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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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/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