Tech workers in China’s Silicon Valley face burnout before they reach 30

there are 2 inputs to the classical production function (e.g. the 2 things businesses need to purchase/obtain in order to stay in business) - labor and capital

if labor is continuing to improve its value (through education, training business skills, learning new technology, etc.) then it continues to have bargaining power in wage/contract negotiations

if a company can produce the same or more output with more capital (generally cheaper/scales better) and less and/or cheaper (younger/less experienced) labor, then it generally will

this is why we're seeing so many "ageist" layoffs at the large tech and industrial companies in the west

old employees are very expensive (especially with pension programs) and they're often not necessary to keep the output constant, or can be replaced/outsourced, for the sake of pumping up equity/shareholder value because cost cutting is currently a lot easier in tech than the R&D/acquisitions needed for increased revenue gen

there are a few things that could happen to increase the bargaining power of labor and increase wages/time off work (benefits): 1. the supply of labor drops (a war/natural disaster) 2. the supply of capital drops (luddites/natural disaster) 3. the quality of education increases 4. labor unionizes 5. TFP (total factor productivity) increases

i don't know chinese labor market specifics but my general impression is that it's much more cut throat because there are just so many more people, the tech companies are playing catch-up in some sense to their western counterparts, the jobs are more blue-collar oriented (rather than white-collar services jobs which have more wiggle room), and because of cultural/government/societal factors that prioritize hard work and family/society dynamics over individual liberty and health

I've had similar thoughts. The problem to me is that a huge portion of the people who say they want to "change the world" really mean they want to get rich quick with loose morals or they want to change the world in mostly trivial ways for young urban professionals. On the flip side, there are plenty of people and companies who legitimately are trying to change the world for the better for large segments of the population, but they're not paying FAANG salaries with cushy offices and benefits.

It comes down to your own priorities - if you want to actually help make the world a better place, you're probably going to have to suck it up and take a salary and career trajectory hit to work at a non-profit or a help-oriented company with low comp structure not based in a sexy city. If you're unwilling to give up some lifestyle points for that, you'll always be faced with companies that are really only paying lip service to positive change while actually being driven by profits.

Yeah, I think anybody with some kind of moral compass in tech has that thought at the back of their mind. When I was 18, the thought of working somewhere like Google was the dream, but now I'm not so sure.

What do you do?

The company I work for doesn't even have an ad platform, and its business model isn't designed around addicting people to anything. I don't go home with the thought in the back of my head that I'm just making a drug that much more attractive. We actually help people. I've heard customers talk about how we saved them from some big disaster before.

Companies that are designed to be exploitative and addictive are the minority, really. They just got really large because of how successful that business model can be and loom large in our minds. There are plenty of places to work based on creating win-win scenarios with customers. You may take a pay cut from Google. Then again, you may not even take that much. Can't hurt to look around.

I can't lay claim to "changing the world", but I do feel like my job is making it better. I'm a Chesterton's Fence kinda guy anyhow. It doesn't surprise me all that much that a lot of companies out to "change the world" do so only to discover that their change wasn't an improvement after all. Improving the world at all is a tall order; to do so in a revolutionary fashion, nearly impossible. (On the flip side, a lot of that "change the world" stuff is just rhetoric anyhow. "We're going to change the world by making it slightly easier to call taxis on your phone!" may be a great pep-talk, but it's kinda... silly.)

Well, did nobody say they were going to change it for the better.

If you know that's what you care about, though, at least that's actionable information for your future.

I do have ask about this desire to "change the world", as I constantly question my own motivations. We all generally think of it in a positive manner, but have most SV companies actually done that objectively? I'm not so sure. I think when we say "change the world", most of the time we really mean, get rich doing something impactful (negative or positive). If we all really wanted to change the world we would go work for non-profits cleaning water for African children or something. By this I mean, there are things that are currently objectively changing the world in a positive way and can certainly benefit from people who have analytical and software skills, but they don't tend to pay very well.

Many of these 'change the world' efforts by non-profits do not scale if there is not a profit motive associated with them. The profit motive would naturally keep these programs running and people happy to make a good living while actually helping others when going to work. Instead what you have is non-profits totally relying on the government and rich people feeling pitty to keep their doors open. Generating a profit can eliminate that and can actually empower these companies to help in the ways they want to without middle men.

I think this issue can still be solved by technology. Keep working on technology that allow me to be self sufficient for my basic needs. I have that, I don't need to work for anyone anymore to survive.

Pick one day a week, doesn't matter which one, finish early and plan an activity you enjoy.

Hell or high water stick to that activity on that day.

You'll naturally start to look forwards to that day.

Then make it two days and so on.

Don't try to make massive changes, make little ones that become habits.

As someone who went from working 70 hours a week (or more technically in hindsight sitting behind a computer for 70 hours and working for maybe 30 of those productively to working 37 hrs a week with about the same level of productivity) it matters.

Focus on investing your money, building up an asset portfolio (I suggest commodities over stocks/housing in the current market, but that's not the important part here).

Your financial future should depend on your wealth compounding, and not on your number of promotions. And of course for wealth compounding timing is key: the earlier you start the better it will be for you over time.

Human society has been great at and thrived on exploiting people for a very long time now. We'd probably have to go all the way back to hunter and gatherer tribes before we find a point in time where that wasn't a normal fact of life. Capitalism is just the most efficient form of exploitation that we've found. It's not really controversial though.

In China, you're mom or mother-in-law will help you raise the kid. That's also why the retirement age in China is 60 for men and 50 for women (55 for women civil servants).

Correct me if I’m wrong but culturally I believe it’s much more important to have children in China vs USA

> He compares himself to a construction worker, who can earn good money due to high work intensity but can easily be replaced by younger, cheaper labour.

The only solution I can think of (if you want to keep on programming and not make a career change), is to acquire skills in such a way that you cannot be easily replaced by younger cheaper labour.

Easier said than done, but one way to do this IMO is to not go after the fads, but instead to pick less sexy but still useful and important technologies and to become an expert in those.

Also, what's been a useful heuristic for me, is what Nassim Taleb calls the "Lindy" effect. The longer something has been in use, the longer you can expect it to be used. This applies especially to technology.

> Anyone who asks you to be "dedicated" to their business or cause is looking to exploit you. When things get tough, they will not repay your dedication in-kind.

If you give your time for free to a company. The company will assume that your time is worth nothing. And once the expectation is created, there is no gratefulness for doing it. The only thing that you will get is a bad looks if you stop giving your time for free because now it is expected.

Ha! You don't have to look to China to see that.

American companies have been playing that game for 40 years now.

My guideline has been to love people, not institutions. Not through any fault of the institutions, but rather through physical reality, they can only be as dedicated to their members as a person can be to individual cells in their body.

I mean, I wouldn't go so far as to assume that the word "dedicated" automatically means exploitation and extrapolate that across the spectrum of organizations that are out there. That's quite a reach.

I wouldn't say that's always true.

I've been at plenty of places that keep 'baggage' employees around because "They paid their dues", or "They were with us during the tough times", or "they've done a lot ffor this company"

Usually the smaller the company, the more attachment there is to those employees. No matter how useless they are at the current time

I think people on the west already know this. It seems like Chinese people have to learn it the hard way.

Ironically, there is, in fact a totalitarian government, and it appears to view its citizens as extensions of the state [1]. While the state isn't trying to force anyone into 996 software jobs to my knowledge, when all the companies expect 996, what other options do you have? Especially after you worked all your life to get into a good college and studied to get a good job, which your parents are depending on you getting for their retirement. You just graduated with a software degree, what are your other options? You could always do construction work or factory work like all the other migrants who couldn't get into a good university (or into any university at all), or whose parents couldn't afford university. Just imagine how your parents would flip out at that, not to mention your own personal pride. Plus you'd have to live like a migrant, which in a city like Beijing is probably crammed in a room with 4 - 8 other people.

[1] https://nb.sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in

Is getting only 3 weeks of vacation self-imposed for most US workers?

> isn't all of this voluntary and self-imposed

> you end up getting exploited by a system that has major leverage over you

> Maybe this is an excessively callous view, but isn't all of this voluntary and self-imposed? Is the expectation for the reader to pity their condition?

I guess that you are down voted because you are supporting a fallacy. Your comment supports the idea that you cannot change the system, and that the system is never at fault but individual people is.

If this people wants to improve their situation there is no individual action that they can take that will make a big impact. Only if they unionize, or make changes in government they can achieve improvements in their lives.

> When you start with nothing, and you want a lot, you end up getting exploited by a system that has major leverage over you.

Yes. This is exactly what I mean. But, the rest of your comment seems to contradict this fact.

It's weird that that's a thing, considering how there are SO many startups both in Silicon Valley and Shenzen. You would think these companies would poach talent by providing perks like "4 day work week" or "unlimited vacation". The author of the article might have a point. Silicon Valley is starting to figure this out to some extent but China isn't yet

Still I would think that since there's so many companies that these jobs would be extremely cushy. I guess the actual problem is that the label market is so much more saturated than the number of startups that they don't even have to poach talent at all

> When you start with nothing, and you want a lot, you end up getting exploited by a system that has major leverage over you.

So the carrot, or the stick? I suppose the carrot is the better alternative, but it's reasonable to be mad at a system that holds you hostage like that.