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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

> One Chinese technology executive said he worked 14 to 15 hours a day at least six days a week. Another said he worked every waking hour and forced himself to watch movies to relax.

> The reaction from a group of Silicon Valley executives: Wow.

> “We’re so lazy in the U.S.!” blurted Wesley Chan, a venture capital investor, on the first day of what would be a weeklong journey into the Chinese technology scene.

Uh, how about not. That is the complete wrong response to that. I understand Wesley might have just been trying to lighten the mood or be nice but let's not encourage working yourself to death.

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>That is the complete wrong response to that. I understand Wesley might have just been trying to lighten the mood

No, he's a VC so he's probably 100% serious. VC's aren't going to fund founders who think they can build a successful business by limiting themselves 8-to-5 and 40 hours a week.

Another famous VC Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital expressed the same praise about working hard like the Chinese.[1] Famous seed investor Ron Conway has said similar qualifications of a founder. ("Well I mean are you willing to work 24/7? The really great entrepreneurs are 24/7.")[2]

Likewise, if you're an entrepreneur that prioritizes the principle of "work/life balance" and 40-hours-a-week, VCs are not the right investor for you.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=moritz+chinese+work+long+hou...

[2] https://youtu.be/qvHhhIfu7Lo?t=4m20s

I think it's a bit of a false dichotomy to say that the options are 40 hours or 24/7. And if they don't literally mean "24/7" then why say it?

Edit: In fact, I can't think of any way to destroy productivity than attempting to work 24 hours a day for any length of time.

no money for you!

If it comes at the cost of forcing myself to work 24/7, or even worse, making other work ridiculous hours at the cost of their health then yeah - no money for me.

One round through the startup/VC/IPO/acquisition world was enough for me - I like building stuff too much.

Why is literalism becoming such a thing? I would think that with the advance of AI we would want to hold our edge and embrace our fuzzier linguistics.

8-to-5 is 45 hours.

In America, both 8-to-5 and 9-to-5 are colloquially referred to as "40 hours/week". It's not an exact math equation.

E.g. Many offices that have salaried "40 hours/week" jobs have expectations of employees showing up at ~8:00am, leaving ~5:00pm, with an unpaid 1 hour lunch in between. Same inexact math reason that we also call 9-to-5 "40 hours" instead of "37.5 hours" even though some workers take a half hour lunch break.

Considering how little work people actually do at work we should be pushing for a 4 day work week instead.

Much of the value is standby time. Even if workers are doing very little most of the day, the fact that you can spin up a worker instantly (between 9 and 9) in China can make their companies extremely efficient.

Depends on what kind of work, if you are front-line developer the value of work is different from that of an executive. Executive game has more perception elements to it, in such the style is as much important as substance. Its has little or no similarities with the deep work needed from most of the knowledge workers.

I think I now what you're saying, but can you please ELI5?

Yeah, but how would you make managers feel important with the illusion of having control if they couldn't extend the time spent on their subordinates? Imagine the horror if an employee could do whatever they want for 3 unsupervised days in a row!

I think this is why the author chose "blurted", clearly this was not a thought out response

> worked 14 to 15 hours a day at least six days a week

That's not the same definition for "work" though, and basically a lot of office time socializing, and watching over people, etc. I doubt that is 2x productivity from 9-5 M-F

If I were a venture capital investor, I probably would say the same thing. My worker mork more -> more money for me.

Of course that only works if you're making widgets. More time working doesn't actually correlate to a successful business. At some point exhaustion sets in and you start making mistakes or making flat out wrong decisions and this leads to failed companies. Failed companies don't tend to provide returns to investors.

This data set suggests that workers in the US put in long hours. I’m on my phone and it isn’t sorted, doesn’t have China in there either.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_annual_labor...

I suppose when you’re a superpower up against the other superpowers, then maybe how you stack up against prosperous small republics with small armies and a high standard of living isn’t the point though.

Americans put in long hours but they don’t work hard. Most of it is posturing and staying in the office longer than your boss even if you spend half the time chatting away on slack.

Some work hard of course. Nobody puts in ling hard hours.

You can either work hard or work long. They are mutually exclusive. Such is life.

You put in the type of work your boss appreciates.

That said: you can always squeeze in another email or another meeting. Manager mode thrives under long hours.

Try to squeeze in another hour of creating and you just spend 2 hours fixing it tomorrow.

Americans working white-collar jobs may not work both long and hard, but people working 2+ manual labor jobs sure do.

You are correct. I was talking about the white collar bubble, which seems reasonable since we're talking in the VC-funded ecosystem.

Do VCs often fund companies that are full of people working 2+ manual labor jobs?

People looking for a second manual labor job are the mainstay of the gig economy (Uber, Airtasker, etc).

The comment you were replying to makes no mention of the VC environment, merely the hours that people work in various countries. VCs also don't fund companies full of people who "hardly do any work", they fund outliers full of passionate people who work twice as hard to make up for lack of manpower.

White collar workers may actually work long and hard hours and be very exhausted by them. They may be unproductive, though. Or if they are “productive” in the sense that they complete a task, often the task itself adds little value.

The white collar workers actually aren’t necessarily lazy though, which is why the bullshit work thing is kinda tragic.

Oh I fully agree that the long hours aren’t highly productive in the long run. I actually do think people work long and hard hours in the sense that they are exhausted and not chillin at the water cooler, but I doubt they’re terribly productive.

I wouldn’t call that lazy though, just counter productive.

> let's not encourage working yourself to death

But if the system's only optimization criterion is the bottom line, then this is the expected outcome.

I don't know. Sometimes it is hard to argue with results. The pace of Chinese technological capitalism is staggering. Perhaps it is just a race to the bottom with working hours.

There are a lot of factors besides the number of hours an individual works that effect their pace. Huge government support (including things like industrial espionage and technology transfer) and a huge number of citizens are much more important than having individuals work obscene hours.

Agree, but I also read this as a little condescending towards Chinese workers.

We tend to attribute their success to corruption, exploitation, or brute-force (given their population). But, could it be that they have something going for them? Maybe they are as capable as we are, as productive as we are, and also are putting the extra work.

Don't get me wrong, I believe this is totally unhealthy for individuals. But it doesn't seem unreasonable for me that a highly capable and motivated individual would indeed produce more in 16 than in 8 hours, health and normal life aside.

>Agree, but I also read this as a little condescending towards Chinese workers.

You need to talk to Chinese tech employees who were formerly working/living in China and are now in the US. They will have nothing but bad things to say about the work culture in China, regarding both management and the employees under them, with plenty of examples / horror stories.

Don't just take HN comments at their word, do a little work on your part and get some first-hand information so you can form a less biased opinion. Even better, go work in China for a bit :)

I think the Chinese are harder working and seemingly smarter if your trust their PISA scores. I don't think there is any measurable trait of the quality of human capital in which Chinese workers do worse than Americans.

I understand how you would read it that way, but I didn't mean any condensation towards Chinese workers. I was simply being lazy at showcasing other factors and picked the two easiest.

> Maybe they are as capable as we are, as productive as we are, and also are putting the extra work.

I 100% agree with this and don't think I suggested otherwise. My comment was in no way meant to take away from the incredible work of many people. I don't doubt that many people have worked long hours and absolutely think people are equally capable regardless of where they come from.

I just think it is ridiculous to suggest that other economies should participate in a race to the bottom of who can work their citizens to death

it wasn't just internal factors - many companies/business people have wanted to do business with the Chinese. In my own experience they're pretty easy to work with.

The economy exists for people, people do not exist for the economy.

Though I agree with the normative claim behind what you are saying, it is not descriptive. The economy should exist for the people; it does not now. And making it do so will be very difficult, short of the invention of Culture style Minds.

Imagine I said the following: "The ecosystem exists for the welfare of the animals." This would strike you as absurd.

The economy exits because of people; it does not exist for people. In the limit of perfect competition, we should expect a race to the bottom, provided imperfect coordination.

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