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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
There aren't many astronomy jobs that pay very well – but the Chinese authorities are offering just that for the director of scientific operation for its new Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope.
At 500m (1,640ft) across, FAST became the world's largest filled-aperture radio telescope when construction finished last year.
While the initial building is complete and nearly 10,000 people have been moved away from the instrument to cut down on polluting it with electromagnetic signals, the telescope still needs to be calibrated and fine-tuned.
[...] Unfortunately, finding a director with the necessary skills to do the job of managing and running the instrument has proven problematic. So a foreigner is now being sought to bring their experience to bear on the project.
"The post is currently open to scientists working outside China only," a human resources official at the Chinese Academy of Sciences told the South China Morning Post. "Candidates can be of any nationality, any race."
[...] It's a tough job, managing a facility that complex and handling the competing claims for time on the 'scope from scientists. The Academy of Sciences is asking for a professor with at least 20 years' experience in radio astronomy, as well as management training.
"These requirements are very high. It puts most astronomers out of the race. I may be able to count those qualified with my fingers," said Wang Tinggui, professor of astrophysics at the University of Science and Technology of China. "It is not a job for a scientist. It's for a superhero."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday August 09 2017, @12:01PM (5 children)
Some things really are cross cultural. They want a guy with experience on a telescope invented recently. Only those with two decades of experience with Chinese made five hundred meter telescopes need apply. So they're only going to get liars as applicants.
Then they offered pay of half a bag of rice per month as pay, when competitors are offering 1M Ren/yer for a large scale managing director position, and they act surprised no one applied, why we'll "have to" get a cheap immigrant to do the jobs Chinese won't do. Increase pay to market? Unthinkable!
So they put it up on job boards and in India nobody checks references, ed, or experience, so some supposed IIT grad (LOL right, probably grade school dropout like everyone who claims to be a IIT grad) with 30 years experience as a managing director of a 500M Chinese made radio telescope (actually he's only 25 and has never seen nor touched a telescope), with both the pope and mr trump as (unchecked) references will apply, say "yes" to everything asked because thats culturally Indian, the failure of the tech interview will be blamed on the interpreter, and get the job for a quarter bag of rice per month as pay, which makes him the wealthiest man in his village in India. "Who cares if he's only 1% as productive as a local, he costs 0.0001% as much" which leads to discussions about how 200+ women cannot cooperate to conceive and birth a full term baby in less than a day, but such logic is beyond the ability of bean counters to understand.
Then when it crashes and burns the real candidate who was probably pre-selected all along because he's the CEO's nephew can swoop in and bypass all the HR crap because its an emergency and a special situation, and take the job for 5M ren/yr. Of which he will spend $740K/yr buying empty condos in silicon valley for investment that no one lives in, and the other $8K/yr he buys the half bag of rice per month as previously discussed.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:50PM
From your post:
"They want a guy with experience on a telescope invented recently. Only those with two decades of experience with Chinese made five hundred meter telescopes need apply."
From the article:
"The Academy of Sciences is asking for a professor with at least 20 years' experience in radio astronomy, as well as management training."
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:54PM (2 children)
Can we have a mod "Imagination run wild" please?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @03:18PM
But...but...but...now the Chinese are stealing our jerbs!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:01PM
Its based on IT projects I've observed from a close-ish distance, there's no obvious reason why this management job would turn out different than IT management jobs I've seen crash and burn. I've managed to avoid being caught inside the fireball but after a couple of decades you can really see some crazy stuff out there.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Thursday August 10 2017, @07:16PM
The pain is real. I had my company put out an ad fro a Java programmer. HR threw their standard "5 years' experience" on the ad. This was 1995.