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I once had a chinese colleague who came to europe for a few years. She always thought we were lazy for working so short and every argument i brought up about me

I once had a chinese colleague who came to europe for a few years. She always thought we were lazy for working so short and every argument i brought up about mental health and work efficiency was met with a: "but it works for us". What i did not understand back then is the absolute replaceability of personel in the chinese market. You work long and hard or tomorrow someone else does it. Not only is this a big reason of the economical prowess of china in my opinion, i fear that this work-ethic will come back sooner or later to europe to "stay competitive". In the face of bankcruptcy or market pressure... managers tend to make irrational and/or unethical decisions. And they will find a way to circumvent the laws. I am also sure that chinese companies will find a way to circumvent the 996 ruling here.

pizza234 5y ago
There's a documentary that shows exactly this phenomenon, American Factory. > i fear that this work-ethic will come back sooner or later to europe to "stay competitive" I'm a bit more optimistic. In a culture where productivity is not the be-all and end-all, staying competitive at the cost one's whole life, will not take roots. I think that productivity also has different dimensions, which helps.
- secondaryacct 5y ago
  What europeans like me who want to try something else do is simple: we emigrate to China and see how it is. We dont all need to all do the same thing, and the biggest fallacy of all is that we re in competition with each other. We trade more or less efficiently but since doors are always half open, heh, just jump if you want. Can even change with age.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    > simple: we emigrate to China Let us know how simple this works out in practice.
    - feu 5y ago
      It wasn't especially difficult pre-COVID. I know a few people from the UK and Bulgaria who have done so.
      - usr1106 5y ago
        Yes. And I know some who returned around 2018ish because the oppression was growing a lot.
      - kwere 5y ago
        Unless You go here with investiment Money Is difficult to get permits
mschuster91 5y ago
> Not only is this a big reason of the economical prowess of china in my opinion, i fear that this work-ethic will come back sooner or later to europe to "stay competitive". We rather will introduce tariffs to fight against price dumping. We have the mechanism for that and politicians are slowly waking up and realizing that China is an enemy that must be fought.
stephen_g 5y ago
Why would it come back? I don’t think any research has ever shown that working those kind of hours in “knowledge work” is sustainable or conducive to high productivity long-term. I expect the “replaceability” that you mention isn’t just “work long and hard or somebody else will”, but also “work long and hard, because you can be easily replaced as soon as you have a breakdown”…
tandem5000 5y ago
It's an instance of Prisoner's dilemma.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
simonh 5y ago
They've swallowed an ideological fallacy that simply working your pants off for long hours means you will win. The USSR had the same disease, if they just worked their people 20% harder than the west did then they would inevitably be more productive and economically 'win'. It's variation of the lump of labour fallacy. Don't fall for it. It's thinking like this that leads to managers optimising for the wrong metrics. Hours worked is clearly the wrong metric. Companies don't exist to simply employ workers for long hours, and thinking that way leads you down the wrong path right from the start. You need to look at where the value actually comes from, and this is sometimes subtle and not at all obvious. Here's a challenge. A taxi driver in London earns about 4x what a taxi driver in Beijing does, in objective international value terms. Why? What factors might lead to that difference? If your value system can't answer that question, then it's wrong. They do quite legitimately earn 4x as much because the work they are doing is worth 4x as much, and there must be a reason.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > the work they are doing is worth 4x as much This is a purchasing power parity argument; moving people around in London is "worth" more because they have more money, and money that is more valuable on the global exchange rate market.
  - owlmirror 5y ago
    You must ask yourself what is the reason that people in London have more money. Purchasing power is not something that manifests itself out of thin air, as well as exchange rates of money. An economy in which the people have multiple times the purchasing power must do something right. And moving people in that economy around is more valuable than moving people elsewhere.
    - z2 5y ago
      For instance, having a century headstart in industrialization and fast economic growth? It actually returns to a longer scale version of having accumulated wealth through working a long time... Also taxi driving isn't exactly the most efficient of markets to compare value. London taxi drivers for example have a unique barrier to entry to become a taxi driver via an onerous road memorization test ("The Knowledge"), and that has nothing to do with the general British economy "doing something right."
logicchains 5y ago
>What i did not understand back then is the absolute replaceability of personel in the chinese market. You work long and hard or tomorrow someone else does it. That's rapidly changing as the birthrate is falling and the population is ageing. https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2020/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2020/
- alasdair_ 5y ago
  Is the birthrate still falling now that the “one child” policy is no more?
  - kwere 5y ago
    Kids are too expensive: there Is no welfare, highest taxes of the world and wages are "depressed" to keep competivity combinerà with real estate kegabubble and education really expensive from infancy
tellersid 5y ago
I am an American but I completely resonate with Confucian values when it comes to work and learning. The most insulting thing to me would be to be called lazy. I can see as a society with that many people though this would naturally go too far. In the West, we are not lazy but delusional as a society. We are the boxing champion that has quit hard training because they think they can't be beat. This is pretty natural after being the champ for so long. We don't need to train, we can just party and still win. That works until the younger talented hungry competitor comes along and you get knocked out. A tale as old as boxing, a tale as old as human history.
- ChefboyOG 5y ago
  Did you just call Rocky IV "a tale as old as human history?"
  - throwaway284534 5y ago
    Well, to be generous, Gilgamesh did suffer from a boredom so severe that his own people begged the gods to bring him an equal. After Enkidu showed up, he spent more time adventuring and fighting mythical creatures, instead of wrestling the townsfolk and enjoying the perks of prima nocta.
harryh 5y ago
History has shown us that as societies get richer / more productive people work less. Here is a graph of this in the US: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/US_working_hours_1950-2014.png/440px-US_working_hours_1950-2014.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/US... This makes sense. As people get richer, they use some of their wealth to "purchase" more leisure time. There is no reason to think this won't happen in China, just like it has happened in other places. I think your fear is unfounded.
- SquishyPanda23 5y ago
  > History has shown us that as societies get richer / more productive people work less. For most of history, when a society gets richer, the rich enslave more people and consolidate power, and then ultimately try to be worshiped as gods until the masses push back enough, and then become content with simply having absolute earthly power. Maybe this trend is over, but given the amount of effort into putting out "God Emperor" memes in the US, my guess is that some people are at least willing to still try at it. At any rate, I'm not sure a graph from the US starting at 1950 is sufficient for establishing historical trends.
  - flerchin 5y ago
    I've got my finger on the pulse of spicy memes, and I've never seen a God Emperor one. Is this some kind of Trumpist thing?
  - harryh 5y ago
    For most of history, when a society gets richer, the rich enslave more people and consolidate power This is not true. The enormous rise in wealth of the world in the 20th/21st centuries has coincided with large increases in personal freedoms as well. At any rate, I'm not sure a graph from the US starting at 1950 is sufficient for establishing historical trends. The trend is consistent with other datasets: https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours
- throwaway769879 5y ago
  Who's to say the causation behind this correlation doesn't go the other way? Some people take more free time, think of more efficient ways of working, and get richer. That in turn encourages others to emulate them.
tomp 5y ago
Just because you want to and have the resources to replace anyone anytime, doesn't mean you can actually do that. In complex codebases (i.e. pretty much anything except "we're managing a Shopify store" (and probably even then)) you're lucky to be able to onboard someone in a few months, forget about days!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kilroy123 5y ago
Honestly, I kind of feel the same way. I'm an American living in Europe and it's frustrating for me at times dealing with people who don't want to work. I don't think the Chinese model of work until you drop dead is good but maybe something in the middle?
- yourapostasy 5y ago
  > I'm an American living in Europe and it's frustrating for me at times dealing with people who don't want to work. I haven't seen what you experienced nearly as bad, but I think a much larger challenge is dealing with people who are content to repeatedly exercise substantially the same skillsets each year, every year. Even after I take to the trouble to mentor them with identifying what they desire for their career, aligning to their revealed preferences of what user stories they opt to deliver in team scrums, writing up suggested "getting started" lesson plans, pointing out appropriately small, simple improvements in the code base they can apply their new skills towards, and arranging for free access to one of the big technical training sites. You can lead a horse...

pizza234 5y ago

There's a documentary that shows exactly this phenomenon, American Factory. > i fear that this work-ethic will come back sooner or later to europe to "stay competitive" I'm a bit more optimistic. In a culture where productivity is not the be-all and end-all, staying competitive at the cost one's whole life, will not take roots. I think that productivity also has different dimensions, which helps.

secondaryacct 5y ago
What europeans like me who want to try something else do is simple: we emigrate to China and see how it is. We dont all need to all do the same thing, and the biggest fallacy of all is that we re in competition with each other. We trade more or less efficiently but since doors are always half open, heh, just jump if you want. Can even change with age.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > simple: we emigrate to China Let us know how simple this works out in practice.
  - feu 5y ago
    It wasn't especially difficult pre-COVID. I know a few people from the UK and Bulgaria who have done so.
    - usr1106 5y ago
      Yes. And I know some who returned around 2018ish because the oppression was growing a lot.
    - kwere 5y ago
      Unless You go here with investiment Money Is difficult to get permits

mschuster91 5y ago

> Not only is this a big reason of the economical prowess of china in my opinion, i fear that this work-ethic will come back sooner or later to europe to "stay competitive". We rather will introduce tariffs to fight against price dumping. We have the mechanism for that and politicians are slowly waking up and realizing that China is an enemy that must be fought.

stephen_g 5y ago

Why would it come back? I don’t think any research has ever shown that working those kind of hours in “knowledge work” is sustainable or conducive to high productivity long-term. I expect the “replaceability” that you mention isn’t just “work long and hard or somebody else will”, but also “work long and hard, because you can be easily replaced as soon as you have a breakdown”…

tandem5000 5y ago

It's an instance of Prisoner's dilemma.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

simonh 5y ago

They've swallowed an ideological fallacy that simply working your pants off for long hours means you will win. The USSR had the same disease, if they just worked their people 20% harder than the west did then they would inevitably be more productive and economically 'win'. It's variation of the lump of labour fallacy. Don't fall for it. It's thinking like this that leads to managers optimising for the wrong metrics. Hours worked is clearly the wrong metric. Companies don't exist to simply employ workers for long hours, and thinking that way leads you down the wrong path right from the start. You need to look at where the value actually comes from, and this is sometimes subtle and not at all obvious. Here's a challenge. A taxi driver in London earns about 4x what a taxi driver in Beijing does, in objective international value terms. Why? What factors might lead to that difference? If your value system can't answer that question, then it's wrong. They do quite legitimately earn 4x as much because the work they are doing is worth 4x as much, and there must be a reason.

pjc50 5y ago
> the work they are doing is worth 4x as much This is a purchasing power parity argument; moving people around in London is "worth" more because they have more money, and money that is more valuable on the global exchange rate market.
- owlmirror 5y ago
  You must ask yourself what is the reason that people in London have more money. Purchasing power is not something that manifests itself out of thin air, as well as exchange rates of money. An economy in which the people have multiple times the purchasing power must do something right. And moving people in that economy around is more valuable than moving people elsewhere.
  - z2 5y ago
    For instance, having a century headstart in industrialization and fast economic growth? It actually returns to a longer scale version of having accumulated wealth through working a long time... Also taxi driving isn't exactly the most efficient of markets to compare value. London taxi drivers for example have a unique barrier to entry to become a taxi driver via an onerous road memorization test ("The Knowledge"), and that has nothing to do with the general British economy "doing something right."

logicchains 5y ago

>What i did not understand back then is the absolute replaceability of personel in the chinese market. You work long and hard or tomorrow someone else does it. That's rapidly changing as the birthrate is falling and the population is ageing. https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2020/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2020/

alasdair_ 5y ago
Is the birthrate still falling now that the “one child” policy is no more?
- kwere 5y ago
  Kids are too expensive: there Is no welfare, highest taxes of the world and wages are "depressed" to keep competivity combinerà with real estate kegabubble and education really expensive from infancy

tellersid 5y ago

I am an American but I completely resonate with Confucian values when it comes to work and learning. The most insulting thing to me would be to be called lazy. I can see as a society with that many people though this would naturally go too far. In the West, we are not lazy but delusional as a society. We are the boxing champion that has quit hard training because they think they can't be beat. This is pretty natural after being the champ for so long. We don't need to train, we can just party and still win. That works until the younger talented hungry competitor comes along and you get knocked out. A tale as old as boxing, a tale as old as human history.

ChefboyOG 5y ago
Did you just call Rocky IV "a tale as old as human history?"
- throwaway284534 5y ago
  Well, to be generous, Gilgamesh did suffer from a boredom so severe that his own people begged the gods to bring him an equal. After Enkidu showed up, he spent more time adventuring and fighting mythical creatures, instead of wrestling the townsfolk and enjoying the perks of prima nocta.

harryh 5y ago

History has shown us that as societies get richer / more productive people work less. Here is a graph of this in the US: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/US_working_hours_1950-2014.png/440px-US_working_hours_1950-2014.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/US... This makes sense. As people get richer, they use some of their wealth to "purchase" more leisure time. There is no reason to think this won't happen in China, just like it has happened in other places. I think your fear is unfounded.

SquishyPanda23 5y ago
> History has shown us that as societies get richer / more productive people work less. For most of history, when a society gets richer, the rich enslave more people and consolidate power, and then ultimately try to be worshiped as gods until the masses push back enough, and then become content with simply having absolute earthly power. Maybe this trend is over, but given the amount of effort into putting out "God Emperor" memes in the US, my guess is that some people are at least willing to still try at it. At any rate, I'm not sure a graph from the US starting at 1950 is sufficient for establishing historical trends.
- flerchin 5y ago
  I've got my finger on the pulse of spicy memes, and I've never seen a God Emperor one. Is this some kind of Trumpist thing?
- harryh 5y ago
  For most of history, when a society gets richer, the rich enslave more people and consolidate power This is not true. The enormous rise in wealth of the world in the 20th/21st centuries has coincided with large increases in personal freedoms as well. At any rate, I'm not sure a graph from the US starting at 1950 is sufficient for establishing historical trends. The trend is consistent with other datasets: https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours
throwaway769879 5y ago
Who's to say the causation behind this correlation doesn't go the other way? Some people take more free time, think of more efficient ways of working, and get richer. That in turn encourages others to emulate them.

tomp 5y ago

Just because you want to and have the resources to replace anyone anytime, doesn't mean you can actually do that. In complex codebases (i.e. pretty much anything except "we're managing a Shopify store" (and probably even then)) you're lucky to be able to onboard someone in a few months, forget about days!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kilroy123 5y ago

Honestly, I kind of feel the same way. I'm an American living in Europe and it's frustrating for me at times dealing with people who don't want to work. I don't think the Chinese model of work until you drop dead is good but maybe something in the middle?

yourapostasy 5y ago
> I'm an American living in Europe and it's frustrating for me at times dealing with people who don't want to work. I haven't seen what you experienced nearly as bad, but I think a much larger challenge is dealing with people who are content to repeatedly exercise substantially the same skillsets each year, every year. Even after I take to the trouble to mentor them with identifying what they desire for their career, aligning to their revealed preferences of what user stories they opt to deliver in team scrums, writing up suggested "getting started" lesson plans, pointing out appropriately small, simple improvements in the code base they can apply their new skills towards, and arranging for free access to one of the big technical training sites. You can lead a horse...