What do you know about Chinese tech companies?

(Photo credit @konkarampelas)

I was on vacation last week and ended up having an accidental but much appreciated digital detox. I went camping and surprisingly, there wasn’t very good cell service (and definitely no wifi). So I was forced to spend my days hiking with the dog, swimming, and reading good novels. I’m committing to myself to take one day a week for the rest of the summer to do the same thing - amazing how much more relaxed I am and how much easier it is to focus my attention. (Though apparently, I am still unsure of what day it is!) One of the things I didn’t miss was social media (mostly) as I continue to observe how much control I don’t have over what appears in my feeds. I ran across this report which highlights China Internet trends for 2020, and thought I’d expand on a few topics here. 

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#techtopic

China has been a market that many US-founded tech companies want to break into (hello, 1.4billion users) but have continued to fail over and over again. (Great infographic depicting many of these U-turns, along with a full list of blocked tech companies here.) In the absence of many of these tech companies we in the US hear about daily, China has a robust ecosystem of home-grown tech companies that have seen huge success. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are the big three -- but Bytedance has been in the news a lot recently as the company that developed the super popular social media app TikTok. 

One huge difference between the US companies and the Chinese companies is their engagement with the government. While next week, the CEOs of 4 of the largest tech companies are testifying in front of Congress about antitrust regulations -- in general, they operate completely independently of government control. In China, there is arguably much more control exerted by their government on tech companies. The extent of that control concerns the US government (and more recently the UK), which has banned Huawei from providing 5G equipment due to fears of Chinese spying on the network. The US Senate moved one step closer to implementing a ban on having TikTok devices on government devices due to concerns of data sharing with the Chinese government. These bans have led to different company responses: the mega-list of actions Huawei has taken, while Bytedance is rumored to be considering a TikTok spinoff to ensure it keeps its US user base. 

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#video

I know it’s actually an ad for Apple - but it’s just so well-done that I had to share. Go Underdogs!

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Can tech play well with the government?

(Photo credit @angelvela)

Next week, my taxes are due. <insert obligatory groan> And yes, I waited until the last minute to do them and yes, I will gripe about how much money I pay in taxes when I see the final numbers. I know that government is a construct that provides enormous benefits to my community using the taxes that I pay into the system.  I am proud to support that system and by extension, our democracy, through all of its ups and downs. You might be wondering what the connection to tech is -- and that’s what tech often forgets too. 

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#techtopic

The tech industry as we know it was born out of government programs & policies like DARPA and Section 230. A 1963 DARPA memo helped bring about the modern internet. And Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 helped set the stage for companies like Google & Facebook to flourish. It’s crucial to understand section 230 as it helps to explain why many of the tech giants exist in their current form, and what drives them to do odd moves like merging Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook together on the same back-end platform. And then when 45 wades into this with an ill-conceived executive order, it causes more confusion about the rights granted to tech companies by section 230.

Tech is also challenged by government regulators around antitrust allegations due to their outsized market power, and the CEOs of 4 tech giants will be testifying in front of Congress in late July. Some argue that if tech companies are broken up, we will lose our competitiveness with China; others argue that we will only remain competitive with China if we break up the big tech companies to allow smaller/more innovative companies to flourish. Companies in regulated industries also believe their ability to compete is curtailed when tech has “no regulations to worry about.” What’s interesting is that none of this public discourse seems to have affected the stock prices for these tech giants -- they are leading a stock market recovery. Not sure if that shows a lack of confidence in our government regulators or a display of confidence in tech’s outlook -- or both. 

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#nerdcool

• Physicists Discover Exotic, New 'Tetraquark' Particle We've Never Seen Before

  • Fun fact: I’ve been inside the Large Haldron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. A PhD friend gave us a tour right before it became fully operational in late 2009. 

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Want a Career in Tech but aren’t sure where to start? Take a look at MY COURSE, ‘TECH SEARCH COMPASS’ FOR STEP-BY-STEP SUPPORT

How productive do you really need to be?

(Photo credit @cathrynlavery)

1. Another thing I’ve admitted to myself in pandemic times: it’s ok to admit that you’re only about 40-50% as productive as normal. Here’s some advice on how to recover: 

   • The Guilt-Free Guide to Getting Back on Track After a Completely Unproductive Day

2. Still struggling to get motivated? It happens to all of us!

   • One approach is to remind yourself why you were a great hire in the first place (also a super helpful strategy when you are trying to make a job pivot): 

     1. How to Find Your Job Search Value Proposition

   • Another is to re-define what it means to be productive right now:

     1. Redefining Lack of Productivity During COVID-19 -Kushaan Shah (love the Pixar Story Spine game!)

3. If you’re working with or managing others, you should be thinking about ways to help support your team right now.

   • Fostering employee productivity and morale through COVID-19 

   • How to Spot When an Employee Is Secretly Struggling

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