Comment by pyrale
1 day ago
> I know several top 1% engineers in the Valley who disengage from recruiting processes when 996 or something similar is mentioned.
A few years back, on this board, 996 was something people made fun of when it was reported that some Chinese companies did it [1].
And now, the strongest claim this blog can make is that some engineers in the US would disengage from recruiting? That the issue with working on saturdays is daily standup? What happened in these years for such a change to happen?!
Former Alibaba employee for a season of my life. I have to be careful with my next sentences because on the internet because it's easy for people to read things in a vacuum and interpret in the worse possible way, so don't do that because thats not how I mean it. The 996 hours are not useful work. It's appearance over productivity.
Yep, if you were to watch what happens at a 996 shop, it's people literally living their at-home life with their fellow employees for most of the time.
Why is this theater kept up?
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I've worked with a few coworkers who came from a 996 environment and kept doing it out of habit. As I was young and impressionable, I started doing it also. I'm not going to be careful with my sentence: these people were absolutely NOT getting more work done than others, in fact they seemed to move glacially, because they had so many more hours to fill up. It's a total footgun, and it chases away good people once the rot reaches management and they start promoting based on perception rather than reality.
This has been the case for these setups long before 996 came in vogue. For the extreme majority of people there's an upper bound on what they can actually get done over a period of time. Trying to squeeze more out of that becomes performative.
As a similar anecdote, when I was at university a few decades ago there was one major where students were pretty insular. They were well known for very long hours in their building, some people would stay there a few days at a time even.
Then I had one as a roommate. He kept normal hours. he didn't work any more or harder than any of the rest of us. He explained that in their building it was mostly socializing, parties, and playing around. He went in, did his work, and left.
After that moment I approached it with eyes wide open and saw this play out over and over again in my life.
The mythology is:
- 30 people between the ages of 18 and 25 sharing a tiny, single office room working on folding tables and CAT 7 cables hanging from the ceiling
- Whiteboards from floor to ceiling on every wall covered in scribbles and diagrams in red, black, and blue pen, half-erased with some "SAVE FOREVER" circled parts
- Typing really fast on loud, clicky keyboards
- Doing nothing but coding or working 18 hours/day with no life at all
- Living at work in sleeping bags
- Surviving on cold delivered pizza, hot instant ramen, and coffee with only a mini fridge, a microwave, and a coffee pot
- Spending absurdly little money on everything
The problem is that if even one gigabusiness began vaguely in such a manner, someone will declare some aspect(s) were "essential" and try to cargo cult the "hard work" pseudo-signals without considering sustainability or that it's even necessary. There are far too many engineers who will overwork themselves until they reach burn out or will not maximize real productivity by working less and taking breaks/vacations, and then won't want to work on a venture at all anymore.
PSA: Don't be a sucker and don't work for below market rates. Eschew working for other people and megacorps when possible; form unions, worker-owned co-ops, and/or get significant amounts of preferred liquidation-preference shares.
It’s better to look at what didn’t happen: unionization.
Americans often remind me of Steve Jobs trying to cure cancer using diets & acupuncture. You know what the solutions are, you just don’t like them.
Until recently American engineers made a lot of money at comparatively cushy jobs. A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European nations. Staff+ engineers at FAANG could make 5x that. People in a good position tend to not like rocking the boat.
Not just that, but the union would likely end up capping their salary much lower so the wealth can be spread around. How hard is the 10x engineer on the team going to work when the compensation is the same regardless? This is where people end up working multiple jobs, if they can keep up with their peers only working one day per week.
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I had a job in twenty-nine When everything was going fine I knew the pace was pretty fast But thought that it would always last
When organizers came to town I'd always sneer and turn them down I thought the boss was my best friend He'd stick by me to the end
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay! Ain't got a word to say He chiseled down my pay Then took my job away "Boom" went the boom one day It made a noise that way I wish I had been wise Next time I'll organize
Again see Steve. Something can look like a good position and still rapidly deteriorate.
This one wasn’t that rapid either, you had plenty of warning. I remember discussing inequality with friends in 2014, and probably knew about it since Occupy Wall Street (2011). Or earlier.
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>A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European nations. Staff+ engineers at FAANG could make 5x that. People in a good position tend to not like rocking the boat.
So... 500k is the normal pay and 2.5mil is the staff+ pay, right? How many people you know actually make that?
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Until recently?
Now it's 20x at the AI labs instead of 5x at FAANG.
Still do
There are unionized engineer jobs in the United States. Every time this conversation comes up people act like we don’t have any unions, but that’s not true. There are unionized engineering jobs.
One of them even tried striking a couple years ago, quite publicly. They ended the strike a couple days later without gaining anything.
I think American engineers know their situation and options better than you think.
Exactly how do you think unions would help for tech workers?
Unionization does not happen because it's typically anti-immigrants. It's an unworkable solution, and liking it will magically make it work.
Curious, what do you mean by 'anti-immigrants'?
Steve Jobs was also an expert at suppressing software engineering wages. Karma has a funny way of coming around.
I would tell a recruiter directly that 996 is a red flag.
Prior to that it was cracked (née 10x (née ninja)) engineers or sigma grindset or whatever.
It's performative. If you bring people together to build something that they actually give a shit about, you'll out-perform a group of people who are grinding out of fear. And you'll _definitely_ out-perform the kinds of people who are buzzword heavy.
i agree. but. there's something in the behaviour of these unicorns that should be examined.
the idea that an engineer can be a ninja, 10x or unicorn independent of the processes of their environment and working group is laughable. i have known several people who were identified as "highly productive" and they all had some individual traits like a) they were very good with individual time management, b) were not afraid to say when they didn't understand something and c) were all pretty smart. (and d, knew how to give good code review comments without pissing people off.)
but... they also needed an environment where they could push back and say things like "i do not feel participating in today's 1-on-1 meeting (or meeting with product management) is a good use of my time", where task design gave them chunks of work that were appropriate and they were given the freedom to identify (and avoid) "wicked" problems.
which is to say... i don't think the story of the ninja/unicorn is complete fantasy, but management has to understand how it's real and craft an environment where an engineer's inner-unicorn can emerge.
I've been an early employee (sub 10 and 20) in two unicorns and another (a presidential campaign) that didn't have a valuation but did the equivalent. People did not work 40 hours per week, and I feel comfortable saying that the companies could not have been as successful if people had.
The common threads were:
- incredible ICs
- founders who spiked in the most important areas for that market
- a mission that everyone truly believed in
- a culture of people who deeply cared about one another but were comfortable pushing back (as you said!)
It's incredibly rare to find all of these together. I agree that management is responsible for helping others thrive, but not necessarily that they should shape the environment to fit any engineer. Some people want things (projects, challenges, roles) that don't make sense in that company's context. It's okay, especially when it's hard, to agree that this isn't the place for someone.
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What is a ‘wicked’ problem?
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> And now, the strongest claim this blog can make is that some engineers in the US would disengage from recruiting?
The statement was specifically about top 1% engineers in Silicon Valley. That’s a very, very small subset of all engineers in the US.
The pointy end of the talent spectrum in SV is a very weird place because it has had a lot of engineers for whom work is life. Living at the office and having coworkers working 24/7 might be something they like.
I’m not condoning this or saying it’s common. It’s not common. However, once you narrow down to the extreme outliers in the long tail of talent distribution you will find a lot of people who are downright obsessive about their work. Their jobs also pay north of $1mm including equity, so spending a few years of their life 996ing on a topic they love with energized people isn’t exactly a bad deal for them.
In general, if a recruiter told an average engineer that 996 was expected that would be the end of that conversation. Average US engineers are not signing up for 996 for average compensation.
I am this person (not a genius or whatever) but work is absolutely life for me. I still absolutely resent the 996 culture and would never do that. I'd like to have agency when I want to abuse myself
The fact that 996 is coming to America is an ill omen for worker's rights and, well, society in general IMO.
What happened? Started with Musk purging half his staff ...
I've been around long enough in this industry to see the pendulum swing back and forth a few times. The peak of 2020/2021 was the epitome of "spoiled tech worker" but now we're well on our way the other side, I'd say.
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Sentiment is changing
If you had enough time to look back through my post history, you’ll find back in 2021 2022 I was loud as hell Screaming from as high as I could on this board primarily that we need to be doing everything we possibly could do to unionize, build labor cooperatives etc. and absolutely nobody gave a shit.
I would get roasted every time and that’s fine I know what I’m doing.
but the attitudes are changing and while it’s frustrating to have to deal with that I feel like being a Hector on this topic is just the entry fee.
I’m extremely dissatisfied at the pace and scale and lack of leaders and organization and push back and etc… so I expect the next two years to be really really really bad and the hope is that people wake up at a large enough scale that they actually are able to affect something but I don’t have a lot of hope for that.
What I describe is not real activism imo but at least I can tell you from first hand documentation that sentiment is changing.