
Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress - eplanit
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-tech-labour/opting-out-some-of-chinas-996-tech-tribe-quit-seek-less-stress-idUSKCN1SM0HX
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drchewbacca
Personally I can't do more than 2-3 hours of genuine "deep work" per day. That
is high quality, focused, immersed thinking on a difficult problem and writing
code.

IMO people who work a large number of hours each week get cognitively slowed.
They can't tell they've slowed down (partly because they don't have a control
to compare against) and so think that if you do 80 hours per week you'll do
twice as much as if you do 40 hours per week. You won't, you'll do less.

Executives who think the best way to measure business performance is by how
much your employees are sat at their desks are idiots.

~~~
dcolkitt
Intuitively and introspectively I agree with you.

But then I ask myself, where are all the successful 30-hour week companies?
Why is it that nearly every single successful organization has a culture of
long hours?

I personally know that I can't sustainably work 10+ hours a day. But the
observed results in the real world seem to say something different.

It's hard to square that circle, and I'm genuinely interested in anyone who
has insight on this.

~~~
foobarqwertz
Looking at the games industry where passion stands for self exploitation. If
you don't push back most employers will take everything they can get.

~~~
hackerbabz
But the question is, what do they get?

Would they develop products faster if the employees worked less?

~~~
_iyig
What if they don’t? What if crunch works, at least in the short term, for the
employer? Does any criticism of crunch time necessarily hinge on productivity?
Does the health and well-being of individual employees warrant sufficient
concern by itself to scale back working hours?

~~~
CalRobert
The pattern seems to be :

* Get a new job at game studio * Start off OK-ish, then get pushed to crunch more and more as release date nears and then slips (probably by design) * Release game * lay off most staff * They're broke for a while but the time without work is nice * Repeat

I can't find a source but I understand the average length of a career in the
industry is 5-6 years. Also, I couldn't help but notice at my last place that
those of us doing more general work (python, data engineering, etc.) were a
hell of a lot more relaxed than those with video-game-specific skillsets
(Unity3d).

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crispyambulance
Can anyone from China who has worked a 996 provide an account of what the work
is like?

Do they have heavy PMP-managed work with meeting paralysis or is it just
sitting at your desk and being expected to magically perform, or is it just
sitting around doing nothing and not being able to leave?

All of those are their own types of hell, but they're all different. What are
they doing in those 12 hours?

~~~
whoevercares
Not a direct answer, but most Chinese had undergone tougher hours and more
dreadful win-or-your-life-is-screwed college examination pressure during high
school. I was in a class where the morning session started from 5:30am and the
day ends around 9pm(and we have full Sat and Sunday morning). Just imagine how
mentally tough Chinese is when 1 point left you 10+k behind in regional
ranking.

So honestly 996 means nothing for a lot of people (esp new grads). Even though
there are protests now, I’m pessimistic it’ll shake anything eventually

~~~
viscanti
Cumulative stress is cumulative. One doesn't recover from burnout with more
burning.

~~~
on_and_off
you need to experience it yourself or see someone close to you going through a
burnout to understand how crippling it is.

Some people I know where unable to get anyway near code for years after a
burnout.

Another person gained deep seated anxiety that they are unable to get rid of.

~~~
viscanti
Right. The idea that someone can become tougher by subjecting themselves to
stress is silly (or at least misguided). That path leads to burnout which is
crippling. It doesn't lead to tougher people who can keep burning themselves
even more. They just hit a wall where they aren't capable of much of anything.

~~~
whoevercares
I mostly agree, I do think the limit is higher for Chinese, but it’s not
infinite

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rb808
I know a lot of Korean and Chinese school kids who cram study until late and
night and that is just normal. I suspect 996 isn't that weird to many young
Chinese developers because that is what they've done their whole lives. 9pm is
probably an earlier end than when they were doing homework.

Even in the US now children are getting more and more homework and stressed
out about getting into the most prestigious universities. If that is normal
when growing up, spending all your time in the office is just more of the
same, except you get paid more than everyone else so society loves you too.

~~~
HansLandaa
In Korea they actually passed a law banning private prep classes after
midnight. And there are "raids" to stop the students from studying! The
mentality there is very different from the US

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Aromasin
On a somewhat related note, I'd love a set of those pictured sleep capsules at
my office. I've taken to running to my car to catch a quick 20 minute snooze
during my lunch break, but it's way too bright, I'm uncomfortably sleeping
sitting slightly upright, and I've got to have the windows open in a noisy car
park. Having a cool, dark, dedicated sleeping pod would be much more
civilised.

~~~
copperx
Having an office with a door that closes solves that problem too. I have one
and take naps on the floor with a yoga mat and a pillow I bring from home on
my lunch break. It's sad that most workplaces are still "open." Even when I
was a grad student I took naps on my library cubicle. Cubicles would be a step
up from the warehouse setup of most workplaces.

~~~
Aromasin
That would be wonderful, but my company has fully embraced the 'open office'
idea. Even upper management have offices that are completely windowed. All
this setup seems to achieve is to provide on open door for people to ask
questions that could be done over email, interrupting work flow every couple
of minutes so no one gets anything done.

The best chance I'd have of finding a place to nap in private would be finding
a crate of packing peanuts in dispatch and hoping I get shipped off to France.

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ddeokbokki
> heavyweights such as Sequoia Capital’s Mike Moritz highlighted it as a
> competitive advantage over the United States.

It's an issue when the so-called tech heavyweights don't understand the basics
of worker productivity in the industry.

~~~
_iyig
What if 996 work hours do, on average across a large population, make workers
more productive? When they burn out, they are easy to replace. Would this
justify such a work schedule?

EDIT: This post is not in support of 996. Does anyone do Socratic dialogue in
comment threads anymore?

~~~
notfromhere
At some point productivity just isn't worth it when it leaves you workers with
like...one day a week to live. What a bleak and pointless existence.

~~~
_iyig
Yes, that's what I was driving at.

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tylerFowler
I worked at Ant Financial for a time (startup acquihire) and spent some time
working in offices in both Beijing and Hangzhou. As an American 996 was
surprising but also doesn't quite live up to it's name, or at least not at Ant
afaik.

In practice the typical "996" day would usually go something like this: \-
~9:30 - 10am Arrive, commutes could vary as you might imagine \- 10 - 11:30am
Morning meetings, usually a team stand-up or two \- 12 - 1:30pm Lunch,
typically 1.5 hours \- 1:30 - 7pm Most work is done during this period, with
some meetings later in the day \- 7 - ~8:30pm Team dinner, sometimes in the
office and sometimes at a nearby restaurant* \- 8:30 - 9/10pm People start to
leave

* - I was a visitor in the China offices so that could've affected how long we spent at dinner or how often we actually left the office for it

On top of the large breaks it was fairly common that the work day was filled
with breaks and naps and such, so I didn't really observe people actually
working for much longer than most western offices but it did tend to increase
the bonds of teams by keeping them together for the entire day. As for working
Saturdays... I asked various colleagues about it and was told that it was
rare, only when it was absolutely necessary to ship something on a set
schedule.

Another thing I found interesting was that our office in the US had Tue/Thur
work from home days and when folks from the China offices would visit they
were just as surprised as I was when I first heard about 996. Some of them
asked me how I would get any work done from home or how management could
enforce it. In general I saw that management in China placed a lot of value in
office time even though the levels of productivity seemed to match it even
less than in western offices.

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freddy418_sc
I question the whole premise of this article. The use of "some" in the title
also seems incorrect when just one person actually quit. The person also quit
to go to an industry where all she has to do is charge rent, in other words,
she quit to go do nothing. I think that another perfectly reasonable
explanation is that her quitting had nothing to do with the stress of whatever
'996' job she had. She quit because she didn't want to work.

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AFascistWorld
High-paying and comfortable jobs(government jobs, state-owned companies; for
example you need to bribe like 30K usd to stay in the military and get
promoted) in China are reserved for people with connections, even then they
hardly have to do anything if show up at all, there's a hierarchy, those who
don't need to work and those who have to work extra.

So while the examples in this story sound good, but majority of people don't
really have a choice.

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throwaway_63679
The funny part is that one VC firm proudly names their podcast “996 podcast”:
[https://996.ggvc.com/category/podcast/](https://996.ggvc.com/category/podcast/)

Talk about out of touch

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nickthemagicman
I love how there's tons of hype from leaders to have employees work more hours
but not so much hype to PAY THEM MORE.

It's just your DUTY?

~~~
sushisushisushi
It makes sense when you understand that those at the top really don't view the
rest of us in the same terms that they view each other. We're not accorded the
same hopes, dreams, desires, needs, etc. They're special; we're not.
Everything they do, morally speaking, proceeds from that premise.

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instabird
This is the biggest reason why I didn't return to China after university even
though I really wanted to. 996 is clearly violating the labor law, but big
companies' spokesmen can publically admit they will enforce 996 without any
major backslash.

The fact that 996 has become a norm among business lines is REALLY terrifying.

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commandlinefan
Is stress the right word? I get stressed when I can’t figure out how I’m going
to get my bills paid or when I’m stuck in traffic and there’s a meeting I’m
trying to get to. Working long hours isn’t _stressful_, it’s exhausting. I’ve
done the unreasonable peer-pressure driven long work hours thing before and I
just want to go to sleep and I’m frustrated that everybody is just demanding
more and more out of me.

~~~
leesec
Sounds like stress to me.

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alphagrep12345
Is 996 completely new though? Wall Street folks, associates at law firms, and
employees at early startups in SV all work crazy hours.

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deehouie
This' another example of the current wide-spread anti-China sentiment. It
suggests only Chinese firms inflict such inhuman work demand on their
employees. Totally not true. Stressful work condition is the norm in Silicon
Valley, it's the norm on Wall Street for years. Investment bankers start their
day at 5:30am and don't go home till 10pm. Some need to follow foreign markets
and stay even later than that.

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stevenwliao
3 anecdotes and a single untargeted statistic isn't much. Reuters should dig
deeper.

