
Mike Moritz slams politically correct tech culture, praises Chinese work ethic - Element_
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/sequoia-vc-mike-moritz-praises-china-tech-work-ethic-joins-sam-altman.html
======
rayiner
Complaining about Silicon Valley political correctness while extolling the
virtues of China is at best tone deaf. It’s pretty much impossible for anyone
who has any experience with Asia to deny that racism is just more socially
acceptable over there than in the US. And things like homosexuality are
suppressed. For example, China recently banned depictions of homosexuality on
TV.

So of course it’s easier to say certain things over there than it is over
here. That’s the difference between a society where tensions are high because
we’re actively trying to work through the challenges faced by our minority
groups, and one where there are no tensions because the concerns of minority
groups are completely suppressed.

It’s also myopic to mistake forced social harmony for principled open
mindedness. My extended family is from a South Asian country, and let’s face
it—people say things that could, among Americans, get them in trouble. That’s
not out of open mindedness. Try bringing up a cousin possibly being gay and
see how open minded everyone is.

~~~
throwaway7312
The simplest way of looking at this is that the more power you divide up among
increasingly small segments of your population, the more you divide the house.

In China, there is the objective of China, where there is a singular focus on
what is good for the people and the country. Groups that would take away from
this to empower their own group are viewed as attacking the collective.

America until the middle of the 1960s or so was like this to a large extent.
Various minorities (Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans) entered the country,
kept separate identities for a while, but eventually integrated into the
whole. The death of John F. Kennedy signaled the end of a unified America and
the birth of a far more divided house.

Today, America has fractured into a litany of squabbling sects. In China, you
have the Chinese. In America, what used to be called "Americans" are now
called whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Indians, Arabs, gays, straights,
bisexuals, pansexuals, transexuals, liberals, conservatives, nationalists,
globalists, Christians, atheists, Muslims, Jews. There are feminists and men's
rights activists and Black Lives Matter and the Alt-Right. Each sect wants the
spotlight; it wants advantages over other groups (masked with euphemisms like
"equality" or "recognition" or "reparations"); and it views the overall
identity of the country as an oppressive enemy that must be fought.

That is not to say one condition is better than the other. These seem to be
natural cycles nations go through. John Glubb notes the Byzantines squabbling
amongst themselves over their divisions as the Ottomans blew holes in the
walls around their city in 1453. [1] Byzantium, like America, had been the
world's greatest super power at one time too. It seems likely the slide into
infighting and decadence is a natural state of every nation advanced in the
cycles of civilizations.

But of course, a people that spends its time tip-toeing around and arguing
about what labels to use to refer to this group and who can use that word and
who can't use that word and how many of which group you have to hire to not
get sued has very different priorities and will achieve very different
outcomes than a people that is relentlessly focused on a more singular,
unified objective, other things being equal.

In America's case, I suppose the question is: do the benefits of diversity
(which has become a sort of national religion over the past two decades)
outweigh the costs?

The test case of American "maximum diversity" vs. Chinese maximal
industriousness may prove as close as we'll get to a controlled study on how
these two very different national priorities stack up against one another
head-to-head on the world stage over the coming decades.

Place your bets now folks....

[1]
[http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf](http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf)

~~~
logiclion
In my opinion 'maximum' diversity doesn't just mean diversity of identity, it
also means diversity of thinking and opinions. I also think the division of
power up to the individual level is called Democracy...

------
mindcrime
_" Engineers have slightly different habits: they will appear about 10am and
leave at midnight."_

I actually agree with Moritz on some points, but this... all I can say is,
from an employee perspective, this only makes sense _IF_ you're going to get
rich as a result. And the average startup employee does not get enough equity
to get rich even in the event of a successful exit, so there's no reason to do
this kind of stuff. Well, OK, _maybe_ if you just plain enjoy coding (or
whatever) to the point that you _want_ to work 12-14 hours days. But I suspect
that's a very small number of people.

Seriously though, unless you're being paid MEGA-BUCKS or have MASSIVE equity
there is just no reason to work yourself to death.

~~~
charlesdm
Working more is almost never the solution. If you have to work from 8am until
10pm, you're just doing something wrong.

Does he himself work from 8am until 10pm?

~~~
maze-le
I assume you mean 10pm? In my experience, after ~6 or 7h coding, my focus
starts to move elsewhere, I make more errors and start reacting more irritaded
than usual.

~~~
charlesdm
Sorry, typo. Yes, 10pm of course

I share pretty much the same experience. Five to six hours of coding is a good
day in terms of work for me.

------
mikeash
So basically, to us American techies, shut up and start working 100 hour
weeks?

What a delightful fellow. I wonder if he’s going to lead by example, or if he
thinks 14-hour days are only for underlings.

~~~
strebler
Exactly, do it or else he's going to take his ball and go home (or take his
fund's money and go to China)

But don't tell him what happens if he ever tries to take his money OUT of
China, we can let that be a "fun" learning experience for him.

~~~
justaman
Doing business in China is basically giving them your IP for free. China is
due for a rude awakening from the west.

------
islanderfun
I agree some parts of our society have basically forbidden any kind of
discussion. That is in need of real change. Respectable and honest discussions
between adults should be allowed.

Sucks that conference speakers are being "checked" for political affiliations.
Why not let the topic stand on its own?

But of course, everyone is free to not listen to people that don't support
them in some way. It's a delicate line.

> "grumbling about the need for a space for musical jam sessions."

What? I have to believe that isn't common and it's being used as a "see how
lazy/unprofessional/undedicated _everyone_ in SV is"

~~~
newman8r
Conference speakers being checked for political affiliation is crazy but not
surprising - are there specific examples of this?

On sites like reddit you often see reasonable arguments shot down based on the
author's political leanings gleaned from their comment history. The chilling
effect is made clear when you see people having to preface their commentary
with "I hate x, but... {insert argument here}"

~~~
liberte82
"You post on 'X' sub. That says all I need to know about you."

~~~
newman8r
It's a vicious cycle where opposing sides become more polarized with every
interaction. For some, the only way out is apathy.

~~~
java_script
I think it's more that pre-reddit/twitter/facebook we all had separate online
forums, chat rooms, etc and now it's all centralized to the same few sites.

For example before reddit we didn't have popular fascist subforums hosted on
the same site as a liberal politics subforum, where people could cross-post
and PM between them.

~~~
liberte82
This is a good point. I used to frequent DemocraticUnderground back in the
2004 days during the Kerry campaign. It was as bad an echo chamber as anything
we see today. The alternative site was FreeRepublic (or 'freepers', as we
called them). However, the fact that you didn't have to go to that site or see
those people's opinions if you didn't want to, made a big difference to how
vitriolic the whole thing felt.

------
projectileboy
Investor prefers environment where employees are even more willingly exploited
than in SV. Well, of course he does.

------
IkmoIkmo
What does having discussions about ethics, morality or equality have to do
with working 14 hour, six day workweeks (84h)?

Look, there's genuinely important discussions to be had right now. If he wants
his son to grow up addicted to a social network he interfaces with through a
screen, or his daughter to be subjected to casual sexism, because it'd hurt
some engineers' feelings to be confronted with that toxic reality, then cry me
a river. I for one am glad to see someone making a stand, some of the
discourse we see now is meaningful and I'm happy for it. (far from all of it,
don't get me wrong. but a lot of these discussions are way overdue and we
shouldn't throw away the baby with the bathwater).

That having been said, this article really looks like one of those 'we
paraphrased 5 minutes of nuanced commentary into a shitty one-liner'. I'm sure
I'll still disagree with his more elaborate views, but I get the feeling
there's more to his argument than this article supposes.

~~~
Sangermaine
>What does having discussions about ethics, morality or equality have to do
with working 14 hour, six day workweeks (84h)?

Because the former is just cover for the latter, which is the real concern.
He, like most of his type, wants his underlings to work as much as possible
for as little as possible without any complaints. This has become annoyingly
hard to enforce in the US, so off to a dictatorship where the drones don't
have those options.

------
jjuel
There is a reason why buildings in China have nets to prevent suicide and
Japan has a work to death problem. Working that much is not good or healthy.

~~~
liberte82
Probably not, but us westerners are going to be forced to compete with them
sooner or later.

~~~
jjuel
Is there proof that working 14 hours 6 or 7 days a week is truly more
productive than working 8 hours 5 days a week? Theoretically it should be, but
I am just curious if there is any science on it.

~~~
liberte82
Even if it's not, we'll need to compete against the perception that the
Chinese are harder working than us.

------
tpkj
More in depth article (well, at least compared to the CNBC piece) here on
Financial Times, authored by the SV investor. The comments section has some
good feedback as well.

[https://www.ft.com/content/42daca9e-facc-11e7-9bfc-052cbba03...](https://www.ft.com/content/42daca9e-facc-11e7-9bfc-052cbba03425)

I get some of the investor's complaints about pc culture, and at the same time
I wonder if this guy considers the ideal corporation one where an "employee"
literally "works" 24/7, never leaves his/her desk for anything thanks to IV
tubes for food, digestion, and medications to keep oneself constantly awake;
and the bio-energy of the employee is harvested to supply energy for the
office building.

Quite the recipe for individual and societal flourishing...

------
firasd
I've seen a lot of anger about his comments on Twitter, but for me this just
boils down to a structural issue: for him, a company is an item in a financial
portfolio. For an employee, a job at a company means years of their life.
Their incentives are not aligned (unless the worker is voluntarily putting in
continuous 12-hr days for adequate compensation.)

------
vthallam
A rich investor is complaining about how people are not working to their death
so that his portfolio companies do better and get him more returns? Give me a
break.

Why do we even have to have a discussion when all he complains about is how
they work for 12 hours? They copied every SV company the moment it hit off, no
real innovation besides the recent AI advancements. What good would come off
by copying that model?

------
wavefunction
The troubling part for me is:

"Top managers show up for work at about 8am and frequently don't leave until
10pm. Most of them will do this six days a week — and there are plenty of
examples of people who do this for seven. Engineers have slightly different
habits: they will appear about 10am and leave at midnight."

This dude wants his fellow Americans to work at least 84 hours a week, if not
a "modest 7 day work week" of almost 100 hours. Life is too precious for that
sort of nonsense and I can only hope that this fellow and those like him lose
their power and capability to influence society.

------
dkhenry
I don't know if the headline is specifically that California and Silicon
Valley is a worse climate then China, but this has been known for anyone
outside the valley for a long time. The business climate in flyover country is
worlds better. The only real problem is that its hard to get enough talent to
really put your money to work, which is the same problem you will have
anywhere outside the major tech hubs.

~~~
jdblair
Can you be specific about what you mean about the business climate being
better? Is it taxation? The cost of land and workers? It seems that if talent
is unavailable that is not just "the only problem" but an actual blocker.

------
youdontknowtho
I love when billionaire's criticize people who work for a living. The
unmitigated gaul. It's amazing that someone... So many someone's...can be so
blind.

------
laurentoget
[https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/jack-...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/jack-
ma/articleshow/59538570.cms)

It is interesting to contrast this investor's cliches about working 12 or 14
hours day as a key to success and Chinese work ethic with what an actual
Chinese business leader as to say on that topic:

“My grandfather worked for 16 hours a day. He thought he was very busy. We
work eight hours a day for five days a week and we think we are very busy. But
in the next 30 years, people will work only for four hours a day and four days
a week”

------
pg_bot
As an employee and a founder of a company his viewpoint seems to go against
what has made the most effective teams I've worked with. You should focus on
outputs not inputs when working. If someone can do the work of someone else
with a fraction of the effort that person should be rewarded not punished. I
don't know anyone who can work 14 hour days regularly and still be productive.
If someone is doing that, it is a red flag for me to know that something is
broken or that person is incompetent and needs to be let go.

------
laurentoget
[http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-01/11/content_279...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-01/11/content_27919058.htm)

meanwhile in the official chinese media, we get a pretty different picture. I
wonder what the chinese communist party thinks of westerners assuming their
people are willing to work like slaves.

------
raverbashing
I just love the "bet on the mouse that spins the wheel faster" mentality

(and this is regardless of culture or nationality) betting on those who are
sitting on their chairs longer is just "traditional" corporate
shortsightedness

------
alphonsegaston
I always suspected that the end goal of the wealthy was to push America into
the Authoritarian Capitalist model of China or Russia. I never expected them
to be so explicit about it.

------
whataretensors
So engineers should work an additional 60 hours a week each while rich VCs get
to systematically steal the future with their accredited investor scam. Sounds
reasonable.

------
kyledrake
When you're more productive, you become more valuable and it requires less of
your time to do something. This is pretty basic economics here.

If Mike wants to fund a Mythical Man Month play against efficient workers, I
wish him the best of luck. I don't think it will work but I'm interested in
the results.

------
neuro_imager
Multi-billionaire with wealth accumulated from institutional gambling and rent
seeking feels that wage-slaves complain about "inequality" to much and should
instead behave like people in countries with no human rights.

Sounds legit.

------
tanilama
Spent too much time on indulging in political correctness in long-term will
hurt the productivity of the SV companies. It adds up the cost to operate.
This guy is not wrong for a lot of good points.

------
JustSomeNobody
So, he's basically indicating to companies he may potentially invest in that
they need to start hiring Chinese to do the actual work because they're
cheaper and work longer ours.

------
dhoulb
I’ve definitely noticed tech, especially tech press, getting much more
political and negative in the last few years.

I don’t really know if it’s the WHOLE of tech (or just how it’s reported), but
it definitely feels like a downer right now.

As a tech liberal dreamer, it’s totally getting to me.

I want to read about interesting new solutions to problems, but at the moment
it seems mostly like negative press about Uber.

Obviously it’s responsible to call it when conpanies do bad things, but is
tech really unethical on the scale of pharma or agrobusiness or fast food?
Doesn’t seem so. ( I get that they’re tech press so they’ll only report on
tech, but context would be nice).

Feels like the optimism is gone?

------
RickJWagner
Too much prosperity isn't a good thing in the long run.

The PC problem is a result of prosperity without corresponding effort. I hope
the correction is a kind one.

------
fulafel
Which side is unhinged? I think the Moritz side.

------
vijay_nair
Meanwhile in Japan:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karōshi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karōshi)

------
thebiglebrewski
"Stealing vacation days"

------
cocktailpeanuts
I agree with this guy. I know I'll be downvoted to oblivion but gotta say what
i gotta say.

I'm not saying political correctness is bad, and I don't think this guy is
saying that either. He's just stating the facts and I would like to also just
state the facts.

There are way more conflicts and drama and scandals in America because
Americans are much more "woke" than citizens of other parts of the world.
Again, this is not a "bad" thing, but if you look at what this is causing,
same americans are tearing down successful and ambitious american
entrepreneurs who may have achieved something really great.

Let me use Uber as an example, since I know you guys will downvote me anyway.
The founder of Uber got kicked out and now Uber is struggling. When Uber was
struggling to grow in China, Americans were busy criticizing Uber for all
kinds of things. This probably didn't help them in any way. You will say
companies like Uber and the founder deserves it and unethical companies like
Uber should not be left to survive.

And I agree with the sentiment that unethical companies are bad, but again,
I'm just going to state the facts.

If you look at "less woke" developing countries around the world, they don't
have this sense of social justice because they don't have the luxury. So they
do whatever is possible to increase their GDP.

That's why a lot of developing countries are corrupt. But guess what, that's
how these countries and companies from these countries grow. Companies like
Samsung have always had very tight relationship with their government, and
most people--while they never actually witness the corruption--kind of
acknowledge that something like that happens behind the scenes. The woke
Americans will say that's bad and that shouldn't happen, and samsung should be
taken down, etc.

But at the end of the day, this is how developing countries actually
accumulate their riches and this is how the top performing companies from
these countries reach the top and end up growing globally.

They will one day become the "woke" ones as much as Americans are, but until
then, they will become richer and richer and soon be a threat to the U.S.
economy.

This has nothing to do with ethics, justice, or whatever. This is just how it
has always been, and that's how it will be.

If you look at what's happening with China, it really IS taking over the
world. A lot of top cryptocurrency projects and companies are from China. Most
influential hardware are increasingly coming from China. All this while the
ADD silicon valley founders and VCs are pouring money into fad technologies
and having a serious identity crisis.

~~~
GVIrish
> If you look at "less woke" developing countries around the world, they don't
> have this sense of social justice because they don't have the luxury. So
> they do whatever is possible to increase their GDP.

They don't have that sense of social justice for a number of reasons. Having
lived in the developing world, one big component is that the legal system is
not set up to prevent exploitation of the many by the few who are rich.
Corruption and exploitation are entrenched because the culture accepts it and
those crushed under it don't feel they have the power to change it.

There's more than enough money in many developing nations to significantly
raise the standard of living for the average citizen, but those taking the
lion's share of the spoils have no interest in changing that system.

> That's why a lot of developing countries are corrupt.

No, a lot of developing countries are corrupt due to weak rule of law and an
entrenched culture of back-scratching. The corruption is not there simply
because they are relatively poor countries.

So for example, in Latin America, Brazil's GDP is around $1.8 trillion, and
Costa Rica is at $57 billion. Yet Costa Rica performs MUCH better on
international corruption scale. And there are plenty of examples of that. Look
at Russia versus some of it's former satellite states. Corruption is much
worse in Russia than it is in Georgia, even though Russia is a much bigger
economy.

It really is about the strength of institutions and rule of law. Being a
developing nation doesn't mean that out-of-control graft is inevitable.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
I agree with all your points.

But that's not what the comment was about.

------
IanDrake
Chinese culture is pretty different from ours (from what I read). I’m not sure
one can pin longer work hours on work ethic alone.

As I understand it, China has a gender imbalance and there are not enough
women. Men therefore must be successful to find a wife. This could help
explain some of the difference in work ethic, as one of the primary human
motivations is to reproduce.

~~~
eddieplan9
This is the most ridiculous explanation I have read about why Chinese work
hard.

It’s extremely simple: everybody wants to be successful, and right now because
of many reasons, Chinese _think_ they can be successful by working hard. This
is the Chinese equivalent of American dream, that one can pursue happiness by
working hard.

