China’s Youth Are Quitting the Rat Race to ‘Let It Rot’
Demoralized young Chinese are looking for pathways out of the carefully scripted lives their elders want for them
Young people in China are becoming more rebellious, questioning their nation’s traditional expectations of career and family
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They have an interesting strategy where they workout expenses for the year if they lived minimal. It might be 9k. So they work for a few months and save up that money then quit their job and "lay flat" for the rest of the year.
Honestly, that sounds amazing, and illustrates why, "can you explain this gap on your resume" is such a bull shit interview question.
What? This illustrates exactly why it’s an important question.
If you’re responsible for hiring are you going to hire someone who has gaps in their resume or someone that’s been consistently working?
The person with gaps on their resume is more likely to quit on you. You aren’t going to hire someone who looks like they will quit.
The actual solution is to figure out why work sucks so hard that people find loopholes like this to get around it. If i can work 4 months out of the year and take care of myself, why would you want to eork any more?
Agreed but employers don’t care. They are the ones with the power. Having you work 60 hours a week is a means of control. If you quit there is a line of people out there that’s willing to take the job. Employers know this and exploit it.
If you think you can change this power dynamic then go for it, but there are too many desperate people out there for that to happen.
one of the problems of modern work environments is that workplaces get saturated with people who actually should leave but don't. It is a bullshit question even if (like many modern problems) it would make sense if we were still in an era where corporations valued long term employees and mutual loyalty was a thing that existed.
Loyalty or not employers aren’t going to bother hiring someone they know is going to walk out in a month or two. That’s why they ask the question. It isn’t rocket science.
"well I work for a short time and then just quit and do nothing."
I can see why they might ask the question. I don't expect people to put the business above themselves, but I certainly would be less likely to hire someone if I knew they were just going to quit after a few months because they have no ambition.
I don't blame them.. The older generations really screwed the pooch for the younger generation. Basically made China inhospitable for foreign investment so all these young people are left high and dry with fancy degrees and no jobs.
It's kinda not really the older generations, though, it's more capitalism. Where does that start and end?
Eh, I think we have to agree to disagree on that point, friend. I've seen a lot of quotes closer to the turn of the last century warning about capitalism, it's been going for quite a while. All through the industrial booms and a few wars were essentially fuelled by capitalist reasons. All that happened in India, British empire stuff, essentially capitalism. I could deep dive and find dates, but if you are interested, there's just so much to read about it, I wouldn't know where to start. You might find some fascinating (and troubling) stuff, once you start scratching the surface. I feel like I am only just scratching the surface. I'm looking for a good book to read on the subject so I have a more indepth understanding.
Wait, the problem in your mind with China is that it's not as safe for multinational companies to exploit their populace?
China’s own megaconglomerates aren’t doing any better. They openly steal from their populace, and exploit their workers in inhumane ways. Just look at the mass embezzlement of peoples life savings in the housing market by ultra mega sized publicly traded corporations. China is basically a hyper capitalist corporatocracy, with extra authoritarianism sprinkled in with no upside.
Agreed that the problem is capitalism, but I don't know about "no upside." The poverty rate in China has continually decreased. While we in the west might argue that living under authoritarian rule might not be worth the tradeoff, that certainly is an upside.
Although this only works when you're not living a minimal existence, paycheck-to-paycheck.
The next step will be to pay them less.
Damn, I'd be sore after laying flat for months.
