China's Tech Work Culture Is So Intense People Sleep and Bathe In Their Offices (techinsider.io) 184
An anonymous reader writes: China's technology sector is booming at an intensely fast pace. Many startups are seeing their business grow faster than they can hire, placing a heavy burden on those already working within the industry. "The pace of Chinese internet company growth is extremely fast," Cui Meng, general manager and cofounder of data startup Goopal, told Reuters. "I've been to the US and the competitive environment there isn't as intense as in China." This has led many workers to put in overtime, sleeping at their desks, on cots, or even in provided bunk beds. Many employees are encouraged to live at the office during the workweek. Lunchtime naps are generally allowed, and those who end up staying past midnight usually pass out in the office.Reuters has amazing photographs of such offices and employees.
When I think of China (Score:5, Funny)
Re: When I think of China (Score:2, Insightful)
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At least their unemployment problem will be far worse than ours when the robots finish taking all the jobs =)
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No it won't. They're Communists.
Re: When I think of China (Score:2)
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As long as the Communist Party runs China, the long view is that it's Communist. The Party allows private ownership and private control, but the key word there is "allows". All it takes is for the Party to decide that they don't like how things are working out and they can nationalize everything overnight at gunpoint and bye-bye Capitalism, regardless of the turmoil it would cause. The ultimate motivator for the PRC is still the Party, not some abstract economic system and the Chinese have a very long histo
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Brain's need rest just like muscles.
Yep, and that's without taking into account any anaphylaxis from allergies. Mussel damage is no joke.
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Japan is not in a recession since decades.
The collapse of Japan was orchestrated by american banks around 1987 - 1990 ... for some reason they though the war is not over and Japan needs another beating.
Luckily they recovered ... but with different exchange rates and price niveau.
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Japan is not in a recession since decades.
Not true. Japan was in recession 3Q last year. They have been cycling in and out of recession since 1990. They may be heading back into recession now.
The collapse of Japan was orchestrated by american banks around 1987 - 1990
Baloney. Japan's recession was 100% self-inflicted, and could have been (mostly) avoided. There is no excuse for a deflationary recession. You just print money, which is what America did with QE during the Financial Crisis, which was not a deflationary recession but could have become one.
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Perhaps you have a different definition of recession :D
No one ever mentioned a recession in Japan the last decade in the news.
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Perhaps you have a different definition of recession :D
A recession is two or more consecutive quarters of economic contraction (negative GDP growth). That is a widely accepted definition of the word.
No one ever mentioned a recession in Japan the last decade in the news.
Perhaps not in People Magazine. Over the last decade, I have seen dozens of articles about recession in Japan, many of them comparing the post-1990 recessions in Japan, and the ineffectual response by the JCB, to the 2008 Financial Crisis in America and Europe, and the responses of the US Fed (mostly effective) and the ECB (mostly ineffective, for mostly the same
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American engineers should enjoy their 8-9 hour/day jobs while Chinese engineers and entrepreneurs are working 15 hours a day.
Apples and oranges? Surely engineers at American startups aren't "enjoying their 8-9 hour/day jobs".
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And right about the time they hit their stride, we'll hit a shortage of almost every industrial metal.
Should be interesting.
I can understand their motivation. It's like it used to be for programmers in the U.S. in the 80s. You could literally work 6 months and earn 2 years worth of pay.
Today, you work 72 hours a week and the company offers you base salary plus a "potential" bonus that never hits 100% while the executives take home millions in pay, have a 2nd better funded pension system, and gold plated h
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The worlds' addiction to laziness and greed will ensure that doesn't happen. You have been warned. China is but an embryo slowly morphing into the mighty dragon it will become. It is already too late. Just sit back and enjoy the show.
LOL
... but no Superfund.
China is fucked.
They're staring down the barrel of a self-inflicted one-child demographic problem that couldn't be worse if it'd been orchestrated by an all-powerful super-villain who hated China.
They've got hundreds if not thousands of Superfund sites
A billion of their people are living in mud hut poverty, and the ones that aren't are living in a real estate bubble that's gargantuanly monstrously huge.
Their provincial debt problems are absolutely staggering.
They have an
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Just sit back and enjoy the show.
Hopefully in their teenage dragon years they realize their government is a shitshow and they throw it out with yesterday's trash.
Re: When I think of China (Score:5, Insightful)
The British said this about the Americans at the start of the Industrial Revolution, when we stole their technology.
We Americans said the same about the Japanese and Koreans.
The British were wrong. We were wrong. Everyone who says that "they just steal our innovation and copy it without any creativity" is wrong. Completely, utterly, to their own detriment, WRONG.
It screams "whistling past the graveyard" /at best/ and probably veiled racism depending on who you hear this stuff from.
"China's economy will collapse"
Whose economies don't have cycles of boom and bust? Ours? HAVE YOU FUCKING LOOKED AROUND?!
Christ on a stick. You have no fucking clue. You are complacent and have not looked past the headlines at all.
--
BMO
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No, what has held China back is the lack of institutions. It takes time to build up universities to do basic research, and commercial R&D divisions to develop it into new products. That's been coming on-line for a couple of decades now. Examples of China's world-leading innovation, off the top of my head, include extremely good but low cost wireless modems and CPUs, LCD technology and supercomputing. Contrary to what some people claim, this isn't stolen tech, it's developed in China by Chinese companies
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Japan leads the world in innovation?
No but they lead the world in perfectionism. They tend not to be very creative, however, they are very good at making small improvements and fixing defects. So even if they don't create many breakthroughs, they are more than able to stay ahead in already existing technologies.
The fucking ATM's shut down every night.
You can now find ATMs in combinis open 24/7. Only traditional Japanese banks still do this, and I am not even sure. The Japanese banking system was broken, that's true, but since the arrival of foreign banks, things have improved a bit
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When I think of China the first thing that comes to mind is technical innovation.
Being first to innovate is meaningless unless you can turn those innovations into real products. China didn't invent nuclear reactors, but it's the one country that is busy replacing their coal-fired power with them. China didn't invent high speed rail either, but is is building bullet lines all over the country, while our one bullet line in California is still tied up in the courts. The Germans invented maglev rail, but guess which country Siemens had to build it in?
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I wouldn't exactly say that. China has been building a lot of nuclear power, but they've also been constructing coal power plants as fast as they can build them.
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How can you tell them apart from Texans? The reason we drive such big cars is so we don't have to worry about what we run over when we change lanes.
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Texas yo, we drive over them only after having shot them in self defense a few times.
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Coming To an American Statup Near You? (Score:2)
Startups here would do this if they could get away with it, perhaps some already do...
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I've heard (not sure if true; any ac want to confirm?) that samsung in the US has bunks for its employees and many are expected to stay long hours that require bed reset -onsite-.
I think its common for samsung overseas; but do they do that, here, in the US?
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I didn't see any in the Bellevue, WA office when I installed their phones and data rooms.
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did they know you were coming, with advance warning?
(j/k)
thx for the data point.
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Start ups? Hell, the poultry factory workers don't even get bathroom breaks [snopes.com], and they have to supply their own diapers, right here in the good old USA already. The Chinese have it good. Those offices look nice and clean...
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I came in one day to find I was replaced by an arduino.
that arduino better watch its step, though. there's a 4bit controller that is itching to take its job, and will take much less pow^H^Hay.
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Startups here would do this if they could get away with it, perhaps some already do...
Startups? Hell I know fortune 100 companies where people already do this(and have done this for years). When I was working in heavy manufacturing in the 90's, I spent around 70% of the work week living at work(sleeping/relaxing/etc) because during crunch there was always some problem that required someone to be on site, especially with some very specific problem that had to be looked after. These days? You'll still find this happening, especially if you're in the software industry or you make video game
Re:Coming To an American Statup Near You? (Score:5, Insightful)
"giving the entirety of one's being" to one's company is already a pretty big trend.
Those of us who know what it's like to actually have a life know what stupid bullshit that is. I have worked with people like that and they seem to think they were put on this planet to work for some company or other. I was not put here for that purpose.
Re:Coming To an American Statup Near You? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Coming To an American Statup Near You? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've slept on the floor at my last startup. Whatever.
When I first moved to Silicon Valley, I didn't even rent an apartment for the first 2 years. I just lived at the office and slept under my desk. Many others were doing the same. The company provided showers, a full kitchen, and laundry service. Then I got a girlfriend. We had sex in my office a few times, but then she insisted that I get an apartment. That was quite some time ago, since we are married now, and our daughter is in high school. But I will see people living out of their vans in tech company parking lots, so I think the startup culture is still alive and well.
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Sex at work? You didn't get caught? HR didn't care? :O
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Says the kid that has yet to sample real life. Take a taste and you'll be hooked.
Reminds me of the Dot Com bubble (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember basically living at work for a few years, slaving away for no good reason (other than ship-ship-ship). I had a friend of mine who worked for a fairly well-known maker of tax software, half their year was basically crunch time complete with in-office cots. They were treated well outside crunch time but I swear to god it aged him prematurely.
I don't think I'd ever work like that again, at the end of the day the code quality was poor and it burnt out all the talent. I didn't think it would be possible to be sick of pizza, but you learn these things.
Sure made the bastard CEO a hell of lot of money...
Re:Reminds me of the Dot Com bubble (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you find that it was unsustainable? There were two periods in my life like this: Bachelor's degree, and a start-up. The start-up was just slightly easier than the bachelor's degree. YMMV based on how hard your school is, how much of a task-master your boss is, and let's face it--how smart you are. I'm sure there were some people that just absolutely cruised courses that made me cram... but then again there were people who dropped out and never came back. I dropped out of start-ups, and when you're middle aged you start to think twice about a diet of late-night pizza and soda. If you pass out with a coronary at 50, what's the point?
Still though, if you think it's really important--if it's for God and country, or family, or just trying not to end up homeless or working a shit job for the rest of your life, you'll do it. Sometimes I think about the excitement and for the right project, maybe... one more time. I ran into a 20 something like that a while ago. He wanted me to help him code his stuff; but unfortunately it was the kind of software I hate. It was easy to turn that one down...
Re:Reminds me of the Dot Com bubble (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Reminds me of the Dot Com bubble (Score:5, Insightful)
Similar experience with me in the 90s and early 2000s. We worked 16 hour days in many cases, sometimes for weeks on end to ship and at one place I worked at they finally did an audit of our bugtracker after one release. It was discovered that the amount of mistakes on code worked on during those pushes went up dramatically, and especially tellingly - during the last 4 hours of those 14-16 hour days, frequently working all weekend as well for up to 2 months. As a result during the next release cycle, the "push" was started earlier but days were limited to 10 hours and we took weekends off again and our ship time on the release was actually faster.
Another after-release audit of the bugtracker showed that the number of introduced bugs was significantly lower than on the previous death march release and the conclusion was that the extra work hours were being burned up by mistakes to no benefit and much lower morale. Going forward, that company continued the 10 hour max rule and continues to do well.
I moved on to other things and places and sometimes there was the old work long cycle again, but I've decided that I will no longer work at places that institutionalize that kind of time commitment. I work in systems so I am on call 24/7, and if something breaks at 3am I get up and fix it because it's what I signed on for, but I am definitely not putting in crazy overtime as part of general employment.
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Similar experience with me in the 90s and early 2000s. We worked 16 hour days in many cases, sometimes for weeks on end to ship and at one place I worked at they finally did an audit of our bugtracker after one release. It was discovered that the amount of mistakes on code worked on during those pushes went up dramatically, and especially tellingly - during the last 4 hours of those 14-16 hour days, frequently working all weekend as well for up to 2 months.
Most people cannot do mental marathons. That is the normal human condition. The bugtracker study done at your company was a smart thing to do.
Some people can do mental marathons, but it takes not only the innate ability, but practice over many years to know when the mind is out of juice for the day. The best way to tell is to audit-your-code/edit-your-writing done during the marathon, and when in the marathon it was done. That way, eventually, one can indeed learn to tell that their brain is fuzzing-out
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It was discovered that the amount of mistakes on code worked on during those pushes went up dramatically, and especially tellingly - during the last 4 hours of those 14-16 hour days, frequently working all weekend as well for up to 2 months.
And that's why USAF air craft mechanics do not work more than 12 hours per day, even during combat. Their bosses/officers, who will ultimately fly the planes, don't want them falling out of the sky due to simple and unavoidable mistakes. (It's amazing what management with true buy in will do to boost common sense in said management.)
And that's realising that even 12 hours is pushing it [dtic.mil]. Sixteen? Forget about it.
Re:Reminds me of the Dot Com bubble (Score:4, Interesting)
"I slept at work again last night; two and a half hours curled up in a quilt underneath my desk, from 11am to 1:30pm or so. That was when I woke up with a start, realizing that I was late for a meeting we were scheduled to have to argue about colormaps and dithering, and how we should deal with all the nefarious 8-bit color management issues. But it was no big deal, we just had the meeting later. It's hard for someone to hold it against you when you miss a meeting because you've been at work so long that you've passed out from exhaustion."
- Jamie Zawinski, 1994
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Even now true of some startups (Score:4, Insightful)
I went through the same experience pre-2000, I would sleep at the office and work 100+ hour weeks at time.
The thing is I don't actually regret it because it was just at the start of my career and I learned a lot of stuff extremely rapidly that has served me well though the years.
It's not like I'd do it again but I don't see anything wrong with other people working like that if they desire to.
Unlike you, I have not yet found the amount of pizza that would make me sick of pizza...
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The problem is, you either desire to do whatever the company asks of you or you'll be replaced by someone who will. It's not voluntary, any more than kneeling before the kings of old was.
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I don't think you understand, I often did this without being asked. I would go in after hours of my own volition and work on stuff, it was never expected or asked of me. Again, I was happy to do so...
The same is really true at startups. They are not exactly ASKED to work as many hours as they do, it's just that a lot of people do.
You either desire to do whatever the company asks of you or you'll be replaced by someone who will
So what? Especially now, you are insane if you do ANYTHING you do not want to d
From a picture in TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
"God rewards the diligent."
Is that Chinese for "Arbeit macht frei"?
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"God rewards the diligent."
Is that Chinese for "Arbeit macht frei"?
Luck favors the prepared. --- Sun Tzu
Working hard or hardly working?... (Score:2)
Been there, and no. (Score:1)
Maybe there are some cases of this, but from what I saw: they started at 9:00, had a nap directly after lunch, and they went home at 18:00. There were thousands of workers at this location in the tech sector.
Jeez I thought it was bad in the US (Score:2)
In the 22 years I was an engineer I got to take a week off two or three times, otherwise vacation time was used by extending weekends to 3 days. The only time I was able to take more than a week off was when I was between jobs.
I pity those poor Chinese engineers!
After working full time as a dentist (4 days a week), for a few years, and finding the same sort of problem getting time off, I realized that I needed more between-jobs time. So now I do locum tenens work. It doesn't pay nearly as well as full ti
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He got the idea from Herbie [youtube.com]
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I spent two years doing the prerequisites - general and organic chemistry, physiology, biology, microbiology, etc., then applied and got into dental school when I was 48 YO. 4 more years of school and I became a dentist in 2011 at the tender age of 52. I believe at the time I was the oldest dental student in the US. I don't know what they were thinking letting me into dental school. My only regret is that I didn't make the switch about 5 years into my engineering career. I had a lot of less than exciti
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On paper I always had plenty of time off. But just try to take it. Then you find out how much time off you really get. And every time you change jobs, the clock starts over.
I worked at HP back when the HR dept used to herd all of us into a room every year to proudly explain that they had colluded with all the other big engineering companies throughout the bay area to set salaries and benefits. The subtext was obvious- stay here because you aren't going to get a better deal anywhere else.
I had an intervi
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Someone needs to film said proclamations then have the Department of Labor take HP up on charges of collusion to set prices. Somewhere, that stuff has to be illegal.
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locum tenens == substitute dentist (in this case) – when the primary is on vacation, I suppose).
Like a substitute teacher, only with better pay.
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Better pay than a substitute teacher, but no benefits at all. I have to pay for everything from my own pocket including 16 hours of CE every year, malpractice insurance, DEA registration, CPR certification, ADA membership, etc. And since I work in different places with no guarantee that they will have instruments that I like to use, I have to buy my own (just certain specific ones that I have grown particularly fond of), and let me tell you, dental instruments are not cheap. I get no life, health, or dis
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I get no life, health, or disability insurance and no 401k plan.
If you so choose, even though you are a 1099 contractor at each job, you can elect to pay those Soc. Sec., state unemployment, and other taxes. If you do so, you pay the taxes, but at least then you have access to the social safety net. The unemployment, or under-employment, category is probably especially applicable to you.
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Amazing isn't the word I would use. (Score:2)
Depressing is. China is working hard to out America America.
They don't have to destroy unions where there never were any.
These pictures just look like cleaner more expensive sweat shops to me. I wouldn't be surprised if they were carefully staged too, like their empty apartment buildings and whatnot.
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I owe my soul to the company store (Score:2)
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Yes, Communist China...the very model of unrestrained capitalism. Only government control of their industries will solve the problem, right?
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| So here's my hope for the Chinese people to say, "enough" and make their government fix this.
Last time they "fixed this" was not that long ago, and they called it "The Cultural Revolution".
You need to review your history. The Cultural Revolution wasn't the chinese people uprising against their system, it was the government clamping down on perceived capitalist/bourgeois infiltrators into their system (but in a way more brutal fashion than USA McCarthyism was trying to purge communists).
"Reuters has amazing photographs..." (Score:1)
That's an improvement over slavery... (Score:2)
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[citation needed]
Really. Doesn't ring true. I would have heard of it.
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Really. Doesn't ring true. I would have heard of it.
I saw several TV news broadcasts on the subject in the early 1980's, but that was pre-Internet and newspaper accounts are probably available only on microfiche. I wasn't able to turn up anything on the Internet. However, the modern practice of tech slavery is alive and well in the Valley.
According to the report, which was released by The Center of Investigative Reporting (CIR), The Guardian, and NBC Bay Area's Investigative Unit, these labor brokers have often charged workers the cost of a visa and didn't have a job waiting for them when they arrived, both of which are prohibited by visa rules. And in some cases, when workers arrived in the U.S., the account goes, they were "benched"—placed in a guesthouse with subpar living conditions and asked to post exaggerated resumes online.
Then, when workers received jobs, the report claims, the body shops who hired them collected a cut of their salary. The authors of the investigation probed this migrant worker problem for a year, speaking to thousands of Indian tech workers both on and off the record. They found abuses in Silicon Valley, as well as other parts of the U.S. One worker described it as an "ecosystem of fear."
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/investigation-reveals-silicon-valleys-abuse-immigrant-tech-workers/ [wired.com]
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Really. Doesn't ring true. I would have heard of it.
I saw several TV news broadcasts on the subject in the early 1980's, but that was pre-Internet and newspaper accounts are probably available only on microfiche. I wasn't able to turn up anything on the Internet. However, the modern practice of tech slavery is alive and well in the Valley.
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/investigation-reveals-silicon-valleys-abuse-immigrant-tech-workers/ [wired.com]
Thanks. I'll read.
Sex slavery and human trafficking are alive and well. Several brothels exist within a mile of my home. There is seemingly nothing I can do about it. Cops will 'come by for an inspection' occasionally, get their free rub-and-tug or BJ, and then move on. The cops are part of the problem.
These places pull the same stunt that you described – job in America!!! Once they arrive, Visa or Passport is "held" by employer until repayment of airfare, etc. is paid for. Their job is not cleaning, or whatever, but sex-trade work. They fear returning home out of (misplaced) shame. Or lack of funds. With no papers, they cannot open a private bank account. And the pimps cycle them through all of the various cities to keep a fresh stable of (slave) whores, who have no idea what city they are are in at any given moment.
So, that said, and having perused your link, I must agree.
H-1B visa overload, with people training their own replacements, is another example of this type of double-exploitation. An H-1B is supposed to be for someone with a "special skill that can't be found locally in the US." Um. Hello? Americans are training their own replacements. That is a hint that the required talent exists locally – just not any that can have a visa-renewal lorded over their heads to demand long hours.
Again, thanks for the link.
I did this in Silicon Valley at a big company (Score:1)
A couple years ago I got tired of rents going up so much in Silicon Valley so I ditched my apartment, bought a van, and lived at the office. I worked for a large tech company. There were showers there. I slept in my van in the parking lot. Turns out there's actually thousands of tech workers doing this in Silicon Valley, but there's a stigma surrounding it. (There's a reason I'm posting this anonymously.)
Part of me was doing it in protest of Agile and Scrum. There was no reason I had to physically be in the
Hard to say if it's really that bad (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it's hard for a lot of folks to see both sides of the picture. I've worked both "crappy" jobs at a call center all the way up to a programmer for a telecom. There are times I wonder if I get paid way too much for doing so little work as a programmer compared to the crazy non-stop work as a call center agent. And while the call center job was a lot of work it always impressed me how some folks could handle that job happily and make thing seem a lot better. While sometimes my very well paid co-workers in telecom would complain about ridiculous things. I think some of those folks despite that crazy life style are having fun. They're pushing their abilities to the limits and accomplishing more than a lot of folks are. It's sometimes nice to be able to focus on one thing and to give it your all in life. Also letting your workers nap is a good thing. They've shown a 15 minute nap can double productivity. If I was the boss I'd encourage it. Life is a lot of things to different people for some it's anything but work but for some it is work. So either way, I wouldn't see it as bad necessarily.
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I for one (Score:2)
Ok... (Score:2)
Where do you fuck? (Score:2)
Seriously, and lame jokes aside about 'nerds and sex' it can't be healthy not to have a social life, and if you can only have a social life in the office because you have to eat, sleep, shower and work in the office then where is somone supposed to have a fuck? And if you do want to make a lame joke about 'nerds and sex', then where are they self masturbating?
It's happening people.
Meh, that nothing (Score:2)
Where I work we have this system called an open-plan office. While it is still difficult to deter people from eating while working, it does limit the sleeping in the office thing. I also haven't seen anybody bathing in the office yet (thank goodness, but on the other hand it might be sorely needed for some). I'd say we have made lots of productivity gains by limiting the non-work behavior like that.
(For the usual humor-impaired /. crowd: yes, the above is meant in an ironical [lmgtfy.com] way.)
What's the incentive in China? (Score:2)
I'm genuinely interested. Do Chinese start-ups give stock to employees? Or is it all cash and bonuses? I've worked for multiple US companies and stock is one of the big drivers to pay over and above the base salary. Sure, there's employees at start-ups all over the world who work night and day, but they're doing it because they have a stake in the company usually.
The desperation of thieves. (Score:2)
These are the faces of those stealing from the US.
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So the guys who were denouncing that France wants to forbid companies to email/text their employees after office hours (seven articles past this one) will be cheering here or ...?
Sounds to me like the French understand something we don't.
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So the guys who were denouncing that France wants to forbid companies to email/text their employees after office hours (seven articles past this one) will be cheering here or ...?
Sounds to me like the French understand something we don't.
And there's a reason why the Germans come marching through Paris every few decades...
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And there's a reason why the Germans come marching through Paris every few decades...
Germany has very similar attitudes towards having a life outside work as France does.
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those fucking cunts invaded my country, home of the brave my ass.
Which country is that exactly?
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Sounds to me like the French understand something we don't.
That micromanaging and over-regulating businesses leads to 11% unemployment, and 0% GDP growth?
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
And btw, reducing the work hours one is allowed to work, forces the employers to let go some of their greed and actually hire more people.
Economists call this the Lump of Labor Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. Real economies don't have a fixed number of jobs to be divvied up, and reducing working hours did not reduce unemployment in France.