You cannot ask staff to be on afterburners constantly for weeks or months on end. It damages the engine.
996
251–260 of 561 posts
Re: 996
#252China's 996 or 007 work schedule is created by desperation. The root problem here is that almost all good industries in China are already cake-spliced by the powerful and privileged, leaving very little for the private sector to compete. As result, every tested and true way to reach profitability is a combat in the bloody sea, which in turn caused the hellish schedule.
So, if you see a SF start up founders started praising 996 schedule, keep a watchful eye, make sure those founders are not in similar desperation.
Also, Elon Musk loved China schedule, I don't really see Twitter improved much since.
Re: 996
#253Programming is simply becoming glorified low-skill job.
Re: 996
#254996 is just theater for investors. Saw this happening even at YC companies. There was always that stupid expectation of overworking, staying until 9. The reality is that people twiddle thumbs. And the disorganization and micromanagement power plays are enough to negate any additional worked hour. This ranges from pure disorganization in terms of what to build to having 3 hour meetings with the whole fucking company w…
> 996 is just theater for investors. Investors who have not heard of the research into productivity that says long hours have no significant benefit for skilled work? Who have not heard of diminishing returns? Who have no experience of the reality of working long hours themselves?
The market for this is people who are convinced that the research only proved most people are lazy and unproductive. Surely these wiz kids we’re backing are too jazzed about their startup dreams to have their output decrease after the first 24 hours of constant caffeine and hacking.
Re: 996
#255I also don't agree that any employee should have to work as much as the founders.
But one point that needs to be made: You don't need to sacrifice your health to run a startup. You can get your 8 hours of sleep and exercise every day and still run your startup.
This notion that you have to get 3 hours of sleep and ruin your health is simply a choice - don't do it.
Re: 996
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's comical that the browser use guy tweeted "crazy salaries, 996" and the highest salary they offer is $320k. In SF.
SF or not, that is 5x the US median wage. There's people in the US that would suit up in gladiator garb and fight to death in an arena for that pay.
Sure, but they don't have the absolute most sought-after skills at the peak of the AI bubble? That's the issue. The dude is asking for 996 to work on an LLM/Patchright wrapper library that also works in the cloud. And with these skills, you can get twice or more at more mature corporations.
Technically, they are also writing their own CDP implementation now.
Why work for less if you can work for more, with a better work-life balance?
Re: 996
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 'tax the rich' crowd loves to quote the top marginal rates from 50 years ago; but did anyone ever really pay those rates? Tax shelters were common in those days with the rich paying accountants and tax attorneys to find ways of avoiding those astronomical rates.
Some people tried to evade the system - that’s why we have helicopters. We can just grab them and bring them to court, no problem. I don’t think “some people didn’t abide the rules” is reason not to make sensible laws.
Yeah, sure, helicopters is all you need to catch millions of sophisticated tax evaders using semi-legal loopholes developed and implemented by professional accountants and lawyers.
Read about Laffer Curve for a start.
Re: 996
#258Back in 1999 in SF, at the peak of dotcom boom, a few startups located down South from the Market street would shutter down their entrances after around dinner time. All people still inside, working over night. I had two of my friends (actually colleagues - we were from a consulting firm) working at those places. It became a norm around that place and youngsters loved that kind of all-nighters. The new year eve of mi…
Young people tend to enjoy the grind more because they 1) don’t have a social life yet, 2) don’t know what “productive” looks like, so they confuse grinding with progress
Re: 996
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because for at least half of the 72-hour workweek, most employee will mentally checkout Management seeing this and doing the calculation: “if they’re gonna be checked out half the time, we’re really only getting 36 hours of the 40 we’ve been promised.”
Introducing: 9117 The latest innovation in Management (unlocked with the power of AI)
you get yourself a PIP for doing 9-11-7 in some Alibaba teams.
they question the “work enthusiasm” of those who leave office by midnight.
Re: 996
#260These times really do feel like those once-in-a-century redefinitions of work and labor, similar to how we got Child Labor Laws and 40-hour work weeks from the labor movement early last century. Intrinsically, more people are realizing that the former social contract was long ago fed into a shredder, and that the lack of a formal contract will have consequences. Technology broke down the 40-hour work week by enabling…
We probably need to rethink how companies are structured - there are (many) companies with revenues greater than most countries but are (in theory) dictatorships with no official ability to change course if the one guy who owns the shares does not want to. Who is the ‘demos’ in a company? Who gets a vote ? Will voting really slow things down?
> here are (many) companies with revenues greater than most countries
IS that true? What do you define as the revenue of a country? Tax revenues? That is just the government. GDP/GNP/GNI? That comparison for that should be profit, and only a handful of really big companies (Saudi Aramco, Apple, that sort of size) have a profit as large as the GDP of mid-size middle income countries (e.g. Sri Lanka) or small rich countries (e.g. Luxembourg). There is a long tail of small or poor countries so most countries by number, but most people live in a country with a GDP that is an order of magnitude or two greater than any company's profit.