783 karma · joined January 9, 2017
Why are you reading this? I'm not as interesting as you've imagined.
In version 2 you could make independent files and put them anywhere. It seems, though I may be wrong as I haven't used v3 much, that they want you to keep all your files in one central location and not have independent Soulver files.
Example: https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/Johannes_Haushofer_CV_of_Fai...
First, anecdotally, I've known a number of Chinese-national but US educated persons, who after receiving their higher education and 5-10 years of work, returned to China. The main reason being the "bamboo ceiling". Often, returning means accepting a lower salary but with higher career trajectory and a more peaceful life. I don't think throwing visas + cash at researchers (at least those I've worked with) would alleviate all the cultural problems that lead them to return home in the first place.
Secondly, a recent push for change in Visa distribution (S.386)[1]. Would make it extremely difficult to attract talent. As this bill stands it will significantly harm prospects of Chinese applications for EB2 visas. The kind of change being suggested here (recruiting researchers and engineers) falls into the EB1 - EB2 category. Given how difficult it's been to even get a bill changing pool statistics this far, I doubt you'd be able to do anything of the nature you're mentioning.
[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/386
[1]: https://www.youdao.com/w/eng/bullshit/#keyfrom=dict2.index
EX: I recently (5ish months) started moving Kindle highlights to Anki. I've found my ability to retain the facts has increased but it is also directly correlated with how I designed the card (cloze, length, etc).
I think we should put more focus on extracting key points for later learning rather than focus on automating the review of those points.
> We wanted to do the right thing by you though and since you've paid for the Web Player in the past, we're giving you 3 years worth of Pocket Casts Plus at no extra charge. You don't need to do anything to claim this, it's already been applied to your account. This means you can continue doing all the things you currently do, and take advantage of our brand new Plus features.
I think this is definitely the right way to handle prior paid customers. Unlike Airmail (oof) they’ve offered a subsidized service for the older users.
It depends on the company. The more westernized the better the likelihood for good management. In general I’d assume looser than what you’d expect and then some.
> As a foreign developer (who isn't a research-level programmer) do I bring valuable skills to the table? As someone who didn't do a CS degree would that be career limiting?
Depends on the company. I can’t speak to all (I have interviewed with quite a few) but China is very meritocratic, meaning that if you don’t have a degree most places won’t even give you the time of day. This might be different at a startup but it is very situational. Also realize that getting a foreigner a work visa puts a huge strain on the company and many will opt to ignore you for that reason alone. Many startups will do this under the table but I wouldn’t recommend that if you want to stay in China as a career path.
> What are dev practises like - do people do Agile / Scrum? Is "post-agile" (sorry) scepticism a thing? What about TDD and CI/CD?
A watered down fork of Agile is really common. At both companies, I've experienced poor management. No one ever asked if I had blockers, needed more resources, etc. It was just expected there would be delays and we build them into the development schedule. This can lead to weeks of getting nowhere because no one is there to help you.
> How about technologies, do people develop on Linux, are they using git, are american libraries/frameworks big - are people using React etc?
In my experience, regardless of verbal ability developers can read and write English purely because they need to do so to succeed in their jobs. There are some sites similar to github/stackoverflow in China, but in general, you need to be able to read and write English to solve your problems. In short, in my experience, people use git, and all the frameworks/libraries you're thinking of.
> How about things like FP and niche languages - is there much appetite for people experimenting with new tech/languages or are Python/Java the defacto choices for application work and everything else shunned?
Again, in a research setting, it was just like working in a US company. Lots of vetting and decision making before choosing a route, but never discouragement for some fringe tool or idea that might artificially limit our capabilities.
> Is there a Chinese-equivalent to GitHub - is engineering in China big enough that they can have their own independent OSS culture? (Is companies contributing back to OSS a thing?)
There is not a Chinese fork of GitHub. Companies do give back to OSS (see Baidu, Ali, etc) and often if the OSS product is valuable enough the company just acquires the team (see GRPC -> BRPC -> acquired by Ali for internal use). My team frequently collaborated with outside contributors and would pull from OS. This is because my lab also ran VLDB so we obviously care for the community and realize there's a lot we can't do.
> EDIT: to add one last question - are developers seen as feature-factories or is the relationship between product and developers/tech more flat/harmonious than that?
IMO unless you're in research developers are just an expense, not people and they're there to fill desks. In China the average salary for a dev is much lower both because of the skill-cap but also the quantity. If you need someone to write an android app they're a dime a dozen. If you need someone to write a new framework, that's more difficult. So in general, getting people isn't hard, but getting good people is. Thus, the vast majority of people at companies are expendable. I think this can be distilled to one example. QQ the most popular messaging app from Tencent in the early 2000s had 6,000 Android developers (still does). WeChat (also run by Tencent but under a different management style) has only 50 devs. The difference is they realized quality > quantity in recent years and learned the value of ROI.
If you have more questions feel free to ask.
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.
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.
There is no publicly available source for price cross lookups. This is largely due to the fact that billing, coverage and pricing varies not only from hospital to hospital but even within the same provider on the same service (a given CPT). So now, there is no way to know the likeness of billing/coverage and it's also highly likely that if she disputes the claim, or there is a renegotiation then she will end up paying significantly less.
In hindsight, this is very scary given that I had access to production systems with loads of PHI, PII, etc. with no censoring or filtering in place.
I am lead to believe this usage of English for code and Chinese for comments is quite common given the code I've read from public repositories and other companies we worked with.
Take, for example, Tiffany & Co. whose products are on average 30% more expensive when paying in RMB vs USD. This means that at best you will make 70% of what you are trying to extract.
It's for this reason that this is not very attractive since there are many other schemes/methods by which you can get a better extraction rate.
These modifications were made earlier this year to prevent capital flight.
The issue is getting the money out of the bank into some other asset in the first place. If you have that much purchasing power in a Chinese BTC exchange you probably already have a number of other means by which you can extract your money.
The hard part isn't what to do with your money -- it's what to do with your money to get it out of the bank and get it into another asset.
AFAIK it is not trivial to purchase that much BTC in China, so the level of attractiveness isn't as you assume.
Having just come back from living in Shanghai for some time, nothing makes it more convenient than not having to think about the price.
NOTE: My comments are only applicable to the US medical industry.
This statement highlights your lack of knowledge about the general EHR/EMR landscape and current implementations. As someone that works parallel to a hospital operation, I both know and interface with people that have to use them on a daily basis and this could not be further from the truth.
EMRs have helped to collect and make more data accessible, this is true, but they are not necessarily an improvement over the previous form of paper records. In most cases, they are simply a different representation of the same data. Take EPIC for example wherein you can search for a patients name but then you are provided with the digital representation of an analogue patient folder and/or chart. I think that most of the people on HN would have their opinion of the medical software landscape changed if they were ever granted the opportunity to use most of the current implementations for only a couple of minutes...
It is also not true that the "industry is iteratively moving to resolve these issues". I was most put aback about 2 years ago when I heard that while every hospital may have EPIC, Cern, etc installations, that none of them are universal. Every hospital will have a customised EHR/MER installation, and therefore custom templates for each doctor, or unit. This means that the installations are almost never updated, or allowed to have new features introduced. In most cases, a patch, or update will require a field tech being sent from the providing company to the hospital where he will work with the onsite customized installation to complete the work.
All in all, it is true that there are people in the field trying to push medical technology forward. Take PatientBank, Sprig, Stitch, etc as evidence that this happening. But what is certainly not true is that the incumbents are pushing to make major changes. Additionally, the regulations with regard to medical software, as well as the legal incentives make it very, very difficult to develop a product, let alone to bring it to market.