I worked in Shanghai for a couple years for an international company. If you go somewhere with western managers (or Chinese who worked in the west) the manageme

I worked in Shanghai for a couple years for an international company. If you go somewhere with western managers (or Chinese who worked in the west) the management may not be much more hierarchical than in the west. If you can, start work at a non-Chinese branch of a company with offices in China and then transfer, as expat packages are often better than what you'd get if you were hired as a local. China has something called 996: 9am-9pm, 6 days per week. If you don't want to work such hours, you'll have fewer options in the tech industry. Personally, I think how much you enjoy it will depend on how much you enjoy Chinese culture. From my experience, expats who stays "expats" forever, only hang out with other foreigners and don't learn the language, are less satisfied than people who integrate more, have local friends, learn the language, and enjoy things like KTV and hotpot. The locals are generally quite pragmatic and in some sense libertarian, in that many will do what they can to skirt laws and regulations that get in their way (which at least in past was perhaps necessary for survival in the corrupt, oppressive conditions there). So if you like "hustle", you'll like it, but if you think Uber are monsters, laws are made to be obeyed, or principles trump pragmatism, then you probably won't have a good time. Also if you're insecure about your appearance you may not enjoy it there; people can be very frank (like, a colleague might observe "wow, you've gotten fatter, what did you eat?"), and many job listings require a photo attached to the resume. Similarly people are more comfortable mentioning racial stereotypes than Americans are, so if (often well-meaning) racism bothers you then again, maybe better not to go. Reasons to work there? The food is amazing and there's so much variety, the sheer number of people and opportunities is greater than almost anywhere else due to the population size (more people --> greater absolute number of people at the tails of any distribution --> there are some really awesome people there), and it's extremely safe. Things like delivery and transport are excellent due to economies of scale. There's also a lot of personal freedom there; the government aside, normal citizens will generally leave you alone and mind their own business, and won't e.g. call the cops or child protection when you let your child play alone outside. If you have kids there they're also much less likely to develop a drug or alcohol problem, should that be a concern; drug use is much less common there, and although the legal drinking age is something like 13 there generally isn't a binge drinking problem (maybe because the kids have too much homework).