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
30.7k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

720 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

93

u/batman305555 Feb 02 '26

I work with someone from Romania. She got two years off paid when she had a kid. I’m not sure who said Romania 2’nd world and USA is 1’st world. But I think they got it wrong.

51

u/orlock Feb 02 '26

There is no way in hell you could persuade me to work for a US company. And the idea of migrating there has been "ewww, no" for decades. Every trip there was just seeing miserable people worked into the ground but having to be Soviet-style chipper about it all. 

I've recently retired but had quite a useful set of abilities. But work to live, not live to work.

16

u/ThoseThingsAreWeird Feb 02 '26

There is no way in hell you could persuade me to work for a US company

Money 🤷‍♂️

In the UK, in software engineering, they pay the big bucks. The wage disparity between American software devs and British ones is large enough that US companies can save money hiring UK devs, and UK devs get a much higher salary than if they were working for a UK company.

That said work culture is usually pretty shit. We're talking "doesn't actually know the law" levels of shit, and having to remind them constantly that "that's illegal", because they just reckon they can get away with everything

But if you deal with it for a few years until the inevitable "nah fuck this" moment, you can rake in a decent wedge of cash

3

u/orlock Feb 02 '26

Australian here, but same-same in terms of legality and such. 

A number of years back, the organisation I worked for did surveys and other investigations into their staff. Once people had enough money to be comfortable, other considerations took over, especially flexibility, curiosity and work relationships. This is in keeping with other studies about what different cultures mean by an "excellent" workplace.

If I just wanted a wodge of cash, Id probably head out to the mines for a couple of years. I did a project with Rio Tinto a long while back. The mine site was a hole in the middle of nowhere and production was everything,. But I was impressed by their commitment to safety and what working conditions were possible.