Yu Haoyan, founder of a coding education startup, works from his office in Zhongguancun. / Photo credit: Handout
Zheping Huang · · 9 min readNo sleep, no sex, no life: Chinese tech workers face burnout before hitting 30
One young couple who works in the tech industry have been trying for months to conceive a child but are too tired for sex on weekdays. / Illustration: Perry Tse/SCMP
He is so focused on keeping his startup alive that he can’t sleep at night. She was asked in an interview if she would be willing to break up with her boyfriend for the job. A young couple wants to start a family, but they have no energy for sex after work.
These are some of the struggles faced by the hundreds of thousands of young workers in China’s tech industry. Take the case of Yu Haoran, a 26-year-old computer science major who in 2014 founded Jisuanke, a startup in Beijing’s high-tech Zhongguancun district that teaches kids coding.
Yu has worked nights and weekends to grow his business from a 10-coder team to one with a 200 million yuan (US$29.8 million) valuation, thanks to venture capital backing. But the personal price he pays is chronic insomnia, sometimes getting just two hours of sleep every night.
“I haven’t really thought of living a life,” Yu said, referring to his entrepreneurial existence. “Because I’m building something, and before I finish it, there won’t be anything else on my mind.”
Last year, China churned out four new billionaires every week, with technology being the biggest driver of new wealth, followed by real estate, according to media company Hurun Report.
For every success story there are thousands of wannabes who toil away, hoping to be the next Jack Ma, who built Alibaba Group Holding, parent company of the South China Morning Post, from a business in his own apartment to the country’s ecommerce giant.
The Post spoke to tech workers in Zhongguancun and other parts of Beijing for a snapshot of what life is really like in China’s Silicon Valley, as these tech hubs – home to internet giants like Baidu, Meituan-Dianping and Bytedance – have been dubbed.
In China’s tech industry, young employees and entrepreneurs constantly battle burnout at work, while worrying about bigger things like career ceilings, lay-offs and a sexist work environment.
Some eventually come to the realization that they need to strike a better work-life balance for the sake of their own health. Others are trying to figure a way out of an opportunistic tech world full of hot money and hype.
Employees at major tech companies who were interviewed for this article had asked to be identified only by their surnames because they were not authorized to speak publicly about their jobs.
Once a graveyard for eunuchs in feudal China, Zhongguancun is located inside the northwestern stretch of Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road, one of the major highways that encircle the Chinese capital.
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