Leading the pack: Tan beats Cook, Musk and Zuckerberg in the analysis by the WSJ. — Photo from Broadcom Inc
Tan tops list of highest paid executives in the US last year
PETALING JAYA: The highest-paid chief executive officer in the United States is neither Apple’s Tim Cook nor Tesla’s Elon Musk, but Malaysian-born businessman Tan Hock Eng.
Tan, 71, also surpassed Meta Platforms’ Mark Zuckerberg by earning US$162mil (about RM760mil) in compensation last year, according to South China Morning Post, which quoted an analysis by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) this week.
“Tan, who is a US citizen, is the CEO of semiconductor company Broadcom Inc and has been topping the pay charts since 2006, receiving US$103mil in 2017,” said WSJ.
However, the pay package comes with several conditions, including the company’s stock hitting a certain level by next year. Tan must also remain as CEO for an additional five years, and he will not receive any more equity or cash bonuses during that period.
The semiconductor company’s shares rose 106% over the past 12 months, bringing its total market capitalisation to US$655bil (RM3 trillion).
Tan is also a board member of Meta Platforms, the US-based company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp among others.
Tan, who hails from Penang, completed his undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He also has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the National University of Singapore. He then earned a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University. After returning to Malaysia, he was involved with Hume Industries between 1983 and 1988.
He then moved to Singapore as managing director of venture capital firm Pacven Investment.
He reportedly relocated back to the United States in 1992 and assumed the role of vice-president of finance for PC maker Commodore International.
This is the strongest criticism yet, written by a Malay about the contemptible Malay power elites.
Apa Malu!
Malays-and-muslim-two-of-a-kind-corrupt-arrogant/
aloq staq
awez khan ali Selamat Pagi Malaysia
The Malays are a broken people. Broken by our own leaders. Broken by the antics, greed, and hubris of Malay political leaders lost in a world where self-interest and nothing else, matters. It is a world where these political pariahs take every advantage of any opportunity to make themselves some money.
Whether these political pariahs are stealing money from Tabung Haji where Malays have saved their hard-earned cash in order to do their holy pilgrimage to Mecca, or getting commission and kickbacks in the purchase of Covid 19 vaccines which are critical to the saving of Malaysian lives – especially the most vulnerable Malaysians – the old and those in the front lines fighting the pandemic by putting their own lives in danger.
Whether it is playing Russian roulette with the lives of our Armed Forces by purchasing submarines and weapons not fit for purpose that could result in the death of our Armed forces or not providing them with Helicopters and weapons that they need to defend our nation and our people against any encroachments from without.
Our children’s education is disadvantaged by the hundreds of millions siphoned from the Ministry of Education budget. Money allocated to buy solar panels, laptop, text books and the construction of schools to anything else that our children would need for their education – the contracts to supply these items are grossly inflated to pay off politicians and even the ex PM’s wife, Rosmah Mansor.
They even take money from suppliers of food and drinks for our students. There is simply no limit to what these political pariahs will do to make money.
And as if the education of our children is not sacred enough for them to leave alone, the Islamic religion is also a source of funds for these political pariahs. They have no shame, they have no sense of fairness and certainly, there are without morals and ethics in their greed for anything they consider of value for themselves.
And the most despicable of things they do is for PAS to use Islam to benefit their political pariahs. And as if it is not enough that these political pariahs steal, their wives, children, and extended family are also into the thieving.
I spit upon these political pariahs.
These political pariahs are still today free to roam and plunder our nation at will. All of them Malays. Most of them are old. All of them must be discarded and punished for what they have done in plundering our national coffers. What they have plundered from our coffers must be taken back from them and put to good use to help our nation get back on its feet and prosper.
The narrative spun over and over again: that the Christians will destroy Islam, that the Chinese and DAP will take over the country, and that the Malays must have the political power to survive in their own Tanah Air is stale and are no longer relevant in the world the Malays live in today.
Let us get rid of these Malay political pariahs and banish them where they can no longer shame the Malays by what they do.
We know who they are, and it is time that these political pariahs be held to account for what they have done to the Malays.
Whether they are Prime Ministers, Ministers, Menteri Besar, all those loathsome and despicable Yang Berhormats or those little Napoleons who think that being a Malay gives them license to behave in an obnoxious manner to other Malays, and anybody else that question their plundering of our nation’s resources.
Let us start by making sure the Father of all Plunderers, Najib Razak, is in incarcerated immediately, to be followed by his wife, Rosmah Mansor and anyone else who has been the cause of the fall and fall of the Malays.
Today I am ashamed to call myself a Malay. Being a Malay means you have to take responsibility for what these Malay Political Pariahs have done.
Today being a Muslim in Malaysia is nothing to be proud of because all these plunderers, thieves, and scammers are Muslim. The non-Malays do not have to tell us these things.
There are many Malays today who can think, and we know what Malays have done to our country. You do not have to tell us how much the non-Malays have contributed to the development of Malaysia. We Malays know. You do not have to tell us that Malaysia is also your home. That too, we know. And we know that the Malays have been left behind by the others because it is all there for the Malays to see.
The best politicians are not Malays. The least corrupted politicians are not Malays. The most hard-working politicians who deliver on their promise to their electorates are not Malays. But this much we Malays know. The most corrupted politicians in Malaysia are Muslims. The most arrogant politicians are Muslims. And the politicians who do not deliver on their election promise are also Muslims.
So there you have it, this nation of ours has been brought to its knees by corruption and the political shenanigans and devious duplicity of these Malays and Muslims. And you and I know that it will also have to be the Malays and Muslims who will have to work to get these political pariahs into the dock, to be tried, convicted, and incarcerated if there is to be any hope for our nation to survive past 2020.
After Huawei, U.S. blacklists Chinese supercomputers
https://youtu.be/uTTkfyvmTHc
https://youtu.be/ICU_g4jXpas
How did China lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty?
https://youtu.be/SSfsvaDS5zU
CGTN starts first 5G smartphone livestream! CGTN首次5G移动直播
https://youtu.be/pSbaREOFpnA
Tech war exposes urgent need for talent
Trade war involves science, tech strength: Huawei founder
Chinese students have increasingly become interested in participating in math contests organized by elite US institutions. Photo: IC
The escalating China-US trade war, which has become a new cold war in technology, has made attracting talent an urgent task.
The recent call by the founder of China's Huawei to enhance the country's fundamental education system was echoed across Chinese society, while observers emphasized the importance of science and math.
In a recent interview with China Central Television aired over the weekend, Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei, whose company is now in the middle of the China-US trade battle, reiterated the importance of fundamental education and research instead of spending too much time talking about his company's future.
The 75-year-old entrepreneur said that he cares about education the most because he cares about the country. "If we don't attach importance to education, we'll actually return to poverty," he remarked.
Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei meets the media in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, earlier this month. Photo: Courtesy of Huawei
The country's development relies on culture, philosophy and education, which are fundamental, Ren said. And the escalating China-US trade war involves strength in science and technology, which comes down to the level of education.
His remarks put the focus on basic education.
Wang Lixin, vice mayor of Shenzhen, a city that is often seen as the new Silicon Valley as it gathers hundreds and thousands of high-tech firms, said at a recent conference that fundamental research is important to not only Shenzhen but the whole country.
"In the 1980s, we often said if you learn math, physics and chemistry well, you will achieve anywhere. Then we had doubts, as working in finance, economy or design would earn you more money. Considering the current situation, it's time to bring up that slogan again," Wang was quoted as saying in media reports on Sunday.
As part of broader efforts to strengthen science and technology, Shenzhen, which is now at the forefront of the China-US tech battle, where tech firms such as Huawei and DJI being targeted by the Trump administration are located, has vowed to invest one-third of its science and research funding to fundamental research, to the tune of over 4 billion yuan ($580 million), reports said.
On China's Twitter-like Weibo, net users praised Ren's call and considered improving the country's education system as the most urgent task. "High-tech growth cannot be supported only by a huge amount of money. Only with continuous efforts in fundamental education can the goal be achieved," a netizen said.
A mother surnamed Song, who lives in western Beijing's Haidian district, said she has always insisted that fundamental education should not become a heavy burden for children. However, the escalating trade war, especially the Huawei incident, has made it more urgent to enhance the country's overall STEM education, she believed.
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and these academic disciplines are often seen as fundamentals for a country in a race for high-tech supremacy.
"I'm thinking about sending her to an afterschool training course on mathematics this summer," she told the Global Times on Monday, referring to her 7-year-old daughter, who is now living at an increasingly competitive environment.
Fundamental research
As the world's two largest economies spar over tech, Chinese industry representatives are considering enhancing fundamental education, including science and math, as a major task, especially after many Chinese parents have been complaining in recent months about the current dogmatic policies of stifling rising talent.
The authorities' latest move to ease the schoolwork burden on primary and middle school students also weakened science and math education, and the ban on extracurricular coaching for Olympiad-style contests issued in 2018 will seriously affect the cultivation of talented students in STEM, analysts said.
"This one-size-fits-all approach will hurt fundamental education in the country and make our children fall behind their American counterparts in the future, which needs to be corrected," Mei Xinyu, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times.
The Ministry of Education issued a guideline in December 2018 to ease academic burden in primary and middle schools. The guideline says primary and high schools are forbidden from hosting math Olympiads to recruit students. The move follows a change in policy on stopping the awarding of extra points to students who have won academic Olympiads or science and technology competitions.
But parents also applauded the government's efforts to ease the children's burden, while some advocated a happy-elementary-education approach.
Ren said he attaches great importance to fundamental research, and the country should invest more in developing mathematicians, physicists and chemists instead of just pouring money into industries.
The US clampdown on Huawei, as part of the China-US tech battle, will stimulate technological self-reliance while boosting scientific research and innovation, as US sanctions also exposed the country's high-tech Achilles' heel due to Huawei's reliance on American technologies and core components reflecting the overall shortcoming in the sector.
It's becoming more urgent for Chinese tech companies to attract talent, as the tech war will eventually become a battle for more talent, analysts said.
"Our country has to have an awareness of crisis, and to clearly see the real gap between China and the US in education," Chu Zhaohui, a research fellow at the National Institute of Education Sciences based in Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday.
For instance, American students have a deeper understanding of natural sciences and mathematics, as they learn by following their own interests, he noted. "How to arouse the interest of Chinese students in science and technology, which will lead to better fundamental research, remains a challenge," he said.
Since the December 1 arrest, in Vancouver, of its chief
financial officer Meng Wanzhou, Shenzhen-based multinational
conglomerate Huawei Technologies Co has indisputably become the most
high-profile Chinese company by which ...
China is pushing forward technological revolution at all
levels, from government support and corporate participation to academic
exchanges and conversations among ordinary people, underscoring an
exceptional phenomenon where the entire country is immersed in technical
breakthroughs amid a trade and technology war with the US.
The issue of IP protection should no longer be a concern.
A large number of innovation-driven Chinese firms are playing a leading
role in different industries with no need to steal technologies. DJI's
production line in the US is perhaps the best way to respond to the
suspicion, so now the US can watch closely how Chinese companies “usurp”
US high technology.
While commercialization has become a common noun in a
world that's being propelled by business innovation, its usage in the
space sector remains something new, which is especially true with .
China's largest drone-maker said Tuesday its plan to
assemble drones in the US and make high-security government edition
drones aims to meet the increasing demand of the US market, rather than
respond to the security warning issued by the US last month, and the
company has no intention of moving its production facilities out of
China.
More than 1,900 politicians, business people, scholars
and media representatives from over 100 countries are expected to gather
in Dalian City, northeast China's Liaoning Province, to share wisdom
and solutions on globalization in the new era for the upcoming Summer
Davos.
Graduate unemployment was 45.5 of overall jobless amid skills mismatch and demand for low-skilled jobs, says MIDF Research
PETALING JAYA: Youth unemployment was at its highest ever at 10.8% in 2017, of which graduate unemployment constituted about 40.5% or 204,000 of total unemployment due to skills mismatch amid a backdrop where demand for low-skill jobs continues to reign – which in turn may leave the government falling short of its 35% skilled workforce target by 2020, according to MIDF Research.
For every 100 jobs available, there are 76 jobs for elementary occupations and 10 jobs for plant and machinery operators and assemblers, which leaves 14 jobs for the high-skill and other low-skill occupations.
About 86.3% of job vacancies in 2017 were for low-skill jobs which was deemed less suitable for a fresh graduate while high-skill jobs such as professional, technicians and associate professionals, comprised 4.1% of the total job vacancies.
It noted that the high single- and double-digit unemployment rate among youth, defined as those between 15 and 24 years old, as being normal not only in Malaysia, but in Europe, the US and South Korea.
The high youth unemployment rate was mainly contributed by soaring graduate unemployment, despite the steady increase in tertiary-educated workers joining the workforce, which was also the fastest growing segment at 4.1%, followed by secondary at 3.2% and no formal education by 0.3%.
Employment share of professionals and technicians and associate professionals improved to 12.2% and 10.5% in 2017 expanding at 0.8% and 4.6% respectively.
“In terms of share, the rising stake of skilled-worker or tertiary-educated is in line with the Eleventh Malaysia Plan. Under the plan, the government estimated skilled-worker to total workforce ratio to touch 35% by 2020. Nevertheless, we view the ratio is not expected to reach the target at the current pace,” MIDF Research said.
“We forecast the skilled-worker ratio to register at 32% by 2020. Continuous improvement in production efficiency, resource allocations and better technology adoptions under the Industry 4.0 will facilitate and accelerate the productivity level in Malaysia in the long run,” it added.
The overall unemployment rate in the country remained low at 3.4% last year.
Malacca remains as the state with the lowest youth unemployment rate for the seventh consecutive year at 2.9% while Sabah recorded the highest at 13.5% in 2017.
Meanwhile, Selangor the largest employer, 23.2% of total national employment saw overall unemployment rate of 2.8% and youth unemployment rate of 9.4% last year.
The overall youth unemployment rate across all states registered poor performances compared with the previous year, 2016.
In 2018, the youth unemployment rate is expected to fall slightly to 9.9% and the overall unemployment rate to stand at 3.3%.
The job market outlook for commodity-based sectors is expected to improve in tandem with recovering commodity prices. This in line with anticipation of improvement in global trade, and higher demand for export products is expected to benefit industries such as electrical & electronics and mining.- sunbiz@thesundaily.com
May 9, 2017 - Based on the latest developments in global and domestic economies, we anticipate youth unemployment rate to slightly fall to 10.1% while overall unemployment rate to stand at 3.3% in 2017. Youth unemployment rate hits 10.5% with number of unemployed youth reached 273,400 persons in 2016. Youth ...
Apr 6, 2016 ... So if both the US and Malaysian Governments couldn't stem the fat tide in their
respective countries, who can? ... Putrajaya the obese-city!
'The outcome of such a strategy will deprive the Chinese community of some good politicians' - Tan Sri Pheng Yin Huah
Leaders against rocking the boat
This Saturday’s nomination day, DAP is facing increasing pressure from Chinese society to drop its strategy to jiao mie (wipe out) outstanding Chinese leaders within the Barisan Nasional.
In the past two weeks, several Chinese guilds – which claim to be apolitical – have come out openly to oppose this DAP stunt which will see the DAP fielding its strong candidates against leading Chinese politicians from Barisan’s MCA and Gerakan.
Many commentators within the community have also published their views in Chinese media arguing against the DAP plan.
Most Chinese newspapers have also voiced their stand against this strategy.
In essence, many see this “king versus king” plan advocated by DAP as wiping out the limited number of outstanding political talents within the community.
Whoever wins or loses in the election, the Chinese community will lose a talent and the ultimate loser is the community, they argue.
The decision by DAP to transfer its political strategist Liew Chin Tong from Kluang to the Ayer Hitam parliamentary seat to collide head-on with MCA deputy president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Seong has not been well received from the start.
Neither is the move to send Perak DAP chief Nga Kor Ming from Taiping to Teluk Intan to rock the parliamentary seat held by Gerakan president Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong.
Among the Chinese associations that have made their opposing stand known are the Federation of Chinese Guilds in Malaysia (Hua Zong), the normally low-profile Federation of Kwang Xi clans and the Federation of Heng Hua clans.
Hua Zong’s president Tan Sri Pheng Yin Huah tells The Star: “We cannot interfere with DAP politics, but as a community leader I hope DAP can consider our views to change this election strategy.
“The outcome of such a strategy will deprive the Chinese community of some good politicians – whether they are from Barisan or Opposition, and this is a loss to the community.”
Last Monday, Pheng issued a media statement to this effect. But in response, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng alleged that Hua Zong was an “external organisation” of MCA.
Lim, in justifying the DAP strategy, said it would help the Opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan to win more parliament seats so as to take over Putrajaya to rule the country.
It appears that DAP is unlikely to change this unpopular strategy.
While Lim can ignore Pheng and the other Chinese community leaders who are not voters in Ayer Hitam and Teluk Intan, he should listen to the voices on the ground.
A professional in Ayer Hitam, who was my high school classmate in Batu Pahat, told me in my recent trip down south: “I normally support the Opposition, but this time I am going to vote for Wee Ka Siong.
“He is a good minister and has done so much work for the people. Everybody here can see.”
His feelings are shared by my other former Batu Pahat high school friends.
Prominent commentator Tang Ah Chai, who is normally more pro-Opposition in his analysis, has warned DAP to handle the discontent from Chinese society with caution to avoid backlash in the coming election.
“The Chinese community is worried that if there is little or no representation in government, their aspirations and voice cannot be effectively channelled to the top and their interest will be undermined. They experienced this when MCA did not join the Cabinet,” Tang commented last Friday.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has warned that there will be a cut in the number of Chinese ministers, in the event Barisan wins the election, if Chinese support for MCA and Gerakan dwindles.
While Pheng does not expect Lim to change DAP’s strategy, which has also been employed in Sarawak, other leaders hope Lim can turn a page on DAP history.
“Look at what happened in 1982 when Seremban sent a strong message that voters wanted MCA leader to stay on,” said one.
In the 1982 general election, in response to a taunt by DAP to contest in a Chinese-majority area, the then MCA president Tan Sri Lee San Choon contested in Seremban to face DAP chairman Dr Chen Man Hin, who had held that parliamentary seat since 1969.
Not only did Lee win in the battle, MCA scored a landslide victory – winning 24 out of 28 parliamentary seats and 55 out of 62 state seats it contested.
DAP was nearly wiped out in that general election.
One of Lee’s projects that have benefited many Chinese is TAR College to expand tertiary education opportunities for the Chinese at the time.
While the 1982 election has come to pass, the sentiment of Chinese against “king versus king” is still present.
Greener pastures: Wang at his company’s headquarters in Shanghai. The successful Silicon Valley alumni was lured
back to China by the promise of a brighter future.
Chinese-born talents are abandoning California for riches back home with the rise of China's new titans.
A FEW years ago, Wang Yi was living the American dream. He had graduated from Princeton, landed a job at Google and bought a spacious condo in Silicon Valley.
But one day in 2011, he sat his wife down at the kitchen table and told her he wanted to move back to China. He was bored working as a product manager for the search giant and felt the pull of starting his own company in their homeland.
It wasn’t easy persuading her to abandon balmy California for smog-choked Shanghai.
“We’d just discovered she was pregnant,” said Wang, now 37, recalling hours spent pacing their apartment. “It was a very uneasy few weeks before we made our decision, but in the end she came around.”
His bet paid off: his popular English teaching app Liulishuo or LingoChamp raised US$100mil (RM397mil) in July, putting him in the growing ranks of successful Silicon Valley alumni lured back to China by the promise of a brighter future. His decision is emblematic of an unprecedented trend with disquieting implications for Valley stalwarts from Facebook Inc to Alphabet Inc’s Google.
US-trained Chinese-born talent is becoming a key force in driving Chinese companies’ global expansion and the country’s efforts to dominate next-generation technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. Where college graduates once coveted a prestigious overseas job and foreign citizenship, many today gravitate towards career opportunities at home, where venture capital is now plentiful and the government dangles financial incentives for cutting-edge research.
“More and more talent is moving over because China is really getting momentum in the innovation area,” said Ken Qi, a headhunter for Spencer Stuart and leader of its technology practice.
“This is only the beginning.” Chinese have worked or studied abroad and then returned home long enough that there’s a term for them – “sea turtles”. But while a job at a US tech giant once conferred near-unparalleled status, homegrown companies – from giants like Tencent Holdings Ltd to up-and-comers like news giant Toutiao – are now often just as prestigious. Baidu Inc – a search giant little-known outside of China – convinced ex-Microsoft standout Qi Lu to helm its efforts in AI, making him one of the highest-profile returnees of recent years.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s coming-out party was a catalyst. The e-commerce giant pulled off the world’s largest initial public offering in 2014 – a record that stands – to drive home the scale and inventiveness of the country’s corporations.
Alibaba and Tencent now count among the 10 most valuable companies in the world, in the ranks of Amazon.com Inc and Facebook.
Chinese venture capital rivals the United States: three of the world’s five most valuable startups are based in Beijing, not California.
Tech has supplanted finance as the biggest draw for overseas Chinese returnees, accounting for 15.5% of all who go home, according to a 2017 survey of 1,821 people conducted by think-tank Centre for China & Globalisation and jobs site Zhaopin.com. That’s up 10% from their last poll, in 2015.
Not all choose to abandon the Valley. Of the more than 850,000 AI engineers across America, 7.9% are Chinese, according to a 2017 report from LinkedIn.
That naturally includes plenty of ethnic Chinese without strong ties to the mainland or any interest in working there. However, there are more AI engineers of Chinese descent in the United States than there are in China, even though they make up less than 1.6% of the American population.
Yet the search for returnees has spurred a thriving cottage industry.
In WeChat and Facebook cliques, headhunters and engineers from the diaspora exchange banter and animated gifs.
Qi watches for certain markers: if you’ve scored permanent residency, are childless or the kids are prepping for college, expect a knock on your digital door.
Jay Wu has poached over 100 engineers for Chinese companies over the past three years. The co-founder of Global Career Path ran online communities for students before turning it into a career. The San Francisco resident now trawls more than a dozen WeChat groups for leads.
“WeChat is a good channel to keep tabs on what’s going on in the circle and also broadcast our offline events,” he said.
Ditching Cupertino or Mountain View for Beijing can be a tough sell when China’s undergoing its harshest Internet crackdown in history. But its tech giants hold three drawcards: faster growth in salaries, opportunity and a sense of home.
China’s Internet space is enjoying bubbly times, with compensation sometimes exceeding American peers’. One startup was said to have hired an AI engineer for cash and shares worth as much as US$30mil (RM119mil) over four years.
For engineers reluctant to relinquish American comforts, Chinese companies are going to them. Alibaba, Tencent, Uber-slayer Didi Chuxing and Baidu are among those who have built or are expanding labs in Silicon Valley.
Career opportunities, however, are regarded as more abundant back home. While Chinese engi-
neers are well represented in the Valley, the perception is that comparatively fewer advance to the top rungs, a phenomenon labelled the “Bamboo Ceiling”.
“More and more Chinese engineers who have worked in Silicon Valley for an extended period of time end up finding it’s much more lucrative for them career-wise to join a fast-rising Chinese company,”
says Hans Tung, a managing partner at venture firm GGV who’s organised events to poach talent.
“At Google, at LinkedIn, at Uber, at AirBnB, they all have Chinese engineers who are trying to figure out ‘should I stay, or should I go back’.”
More interesting than prospects for some may be the sheer volume of intimate data available and leeway to experiment in China.
Tencent’s WeChat, built by a small team in months, has become a poster-child for in-house creative licence.
Modern computing is driven by crunching enormous amounts of data, and generations of state surveillance has conditioned the public to be less concerned about sharing information than Westerners.
Local startup SenseTime for instance has teamed with dozens of police departments to track everything from visages to races, helping the country develop one of the world’s most sophisticated surveillance machines.
China’s 751 million Internet users have thus become a massive petri dish.
Big money and bigger data can be irresistible to those itching to turn theory into reality.
Xu Wanhong left Carnegie Mellon University’s computer science PhD programme in 2010 to work on Facebook’s news feed.
A chance meeting with a visiting team from Chinese startup UCAR Technology led to online friendships and in 2015, an offer to jump ship. Today he works at Kuaishou, a video service said to be valued at more than US$3bil (RM12bil), and commutes from 20km outside Beijing. It’s a far cry from the breakfast bar and lush spaces of Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters.
“I didn’t go to the US for a big house. I went for the interesting problems,” he said.
Then there are those for whom it’s about human connection: no amount of tech can erase the fact that Shanghai and San Francisco are separated by an 11-hour flight and an even wider cultural chasm.
Chongqing native Yang Shuishi grew up deifying the West, adopting the name Seth and landing a dream job as a software engineer on Microsoft’s Redmond campus.
But suburban America didn’t suit a single man whose hometown has about 40 times Seattle’s population.
While he climbed the ranks during subsequent stints at Google and Facebook, life in America remained a lonely experience and he landed back in China.
“You’re just working as a cog in the huge machine and you never get to see the big picture.
“My friends back in China were thinking about the economy and vast social trends,” he said.
“Even if I get killed by the air and live shorter for 10 years, it’ll still be better.” - Bloomberg
