English Banditry

Why Tech In China Is Going To Hell

I've been working in computers in China for some years now. Since this is my first real job after graduating, I didn't show up with any sort of preconceptions of how things are supposed to be. I have no firsthand knowledge of what the work environment in North America is like. I was here nearly a month before I spontaneously noticed what appeared to be immense age prejudice in the hiring process. Why is everyone so damn young and inexperienced? Even if they don't like "old people" here, wouldn't it be handy to have just one guy (other than management) on the team over 30 with some solid years of experience to help people out with tough questions? Maybe it should have been common sense, but after some asking around and realizing many of the fresh college graduates hadn't even touched a computer prior to their first programming assignment in college, it all started to make a lot more sense. This is a top international computer company and I know of lead programmers which DO NOT OWN a computer of their own and no shortage of employees that do not have internet access at home. I don't know why I seemed to have forgotten that Shanghai is still China. Just a few years back studying at a university in a smaller Chinese city it was a challenge to be able to get a shower on a regular basis.

What are the implications of all this? Well—let me mention my friend who also recently graduated and took a place in a top company in the US. I talked to him a short time after he started working and he excitedly related to me about how many things he was learning and what excellent resources some of his much more experienced coworkers would be in helping him rapidly grow his knowledge. I had no such experience. Not only did I fail to meet any inspiring über-hackers here, but if anything, my coworkers had a negative impact on me because I found it disgusting to see such a completely unenthusiastic passionless bunch of computer geeks. It's one thing if you are a societal reject computer geek: it's quite forgivable if you are crazy about it—but it's quite another thing if you are a geek that makes it look like your geekhood is a form of slavery.

What's the relevance? I would argue that in many cases even the fresh grads here are less experienced than (at least aside from that one batch of dot com bubble money-chasing imbeciles) a good portion of their geek-for-life freshly graduated counterparts in the West. I'm used to a considerable portion of programmers having gotten started on their own initiative practically from childhood. The lack of computer contact before college for many of the guys here was not so much a money or means to access issue as a lack of interest issue. We have guys who wanted to be doctors (more than one) but couldn't get quite the right score on the college admissions test for that major and were thus automatically reassigned to computer science. We have people who wanted to study and do a plethora of other things, but due to the whole business of filial piety and the parents thinking it was "a good idea" and more financially lucrative (actually the crux of the issue) the kids went along with what they were told and studied computers. Read: no passion. These "computer people" are not even computer people! It's purely a kind of job to them.

Another employee here has confided in me the fact that he believes he has no room for actual "career development" here because there is really no one he can ask about anything. If he doesn't know something there might be another guy on the team with a decent suggestion of what he can do, but there are no wizards that are going to make him feel as my friend in the U.S. did with the experienced coworkers: "I'm really learning to rock this stuff now!!!"

Since the stuff my group works on is not terribly sophisticated or mission critical, having highly experienced people is not "do or die" to this particular team and in such cases it is quite possible the company wouldn't want to incur the additional expense of paying real wizards. But I remain convinced that in many cases China is running into serious issues when it comes to talent availability. The fear of being outsourced, if you have decent experience, has been greatly exaggerated—the job market here is nearer than you might expect to being saturated with positions for which sufficient talent cannot be found to fill, and there are not 1.3 billion waiting in the wings to take your skilled job. A friend of mine that works on another team has actually indicated to me that for some of their serious applications where an extremely high level of experience really is mission critical to the project, they really cannot find the needed talent locally and are going to have no choice but to ship in folks from elsewhere.

Why There's No Prayer For The Future

What about 10 years down the road? Things don't look even the slightest bit rosier. Every computer operation in China is relatively new, so most of the people that stay long enough to accumulate the needed years of experience are eventually going to be needed to fill the higher ranks in new ventures or departments of existing companies. As they are shifted into management positions and have less need for the technical skills, their abilities stagnate or even atrophy. This cycle will likely continue for quite some time. Not everyone is suited for management, but the picture here doesn't looking any better: The once fresh guys who do stay at the entry level or in otherwise non-managerial positions for a protracted period are not getting the same 10 years of experience that their peers in the developed world are gaining. They're spending 10 years surrounded by peers of equal or lesser ability, while their counterparts in the Western world are spending 10 years picking up tips from peers who are simultaneously moving from 10 to 20 years of experience or perhaps even 20 to 30 years of experience—experienced people who themselves were shown the ropes a generation prior by an earlier generation of experienced people. I don't think this deficiency can be seen as completely insignificant or negligible. It's not about whether or not one can individually seek out the answer to a known problem, but more about whether one knows there is a problem at all. Do you want to drive over a bridge designed by an engineer who knows everything about calculating metal and concrete strength as it is the day of construction but who has never even heard of the practice of giving consideration to the way the materials are affected under continual stress and material wear over the course of 30 years of weathering and use?

Please no responses from (1) Chinese dudes trying to "save face" for the nation by contesting a point just for the sake of face (2) people who want to misread anything I've written as blanket stereotyping. When I say "they are passionless geeks" I know damn well exceptions exist.

My heart is still pounding as I write this. In the last minutes of 2008 and first seconds of 2009, I basically felt like I saw my life flash before my eyes. The firecrackers at midnight around the middle of Shanghai's Nanjing Pedestrian Street were like the light at the tunnel, and there was definitely no "countdown" for me because for the entire stretch of time I had no perception of the passage of time but only a perception like I was struggling to survive. Due to some very unfortunate poor decisions on the part of people whose job it is to know the danger of unlimited and uncontrolled immense crowds, and who were responsible for safety at the event, there was absolutely no limit or control whatsoever on the crowds nor was there enough man power or means, such as metal barriers, if they suddenly realized it was necessary to take action.

After making a lap and a half across the entirety of the street, a friend and I timed our walking to arrive at the center of the action about ten minutes before the final countdown. As we got closer the density of the crowd very quickly became such that one lost any choice in the matter of what direction to move. A street upon which cars can drive intersects with the middle of Nanjing Street and as a precursor to how nuts things were getting, I saw a lady driving a small motorized two-passenger carriage have the vehicle surrounded by all sides with people and shake and almost tip over several times in either direction as it rocked with the warring direction of the crowds. At this point the pressure on my chest was a bit frightful, but no more than I had endured in a Pantera concert up next to the stage many years back. My friend and I proceeded, as I foolishly thought that in another two minutes everyone would stop moving around and just watch so the dangerous back and forth rocking would stop and then probably everyone would just wait to move until there was enough space to do so.

My estimations were terribly wrong. As the pressure increased I saw a child wincing and a look of terror in the eyes of many nearby females. Some people began shouting to move in such and such direction and the crowd began rocking left, right, left and right faster than I could maintain my footing. Everyone was struggling to maintain their footing and I think more and more were beginning to panic. As I've no doubt heard countless stories of people being trampled to death in such a manner, I was pretty much seized with terror and the absolutely certainty that if I slipped down there was no chance anyone around could help me even if they wanted to. I got turned around such that walking backward it was impossible to keep my footing. Then, the guy behind me went down. I couldn't do anything. With him behind me I had no choice but to fall as well and I saw the image of 100 people piling up on me and knowledge of what it would be like to die of suffocation for there was already enough pressure that it was a bit hard to breath. My legs were underneath all the people in front of me and I reached out my hands screaming "救命，救命" (Help, help!) and "我喘不过气" (I can't breathe). The poor bastard behind me seemed to have already given up on living, being that much closer to the ground, and had a look of absolute terror and hopelessness on his face. There is NOTHING on this earth you can do to save yourself if things go wrong in such a crowd. It's like a force of nature.

In short, last night really, REALLY sucked. If you were there and were less in a panic, maybe you think I'm making too much of it. But, really, with just a bit more panic in the air, and if someone hadn't begun shouting "some people have fallen down, stop moving" then I know without a doubt how relentless the force would be if everyone had no choice but to just walk over top of me, leaving me unable to breath. I lost track of my friend for a half hour after, as cell phones were not working too well with the density of people there. He later told me people near him had fallen and were on the ground crying, but miraculously the crowd was able to pick them up one by one. If the slightest thing had set people apanic, the ones on the ground would have been goners. My friend also said it seemed some people got pushed through the glass doors of one of the stores. I don't have any evidence to confirm that, since he couldn't see clearly, but it sounds horrible.

When I reached my hands about three layers of people back screaming for help, they were able to help pull me up. The only way I could get my leg out from underneath all those feet was to yank it with all my might and discard my shoe in the process. I had to walk an hour in the freezing cold, missing one shoe, before finally getting a taxi. I would have spent more time looking for the shoe except for the fact that the whole street was littered with shoes, and the asshole street sweepers were already sweeping them up. Fortunately or unfortunately I was so much in shock for that hour that I didn't notice it was even cold outside.

静水流深 - 日记 [2008年12月31日] - Someone else who was there (in Chinese).
(Three video clips attached to the full entry.)