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Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

reuters.com

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Re: Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

#61

Post by viscanti »

whoevercares wrote: post #19
crispyambulance wrote: post #9

Can anyone from China who has worked a 996 provide an account of what the work is like? Do they have heavy PMP-managed work with meeting paralysis or is it just sitting at your desk and being expected to magically perform, or is it just sitting around doing nothing and not being able to leave? All of those are their own types of hell, but they're all different. What are they doing in those 12 hours?

Not a direct answer, but most Chinese had undergone tougher hours and more dreadful win-or-your-life-is-screwed college examination pressure during high school. I was in a class where the morning session started from 5:30am and the day ends around 9pm(and we have full Sat and Sunday morning). Just imagine how mentally tough Chinese is when 1 point left you 10+k behind in regional ranking. So honestly 996 means nothin…

Cumulative stress is cumulative. One doesn't recover from burnout with more burning.

Re: Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

#62

Post by instabird »

This is the biggest reason why I didn't return to China after university even though I really wanted to. 996 is clearly violating the labor law, but big companies' spokesmen can publically admit they will enforce 996 without any major backslash.

The fact that 996 has become a norm among business lines is REALLY terrifying.

Re: Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

#63

Post by freddy418_sc »

I question the whole premise of this article. The use of "some" in the title also seems incorrect when just one person actually quit. The person also quit to go to an industry where all she has to do is charge rent, in other words, she quit to go do nothing. I think that another perfectly reasonable explanation is that her quitting had nothing to do with the stress of whatever '996' job she had. She quit because she didn't want to work.

Re: Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

#64

Post by leesec »

commandlinefan wrote: post #60

Is stress the right word? I get stressed when I can’t figure out how I’m going to get my bills paid or when I’m stuck in traffic and there’s a meeting I’m trying to get to. Working long hours isn’t _stressful_, it’s exhausting. I’ve done the unreasonable peer-pressure driven long work hours thing before and I just want to go to sleep and I’m frustrated that everybody is just demanding more and more out of me.

Sounds like stress to me.

Re: Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

#65

Post by tynorf »

hackerbabz wrote: post #40
foobarqwertz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the games industry where passion stands for self exploitation. If you don't push back most employers will take everything they can get.

But the question is, what do they get? Would they develop products faster if the employees worked less?

This article seems to indicate that they would at least develop better games if the employees were not subjected to "crunch". https://gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150120/234443/The_G...

Re: Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

#66

Post by notfromhere »

_iyig wrote: post #56
ddeokbokki wrote: post #36

> heavyweights such as Sequoia Capital’s Mike Moritz highlighted it as a competitive advantage over the United States. It's an issue when the so-called tech heavyweights don't understand the basics of worker productivity in the industry.

What if 996 work hours do, on average across a large population, make workers more productive? When they burn out, they are easy to replace. Would this justify such a work schedule? EDIT: This post is not in support of 996. Does anyone do Socratic dialogue in comment threads anymore?

At some point productivity just isn't worth it when it leaves you workers with like...one day a week to live. What a bleak and pointless existence.

Re: Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

#67

Post by _iyig »

notfromhere wrote: post #66
_iyig wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if 996 work hours do, on average across a large population, make workers more productive? When they burn out, they are easy to replace. Would this justify such a work schedule? EDIT: This post is not in support of 996. Does anyone do Socratic dialogue in comment threads anymore?

At some point productivity just isn't worth it when it leaves you workers with like...one day a week to live. What a bleak and pointless existence.

Yes, that's what I was driving at.

Re: Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

#68

Post by on_and_off »

viscanti wrote: post #61
whoevercares wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a direct answer, but most Chinese had undergone tougher hours and more dreadful win-or-your-life-is-screwed college examination pressure during high school. I was in a class where the morning session started from 5:30am and the day ends around 9pm(and we have full Sat and Sunday morning). Just imagine how mentally tough Chinese is when 1 point left you 10+k behind in regional ranking. So honestly 996 means nothin…

Cumulative stress is cumulative. One doesn't recover from burnout with more burning.

you need to experience it yourself or see someone close to you going through a burnout to understand how crippling it is.

Some people I know where unable to get anyway near code for years after a burnout.

Another person gained deep seated anxiety that they are unable to get rid of.

Re: Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

#69

Post by crucialfelix »

JohnFen wrote: post #51
matz1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how ?

Because it eats up more of your day. For me, anyway, short breaks aren't really helpful -- they just serve to derail my "flow" and cause lost time as I ramp back up afterwords. I'd much prefer working straight through and then have a larger single block of time off.

If I'm excited and grinding towards one goal then it's hard to get myself to stop.

But often I'm solving architecture or features and I get blocked trying to solve or make risky decisions. That's the time to go for a walk. Then the relaxed brain drifts around the problem and solutions pop up.

Re: Some of China’s '996' tech tribe quit, seek less stress

#70

Post by tylerFowler »

I worked at Ant Financial for a time (startup acquihire) and spent some time working in offices in both Beijing and Hangzhou. As an American 996 was surprising but also doesn't quite live up to it's name, or at least not at Ant afaik.

In practice the typical "996" day would usually go something like this: - ~9:30 - 10am Arrive, commutes could vary as you might imagine - 10 - 11:30am Morning meetings, usually a team stand-up or two - 12 - 1:30pm Lunch, typically 1.5 hours - 1:30 - 7pm Most work is done during this period, with some meetings later in the day - 7 - ~8:30pm Team dinner, sometimes in the office and sometimes at a nearby restaurant* - 8:30 - 9/10pm People start to leave

* - I was a visitor in the China offices so that could've affected how long we spent at dinner or how often we actually left the office for it

On top of the large breaks it was fairly common that the work day was filled with breaks and naps and such, so I didn't really observe people actually working for much longer than most western offices but it did tend to increase the bonds of teams by keeping them together for the entire day. As for working Saturdays... I asked various colleagues about it and was told that it was rare, only when it was absolutely necessary to ship something on a set schedule.

Another thing I found interesting was that our office in the US had Tue/Thur work from home days and when folks from the China offices would visit they were just as surprised as I was when I first heard about 996. Some of them asked me how I would get any work done from home or how management could enforce it. In general I saw that management in China placed a lot of value in office time even though the levels of productivity seemed to match it even less than in western offices.

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