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by lazide 605 days ago
Expectations of engineers and managers in Asia (especially hard engineering) is an order of magnitude higher than in the US - in good and in bad ways, depending on who you are asking.

One thing is non-controversial though, work life balance is just not a thing for for engineers or engineering managers in Taiwan. or most other places.

1 comments

Asian companies in North America behave the same. Don't seem to give a crap about employees or lives. My jaw continues to drop at what I come across.

It goes both ways. I am a non-asian manager but my asian employees don't seem to say no to unreasonable request. I've actually had to talk to some of the younger employees about burnout.

I don't understand why it is okay for anyone .. employees or managers to be tortured.

What are some of the unreasonable requests you've observed (or made)?

Have you seen burnout arise solely from "too many hours worked", or has it tended to be coupled with other factors (like lack of control / agency, goalposts that keep moving such that they never get achieved, coworker disagreements, toxic office politics).

It’s not about ‘ok’, it’s about what they can get away with.

And in Asia, there are too many people ‘to worry’ about burning just one of them out.