So, I talked to someone who had worked at AliBaba for a bit (Son Luong Ngoc) and learned a lot. Some of the 996 is related to the company campus providing everything at a pretty low cost and a sort of presentism where being around is rewarded. All that plus the jobs are considered great jobs within China, and there is cut-throat performance competition process.
Also, I think sleeping at work, taking a nap while waiting for something to run, or waiting on another team are encouraged. Excuse the link drop, but if you want to see some pictures of tents set up for sleeping scroll down to the bottom here:
To me, from Son's experience, some of it sounds like giant tech campuses in NA, but with competitiveness and cutthroat performance reviews taken to it's logical extreme.
I'd love to hear your stories if you've worked at ByteDance, Alibaba, or any other similar company. What was it like? What do we get wrong from the outside?
Also your experiences could be a fit for my podcast. Hit me up (see profile).
I thought everyone would have assumed this is what 996 was anyway. What else could it be? It does not seem any different than the finance/law situation in NYC.
I feel like the Wikipedia article is demonizing the Chinese companies without enough citations of what they're asserting (I was expecting a lot of citations of how the whole thing is still being practiced in 2024...), while the reality is like what you describe, of presentism and being unproductive for a lot of time...
None of the “soft benefits” are even close justification for basically owning people’s lives. With one day of and 9-9 schedule, what is even the point of living? No time for hobbies, family or anything remotely enjoyable in life.
I would point out for centuries, I’m thinking at least through the Industrial Revolution, 10-16 hours was the norm and many families were still raised. And it was horrible.
For sure, It seems like a zero sum game that the firms encourage and then individual incentives do the rest. Like the fight to be partners at a law firm.
And you wonder why China is experiencing brain drain. Rest of world is moving toward 4-day work week and these guys think their citizens are dumb enough to slave away their lives.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the... ("Schools across the U.S. are trying a 4-day week. Why? To retain teachers") (My note: ~1000 US school districts have moved to a four day week, as they are unable to retain teachers otherwise)
https://www.abc15.com/news/national/4-day-workweeks-may-be-a... (“Nearly one-third (30%) of large US companies are exploring new work schedule shifts such as four-day or four-and-a-half-day workweeks, according to a KPMG survey of CEOs released this week.”)
In Europe I believe you can request an 80% work week, I've seen job posting and heard it second hand. Here's a Swiss example, https://threema.ch/en/jobs#openings of 80-100% jobs
In North America there were and are a number of companies that operate or operated (pre-layoffs etc, ZIRP free money RIP) on a 4 day work week. You can search "4 day companies" and you'll find a list. Some companies still operate on a 4 day week, so it wasn't necessarily a ZIRP-era only thing.
US congress or someone in government proposed a 32 hour work week -- unlikely to be passed of course or get any traction any time soon.
But in general, there's growing mainstream sentiment towards trying and exploring shorter work weeks.
If AI/AI-enabled-capitalists doesn't enslave us, those grandiose promised AI productivity gains may push sentiment further in that direction.
If anything - the US and, the majority of the world with it - has moved to longer work hours with fewer holidays. Sabbaticals are virtually unheard of anymore. Two people in the family work instead of one. I would argue the world is moving in the opposite direction.
It's an East Asian cultural thing to work super hard for some reason, same with Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. By "Rest of the world" you really just mean a handful of Western European nations with stagnant economies, but by god I do wish I could work less.
We've had 45 years of GDP increase not being reflected in wages, who cares if the economy is "stagnant" if the people making it happen aren't seeing the benefit.
Well, I can mostly speak to Japan, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was also true in China.
The long hours of Japanese work culture are true, but simultaneously, there's a lot of wasted time. Japan evens praises sleeping at the office, when you're clearly getting no work done.
This might be limited to white-collar office workers; no idea about people on the factory floor.
I don’t think people in East Asia work harder at all. It’s mostly sitting around and taking two hour lunches. I regularly worked 80-100 hours for most of my 20s and early 30s. It’s not sustainable at all and 95% of the population do not even have the physical and mental stamina to do it for more than a couple of weeks out of the year. Out of all the places I’ve experienced, East Coast (and particularly NYC) has the hardest working culture. It’s not even close.
Can you please elaborate on "downward pressure". Because the way I see it, 4day work week should actually increase the salaries, not reduce it. The way I see - if there is work for 3200 hrs. - it could either be done by one person in 80 weeks (current setup), OR 100 weeks in new setup. Assuming next that velocity should remain the same to keep competitiveness, it's gonna require you to hire not 0.25, but probably 0.5 person for one day free. Hence demand increase for employees. No?
Unions and labor regulations are important components of arriving at the desired outcome. You have to keep pulling the policy ratchets to reduce the work week and bolster worker protections, otherwise capitalism will extract until there is nothing left.
I just don't get how knowledge workers can slave away like that.
I can be productive for 12-15 hours a day when the conditions are just right, but usually they aren't and after a few hours I need to switch to something less productive than actual coding.
Do employers really see any measurable improvement in volume (let alone quality) of output after 30 hours a week?
I work anywhere between 25 and 45 hours. My work varies based upon my ability to complete the work given to me. I am not really qualified for some of the tasks in my position although I learn quickly.
I would argue that 90% of employers cannot effectively measure productivity. I have worked in call centers where metrics are tracked - which of course I learned to game - allowing me to work the same hours while making 50% above my peers based upon bonuses.
Knowledge workers are a different type of job with somewhere >50% being fake jobs that exist only because companies have capital and managers and head count means success.
They don't. It's visually impressive: look how hard we're all working! But it's impossible that they're getting more than a pittance of useful output after hour 50 or so.
You've got a guy sitting at his desk at 8:55PM on a Saturday night. Impressive. We all know he hasn't been doing anything worthwhile since some time back on Thursday, and you've been wasting electricity on him afterward.
Its a knows patter in AAA games dev. People are pushed to work long hours, and the do perform maybe not at 100% but they do overproduce. However eventually they crash and burnout, then they get fired and replaced. Its a soul sucking industry that preys on positive, creative and idealistic people.
Because in corpo you are always easily replaceable.
It's not a rational phenomenon, it's social/peer-pressure based. Ever been in a situation where an open floor plan full of employees is typing away, with the boss walking the aisles, and you need to leave early?
Yeah, that's why 996 kills people slowly. 996 is taking away your own time for the company, and most likely in a not so productive way.
So you don't get the refresh, the first 1-2 companies which employs you get the most benefit because you are not drained yet, but companies later in the line got a used battery almost completely drained -- and that's why China also has the 35 yrs old rule.
also at 35, you are more likely to have kids. Once you have a kid, you wont submit to 996 anymore, so they'll just lay you off and replace you with a fresh out of college grad
Yeah. It's a vicious cycle. UNLESS you made into a lead or a manager of some sort -- but it's still rare and you are still required to do a lot of overtime.
I've always wondered, do these work? As in - is the production of the 996 workers more, less, or equal to those working 40 hour weeks?
Did it arise out of some data-driven research, or is it mostly just the result of cargo-culting, where one successful company had such hours/schedule, and the other companies just followed suit?
From my experience working in the US for companies that wanted to emulate that culture. 996 was nothing more than a result of poor management, lack of planning, and the attitude that employees are disposable and could be easily replaced.
The phrase I associate with and cringe at is "all hands on deck". Oh, you didn't know that project A's deployment will wipe out project B's testing in the lower environment? All hands on deck. Oh, you didn't realize your novel idea of deploying 40000 processes to update the databases will result in a denial of service attack on our own servers? All hands on deck. Oh, you didn't get knowledge transfer from the last bunch of contractors who were let go and now you can't figure out how they deployed A into abstraction layer B which has a dependency on C and no documentation exists? All hands on deck.
My understanding is that it does work, for the period that they work in the company, because few work actually needs intensive brain activity.
But it's bad for the employee, and bad for the companies down in the line because the employees would already been drained. That's why there is an implicit or explicit 35-yrs old deadline in the industry.
China actually adopted the 8-hour workday in 1930 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#China). The 996 policy is a regression which needs to be fought by organized labor, the same way organized labor had to fight (and sometimes die) to get the 8-hour workday.
Do you think its kyriarch's ideas that drive oppression? The corporate egregore hungers for profit, and will squeeze every ounce of value from the world that's not nailed down, ie consciously resisted. The man has already heard of "longer working hours," and the only thing stopping their implementation is our self-respect.
Not just self-respect, law. In particular, FDR's New Deal. 40 hours, overtime, unemployment insurance, social security, right to unionize, and more.
Capital interests have been working hard to erode these over the last 80 years with notable success, but the importance of legislative victories cannot be understated. Early 20th century labor relations were egregious all around the world, and they did not improve because capitalists developed a conscience. Many places went straight socialist. We saw how that went. In America, we didn't need socialism because we had Roosevelts. This worked out better for all involved.
This is the reason why Chinese products are beating everyone else, and it's also a reason why we need to impose tariff on Chinese products made by workers in inhumane working conditions, e.g. 996.
It really isn’t… Chinese products are beating everyone else because their labor costs are cheaper, period. In the case of newer industries like electric cars, because they are heavily subsidized by the state. I won’t get into the debate of whether this needs to be protected against… Possibly, but a very complex topic. According to the article 996 applies mostly to software products where America is still absolute king of the hill.
I don't think this is true? And the trend seems to be down. Looking around me, my car, phone, home appliances, and most of my furniture were not made in China. My Macbook probably was, but I just read that Apple is moving some production to other countries (like Vietnam).
A lot of random things I own like hand tools were made in China, but they tend to be relatively low-technology products commonly manufactured in many places.
I could be an outlier; certainly there are many electronics items (screens, gaming devices, phones, etc) made in China. But it's not obvious that they're "beating" the competition. Would love to see meaningful statistics.
Yep. Labor laws that can be bypassed by outsourcing+importing are a complete joke, this was known when they were passed, and the resulting "compromise" reflects the reality of who was actually in charge. We need to fix this, but we'll have the same opponents as we had before, so it will be an uphill battle.
It would be pretty funny to see Capitalist America twist Communist China's arm into un-fucking their labor relations. The irony would be palpable. Alas, this is going to be one hell of a tough sell in Capitalist America precisely because we are Capitalist.
> Labor laws that can be bypassed by outsourcing+importing are a complete joke,
All labor laws can be bypassed by importing; it's a natural economic consequence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization . Only restrictions on trade can slow the equalisation of wages across two countries.
What's wrong with restrictions on trade? Alexander Hamilton's 1791 Report on Manufactures spells out why they are so damn important, and this line of thinking ruled American policy for the next 150 years. America industrialized itself using protectionism. It's trade liberalization that is the recent anomaly, although it has now run for enough decades that its promise of "better for everyone, honest!" can be evaluated against reality. The results are in: the benefits accrued to capital, who saw a many-fold return on their assets, and the costs accrued to labor, who saw stagnant wages for decades.
If you want the macroeconomics assessed in detail and the usual apologetics evaluated against evidence, I refer you to "Trade Wars are Class Wars" by Klein and Pettis.
Also, I think sleeping at work, taking a nap while waiting for something to run, or waiting on another team are encouraged. Excuse the link drop, but if you want to see some pictures of tents set up for sleeping scroll down to the bottom here:
https://corecursive.com/software-world-tour-with-son-luong-n...
To me, from Son's experience, some of it sounds like giant tech campuses in NA, but with competitiveness and cutthroat performance reviews taken to it's logical extreme.
I'd love to hear your stories if you've worked at ByteDance, Alibaba, or any other similar company. What was it like? What do we get wrong from the outside?
Also your experiences could be a fit for my podcast. Hit me up (see profile).