Ask Slashdot: Find a Job In China For Non-native Speaker? 402
An anonymous reader writes "My fiancée has recently been accepted into a Chinese university into their Ph.D. program, and I've been looking at jobs in China (specifically the Beijing area) and not having any success. I'm a developer with 8 years of experience (java), mostly on the server side, so I'm not lacking in the general experience, but the problem is I don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese. I am a native English speaker from Canada though. The only jobs I've had any responses from were teaching positions for simple English which isn't exactly my first choice. Has anyone had any experience or success as a programmer finding a job in China, without being able to speak the native language? Any websites I should be focusing on?"
Maybe a local job isn't the best? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you considered working as a coder-for-hire at either an established firm, or on a do it yourself basis from one of the many websites available (Google can show you the way)? The pay might even be better, unless you were particularly interested in exploiting your language talents in the local labor market (which it sounds like you may not be).
maybe not developing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe instead of trying to find a coding job, find a job along the lines of "conversational english for IT type people"...
Help your fellow coders bring up their communication skills...
Re:Construction or landscaping (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard to claim racism when no race is mentioned in the question or the answer, only language, though I do see where you're coming from. That said, the GP has a point, even if it was not made in the most politically correct manner. The fact is, in any country, if you don't speak the language, you're going to have very limited options. Generally those options are going to consist of jobs that don't require much in the way of communication, as in more manual labor, less office work. This isn't a product of racism, it's a product of "you can't get a job that requires communication if you can't communicate with the people you'll be working with".
Live in China...speak Chinese (Score:2, Insightful)
You know how people love to complain that if you expect to come live and work in America, you should have to learn to speak English? Same argument applies.
Re:Construction or landscaping (Score:3, Insightful)
How is this racist?
Learn Chinese or work over the inernet? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, to turn this around, if someone came into your place of work looking for a job, didn't speak English, and wasn't yet in the country ... would you be seriously considering this candidate?
At a certain point, if you don't speak the language, what are you offering them?
That's not to say you don't have stuff to offer, and if they have some English speakers you might not be someone who might be a good fit. But from a certain perspective, not having any language skills can be a huge liability in looking for work there.
That, and you might need to find out the legal stuff you might need to account for to work in China. The equivalent of a work visa. The teaching of English might be your only option for a while.
If you haven't already, I'd be trying to understand your legal position and what you'll be able to do when you're there as a visitor. You could find yourself unable to work, limited in what you can do (both legally and linguistically) and sitting around wishing you hadn't gone there in the first place.
Waste of time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just tell your fiancé not to do it. I am telling you this from experience. My wife and I held getting married because she wanted to finish her studies she went through the whole thing till she got the PHD and I followed her around just like you are planning to do which also changed my plans. Education expenses were none since she made a nice income while doing research for the PhD.
The problem was after she finished. My wife became hormonal and wanted to have kids, and pop up 2. Now all she wants to be is a mom a stay at home mom. And I am not the only one with the same situation. I got about a dozen friends with wifes with expensive education just going to waste because they want to be a house wife.
Also you do not want to live in Beijing the air quality there is horrible.
Move to management (Score:5, Insightful)
I have lived and worked in China. As an English language speaker, it is not too difficult to find work in China since many companies use English as their official working language. But if you expect to find a job as a programmer making anything close to a western salary, you can forget it.
Instead, you should consider moving to management. Plenty of companies doing outsourcing want someone on the ground in China who understands western business culture.
You might also consider doing something completely different, like teaching English.
Also, try to learn some Mandarin. You certainly need to know how to say please, thank you, excuse me, etc. You should also learn to say "this", "that", "How much does it cost?", and "Please give me ....". If you learn a few hundred hanzi, that will be a big help in reading street signs, menus, and restroom gender indicators.
Re:maybe not developing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe instead of trying to find a coding job, find a job along the lines of "conversational english for IT type people"...
Help your fellow coders bring up their communication skills...
I don't know about Canada, but I find that we could use a class like that right here in the US.
Re:Construction or landscaping (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd call it "painsy-assed". As in: If you are so easily offended that a poster said a non-speaker can only find non-speaking blue-collar jobs, then you must be painsy-assed. Don't be so sensitive.
Re:Learn Chinese or work over the inernet? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I know mostly that; a Vietnamese friend tried to explain tonality [wisegeek.com] once -- and as a Westerner, I just can't pick up on the subtleties.
That there are 12 ways pronounce the same things, and those vastly change the meaning baffles me, and isn't something I'm capable of hearing. My wife took a class in college which talked about it ... and when the instructor was describing the difference between "ga, ga, ga and ga", most of the people in the class could only hear a single "ga" , not four distinct ones. Since English doesn't use this, most of us can't even identify it when we hear it.
And I know that's barely scratching the surface. There's more than just tonality.
But I'm not the one planning to parachute into China without speaking the language and hoping I can get a job. Unless they speak English already, that's going to be a huge liability.
The more I've listened to non-native speakers of English, the more forgiving I am about how you use it -- because trying to explain why some of these things are as they are can prove to be kind of pointless (unless you're actually a linguist). Because sometimes it's because the word is English, French, German, Latin ... and other times it's largely "because we say so".
Increasingly, a lot of grammatical mistakes people who didn't grow up speaking English ... well, those make perfect sense if English actually had consistent rules. But since it doesn't, it can be very hard to explain.
It would take years to learn Chinese ... but if you want to work there, you need to find English speakers, or learn Chinese.
Re:Waste of time. (Score:2, Insightful)
Secondly, do you advise men not to get an education when they're in similar situations?
And finally, what do you suggest the fiancé do instead?
Because honestly, you sound like my friend that's going through an ugly divorce and regularly vents his frustration at all women-kind. If you're having personal problems with the shared workload in your family, you should have a discussion with your wife. Or maybe a marriage consoler.
Advising others to be sexist pigs isn't all that helpful.
Re:Are you nuts? (Score:5, Insightful)
Give us the name of the company. That's the type of enterprise we want to encourage in China.