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

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

#61

Post by xster »

discordance wrote: post #42

I collaborated on a project with developers at QQ a few years back and here are a couple of anecdotes: 1. A 32 year old (!) developer I was working with one-on-one from QQ had a heart attack two weeks before, but was pressured (while in hospital) to come back to work as soon as possible. 2. At the QQ office, I watched an entire group (50+ developers) have a nap heads down at their desk after lunch. If any developers…

> Leave your company, take your colleagues and start one with better conditions.

That company would last a month in China's gladiatorial business environment. It's not individual companies whimsically deciding to abuse the workers. It's the general intensities of the Chinese market (where you can't just invent something, file a patent and rest and count cash).

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

#62

Post by lauraluowei »

whoisjuan wrote: post #6

I always had a question about hiring Chinese engineers remotely. Is it easy to handle salary payments to China and will the Chinese Firewall interfere with any web development activity they have to do? Is anyone here doing it?

We can find method to solve the Firewall，for example，Shadow Socks or buy some vpn service。For openweb。

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

#63

Post by bota »

discordance wrote: post #42

I collaborated on a project with developers at QQ a few years back and here are a couple of anecdotes: 1. A 32 year old (!) developer I was working with one-on-one from QQ had a heart attack two weeks before, but was pressured (while in hospital) to come back to work as soon as possible. 2. At the QQ office, I watched an entire group (50+ developers) have a nap heads down at their desk after lunch. If any developers…

nap heads is normal

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

#64

Post by 4faramita »

Arcantium wrote: post #30
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.

Because you will be leaving at 10 or even 12 anyway, this way you can work for 3 hours more everyday

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

#65

Post by geezerjay »

uranusjr wrote: post #47
discordance wrote: post #42

I collaborated on a project with developers at QQ a few years back and here are a couple of anecdotes: 1. A 32 year old (!) developer I was working with one-on-one from QQ had a heart attack two weeks before, but was pressured (while in hospital) to come back to work as soon as possible. 2. At the QQ office, I watched an entire group (50+ developers) have a nap heads down at their desk after lunch. If any developers…

That heart attack incident is terrible. The nap part, however, is not particularly concerning. Nap after lunch is encouraged in the Chinese culture, and schools have a dedicated “noon nap” slot. Your Chinese coworkers likely nap not because they are so tired they have to, but because they and everyone else have done it their whole lives (and why not, napping feels good).

> Your Chinese coworkers likely nap not because they are so tired they have to, but because they and everyone else have done it their whole lives (and why not, napping feels good).

...unless institutionalized scheduled napping was established to extact just a tad more of energy from overworked servants.

Just saying.

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

#66

Post by teknologist »

It's often not a conscious decision to adopt a "996" schedule but just happens anyway in Chinese tech firms.

I remember visiting the Alibaba campus some time ago and they had devs sleeping in tents in the office at 8pm on a weekend. Their boss proudly told me that he was making them all stay to have them finish a feature he wanted shipped the following week.

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

#67

Post by teknologist »

pcr0 wrote: post #41
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…

> online protest on a platform that the Chinese government doesn't control False (for Chinese residents). China used to block GitHub but stopped doing that when they realized they could politely ask GitHub to block access to certain pages from Chinese IPs. [0] [0]: https://qz.com/718465/chinas-fierce-censors-try-a-new-tactic...

Interesting. I'm curious about whether the time they hijacked Baidu Analytics to launch a huge denial of service attack against GitHub was considered "politely" asking or not.

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

#68

Post by rememberlenny »

gaotongfei wrote: post #38
rememberlenny wrote: post #9

This kind of expression helps humanize the otherwise distance created between the Chinese development world and the otherwise Western portrayal. A few thoughts from my experience living in China. When living in China, I didn't see any appeal in the overworking culture. Most developers with families worked normal hours. People who were single made time to spend time with friends. I didn't see the overwork ethic it in…

I work in Shanghai, my first full-time job as a Rails developer was more than 2k dollars a month(I was just graduated with only a little development experience), and I think that's about the average in Shanghai.

Good to know. My experience there was approximately 8 years ago. Im curious how much base salary has increased.

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

#69

Post by zachguo »

rememberlenny wrote: post #9

This kind of expression helps humanize the otherwise distance created between the Chinese development world and the otherwise Western portrayal. A few thoughts from my experience living in China. When living in China, I didn't see any appeal in the overworking culture. Most developers with families worked normal hours. People who were single made time to spend time with friends. I didn't see the overwork ethic it in…

The salary data is way outdated. All of my developer friends who returned to first-tier cities in China earn >4k USD per month. Even nannies generally earn more than 2k USD per month, it's hard to survive in tier-1 cities with 1k USD per month.

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

#70

Post by 594kJ »

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…

Another funny part is that there are actually a portion of coders who not only agree on but also advocate such 996 culture. One of my roommate is an example who believes it's beneficial to the young workers (for seemingly high salary of course). He's heading to Huawei after graduation.

Bonus part: he doesn't like tech/CS per se. Choosing this profession is purely out of the interest of $$$

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