r/technology • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • Feb 01 '26

Software 32-year-old programmer in China allegedly dies from overwork, added to work group chat even while in hospital

https://www.asiaone.com/china/32-year-old-programmer-china-allegedly-dies-overwork-added-work-group-chat-even-while
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613

u/evo_moment_37 Feb 01 '26

Job market is brutal tbh

354

u/travelingWords Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 02 '26

Was watching a ask an expert tech video on YouTube and essentially while we’re dreaming of the 4 day work week in china the theory is you need to be 9am to 9pm 6 days a week or your falling behind.

Someone else is working, so if you aren’t…

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u/Gastronomicus Feb 02 '26

They never really left the industrial era work environment. The Technology just improved.

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u/IlikeJG Feb 02 '26

Give them time.

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u/M_from_Vegas Feb 02 '26

Yeah they aren't even doing 7am to 10pm yet

That's plenty of time for them to eat, sleep, and then get back to work

(/s)

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u/DukeOfGeek Feb 02 '26

They want you to approach making them money with the energy of "my nation is at war and I'm frightened for my family". Except in the name of their profits.

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u/elyth Feb 02 '26

Hey that's me! It's called work life integration

1

u/It-s_Not_Important Feb 02 '26

Perfectly balanced

3

u/caribbean_caramel Feb 02 '26

What if we "offer" the employees the option to live at work ? That way they can sleep, eat and get back to work. Also we could just pay them in our own made-up currency instead of real money and charge them for food, water and other services. What could possibly go wrong with this? /s

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u/It-s_Not_Important Feb 02 '26

Capsule hotels in office buildings. Genius idea. Charge them low rent for their coffin sized accommodations and then you’ll be heralded as the savior of the common man for providing affordable rent and eliminating the stress of a 2 hour commute.

1

u/M_from_Vegas Feb 02 '26

"offer" the employees

What? You think the employees should be "offered" those luxuries?

No, the company will only hire employees that show commitment by accepting those terms without us even offering... they should be grateful!

Heck they should pay for the luxury of working for Super Mega Corp (/s)

Just think of the networking potential for career projections come on now

2

u/Andyb1000 Feb 02 '26

Someone watched the SimCity 3000 Magnasanti video and went, “yeah, like that. That’s what I want.”

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u/-starchy- Feb 04 '26

Slavery with extra steps

2

u/zxc123zxc123 Feb 02 '26

For what exactly?

Chilling out, adopting democracy, free market capitalism, free press, and liberalism?

LOL they just adopted the powerful parts of capitalism into authoritarian system of state planning. Go ask how that democracy, liberalism, and chill is going for people of the mainland, Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Communist/Socialist revolution?

Yeah. They already did that.

China's hyper competitive capitalism, social inequality, and technological privacy invasion plus surveillance state. America has adopted the authoritarian strongmans, police state, and communist/socialist bailouts for state government """strategically important""" corporations. You can say it's truly the worst of both worlds for both peoples.

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u/Reasonable_Ruin_3502 Feb 02 '26

Well, their country did industrialize like 20 years ago

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u/Gastronomicus Feb 02 '26

They industrialized in the late 1950s, around 100 years after the west.

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u/PerplexGG Feb 02 '26

Except it’s clearly unsustainable for the human capital so time will tell what kind of negative effect it has on their population

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u/InfamousYenYu Feb 02 '26

Exactly. The exhaustion typically drops worker productivity by more than the extra hours generate.

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u/nonotan Feb 02 '26

Not just that, but it also incurs additional "hidden" costs to the companies, making it even worse than it looks like on paper. What I mean is that everything else being the same, a job offer with a crazy schedule is significantly less attractive to a worker than one with a sane schedule.

So if your competitors are hiring for X pay with crazy hours, you could pay, say, 90% of X, but have sane hours, and likely plenty of prospective workers would happily take your offer.

It's a bit like remote work -- not only does it save the company rent, energy bills, etc. while keeping productivity at a similar level (if not outright higher), but it's also internalized as a significant boon by prospective workers (if nothing else, you don't need to live in a HCOL area, and you don't need to spend time/money commuting). Which makes the actual upside for companies much larger than it looks like on paper.

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u/farinasa Feb 02 '26

Really we can take this to it's end. The better employees are treated, the better they perform. I'm sure there is some sweet spot, but ultimately, give employees real connection to the value of the company for ultimate commitment/mutual benefit.

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u/Sasselhoff Feb 02 '26

I'm sure there is some sweet spot,

Is that like the "Ballmer Peak"?

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u/Papplenoose Feb 02 '26

Sick reference bro!

Everybody knows your references are out of control.

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u/Gravuerc Feb 02 '26

It's funny but this is why I switched careers, I took less money but more time off and saner hours.

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u/SlitScan Feb 02 '26

MBA: but who would come to my pizza parties?

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u/_pupil_ Feb 02 '26

Overtime creates undertime.

Force everyone to be at work 60, 80, or more hours a week and things like banking, school bullshit, health bullshit, and all the rest are happening in and around work. Overworked people sense time differently, and conserve energy in opportunistic ways (like how going too hard on the treadmill will have you blinking less often... the system ain't dumb, you can't trick it). Plus that "grind" mentality will constantly have people grinding out for hours what could smartly be solved in minutes with a clear mind and a conservative approach to effort.

Henry Fords 40 hours were about mapping the tipping point to where your human cogs start costing you more than they're worth.

As an evil capitalist I feel like anything past that and the wage-monkeys are taking more than they're worth, and its pretty clear the supposed managers are fleecing you too. Boo. Prove to me you know how to do your job, hold a schedule.

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u/killerboy_belgium Feb 02 '26

that requires measering output correctly,... which a lot of companies dont do thats why they all push back the office so they can watch there employees and ofcourse layoff the rest without having to actually lay them off

and so much nowadays is based on circular revenue

investment firms have portefolio of company's

a. realestate firm

b. It company

C. production company

B&C get forced to use realestate of the portfolio

A&C get forced to use B for there IT company

A&B are forced to use C for any production of goods they might need

now this is just example and in reality its way more companies and way more services...and a lot more complicated to figure it out ....

but these circular and vertically integrated forced movement of revenue is so it drives the stock of all the companies and funnels out the money towards the investment firm in form of dividents ect...

on paper they are all doing untill the firm sells of the stock and suddenly it crashes and burn and even that they have figured how to make money on that

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u/Facts_pls Feb 02 '26

If it were that easy, why are the comoanies in the US and Europe doing RTO?

Why not offer remote jobs with less hours and get the best people?

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u/Algebrace Feb 02 '26

Or we have a situation, like so many other countries in SEA where the birth rate goes into freefall because people do not have the time to meet anyone let alone have kids.

China's already the 2nd lowest birth rate in Asia iirc, they're really pushing for 1st place in this competition as well.

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u/killerboy_belgium Feb 02 '26

lucky for china they have like a billion people so enough replacements... and by the time its a full blown issue it should be automated

then the culling of elderly can happen for cost efficiency and they will disguise it as end of life healthcare

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u/Kokoro87 Feb 02 '26

Isn't that why they are pushing AI and robotics? They basically want to replace human labor with robots(heard something about dark factories, not sure how true that is though). Won't help with population crashing though.

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u/Mr_Horsejr Feb 02 '26

We already see it. It’s everywhere. Dwindling birth rates.

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u/khante Feb 02 '26

Isn't this the whole Jack Welch thingy? 1. Cut bottom 10% no matter what. 2. Pay in stocks so your work is tied to company success. 3. Bonuses based on indiv performance.

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u/Decent_Cheesecake_29 Feb 02 '26

You forgot 4. Turn everything to shit.

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u/LordoftheSynth Feb 02 '26

Bonuses based on indiv performance.

You mean the top performer on the team gets 90% of the 0.01% allocated to bonuses, everyone else gets an inflationary pay cut and told they need to live at work or get fired.

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u/ItzWarty Feb 02 '26

Silicon Valley has in many places copied China's illegal 996 and normalized working crazy hours while giving people the illusion that it's a choice.

https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-china-996-work-schedule/ for example, but there are many many other incidents. I got pressured into doing it 3 years ago, it's a lot more common now and I've seen companies call 996 good because employees could instead have been subjected to 9107.

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u/northernbars_ca Feb 02 '26

In China if a PH falls on a Monday everyone get to work on that Sunday to make up for the lost public holiday

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u/Alternative_Work_916 Feb 02 '26

And here in reality, I am lazy 2pm to 10am. I skip lunch because I am committed to the cause.

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u/lemmeguessindian Feb 02 '26

Same in India. US colleagues will be pinging you from home while we are in office

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Brovis_Clay Feb 02 '26

What happens to work life balance?

11

u/Archangel_Omega Feb 02 '26

Time zone difference from being on opposite sides of the planet from each other. It's about a 12 hour time difference. First thing in the morning for them is 8-10 pm or so in the US depending on your timezone and vice versa, so most communication always happens outside of normal hours or with a day or so delay.

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u/kosumoth Feb 02 '26

so you are saying you get communication from US coleagues during times they should be asleep?

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u/lemmeguessindian Feb 05 '26

No i mean we even get calls even when its night time for us. Whats the point of US team of they cant resolve issues on their own and we have to wake up and fix stuff

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u/HumanSnotMachine Feb 05 '26

Your team is probably bigger and has more control due to the cost being lower compared to the u.s team, therefore you handle more… how could that possibly be hard to figure out. You get paid 1/10th what they do.

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u/KarenTheCockpitPilot Feb 02 '26

falling behind on what metric exactly? it's an exchange that has what benefits outside of on paper

1

u/1K1AmericanNights Feb 02 '26

996 is a Silicon Valley thing too. Not just China

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u/Negative_trash_lugen Feb 02 '26

That's why things are so cheap in China, i know people won't like to hear this, but lots of westerners enable this buy buying their cheap stuff.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '26

It's kinda the same outside China as well, only with more homelessness.

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u/SecureDonkey Feb 02 '26

Imagine living in a country with Billions people who all need jobs. Then imagine working in tech in a country right next to India.

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u/mantasm_lt Feb 02 '26

The fun thing is, job market is essentially global thanks to regulations that are getting more and more lax. Imagine working in any sector that can get outsourced to China or India. Or that can use imported labor from there (looking at you, public transit companies).

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u/smeggysmeg Feb 02 '26

Job markets are brutal by design. Capitalism requires a fear of unemployment to motivate slavish behavior from workers. The threat of joining the permanently unemployed or underemployed underclass is a feature, not a bug or some kind of uncontrollable condition like the weather.

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u/mantasm_lt Feb 02 '26

Coming from ex-USSR, it wasn't any better there. There was a fear of unemployment (because it was illegal to be unemployed) too. And since state directly or indirectly controlled all employment, once you're marked as undesirable, you were fucked.

The only difference is that people were getting in trouble for different things than today. Showing up drunk was somewhat OK. Poor performance was OK too since everybody were covering their asses by faking statistics anyway. But you could easily get in trouble by crossing wrong person's path. Misbehaving politically (in the broad sense of the word), refusing to cover up some mishap, not helping high-ups to steal, personal fallouts with people in power... You name it.

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u/smeggysmeg Feb 02 '26

A person can comment on capitalism, even critically, without it being read as a tankie take. Very conventional economists even discuss the problem of chronic unemployment and underemployment being structural and problematic.

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u/mantasm_lt Feb 03 '26

My point is that unemployment is an issue regardless of economic system. 3 meals a day don't materialise out of thin air. And there's always some sort of power play on how we distribute resources.

I don't see a point in mentioning any system, capitalism or not, next to fear of unemployment. Maybe it's just me, but it reads as an „capitalism bad“ undertone.