China
blog.samaltman.com
China
1–10 of 317 posts
Re: China
#2I continued to be impressed with Sam's clarity. Keep it up!
Sidenote: interesting to see that YC has a BBerg terminal (and careful with the RMB claim in the near-term)
Re: China
#3China has 3 times the population of the US. As soon as they started growing a middle class, it was inevitable that this would happen.
Re: China
#4In other words, stop complaining about unsustainable work habits leading to physical and mental problems among founders, and let venture capitalists turn that hard work into (a) profit for them while (b) keeping you all safe from Chinese Dominance.
Re: China
#5After listening to a recent episode of Invisibilia, I've become somewhat convinced that one of the root ills of current American society is extremely low expectations.
Whenever I think of countries like China, I think of an entire population driven to be more excellent. I know that's not true in general (people are people everywhere), but I still feel there is a stronger expectation that, as a human, you will do more than just exist and consume junk food and mass media.
America feels sluggish to me... safe and dumb and comfortable but not content. It's like the feeling I get when I spend an entire weekend on the couch binge-watching Netflix.
Re: China
#6I lived in Shanghai and worked at a startup for a year after college. The startup expat and startup local communities are surprisingly developed.
There are a lot of co-working spaces, hacker spaces, and start up events. For anyone interested in China, you can live in Shanghai without speaking Mandarin.
Western training in programing, design and product is highly valued. Salary offerings are lower by a factor of 10. Regardless, its easy to live and identify alternative income sources.
I'd love to answer any questions for people interested in the Chinese startup space.
Re: China
#7> One thing that I’ve found puzzling over the last ten or so years is the anger directed towards people who choose to work hard
That feels somewhat disingenuous. If 'sama is referring to the sentiments expressed on this board, from what I've seen, it's not anger towards people choosing to work hard, but anger towards demands of hard work of others from those who stand to benefit at their expense.
Ie, the anger is towards VCs who talk glowingly of start-up founders working themselves to the bone and, in turn, towards start-up founders who talk glowingly of 0.01% equity-holding employees grinding out hour after overtime hour.
Re: China
#8China has 3 times the population of the US. As soon as they started growing a middle class, it was inevitable that this would happen.
The world can't sustain a China middle class the same with similar proportion/consumption as the US (look at per capita oil consumption, fresh water consumpion, CO2 production, et al). That's maybe the bigger story in a bigger sense.
Re: China
#9He's Paul Krugman in (I think) 2003 discussing how people overstate the value of the dollar being the world reserve currency:
Re: China
#10I lived in Shanghai and worked at a startup for a year after college. The startup expat and startup local communities are surprisingly developed. There are a lot of co-working spaces, hacker spaces, and start up events. For anyone interested in China, you can live in Shanghai without speaking Mandarin. Western training in programing, design and product is highly valued. Salary offerings are lower by a factor of 10. R…
I'd love to see you expand more on alternative income sources. Are you referencing freelancing jobs that pay American (or equivalent) wages?
I lived in Shanghai for a period and would love to move back there, but I'm worried about salary.