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China Businesses The Almighty Buck The Internet Technology

Some of China's '996' Tech Tribe Quit, Seek Less Stress (reuters.com) 116

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An increasingly growing number of millennials in China are beginning to question the value of working long hours in the tech sector and deviate from the longstanding 996 work environment (working 9am to 9pm for six days a week) that many local companies religiously follow. From a report: In April, protests from tech employees against excessive overtime surfaced online, sparking an equal pushback from industry magnates such as billionaire Jack Ma of e-commerce giant Alibaba. The protests point to a mindset shift in the tech industry, whose penchant for long hours has been praised by Western executives as a reason for China's economic rise. But the shift could also have a cost for tech firms, venture capitalists and analysts say. According to job-hunting site Maimai, the tech sector was the only industry out of thirteen surveyed to see more people leave than join between October 2018 and February 2019.

"One of the highest costs in an organization is high employee turnover. A culture that is less focused on hours put in, may also become more effective if the focus is turned to output versus input," said Rui Ma, a San Francisco-based investor who has funded startups in China and North America. For some companies and employees, working 996 became a badge of honor and Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Sequoia Capital's Mike Moritz highlighted it as a competitive advantage over the United States. But a 996 backlash surfaced publicly in April, when a group of programmers launched an online protest against the practice.

Supporters published a crowdsourced list of companies that engage in long overtime hours, which included big tech names such as Baidu, Tencent Holdings, and delivery service app Ele.me. The protest prompted a public debate about work hours in China's tech industry, and spurred reactions from at least 10 Chinese tech moguls, including Ma, who initially defended the practice. Chinese state media said 996 violated the country's labor laws, which mandate an average working week of 44 hours.
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Some of China's '996' Tech Tribe Quit, Seek Less Stress More

Some of China's '996' Tech Tribe Quit, Seek Less Stress

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  • Surprise corporations: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you overwork people as a matter of practice at their jobs, they will quit and find places where they can make livable earnings without slaving themselves into misery and physical debilitation! Who would have thought?

  • Never again.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 16, 2019 @09:49AM (#58602498)

    Went to HR after I worked 25 hours on a single shift due to an outage. All they cared about was if I hit 40 hours for the week. I've literally been cornered in meetings by managers telling me I couldn't leave, they wouldn't move until I started calling 911. Managers were from India.

    Gave my notice and left. I am not a slave. I'm sure they backfilled the position too.

    • I worked 40 hours straight to meet a deadline, informed HR and took three days off. My boss was pissed that I didn't show up for work at 9AM the next day. He did complain to HR but HR was pissed at him for allowing me to work 40 hours straight. The payroll system didn't allow entering 40 consecutive hours.

    • Re:Never again.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by rgmoore ( 133276 ) <glandauer@charter.net> on Thursday May 16, 2019 @12:10PM (#58603246) Homepage

      This kind of thing is why California's labor law requires overtime pay to start based on the hours worked in a single day. If you work over 8 hours in a day, you start getting time and a half. After 12 hours in a day, you get double time. There are exemptions for workers on a 10/4 or 12/3 schedule, but they still get overtime if they're forced to work beyond their scheduled work day. It's effective at forcing employers to consider the length of the work day rather than just the work week.

      • There is the law and then there is reality. I work 12 hour shifts and I don't get paid anything except single time if I pick up another shift or break 80 hours in the two weeks.

  • I once worked for a CIO who... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Thursday May 16, 2019 @09:50AM (#58602508)
    ... was of the opinion that more time in the office equaled more productivity. I was not able to convince him that an exhausted mind is the big killer of productivity for Engineers, that an Engineer does not necessarily need to be sitting at a desk in the office to be thinking about the project. The CIO was unconvinced, resulting in a high turnover rate and lowered productivity in the Engineering department.

    • Sadly there are many who carry this mindset while largely ignoring the turnover situation.

      • Think like a manager.

        The turnover "situation" is not an embarrassment for them, but time overruns on projects are. If the workers are only putting in 40/week, then you dont get the cover excuse "we already had em working 72/week, what can you do"

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by rgmoore ( 133276 )

          If the workers are only putting in 40/week, then you dont get the cover excuse "we already had em working 72/week, what can you do"

          If line managers think this way, it's a problem with upper management. The people at the top are supposed to know better. I suspect this reflects an underlying problem with Tech in general and Silicon Valley specifically: lack of competent upper management. Most small tech companies are founded by people who know the technology but not management, and those people often remai

          • If line managers think this way, it's a problem with upper management.

            Upper management are the ones that set the unachievable deadline.

    • Re:I once worked for a CIO who... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 16, 2019 @10:03AM (#58602584)

      I'm of the firm opinion that this stems from a type of ego centrism which is prevalent in most of society. Okay, I think I should dial that down and rephrase it a little...

      The gist of the argument is "If it works for me, it should work for everyone" Regardless of how their situation is different.

      A CIO, CEO, or any VP/upper management type, will carry this belief that people in the office are more productive because THEY are more productive in the office. Talking to other people in the company is the primary focus of their job. So since that's what THEY need to be productive, they believe it follows that's what everyone else needs.

      A manager holding a meeting is a manager doing their job. A Worker in a meeting is a worker NOT doing their job. This distinction is one that escapes management, and the higher they climb up the corporate ladder, the harder it is to see it.

    • What I hate about this long shift mentality is that, particularly in fields like programming, there's a degree of creativity involved. There were times when I really could do a ten or twelve hour session. I was on fire, code was flowing from my fingers like butter. But just as often it was a horrible slog. Things weren't working right, I was screwing up, and maybe just not conceptually in the right place. Just sitting there and mindlessly hitting keys to make it to the end of the shift would just burn me ou

      • The issue is shitty management, and how hard it is to quantify output vs time-in-chair. Especially in a field like programming, quantifying output is tough. Lines of code isn't all that hot, since less code doing the same thing is better in most cases. Hitting project milestones isn't either, because so much depends on the initial scope of work, customer clarity, scope changes, etc.

        Businesses are afraid of getting sued, and as they get bigger and bigger they become more and more risk-adverse. A good manager

    • That was his productivity metric? Hours in the office? How did such an utter moron of an asshole ever become CIO?

  • It is not as if it doesn't happen here. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Thursday May 16, 2019 @09:54AM (#58602528)

    I see a lot of people around Silicon Valley doing 777 let alone 996. The lure is to get ahead somehow, build up a huge stock valuation, sell for a big exit, then easy-street or play VC from there on in.

    Maybe 1 in a 1000 make it this way. But that culture trickled down and if you want to be a "team player" it is expected.

    Moral: Overwork is a sure sign of a failed business model. (quote from Tanya Degurechaff).

    • As long as you'll get a reasonable cut of the company's success when it sells or goes public, that's fair enough.

    • Re:It is not as if it doesn't happen here. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Thursday May 16, 2019 @10:26AM (#58602708) Journal

      I see a lot of people around Silicon Valley doing 777 let alone 996.

      The company I just left had an interesting "Core Value", which said that "if your people are routinely working overtime, then your company is fundamentally broken."

      I can't imagine working more than 40 hours a week unless a) I got massive overtime pay, and b) I really, really wanted to work that much. My goal is to work as few hours as possible while maintaining my standard of living. Anyone who slaves away at work to the detriment of their free time should probably reexamine their priorities.

      The fact is that no one ever died wishing they'd spent more time in the office.

      • When my father was working, he'd bring a stack of work home every night to do after dinner. Over the weekends, he had a bigger stack. I once asked him why he did this because he wasn't being paid overtime. He answered that his employer expected this level of work from him. I answered that the employer only expected it because he provided it.

        When I joined my present company (some 18+ years ago), I told them that - apart from the occasional emergency (e.g. a vital server crashed) - I'm leaving my work behind

    • I'd rather buy lottery tickets. You stand similar chances of striking it rich, and you can still have a life.

    • Moral: Overwork is a sure sign of a failed business model. (quote from Tanya Degurechaff).

      I'm off to see the movie in 30 minutes!!! :-)

  • Huh (Score:5, Funny)

    by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 ) <mike@mikesmYEATS ... n.com minus poet> on Thursday May 16, 2019 @09:56AM (#58602534) Homepage

    If only the Chinese lived under a system that was focused on the rights of the worker.............

  • 996 is 75% wasted time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday May 16, 2019 @09:59AM (#58602560)
    I have visited tech companies in China. I have seen people sleeping at the desk, obviously streaming shows, playing games and so on. Most of that 996 is a wasted time. Actually, a lot of 955 is also wasted time, in tech, where you have to stay sharp to think, you are productive a lot less time than 9 to 5.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Falconnan ( 4073277 )
      Yeah, but I'm not sure what that actually reveals. There have been studies suggesting that long work hours are actually detrimental in general. This stuff is still fairly soft on the numbers, but essentially putting more people to work and shortening the work week in the long run might be a good move for society across the board. But it's also telling that China is at least in theory trying to limit hours. Process that: At least on paper, China is now more concerned about its people than the US. Given histo
    • Hear, hear. My experience in South Korea and China in the late 90s was very similar: lots of guys spending long hours at the office, but many of them doing all sorts of things - including openly napping - other than working. I suspect that this penchant for keeping people in the office for long hours is just another symptom of an upper management that is aware of its general uselessness, in an effort to justify their otherwise unjustifiable jobs, and to let their underlings know that they - the managers wit
    • I've seen this a lot in China, not just in tech companies. I've had natives there brag about how they are "qin lao" aka diligent, but most of the time they aren't doing anything. Employees are still relatively cheap there so businesses can afford to overstaff. I've seen tiny retail stores with three or four employees lounging around all day.

  • Good for them. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Thursday May 16, 2019 @10:01AM (#58602574) Journal
    There's a lot to be said for enthusiasm, loyalty and dedication to one's job... up to point. And as long as the company reciprocates. Perhaps that is what Ma meant.
    But he missed the mark comparing himself to regular employees, and sounded as if he was saying: "I worked tirelessly and long hours to make my multi billion company a success, and I think you ought to do the same... that is: for you to work tirelessly and long hours to make my multi billion company a success". If you pay someone regular wages, you ought to expect regular hours and effort from them, you can't expect the zeal and dedication of a founder from someone who has no tangible stake in the company's success (other than continued employment).

    Of course that's no excuse for being lazy either: you should definitely try and apply yourself to becoming more successful. But on your own terms, and for your own sake, not because the boss demands it.
  • I feel like I work too much already with 50-60 hour weeks. Quality of life sucks and I can't imagine working more than that. Let's not even mention work away from work that has still has to be done also... People work their youth away to what retire at an old ass age where you can't really do anything anymore except rot away in a chair? No thanks! Being able to travel, spend time with my family, and create memories outside of work while at an age that is enjoyable is priceless.

    • Cut your hours. Cut your expenses. Save/invest half your income and retire in ~15-20 years. I am 41, kicking myself I didn't set this at a priority sooner and now on track to retire at 47.

  • 996 is great for a culture that considers human lives to be of less value that cheap livestock. Use them up, burn them out, and toss them side because there's always more knocking on your door.

    • Yeah, 996 worked great here in the US until ___ (hint: 1863).

      China is headed for a civil war.

      • lolz, 996 isn't slavery, and you are ignorant of labor history in the USA if you think the USA flavored 996 stopped anytime in the 19th century

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        Yeah, 996 worked great here in the US until ___ (hint: 1863). China is headed for a civil war.

        What did the US Civil War have to do with long work hours? Work hours had been on the decline in the mid 1800's, and the reduction didn't accelerate in the decades after the war. Weekly hours were at around 70 in the early 1800's, lowered to the low-to-mid 60's by the civil war, and were down to just under 60 by 1900. The first three decades on the 1900's are what ushered in the 40 hour work week, and then the 1930's brought the Fair Labor Standards Act which enshrined it into law. Although even there you h

    • Even China is going to run out of people to stomp on to achieve ridiculous productivity quotas. China's already been down this road during the Great Leap Forward. You can make any production schedule you want, but if it isn't rooted at least somewhat in reality, then eventually you will run out of hamsters to turn the ridiculous wheel you've built.

    • Who cares how much time was put into your device? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Thursday May 16, 2019 @10:28AM (#58602728)
      Whenever you use a product, do you care about how many hours the creator put into it or how well it works? In the US, 20 years ago, people bragged about long hours in tech jobs and that stopped long ago. The longer you work, the less productive and creative you get. Ultimately, programming and most tech jobs are creative problem solving jobs.

      As others pointed out, those that work the longest hours are usually putting on theater. It sounds cool to say you stayed in the office until 9pm, but I guarantee you that most of those people are goofing off or doing subpar work. I think a programmer has 6 productive hours a day if they're fully rested and had a good night's sleep. The quality you see in pull request goes down tangibly the longer the person works. Commits done after 5 (when the work begins after 5) have more mistakes and are much sloppier than commits done at 3pm.

      I've personally worked all night on something, spending 6h to create a feature only to realize after a good nights sleep that I could have done the same work in 30 minutes....and then spend an hour the next day undoing what I did the night before and doing it the right way.

      The mark of an experienced programmer is how small the pull requests are. Good programmers spend a lifetime learning and building knowledge so they can solve a problem quickly and efficiently, usually by reusing existing libraries. Shitty ones rewrite everything and spend all night doing it. The best programmers deliver their work in 6h days and don't work weekends because they did the job right the first time.

      If simply putting hours in was the key to success in technology and industry, America and Europe would have been dethroned by Asia long ago. People still buy American laptops and phones running American software and drive German cars. They play American video games created on engines built by Americans running on American chips. Westerner companies value productivity, effectiveness, and creativity over merely working long hours and thus they have been able to thrive despite the onslaught of Asian companies that have vast pools of cheap and hardworking labor.

  • Democracy comes to China ... (Score:3)

    by CaptainDork ( 3678879 ) on Thursday May 16, 2019 @10:24AM (#58602690)

    As the middle class expands, people want leisure time to mitigate mandatory time. The Chinese are moving past subsistence living and entering the consumer phase. Money is not much fun if your disposable income is only good for one day's play time.

    Also, the Chinese government had a lot more control when the population was isolated from the West. Try as they might, the flow of external information is encroaching and the People are looking around at all the cool kids.

    The communist country stepped on their dicks when they began tolerating capitalism. Money feeds independence.

    • The communist country stepped on their dicks when they began tolerating capitalism. Money feeds independence.

      I don’t know about that - it sounds like their transition from communism to authoritarianism is going pretty smoothly...

  • I'm done with that craziness (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Thursday May 16, 2019 @10:33AM (#58602760)

    Tech companies, especially in this Second Dotcom Bubble we're in, rely on a constant supply of new grads who are happy to work these kinds of hours. They lure them in with a college campus atmosphere (so not much changes from when they graduated) free food, all-encompassing social schedule and stock options.

    For most people, this gets old after a while. Some stay on forever, but most break out and start having a life that doesn't revolve around work. I can sort of see doing this for short periods working for a startup where you're virtually guaranteed a millionaire-level payout...but at least in US work cultures most people can't keep this up for long stretches. I know Japan and Korea have insane work cultures where you don't leave before your boss does and you have to go out partying with your coworkers after spending the whole day with them, so I'm surprised China is experiencing this.

    It's not too surprising though...this bubble's crop of new grads are getting older and wiser. It usually takes a couple of jobs before you learn to set limits on your time. I'm married and have 2 kids -- no 90 hour weeks for me. I live near NYC and could easily get a job at a law firm or investment bank that has work schedules like this -- and get paid a ton more than I am now -- but I don't. I'd never see my family after commuting back and forth and working 10-12 hours a day. Between actual work time and studying/reading, I'm averaging 42-45 hours a week and fine with the trade-offs that entails.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jebrick ( 164096 )

      Tech companies, especially in this Second Dotcom Bubble we're in, rely on a constant supply of new grads who are happy to work these kinds of hours. They lure them in with a college campus atmosphere (so not much changes from when they graduated) free food, all-encompassing social schedule and stock options.

      For most people, this gets old after a while. Some stay on forever, but most break out and start having a life that doesn't revolve around work. I can sort of see doing this for short periods working for a startup where you're virtually guaranteed a millionaire-level payout...but at least in US work cultures most people can't keep this up for long stretches. I know Japan and Korea have insane work cultures where you don't leave before your boss does and you have to go out partying with your coworkers after spending the whole day with them, so I'm surprised China is experiencing this.

      It's not too surprising though...this bubble's crop of new grads are getting older and wiser. It usually takes a couple of jobs before you learn to set limits on your time. I'm married and have 2 kids -- no 90 hour weeks for me. I live near NYC and could easily get a job at a law firm or investment bank that has work schedules like this -- and get paid a ton more than I am now -- but I don't. I'd never see my family after commuting back and forth and working 10-12 hours a day. Between actual work time and studying/reading, I'm averaging 42-45 hours a week and fine with the trade-offs that entails.

      I would mod this up if I had points.

      It is so true. I worked for a company that like to act as a startup but treated it workers exactly like that. They did not want you to have a wife/husband but if you did you should not have kids and if you did have kids your SO should stay home with them. Basically you were expected to work at at least 70 hours a week. I left after a 100+ hour week. They had a 30+% turnover rate and would just keep hiring the recent college grads.

  • six hours a day (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nw_rad ( 904914 ) on Thursday May 16, 2019 @10:51AM (#58602846) Homepage
    I am retired now, but I have had a long and successful career as a developer. I found I became much less productive if I tried to put in over six hours a day on design or coding. I read about people putting in long hours (death march developing) and wondered if there was something wrong with me. So I talked to other developers and found they had the same experience. Bosses forced people to work long, unproductive hours, to impress upper management. The time was mostly wasted, and left the developers tired and less productive for days after the death march was over. In fact some of my most productive sessions have been three or four hours when I was rested enough to really focus. As a supervisor, I noticed that some of my people didn't realize how unproductive they became after working eight hours, and I has to order them to take a break. The idea that more work hours in a day equals more productivity is a major fallacy in our work culture.
  • The 996 principle is a throwback to the times when slavery was an accepted and natural part of the social structure. Jack Ma is an asshole, and may he rot in hell for pushing this principle.

  • Mike Moritz is talking B.S. (Score:3)

    by Martin S. ( 98249 ) on Thursday May 16, 2019 @11:39AM (#58603094) Journal

    I've worked at the coal face of software development for 20 years. I'm at my most productive when I'm well rested and enthused and not under the whip.

    Software development takes a lot of mental effort and unless you're completely in zone and working your volition pressuring extra hours reduced the overall productively, introduces more bugs, more missed features and the amount of refactoring.

    My view is supported by academic research, we can manage about 6 hours a day of high mental effort and productivity. We can keep this up on a day in day out basis. Uping that by even a couple hours a day quickly reduces the peoples capacity over the medium term.

    • ...and unless you're completely in zone and working your volition pressuring extra hours...

      At this point in my life, I don't even find that to be worthwhile. I suck at figuring out when I'm mentally fatigued. I know when I'm totally exhausted, but there's a period where my quality of work starts taking a nosedive and I don't realize it until later.

      Now at quitting time I make some notes about where I'm at and where I'm going, and head out the door. Half the time I come in and pick up where I left off, and half the time my brain chewed on it overnight and I realized that I wasn't on the right trac

  • I do seven twelve hour days in my job. But, after two or three months of work, I get a month or two off. I'm happy with the trade-off. When I work, I'm doing nothing else. When I'm off, I have my free time in a big enough chunk that I can do something with it. I don't have romantic attachments or children. It's a little more hit and miss with those of my coworkers who do.

  • For some companies and employees, working 996 became a badge of honor and Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Sequoia Capital's Mike Moritz highlighted it as a competitive advantage over the United States."

    Yes. It is a no-brainer that it's a competitive advantage to have people working 72hr work weeks. And paying them peanuts to do so, too. But why stop at 72 hours? Slave labor is also a competitive advantage, too. We (mostly) discourage that in the U.S. though it doesn't stop some management teams from t

  • While some do not like the 996, it's key issue, other than fried egg optical design, is the M96's faulty intermediate shaft. Although the distribution of this problem has been overblown (pun intended) by the Internet, the failure of aforementioned component would result in a catastrophic and costly loss. Best of breed examples of the model line employed a Metzger and did not suffer this possibility. However, the market takes all this into account and one is thus able to acquire a great specimen for a very r

  • With that kind of hours, it damn well better for your own company.

  • Happened in most industrialized nations over the centuries. In China however, it's a different story. The people belong to "the state" and have effectively NO RIGHTS. Can't see a few million people striking, with no way to defend themselves from the government. Oh, they might make some protests, but, the "central party" loves their power and control over the people, not to mention their lavish lifestyle, so this will go no where, UNLESS the entire nation stops working at the same time and refuses to work.
  • Everyone should have at least 8 hours of sleep, and at least 8 hours of relaxation - to make food, spend time with kids or whatever. That leaves 8 hours for work. It's a simple formula for a better, but not ultimate, happiness.

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