Originally Posted by rhino123
There was a time when I frequent China a couple of times a year (not anymore now) for work purposes. My stay there was kind of short though... with a maximum of 14 days per trip. And we went there because just before we give any contract to a vendor... they would promise us sky and heaven.
However when we give them something to do... always towards the end of the scheduled time that they are suppose to deliver... something must slip. This is kind of irritating as we have to go there often to straighten up the stuff. Plus... when we are there... things seemed to flow more smoothly... but once we came back to our country... it became problematic again.
Sometime I feel that it is their attitude and not their skill or hardware that is the problem. So as you can see, handling the Chinese is really not an easy thing to do... I too have vendors in Malaysia, doing the same thing as vendors in China. So far those in Malaysia give us things as promised in the contract with minimum or no hiccups at all.
But I do agreed with Seigecrossbow in his assessment of Chinese engineers. They are REALLY good. I have a group of electronic and software designers in Singapore, and whatever given to them... they fail quite miserably... maybe they are not really gear to do things at today's extremely short timeframe and tight schedule. However when I gave almost the same design to my Shanghai and Hefei's team of designers, they could come out with the design in the given time and with minimal hiccups... well... I am very, very impress.
Paul Midler aludes to that sort of thing in his book "Poorly made in China"
Notice how bladerunner bolded the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs but not the 4th?
I'm schooling as a Civil Engineer in Canada, where I've lived for half of my life. Haven't really thought about going back to China to work though. Even if I was to go back, I would start working here in Canada first, to gain some experience that would make me more valued in China. With so much demand for civil engineers coming from all the construction going around, I shouldn't have a hard time finding a job there. That being said, I still like where I am now, and being able to drive an hour to hike in the Rockies on weekends.