Re: [tlug] Looking for Summer Internship in Japan

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 5:23 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:
> Raymond Wan writes:
>
>  > Sure.  Maybe I'm being a bit simplistic but hopefully not too much so
>  > by saying this.  Suppose you have a certain number of IT companies
>  > when there are X number of people.  If the population doubles then
>  > maybe the number of IT people doubles as well?
>
> That's way too simplistic.  The big factor in the growth of software
> manpower (and womanpower) in Asia is education rates, not fertility
> rates.


Yes, that's true.  Thanks!

And yes, education is improving in all the places that were mentioned
by Noda.  If the population was not growing but education was
improving, they would still be a formidable IT workforce.  Coupled
with a growing population seems to make things grow faster.



>  > Then, are the number of IT companies such as Microsoft and Apple
>  > going to double?
>
> Depends on how you define "such as".  There's only room for ten in the
> top ten, you know.  It's not obvious that Microsoft and Apple or even
> Google can suck up "all" of the top talent because a lot of the top
> talent is averse to having a boss, or because they've got a "thing"
> they need to do first.  But few of them are going to be double-threats


Yes, I mentioned them since Nicolas drew them up as examples in the
USA.  But yes, you don't have to be in the "top 10" to do good IT
work.

But, I think there should be a saturation point for IT companies, just
as there is one for car manufacturers, tv stations, etc.  (i.e., How
many can you have in the market or on air?)  I think that's what I was
trying to say.


> Facts are more or less correct, but I think you're missing one huge
> factor: in the last 20 years it's become possible to sell software
> *to* those countries (in part because of Unicode), and that helped
> introduce the big companies in America and Europe to the little
> programmers in Asia.  They then started to pull them back to their
> home offices in the 80s and 90s, because there just weren't enough
> excellent home-grown programmers to go around.  Then they started to
> go home (very consciously so in the case of the Taiwanese, don't know
> about the Indians, my impression is they're more likely to stay
> abroad, but I don't have any stats or serious informants to back that
> up).


Yes, that sounds right.  I'm not sure about the Indians, but I think
that is true for the Chinese.

A bit of a tangent since I don't know the IT field in China, but their
government is actively attracting tenured Chinese professors in
American, etc. universities back to China with salaries and titles
that cannot be attained in the USA.  I wouldn't be surprised if
companies are doing something similar.

Ray