No Boss, No Money: The Raw Reality of a Chinese Gen-Z Freelancer

Jared is 28. He used to be an AI algorithm engineer at one of China's big tech firms — the kind of job millions compete for. He quit because he could not stand the 996 schedule: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. He traded the "iron rice bowl" for freelance work, and his life now, documented by the channel Inside China Lives, is a clear-eyed look at what that freedom actually costs.

He and his wife, married a year, live in an illegal rooftop structure on top of a 1990s apartment block. No proper title, no formal lease — they pay rent each month to the landlord downstairs. They have lived there three years.

The rooftop bakes in summer, and the landlord will not install air conditioning. So Jared built his own cooling: a high-pressure electric misting system. He programmed an ESP32 microcontroller to run a PWM-controlled fan, assembled his own speaker system, and repairs every appliance himself. If he can make it or fix it, he never buys it.

The freelance squeeze

Jared makes his living taking coding jobs online. Together with his wife, who works in a hospital pharmacy, the couple brings in roughly ¥10,000 a month (about $1,400) — noticeably less than in his first two years of freelancing.

The reason is familiar to freelancers everywhere now: AI. Large language models have collapsed the skill premium on routine coding. A client can type one prompt and get a working prototype, so the price of outsourced code keeps getting bid down. Jared is not bitter about it — he uses AI himself to learn new stacks faster — but the arithmetic is the arithmetic.

There is a quieter cost, too. With no office and no boss, the initial excitement of freedom faded into laziness, procrastination, and a low hum of pointlessness. Discipline, it turns out, is a resource you burn.

Four hours a night on a scooter

To cover the rent, Jared delivers food from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., avoiding the daytime heat. He carries up to five orders at a time and makes about ¥100 for the four hours — ¥20–30 an hour, up to ¥50 an hour when it pours, because almost nobody else wants to ride.

Asked about platforms steadily cutting per-order pay, he is unsentimental: more riders sign up every day, so of course the platform squeezes delivery costs to serve its shareholders. That is simply what the business is. No moral panic required.

On one hospital run he met a full-time rider with a leg broken in a traffic accident. The man's commercial accident insurance — which riders pay for themselves — was nowhere near enough: months with zero income. That is the part of the gig economy no dashboard shows.

Would he go back?

Given the choice between full-time delivery riding and a full-time job back at a big tech firm, Jared does not hesitate: delivery. Once you get used to freedom, he says, you cannot go back. Nobody manages him. Even poor, he breathes easier than he ever did swiping a badge under fluorescent lights.

But the video ends on the unresolved note. Freedom without a financial floor underneath it is always one shock away from collapsing. The couple is now trying for a baby, and a child's costs may yet force the compromise he has been refusing. The anxiety of an uncertain future, it turns out, is not obviously lighter than 996 — it is just a different weight.

— Terry, Airgrix