Hacker News Reader

Comment by 627467 | Hacker News Reader

The only part that seems different from the rest of the world is the urging part. ie. In many countries youth unemployment have been high and no one seem have been caring about it https://www.bbc.com/news/57406236

View on HN

The rest of the world doesn't have a 72 hour work week.

Citation needed; "hustle" and "crunch" culture in some parts of the rest of the world and some industries encourages working ridiculous hours. Some economies force people to work multiple jobs just to try and keep their head above water. Some cultures expect people to be engaged with their work, or have their work as a hobby outside of work hours ("do you contribute to open source in your free time?").

Here's a citation. Nearly everywhere in the world working hours are decreasing apart from China https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours

Fascinating data! Thanks for sharing.

Interestingly, China and Hong Kong are having a crossover moment right now: HK has a downward trend, and China has an upward trend.

> Some cultures expect people to be engaged with their work, or have their work as a hobby outside of work hours ("do you contribute to open source in your free time?").

Is this actually still a non-negligible factor in tech hiring? I've never had anyone ask me this (and never shared my github), though I believe it existed in the past. But I can't imagine it's accurate to say that this is "expected" in a labor market as absurdly tight as tech is.

I think what's perhaps the case is that you're mistaking opportunity for expectation; for those with little experience and no credential, open source work is an open-to-all foothold to showing your ability. This is one of the _good_ things about tech hiring, that makes us less blindly credentialist: try getting a job in (eg) finance without a college degree by showing off participation in a non-professional project.

That's the model I have of open source's role in tech hiring. Am I missing something?

My impression is that in China it varies a lot by industry and location. Even in Shanghai, I've come across offices closing at 4PM with a 2 hours lunch break.

Expat in Singapore. 2 hour lunch break here in Singapore as well for me. And keep for most office work, people are just wasting time, taking care of other tasks at work, etc. I end up working much less than when I was in America, but my availability 'presence' is higher.

Singapore shares little culture with China

I'm 26 and I've never worked more than 40-45 hours a week. Definitely depends on the job though. My girlfriend works about 50-60.

You will soon realize that both sets of hours you mentioned are rediculous. Unless you have an equity stake that number of hours worked is a result of pressure and manipulation. It takes years of practice to deprogram and learn how to enjoy life post-calvanist/protestant/boss-worker brainwashing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com