Xinzhiyuan report

Editor: Yuanyu

Recently, a Meta employee named priiir (online nickname) posted a post claiming that he was the only non-Chinese in his team and could not integrate into the team due to his lack of understanding of Chinese. In the Silicon Valley, Chinese people's st

A language siege is unfolding in Silicon Valley.

There are too many Chinese people at Meta!

Recently, a Meta employee with the online name priiir posted a post on teamblind to complain about something.

He stated that the entire team, including management, is mostly Chinese, and they all communicate in Chinese during daily work, even in shared spaces and meetings.

This makes priiir feel extremely isolated as he doesn't understand Chinese.

He felt excluded from team discussions and decisions, especially when other members were using private WeChat groups to communicate.

Indeed, as Meta accelerates its investment in AI, Chinese employees are becoming increasingly common at Meta as priiir has observed.

Especially after Meta established its Superintelligence Labs (MSL) at the end of June this year, it has brought in a large number of Chinese AI elites, including Alexandr Wang and Zhao Shengjia.

Meta's Chinese Face

At Meta, especially in the MSL department, the faces of Chinese people are very noticeable.

For example, Meta's first Chief AI Officer, Alexandr Wang, and Chief Scientist, Zhao Shengjia.

Alexandr Wang

Alexandr Wang

Alexandr Wang joined Meta as its first Chief AI Officer this June, leading the Meta Super Intelligence Lab (MSL).

Prior to that, Alexandre Wang founded Scale AI in 2016 while he was still a 19-year-old student at MIT, providing critical data and infrastructure for large model training.

Zhao Shengjia

Zhao Shengjia

Zhao Shengjia joined Meta's MSL department as the chief scientist in July 2025. He worked with Alexandr Wang and Zuckerberg to set research agendas and scientific directions for MSL.

Previously, Zhao Shengjia served as a researcher at OpenAI, where she participated in the creation of models such as ChatGPT and GPT-4.

Changhan Wang

Changhan Wang

Changhan Wang is a research engineer at Facebook's Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, mainly working on research in natural language and voice processing.

Xian Li

Xian Li

Xian Li is a research scientist on the FAIR team. Her research interests are mainly focused on scalable training methods for basic models.

Xin Luna Dong

Xin Luna Dong

Xin Luna Dong serves as the Chief Scientist of Meta Reality Labs, leading the charge in machine learning efforts focused on building intelligent personal assistants.

Prior to joining Meta, Xin Luna Dong spent nearly ten years working on knowledge graphs at Amazon and Google.

Moreover, Clara Shih, who is in charge of the Business AI business line, and Susan Li, the Chief Financial Officer of Meta, are also Chinese.

Susan Li

Susan Li has been serving as the Chief Financial Officer of Meta since November 202211.

She joined Facebook, the predecessor of Meta, in 2008 after working as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley.

A netizen mentioned that Priscilla Chan, the wife of Meta founder Zuckerberg, is also Chinese, which may also increase Meta's acceptance of employees with Chinese backgrounds.

If you stand in the office areas of Silicon Valley giants like Meta, it's not surprising to feel like you've been transported to China in an instant.

Not understanding Chinese

Can't enter the core circle?

Not only Meta, but also teams from OpenAI, Google, and other companies have many Chinese members as well.

In addition, renowned Chinese experts such as Li Feifei (a Stanford Computer Science Professor, former Chief Scientist of Google Cloud AI/ML, and advocate for people-centered AI) and Huang Renxiong (the founder of NVIDIA) are well-known leaders in th

Chinese immigrants have become an important force in the Silicon Valley and even the global AI and technology industry that cannot be ignored.

Recently, Chairman of Cheetah Mobile Chairman Fu Sheng also mentioned the amazing scene he saw in the Silicon Valley:

Without understanding Chinese, it is difficult to join the core team of Meta AI.

During the meeting, English was spoken, but after the meeting, everyone spoke Chinese. So this time, it was the foreign participants who were left confused and at a loss.

And not only do people speak Chinese, but even the large models are now speaking 'Chinese'.

Major products of companies such as Cursor and Windsurf have been revealed to be using domestically sourced open-source large models as their basis.

Compared to two years ago when ChatGPT first gained popularity and domestic big models were often imitating foreign models, the situation has now completely reversed.

Some netizens even predict that in the next few decades, more and more foreigners will have to learn math and Chinese.

So some netizens forwarded the post from priiir and commented below, Have you ever considered becoming a Chinese?

Big Tech in Silicon Valley Faces Cross-Cultural Challenges

In the case of priiir, what's worse is that he felt he was marginalized by the team and even suffered unfair treatment.

He saw that some Chinese people could be easily recruited just because they belong to the Chinese community.

Chinese managers only hire Chinese employees, and if they do hire non-Chinese employees, those employees are likely to be targets for dismissal.

As the only non-Chinese employee in the team, priiir expressed uncertainty about whether they could stay for a full year because they can only be transferred to the team after one year.

For him, staying in the original team seems to be like dragging through the mud. It's becoming quite difficult to endure the time.

A former Meta employee advised priiir to consider relocating their team early on. "If Zuckerberg doesn't care about this issue, almost nothing can be done".

If we need to adjust the team, where can we adjust it to?

In addition to Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, Apple, Amazon... almost all multinational giants have team members across multiple cultural backgrounds.

This has also made priiir's experience resonate with people from many other cultural backgrounds.

A netizen mentioned that in a team dominated by Indians, Indian managers only hire Indian engineers. Different cultural backgrounds, but same story repeats

As a global hub for tech talents, the Silicon Valley attracts talents from different cultural backgrounds all over the world.

Working here, cross-cultural integration is a compulsory course, and an open mindset that seeks common ground while preserving differences is very important.

As one netizen mentioned in his message, forget cultural differences, put down titles and self-esteem, and work hard.

Confrontation can only lead to company failure, layoffs, economic downturn, and a series of bad news.

References:

https://x.com/chinesegon/status/1985417313848529394%20

https://www.teamblind.com/post/political-chinese-culture-at-meta-2vx8g0a1