Dan Wang

And if we take a look at the median engineer, median worker between the US and China, I strongly suspect the Chinese are

Just putting in much, much more hours relative to the median in the U.S.

In California, we love to make fun of the Google offices, which clears out by 3 p.m.

on a Friday.

Everyone's at the yoga studios again and not working super hard, in particular because it's Google.

And that sort of thing is pretty unimaginable in China, which invented this phrase, 9-9-6, working from 9 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

six days a week.

And I think there's some really, maybe inspiration is really important.

Working smart is really important, but I think working hard is also very, very important.

According to these statistics, which are out there, it takes an automaker from the US or Japan or Germany roughly six years to conceptualize of a new model and actually get it out on the roads of a new vehicle.

And in China, it's something more like 18 months to two years.

So at a first approximation, they're probably working at least three times faster than the Americans are doing.

There's some founding mythos of companies like Meituan.

I visited Meituan with my friend Eugene Wei, who is also a big fan and who has been on this show.

We went to visit their offices in Beijing in 2018.

And part of what the story that Meituan tells about itself is that it survived 5,000 other competitors who were all Groupon clones that started at around the same time in something like 2015 or so.

Meituan was a big company back then, and it's now one of China's biggest tech companies now.

And just imagine how ruthless and cutthroat the executive team has to be to survive this battle royale of 5,000 companies.

And so I think there are some ways in which maybe inspiration is still better here.