
996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening - chanind
https://chanind.github.io/china/2019/04/10/github-996-china-digital-workers-rights.html
======
_air
Previous discussion around the 996.icu website:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620)

------
saagarjha
> At the time of writing, the 996 website isn’t blocked in China, but greedy
> tech companies have decided to block it themselves. Tencent’s Wechat refuses
> to open the site, as does Alibaba’s UC Browser and Qihoo’s 360 browser.

This is what you get when you give companies to power to censor information…

~~~
redwall_hp
I've been saying this for years: censorship, like many things, has been
privatized. Things like the First Amendment in the US are inadequate for the
modern age, because the majority of our discourse touches multiple
intermediary businesses on its way between individuals.

There is no "just herpderp yourself" when communication and publication in our
digital society involves information coming in contact with a handful of
middlemen who can tamper.

~~~
zorked
Hmm, mass communication wasn't easy back in the time the First Amendment was
written and the problem was "we don't have enough free communication". You
could just as well argue that it wouldn't exist if written today.

There were never practical limits on 1:1 communication even in the worst
dictatorship because you can't have a policeman in every house. The first
amendment was always about public discourse.

~~~
indigo945
You can't have a policeman in every house, but you can have an Amazon Alexa.

I think the privatization of surveillance is much scarier than the
privatization of censorship. To escape the latter, I can just visit my local
library, whereas the former is growing at such alarming rates that it might
just make that impossible very soon. The chilling effects are real.

~~~
Frqy3
This is exactly the problem.

Imagine if every single law on the books is enforced 100% of the time. No
leeway, no margin for discretion.

~~~
unityByFreedom
No country does that, they just set examples of people who break draconian
laws, which is effective as long as you don't count all the people trying to
leave the country.

------
wenbin
Some Silicon Valley VCs seem to love 996.

\- An article from VC
[https://www.google.com/search?q=mike+moritz+ft+996&ie=UTF-8&...](https://www.google.com/search?q=mike+moritz+ft+996&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-
us&client=safari) (first result; paywalled, but okay to read via google search
results)

\- A 996 podcast from VC [https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/996-podcast-by-
ggv-capi...](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/996-podcast-by-ggv-capital-
ggv-capital--QaJrlmxpS1/)

Edited: update the FT article url

~~~
mintplant
The FT article is paywalled, but accessible if you search the title and click
through via Google.

It's as sickening as one might expect. One more thing to think about the next
time the VC crowd decides to remind us of the supposed evils of unionization
and labor movements.

------
girzel
The term for this strategy is "collateral freedom":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom)

~~~
est
And collateral freedom converges to no freedom. That wikipedia page used to
have list of available working "domain fronting" list, and not it's all gone.

People seems don't to remember Github was blocked several times in China
before. Each time the developers united to file complaints to central
government to get it unlocked.

Still today all gist.github.com is blocked. http is blocked. God know when
will github be totally blocked.

~~~
ZeikJT
That wikipedia page never had any domain fronting lists according to its edit
history. It does and seemingly has always had a link to the Domain Fronting
page in the "See also" section. Looking over the Domain Fronting page I also
don't see any proof in the edit history that any list has been removed.

Maybe you were confusing these two for a different page that still exists?

------
president
I would like to see something similar in the U.S. Unfortunately, I don't see a
path to resolution anytime soon, both for U.S. and China. In the past 20
years, I have only seen society become more and more corporation-friendly.

~~~
tiredyam
... we do not have the same problems. Every single software engineer I know
does not work 996 even if they work at a fast-paced startup

~~~
baroffoos
I don't even understand what the point of 996 is. I work normal hours and I
find by the last hour I'm mentally done and I become totally unable to do
anything more, staying extra hours would get nothing extra done.

~~~
njepa
There is no point other than opportunism. The same reason kids were working in
textile mills last century and why housing costs are multiplying now in the
western world.

~~~
baroffoos
But a greedy company acting purely in self interest wouldn't want this because
you are getting less productivity by making sure your employees are constantly
tired and never getting anything done.

~~~
hrktb
To get the full picture you need to shift perspective and see humans more as
resources. When a resource doesn’t produce enough anymore it gets replaced.

~~~
ndnxhs
How can you possibly develop a product when none of your developers have been
around for more than a few months?

~~~
Ericson2314
If the entire industry is less productive, it's not a business problem.

Overworked employees a probably cheeper per hour too.

------
apatters
For those of us who employ developers remotely and ask for a sane number of
hours per week (usually 40), does this mean there's an opportunity to hire
great developers from China who would like to have better work/life balance?
Where would I start?

~~~
swuecho
I think hacknews is good place. the barriar is english. chinese developer who
visit hacknews pass the english requirement and usually are interested in
software development.

~~~
swelz
I agree. I work for a Chinese company in Shenzhen. There are a few software
developers I cannot speak with face-to-face, but almost all are decent through
text and patient enough when I need clarification. And if they are actually
visiting sites like HackerNews, or contributing to StackOverflow they likely
are more than proficient enough to work with.

Just be sure to double check their comments and documentation to be sure it's
readable. My coworkers have always appreciated when I've helped make their
stuff more readable.

------
ComodoHacker
Slightly more readable companies blacklist (website URLs extracted):
[https://pastebin.com/rP4YHr0s](https://pastebin.com/rP4YHr0s)

Huawei is #1, with hours even worse, labeled as "9106". Alibaba is #2. Xiaomi
is also there.

------
seanmcdirmid
When I visited in 1999, my friend’s mom had to work on saturdays, and pretty
late everyday at that. This mostly went away but popped back up in Chinese
tech industry for recent times.

Many Chinese tech companies even have time cards for salaried employees to
make sure they are in the office enough, as well as cheer leaders and such to
keep them motivated past dinner time.

------
nomercy400
I didn't know they had a phrase for long working hours until I read this.

I have done 996 for a while in china, and it wrecks your social life, as now
all of a sudden you have no free evenings and only one day in the weekend to
balance fun stuff with weekly chores. Meeting friends outside of work is
nearly impossible. Also, when near a release, expect to 'give your best' for
the company and work on sunday as well.

You do however get 2-hour lunch breaks (i.e. nap time for your chinese
colleagues), and about half a hour for dinner which you can also get at or
near work.

------
gpickett00
Wow, that's a brutal work schedule. Hard to believe it's the norm. Isn't there
enough demand that tech workers could elect to work elsewhere if their
employer enforces this?

~~~
munk-a
I was never on a schedule this bad but when I was doing regular overtime (~52
hrs/week, the worst weeks coming in at 60) I found that my work drained me
physically to the point where I just lost all ability to enjoy my life and
do... anything - I just sort of collapsed through a work day into the next
work day with a blearily remember transit ride and face-stuffed-with-pizza
home time between it. As one of the two back-end developers I put my foot down
regarding more OT and got out of that job as soon as I had a solid
alternative.

My life is not a way to transform calories into money for someone else,
nobody's should be - stand up for your rights.

~~~
bendbro
+1 for "tranform calories into money," it brought me a small chuckle.

~~~
narag
That was an old joke with caffeine instead of calories.

I worked seven days a week for two months. We were paid double salaries and
some perks, but no amount of money would have convinced us to keep that
schedule longer. It was absolutely crazy.

------
jialutu
The working hours is one thing. What I am most curious about is does more
hours being put in mean more/better work output; ie does the 996 work culture
actually means a higher output, even if by a slight margin?

Personally my opinion is that coding is not like the assembly line where more
hours mean more things that's produced, but more lines of code can mean
absolutely nothing (sometimes can even be a negative). However, looking at the
recent progress in China, I am wondering what percentage of that is attributed
to the 996 working culture, or is it to do with something else?

~~~
NotPaidToPost
9am-9pm really is the period of presence in office. It's always that way in
countries where the stats show high "working hours".

It is also traditional in Chinese work culture to have a nap after lunch,
which provides a break and helps with staying later. Dinner is also usually
early (6pm) so 9am-9pm days mean a lunch break and a dinner break.

Working 6 days a week has been quite standard in Asia. I remember Korea moved
to 2-day weekends only a few years ago, and it's hard to change work culture.

It's probably also compounded by the fact that in China there is no day off
for shops, restaurants, banks, etc. Everything is open 7 days a week by
default, which is great as a consumer but probably means pressure on staff.

~~~
jialutu
So a 40 hour work week does not mean 40 productive hours. Let's say that you
are only truly productive at a flat rate of 40% of your work time, then 40
hour work week means 16 productive hours per week, whereas 996, 72 hours a
week means 28.8 productive hours per week.

Now my question is, is the assumption of productive hour ratio real or does it
start high and end low? And if my assumption of the flat productive ratio is
true, then does it actually yield any good results?

~~~
NotPaidToPost
> Let's say that you are only truly productive at a flat rate of 40% of your
> work time

That's not the case. Hourly productivity decreases at some point.

The law of diminishing returns is at play here. Working longer hours leads to
higher overall output up to a point as the marginal increase diminishes.

Then, at some point you are too tired and produces bad software that will cost
to fix.

If your employer pays you a flat rate then it is profitable to make you work
long hours up to the point when you start screwing up. If they pay you by the
hour or if they pay you overtime, rationally they shouldn't push you beyond
the point where your hourly output is too low to justify your pay.

~~~
jialutu
Look, I completely understand what you are saying, because it's something I
believe as well. However, what I am trying to find out more is whether this
belief is correct or not and whether anyone has done any actual studies.

~~~
NotPaidToPost
This is the way it is. Anyone who's worked in the industry (or any industry?)
knows from experience that this is the way it is. I'm sure that there are data
available.

A quick Googling for "productivity vs hours worked" led me to this:

[http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2013/10/hours-worked-
an...](http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2013/10/hours-worked-and-
productivity/)

~~~
jialutu
Unfortunately there are quite a few problems in the report: 1\. it measures
productivity by GDP, which itself is not a great measure 2\. it compares
Greece vs Germany, and fails to mention that they rely on completely different
industries; Greek - agriculture, Germany - manufacturing

But what we are talking about here specifically is the software development
industry, where quantity does not always mean quality. So herein lies the
problem that potentially a lot of our beliefs that "more hours worked means
diminished return" could just be based on bad data analysis.

------
powerapple
There is a reason why companies cannot just lower employee's salary and hire
more people instead of pushing people to work more time: that is, once you
give people these option, people will go to choose to work for companies with
higher pay and more overtime. That's a choice. There is a reason your salary
is a lot higher than any other people, and there is a reason it is a
developing country.

------
netrus
Interesting observation from Germany: I have encountered some reports about
996 in main-stream media in the past weeks. However, the spin was that Chinese
workers are proud to work 996, or demand not to work MORE than 996 - in
essence: Brace yourselves Germans, the Chinese people will crush you with
their productivity.

~~~
adventured
> in essence: Brace yourselves Germans, the Chinese people will crush you with
> their productivity.

996 isn't a matter of productivity (other than perhaps indicating
exceptionally poor productivity). Productivity is closer related to how much
output you generate in a given unit of time.

Brace yourself Chinese, the Germans are smashing you when it comes to
productivity with their $48,000 GDP per capita and 30 hours per week of work.

A balanced mixture of high value output and quality of life (fewer hours
worked) is the ideal. If China had an epic GDP per capita, it'd be worth
considering the merits of how they're doing things. As it is now, they're
still losing horribly. The premise properly should be that 996 dies - it
becomes an absurdity, a relic of development - as they push up the economic
ladder. If they can't escape the middle income trap, that may never happen.

------
bartimus
Go ahead, China. Why wouldn't you block Github?

------
valgaze
Triangle Boy...

[http://www.webrant.com/safeweb_site/html/www/tboy_whitepaper...](http://www.webrant.com/safeweb_site/html/www/tboy_whitepaper.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TriangleBoy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TriangleBoy)

------
sfotm
Do Chinese workers not have the flexibility to avoid working for companies
that force these schedules on them? I know next to nothing about working life
in China, but wouldn't workers generally gravitate to the companies that value
work/life balance?

Is working for these companies just worth the prestige for some?

~~~
fasthandle
Yes, and no. IT development is one of the best paying professional jobs in
China, commanding 3x to 8x a typical office worker's salary.

If you have skills, experience, or for a fresh graduate an interest, in what
in the US would be considered a mainstream enterprisy (Java, Angular, .NET)
and passable English or Japanese language skills, you can get a position in
development with a Fortune 500 or as a contractor to a F500 without too much
difficulty. Normal 9-6, 5 day work week, public holidays plus 10-15 days
discretionary holiday per year, stability over fast-pace, middle class income
(8,000 Yuan per month for 0-2 years experience, 20,000 per month in a Tier-2
city for 5 years experience; for reference rent for a newish 2 bedroom
apartment within 20 minutes walk to the office would be about 3000 Yuan per
month).

The BATs (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) pay more, 2x or 3x, and are the glamorous
places for fresh grads to work. Good luck getting in though.

Want-to-be BATs are probably the worst employers. They lack the pay and
prestige of BATs, lack the stability and sane working culture of F500s, and
tend to have terrible management that lack conviction and realistic goals.
Without a BAT or F500 early in one's career, it's hard to break away from
want-to-be-BATs.

I know nothing about Games development, so no comment there.

There is a big age ceiling. 15 years experience doesn't pay much better than 5
years experience and will often be met with questions about why not able to
move into product ownership of management, but that's another topic. Working
in a Tier-1 city will mean rents are way higher, purchase of property probably
unattainable, and wages probably less than double those mentioned above.

I hope that answers part of your questions.

~~~
Roark66
>There is a big age ceiling. 15 years experience doesn't pay much better than
5 years experience and will often be met with questions about why not able to
move into product ownership of management, but that's another topic.

Is product ownership or management seriously considered a better job in China?
At almost all places I worked at in EU middle management/product ownership is
considered a less desirable position.

------
echevil
Well, if the work culture in China's tech industry improves after this, it's
time to seriously consider moving back to China :)

------
xiaoyafeng
Actually, I don't think github is proper place to discuss workers rights.
First if China gov block Github eventually, The whole programmer in china
would lose a good place to share, learning knowledge. Second, In China,
programmers are looked as mid-class, what most of them earn are as ten times
as what other persons who work at other area earn. we can't because they speak
loudly, then think they are right. they 996 just because they earn much more.

~~~
anoncake
> First if China gov block Github eventually, The whole programmer in china
> would lose a good place to share, learning knowledge.

Good. Oppression should make a country less succesfull.

------
ezoe
> Ironically, given that China is a communist country, workers’ rights
> movements and unions are extremely uncommon

mind-boggling.

~~~
ePierre
China is not a communist country, it's a “communist with Chinese values”
country. I don't know what it means, but every time the topic is brought on
the table, this is the official stance from the Chinese Communist Party.

I guess it means you owe loyalty to whatever authority you get: father,
teacher, employer, emperor. Respect them, or they will crush you.

~~~
whooshee
China was a pure communist country before the reform.

To keep the name, they had to attach it to a different interpretation.

when it comes to respecting the authority,

「王侯將相,寧有種乎!」is a pretty common value to Chinese people. can be partially
translated as "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the
gentleman？--John Ball".

~~~
peteretep
> "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman？--John Ball"

Could you take another stab at translating or explaining that?

~~~
ezoe
The quote was from this historical event in 秦, China.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazexiang_uprising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazexiang_uprising)

The people who was drafted for army was moving to the designated place. But
due to the flooding, it is obvious they can't reach the place by the deadline.
The penalty to miss the deadline is, by any means, death.

By facing the certain and unfair death penalty ahead of them, they decided the
uprising. Saying.

王侯將相寧有種乎, "The king, loads, generals or ministers, Is there the seed for
them?(no it isn't)"

In the end, they(the leaders, 陳勝 and 呉広) couldn't complete the the revolution.
But the uprising movements continues and 秦 era was ended soon after.

------
ratling
I don't see this going anywhere. Anyone seriously pushing this will just be
replaced. Chinese companies will probably take the US approach and just
ignore/cover up the whole thing, or make some handwavey pithy gestures.

I'd love to be proved wrong, but I doubt it.

------
number6
China is a communist country - shouldn't be the workers rights one of its top
priorities?

~~~
est
China has their own definition of "worker" e.g. Party members with some
engineering background.

------
xiaoyafeng
I don't think github is proper place to discuss workers rights. First if China
gov block Github eventually, The whole programmer in china would lose a good
place to share, learning knowledge. Second, In China, programmers are looked
as mid-class, what most of them earn are as ten times as what other persons
who work at other area earn. we can't because they speak loudly, then think
they are right. they 996 just because they earn much more.

