Going To an Office and Pretending To Work: A Business That's Booming in China (elpais.com)
- Reference: 0177898935
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/02/0858222/going-to-an-office-and-pretending-to-work-a-business-thats-booming-in-china
- Source link: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-05-31/going-to-an-office-and-pretending-to-work-a-business-thats-booming-in-china.html
Some operations assign fictitious tasks and organize supervisory rounds to enhance the illusion, while premium services allow clients to roleplay as managers or stage workplace conflicts for additional fees. The trend has gained significant traction on Xiaohongshu, China's equivalent to Instagram, where advertisements for "pretend-to-work companies" accumulate millions of views. Youth unemployment reached 16.5% among 16-to-24-year-olds in March 2025, according to National Bureau of Statistics data, while overall urban unemployment stood at 5.3% in the first quarter.
[1] https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-05-31/going-to-an-office-and-pretending-to-work-a-business-thats-booming-in-china.html
Not only is the world stranger than I imagine (Score:2)
But why?
Re: (Score:2)
Right? I thought I had seen everything, but now I learn about work LARPing?
Two things (Score:2)
China is a centrally planned economy and to keep their economy going while automation was devastating their factory jobs they were pushing a huge, almost insane amount of construction.
Yeah there's a lot of what folks call tofu dregs which are buildings that are so poorly built they just collapse but there is a hell of a lot of solid built Office buildings with absolutely nothing to do because the only reason they exist is the government needed to keep the economy functional while Xi consolidated his power
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
> people think they can find solutions to nuclear war like the golden dome.
The Golden Dome will never exist, and even if it did it would not prevent catastrophic consequences of nuclear war. To name two immediate vulnerabilities: a) since it is aspiring to take out missiles in their boost phase, it can easily be overwhelmed by a bunch of dummy missiles that consist of a first stage only, and b) submarines can bring nuclear devices very close to coastal cities essentially undetected, and they can be delivered underwater. A 5MT device suddenly popping up a mile or two off the coast
Re: Not only is the world stranger than I imagine (Score:2)
People who are employed find it easier to find work. I think the theory is that employed people are necessarily employable. This is bullshit, as companies hire the wrong people all the time, but the idea is attractive to the intellectually lazy (like most executives, managers, and HR workers.)
Re: (Score:1)
Unlike yours, which doesn't work due to too much lead-eating.
fictional tasks thought the chinese were smarter (Score:2)
than that be an outside contractor and allocate them real tasks to do without telling them. Its the american way,
Blame Verizon (Score:2)
Remember when a Verizon employee outsourced his job to China?
[1]https://www.npr.org/sections/t... [npr.org]
> What began as a company's suspicion that its infrastructure was being hacked turned into a case of a worker outsourcing his own job to a Chinese consulting firm, according to reports that cite an investigation by Verizon's security team. The man was earning a six-figure salary.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/16/169528579/outsourced-employee-sends-own-job-to-china-surfs-web
Got my first billion dollar(*) company worked out (Score:2)
I will set up one of these fictitious work companies, but instead of fictitious tasks, I'll give them real work to do!
Venture capitalist vultures please contact Investor Relations at realfakework.com
Note that we will use AI. For something.
(*) Billion market cap, not billion turnover.
Bullshit jobs [Graber] (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
I guess China has those too.
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't read that book, but reading the summary of useless jobs I feel like the author may have never worked?
A good administrative assistant is golden, as is a good middle manager.
I'm not convinced there's no value in someone checking and enforcing compliance too.
I think the author just assumes everyone is perfect and there's no value to a little bit of redundancy to making sure things are done right and on time, and therefore sees fluff where there's value.
Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual work.
Re: (Score:1)
> TFA: or stage workplace conflicts for additional fees.
I'm the Chief Slashdot Animosity Engineer . Known on the street as a "troll".
Finally! (Score:3)
Finally! A job I'm 100% qualified for!
wrong date ? (Score:2)
I double-checked and it's not April 1st.
WTF?
Capitalism is now packaging wage-slavery as a product and SELLING it to us?
I hope the AIs evolve quickly to take over. My hope for humanity is melting faster than the ice caps.
They're charging the unemployed people?! (Score:2)
Shouldn't this be a social program, subsidized by the government??
Re: They're charging the unemployed people?! (Score:2)
If there were actually anything communist about China, yes it would be.
Kramer (Score:2)
Didn't Kramer originate this business model on Seinfeld?
Old Soviet Saying (Score:2)
..."We pretend to work, and the Party pretends to pay us."
Why doesn't MS pay them to (Score:1)
...fix all their damned bugs that have existed for decades? It's cheap educated labor. Wake Up Nadella!
People pay for that in China? (Score:3)
Rather silly for the Chinese to pay for the privilege when so many of us in Western countries have already figured out how to do it while getting paid.
Whatever makes the economic figures look good I guess.
If it makes you feel better (Score:1)
Increases in automation are going to help identify the Wallys of the world and fire them.
I had a lot of older coworkers that didn't really do any work. It would be kept around for the sake of headcount. I knew others at smaller companies that didn't do anything but got kept around because they were somebody's relative or something or they just couldn't bring themselves to fire it the little lady who used to do the books before all the newfangled computer software made her job obsolete.
One of the bes
Re: (Score:3)
Keeping a Job
Often senior employees figure out a secret business process and don't document / tell anyone else in the company about it. This secret business process means that the person must be kept around. The business disruption caused by firing them is too high.
Other times, people just make busy work to look like they are busy. Sometimes it is at an individual level. In other cases, it can happen collectively. [1]Carl Icahn has this crazy story about letting go 12 floors of people when he couldn't f [youtu.be]
[1] https://youtu.be/WSatPoD2W-o?si=VZO9EFI-osnFAcGG
Re: (Score:1)
Can we get an AI option for a downvote?
Re: (Score:2)
Increases in automation are going to help identify the Wallys of the world and fire them.
That is what they said about computers, that is what they said about printing press, that is what they said about factories and robots.
They say this to keep the working persons income down, they say this to suppress the employee.
I would tell you to mind your history, but a bot is only told what to do. It doesnt think for itself.
Re: If it makes you feel better (Score:2)
"That is what they said about computers, that is what they said about printing press, that is what they said about factories and robots."
And they were right every time.
Re: (Score:2)
> Rather silly for the Chinese to pay for the privilege when so many of us in Western countries have already figured out how to do it while getting paid.
> Whatever makes the economic figures look good I guess.
There are indications that recent new college graduates in the US are struggling to find jobs, with unemployment rates around 5.8% overall and near 8% for computer science. However, that pales in comparison to the situation in China, where the estimates are that anywhere from 15% to 50% of new college graduates can't find jobs or at least the white-collar jobs that they were expecting after graduating from college.
Re: (Score:2)
My daughter is graduating in psych. Has a poorly paid but good experience for the future job lined up.
Son is still in school. Has a poorly paid but good experience for the future job already.
People gotta start somewhere.