Comment by dougmwne
7 years ago
Funny. I just read about 996 in a comment on another HN post today. I couldn't believe that schedule could actually exist in Chinese workplace culture so I started doing some research. Sure enough, this hellish schedule is actually quite common and official at major Chinese startups and tech companies. It seems like it's not as common at western companies operating in China. There's even a joke about 007: 0AM-0AM, 7 days a week.
Of course this flies in the face of my own experience that for the majority of people, productivity tops out at 40 hours per week unless it's for very short periods of crunch time. It's odd to see people so burnt out they've lost the self awareness to see that they've stopped adding value with their perpetual motion.
Another funny part is that there are actually a portion of coders who not only agree on but also advocate such 996 culture. One of my roommate is an example who believes it's beneficial to the young workers (for seemingly high salary of course). He's heading to Huawei after graduation.
Bonus part: he doesn't like tech/CS per se. Choosing this profession is purely out of the interest of $$$
In general it’s fascinating how the lack of constraints around time makes for worse code, business processes and tooling: if you can only 35 hours a week (RIP that French labor minister who thought reducing the number of working hours would create jobs) you better automate all that stuff you’d do manually if you could work 60 hours a week.
I mean you don't know that until recently? I'm pretty sure if you ask any Chinese IT worker about this, they probably have some story to share.
BTW, now you know if Chinese programmers are seeking oversea jobs, they are probably not trying to enter your company to steal your techs. No, more likely they're just 996 refugees :)
It's not just tech - lots of jobs require people to work 6 days a week in China.