Chinese tech companies push staff to the limit | Hacker News Reader

Chinese tech companies push staff to the limit

ft.com

17 pointsburgerquizz7 comments

> We have employees who prefer to enjoy life, who put life first and work second — I can understand not wanting to work hard, everyone makes different choices . . . so I can only say that you are not our brother, you are a passer-by,” Liu told attendees, according to a recording posted on social media. “We should not be working together”.

And people wonder why birthrates are collapsing.

https://archive.is/9ZO1k

“That is what our competitors do, how can we survive if we don’t as well?”

Regulation is the answer to this race to the bottom. When competing companies can't agree to give employees a break, the government can make some rules.

Also applies to other things companies can't agree to do, like spend some extra money to process their factory waste instead of polluting a river.

>As executives across [the] tech industry face a new reality of low growth, rising competition and investor apathy, many are cutting staff and making tougher demands of those they keep.

Is this about China, or the U.S.?

> Is this about China, or the U.S.?

There is a global contraction in VC and Growth funding. This has over-impacted Tech and Biotech.

VC and Growth Funds are used as a diversification method by institutional investors (the actual moneymakers), and they've begun moving to other financial instruments now that interest rates are higher.

Finally, this is more China specific, but Western capital was always a significant player in the Chinese tech scene. It was investors like Tiger Global, SoftBank, Golden Gate Ventures, Sequoia, etc who were major market makers in the Chinese scene. They've all began divesting from the Chinese markets in the 2019-20 period when rules around Chinese dual-listings were shored up by Chinese and American regulators, making it hard for investors to make a return on Chinese investments.

All this has lead to a much more difficult tech market globally and I don't see it recovering anytime soon. This is the new normal - 2017-2022 was a fantasy time.

> Now, as growth stutters and share prices suffer — China’s top five publicly traded tech companies have collectively lost about $1.3tn in market value from their peak levels in 2021

> Engineers in China have never enjoyed the level of perks offered by peers in Silicon Valley, where employees have benefits such as onsite doctors and sushi bars

To be fair, most engineers in the US don't enjoy those perks either

> Chinese tech companies push staff to the limit

Just like US tech companies. The US conpanies in EU seem to have a strange interpretation of labour laws.

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