echevil

Would you mind to share is it becoming easier or harder for startups to hire foreign engineers on H1B visa in the past few years? And roughly how many percent of YC companies support new H1B applications?

Also companies often want very different things. Not only from the technical perspective, but most of them also care about cultural match, and culture can mean very different thing in different companies. So getting offers from one good company and rejected by another is completely normal.

Totally agree. Technical hiring is already much more standardized than hiring in many other professions but essentially it still is predicting actual work performance based on a few short interviews. Even the best interview process still have false positive and false negative. Good companies are usually more tolerant of false negatives because the cost of wrong hires are high, but false negatives don’t matter as much.

> my friend's bank account was AUTOMATICALLY withdrawn a couple hundred RMB from last month, to pay the tax AUTOMATICALLY.

That's just the primary way to pay income tax in China. People usually don't file tax returns on their own. Their employers calculate the tax they should pay and deduct from their salary automatically

> Where does the government's money comes from

Looks like many people are interested in this. Combining some information from Chinese websites, the main sources of Chinese government includes the following:

- Tax income: The top categories of tax income are value-added tax and business tax.

- Operation income of state-owned companies.

- Income from state-owned properties. e.g. A chunk of income of local governments come from selling lands to real estate companies.

- Government debt.

These may not be super accurate, but just to give an idea.

> But the entire setup of China is made for stealing tech from companies who invest there

That's a really weird statement. A large part of China has no foreign dependencies. China has a vibrant and closed ecosystem tech industry right now -> Most of the Chinese tech startups nowadays have diverged so much from other countries and they're mostly focusing on Chinese market.

I'm sure there are lots of Chinese scientists that would never go back, but at the same time there're also plenty of Chinese immigrants (including scientists) actually went back or are considering going back when the time is right, including myself. I think overall more people are considering that as a viable option over the years.

Unlikely, but most Chinese scientists would still publish their best research in English journals/conferences.

Well I guess the first step would be luring Chinese scientists currently in US back to China (many of those have US citizenship and would also be counted as US scientists)

Given the scale of VPN usage in China, it’s unlikely the party could do anything about it even if it got access to some logs. Vast majority of the users of these services inside China are most likely very educated group of people, like academia, software engineers, scientists etc. Large tech companies usually have some way for their employees to access banned websites in China, but mostly just for accessing tech related information. It’s just yet another gray area

Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. VPN is useful in both direction. There are quite some Chinese content not accessible outside China.

Privacy is not a big concern for the Chinese based VPN services. It’s useful for both accessing websites blocked inside China, and also Chinese content blocked outside China

There is usually a free version and a paid version for better speed.

There're tons of Uighurs, Tibetians living in peace in China. Plenty of them also live in the east part of China, and plenty of Han people live in Xinjiang and Tibet as well. Falun Gong is banned, yeah, and most Chinese would support that. The government has nothing against minority groups, but it would take actions if: they become a threat to public safety; they become extremists and possibly engage in terrorism, no matter which ethnic group they are; they try to separate part of China out of the country (that's a red line for the government); they attempt to overthrown the government (yeah that's another red line). I wouldn't say there're no wrong-doings when the government take actions, but it's certainly not a concern for most Chinese citizens.

Interestingly I just replied to someone else asking about minorities groups in China, you can find it just by searching for my handle. Long story short: It's fine to live in China as a minority group.

I've also expressed my opinion about some other issues like Xinjiang in another thread if you're interested:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439175

I'm not saying there aren't tons of problems with Chinese government. But from the point of view of a Chinese citizen, the human right issues are mostly excuses that western media use to attack Chinese government; a lots of those are false claims; and even for the parts that'd be truth, it impacts very few amount of people and it's generally not a big concern for vast majority of people living in China no matter Han or not (Not saying violating human right is fine but the issue has much lower priority for most people)

In a historical context, the minority groups are mostly people lived in different areas. Typically Han was in the central/east region in China, and there were other groups in north/west and sometimes south. There had been lots of wars in the past, and lots of peace as well. The fairly recent Qin dynasty was actually founded by a minority group in the northeast, and they ruled Han along with all other minority groups for hundreds of years. Most minority groups are heavily influenced by culture of Han, whether they controlled large part of China or not. For example, after Qin dynasty controlled the entire China, the emperors inherited plenty of traditions from Han; they started speaking Chinese and learning from classical Han literature; and they influenced Han culture as well. There are exceptions like Genghis Khan -> They occupied China but didn't care about local culture at all, and soon they left.

All the dynasties founded in the region, no matter if it was mostly Han people or minority groups, are considered part of China's history now. Just that Han had much higher weight in history books.

In a modern context, the main theme from textbooks is that all the minority groups live peacefully together and united as one nation, no matter what the history is. This is mostly true in reality, except maybe a small number of people in the west might want separation. You can find people from all minority groups living in large cities in the east of China, where the economy is most advanced. They mostly appear not much different from Han people, even though they might still carry some traditions from their own culture. Sometimes Han people might get curious when they meet someone from a minority group, but mostly they won't treat them any differently.

Being a part minority group is generally a good thing in China -> Among other things, they get bonus points in college entrance exams, which is a very big deal for vast majority of Chinese.

> Do you not believe the Chinese government to be corrupt, authoritarian, and/or oppressive?

I believe it's way too harmful to simply categorize government into "free" vs "bad/corrupt/authoritarian/oppressive". There're a large number of other factors to consider. I agree Chinese government has tons of problems, just like US government has tons of problems of its own, just different.

At the bottom line, Chinese government is making tons of efforts to improve the economy of the country and improve the life of all the citizens. "According to the World Bank, more than 500 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty as China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 2012, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China

> Do you not believe the Chinese government to be corrupt, authoritarian, and/or oppressive?

I agree there're corruption in Chinese government. Anti-corruption is a one of the main focus of Chinese government in the past few years. Moreover, corruption has nothing to do with 'freedom' vs 'non-freedom'. There are way too many heavily corrupted democratic government in the world.

Is it authoritarian? Yes there is only one party in power - the CPC. The party has close to 100 million members throughout the country, which is close to 1/10 of the entire population. You can't possibly consider a party like that to be a single entity. There's also semi-democratic process: People elect representatives and they form National People's Congress - highest organ of state power in China.

Is it oppressive? Well, media censorship is a thing, and if you had to go on the street and protest the government in the same way you'd protest Trump, the government might invite you to "have a talk". But people still talk shit about the government all the time in private and on social media. The comments are likely to get deleted / banned. That sucks, but it is not something that could hugely impact the quality of life of regular citizens. You can still hear lots of dissident voices on the internet, and the government would often respond to that in positive ways.

It turned into an interesting discussion actually, thank you!

> To practice things that can be extended to the wider population maybe?

I didn't read the full article you referenced, but from what I know it is true that surveillance has tighten up in Xinjiang. Why do you think that happened? Why does Chinese government needs to "control" Uighurs, and not other minorities that are living peacefully in other regions of China.

I don't know what exactly is happening out there, but naturally you'd need more security when the there's danger to public safety. I wouldn't say there's no wrong-doing of the government, but bottom line is, I don't really doubt the primary goal is just anti-terrorism and make that region safe.

> How come people just disappear and nobody knows what happens to them?

Well I don't know how could people just disappear in Xinjiang.

But it reminds me that, recently a friend of mine asked me "How could a person just disappear? How scary is that" after she read this article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/asia/china-fan-bing...

Apparently it sounds like the Chinese government "made" her disappear. Well, I only found it funny and I told her "It's fine, she just disappeared from media. Her agent probably knows her whereabout but won't tell the media as she's being investigated and there's no official result." Fan Bingbing reappeared just a few days later when the investigation ended, as most of us expected, and she made an official announcement about her tax evasion. Throughout the entire time I didn't feel anything scary at all, but that's not the impression if you only read the NYTimes report.

> But saying it's all biased and therefore made up

I wouldn't say they all made up facts, but simply selecting the truth to report and finding a way to report it that supports their existing belief can also make a huge impact on people's perception.

I also don't believe most professional news reporters would just make up facts. (The "Self-individual media" in China is way too different, plenty of them do make up facts;) So, a much more likely scenario in my mind, is that they interviewed unreliable sources. To depict that in a more extreme but easy to understand way, just imaging if reports interviewed a terrorist in middle east, and ask them about America. Plenty of people left China in the past century (very small in percentage but still a big number because of the large population base) because either they really hate Chinese government or they're trying to get refugee visa. They also have much closer relations with western media. But anyway, it's just my guess.

I am a Chinese citizen and all my education was in China, from kindergarten to grad school.

> China has cultivated in its people a very troubling mental complex centered on national pride and driven by the Century of Humiliation.

I’d say this is correct to a small extent — the history lessons in particular, took that stance when it’s covering contents about Chinese history from late Qing dynasty to the end of WW2. But the education also renders China as a peaceful nation, and the rise of China would benefit the entire world, which majority of the Chinese population agrees.

> To say they are fervent about righting the wrongs and perceived wrongs of the past is an understatement

It would be a correct statement if “righting the wrong” simply means “making China a great country again” so that “centuries of humiliation would never happen again”. Yes majority of Chinese citizens do have national pride, not unlike people any other country I’ve seen. Except maybe some extreme nationalists, most Chinese citizens would love to see China becoming stronger peacefully and be helpful to under-developed parts of the world.

> But I think our more diverse (talking about points of view, not race here) and more activist anti-racism voices are a tempering force that China lacks.

There are very little discussion about racism in China compared to US, simply because it’s less relevant. - Most Chinese don’t ever interact with a different race. But diversity in oppinions in other topics are very common. I’d say it’s virtually impossible to keep a billion citizens on the same page.

Just as an example, at the core of China’s “nationalism education” (don’t know what should I call it) is the anti-Japanese war which was part of WW2. Like South Korea, plenty of Chinese hate Japan for not acknowledging the war crimes they’ve done and trying to erase those facts from their history books. There had been several movement to boycott Japanese products in the past two decades. At the same time, Japanese culture actually have a huge influence in China, especially among young people. Japan is also one of the most popular foreign destinations Chinese people would love to travel to.

Well, thank you for the detailed explanations, and I think I owe you some more explanation.

I'm not sure how different are "Major" and "major in contrast". Sorry about my English, it's not my first language. It is my opinion that fake news and such are an important problem and it's prevailing in Chinese social media. I do believe freedom in press is great but freedom with no regulation would be very dangerous. I don't remember how many times I need to tell my parents "don't listen to that, that's completely fake" "seaweeds on the market are not made of plastic bags", "it's fine to eat persimmon",...

> It's too complicated to explain, so I take your word for it? It's just something I don't feel like arguing, because why would you trust me instead of those news reports you've been reading all the time.

> Any intelligent human with a backbone cares about people murdered en masse, over decades...

I'd feel terrible about those people, of course, but ONLY IF THOSE CLAIMS ARE TRUE. I don't really buy their claims because the reporters themselves are very unlikely to have investigated the situations in person, and the stories are most likely coming from sources that either are anti-Chinese government themselves or seeking personal gains (like getting refugee visa in US). And the stories don't really make sense.

The official claim from Chinese government is: those are re-education centers trying to train muslim extremists so that they have enough skills to get a job and live a normal life instead of becoming terrorists.

While I won't simply just believe the Chinese government's claim as it is, but it is much more plausible and much more likely to be truth adjacent. If you know more about China, you'll know there are actually quite many muslims living in peace in China, and you can easily find muslim restaurants in most cities. Why would Chinese government even care about put muslims in Xinjiang into concentration camps? What would they gain from that? The background is that there had been more terrorist activities in the past few years in that region, and it's becoming more unsafe, especially for Han ethnic group to live there. That's what the government is most worried about. Re-educations are just a way of making extremists less extreme.

> I'll just note that so far you aren't really speaking for yourself, but refer to Chinese media, without even stating their explanation, and bring up "Western media"

I do bring up "Western media" a lot because I am so frustrated with them bull-shitting about China and that they successfully influenced people's opinions with tons of single sided stories and disinformation. I had friends asking me about whether I have need to worry about social credit score, and what can I say? "It's at most a proposal yet and it's far from being established" "How can there be so many creepy rules before it's established?" "You can't just believe whatever NPR says because you think it's neutral. Their sources could lie"

> "they" said they are hardly "major"?

Why would I care what "they" say if I have first hand knowledge about whether it's major or not?

> For example, the government is sending massive amount of people (village by village) to reeducation camps in Xinjiang province. Do you think the official news media will report any of this?

The government actually publicly addressed that a while ago and I've seen it in news. It's very different from what the western media claims of course, and it's a complicated issue like the fake news.

Also, it's mostly western media that cares the most about these topics, not the "individual self media".

If you ever actually read the articles published from these media accounts, you'll easily see how "Not ridiculous" the claim is. (Of course there're plenty good ones, I'm not blaming all news media accounts, but there're way too many harmful ones)

The problem of these media in China is not exactly the same as the those on Facebook, but it's way more common and cause lots of harm - e.g. a large portion of these articles are influencing people to buy / not buy certain product in a very problematic way.

There is no reason these news media accounts should not be regulated. e.g. You should not publish fake news intentionally misleading the public. (Otherwise why not just let Russians publish whatever ads they want to influence American election whichever way they want?) In western news reports, this is of course "controlling what can be reported and what cannot", and they won't tell you the full story. I just wanted to point out, a large part of this is actually fighting a real problem for the good.

The problem of individual news media accounts in China is that they are a major source of fake news, disinformation, and often uses exaggerated titles or suggestive images. I’ve seen too many of those articles floating around social networks.

When a western media reports this, of course it is yet another way that Chinese government “suppresses information”. But the reality is, the effort of fighting these content just what Facebook is doing right now.

I remember this being a research topic while I was in grad school more than 10 years ago. Like face recognition, it is nothing unique and is being researched by plenty of people

Companies can decide what schedule makes better sense then. Or if needed, better rules can be established to solve those problems.

Even with day light saving, people don't work on the same schedule. Plenty of them need to get up before sun rise or work until late night no matter what the clock says.

What’s wrong with just getting up earlier, on your own terms? Or just stay on DST time zone forever?

Grew up in a region without day light saving, I really don’t see the point of changing clocks twice every year. I’d be very glad to see it getting abandoned

Triplebyte founders started by doing tons of technical interviews themselves with candidates.

https://triplebyte.com/blog/three-hundred-programming-interv...

After the first few hires, their engineers all took part in interviewing candidates. That has deferred the scaling problem quite well.

Interesting! I think it could be scalable even at much bigger scale -> Hiring more professional photographers to do that as the company grows doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. Just like Google having tons of people driving cars around cities to create content for street view

> The fact is, webapps are suboptimal, and unless something drastically changes, will remain so.

I agree it’s still suboptimal for now, incremental improvements are making it less so year over year. More parts of native apps are also getting written with web technologies. Eventually, maybe, most of the app icons in our phones might just be a shortcut to some website