Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 264 posts

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#251

Post by theseadroid »

ackbar03 wrote: post #242
theseadroid wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong copycats yes. Strong innovation tech companies? I dont think so.

You need to take another look at the landscape bro... This was true a few years ago but less the case now

I almost look at it everyday mate :D Most of my classmates are in China. And I still go back to visit my family like once a year.

There are attempts to innovate. But I think all the 996 and censorship and other policies to make the populace compliant is working against true innovation.

They can take an existing idea and execute with great efficiency. High speed trains, subways, electric vehicles. They are good at mixing ideas from both Western countries and Japan/Korea and other parts of the world. I like that part a lot. But original, novel ideas that will actually work? Not really. The culture there is not structured to promote/refine good ideas.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#252

Post by balabaster »

rqs wrote: post #216
balabaster wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "If you love your job, 12 hours is not very long... Hit: If you don't work 12 hours a day, you don't love your job." First up, I'm not arguing against the fact that there are many many managers, bosses, directors and CEOs that use emotional manipulation to blackmail employees to do their bidding even though on paper they claim differently. They give it all sorts of names to make you believe this behaviour is okay.…

> This statement can stand alone without any implication Here is the part of statement from Jack Ma for better context, you can judge it by yourself (full: https://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2019-04-12/doc-ihvhie... ): (Notice I have difficulties when translating Chinese word by word to English, because expression of the two language is different. But I'll make marks to help you understand) > 今天我们拥有这么多资源，我们带着巨大的使…

Loose interpretation of your translation: We want you to sacrifice your personal life to make Alibaba's dream come true. If you don't want to, that's fine, there's plenty of people on the street who will.

That's fine, I don't want to work at a place like that. I work hard, really fucking hard. I'm good at what I do. I've made a name for myself because I work hard to be the best I can be at what I do. I give back every time I can. I mentor. I send the elevator back down as often as I can. If a company doesn't come looking for me because of the reputation of commitment I've spent the last 35 years pouring my blood, sweat and tears into building, I don't want to work for them.

You can have your people on the street and treat them as slaves and you'll get the quality of work out of them you can expect out of a sweatshop. I will go somewhere that my contribution is valued.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#253

Post by Grustaf »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #142
Grustaf wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but isn’t Ma smart enough to say what he wants to say, I don’t think he wants newspapers to alter his message.

Both pieces cover what he said without altering his message, they just highlight different parts to completely change the tone and fit their editorial guidelines. Ignore anything that isn't a quote, and he is saying people that don't want to work extreme hours just don't love money.

Seems almost tautological.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#254

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #222
salawat wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely not seeking to troll or start a flame war here, so I apologize profusely if I speak out of line, I'm just looking to understand the current Chinese mindset. All that working hard is to catch up to a country that pushed the envelope on a 40 hour work week, and at least made an effort to respect the right of the worker to have a life outside the office? I find the argunent/cultural value unconvincing when…

I’m not Chinese, but the sentiment is pan-Asian. You can’t build an industrial superpower from a country of rice farmers by working 40 hours a week. (Nor did the rice farmers work 40 days a week before industrialization!) Certainly, the US didn’t do it. (See: “Protestant work ethic.”) The 40-hour work week is something we adopted after our ascendency. It’s a luxury for the already rich. It’s possibly a luxury for tho…

[deleted]

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#255

Post by salawat »

rayiner wrote: post #222
salawat wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely not seeking to troll or start a flame war here, so I apologize profusely if I speak out of line, I'm just looking to understand the current Chinese mindset. All that working hard is to catch up to a country that pushed the envelope on a 40 hour work week, and at least made an effort to respect the right of the worker to have a life outside the office? I find the argunent/cultural value unconvincing when…

I’m not Chinese, but the sentiment is pan-Asian. You can’t build an industrial superpower from a country of rice farmers by working 40 hours a week. (Nor did the rice farmers work 40 days a week before industrialization!) Certainly, the US didn’t do it. (See: “Protestant work ethic.”) The 40-hour work week is something we adopted after our ascendency. It’s a luxury for the already rich. It’s possibly a luxury for tho…

There's a difference, even in the "Protestant Work Ethic" though. You're expected to work for yourself, to get what needs to be done, done. That "work" includes living righteously, starting a/serving a family, contributing to and propping up your community, and making yourself a better person.

Nowhere in that is a blanket "Thou shalt do and ask no questions, lest you be punished."

There isn't Japan. Blind obedience went out of style in 1945, and should stay gone. We all know where that leads.

"A son who does not admonish an unreasonable father leads his family to ruin.", Confucius [paraphrased] again.

The 40 hour work week isn't even a luxury. It's required if you want some semblance of social stability. Industrialization was revolutionary in that tooling, factories, and infrastructure created an environment where work could happen 24/7/365. That doesn't mean it should, especially to the benefit of a few, at the cost of the livability of life for everyone else. Industry is meant to cure societal ills, not to act as a building block for exponential manufacture of new societal ills to be fixed by the very root cause of the original malaise.

I may not be Chinese, and may not fully understand current pan-Asian culture, but I weep at the tragedy I see unfolding whereby a culture seems to be cannibalizing itself into something nigh-unrecognizable from what it once was.

It seems to be happening everywhere nowadays.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#257

Post by mevile »

bigred100 wrote: post #164
rwallace wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your conclusion is absolutely correct. The explanation is that Homo economicus, the economic optimizing agent, is a leaky abstraction on top of a killer ape. In the modern environment, it's easy to forget that our brains did not actually evolve to deal with money, let alone the high-tech infrastructure of a modern corporation. They evolved to dominate other apes on the African savanna. But evolution does not document…

Lately I have the vague opinion that half-baked scientific reasoning and the tendency to come up with evolutionary just so stories is a horrible detriment to modern society. Humanity has come up with a reasonable way to interpret human behavior by human standards through the humanities. I feel content to evaluate other humans by human standards rather than speculating on how he’s actually highly adapted for the Afric…

This is my favorite all time comment on HN. Thank you for these words. I agree!

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#258

Post by drukenemo »

npo_ wrote: post #149
drukenemo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice comments, but may I suggest that you check your spellings before posting? Lots of things I had to interpret what you meant to say based on mispellings.

In case you're not trolling, it's likely that the commenter you're replying to doesn't speak English as a first language. Considering the topic of this post (and the hanzi in their comment), I'd venture to say s/he speaks some dialect of Chinese as a first language.

I’m not trolling, can’t I give feedback to someone? It didn’t look like misspellings from a non native (e.g. catle vs cattle), but from rushed typing (e.g. he truned back). He fixed his post now, so I’m making due with examples to illustrate where I was coming from.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#259

Post by brianpgordon »

rqs wrote: post #216
balabaster wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "If you love your job, 12 hours is not very long... Hit: If you don't work 12 hours a day, you don't love your job." First up, I'm not arguing against the fact that there are many many managers, bosses, directors and CEOs that use emotional manipulation to blackmail employees to do their bidding even though on paper they claim differently. They give it all sorts of names to make you believe this behaviour is okay.…

> This statement can stand alone without any implication Here is the part of statement from Jack Ma for better context, you can judge it by yourself (full: https://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2019-04-12/doc-ihvhie... ): (Notice I have difficulties when translating Chinese word by word to English, because expression of the two language is different. But I'll make marks to help you understand) > 今天我们拥有这么多资源，我们带着巨大的使…

> During the early years, we at Alibaba also work long hours, why?

A hell of a lot more equity than the average Alibaba worker gets today?

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#260

Post by BurningFrog »

learc83 wrote: post #243
BurningFrog wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Fortune article speculates in much higher numbers for their stock compensation: http://fortune.com/2016/02/05/alibaba-stock-pay-disturbing/ If long hours is the industry standard, to me that is exactly informed consent. I mean, no one will be surprised by the standard workplace arrangement.

There's no way Alibaba is giving away 15% of their revenue in stock grants, so I'd take that with a huge grain of salt. Regardless the vast majority of their employees aren't going to become millionaires working there. >If long hours is the industry standard, to me that is exactly informed consent. I mean, no one will be surprised by the standard workplace arrangement. That's not what informed consent means--informed…

Your consent argument makes no sense to me. We're probably too far apart to communicate, but I'll make an attempt:

I agree that "informed consent has to be voluntary or it's not consent".

But this is absurd: "If 72 hour weeks are standard and your choice is long hours or being unemployed, it's not informed consent."

Note that you can replace "72 hour weeks" with "40 hour weeks" or "10 hour work weeks" without changing the argument. I'm guessing your silent assumption is that anything worse than your current middle class American expectations are by definition inhumane. This implies that poor people across the world can't consent to anything.

To me, as long as you can freely walk away from something, you are there by consent. No other definition makes logical sense.

Post reply on HN