This article is both shallow and basically blogspam of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-02/china-s-tech-industry-wants-youth-not-experience" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-02/china-s-t...</a>.<p>Note that the site guidelines include: "<i>Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.</i>"<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
Well, as ways to ensure that China never really becomes competitive technically go, this seems to be one of the faster ones.<p>I mean, the idea that people get <i>better</i> with <i>experience</i>... ludicrous! Beyond ludicrous! Unpatriotic!<p>Not entirely sure I buy it as a industry-wide phenomenon, though. I'd guess this is a particular subset of the industry or something, just as it is in the West.
Why are the standards of evidence so much lower for trends in Chinese and Japanese culture?<p>First of all, the title of the article isn’t supported by the content.<p>Secondly, the evidence of the title appears to be a single unnamed recruiter.<p>Third, of course a vast majority of people in tech in China are going to be young. Do people not remember the economic situation of China 20-30 years ago?
What could possibly go wrong when your hiring processes preclude most people with in-depth real-world experience? Learning lessons the hard way is expensive.
It's all symptoms of the same problem: a vast oversupply of educated talent. To some degree we have it here to in the US, but it's much greater in China. With an oversupply of labor/talent, companies can be arbitrarily selective.<p>In China, seasonal workers coming into the city actually earn more than college degree holders because there's just so many people with degrees. We something similar starting to happen in the US, as more and more people get bachelors degrees, those people get compensated less and less.
Younger workers are less likely to take moral positions on company activities. I worked at a mortgage lead generation site in the 2000's and bought everything management sold. I can't see myself doing anything like that at this stage in my life.
"They’re not able to focus on the high-intensity work" That is true. most 30 and over people with work experience know devoting 9-12 hours a day to a company is not worth it. While, a young engineer right out of college doesn't know any better. Burn them out after 2-3 years. rinse and repeat.<p>The main problem is employees are "at-will." Meaning they can be fired at anytime without reason. companies have no incentive to not overwork employees. Laws regarding "at-will" need to be changed
Interestingly enough,I'm having the opposite problem here in the US... I've been applying to multiple tech firms for hardware roles and keep on getting rejected since they are almost all trying to hire senior positions rather than mid-level at this time.
Considering what big tech firms do in China mostly is copying other people's ideas using their own guys then drive them out of business, cheaper is better.
All firms? Some firms? Most firms? The biggest firms? China is pretty big place.<p>Not that I don't believe it because things like that appear to happen informally in the US as well, but article would have been better with some supporting numbers.
More punitive OT laws help discourage this kind of behavior. You'd seek out more experienced workers if it meant avoiding the huge salaries you'd otherwise be paying younger workers working large swaths of OT.
That kinda sucks. I was recently approached by two Google employees, one of them said he likes my projects on GitHub, that I'm Google material and if I would like for him to refer me to a job there. I was very excited, of course. Did all they asked, applied for 3 positions as the usual on their process and managed to not even pass to the first interview. I'm 34 and going to college for 2nd time, graduating this year. Maybe this isn't my case, but I can't help to wonder.
This would make a good study in Economics:<p>1. Given Large supply of Developers as compared to Demand.<p>1.1 What causes Poor Software Quality Control and Poor hiring practices(resume padding or tech hiring offloaded to non techies)?<p>Are things like Long/Odd Working hours, Poor wages(race to the bottom), Talent flight and High attrition rate, Poor productivity etc just enforcing a vicious cycle till things hit some sort of equilibrium(software that just works and is barely maintainable and business margin is based on things like PPP between countries)?<p>1.2 How do good things come about; Like Decent/Good Software Quality Control, Good Hiring practices? Perhaps these cases have just okayish wages but poor working hours/balance? And there is an implicit bias towards a Younger talent pool because of focus on productivity.<p>2. Given short supply of workers as compared to Demand I have seen similarities to 1.1 and 1.2, the only difference is that people have options and always gravitates towards better employers and work conditions; the wages are overall much better than case 1 period. There are still many interesting economic questions to be answered here, but likely different, more specialized ones as compared to (1).
Unfortunately, the current US immigration policy has made it unlikely that US tech firms would be able to take advantage of any prejudicial ageism bias in China.<p>It'd be nice to entice them to resettle in cities other than those on the west coast, too, but that might be a local culture problem, less amenable to remediation by legislation.
In the future, the majority of the world's population will be either hackers or mafia members.
It will be a complete breakdown of human values. World governments will probably be forced to legalize crime. If we remove meritocracy, we'll end up with anarchy.
You can always work in the military industrial complex. Lot’s of gray hair, including myself. Most under 35 don’t know WTF they are doing anyway; sometimes amusing to watch them flop, then $$$ for me to fix their mess.
A little bit like the US maybe?<p>I was already in a technical field, was laid off after a company buyout, I changed careers and took a coding bootcamp.<p>A few like minded classmates and I would compare notes after we did interviews.<p>The other two older guys and I got a lot of "culture" related questions. One dude was actually told by the recruiter that they were worried he was too old, he was surprised they'd actually say it to him so he asked ... and the recruiter repeated herself happily.<p>Meanwhile the younger classmates reported hearing nothing about "company culture" in any of their interviews...<p>The description of culture was often pretty benign ("we like to have fun" and so forth) but I couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't just a placeholder for some bias. On one occasion I got a description of "we're a young office".
the same reason why everybody drafts/conscripts youngsters into the army - the youngsters dont ask questions, dont hold theirs superiors responsible and with great enthusiasm do what they told to do. A very powerful sledgehammer style tool. Obviously been there myself - not the army, that i dodged by the way of ROTC (USSR/Russia), i mean i've been to that place of stupid(well, looking back it looks that way even though it is in significant part a result of inexperience) unquestioning enthusiasm.
I recently was talking to a libertarian friend about this kind of thing (specifically the gender wage gap). He argued that if there were a group of people getting paid less for the same work, then any good business would only hire people like that, because it's cheaper.<p>Obviously this isn't the case, but I do find it curious that the market doesn't seem to prove a strong enough incentive for the people making hiring decisions to overcome their biases.