China's Workers and the Curse of (Turning) 35 (osu.edu) 61
Long-time Slashdot reader 93 Escort Wagon writes:
Age discrimination is something many tech workers think about — especially once they get into their 40s and 50s. But imagine what it would be like if you thought that every job in every field shunned you at an even earlier age. In China, you apparently don't have to imagine, the New York Times reports...
"When Sean Liang turned 30, he started thinking of the Curse of 35 — the widespread belief in China that white-collar workers like him confront unavoidable job insecurity after they hit that age. In the eyes of employers, the Curse goes, they're more expensive than new graduates and not as willing to work overtime.
Liang, now 38, is a technology support professional turned personal trainer. He has been unemployed for much of the past three years, partly because of the pandemic and China's sagging economy. But he believes the main reason is his age. He's too old for many employers, including the Chinese government, which caps the hiring age for most civil servant positions at 35. If the Curse of 35 is a legend, it's one supported by some facts."
"It's not clear how the phenomenon started, and it's hard to know how much truth there is to it," the article points out. But it also notes that age discrimination "is not against the law in China," which with a weak job market forms "a double whammy for workers in their mid-30s who are making big decisions about career, marriage and children...
"In 2022, the number of marriage registrations fell 10.5% from a year earlier, to the lowest number since China began disclosing the data in 1986. The country's birthrate fell to a low point last year, and its population shrank for the first time since 1961, the end of the Great Famine."
"When Sean Liang turned 30, he started thinking of the Curse of 35 — the widespread belief in China that white-collar workers like him confront unavoidable job insecurity after they hit that age. In the eyes of employers, the Curse goes, they're more expensive than new graduates and not as willing to work overtime.
Liang, now 38, is a technology support professional turned personal trainer. He has been unemployed for much of the past three years, partly because of the pandemic and China's sagging economy. But he believes the main reason is his age. He's too old for many employers, including the Chinese government, which caps the hiring age for most civil servant positions at 35. If the Curse of 35 is a legend, it's one supported by some facts."
"It's not clear how the phenomenon started, and it's hard to know how much truth there is to it," the article points out. But it also notes that age discrimination "is not against the law in China," which with a weak job market forms "a double whammy for workers in their mid-30s who are making big decisions about career, marriage and children...
"In 2022, the number of marriage registrations fell 10.5% from a year earlier, to the lowest number since China began disclosing the data in 1986. The country's birthrate fell to a low point last year, and its population shrank for the first time since 1961, the end of the Great Famine."
China is such a wonderful place to live (Score:5, Insightful)
Slave labor.
Concentration camps.
No free media.
No rights.
No rule of law.
No wonder their best and brightest keep moving to California.
Re:China is such a wonderful place to live (Score:4, Funny)
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Don't forget the best Chinese restaurants in the world!
If you like gutter oil.
Re:China is such a wonderful place to live (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure the "best and brightest" emigrate to California for its free media/rights/rule of law. I think they move because they're just rich people who go and live in rich people's places. I live in EU. I interact with some Chinese students and young professionals that I would say are "best and brightest" (Master's degree or PhD in engineering) who come for scientific work. One would think they'd be happy to finally had the opportunity to be in a free country and eager to know all the new things they can do, or considering settling for life, maybe acquire citizenship and vote to our elections; but no, quite the opposite.
I have yet to meet a single Chinese residing in my EU place who would be interested in western media, political freedom or civil liberties. All I know seemed quite proud of China and its form of government ("it does not matter if we have elections or not, what matters is we have good leaders"), entirely uninterested in news media and unaware (and surprised) that we criticize our government as a normal daily thing. I have good Chinese acquaintances working with me for 15 years defending the North Korean regime ("poor them, [if South Korea wins] they will lose everything") without irony. Their motivation to move out of China was never motivated by political reasons, only very practical: acquire knowledge from fancy western places, then go back to China and make a fortune with their new competences.
This is very different with people from most other nationalities from Middle East, Asia, Euarasia that I have met (e.g. Bangladesh, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey) who often cite political concerns as their reason for moving out.
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Re:China is such a wonderful place to live (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know where these people are coming from, because if you get two people together in Shanghai, the first thing they start talking about is all the ways the government is screwing them over. They automatically assume the government is always lying, and any government move that seems "good" on the surface has an ulterior motive. I my experience, Shanghai people are far less trusting of their government than westerners.
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The difference might have to do with who's asking.
When I was in grad school students from different nationalities mixed to different degrees.
The two greatest predictors of cross-socializing were culture (you hang out more if you have things in common) and size of the nationality (if there's two of you then you gotta talk to other people, if there's 50, not so much).
Our department had a lot of Chinese students who have very different backgrounds than the native born Canadians. As such, the Chinese didn't soc
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I'm not sure the "best and brightest" emigrate to California for its free media/rights/rule of law. I think they move because they're just rich people who go and live in rich people's places.
Lots of Chinese (and Indians) move to Silicon Valley. They don't come for legal freedoms but because of (1) high paying jobs and (2) a critical mass of others from their countries, which means lots of people speaking their languages, restaurants, stores, etc. My company has offices distributed across the entire US, and it's overwhelming the Chinese, Indians, and Europeans who choose to live in Silicon Valley. Over the years, there has been a noticeable white flight away from Silicon Valley, but it's moti
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China is such a wonderful place to live
Slave labor.
Concentration camps.
No free media.
No rights.
No rule of law.
The US is such a wonderful country too ...
Large illegal work force and abuse of undocumented.
International massacre of over well over 300 000 non-combatant civilians, women and children too, since 9/11.
Overt illegal prisons with uncharged populations, covert torture prisons.
The lower you are on the socio economic scale, the more the law applies to you and less rights you have.
Over 4 times more prisoners per capita than China and one of the highest in the world.
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I suppose reeducation camps [wikipedia.org] don't technically count as prisons...
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Another China expert who has clearly never been there.
For most Chinese people, they enjoy a fairly liberal, and increasingly western style life. The CCP isn't dumb, brutalizing the population never lasts. North Korea only hung on because China supports it as a buffer between China and the Americans on the SK border. The CCP keeps its genocide limited to certain areas, while keeping the vast majority of people happy and enjoying a rapidly improving quality of life.
The 35 thing is real though. It's basically
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The 35 thing is real though. It's basically the same as the west.
I think it is a problem with education and will to learn. People that are willing to learn and continue to do so get more valuable with age. But most stop at 25 or so and at 35 they are more expensive but they do not bring more to the table. And in tech fields, they are 10 years behind at that time.
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The CCP is guilty of crimes against humanity. But clearly that is not something you can rely on to motivate the population to overthrow them. If you somehow engineered a coup or something, they would not be very happy about it.
You need to understand that to understand China, both to help the Uyghurs and you compete economically and technologically.
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Until the ethics system of your favorite exercise organization is deemed a danger to the CCP, then you better be first in line denouncing it and your friends or you're proper fucked.
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Draw a picture of Winnie the Pooh on a wall outside the main government buildings in Beijing. See how fucking liberal it is then.
You are a Chinese troll. Fuck China. Democracy and freedom for Hong Kong.
in the usa if you lie about your age they hire you (Score:2)
in the usa if you lie about your age they hire you and then they find out firing you for that may end up with an big lawsuit.
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Median age at Google is 29, says age discrimination lawsuit
Lawsuit recounts experience of a programmer who tried to get a job at Google
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People with money exploit lower classes - about time that playing field were levelled.
the 996 work day needs to end overtime abuse (Score:3)
the 996 work day needs to end overtime abuse
Population crisis to the rescue! (Score:5, Interesting)
Immigration, reform, or econcomic disaster! (Score:4, Insightful)
China's fertility rate has crashed. There aren't going to be nearly enough young workers to fill out the workforce, which will force employers to keep older workers on instead of replacing them with a newer model. I'm surprised the article didn't discuss this.
I was thinking the same thing. They're not an immigrant-friendly country. They're apparently horrible to parents. Eventually you'll run out of poor villagers to exploit in your jobmarket. They need to change or suffer some major economic consequences. So will their leadership get the message that the only way to prevent demographic collapse is to have more babies...and make having them less perilous of an experience....or are they going to open up their borders? I'm not sure who wants to move to China for shitty job....it's a hard language to learn, a racist culture, and it takes many generations to change attitudes towards immigrants. My guess is they'll make reforms, but it'll take decades for that to make a difference....all while the gov will have to figure out how to support an aging population.
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Re:Population crisis to the rescue! (Score:5, Interesting)
There is also a growing movement of voluntary unemployment in China - the newly graduated are fighting back against the job market. There are plenty of jobs, but most are paying slave wages and excessive hourse. Instead of doing that, these new graduates are basically withdrawing from society - they're not going to participate in jobs that pay little and demand a lot.
So you have both factors to consider - yes, the curse of 35 is because why hire an experienced worker when you have a new graduate you can exploit at half the cost or less? Except, those new graduates see that happening and aren't participating as well.
So China's going to have to grasp with these two facts - a growing number of unemployed (expensive, but experienced) workers, a growing number of unemployed (new graduates who don't want to be exploited), and a growing number of unfilled jobs by individuals who won't pay for experience and want to overwork.
It's called the "lying lfat" movement - Give up the 996 work ethic, because doing nothing is now the name of the game.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0... [nytimes.com]
That's because China is currently doing really well economically. The people are happy because they're working and having money and nice things.
When things are good, it really doesn't matter about the government - if people are happy with the way things are, then they won't complain.
Even when the government is fooling them. They don't care - they see the good and the benefits and think it's all OK, and everyone who says anything else is lying.
Beijing only has to keep a majority of the people happy - if they sweep out and throw away the homeless population it makes the place look clean for them. And as long as things are going good for them, they don't care.
The problem is, of course, good times don't last forever. China is having lots of "good times" because of foreign money, but the big question is what happens when the music stops and everyone rushes for the too-few chairs?
Right now, things are good, so you don't criticize the thing making your life good. Thus, Beijing can do no wrong.
And fooling people works - you saw it in Russia, the people believe in the government because they don't know any better. Their life has always been one of suffering under restrictions, so the Ukraine invasion draining Russia's resources mean nothing to the population already used to not having enough.
Of course, the question is, what's going to happen in China. Foreign investment is down - all the cheap manufacturing has moved to other places in Asia like Vietnam, and if India can get their act together, they can enjoy the rise of investment and manufacturing as well. So once the good times end, what's going to happen?
As an aside, China wants to become the next superpower, but the Yuan is under so many currency restrictions, it makes it hard to deal with the Yuan as an alternative to the US dollar.
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Fascism Light just works better and China has been proving this; they are well managed so really any system will be ok as long as it's well enough run. If you think they are still communist, you failed social studies. (FYI: China is also a Republic.)
The problem is when the system is poorly managed people blame the system or the flaws seem more apparent in the system when it's management that is to blame. The problem with Fascism is how you can't handle BAD management and that is where democracy works bett
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At this time, China still has tons of rural areas and people are moving to the cities. They will not have an industrial worker shortage for a long time yet.
This explains a lot (Score:3)
It takes a long time to be proficient at a job, to build up the wealth of knowledge needed to keep things running smoothly. By essentially forcing people out at 35 China undercuts any progress it wants to make resulting in the infamous chinesium steel, among other things.
But hey, if it keeps the country from advancing, who can be against it?
Ohh okay! (Score:3, Insightful)
I worked with these sub-35 Chinese engineers before. You can keep them!
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I was just thinking this. Can you send over those old people you have no use for anymore? I do.
So? It's not like other places don't... (Score:2)
So they picked 35 years old as the age to worry. So what? Ageism is a worry in the west too.
Maybe it's amplified there? I've been surprised about the people who "go to the city, then send money home". Assuming that happened with all the children in rural areas when they hit 18... Yeah, that'd impact the economy. Job availability. Perceived prices of employees, etc.
Zero experience people will always be willing to work for less. And if you can keep that going for a while...even experienced people will
*Not applicable for the Party (Score:1)
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Old Soviet joke:
What was succession like in Czarist times?
Power went from Grandfather to Grandson.
What is succession like in Communist times?
Power goes from Grandfather to Grandfather.
What really hurts about this is that it now also applies to the so-called free world...
This just in (Score:2)
People with some life experience are way harder to exploit.
Resume Oriented Programming (Score:2)
Indeed! I point out the BS of IT fads, and get pushback. The younglings are really doing Resume Oriented Programming: learning new buzzwords so they can get better jobs elsewhere. I should STFU and go along, but it's damned wasteful. The Vulcan side of me has to pipe up.
Demographics work in their favor (Score:2)
There's age-ism in Silcon Valley too (Score:2)
If you are an older tech worker like me, you hope your job will last until retirement because it's very difficult to find a new job. They want young and stupid workers. I say stupid, because they'll work 16 hour days every day on a fixed salary. As you get older, you realize that working yourself to death isn't worth it, regardless of any bonuses.
It sounds like it's much worse in China with the cut-off age of 35. Either way, it's wrong but is unlikely to ever be fixed despite the law.
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I hear ya. I chose to hit the market after a buyout of my small employer when in my 50's. I interviewed at Meta and in hindsight am glad I didn't make the cut (said I was close, maybe they were just being nice). I would be out the door for sure.
I feel lucky to have landed as a mid-sized public Silicon Valley company (couple thousand employees) that is both remote and office friendly. The product is ordinary but useful. We're a truly blended company across the decades of ages and countries - typical US, Indi
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Maybe Not Working... (Score:1)
There is a case that this works in their favour (Score:2)
This played well for many. They worked somewhere that allowed them to save some money for something that they knew was coming. Then, they had some experience both in business and in life. They then opened a small business while they were still young enough to put the years in to make it work.
It did work well for many. No, n
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