Worked with a team in China recently. N=1, but:
Strengths:
- extremely competent SWEs
- very well educated
- work extremely hard
- no patience whatsoever for you if you suck, but once you’ve demonstrated competence they’re the biggest sweethearts you’ll ever meet
- very efficient, get a huge amount done with little resources
Weaknesses:
- very strong command and control structure, little happens bottom up. (Ppl might debate whether this is a weakness, but I’m more aligned with bottom-up teams philosophically, I think they’re more effective, and I will die on this hill)
- execution patterns not world-class yet, top US firms are a standard deviation better. This isn’t easy to level up quickly and is a huge advantage for the U.S.
Again n=1, but if U.S. and China are meant to be adversaries (which I’m still hoping we can avoid), I would not go up against that team lightly.