7 ms·

Meanwhile in China we have 9-9-6. The US needs to wake up to whether it wants to stay in the game.

• mac01021 8y ago
  What does "9-9-6" refer to?
  • jorgec 8y ago
    schedule from 9am to 9pm, 6 days per week. However, this schedule doesn't work.
  • unithrowaway 8y ago
    My guess is from 9 AM to 9 PM six days a week.
  • friendstock 8y ago
    Work from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
  • uxcolumbo 8y ago
    09:00 - 21:00 6 days a week.
• ivalm 8y ago
  That sounds like a recipe for terrible productivity and inability to do creative work...
• doctorpangloss 8y ago
  There are people everywhere who work very hard. A corporate culture doesn’t tell you much about socially positive outcomes in research. A faith in corporate culture may, though. Conformity, in any country, is incompatible with effective R&D.
  • kodz4 8y ago
    We are talking about Stanford here. I don't know, but to me it feels like someone getting into the NBA or trying out for the Olympics having a problem with hard work. If you can't do the work why take up a spot in one of the best schools in the land? Isn't that a valid question? Especially in the hypercompetitive world we live in?
    • jacobolus 8y ago
      From what I understand, successful professional athletes tend to train very hard during dedicated practice hours (something like 30 hours per week), but then have rich lives outside their training, get enough sleep every night, etc. Trying to do more than 30 hours of intense creative work per week yields diminishing returns, while leading to worse and worse negative health effects as you increase hours. People working 60+ hours per week are wrecking themselves for bad results.
      • icelancer 8y ago
        > From what I understand, successful professional athletes tend to train very hard during dedicated practice hours (something like 30 hours per week), but then have rich lives outside their training, get enough sleep every night, etc. I train hundreds of professional athletes. The majority of them do not have rich lives outside of their training. Most of them have very unbalanced lives that center around their sport, training, and everything to do with it. Most relationships fail inside pro sports for several obvious reasons. Most have some form of mental health issues. We watch them on TV and we expect greatness, but as long as it is not us paying the cost to get there, we don't mind.
        • jacobolus 8y ago
          Thanks for the reply. How much do the athletes you train practice? Do you think the exclusive focus helps their performance at their sport? Do you think competition selects for people with mental health problems, or causes mental health problems? Is there a noticeable difference between athletes who burn out in a few years vs. the ones who have long careers?
• tonyaiken 8y ago
  I don’t think overwork matters
• fiblye 8y ago
  Hours worked is inversely correlated with GDP per capita. China needs to step down if they want to try to be competitive.
  • icelancer 8y ago
    This implies that "GDP per capita" is something to optimize for. My guess is that China doesn't see it that way.
    • ivalm 8y ago
      I mean, pick your favorite financial metric, they are behind.
      • icelancer 8y ago
        This is trivially false. Here's a relevant one: Rate of positive change of GDP (absolute or per capita) over the last 20 years, by country.
        • fiblye 8y ago
          They're behind Ireland in that aspect. And frankly, countries like Switzerland and Norway can't even really grow their GDP. They're essentially maxed out since most people have a standard of life beyond even upper class people in most countries. China is at a point where $2000 of growth is more significant than $12000 would be for Switzerland or Norway.
• rbg246 8y ago
  Sleep science says this is a terrible idea
• seattle_spring 8y ago
  Meanwhile in China you also have one of the highest suicide rates per capita in the world.
  • icelancer 8y ago
    That's... not true by official statistics. http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/suicide-rate-by-country/ http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/suicide-rate-by-c... Japan and the United States are both quite a bit higher. Is it likely that China is fudging the numbers and it's higher than what they report? Yes. But neither Japan nor the US come off as looking good here.
• luckydata 8y ago
  Not a single thing about China is attractive to me. Not how you work, not your politics, not your view of what's important in life. We have nothing to learn from you and I hope we don't become more similar than we are now.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • skrebbel 8y ago
    I agree with the things you list but wow there's a lot to learn from the Chinese. There's a NYT bestseller called "the subtle art of not giving a fuck". The Chinese, by and large, don't need this book because they already carefully allocate their fucks, and it's a natural thing for them to do (especially in the south, by my impression) More anecdotally, I find Chinese engineers among the most joyful and laid back people to work together with. 10-10 Would Work With Again. Also Chinese humor is splendid. Any joke that can get better by loudly appending "HAHAHAHAHA! ^_^" must be an excellent joke.
    • thewarrior 8y ago
      How can you be laid back while also doing 996 ?
      • skrebbel 8y ago
        Long lunches and 2-hour afternoon naps help.
  • digitalixus 8y ago
    If there's one thing living and working in Europe (Germany) has taught me is that all countries are more or less the same. It's just how well the culture manages to mask the "unattractive" traits we love to criticize in places like China (or America, as of late), and the PR/propaganda campaign they run to convince everyone they're the best place on the planet. China is a prime example of subpar image/PR management. They really gotta take a hint and learn from the Germans, who are well respected and have lots of positive stereotypes parroted around the internet "work-life balance, efficiency, timeliness, high standards of living, LE FREE HEALTHCARE!!!" IMO Germany is worse than America (the country they love to poo-poo on) and even China in so many respects. Yet America and China are the places people call "third world" nowadays. - Trains are constantly late. - Majority of offices don't have airconditioning or any air ventilation system (in fact, my previous workplace of 300 employees was in a building with NO insulation or fire alarm/suppression system!) - Card payments are not accepted in at least 50% of places, particularly restaurants. Cash only in 2019 (can anyone say TAX EVASION?). - People boast about contactless payments which just became mainstream last year like it's the second coming of sliced bread. - Boasting about the public transportation system which is only the best if you're a student with a massive surplus of time/shortage of cash, otherwise it takes you anywhere from 10 mins to 1 hour (depending on time of day and route) more to get between two places compared to a car. Heaven forbid you have a family, then public transportation even costs more than having a car. - Employers are extremely exploitative, especially in tech and especially startups - I'd say some places in America/Asia have better work-life and are less toxic than German companies. The only difference between America/China and Germany is the latter has employment laws that are actually enforced, but only if you go to court (but contrary to popular belief, don't make you "unfireable", just allow the employee to get a few thousand EUR as compensation for when the employer does try their hand at something exploitative - and they will, hoping you're not aware of your rights) - Virtue signalling on all sorts of things. Not gonna get into politics/immigration, there's plenty on that elsewhere. But German companies love to boast about EQUALITY FOR ALL, DISCRIMINATION IS DISGUSTING. All while lowballing immigrants in terms of salary and imposing an industrial-grade glass ceiling for any non-German who tries to work here. E.g. they will boast how their company of 300 has over 80 nationalities and work exclusively in English (because 90% of clients are American/British) but oddly enough, everyone in mid-upper/upper management is white and German. Maybe throw in the occasional white non-German European or token Indian guy for DIVERSITY!!!111!!!!1 - Diesel, until recently, was the bragging point for efficiency. I remember not 5 years ago, there would be so many Europeans in comments sections of (any discussion remotely car/transportation related) poo-pooing on the "dumb Americans" for still using gasoline and polluting the environment by not getting "the bigger MPGs" using diesel. LOL. - Free healthcare isn't actually free if you're not like the classic local European who still is a student with 0 work experience at age 30 shitposting on the internet. Look at the "KV" (health insurance) field of your payslip: I pay hundreds of EUR every MONTH as a healthy young person for "free healthcare". Out of sight, out of mind right? TLDR China is about as attractive as any other country on the planet, they just have subpar image management and PR at the moment
• sgwae 8y ago
  They dont expect you to be working the whole time though. If you spend time learning, or working on personal projects whos the wiser?
  • imtringued 8y ago
    Then your employer owns your personal projects.
    • sgwae 8y ago
      uh, how would that even get enforced? Some of my coworkers do schoolwork, and online lectures during work, you think the boss will take thier degree? Knowleged gained from spending time learning new stuff, and experienced gained from related projects to prepare for your next job is gonna be hard/pointless to confiscate as well. Oh no, the boss is going to take my hello world app in node js.
• skrebbel 8y ago
  I recognize that this is anecdata but I worked together remotely with a engineers from the Shenzhen area a number of times, and they would have a 2 hour lunch plus a 2 hour afternoon nap (under their desks, on a couch, anywhere really) every day. Working from 9 to 9 sounds less heavy (and more fun!) that way. Maybe I met some lucky few, but if my impression of Chinese tech working culture is accurate, it's less insane than popularly reported.
  • digitalixus 8y ago
    Ain't that the inconvenient truth? Countries with long working hours aren't filled with people with superhuman stamina and concentration. They just fill up the additional hours with a bunch of other stuff; in the western hemisphere, it's acting busy and spending hours on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. I'd rather work in a place with "work-life balance" (whatever the hell that is these days, 8-6?) but such places are disappearing all over the planet. Even in Europe, work-life balance can be goddamn horrible in tech, especially if you work in a startup. Unpaid overtime is common, in a recent interview at a startup of 70 employees, I was told "our official working hours are 9am-6pm but... well, we're a startup, so you know... hint hint nudge nudge". If what places like Blind are saying is true (that pay in the east is rising to SV-like levels), China and Asian countries with "long working hours" may be viable places to work in the future, since long hours are already a norm in America and becoming the new European standard too.
    • Gene_Parmesan 8y ago
      These places are findable, but you have to take a pay hit usually. I'm working as a software dev for a nonprofit right now in the US -- we have 35-40 hour weeks, 25 days of vacation, 1 telecommute day per week, and the nicest coworkers I've ever met. Everyone is sunny and relaxed because the culture breeds happiness. It's downright intoxicating to work there. But I'm making a solid $20k less than I could make elsewhere at my current role. To me though, it's worth it for a working environment where I wake up with a smile at the thought of driving in, rather than waking up with a sick pit of dread in my gut every day.
    • lavotu 8y ago
• Volt 8y ago
  That China needs to put in that much effort to be competitive with the US isn't a particularly good sign. Work smarter, not harder.