matt, it’s totally different from the US.
In Asia, you get the job, and are expected to produce a couple of AutoCad orthos and photoshop renderings as proposals, all in a week. Yes, that means you will do sketching, orthograph and photoshop rendering in 7 days. Tell me how you can do that well without having to work over time?
It’s all about money. A company would rather have on going projects with little or no profit to keep the company running, than to have nothing to do and yet has to sustain the expense to hire designers.
It’s sad, and value of design goes right down, but people need to eat.
However, if you can get used to the pace and still produce good designs, then you will have an edge over anyone else.