny to have the same fight (DAU and how engaged users really are) between Slack and MS Teams.

<comment><USER22> I've written video software.

Zoom's client blows away anything that I've seen from anyone else -by a significant margin.

When you can have 30 active video thumbnails on a single screen, with very little latency, on a humbly-specced machine, and the fan doesn't even kick in, you have some impressive work.

<comment><USER23> I have wondered if they're combining them on the server-side and just pushing a single stream to the client. Would that be detectable?

<comment><USER24> I use BlueJeans at work is this is what they do. I'm not so sure that Zoom is doing this. The side effects are that it heavily restricts what kinds of layouts you can use, and you will frequently see everyone's face go pixelated in a way thats super clear it's a single stream. Stuff like BlueJeans will only show you at most 9 users in a grid, even if more than 9 have video on. They will never have rows of 3 and then a row of two users. I don't see this behavior with Zoom but I only use it about once a month for random meetings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This was expected already, anyway it's better to use jitsi, better security and privacy

</comment><comment><USER26> I prefer Teams or Skype for Business, they works best.

I don't like the zoom UI or setup

</comment><comment><USER27> Funny how they admit that AFTER their IPO.

Lawyers: get your securities class action lawsuit in!

<comment><USER28> They made the statement they corrected less than two weeks ago. How is their IPO last year relevant?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Article sponsored by Microsoft, Google.

<comment><USER30> There does seem to be quite the media campaign against zoom. Interestingly its highlighting that strange divide between those of us that follow 'tech news' and those that don't. I've seen a few of the tech types try and get people to switch away from zoom with very little success over the last few weeks, no-one outside of this sphere seems to give even the slightest damn about what's being briefed to the tech media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> They apparently have 300M daily meeting participants which is actually more impressive than this headline.

<comment><USER32> Its 3x what Google Meet reported in their recent blog post, just for context.

<comment><USER33> I am a fairly young consultant and have initially advocated against Zoom due to the glaring privacy issues.

Obviously to no avail. Nobody cares. People just want to open a service and have it work and Zoom excels at that. As Teams was already there for my large enterprise client, we tried that at first but nope. Has issues with screen sharing and makes problems even with less than a dozen users.

I never had any Zoom connection issues and among my consultant company and my client I have participated in Zoom meetings with 200-300 people (we did some events digitally) with absolutely zero issues. Grid view is amazing as well.

Jitsi exists but I couldn't even convince a single person to switch for more than one session. Zoom works and nothing else counts. In Europe I don't know any company that would get Google licenses for Meet due to ... Google being Google.

It's all Zoom (professional & private) and Houseparty (private).

<comment><USER14> I have had plenty of issue with Zoom. Quality being bad, people not understanding the interface and my university had people zoom-bombing or whatever it is called. I recently accidently logged into a session with the wrong credentials (whatever Zoom defaulted to, not my official uni login) and everyone thought I was zoom-bombing them. I couldn't understand why I was being cross-questioned by people in the session.

Unfortunately the media have pushed zoom so hard that everyone assumes it is the best option and don't want to hear of anything else.

<comment><USER34> > Quality being bad, people not understanding the interface

Honestly hearing this complain about zoom for the first time. I have never seen anyone complain about quality of meet or the interface (more than a 100 people from different teams).

<comment><USER14> I am in New Zealand so distance may have been a factor. I haven't had problems in a couple of weeks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Popup mobile/web dev shop only on the weekends - <AUTHOR>

We all know that devs are in high demand and usually the best have FT jobs at the top companies or they're trying to start something on their own. Companies don't have the talent/time, devs don't have time or don't want to commit significant time.
I've been doing some market research, and found that devs always have an interesting side project or try to attend hackathons to solve problems during the weekend.
Why not get paid handsomely for it? Like $7k-$10k in a weekend. Just to give a rough format of the weekend:
Qualified devs give availability for weekends they want to hack and more importantly, screen out undesirables, (PHB, egotistical devs, etc.) you're here to have fun and get paid.
Popup dev shop finds clients that want to test an idea or rapidly prototype something along with a significant deposit to show that they're serious + fee to cover weekend running costs. Projects get selected based on interest from the pool of hackers + availability.
Friday - Sunday: hack with all amenities provided, food, beds, shower, etc.
Monday: Present to the client the product. If they like it, we get paid, if not, something to put in your portfolio and meet fellow qualified hackers.
Mutual understanding from the client and hackers that there is no obligation to continue working on the hack after the weekend is over, but at least they have a working prototype which they can buy.
Rinse and repeat. The popup dev shop.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> You lost me at "if they like, we get paid, if not something to put in your portfolio...", especially when preceded with the lure of $7-10k for 3 days.

<comment><AUTHOR> This will changes as reputation of the shop changes. You can't expect a company to fork over that kind of money only to have nothing done.

<comment><USER3> Then, wouldn't 2-3K of guaranteed work be better than a lure of 7-8K? If you are looking at top-notch devs who can code and execute an idea from scratch, that's not a bad deal at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think 2k-3k will cover the costs for the dev. Just to humor you with the breakdown:

\- Friday night: Plan and agree on approach

\- Saturday morning to Sunday night: hack

\- 4-5hrs sleep/night + breaks and tomfoolery

Maybe getting 35 hours of actual solid work comes out to $200-$228/hr. $2k-3k would be way too low esp. after taxes unless there is a way to skirt the IRS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some reason I can't edit my own comment, but even $200/hr is low. I used to work in economic consulting and I only have a BA in economics. My company charged the clients $400/hr for my services. Good lawyers charge $1,000/hr, why shouldn't good hackers make $400k-$500k/year just in salary? Fuck stock options, that's just the cherry on top. I've been reading that a good dev makes 125k to 150k, I think that's cute, but devs are still under valued in this market. Let's do something about it.

<comment><USER4> Lawyers have systemic and geographical barriers to competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What client is going to pay $7-10k for weekend dev's work and "fun"? Who fixes the inevitable bugs afterwards? People pay developers to work on their ideas to exact spec, not to experiment and hack.

You're looking at the market from the supply side, you need to look at it from the demand side which is far more important.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got clients that are interested and it's been done with lot's of overhead at regular hackathons except, the devs you get are a crap shoot and lots of distractions that hinder the process of actually shipping something.

<comment><USER6> Of course clients are going to love it because they're not going to pay for anything unless they want to, and they are going to try to bring you down to as low of a price as possible.

Where I see it, you don't care what the price is really, because you'll always get the same percentage of the cut no matter what the selling price is.

I don't think the issue is that a lot of devs have side projects and never finish them, I just think it's the fact that we work on side projects and we get distracted by paying jobs, outside life, etc.

If you can make this work, then more power to you. If you really want to get interest, you should try to get college kids that don't already have years of experience and already in full time jobs, they'd be more willing to get something to put on their resume for the risk of not getting paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Weekend projects are guaranteed to be fun. A job is, unfortunately for a lot of people, not.

Convincing people to have less fun and work a second job is a hard sell -- made harder because most people who are capable of building something in a weekend already have pretty well-paying jobs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, but I wouldn't consider this a second job. You have no obligation to show up every weekend, jobs do. This is hackathon with the best people working on fun[1] problems and getting paid to do so.

I share your guaranteed fun of weekend projects and that's what I want provide.

[1] You decide what's fun by showing up or showing interest in a project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you could actually guarantee that I would get a really high quality product, that worked, and didn't have lots of bugs (it can have a few tweeks still needed), I can customers people being interested. What you would need is to ensure that the end product is awesome and DOES work. More so what I can see is this as a business idea - where people can come to a company for an amazingly fast turnaround time. Dealing with web design and development firms is a disaster from my experience. Even the level of customer care they provide when you approach with a potential $20,000 is terrible.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think building an MVP in a weekend is possible.

I suggested something similar to this recently. Like startup weekend for your own ideas, except the developers get paid.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you are in NYC, I'd join you. I love to hack over the weekends and would definitely love to get paid for those hacks.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the South Bay by Mountain View. You can start the NYC chapter.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Strategies For Detecting Scams - <AUTHOR>

So I recently received a call from a debt collection agency. They exhibited all the signs of a scam, and when I looked them up there were tonnes of reports of them being a scam.
On the off-chance it was real, I called them back and requested the information on the charge, which although it seemed to be related to a legitimate doctor's visit, was from a diagnostics company and debt collection agency that the doctor's office denied all knowledge of. I called the company that the doctor said they sent the test to, but they had no record of me.
I threatened to contact the FBI about the calls (from the collector) until finally they gave me the complete information (which they all knew all along). That was also when I started getting polite operators that were cheerful and helpful. The doctor's office sent a test to a diagnostics company, who forwarded it to another company, who forwarded it to another company, who employs a doctor who did the test, who charged it to my insurance company. The insurance company denied the charge, and that's where it ended. They all claim that someone else should have billed me, but when the company that actually performed the test didn't get paid, they sent me (not the people they claim to be responsible for billing me) to collection.
That was an hour of phone calls, and now the one company I need to speak to in order to resolve the issue is closed for the day. Since I was so sure the collection agency was a scam, does anyone have any advice on how to be sure something is a scam, when you think it is? <comment><AUTHOR> Here're the reasons I thought it was a scam:

\- Crappy website

\- Inaccurate information

\- Very low quality phone system and operators

\- Rampant reports of being a scam

\- Asked for financial information to verify who I was (edit: which I didn't give them)

<comment><USER2> _Asked for financial information to verify who I was_

NEVER give that out to a cold caller. You only give that out over the phone if you made the call to a known person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've always found that asking people to put it in writing is a good filter. I refuse to conduct any financial business on the phone, even with my bank (whose customer service department regularly attempts to bullshit customers).

</comment><comment><USER2> I usually check my caller I.D. display of an incoming phone number on Google. Most scam callers call lots of people, and there are reports about them on the Web.

<comment><AUTHOR> The number they used to call had lots of reports of it being a scam. I would say 5% of the reports indicated it was legitimate.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Those who moved careers from the West to China, what's your experience? - <AUTHOR> There's often talk in the news about China wanting to poach Silicon Valley talent to build up their own tech scene. There's also talk of founders who moved to Shenzhen to be closer to hardware development for rapid prototyping.<p>However, I've struggled to find individual examples of experiences. Has anyone done this, or know someone who has and blogs/tweets about it? I'm curious how this looks in reality. <comment><USER3> I've sort of done the move. If you are not ethnically Chinese and speak the language, there will be a few things to get used to. The degree will depend a bit on where you end up.

For example:

\- pollution can be a big problem.

\- if Chinese company, work culture can be very different. More top down, longer hours etc.

\- noisy. Most places you go in big cities you are surrounded by noise. Cars, people, construction. It doesn't end.

\- I find the general quality of things to be lower. Buildings are poor quality generally. Side walks aren't as maintained. A lot of things look nice from a distance only.

\- internet obviously. Things are blocked and vpn can be flaky.

\- many every day things will be more difficult. Banking, medical care etc. On the other hand many things are also much more convenient. Food delivery, transportation (unless you want to drive yourself) etc

There are pros too of course. You get to learn about a different culture and language. You'll be relatively wealthy compared to most people there. It's really easy to meet new people.

In the end I'd say move there if there is a good reason: Higher salary, better opportunity you wouldn't normally have or if you just want a change / adventure AND you can live with the cons, at least for a while.

<comment><USER4> I would like to add: Even if you are ethnically Chinese and speak the language, don't go back to China unless you really cannot find a decent job in the west.

Especially if you are young and educated in the west, here are the things to consider:

\- It is not very hard to find a STEM job in the west, and the pay is good.

\- Your parents are healthy now, not much to worry. It's better to get a green card before they get old.

\- You may start a family soon. It is much much easier to raise a child in the west.

<comment><USER5> Care to expand on your last point? I haven't heard that before.

<comment><USER4> A) Parenting. You will mostly have no parenting on your own in China. Tech companies will make you work long hours. It is not uncommon that when you finished work and back home, your kid is already asleep. When you leave home early to catch the train, your kid is still asleep. It is not a joke but many Chinese young couples only see their kids during weekend, even they live together. You think leaving your kid to your parents 5 days per week is good? Noooooooooo

B) Medicare. Every time your kid gets fever: IV. Your parents just love it. They think it is the best. Chinese people love to have their kids get blood test, X-ray for just cough... Children's hospitals are crowded by (grand)parents and kids who simply have cold (see pictures and story [http://www.sohu.com/a/212568582_407108](http://www.sohu.com/a/212568582_407108)). Most Chinese people (including educated middle class) do not understand get cold is not because of cold, it is because of virus.

C) Also everybody knows: the highly competitive education system is a huge burden on kids and parents. It is common to spend lots of money to purchase apartment at good school district (xue qu fang). And many parents do this for kids going to elementary school, middle school, high school... Middle class life is not easy.

<comment><USER6> A story on the this point - I worked with some colleagues from a giant China company. One of them just had his firstborn and was deployed outside the country for 3 months. The other also had small children and was also deployed outside his country for months.

These guys were also the first in the office, last ones out.

I doubt a Western company would be as eager to split a parent from their babies, but this was a common thing, especially when you're the linchpin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be honest, don't don't it. Unless you're of Chinese descent and speak the language, you won't be able to advance in most companies. The work culture is alien to most westerners and the benefits to your career are negligible.

Mostly depends on what you want out of your career but speaking as someone that lived in China and worked in Chinese tech companies for seven years, including being the first foreign hire for a large mobile games company, it's not something I'd recommend mid-career. Maybe just starting out or if you can be hired into a c-level role.

<comment><USER8> "Unless you're of Chinese descent and speak the language, you won't be able to advance in most companies."

There is no such issue when working for international or western companies and/or startups. Also a local mobile games company is not a good example to generalize with since games industry is known for being pretty horrible here. Internationally as well.

While there are some things many westeners might find annoying, there are lot of good things as well. For example income tax and living costs are very low. I moved from Europe to China to work in software engineering and my living standards have increased significantly.

<comment><USER9> I guess language barrier is the main issue here? In western companies, it's also hard to advance to high/exec levels if someone cannot communicate in English well.

<comment><USER10> I'd say it's more like being brown in the US and trying to advance into C-level roles ... possible, but you may encounter resistance depending on the company and region.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm in a WeChat group for Product Managers in China. Someone asked a similar question a few weeks ago. The context of their question was:

\- product management (not engineering)

\- working as an employee of a Chinese tech company (not starting something themselves)

With those caveats out of the way, below is the text of my answer to them:

"As I understand it, until maybe 2000 or 2005, there was a lack of people with specific experience in many many areas. So the median foreigner coming to China had better experience (and ability) than did Chinese people with a similar educational background and age.

As China's economy has developed:

\- many more Chinese have gained that experience

\- many Chinese who worked in US/Europe for many years have come back (or can be tempted to come back)

As a result, most foreigners are equivalent to a local Chinese person, except that:

\- they know English very well (advantage for policy/comms/bizdev roles)

\- they don't know Chinese well (e.g. hard for a Product Manager to work in a Chinese company when the working language is Chinese and most engineers and other peers don't speak Chinese well)

\- they aren't in touch with local culture (e.g. don't use the new live streaming platforms that everyone else does)

\- they need a work visa (only a minor issue for all but the smallest companies)

There are foreigners here [in this WeChat group] who work for Chinese companies (e.g. @[REDACTED] @[REDACTED] ) and are very good at what they do. But it's not easy.

I've interviewed at two large Chinese companies you've heard of. Both of them tested my level of Chinese early in the process. One took me by surprise because the interviewer had grown up in the US and so could obviously have interviewed me in English. In the other, I was expecting interviews in Chinese, but one of the interviews was with a data scientist and that kept me my toes as I didn't have the vocab to explain my answers fully/concisely."

Oh, and take note of the last sentence of rlglwx's earlier comment: "Maybe just starting out or if you can be hired into a c-level role." If you're just starting out, then the pace and intensity of working at an early-stage Chinese tech company could be an amazing learning experience. If you bring distinct experience that can get you a very senior role, then you will work very hard but could also be very well compensated. If you're in the middle, it's tricky due to the competitive issues I mentioned above.

<comment><USER12> "As I understand it, until maybe 2000 or 2005, there was a lack of people with specific experience in many many areas. So the median foreigner coming to China had better experience (and ability) than did Chinese people with a similar educational background and age."

I've heard this argument often, but as a someone actually living and working here, I have to say that this hasn't changed at all or at least not in the tech sector.

Local senior developers here in Shanghai and Beijing are usually equivalent to a western mid- or junior+ developers. Often you see senior devs that couldn't even be hired for junior position in the US or Europe.

Managers are often selected through relationships and connections and only in few rare cases have any kind of ability or competence for their role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A warning for folks considering working in China (love to hear this debunked if untrue):

[https://www.chinalawblog.com/2016/09/the-china-stock- option-...](https://www.chinalawblog.com/2016/09/the-china-stock-option- scam.html)

> no foreign person can own stock in a Chinese domestic company not already > listed on a stock market. So any such option or stock transfer is void from > the start. Foreigners are not permitted to be shareholders of Chinese > domestic companies, nor does China recognize the concept of nominee > shareholders.

<comment><USER14> you can via ADRs, at least for large companies they usually follow the market. However under the hood this seems unfair. Why does China get to be protective but the the west does not? Just greedy non-chinese companies that don't care where the investments are coming from?

<comment><USER15> > Why does China get to be protective but the the west does not?

The short answer is the west was seduced by access to the Chinese market and was willing to do one-sided trade deals to get that access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Haven't moved my career here but am working remotely for a couple of months.

All of my work is European and I'm on the verge of leaving due to how bad the internet gets at night.

Throughout the day you've got ExpesssVPM and Shadowsocks but at around 7pm every night there's a huge crackdown on foreign traffic where even obscure sites fail to load.

It's probably fine if your work is 9-5 but outside of then the internet for foreign usage is pretty much unusable that I want to curl up into a ball and cry most nights.

Baidu and Chinese sites will consistently ping at around 40ms consistently but at night you're looking at something like 70% packet loss and 2sec pings outside

<comment><USER17> Is there some reason why this only happens from 7pm? I would have thought that the net would either be censored all the time and nothing would ever work, or else a VPN would work always.

<comment><USER18> If I had to guess, they reduce the censorship during the day to lessen the effect on businesses. In the evening it's primarily going to be people using the internet at home, which they'll want to control more tightly.

<comment><USER19> Also in 9-5 China time most western people are not online. But in the Chinese evening Europe wakes up and then slowly also the US comes online leaking into the Chinese morning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I can't speak for "founder/tech startup" scene in China, but I did spend 4 years as a manager in the property development arm of a large foreign retailer.

1) As far as I know, the overpaid expat days are over. A lot of Chinese have returned from long stints overseas, and they're bringing that experience back with them. If you want a good position, now you actually need to offer something unique.

2) It's not impossible, but you will struggle if you can't speak Chinese. It's funny how this working generation were all forced to learn English at school, but many of them can barely string a few words together. Depends on your industry, of course.

3) Most of your business interactions will be unpleasant. Chinese companies will lie, cheat, steal, and anything they can to sell you down the river. Most of your time will be spent watching your back and trying not to get screwed. Same goes for employees.

4) The pollution is horrible, and one of the main reasons why so many people left at the same time I did.

5) Managing teams can be a nightmare. Chinese employees love empire building, and their answer to any problem is "you need to give me more people".

6) Decisions are very much top-down, and noone wants to second-guess the boss. This means companies are constantly lurching from long periods of inaction (waiting for the CEO/ Chairman to make a decision) to mad sprints/crunch time (once they make a decision and insist that it be carried out in a ridiculous timeframe).

7) "Face-time" is very much a thing. Many employees are working 12 hour days, but most of that is spent on WeChat/mobile games/etc.

In short, would I recommend someone do it? Yes - if you can speak Chinese, have no kids and can swing a well-paid, time-limited posting (say 2 years) with your existing company.

It's an eye-opening experience and really makes you value things that you take for granted in the West.

<comment><USER21> Excellent point on #3. I have heard so many reasons for this. I have no idea how a foreign CEO sleeps at night with all the backroom embezzlement activity I have heard about. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in inflated P.O. going into the wrong aka less efficient, less competent hands because it can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> i've been in Hong Kong for 6.5 years already. Worked in small consultancies, large logistics company, and local startup.

PROS: a) Salary is high, especially if you get to work in finance/insurance/luxury retail fields b) disposable income (aka savings) is extremely high as income tax is low, no more than 17%, also, no capital gains tax! c) great hub to work and explore Asia

CONS: a) IT jobs (development mainly) aren't that exciting as they are mostly outsourced to cheaper countries so you ended up being a lonely team member in HK or in management type of jobs. There's always exceptions to this (Credit Suisse, Lalamove, Chengbao to name a few) b) tech is lagging behind in all aspects, from testing to devops. For example; Continuous Integration I'm yet to see a team in mid to large companies effectively having and respecting the build. This can be seen as an opportunity if you are willing to try. c) You work longer hours, more stress and generally fewer vacation days

However, if you come here to work as a founder to be closer to Shenzhen (factories), you also reap the benefits of an established legal system in Hong Kong. Plenty of highly motivated fresh graduates as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great point about access to Shenzhen from HK. How's the language barrier been? Have you had to learn both Canto and Mando and read both simplified and traditional? Is there a distinct advantage to living on one side of the border over the other?

<comment><USER22> HK has uncensored and fast internet. The language barrier can be a issue but English is still widely spoken, even in remote areas of HK like where I live. I know enough Canto for numbers, food and the rare times I get a taxi. I can't ready anything though. There's a big question mark as 2047 looms closer, which is till when China promised to keep HK the way it is now (capitalism, different currency, open, legal system and so on).

<comment><USER23> > There's a big question mark as 2047 looms closer, which is till when China > promised to keep HK the way it is now (capitalism, different currency, open, > legal system and so on).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests)

They're not going to wait until 2047. Already many (most?) elementary schools in HK speak Mandarin instead of Cantonese.

<comment><USER24> > Already many (most?) elementary schools in HK speak Mandarin instead of > Cantonese.

Mandarin is far easier to learn and speak than Cantonese

<comment><USER23> I don't know what you're getting at. Shouldn't they learn Spanish or something because it's "easier"?

<comment><USER24> It sounded like you lament transition the from Cantonese to Mandarin and you make it seem like a bad thing, near equivalent to the loss of rights and freedoms. I don't feel that way.

Sarcasm aside, Spanish is not easier for Chinese people since barely anyone speaks it in Asia other than nouns in the Philippines. Mandarin is easier because it's already the primary language for most Chinese people and not just the mainland. It's also generally easier to speak and understand compared to Cantonese. Having one standard language is an advantage vs having a million "dialects".

There are many bad things about the HK handover. Standardizing on Mandarin is not one of them.

<comment><USER23> Language attrition is a real thing, and it's terrible.

Erasing the language erases part of the culture that makes Hong Kong unique and interesting. It's a poverty to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I moved from Europe to China to work as a mobile/backend dev.

Pros:

\- Salaries these days in China's big cities are pretty much same or better than in Europe

\- Income tax and living costs are significantly lower

\- Former two combined: your living standards will increase a lot here.

\- If you live in big cities, life is good and you can live really western life style

\- Extremely safe and very peaceful. Street crimes and violence are pretty much nonexistent.

Cons:

\- You really have to take much more responsibility. You might find your dream company with excellent salary here or you might end up in sweatshop with shitty salary. General rule: Avoid really local Chinese companies and work for international ones like Apple, Microsoft, Google, western startups etc.

\- Internet is blocked (can be easily bypassed with VPN though)

\- Chinese culture might be hard to deal with for many foreigners.

\- Competence of Chinese developers and especially managers is really low when compared to the West

In general: It's a wild and scary ride, but I'd recommend it at least temporarily.

<comment> abc-xyz More cons: you're directly supporting a surveillance state that has no regard for human rights, that is engaged with concentration camps and medical genocide, and that won't hesitate a second to kick you out of the country and ban you from entry without telling you why or for how long, likely resulting in you losing any type of investment (relationship/financial/etc). It doesn't matter if you've been a good citizen for many years, and you have no way of appealing the decision. If you end up in a relationship with a Chinese citizen then you also risk (s)he won't be allowed to go abroad to a Western country (quite common for those who don't belong to the higher class). You'll also be denied entry at most hotels that aren't 4-5 star because they don't allow foreigners, and the same goes for apartments. If you try to stay at a friends apartment then you risk the landlord calling your friend to say foreigners arent allowed to stay there. I tend to stay at relatively cheap hotels (often the cheapest I can find), in China I'd get denied by 9/10, in any other country I've not once been denied. Trying to rent an apartment in China without going through an agency that have a "Green Book" will result in similar odds.

Do yourself a favour and go to any other Asian country where you won't be supporting modern day Nazis, and where you won't be treated as dirt by the government. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. are all great options that will most likely give you a better experience.

<comment><USER25> I'm actually surprised that this is the first comment of this nature I've encountered on this page.

China is that country that checked out the show Black Mirror and _was actually inspired_ by the dystopias:

[https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/chinas-13-million- discred...](https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/chinas-13-million-discredited- individuals-face-discrimination-thanks-social-credit-system/article/3003319)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ex-Googler Scotty Allen has done exactly the things you mentioned about for a few years now migrating from California/Seattle to Shenzhen China! He hosts a great YouTube channel called "Strange Parts"[1], you should check it out!

[1] [https://strangeparts.com/](https://strangeparts.com/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been considering a move to Japan. My pay would likely be several tens of thousands of dollars less (still very good, relative to the market but less than what I could command in a Western market), but it's also an opportunity to have a very different life experience.

Money vs. experience, it's really tough for me to figure out what's more important.

<comment><USER28> If we're tossing other countries in the hat, throw in Taiwan. It's like China, minus the smog, tyranny, and bad internet!

<comment><USER29> The only problem is that they constantly have China talking about how they want to invade and retake it.

<comment><USER30> Meanwhile, a comparable group of people keep spreading the image that unifying with China cause no harm. What do you say then? Taiwan is a divided society as always.

The truth is, it just seems that nobody cares about politics here anymore. Taiwanese media have been so sick that gossip is more than serious news. And guess what, most of the cable TV channels are Chinese-funded nowadays.

So when you say "The only problem is that they constantly have China talking about how they want to invade and retake it," you are either lying, or you have other intentions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> my impression is that unless you're in a super high-demand and high-level role (ie. Andrew Ng), it's still not that appealing compared to the US. For engineering roles, you're going to be worked harder and for lower pay than in the US. As an engineer with a degree in Chinese, I originally planned on working in China but found much better options stateside. Some of my colleagues have been successful in getting decent business-side tech jobs in China, or doing supply side stuff for businesses based outside of China.

<comment><USER32> >for lower pay

How is it when adjusted for cost of living though?

<comment><USER33> What adjustment for cost of living?

Assuming living in a Tier-1 where the tech-hubs are (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen), rents for a 2/3 bedroom apartment somewhat centralish (these are vastly larger, more populous, and higher density than most American or European cities) will be at least USD 2000, possibly 4000 depending on taste (apartment, not house). Pension may need to be privately paid, and tax-band will be above 40% for anything that can support the above. Purchasing equivalent consumables like food and eating out western-style will be the same or double than the cost in most of the USA. If with kids then international schools are pretty expensive in China, over USD 20k per kid per year. International driving license not hard but car questionable as the above Tier-1 cities have restrictions / waiting lists / lotteries on license plates.

Cost-of-living adjustment is only relevant if: no kids, no pension, able to adapt to eat locally (quite hard for a lot of people especially when hitting the ground with a full time job), don't mind a 30-60+ minute subway commute (cheaper rents).

<comment><USER34> It sounds like you never really tried to integrate, so here's my experience living in Shanghai, the most expensive mainland city - eating mostly Chinese food I would eat stuff like jianbing with chicken and pork for breakfast for about $0.80, lived in a studio apt in a shikumen building 5 mins walk from IAPM/陕西南路站 (I would consider, quite central) for about $400/mo that I actually found on Airbnb, not even using local apt finding services (bc I was there relatively short term, 4 months, and didn't want to sign a lease) where I could have found one even cheaper probably, and was eating out for dinner at an average cost of maybe $5 to $7 per meal, or around $20-$30 if I wanted to splurge.

Then again, I took time to learn Mandarin against the advising of expats who reassured me that I'd never get any good and therefore should just not try, so maybe that's where my perspective differs.

Sounds like your problem is trying to replicate western lifestyle in China, if you do that everyone sniffs the blood and will find ways to rip you off on everything. Though yeah, schooling probably would be a pretty big expense - <USER2> way I'd send my kid to Chinese schools either.

<comment><USER35> +1 to this. If you try to live the same way as you did in the States, without trying any of the more hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and only go to like, Pizza Hut (which is considered a decent mid-end fine-dining restaurant), for sure you will spend 100 RMB+ per meal. But getting buns, dumplings, beef noodles for 10-30 RMB is in no way a remote possibility, but they definitely don't look Western.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As a native Chinese, this is our experience [https://996.icu/#/en_US](https://996.icu/#/en_US)

</comment><comment><USER37> Agree with comments below. Don't do it, unless you are native Chinese and earned a high degree and would join a key high-tech company working on research topics, and have high lever relationships with the company.

</comment><comment><USER38> I worked in Shanghai for a couple years for an international company. If you go somewhere with western managers (or Chinese who worked in the west) the management may not be much more hierarchical than in the west. If you can, start work at a non-Chinese branch of a company with offices in China and then transfer, as expat packages are often better than what you'd get if you were hired as a local. China has something called 996: 9am-9pm, 6 days per week. If you don't want to work such hours, you'll have fewer options in the tech industry.

Personally, I think how much you enjoy it will depend on how much you enjoy Chinese culture. From my experience, expats who stays "expats" forever, only hang out with other foreigners and don't learn the language, are less satisfied than people who integrate more, have local friends, learn the language, and enjoy things like KTV and hotpot. The locals are generally quite pragmatic and in some sense libertarian, in that many will do what they can to skirt laws and regulations that get in their way (which at least in past was perhaps necessary for survival in the corrupt, oppressive conditions there). So if you like "hustle", you'll like it, but if you think Uber are monsters, laws are made to be obeyed, or principles trump pragmatism, then you probably won't have a good time. Also if you're insecure about your appearance you may not enjoy it there; people can be very frank (like, a colleague might observe "wow, you've gotten fatter, what did you eat?"), and many job listings require a photo attached to the resume. Similarly people are more comfortable mentioning racial stereotypes than Americans are, so if (often well-meaning) racism bothers you then again, maybe better not to go.

Reasons to work there? The food is amazing and there's so much variety, the sheer number of people and opportunities is greater than almost anywhere else due to the population size (more people --> greater absolute number of people at the tails of any distribution --> there are some really awesome people there), and it's extremely safe. Things like delivery and transport are excellent due to economies of scale. There's also a lot of personal freedom there; the government aside, normal citizens will generally leave you alone and mind their own business, and won't e.g. call the cops or child protection when you let your child play alone outside. If you have kids there they're also much less likely to develop a drug or alcohol problem, should that be a concern; drug use is much less common there, and although the legal drinking age is something like 13 there generally isn't a binge drinking problem (maybe because the kids have too much homework).

</comment><comment><USER39> I would say unless you look like Chinese, speak like Chinese, have the resilience to endure long hours and enjoy adventure, then maybe China isn't really for you.

Like bamboo ceiling is a thing in US, similar ceiling will be put upon foreigners in China, unless it is your own company.

</comment><comment><USER40> A couple examples of AI engineers moving to Tokyo (I know it's different) and sharing some thoughts on Twitter:

\- David Ha w/ Google Brain: [https://twitter.com/hardmaru](https://twitter.com/hardmaru)

\- Adam Gibson started Skymind in Silicon Valley and moved to Tokyo a few years back: [https://twitter.com/agibsonccc](https://twitter.com/agibsonccc)

<comment><USER41> At least Japan lets non-permanent residents avoid taxes on income from abroad (that stays abroad) for the first 5 years. Depends on your home country whether this lets you avoid their taxes.

In some cases, this can save a lot of tax.

<comment><USER42> Do you have any information about this? I've been looking into the tax implications of moving to Japan recently and it's not been easy to sort through.

<comment><USER41> Just googling. It looks like it was a better situation pre2017 though:

www.mondaq.com/x/561782/tax+authorities/Change+In+Taxation+Of+NonPermanent+Residents

See an accountant/lawyer yada yada.

The bitcoiners that gave up their US citizenship, or otherwise left their home country and moved to Japan probably came out well tax-wise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't know much, but did see there was a Bloomberg series about Shenzen that had some Western entrepreneurs in some episodes. It looks awesome tbh.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmaIbb13GM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmaIbb13GM)

I think in that episode they were talking about the Hax incubator. [https://hax.co/](https://hax.co/)

</comment><comment><USER44> [https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/blob/master/en_US.md](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/blob/master/en_US.md)

A "996" job refers to an unofficial working pattern (9 am - 9 pm, 6 days a week) that has been gaining more popularity. Serving a company that encourages the "996" working pattern usually means working for at least 60 hours a week.

TLDR; A protest going on right now of developers in China. ICU means Intensive Care Unit.

</comment><comment><USER45> I am curious, why not japan or South Korea? Or even Taiwan, which google is now opening offices there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Google has offices in Shenzhen, too. And one could debate whether Taiwan is a country or part of China.

But that aside, the pull seems to be China's incentives and access to local hardware manufacturing. Not just the idea of living in Asia instead of the West.

<comment><USER32> >one could debate whether Taiwan is a country or part of China

At least we can while we're in the west

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I believe Ian Bernstein at Sphero moved to China. Here's the podcast that I remember him mentioning it in:

[https://www.blubrry.com/execpodcast/20878353/036-from- zero-t...](https://www.blubrry.com/execpodcast/20878353/036-from-zero-to- sphero-w-ian-bernstein-cto-sphero/)

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't have personal experience living in China. I've followed SerpentZA and laowhy86 on youtube for many years, who share and film their own experiences living in southern China. They have a shared channel, ADVChina, where they ride around on motorcycles and discuss often controversial topics related to China and the upsides and downsides of being a foreigner there. They have some great content and a few good documentaries too: Conquering Southern China and Conquering Northern China.

[1]:[https://www.youtube.com/user/churchillcustoms](https://www.youtube.com/user/churchillcustoms)

</comment><comment><USER48> NOTE: I wanted to say I spoke pretty good Mandarin before going to China the first time. I knew what I was getting into and really wanted to be there. If you appreciate Chinese culture and have studied a bit ignore everyone's warnings - you'll be fine.

I'm late and most of what I have to say has already been said, but I'm a bit of a different story, given as I'm Western but _started_ my career in China. I've worked at a top 50 startup in Shanghai (Video++) and most recently at Alibaba. Given that I'm 22, and have spent the majority of my internship/working career in China I'll give my take:

\- Living in China has been better than anywhere I've lived in the US (CT, NYC, ATL, SF). There's abundant food that's both very good, and very cheap (both relative and absolute).

\- Not only is the food cheap, but healthy. Very little food is processed (most is prepared fresh) and everywhere I've worked we've had wonderful meal services that prepped healthy portions. I lost a ton of weight working there without even working out or changing my diet!

\- Cell service is really, really good and affordable. However, internet service is quite bad and no amount of money can remedy this. At Alibaba, we had fibre laid in Hangzhou so this is the only time I've ever experience moderately fast connection speeds.

\- GFW etc isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Any reasonable company already has a proxy or VPN for you to use at work, and there are a number of good VPNs for personal use. I never felt I missed out on the Western web, only that it was a bit slower to connect (see above).

\- Technology is abundant and fast-paced. You can rent umbrellas, bikes, phone batteries, etc. If you can think of it someone probably is working on the problem and you'll experience things you've never seen before in the US.

\- Pollution and noise are a problem but not terrible. You certainly adjust and you do have to make some concessions i.e. I never cycled while living in Shanghai, and sometimes wore a face mask on particularly bad days.

\- Transit is much better. In Shanghai and Shenzhen, the subways are practically brand new. Not only is there cellular/WIFi connectivity but they're always on time and people queue very neatly for them. High-speed rail is ubiquitous and cheap. Didi is objectively worse than Uber though.

\- The work environment is quite different:

1\. Management (where I've worked) has been practically non-existent as compared to the US. This might be because I do research, but I've never had a micromanager, or standups, etc.

2\. Daily naps are a thing. Expect to find people taking an hour nap after eating lunch.

3\. 996 is real. Most people at tech companies will work 9am-9pm 6 days/week.

4\. It is expected you basically live in the office. You'll eat all 3 meals there, and spend a lot of time with your colleagues. Family time, and going home for dinner isn't a thing like it is in the West.

I'm sure I've left a lot out, but the above has been my experience in China. I'm planning on taking a full-time offer that'll put me back in China, and clearly, am biased as I think the quality of life is better there compared to the West.

Feel free to ask me any questions.

<comment><USER49> How did you land your first job? I'd assume that Chinese companies won't easily take the risk to sponsor a visa for a foreign graduate without relevant experience, especially if they don't speak the language (edit: I see you added a note, so feel free to ignore that last part).

<comment><USER48> I have a lot of experience with the visa process...fortunately I had pretty good Chinese before I began my job search.

I was lucky enough to have help from a pretty notable entrepreneur in Shanghai (a friend of a friend) who sent my resume around. The interview process is very slow in China (also recruiting happens at different times than the West) and so about 4 months and a bunch of interviews later I decided on Video++ in Shanghai.

Unlike the US the visa process is very straightforward. It works as a points- based system in a number of categories, where if you hit the point minimum (overall of 60 I believe) then you get your visa. So once you get an offer it's not particularly hard for the company, but smaller ones will certainly be more averse given the time and expertise it takes to produce the documentation to provide to the consulate.

N.B.: I'd add that a lot of Chinese companies are intrigued (not necessarily the right word) by foreign candidates. You'll stand out in the pool. So if you apply through normal means, or even reach out they'll pick you out and talk to you. It depends a lot on the company and the timing but in my experience, it's been far easier than doing interviews in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> [https://996.icu/#/en_US](https://996.icu/#/en_US)

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm an American that has been working at an American company in China for the last year. I'm ethnically Chinese and can speak okay (HSK5 - HSK6) Chinese.

Overall, it's been a negative experience but I don't regret at least giving it a shot.

-Even in multinational companies people are in the office for much longer hours than in the west. However, a lot of that time is on wechat, super long lunches and who knows what. -My compensation is a bit more than half as much I was making in the US but my taxes and living costs are much much lower. I can save almost as much as I used to. If you get a job in China, make sure to really understand your pay structure and tax implication. Your taxes could either be super high or super low depending on the structure. -Pollution is awful. It's really oppressive some days and you just don't want to go outside. -Chinese ability is a must. Basically all my technical discussions are in Chinese. -The 差不多 (good enough) mentality is exhausting sometimes. Even in tier 1 cities, everything is falling apart and looks like crap up close. -I have a mix of foreigner and Chinese friends. When I first came here, I was super insistent on only hanging out with Chinese people to get the "real experience" but realistically as a westerner there is too much of a culture gap. Most Chinese people that I've met are very very focused on work and their income. -Chinese people are pretty nice individually when you get to know them, but it's a different story in public. Cutting in line, shoving their way, watching shows full volume on their phone in the subway, riding their bikes into you, etc... -Phone usage is crazy here. It seems like nearly everyone is glued to their phones at all times. -Dating is really easy (if you're a man). I haven't heard this mentioned in this thread yet, but it is a big reason why a lot of expats move to China. However, I would tread very carefully. I wouldn't recommend starting a serious relationship here unless you're in love with China and are in it for the long haul. Also, casual dating isn't very common here so girls get attached very quickly. If you're planning on just dating around, you'll feel awful eventually unless you're a sociopath. -Red tape everywhere. It seems difficult to do nearly everything, especially if you're a foreigner.

I definitely wouldn't live in China for the long term, but it's been a pretty interesting experience. Do it for a year or two for the experience and then GTFO.

</comment><comment><USER52> The reason you find it hard to find experiences is that there aren't a lot of us who stick around.

Across most of China the dominant foreigner is the young visitor, maybe as a student, maybe teaching English. There are also some old English teaching hold-outs, married people running F&B businesses, and a few traders (the imported wine merchant is a classic). Other professionals are rare outside of major cities and industrial areas, save occasional NGO/intergovernmental projects, conferences and trade shows. Travelers are pretty rare. To over- generalize, the type of media these people leave online is usually somewhere between "OMG squat toilet!" and "found a McDonalds!", to "selfie at [landmark]" or "[me picking up locals]".

I've done my time: 18 years here, and only hospitalized for salmonella three times! About half-way through I went back to the west for 2 years, then came back to China. I've also taken an extra year out. The short answer is the situation has been changing frequently. It's a lot more expensive now (cost of living), visa rules have changed greatly, the government is getting more aggressive at taxing foreigners, there are still few decent jobs for foreigners (outside of multinationals who generally fill them via internal transfer from elsewhere), and the domestic economy is in slowdown. It's a great place for hardware businesses, mostly due to supply chain. The manufacturing isn't the cheapest anymore. Legals and government are a pain in the ass.

My advice? If you want the language, you have to stay, and if you're going to stay, make sure to study a few hundred characters, and study basic Chinese history. You'll get _far_ more out of your stay with no additional overhead after covering those basics. If you want a job from someone else, go elsewhere unless you bring experience and are in to career track stuff like management consulting, marketing strategy or some other kind of middle management where international perspective can add some value. If you want to start something in hardware, it's better to do it off-books and base yourself somewhere cheap near the border, eg. border-hopping Hong Kong/Shenzhen, or nearby in Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, etc.

Running a company here is a real grind. _Everything_ is a hassle: government, banking, visas, lawyers, logistics, medical, education, internet, business culture/negotiations, etc. It's not cheap anymore either.

Personally I couldn't live in most of the country due to lack of nature, pollution, cold winters. I've lived in Shanghai, Qingdao, various parts of Yunnan, Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Don't get me wrong though, China is fascinating, represents and allows you to better understand a massive chunk of humanity, and has some of the best history, nature and food on the planet. Happy to answer any specific questions.

</comment><comment><USER53> My sister-in-law's ex-husband traveled to China for weeks at a time and often. After their divorce, he moved there permanently. Two things happened.

Right away, he lost a lot of weight because he didn't like the food. Too many things he would never consider eating but he had to eat something. I don't know if it's the area he was in but he is still too thin today.

They divorced because he met a Chinese girl and married her. I don't recall the details--it might be a cultural thing--but it sounds like he was bamboozled into providing a lot of financial support to her Chinese family. The impression I get is that he's now stuck and it's a heavy burden.

<comment><USER54> Doesn't really make sense to me. Guy travels to China for weeks and often. After all this, he discovers that he didn't like the food??

It would like someone traveling to the US for weeks and often, decides to relocate and then doesn't like the place because he discovers most people speak English

<comment><USER53> He discovered he didn't like the food on day one. What's your point? The question is about experiences moving to China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why would anyone willingly move to an authoritarian dictatorship?

<comment><USER32> For me it was the money and opportunities. I turned a blind eye to the power abuse, human rights violations and corruption, and moved to the US anyways.

<comment><USER56> "I turned a blind eye to the power abuse, human rights violations and corruption"

I'm not sure how you can compare the US, which does have it's problems, but is one of the least racist (and offers many more opportunities to people that start with nothing) countries in the world to China, one of the most corrupt and authoritarian.

In China, for example, you need to include your head shot on your resume and I've known people that were told the were too fat to work at a company.

If people actually cared, they would look at the gross human rights abuses by the Chinese government.

You just don't see things like this:

[https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country- chapters/china...](https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country- chapters/china-and-tibet)

In the US.

<comment><USER57> You don't see reports like that about the US because of US hegemony, and most things that do come up is usually by the UN and isn't taken seriously. I'm not saying china is perfect by any means, but things ain't great in the US either. They just seem normal to us because we're used to it.

<comment><USER56> "You don't see reports like that about the US because of US hegemony"

I've see so many negative news reports about the US, that if it were even 1% as bad as you say it is, it would be shoved down our throats.

"They just seem normal to us because we're used to it."

When you live outside the US, you will quickly see the amount of poverty and corruption that just doesn't exist here. It's why I moved back and have no plan leaving again. Corruption in many countries is normal and accepted. It happens in the US, but it's certainly not accepted.

Have you seen what the EU is doing lately in terms of the freedom of speech on the Internet? China has already cracked down considerably and many other countries are using the same technology to suppress free speech and the EU is in the process of passing laws that do the same.

"I'm not saying china is perfect by any means,"

'not perfect' is an understatement. In terms of freedom, China is a horrible place to live. If you have money, it's great. You can buy yourself out of anything...including prison time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Inside Story of Oculus Rift - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/05/oculus-rift-4/ <comment><USER2> It doesn't really mention that Palmer Luckey was working with Mark Bolas' VR group at USC [1] at the time of the Kickstarter. The Rift isn't the product of a lone 18-year-old VR autodidact.

I'm not 100% certain regarding the timeline, but it's starting to seem odd how _every_ article about Oculus seems to marginalize everyone but Palmer and Carmack.

[1] [http://interactive.usc.edu/2012/06/12/mxr-lab-members-and- al...](http://interactive.usc.edu/2012/06/12/mxr-lab-members-and-alum-get- play-at-e3/)

<comment><USER3> Most of these articles marginalize key players in relation to the public face

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did Valve really contribute the most important part to Oculus that is the no- nausea experience? If so, on what terms did they share the technology with Oculus? I'm wondering if Valve is the winner in the shadows or the biggest loser.

<comment><USER5> IIRC, Valve wants to make games for VR, they don't want to make VR.

<comment><USER4> That's the current state, but surely if they patented the no-nausea bit of tech, they wouldve earn millions just licensing it. It makes me wonder whether the Valve claim in the story is accurate or perhaps there is another story behind the official one.

<comment><USER6> So, that's likely absurd, right?

The "no-nausea" bit is more likely a combination of factors: low-latency, head tracking with thus-and-such a precision, field-of-view tweaks, etc.

It'd be like patenting the ideal air-to-gasoline burning ratio: it's just a fact of life.

<comment><USER7> My impression is that Valve contributed two qualitative improvements: replacing accelerometer/gyro with optical tracking and replacing LCD with OLED and blanking the OLED between each frame to reduce persistence.

<comment><USER6> The first is a very obvious step in improving absolute pose estimation--one implemented in various videos around the time the devkit came out.

The other seems like a natural evolution of display technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Sidenote:_ wired.com articles have a truly annoying UX error. The slider/gallery goes full screen when the user presses 'F', which hides the article.

Not very helpful when you want to find something written in the article by Ctrl+F!

<comment><USER9> For me, almost every single time: Ctrl+Shift+K, push to Kindle, close the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rubin helpfully fills in a lot of blank spaces in what we already knew about this. The one nagging doubt that still lingers sits somewhere between what is doable, versus what is done. The Kinect, for all it's technological triumphs and impressive market performance, still leaves us waiting for whatever it was that made it seem like it was going to change everything. While few who have ever had the Oculus experience have any doubt that it could change everything, we mustn't forget that we are also all still waiting for the first concrete confirmation that this expectation will be met.

<comment><USER11> Kinect rode on Microsoft >$1 billion marketing campaign of lies. Every PR clip showed people interacting with fast paced action packed games in very responsive way.

Reality of hardware was totally different. M$ wasnt ready, Project Natal was couple of years away. They scrambled in panic and bought Primesense. Kinect was basically repackaged Primesense dev kit.

Kinect was supposed to be answer to Wii. Problem is there is a huge difference in speed between tracking 4 points of light versus complex DSP on a point cloud. Kinect had a 100-500ms delay between something happening and skeletal tracking on the screen. Kinect One only manages to cut that in ~half.

You simply CANT do responsive input with latencies in the hundreds of milliseconds. This is why Kinect has failed to deliver what $1 billion of M$ PR promised four years ago.

Kinect is great for puzzle games, art projects, slow complex input.

<comment><USER12> do you have sources for the latency numbers for kinect on xbox one? I've searched and can't find anything concrete and the XDK isn't publicly available.

and this might downvote me into oblivion, but is using "M$" still a thing? I don't see how that helps a discussion.

<comment><USER11> Unofficial Kinect one docs say 20ms depth sensor latency, this is same as 50fps vision camera so no lag there. They also say 60ms for tracking versus 90ms of original Kinect. Problem is original kinect did >100ms at minimum, and topped at 500ms

[http://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/imda/sites/www.nrl.navy.mil.itd....](http://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/imda/sites/www.nrl.navy.mil.itd.imda/files/pdfs/2012_VRposter_kinectSkelPerf.pdf)

       We experienced maximum latencies of nearly 500 ms

M$ will cease to be a thing when Microsoft stops dropping Billion dollars on every problem (kinect pr, original xbox pr, surface writeof)

<comment><USER13> M$ is juvenile. Big companies will tend to spend up on building and then promoting their products. What's the shame in that?

<comment><USER14> The shame is with enough money pigs can fly. If the product you were making was something of quality that people wanted, you wouldn't need billions to ram it down the public's throat. (You'd probably only need hundreds of thousands.)

<comment><USER13> How are you going to quantify what constitutes normal advertising and what is "ramming it down throats"?

<comment><USER11> You decide, how would you classify paying people from third world countries to spam YT with "product reviews" in broken english?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I didn't know it had shipped to retail already

<comment><USER16> It hasn't. That's why the article says: "Now Oculus is hard at work on its long-awaited headset for consumers, which the company predicts will be released later this year, or more likely early next year, or perhaps even not so early next year."

<comment><USER15> Yes I get that but the article says how it became a reality. It's been a non- consumer reality for quite a while in arcades. It's still not a reality unless you have a dev kit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wired, your pages are slooow.</comment>


Chinese steelmaker HBIS in yuan-denominated iron ore deal with Brazil's Vale - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/china-ironore-hbis/chinese-steelmaker-hbis-in-yuan-denominated-iron-ore-deal-with-brazils-vale-idUSL4N29R3U9 <comment><AUTHOR> Not to overdramatize, but this is exactly what you'd start looking for as the begin of the end for US dominance internationally.

 _" China is the world's biggest iron ore consumer and has been trying to increase its influence over pricing of the steelmaking raw material, for which contracts are usually in dollars, and the Vale deal marks the first yuan- denominated deal for HBIS with an overseas ore supplier."_</comment>


ambit-0.9.1 -- a Gem for choose/fail (amb) non-deterministic programming - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jimwise/ruby/tree/master/ambit

<comment><USER2> Looks like this is a direct port of pg's version. I have to admit, I haven't seen callcc before and the concept while similar to closures scares me a bit. Storing a complete environment in a variable is a new concept to wrap my head around.

      This is an all-ruby implementation of choose/fail nondeterministic
      programming with branch cut, as described in Chapter 22 of Paul Graham's
      On Lisp[1], or Section 4.3 of SICP[2].

      Due to Ruby containing a true call/cc, this is a much straighter port
      of Paul Graham's scheme version of this code than his Common Lisp or
      my C versions are. :-)</comment>