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Meanwhile in China we have 9-9-6. The US needs to wake up to whether it wants to stay in the game.
Meanwhile in China we have 9-9-6. The US needs to wake up to whether it wants to stay in the game.
My lab's workload on average is 8 - 12 hours a day for 6-7 days a week, ramping up even more closer to deadlines. That being said, a lot of this time (50% or more) is for thinking and discussing. This schedule, while hard, seems to be effective for publishing in good conferences.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are people everywhere who work very hard. A corporate culture doesn’t tell you much about socially positive outcomes in research. A faith in corporate culture may, though. Conformity, in any country, is incompatible with effective R&D.
We are talking about Stanford here. I don't know, but to me it feels like someone getting into the NBA or trying out for the Olympics having a problem with hard work. If you can't do the work why take up a spot in one of the best schools in the land? Isn't that a valid question? Especially in the hypercompetitive world we live in?
Trying to do more than 30 hours of intense creative work per week yields diminishing returns, while leading to worse and worse negative health effects as you increase hours. People working 60+ hours per week are wrecking themselves for bad results.
Meanwhile in China we have 9-9-6. The US needs to wake up to whether it wants to stay in the game.
Maybe I met some lucky few, but if my impression of Chinese tech working culture is accurate, it's less insane than popularly reported.
Disclaimer: Our field is extremely competitive (deep learning) and other labs may have better working styles depending on their lab size and member composition. My lab's workload on average is 8 - 12 hours a day for 6-7 days a week, ramping up even more closer to deadlines. That being said, a lot of this time (50% or more) is for thinking and discussing. This schedule, while hard, seems to be effective for publishing…
Couple months into the semester I realized the pressure kicking in my program. The planned 40 hour load required atleast 80 hours of work. I could sense stress and depression all around. None of my classmates seemed to have any weekends to travel around or play a sport. Friends needed smoke breaks every couple hours during group assignments. The fact that the program didn't offer the quality that one would expect made matters worse. I spent 6 months doing things that I did not enjoy. At the same time, my 5 years of work experience taught me enough to understand that what I was spending most of time on did not prepare me intellecually with regards to what to expect once I am back in the industry. The only preparation I was getting was the ability to absorb stress; and I was sucking at it. Dark thoughts started haunting me; I pushed through one semester and came back home to evaluate the ROI of this whole ordeal.
I quit after going back in order change my program to something better; but time to switch and forth coming costs weren't motivating enough.
UPDATE: I would honestly attribute most of the ordeal part to the program I selected. I looked forward to a couple professors to work with; both of them ended up either leaving the university or reducing their focus on my program. I saw students in other programs go along really well. At this point in academia I would consider it critical to visit the university personally (even if you are an international) to evaluate the environment you would be studying in and understand from fellow students how the program is being driven.
Meanwhile in China we have 9-9-6. The US needs to wake up to whether it wants to stay in the game.
Not a single thing about China is attractive to me. Not how you work, not your politics, not your view of what's important in life. We have nothing to learn from you and I hope we don't become more similar than we are now.
Meanwhile in China we have 9-9-6. The US needs to wake up to whether it wants to stay in the game.
Not a single thing about China is attractive to me. Not how you work, not your politics, not your view of what's important in life. We have nothing to learn from you and I hope we don't become more similar than we are now.
There's a NYT bestseller called "the subtle art of not giving a fuck". The Chinese, by and large, don't need this book because they already carefully allocate their fucks, and it's a natural thing for them to do (especially in the south, by my impression)
More anecdotally, I find Chinese engineers among the most joyful and laid back people to work together with. 10-10 Would Work With Again.
Also Chinese humor is splendid. Any joke that can get better by loudly appending "HAHAHAHAHA! ^_^" must be an excellent joke.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are talking about Stanford here. I don't know, but to me it feels like someone getting into the NBA or trying out for the Olympics having a problem with hard work. If you can't do the work why take up a spot in one of the best schools in the land? Isn't that a valid question? Especially in the hypercompetitive world we live in?
From what I understand, successful professional athletes tend to train very hard during dedicated practice hours (something like 30 hours per week), but then have rich lives outside their training, get enough sleep every night, etc. Trying to do more than 30 hours of intense creative work per week yields diminishing returns, while leading to worse and worse negative health effects as you increase hours. People workin…
I train hundreds of professional athletes. The majority of them do not have rich lives outside of their training. Most of them have very unbalanced lives that center around their sport, training, and everything to do with it. Most relationships fail inside pro sports for several obvious reasons.
Most have some form of mental health issues.
We watch them on TV and we expect greatness, but as long as it is not us paying the cost to get there, we don't mind.