I love when they discuss competing with China it’s always about how to make rich guys richer by exploiting the workers.
Never about massive infrastructure investment, massive solar and wind projects, huge investment in technological advancement, huge investment abroad, and never about exercising capital punishment or jailing rich guys who get caught lining their pockets at the country’s expense.
If you want to compete with a country working 996, it is fairly easy. Work less than 40h/week.
Even Ford who was nothing if exploiting workers to the max noted 40h as a max.
More recent data: https://carreersupport.com/employee-productivity-vs-hours-worked/
These guys are such assholes.
Ford is such an enigma. He basically democratized the automobile and his policy of paying his workers more and making them work less is actually how he got so fabulously wealthy.
But at the same time he was also anti-innovation. The Model T was revolutionary for many reasons, but he literally thought it was the ultimate car and nothing more would ever be needed. His engineers would plead with him for many years to let new designs be manufactured or else Ford would go bankrupt. He also became a massive union buster and anti-worker guy and his goons were even involved in killing some strikers.
And let’s not get into his antisemitism and his love for Hitler.
His policy for worker being paid more and working less was nothing but optimisation. He needed reliable workers, so he paid them more for trained workers to stay, and reduced working hours to minimize manufacturing errors and induced costs. Worker’s well-being was coincidental.
The money is like the most powerful drug. I don’t know why it makes you anti-Semitic, but a lot of the other stuff is chasing the dragon.
I worked in the US for three years. Striking lack of work holidays, and everyone is obsessed with hours but not actual productivity. I saw a lot of screwing the pooch 4 hours of the day.
Funny how AI is irrelevant to THIS conversation. Can’t AI fix everything and make toast?
Competing with China means having leadership that doesn’t spend all its time shitting its diapers and railing lines of “prescribed” amphetamines
Xi Xingpin has the easiest job in the world right now. He is sabotaging the US by… Doing nothing.
ha, cuz the 12 hour shift is just unheard of here in the united states… theres no poor people havin to work 2 jobs to feed themselves here
Fun fact: China made the 9:9:6 illegal. But they are not enforcing that law very well.
Eric Shit
But Sergey Brin says 60 hour weeks are the sweet spot.
Sergey Brin is twice divorced.
Except if you’re a CEO or other c-suite/board person… in which case you don’t have any real work to do.
I don’t know anyone competing with china in my area. Eric Shit can eat it
Fun fact, the “996” work style is mostly illegal. Companies can be fined for firing someone for refusing to work it, and there’s pretty much no recourse from the company. In a few cases companies can be shut down for having it as a standard business practice.
The ‘mostly’ part is that temporary overtime to that extent can be allowed, in some industries, where public safety is not a concern. But it cannot constitute the majority of a worker’s schedule.
So it’s really easy to compete with 996, just do what china does and ban it.
The ocassional and temporary OT is fine. But regular? Fuck no.
Sample size of 1 here, but I work with remote Chinese devs and they work 9-5, 5 days a week. They also take as many, if not more public holiday days off as I do in Australia. I think I’ve asked them to work OT once, for 3 days, (10hrs rather than 8hrs) to knock over an important project feature, but other than that, it’s just regular office hours. Pretty sure they also take 1hr lunch breaks based on their patten of seeing and responding to my random Element messages, and in summer they leave the office to eat, whereas I eat at my desk and have 30 mins for lunch.
I think I’ve asked them to work OT once
That sounds like you’re describing outsourced Chinese devs working for an Australian company, not a Chinese one. I don’t think that’s the same thing.
I feel like I keep seeing articles saying china is better than USA.
Even America’s slogan implies it’s not great any more
lets ignore all the downside china is also facing because of that strat while were at it.
No
The US is using 996 too
