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996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

chanind.github.io

11–20 of 146 posts

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#11

> 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…

Apparently tweeting the 996.icu website from the official Twitter Android/iOS clients causes it to refuse to send at all. You don't even need to be in China to see the result, because it blacklists the link globally. It allows the link on web and 3rd party clients, though.[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/copiesofcopies/status/111403968059961344...

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#12

> 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…

To block the 996 Github presence on Github would mean to block Github, as Github is served via HTTPS. That's not viable as Github is far too useful to block (IIRC it and StackOverflow were blocked a couple of years ago but then unblocked due to uproar from the tech industry).

To block Github 966 pages specifically means the domestic browsers are pre-filtering URL requests before they're made. And that means these domestic browsers are pre-filtering all URL requests, HTTPS or not, VPN or not.

Perhaps all forms on pages loaded by these browsers are also being eavesdropped.

Safe to say any secure experience under these browsers is compromised.

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#13
post #6

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?

In Mainland China you have to be really lucky to get such a choice.

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#14
post #6

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?

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.

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#17

> 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…

Apparently tweeting the 996.icu website from the official Twitter Android/iOS clients causes it to refuse to send at all. You don't even need to be in China to see the result, because it blacklists the link globally. It allows the link on web and 3rd party clients, though.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/copiesofcopies/status/111403968059961344...

Why would Twitter censor something like that?

Edit: if this is a glitch from trying to combat bots Tweeting the URL, that just means you can trigger automatic censorship of any URL with a bot farm.

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#18
post #15

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

I think there was a similar thing in USSR: there were no independent workers' unions and a worker in a capitalist country had better chances to protect their rights. There wasn't anything like 996 though and people mostly didn't work overtime.

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#20
post #15

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

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.

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