21–30 of 264 posts
996 sounds like a paradise. We startup founders work 24/7. We are either working or thinking about work related stuff when not sleeping. Not that we don't know work-life balance is good for health, but you just can't stop dwelling on it if you have a devotion.
996 sounds like a paradise. We startup founders work 24/7. We are either working or thinking about work related stuff when not sleeping. Not that we don't know work-life balance is good for health, but you just can't stop dwelling on it if you have a devotion.
Jack Ma's comment on this matter is full of logical fallacy. Forcing employees to stick to the 996 schedule with no overtime pay is not equivalent to someone finding their own passion and work restless towards their own goal. He somehow mixed up these two completely different things while avoided talking about the lack of overtime pay or even basic respect for employees in many corporations. Labeling people who deman…
When the excuse is feeble, it's because it isn't an excuse, it's just an expression of indifference
Leaving aside the questions around the ethics of 996... is this kind of schedule actually effective? Do companies that work knowledge workers like this actually outperform competitors?
I spent a good chunk of my twenties working a schedule of 8 hours coding at work followed by 6 hours coding on a side project, with my entire weekend on the side project as well. I didn't have any sort of social life (largely by choice but also because I was remote working in a tiny rural village). It was massively effective. I wrote a ton of great code. I made enough money to quit working for several years and do a…
Richard Liu almost made this explicit when he stated that people who didn't adhere to it were not his "brothers".
The mystery to me is that if my suspicion is correct, then the CEOs and upper management must think that devotion is ultimately (long-term) more important than productivity is to the bottom line... and I have no idea why. I don't buy the explanation that all of this is just "dumb". Something is up with this.
But I feel this is a moral issue. The thing is, the system of employment is the evolution of plain old fashioned slavery. That is where Ma is coming from. He believes that he owns those people. Class is still a very strong part of global society.
Just look at the etymology of the word 'employ'. It means using something. Earlier it came from
late 14c., implien, emplien "to enfold, enwrap, entangle"
The thing that is really tough about this is that it's a subtle form of violence as the vast majority of people (even programmers) are in fact dependant upon keeping their jobs.
So in fact the forced overtime is forced labor and is a human rights issue.
I think it's going to get worse rather than better because AI, robotics and automation in general are gradually picking up steam.
Maybe we can be optimistic though and imagine a time where using people ("employing" them) is recognized as unethical. Maybe we will have that luxury someday if we have machines that are smart and dextrous enough to replace human workers. That probably won't end class structures on it's own though.
Jack Ma is an idiot for doing this for very simple reasons. It's a country of 1 billion people. His company has 5 billion dollars in revenue, they pay their developers like 30k USD. Burning out your brightest is a stupid business strategy. They can afford to hire many more people as they have plenty of money to afford to do so. It's like some stupid idea of machismo. Like be a man! Yeah fuck that noise. It's in fact…
It sounds like he's really smart. There's a billion people. He can just keep burning them out and there will be more begging to be treated that way. The only way to solve this is with regulations -- this is where capitalism breaks down. With that many people, it won't matter if he burns through them.
Leaving aside the questions around the ethics of 996... is this kind of schedule actually effective? Do companies that work knowledge workers like this actually outperform competitors?
I find 12 hours a day to be too much. And 6 days a week is throwing the mental health of a person off a cliff. I’ve frequently found, personally and observing others, that productivity drops after 6h of continuous work especially if it forces you to think a lot (which is pretty much always in software - you still need to apply your brain to connect the plumbing between APIs) Anything after 6h should either be menial…
Humans only work so many hours a day. Outlier humans who can work more won't waste their talent/superpower at an employer where their extra time isn't compensated.
That's a pretty wild assumption, especially coming from a billionaire, but I guess he needs to justify treating his employees like crap to himself somehow.