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Chinese Devs Using GitHub to Protest 996 Workweek (9am – 9pm, 6 days/week)

996.icu

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Re: Chinese Devs Using GitHub to Protest 996 Workweek (9am – 9pm, 6 days/week)

#21

Post by zhte415 »

cjhanks wrote: post #3

Are you a talented dev in China tired of 996? American and EU companies are looking for you.

This. Fortune 500s in China might not pay salaries as high as BATs (20-50% lower) nor sell dreams of being an early engineer at a startup. They do however offer 40 day work weeks with minimal overtime or shift, a good salary (development/tech is one of the highest paid professions in China as in the US), and plenty of work-life time to pursue hobbies/family/projects.

Re: Chinese Devs Using GitHub to Protest 996 Workweek (9am – 9pm, 6 days/week)

#22

Post by 07d046 »

An interesting aspect of this is that this is an online protest on a platform that the Chinese government doesn't control. They normally exercise strict control over their internet to prevent movements from getting out of their control (for example, censoring #metoo when it starts trending). Would the Chinese government be willing to block GitHub? Surely that would be damaging to China's tech industry.

What if people started creating repositories with nothing but information about topics that the Chinese government considers sensitive (like the Tiananmen Square massacre or other human rights abuses)?

Re: Chinese Devs Using GitHub to Protest 996 Workweek (9am – 9pm, 6 days/week)

#23

Post by thatfrenchguy »

dougmwne wrote: post #11

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…

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.

Re: Chinese Devs Using GitHub to Protest 996 Workweek (9am – 9pm, 6 days/week)

#25

Post by judge2020 »

07d046 wrote: post #22

An interesting aspect of this is that this is an online protest on a platform that the Chinese government doesn't control. They normally exercise strict control over their internet to prevent movements from getting out of their control (for example, censoring #metoo when it starts trending). Would the Chinese government be willing to block GitHub? Surely that would be damaging to China's tech industry. What if people…

They've censored the entire website in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China

Re: Chinese Devs Using GitHub to Protest 996 Workweek (9am – 9pm, 6 days/week)

#30

Post by Arcantium »

ceohockey60 wrote: post #16

This self advocacy is encouraging and long overdue IMO. The Chinese colloquial term for developer is "码农". Its literal English translation is "code peasants" -- not the most flattering or respectful way to call software engineers. I've recently heard horror stories, where 9-9-6 is no longer enough inside one of the Chinese tech giants, and 10-10-7 is expected (10am-10pm, 7 days/week) I hope this brings about some pos…

Why not just 9-9-7? Was there any reasoning behind starting and finishing at 10? Its still a 12 hour day.
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