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Crazy Work Hours and Lots of Cameras: a group from Silicon Valley visits China

134 points by awad 8y ago

katuskoti 8y ago
“We’re so lazy in the U.S.!” blurted Wesley Chan, a venture capital investor, on the first day of what would be a weeklong journey into the Chinese technology scene. ...Yikes.
- phil_folrida 8y ago
  yes, this only shows how not very experimented those people were, not a lot of gray hair in this article.
  - __blockcipher__ 8y ago
    I think perhaps you were looking for the word “experienced“ (experimented is a ‘false cognate’ in Spanish and similar languages)
  - nashashmi 8y ago
    Good Point! Burn out is real. And Eventual. Especially when you work for a founder or have a VC who is just demeaning and sucks all around.
tschellenbach 8y ago
I'm from Europe, living in the US, and it always frustrated me that startups are able to do so well in the US and China, yet find very little momentum in the EU. It's crazy, there is plenty of local talent in Europe's tech hubs.
- baxtr 8y ago
  Why do you think it is like that? Access to risk capital? Lack of IPOs?
  - tdons 8y ago
    Fragmented European market; the culture and language differences.
    - mtgx 8y ago
      Bingo. You can launch a startup in the "United States" or "in China" in day one. You can't really launch a startup in "Europe" from day one, unless you only offer an online service and only to the English speakers (a tiny single-digit percentage, on average) of those countries.
      - syntheticcdo 8y ago
        Beyond the language barrier, does the regulatory burden of complying with all applicable EU and individual state rules factor in at all?
        kazen44 8y ago
        it depends on your market you are trying to enter. Let's not forget that harmonizing these rules is one of the major points of the EU in the first place.
    - baxtr 8y ago
      I don’t but that argument. In math you’d say that this is an “continuous function”, wouldn’t you? Where is the break-off point? Germany for example has 80 mio people, Japan has 120 mio or so. You’d expect the same level of activity scaled by population size. Am I wrong? EDIT: Another example countering your point is Sweden/Stockholm. Tiny population, high number of startups and unicorns.
      - adventured 8y ago
        That really heavily depends on the market in question. They're all so different in terms of culture, regulation, politics, market structures, productivity, output, wealth, etc. Jordan for example has the same population size as Sweden, that's about where the similarities end. Sweden, along with Canada and Australia, are just about ideal micro US versions in technology, in terms of potential to pull off your scaling of activity. Good market economies, relatively robust technology societies and technology economies, high GDP per capita and incomes, plenty of wealth and capital to invest, stable open societies with respect for human rights, english language use giving them global benefits (Sweden having one of the world's highest english language adoption rates, outside of primarily english speaking countries), and so on. Japan has far less spending power per capita - disposable income - than the US, and their economic output per capita is similarly far lower. Their cost of living is not far lower to offset. US GDP per capita will be around $63,000 for 2018. Japan is down around $38,000 to $40,000. Culturally Japan has historically not been friendly to risk taking, entrepreneurial activity. That has shifted some over the last 10-15 years, but not immensely (it's starting from an extreme where a long corporate career was the only acceptable path). There's a considerable difference between Sweden and Japan on that conservativism. Japan also is very different at a macro level, they put themselves into a particularly bad 20+ year debt trap that has robbed their economy of the surplus capital it needs to invest into expansion and innovation. Germany is doing OK, in regards to technology and tech start-ups. They've lagged a bit in the transition from old industrial to new technology [1][2], it appears to be a cultural problem that is acting as friction. Culturally they're not nearly as dynamic on entrepreneurism as Sweden has become. Perhaps it's just easier to change directions at the scale of Sweden than Germany, with all the entrenched institutions and large conglomerates that Germany has. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/germany-needs-to-reengineer-to-thwart-digital-obsolescence https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/germany-n... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-16/inside-europe-s-struggle-to-build-a-truly-global-tech-giant https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-16/inside-eu...
- beamatronic 8y ago
  Hiring might not be as big a fear, compared to firing in Europe. A startup cannot quickly cut a bad fit there.
  - rightbyte 8y ago
    Mostly I see that as a feature not a bug. If you can't trust management for hiring why trust them for firing. You got like a couple of months "test period" that can end every month anyway.
- no1youknowz 8y ago
  Let me give you a real world data point. I'm in the UK. With a bootstrapped startup. I get no problems contacting US companies. Each upper level manager, VP or even CEO that I contact are all excited about the project. Have no issues getting a service provider onboard. Juxtapose this with a UK or EU company, where lets face it. There's no bootstrap startup culture at all. Anyway, here's my anecdotes:- - If I contact the sales or info mailbox on the website. I don't get a response. Even after 2 or 3 more follow ups. - If I contact the sales team by phone, no one is ever available. They are permanently busy. - If I do manage to get in contact with someone, they tell me to send information over and they don't call back. - If I do manage to get a VP/Director email address. I send out the initial email and then I hear silence back. Follow on emails just get ignored. The US and UK/Europe mentality are completely different. In the US you can start in your basement, garage or even on the streets and fight your way to a unicorn. There is infrastructure available to make a success and everyone has a vested interest in that. In the UK/Europe it seems, the general feeling that I get. Is that unless you have sold a major stake to a VC/Accelerator, there's no way you'll succeed! Also everyone wants a slice of your company for free because in all honesty, they are a bunch of freeloaders. I've had 5 instances already of companies telling me they can partner with me for 5-10% of equity. I just ignore them.
joshstrange 8y ago
> One Chinese technology executive said he worked 14 to 15 hours a day at least six days a week. Another said he worked every waking hour and forced himself to watch movies to relax. > The reaction from a group of Silicon Valley executives: Wow. > “We’re so lazy in the U.S.!” blurted Wesley Chan, a venture capital investor, on the first day of what would be a weeklong journey into the Chinese technology scene. Uh, how about not. That is the complete wrong response to that. I understand Wesley might have just been trying to lighten the mood or be nice but let's not encourage working yourself to death.
- tommoor 8y ago
  I think this is why the author chose "blurted", clearly this was not a thought out response
- izzydata 8y ago
  Considering how little work people actually do at work we should be pushing for a 4 day work week instead.
  - wycs 8y ago
    Much of the value is standby time. Even if workers are doing very little most of the day, the fact that you can spin up a worker instantly (between 9 and 9) in China can make their companies extremely efficient.
    - sremani 8y ago
      Depends on what kind of work, if you are front-line developer the value of work is different from that of an executive. Executive game has more perception elements to it, in such the style is as much important as substance. Its has little or no similarities with the deep work needed from most of the knowledge workers.
      - DAaaMan64 8y ago
        I think I now what you're saying, but can you please ELI5?
tommoor 8y ago
I have taken part in this trip on previous years. It really was an eye-opening experience, although less for long work hours and more for the scale that these "small" startups operate at. We were talking to companies only a couple of years old that had hundreds of millions of users – and that wasn't a standout/unicorn.
- Spoygg 8y ago
  In walled garden where you have few choices as a user it's not really a question of quality product/service.
  - jpatokal 8y ago
    It's a walled garden with over a billion people, there's plenty of choice. If anything there's more choice since BBAT copycat each other furiously: imagine if every time Google launched a product, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Microsoft all launched their versions within weeks.
alexandercrohde 8y ago
I have always found this notion of "race" with China odd. I don't see how other countries doing well economically does anything but help America economically. If anything, to me the lesson of the last century is that we've changed too fast with too little forethought.
- chapium 8y ago
  The "us vs them" mentality puzzles me as well. Perhaps for some they feel economic growth is a zero sum game. However I see the potential growing for all players.
  - clarry 8y ago
    > Perhaps for some they feel economic growth is a zero sum game. Maybe not zero sum, but you can't have the rich without the poor. If you lose the race, you may very well end up among the poor.
tjbarkley 8y ago
> “I’m not worried so much about my portfolio companies not working as hard as the Chinese companies,” said Mr. Chan, now a partner at Felicis Ventures. “I’ll worry when they’re less creative and less efficient.” This seems to be a hollow fear. Working that much seems like it would do more harm than good.
Chardok 8y ago
It is extremely concerning to me how these tech executives are so enamored with Chinas working conditions and all-pervasive data collection as if it was the pinnacle of living in the 21st century. What happened to the dream of letting technology do the work for us, giving us vast leisure time and taking the burden of survival off? These executives seem so driven towards some ever-changing unobtainable goal that I don't think they will be ever satiated with people just... living.
- 21 8y ago
  Their goal is to be billionaires first. Then they can have the leisure life. You won't become a billionaire by enjoying life on basic income.
  - tyfon 8y ago
    No but most likely you will have a better overall life (imho).
    - Kurtz79 8y ago
      https://fourpillarfreedom.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherman/ https://fourpillarfreedom.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fishe...
      - vkou 8y ago
        There's a part two to the fairy tale of the Mexican Fisherman. > Sensing skepticism from the fisherman, the businessman moves onto the next boat and finds a more receptive fisherman. The two, sensing an obvious business opportunity, decide to go into business together. They raise a venture capital round and a year later, return to the pier outfitted with a dozen high tech fishing boats. > Immediately, the price of tuna at the pier drops threefold with increased supply, forcing the young Mexican fisherman to increase his hours at sea just to maintain his existing standard of living. > Shortly thereafter, all of the shallow water tuna have been caught and the young Mexican fisherman discovers his tiny boat is incapable of deep water fishing. Because of his limited savings, he does not have enough capital to invest in a deep water fishing boat and he is forced to sell his tiny fishing boat for pennies on the dollar as scrap because advances in technology have made it obsolete. > After discovering that there is limited demand for an employee whose only skills are watching ballgames, playing the guitar and taking siestas, the young Mexican fisherman finds his only option is to take a job working minimum wage on one of the businessman’s fishing vessels. > Several years later, the fisherman’s joints are shot through from the hard manual labor of operating on a commercial fishing vessel and an ill timed lift of a 150lb pallet of tuna finally causes his back to give way, causing permanent crippling. The fisherman discovers intensive lobbying from the businessman has weakened workplace protection rules and the fisherman is summarily let go with only a paltry settlement. > After years of expensive medical treatments and crippling bills, the fisherman is finally forced to sell his land, passed along to him from generation to generation, to a development conglomerate run by the businessman who is buying large tracts of the entire village. > Unbeknownst to the fisherman, the businessman has lobbied for the village to turn into a protected nature reserve, allowing for the rehabilitation of the environment and the restocking of fish in it’s pristine waters. The businessman painstakingly recreates the quaint, costal charm of the village he once visited, making it a paradise where the wealthy flock to when they want to retire into a life of easy indolence. > Finally, 15 – 20 years after the original conversation, the fisherman and his wife are found dead in a homeless shelter. Meanwhile, the businessman retires to the village having made two successive fortunes first in fisheries and then in real estate development. He spends his days sleeping late, playing with his grandchildren, watching high def ESPN ballgames on a 70″ TV, and taking siesta with his wife. He occasionally strolls down to the village in the evenings where he regales his fellow millionaires with the story of how he found an unexploited niche in the marketplace and then took full advantage of it to make the fortune that got him to the comfortable retirement he enjoys today. Much like the original story, this is of course a fairy tale - I doubt the businessman in question would put much effort towards the rehabilitation of the village's environment. Environmentalism rarely improves a business' bottom line - if it did, we'd see a lot more businesses lobbying for it.
jasode 8y ago
Semi-related video from 1999 of Jack Ma's early pitch about Alibaba's potential to some friends in China.[0] His quote about hard work and long hours: >"Second, we need to learn the hard working spirit of Silicon Valley. If we go to work at 8am and go home at 5pm, this is not a high tech company, and Alibaba wil never be successful." Apparently, of the 17 people in that room, only 1 joined/invested in Alibaba. Intense startups are definitely not the right lifestyle for most people. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up9-C4_8dVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up9-C4_8dVo
azifali 8y ago
This seems to be straight out of a dystopian novel. While we do have our own - of government snooping and excessive government oversight - the scenario playing out of China is not sustainable in the long term.
- pacala 8y ago
  My fear is the scenario is all too sustainable. North Korea is at the third generation of Kim's and its political pyramid appears to be quite stable.
toastking 8y ago
I think one thing that seems to be missed here is none of the products they showed were that original. It's not like WeChat was some amazing new idea. It was chat. Their only real advantage is a captive market.
- obmelvin 8y ago
  WeChat is a lot more than just a chat app
  - Markoff 8y ago
    agreed, it's the most successful gov surveillance tool, now even enhanced with tracking financial movements
- chapium 8y ago
  What makes WeChat unique is how much market share they captured and how they positioned themselves as a replacement for many other retail payment services in China.
- fuscy 8y ago
  Besides chat, WeChat allows a lot of stuff from hailing cabs, ordering food, doing payments, the sky is the limit because businesses can integrate with it. On the other hand, I look at all Western social apps and cringe: Facebook made a big deal from launching their instant games for messenger, Twitch from allowing some extra monetization options, YouTube actually reducing opportunities for people to make money. Look at China with their WeChat, Weibo, bilibili, QQ and many more.. I wish I could open Facebook, start doing a live and people can send me money (red packets, rockets, cute cats, auspicious objects etc.) for doing it, right there. Meanwhile there's the EU where if you receive 5E, you have the IRS from 28 countries breathing down your neck, asking for their cut, fining you, smacking a GDPR notice because why not and passing legislation to "enable" competitive startups similar to the US (/semi-sarcastic).
almost_usual 8y ago
I'd prefer 6am to 6pm 6 days a week.
browsercoin 8y ago
> > “We’re so lazy in the U.S.!” blurted Wesley Chan, a venture capital investor, on the first day of what would be a weeklong journey into the Chinese technology scene. This is the sort of arrogance that really pisses people off. It's one thing to come to a foreign country and be given the opportunity to partake in their economy. It's another to bring your biases, cultural habits without considering well ahead of time how it will be perceived by the host country and it's citizens. Saying shit like Americans are fat and lazy never work 14 to 15 hours,this sort of immature, ignorant, childish mentality is not going to be tolerated like in China, where the have nots have been literally coerced into an surveillance prison, and the threat of parting with their organs keeps them working 14~15 hours a day. Fuck Wesley Chan and god bless United States of America. If Americans are lazy its because their leaders have done a good fucking job (at the expense of weaker nations riddled with US debts). Blame Winnie, for having to work so hard China.
- comonad-colaboy 8y ago
  Hear hear
- heroyanglives 8y ago
  Americans are fat and stupid and lazy, that's why you need hardworking Asians and Latinos to do all the work for you. You are used to having slaves anyway pink pig.
  - asianthrowaway 8y ago
    Assuming this is true, the pink pigs would be the smart ones in this situation. Tricking latinos and asians to do all the hard work while they get to enjoy life!
- samontar 8y ago
  Eh? This comment makes no sense. Wesley Chan is American, dude. He’s amazed at what people are doing in China. If anything he’s bringing the cultural habits of a 9-5 job from the US to China and being surprised by it, hence ‘we’ and not ‘they are lazy in the US’.
heroyanglives 8y ago
You Westerners are so weak. That's why we are the future and your civilization is in decline. Into the ash heap of history you go!
kstenerud 8y ago
This has amazing parallels to the panic over the Japanese manufacturing and management methods of the 1980s. Everyone was terrified that Japan would take over the world economically, and everyone would be working for Japanese companies soon if we didn't adopt their ways of doing things. Hell, it even made it into Back to the Future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlUgBDgH1po https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlUgBDgH1po Seriously, this is what America was terrified of.
- browsercoin 8y ago
  then IMF and World Bank popped Japan's credit bubble. Same shit happening to China but because of their authoritarian rule, they will let it go to shit before they lose control. there's already social unrest happening as China is getting its ass beat in the trade war
- jpatokal 8y ago
  Bingo. Japan also was (and is) infamous for long working hours, but turns out that just hides a lot of inefficiency.
- refurb 8y ago
  I can remember watching new reports of people smashing up Japanese electronics in front of the White House. And people were really concerned about all the US property being bought up by the Japanese. It was the beginning of America's decline everyone thought. It didn't turn out that way at all.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I.. uh.. congratulations on the pregnancy?
asianthrowaway 8y ago
I've often wondered about that. It seems we've gone backwards since the social democratic promises of the 60s and 70s. A higher level of technology should translate into more leisure and less work, not the opposite. Neoliberalism?
- almost_usual 8y ago
  Capitalism ironically. X money is never enough.
  - jerf 8y ago
    There's a lot of people here trying to blame capitalism or the right, but it seems like trying to square that circle with the collaboration of Silicon Valley and the Chinese Government is a bit of a stretch. History is important and all, but even if I stipulate your theory about the past (which I don't, but for the sake of argument let's let it go), it's SV and China doing this today. Anyone who wants to try to convince me that the SV+China collaboration is "of the right" is welcome to try but I warn you you're basically facing Mt. Everest here. Blaming it on people who are not even proximal to today's manifestation of the will, at best, make you briefly feel better, but do nothing to solve the problem.
    - FiveSquared 8y ago
      What happened in the past can happen again. See, every war in human history.
      - jerf 8y ago
        What relevance does that have to what is happening now? Are you seriously proposing that it's OK to not worry about what Silicon Valley and China are doing, because someday in the past and maybe someday in the future, right-wing people will try to squash freedom? That makes no sense.
    - greycol 8y ago
      I think you'll be willing to admit that SV's interest in China is the good old capitalistic rule "rational actors will make deals that most benefit them" coupled with the fact that publicly traded businesses are generally targeted at profit for shareholders. You'd need quite a few obstacles/penalties to make a rationally acting company not jump on the more money bandwagon. Whether that's shareholders with that inclination and enough power to block such actions, blow back from other parts of the company(customers boycott/supplier not supplying/workers walkout) to lower the value of Chinese deals, or laws and regulations that make dealing with China while disregarding ethical issues less profitable. In that non exhaustive list on making companies behave ethically the first two are "vote with your wallet" the last is "vote with your vote". Both the left and right vote with their wallet on these issues, but when it comes to the laws and regulations it is fair to say that the right has a more laissez faire approach than not to adding regulations and laws. It's also arguably this one that is most effective with very large or monopolistic companies (as there are more barriers to voting with your wallet). Thus the left blaming the right for not coming to the party on regulations that would stop or regulate this. I'll point out that this is just one viewpoint on why those more to the right can be blamed for this and ofcourse it misses the underpinnings of why the right to left spectrum differ on their views to the spectrum of regulation. I'd expect that those underpinnings would be part of why you feel changing your mind on the connection would be climbing Everest. Still, I'd hope you agree that it's not straight "Blaming it on people who are not even proximal" as regulations do change company behaviour.
stevenwoo 8y ago
"They found Chinese tech executives to be less reflective about the social impact and potential misuse of their technologies." On the one hand it's hard to find anything less reflexive than Facebook/Whatsapp acknowledging their platform was used for a literal genocide and taking a year to actually do something about it, on the other hand what we know about product tampering in China for the bigger scandals with baby formula, milk and pet food seems the anything goes for a profit should make this story's startup attitude not a surprise to anyone paying attention to the news.
andyidsinga 8y ago
This is interesting - implications is that VC's may have to work 996 too to keep up :) > While Silicon Valley start-ups raise funding every 18 to 24 months on average, the group was told that the most successful Chinese companies do it every six months. It isn’t unusual for a hot start-up to raise funding three to four times a year edit changed 669 to 996 :)
pulsarpietro 8y ago
We need to be more efficient to beat them, there are not other ways.
salmonfamine 8y ago
This attitude of "tech for tech's sake" at the cost of everything human is so absurd on its face that I have a hard time believing that even these SV-bubble VC's truly believe it. But apparently they do. This is why people hate Silicon Valley and everything tech nowadays. Historically, technology -- even when it has caused massive disruptions -- has generally enhanced people's lives by freeing them from a harsh constraint imposed by nature. If you have a refrigerator and a microwave, you don't have to worry so much about gathering food and spending all day cooking. If you have birth control, you don't have to worry about choosing between your sex life and your future. Much of what Silicon Valley has produced in the past 10 years is software and platforms that 1) actually appeal to base, primitive instincts via advertising and 2) directly reduce human liberty by constraining privacy. We need technology that has a purpose. It seems like the EU is the only governing body that actually understands this.
- LiterallyDoge 8y ago
  Respectfully dissenting on the hate comment, but otherwise very good points. +1
  - salmonfamine 8y ago
    It's a strong word. However, I've found that very few people I know outside of the tech-world bubble have remotely favorable opinions of Twitter, Facebook, or Google. I realize that's anecdotal, though.
  - carapace 8y ago
    "Fuck! Fuck Google!" Literal quote from my mother when I explained Project Dragonfly to her. (She's not a person who cusses often.)
alismayilov 8y ago
I’ve always thought that in future we are going to have 4h work days. I thought it is a logical direction to go. However, it seems we are now proud of longer working hours and we are heading to wrong direction.
m23khan 8y ago
As much as I love working in IT, if things continue down the path where you are expected to become a labourer in 3rd World Country (mentally) and as a consequence start suffering devastating effects such as physical illnesses, I would strongly, STRONGLY recommend my kids to not pursue IT as a career at all - better be a civil engineer or even a plumber or a lawyer or a family Doctor and live a good life with good money.
- nashashmi 8y ago
  Plumber = get hands dirty, sometimes real dirty, little respect, and work is hard. Civil engineer = except for the top tier branch smart people will find a difficult community fit, moderate to modest money, too many external influences towards the discipline, seemingly prime for disruption by the tech world (already happening). Lawyer and family doctor = too many hours in school and then too many hours in work (generally). Disclaimer: I'm a civil engineer, work alongside plumbing engineers, know zero actual plumbers, fiancee is doctor, looking to pursue law.
  - m23khan 8y ago
    hahaha, damn, you are probably the best suited person to reply to my comment. Good luck to you and wishing you and your Fiancee the very best!
  - borkt 8y ago
    I'm a municipal civil, wife is a winemaker. We do well enough that we can afford to live where we grew up and I don't see this job getting disrupted (old underground infrastructure, much of the work is project management related, im pretty adaptable to whatever technologies end up downsizing the field, etc) but it is definitely just a job to me and not even remotely a passion.
  - sizzle 8y ago
    Wow a doctor looking to pursue law, very cool! Isn't law worse for work/life balance? (Not taking into account the opportunity cost of already having gotten past the grueling med school and residency stages). Or is it to go into the medical side of the legal field and combine the best of both worlds, or simply a change of heart? How do you like civil engineering? Do you see tech disrupting your profession, or the field of medicine or law for your significant other? For example, I know there is software that will make paralegal work redundant eventually.
exabrial 8y ago
My personal experience, after working for Alibaba, is that just the appearance of looking busy is what drives promotions, funding, and raises. Actual progress on projects is not measured, nor is code quality via common metrics (tests written, branch coverage, line coverage, test failures).
pmcpinto 8y ago
"Then there are the work schedules. The Silicon Valley natives were introduced to the Chinese start-up concept of 996: Work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Once they got over their shock, they had to ask: Does that punishing schedule make sense? “I’m not worried so much about my portfolio companies not working as hard as the Chinese companies,” said Mr. Chan, now a partner at Felicis Ventures. “I’ll worry when they’re less creative and less efficient.”" This is scary
FlyingSideKick 8y ago
Chinese citizens have en masse been exploited by those in power for thousands of years. Moreover, workers and peasants weren't critical or even overwhelmingly supportive of the cultural revolution. Now China near the highest income inequality in the world and just like in the past those in power have technology in place to keep the average Chinese worker the ability to protest their working conditions. Hopefully, this will change but it is probably unlikely. I'd really like to ask these VC's and corporate leaders "Are 12 hour work days 6 days a week where every movement of your workers are tracked something you'd like to see as a cultural norm?" I think it is up to employees and entrepreneurs here in the US to push back against this march to longer and longer work days. Our physical and emotional health is far more important than a title or a few extra dollars. The well balanced life is a wealthy life.
baybal2 8y ago
I can give a first hand account. Working in a mid sized engineering consulting company there, and been working all around consumer electronics industry since 2007. Six points for you: 1. "American style startups" only make single digit percentage of the whole tech industry in China. And out of those, the "cult like" make even less. 2. "the American style startup" model is seen here with a lot of scepticism. Some call it a model for failure, and justly so. 3. There are not so few very well run companies in China, including, surprise, factories! I don't know a single factory owner who is not aware how dangerous overworked workforce can be for the bottom line. A single misplaced component can fry a few thousand dollars TV set. A single labour action, can end his business. 4. Becoming "more Western" is not a success model for a Chinese company. It became clear to me as as a rule of thumb, when a Chinese company invites "cool American MBA boys," things begin to go wrong very fast. 5. So are Chinese businesses that competitive after all? Yes and no: Yes, as for that the capability to outcompete American companies "fair and square" is there. And no, for that the company that could've buried countless strong American competitors will never take their place, never become a household name, never list on a stock market, never own a skyscraper office, and may not even have a website — it will forever remain a no name OEM in a grey factory building in a dusty industrial town. 6. "What's the trick?" The answer is: "the trick is that there are no tricks." Whatever place under the sun Chinese companies wrestled from Western competitors was achieved with nothing but sweat, blood, grit, and perseverance. The best thing China has introduced me to was an entirely different, bullshit free work culture centred on value: contract, payment, and CAD files in the morning — widgets ready in the evening, without any manager in the loop. If a Western business wants to do as well as a Chinese competitor these days, their corporate boffins should try doing that as their starting point

134 points by awad 8y ago

“We’re so lazy in the U.S.!” blurted Wesley Chan, a venture capital investor, on the first day of what would be a weeklong journey into the Chinese technology scene. ...Yikes.

phil_folrida 8y ago
yes, this only shows how not very experimented those people were, not a lot of gray hair in this article.
- __blockcipher__ 8y ago
  I think perhaps you were looking for the word “experienced“ (experimented is a ‘false cognate’ in Spanish and similar languages)
- nashashmi 8y ago
  Good Point! Burn out is real. And Eventual. Especially when you work for a founder or have a VC who is just demeaning and sucks all around.

tschellenbach 8y ago

I'm from Europe, living in the US, and it always frustrated me that startups are able to do so well in the US and China, yet find very little momentum in the EU. It's crazy, there is plenty of local talent in Europe's tech hubs.

baxtr 8y ago
Why do you think it is like that? Access to risk capital? Lack of IPOs?
- tdons 8y ago
  Fragmented European market; the culture and language differences.
  - mtgx 8y ago
    Bingo. You can launch a startup in the "United States" or "in China" in day one. You can't really launch a startup in "Europe" from day one, unless you only offer an online service and only to the English speakers (a tiny single-digit percentage, on average) of those countries.
    - syntheticcdo 8y ago
      Beyond the language barrier, does the regulatory burden of complying with all applicable EU and individual state rules factor in at all?
      - kazen44 8y ago
        it depends on your market you are trying to enter. Let's not forget that harmonizing these rules is one of the major points of the EU in the first place.
  - baxtr 8y ago
    I don’t but that argument. In math you’d say that this is an “continuous function”, wouldn’t you? Where is the break-off point? Germany for example has 80 mio people, Japan has 120 mio or so. You’d expect the same level of activity scaled by population size. Am I wrong? EDIT: Another example countering your point is Sweden/Stockholm. Tiny population, high number of startups and unicorns.
    - adventured 8y ago
      That really heavily depends on the market in question. They're all so different in terms of culture, regulation, politics, market structures, productivity, output, wealth, etc. Jordan for example has the same population size as Sweden, that's about where the similarities end. Sweden, along with Canada and Australia, are just about ideal micro US versions in technology, in terms of potential to pull off your scaling of activity. Good market economies, relatively robust technology societies and technology economies, high GDP per capita and incomes, plenty of wealth and capital to invest, stable open societies with respect for human rights, english language use giving them global benefits (Sweden having one of the world's highest english language adoption rates, outside of primarily english speaking countries), and so on. Japan has far less spending power per capita - disposable income - than the US, and their economic output per capita is similarly far lower. Their cost of living is not far lower to offset. US GDP per capita will be around $63,000 for 2018. Japan is down around $38,000 to $40,000. Culturally Japan has historically not been friendly to risk taking, entrepreneurial activity. That has shifted some over the last 10-15 years, but not immensely (it's starting from an extreme where a long corporate career was the only acceptable path). There's a considerable difference between Sweden and Japan on that conservativism. Japan also is very different at a macro level, they put themselves into a particularly bad 20+ year debt trap that has robbed their economy of the surplus capital it needs to invest into expansion and innovation. Germany is doing OK, in regards to technology and tech start-ups. They've lagged a bit in the transition from old industrial to new technology [1][2], it appears to be a cultural problem that is acting as friction. Culturally they're not nearly as dynamic on entrepreneurism as Sweden has become. Perhaps it's just easier to change directions at the scale of Sweden than Germany, with all the entrenched institutions and large conglomerates that Germany has. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/germany-needs-to-reengineer-to-thwart-digital-obsolescence https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/germany-n... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-16/inside-europe-s-struggle-to-build-a-truly-global-tech-giant https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-16/inside-eu...
beamatronic 8y ago
Hiring might not be as big a fear, compared to firing in Europe. A startup cannot quickly cut a bad fit there.
- rightbyte 8y ago
  Mostly I see that as a feature not a bug. If you can't trust management for hiring why trust them for firing. You got like a couple of months "test period" that can end every month anyway.
no1youknowz 8y ago
Let me give you a real world data point. I'm in the UK. With a bootstrapped startup. I get no problems contacting US companies. Each upper level manager, VP or even CEO that I contact are all excited about the project. Have no issues getting a service provider onboard. Juxtapose this with a UK or EU company, where lets face it. There's no bootstrap startup culture at all. Anyway, here's my anecdotes:- - If I contact the sales or info mailbox on the website. I don't get a response. Even after 2 or 3 more follow ups. - If I contact the sales team by phone, no one is ever available. They are permanently busy. - If I do manage to get in contact with someone, they tell me to send information over and they don't call back. - If I do manage to get a VP/Director email address. I send out the initial email and then I hear silence back. Follow on emails just get ignored. The US and UK/Europe mentality are completely different. In the US you can start in your basement, garage or even on the streets and fight your way to a unicorn. There is infrastructure available to make a success and everyone has a vested interest in that. In the UK/Europe it seems, the general feeling that I get. Is that unless you have sold a major stake to a VC/Accelerator, there's no way you'll succeed! Also everyone wants a slice of your company for free because in all honesty, they are a bunch of freeloaders. I've had 5 instances already of companies telling me they can partner with me for 5-10% of equity. I just ignore them.

joshstrange 8y ago

> One Chinese technology executive said he worked 14 to 15 hours a day at least six days a week. Another said he worked every waking hour and forced himself to watch movies to relax. > The reaction from a group of Silicon Valley executives: Wow. > “We’re so lazy in the U.S.!” blurted Wesley Chan, a venture capital investor, on the first day of what would be a weeklong journey into the Chinese technology scene. Uh, how about not. That is the complete wrong response to that. I understand Wesley might have just been trying to lighten the mood or be nice but let's not encourage working yourself to death.

tommoor 8y ago
I think this is why the author chose "blurted", clearly this was not a thought out response
izzydata 8y ago
Considering how little work people actually do at work we should be pushing for a 4 day work week instead.
- wycs 8y ago
  Much of the value is standby time. Even if workers are doing very little most of the day, the fact that you can spin up a worker instantly (between 9 and 9) in China can make their companies extremely efficient.
  - sremani 8y ago
    Depends on what kind of work, if you are front-line developer the value of work is different from that of an executive. Executive game has more perception elements to it, in such the style is as much important as substance. Its has little or no similarities with the deep work needed from most of the knowledge workers.
    - DAaaMan64 8y ago
      I think I now what you're saying, but can you please ELI5?

tommoor 8y ago

I have taken part in this trip on previous years. It really was an eye-opening experience, although less for long work hours and more for the scale that these "small" startups operate at. We were talking to companies only a couple of years old that had hundreds of millions of users – and that wasn't a standout/unicorn.

Spoygg 8y ago
In walled garden where you have few choices as a user it's not really a question of quality product/service.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  It's a walled garden with over a billion people, there's plenty of choice. If anything there's more choice since BBAT copycat each other furiously: imagine if every time Google launched a product, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Microsoft all launched their versions within weeks.

alexandercrohde 8y ago

I have always found this notion of "race" with China odd. I don't see how other countries doing well economically does anything but help America economically. If anything, to me the lesson of the last century is that we've changed too fast with too little forethought.

chapium 8y ago
The "us vs them" mentality puzzles me as well. Perhaps for some they feel economic growth is a zero sum game. However I see the potential growing for all players.
- clarry 8y ago
  > Perhaps for some they feel economic growth is a zero sum game. Maybe not zero sum, but you can't have the rich without the poor. If you lose the race, you may very well end up among the poor.

tjbarkley 8y ago

> “I’m not worried so much about my portfolio companies not working as hard as the Chinese companies,” said Mr. Chan, now a partner at Felicis Ventures. “I’ll worry when they’re less creative and less efficient.” This seems to be a hollow fear. Working that much seems like it would do more harm than good.

Chardok 8y ago

It is extremely concerning to me how these tech executives are so enamored with Chinas working conditions and all-pervasive data collection as if it was the pinnacle of living in the 21st century. What happened to the dream of letting technology do the work for us, giving us vast leisure time and taking the burden of survival off? These executives seem so driven towards some ever-changing unobtainable goal that I don't think they will be ever satiated with people just... living.

21 8y ago
Their goal is to be billionaires first. Then they can have the leisure life. You won't become a billionaire by enjoying life on basic income.
- tyfon 8y ago
  No but most likely you will have a better overall life (imho).
  - Kurtz79 8y ago
    https://fourpillarfreedom.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherman/ https://fourpillarfreedom.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fishe...
    - vkou 8y ago
      There's a part two to the fairy tale of the Mexican Fisherman. > Sensing skepticism from the fisherman, the businessman moves onto the next boat and finds a more receptive fisherman. The two, sensing an obvious business opportunity, decide to go into business together. They raise a venture capital round and a year later, return to the pier outfitted with a dozen high tech fishing boats. > Immediately, the price of tuna at the pier drops threefold with increased supply, forcing the young Mexican fisherman to increase his hours at sea just to maintain his existing standard of living. > Shortly thereafter, all of the shallow water tuna have been caught and the young Mexican fisherman discovers his tiny boat is incapable of deep water fishing. Because of his limited savings, he does not have enough capital to invest in a deep water fishing boat and he is forced to sell his tiny fishing boat for pennies on the dollar as scrap because advances in technology have made it obsolete. > After discovering that there is limited demand for an employee whose only skills are watching ballgames, playing the guitar and taking siestas, the young Mexican fisherman finds his only option is to take a job working minimum wage on one of the businessman’s fishing vessels. > Several years later, the fisherman’s joints are shot through from the hard manual labor of operating on a commercial fishing vessel and an ill timed lift of a 150lb pallet of tuna finally causes his back to give way, causing permanent crippling. The fisherman discovers intensive lobbying from the businessman has weakened workplace protection rules and the fisherman is summarily let go with only a paltry settlement. > After years of expensive medical treatments and crippling bills, the fisherman is finally forced to sell his land, passed along to him from generation to generation, to a development conglomerate run by the businessman who is buying large tracts of the entire village. > Unbeknownst to the fisherman, the businessman has lobbied for the village to turn into a protected nature reserve, allowing for the rehabilitation of the environment and the restocking of fish in it’s pristine waters. The businessman painstakingly recreates the quaint, costal charm of the village he once visited, making it a paradise where the wealthy flock to when they want to retire into a life of easy indolence. > Finally, 15 – 20 years after the original conversation, the fisherman and his wife are found dead in a homeless shelter. Meanwhile, the businessman retires to the village having made two successive fortunes first in fisheries and then in real estate development. He spends his days sleeping late, playing with his grandchildren, watching high def ESPN ballgames on a 70″ TV, and taking siesta with his wife. He occasionally strolls down to the village in the evenings where he regales his fellow millionaires with the story of how he found an unexploited niche in the marketplace and then took full advantage of it to make the fortune that got him to the comfortable retirement he enjoys today. Much like the original story, this is of course a fairy tale - I doubt the businessman in question would put much effort towards the rehabilitation of the village's environment. Environmentalism rarely improves a business' bottom line - if it did, we'd see a lot more businesses lobbying for it.

jasode 8y ago

Semi-related video from 1999 of Jack Ma's early pitch about Alibaba's potential to some friends in China.[0] His quote about hard work and long hours: >"Second, we need to learn the hard working spirit of Silicon Valley. If we go to work at 8am and go home at 5pm, this is not a high tech company, and Alibaba wil never be successful." Apparently, of the 17 people in that room, only 1 joined/invested in Alibaba. Intense startups are definitely not the right lifestyle for most people. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up9-C4_8dVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up9-C4_8dVo

azifali 8y ago

This seems to be straight out of a dystopian novel. While we do have our own - of government snooping and excessive government oversight - the scenario playing out of China is not sustainable in the long term.

pacala 8y ago
My fear is the scenario is all too sustainable. North Korea is at the third generation of Kim's and its political pyramid appears to be quite stable.

toastking 8y ago

I think one thing that seems to be missed here is none of the products they showed were that original. It's not like WeChat was some amazing new idea. It was chat. Their only real advantage is a captive market.

obmelvin 8y ago
WeChat is a lot more than just a chat app
- Markoff 8y ago
  agreed, it's the most successful gov surveillance tool, now even enhanced with tracking financial movements
chapium 8y ago
What makes WeChat unique is how much market share they captured and how they positioned themselves as a replacement for many other retail payment services in China.
fuscy 8y ago
Besides chat, WeChat allows a lot of stuff from hailing cabs, ordering food, doing payments, the sky is the limit because businesses can integrate with it. On the other hand, I look at all Western social apps and cringe: Facebook made a big deal from launching their instant games for messenger, Twitch from allowing some extra monetization options, YouTube actually reducing opportunities for people to make money. Look at China with their WeChat, Weibo, bilibili, QQ and many more.. I wish I could open Facebook, start doing a live and people can send me money (red packets, rockets, cute cats, auspicious objects etc.) for doing it, right there. Meanwhile there's the EU where if you receive 5E, you have the IRS from 28 countries breathing down your neck, asking for their cut, fining you, smacking a GDPR notice because why not and passing legislation to "enable" competitive startups similar to the US (/semi-sarcastic).

almost_usual 8y ago

I'd prefer 6am to 6pm 6 days a week.

browsercoin 8y ago

> > “We’re so lazy in the U.S.!” blurted Wesley Chan, a venture capital investor, on the first day of what would be a weeklong journey into the Chinese technology scene. This is the sort of arrogance that really pisses people off. It's one thing to come to a foreign country and be given the opportunity to partake in their economy. It's another to bring your biases, cultural habits without considering well ahead of time how it will be perceived by the host country and it's citizens. Saying shit like Americans are fat and lazy never work 14 to 15 hours,this sort of immature, ignorant, childish mentality is not going to be tolerated like in China, where the have nots have been literally coerced into an surveillance prison, and the threat of parting with their organs keeps them working 14~15 hours a day. Fuck Wesley Chan and god bless United States of America. If Americans are lazy its because their leaders have done a good fucking job (at the expense of weaker nations riddled with US debts). Blame Winnie, for having to work so hard China.

comonad-colaboy 8y ago
Hear hear
heroyanglives 8y ago
Americans are fat and stupid and lazy, that's why you need hardworking Asians and Latinos to do all the work for you. You are used to having slaves anyway pink pig.
- asianthrowaway 8y ago
  Assuming this is true, the pink pigs would be the smart ones in this situation. Tricking latinos and asians to do all the hard work while they get to enjoy life!
samontar 8y ago
Eh? This comment makes no sense. Wesley Chan is American, dude. He’s amazed at what people are doing in China. If anything he’s bringing the cultural habits of a 9-5 job from the US to China and being surprised by it, hence ‘we’ and not ‘they are lazy in the US’.

heroyanglives 8y ago

You Westerners are so weak. That's why we are the future and your civilization is in decline. Into the ash heap of history you go!

kstenerud 8y ago

This has amazing parallels to the panic over the Japanese manufacturing and management methods of the 1980s. Everyone was terrified that Japan would take over the world economically, and everyone would be working for Japanese companies soon if we didn't adopt their ways of doing things. Hell, it even made it into Back to the Future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlUgBDgH1po https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlUgBDgH1po Seriously, this is what America was terrified of.

browsercoin 8y ago
then IMF and World Bank popped Japan's credit bubble. Same shit happening to China but because of their authoritarian rule, they will let it go to shit before they lose control. there's already social unrest happening as China is getting its ass beat in the trade war
jpatokal 8y ago
Bingo. Japan also was (and is) infamous for long working hours, but turns out that just hides a lot of inefficiency.
refurb 8y ago
I can remember watching new reports of people smashing up Japanese electronics in front of the White House. And people were really concerned about all the US property being bought up by the Japanese. It was the beginning of America's decline everyone thought. It didn't turn out that way at all.
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I.. uh.. congratulations on the pregnancy?

asianthrowaway 8y ago

I've often wondered about that. It seems we've gone backwards since the social democratic promises of the 60s and 70s. A higher level of technology should translate into more leisure and less work, not the opposite. Neoliberalism?

almost_usual 8y ago
Capitalism ironically. X money is never enough.
- jerf 8y ago
  There's a lot of people here trying to blame capitalism or the right, but it seems like trying to square that circle with the collaboration of Silicon Valley and the Chinese Government is a bit of a stretch. History is important and all, but even if I stipulate your theory about the past (which I don't, but for the sake of argument let's let it go), it's SV and China doing this today. Anyone who wants to try to convince me that the SV+China collaboration is "of the right" is welcome to try but I warn you you're basically facing Mt. Everest here. Blaming it on people who are not even proximal to today's manifestation of the will, at best, make you briefly feel better, but do nothing to solve the problem.
  - FiveSquared 8y ago
    What happened in the past can happen again. See, every war in human history.
    - jerf 8y ago
      What relevance does that have to what is happening now? Are you seriously proposing that it's OK to not worry about what Silicon Valley and China are doing, because someday in the past and maybe someday in the future, right-wing people will try to squash freedom? That makes no sense.
  - greycol 8y ago
    I think you'll be willing to admit that SV's interest in China is the good old capitalistic rule "rational actors will make deals that most benefit them" coupled with the fact that publicly traded businesses are generally targeted at profit for shareholders. You'd need quite a few obstacles/penalties to make a rationally acting company not jump on the more money bandwagon. Whether that's shareholders with that inclination and enough power to block such actions, blow back from other parts of the company(customers boycott/supplier not supplying/workers walkout) to lower the value of Chinese deals, or laws and regulations that make dealing with China while disregarding ethical issues less profitable. In that non exhaustive list on making companies behave ethically the first two are "vote with your wallet" the last is "vote with your vote". Both the left and right vote with their wallet on these issues, but when it comes to the laws and regulations it is fair to say that the right has a more laissez faire approach than not to adding regulations and laws. It's also arguably this one that is most effective with very large or monopolistic companies (as there are more barriers to voting with your wallet). Thus the left blaming the right for not coming to the party on regulations that would stop or regulate this. I'll point out that this is just one viewpoint on why those more to the right can be blamed for this and ofcourse it misses the underpinnings of why the right to left spectrum differ on their views to the spectrum of regulation. I'd expect that those underpinnings would be part of why you feel changing your mind on the connection would be climbing Everest. Still, I'd hope you agree that it's not straight "Blaming it on people who are not even proximal" as regulations do change company behaviour.

stevenwoo 8y ago

"They found Chinese tech executives to be less reflective about the social impact and potential misuse of their technologies." On the one hand it's hard to find anything less reflexive than Facebook/Whatsapp acknowledging their platform was used for a literal genocide and taking a year to actually do something about it, on the other hand what we know about product tampering in China for the bigger scandals with baby formula, milk and pet food seems the anything goes for a profit should make this story's startup attitude not a surprise to anyone paying attention to the news.

andyidsinga 8y ago

This is interesting - implications is that VC's may have to work 996 too to keep up :) > While Silicon Valley start-ups raise funding every 18 to 24 months on average, the group was told that the most successful Chinese companies do it every six months. It isn’t unusual for a hot start-up to raise funding three to four times a year edit changed 669 to 996 :)

pulsarpietro 8y ago

We need to be more efficient to beat them, there are not other ways.

salmonfamine 8y ago

This attitude of "tech for tech's sake" at the cost of everything human is so absurd on its face that I have a hard time believing that even these SV-bubble VC's truly believe it. But apparently they do. This is why people hate Silicon Valley and everything tech nowadays. Historically, technology -- even when it has caused massive disruptions -- has generally enhanced people's lives by freeing them from a harsh constraint imposed by nature. If you have a refrigerator and a microwave, you don't have to worry so much about gathering food and spending all day cooking. If you have birth control, you don't have to worry about choosing between your sex life and your future. Much of what Silicon Valley has produced in the past 10 years is software and platforms that 1) actually appeal to base, primitive instincts via advertising and 2) directly reduce human liberty by constraining privacy. We need technology that has a purpose. It seems like the EU is the only governing body that actually understands this.

LiterallyDoge 8y ago
Respectfully dissenting on the hate comment, but otherwise very good points. +1
- salmonfamine 8y ago
  It's a strong word. However, I've found that very few people I know outside of the tech-world bubble have remotely favorable opinions of Twitter, Facebook, or Google. I realize that's anecdotal, though.
- carapace 8y ago
  "Fuck! Fuck Google!" Literal quote from my mother when I explained Project Dragonfly to her. (She's not a person who cusses often.)

alismayilov 8y ago

I’ve always thought that in future we are going to have 4h work days. I thought it is a logical direction to go. However, it seems we are now proud of longer working hours and we are heading to wrong direction.

m23khan 8y ago

As much as I love working in IT, if things continue down the path where you are expected to become a labourer in 3rd World Country (mentally) and as a consequence start suffering devastating effects such as physical illnesses, I would strongly, STRONGLY recommend my kids to not pursue IT as a career at all - better be a civil engineer or even a plumber or a lawyer or a family Doctor and live a good life with good money.

nashashmi 8y ago
Plumber = get hands dirty, sometimes real dirty, little respect, and work is hard. Civil engineer = except for the top tier branch smart people will find a difficult community fit, moderate to modest money, too many external influences towards the discipline, seemingly prime for disruption by the tech world (already happening). Lawyer and family doctor = too many hours in school and then too many hours in work (generally). Disclaimer: I'm a civil engineer, work alongside plumbing engineers, know zero actual plumbers, fiancee is doctor, looking to pursue law.
- m23khan 8y ago
  hahaha, damn, you are probably the best suited person to reply to my comment. Good luck to you and wishing you and your Fiancee the very best!
- borkt 8y ago
  I'm a municipal civil, wife is a winemaker. We do well enough that we can afford to live where we grew up and I don't see this job getting disrupted (old underground infrastructure, much of the work is project management related, im pretty adaptable to whatever technologies end up downsizing the field, etc) but it is definitely just a job to me and not even remotely a passion.
- sizzle 8y ago
  Wow a doctor looking to pursue law, very cool! Isn't law worse for work/life balance? (Not taking into account the opportunity cost of already having gotten past the grueling med school and residency stages). Or is it to go into the medical side of the legal field and combine the best of both worlds, or simply a change of heart? How do you like civil engineering? Do you see tech disrupting your profession, or the field of medicine or law for your significant other? For example, I know there is software that will make paralegal work redundant eventually.

exabrial 8y ago

My personal experience, after working for Alibaba, is that just the appearance of looking busy is what drives promotions, funding, and raises. Actual progress on projects is not measured, nor is code quality via common metrics (tests written, branch coverage, line coverage, test failures).

pmcpinto 8y ago

"Then there are the work schedules. The Silicon Valley natives were introduced to the Chinese start-up concept of 996: Work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Once they got over their shock, they had to ask: Does that punishing schedule make sense? “I’m not worried so much about my portfolio companies not working as hard as the Chinese companies,” said Mr. Chan, now a partner at Felicis Ventures. “I’ll worry when they’re less creative and less efficient.”" This is scary

FlyingSideKick 8y ago

Chinese citizens have en masse been exploited by those in power for thousands of years. Moreover, workers and peasants weren't critical or even overwhelmingly supportive of the cultural revolution. Now China near the highest income inequality in the world and just like in the past those in power have technology in place to keep the average Chinese worker the ability to protest their working conditions. Hopefully, this will change but it is probably unlikely. I'd really like to ask these VC's and corporate leaders "Are 12 hour work days 6 days a week where every movement of your workers are tracked something you'd like to see as a cultural norm?" I think it is up to employees and entrepreneurs here in the US to push back against this march to longer and longer work days. Our physical and emotional health is far more important than a title or a few extra dollars. The well balanced life is a wealthy life.

baybal2 8y ago

I can give a first hand account. Working in a mid sized engineering consulting company there, and been working all around consumer electronics industry since 2007. Six points for you: 1. "American style startups" only make single digit percentage of the whole tech industry in China. And out of those, the "cult like" make even less. 2. "the American style startup" model is seen here with a lot of scepticism. Some call it a model for failure, and justly so. 3. There are not so few very well run companies in China, including, surprise, factories! I don't know a single factory owner who is not aware how dangerous overworked workforce can be for the bottom line. A single misplaced component can fry a few thousand dollars TV set. A single labour action, can end his business. 4. Becoming "more Western" is not a success model for a Chinese company. It became clear to me as as a rule of thumb, when a Chinese company invites "cool American MBA boys," things begin to go wrong very fast. 5. So are Chinese businesses that competitive after all? Yes and no: Yes, as for that the capability to outcompete American companies "fair and square" is there. And no, for that the company that could've buried countless strong American competitors will never take their place, never become a household name, never list on a stock market, never own a skyscraper office, and may not even have a website — it will forever remain a no name OEM in a grey factory building in a dusty industrial town. 6. "What's the trick?" The answer is: "the trick is that there are no tricks." Whatever place under the sun Chinese companies wrestled from Western competitors was achieved with nothing but sweat, blood, grit, and perseverance. The best thing China has introduced me to was an entirely different, bullshit free work culture centred on value: contract, payment, and CAD files in the morning — widgets ready in the evening, without any manager in the loop. If a Western business wants to do as well as a Chinese competitor these days, their corporate boffins should try doing that as their starting point