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Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

bloomberg.com

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Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#81

Post by _cs2017_ »

rococode wrote: post #41
cjw3 wrote: post #18

It’s interesting to compare the Bloomberg article with this one from the South China Morning Post, titled “Alibaba founder Jack Ma says companies forcing staff to work overtime are ‘foolish’”. Two articles reporting on the same statements and drawing completely different conclusions. It’s getting harder to find the truth. [1]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3006127/alib...

edit: seems like there are contradicting statements from him on this so I'll remove the stuff I had written earlier. It appears he is generally against forced hours but highly encourages his employees to work those hours anyways.

Recently, I have seen multiple Bloomberg articles that were way outside the normal margins of journalistic prose, and far into the territory of clickbait and even misinformation. A while back I thought Bloomberg was a high quality source.

Either Bloomberg got a lot worse; or I was too dumb to realize how bad they were in the past.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#82

Post by rmrfrmrf »

skrebbel wrote: post #78
marcus_holmes wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalists making a story more controversial by tailoring which bits of a speech to quote? How incredibly unusual. Oh wait, no. The other thing. The thing about never trusting anything you read, especially if it was written by someone who has something to gain by manipulating your emotions.

What does a badly paid Bloomberg reporter have to gain by making me feel like Jack Ma is a mean person?

Bloomberg reporters get bonuses for writing stories that affect the market. Seriously.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#83

Post by stuffedBelly »

thetechlead wrote: post #80
stuffedBelly wrote: post #10

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…

Worked at Alibaba. Not trying to defend the company, just offering my observation. They do work much longer hour as compared to most American companies (like Google, I worked at too), even longer than the average Chinese ones. However, 9-to-9 doesn't mean people work 12 hour straight and nobody forcing anyone to stay at work until 9. Chinese work schedule includes 30 minutes to 1 hour extra napping time at noon, and…

The keyword is "voluntary". Alibaba doesn't have this problem but many other companies do. The fact anti-996 has gained tons of attention makes me doubt it's just an immature movement started by a couple of crybabies.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#84

Post by stuffedBelly »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #82
skrebbel wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a badly paid Bloomberg reporter have to gain by making me feel like Jack Ma is a mean person?

Bloomberg reporters get bonuses for writing stories that affect the market. Seriously.

Nope, this is not true (from someone I know who's working at Bloomberg).

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#85

Post by fsloth »

stuffedBelly wrote: post #10

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…

I think you have to compare to this other organizations with up-or-out mentality like the big name consultancies and so on.

The point is not to offer a "sustainable worklife". The whole point is to chew through fresh graduates as fast as you can. They are fuel for the fire. And China has many, many hungry and young graduates.

It's kinda fair to say this out loud. People know what they are getting into. Some people actually enjoy this and thrive in such a high strain environment. The losers are the people who think they have to do this to "prove themselves" and just suffer and burn out.

Those who survive get promoted, and perpetuate the culture.

The only pathology I see is that if people think this is the only way to run a technology company and start aping the practice - which is a likely outcome.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#86

Post by baybal2 »

khawkins wrote: post #46
jedberg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Regulations from whom? The "Communist Party", a regime founded on anti-capitalist doctrine? This is where communism breaks down. The only way to make it work in an economic sense is to turn it into a soulless corporate dystopia. Absent the incentive to work for personal gain, everyone must be motivated to work for the glory of the country through near constant propaganda. Poor performance becomes a sign of anti-gover…

Having spent my early childhood in Russia, I can say you are spot on on the whole sentiment, but work productivity in USSR was below the sea level.

Without objective measurement of work nobody gave a fuck about own productivity — a thing that Jiang Zemin's China stomped out.

China's tech industry is still waiting for the same happening to it. A lot of it still functions like a cargo cult.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#87

Post by guywhocodes »

paulsutter wrote: post #74
ttflee wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, SCMP is owned by Alibaba. This could be interpreted as a conflict of interest to report anything about Alibaba founder in this context.

Shouldn’t that make them even more likely to express his actual opinion?

Should make them most likely to try to please their owner. Whoever gets to write something for Jack that is charitable without even being asked to do has a lot to gain.

I think that what they write has little connection to truth in a situation like this but with that said I have no idea nor do I really care to form an opinion yet.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#88

Post by noname120 »

rococode wrote: post #41
cjw3 wrote: post #18

It’s interesting to compare the Bloomberg article with this one from the South China Morning Post, titled “Alibaba founder Jack Ma says companies forcing staff to work overtime are ‘foolish’”. Two articles reporting on the same statements and drawing completely different conclusions. It’s getting harder to find the truth. [1]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3006127/alib...

edit: seems like there are contradicting statements from him on this so I'll remove the stuff I had written earlier. It appears he is generally against forced hours but highly encourages his employees to work those hours anyways.

This single quote misrepresents his opinion, here are some extra quotes:

> But in a speech to Alibaba staff on Thursday, Ma said the company expected people to be ready to work 12 hours a day since it had huge commitments to its clients.

> “If you don’t work 996 when you are young, when will you? Do you think never having to work 996 in your life is an honour to boast about?” he said in the speech.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#89

Post by kmlx »

lazyjones wrote: post #79
kmlx wrote: post #51

Jack Ma will be surprised to find out that it doesn't matter how many hours you spend at the office. Actual productive activities will total only 2-3 hours per day. So spending 12 hours per day at the office actually means more time for social media, news sites, gossip, etc (i'm not going to dwell on the negative effects of his comments since they're well understood - less time spent at the office = better productivi…

> Jack Ma will be surprised to find out that it doesn't matter how many hours you spend at the office. Yes, the richest self-made man in China will soon be lectured by a random commenter on the Internet about how he got it all wrong.

is this a joke? Jack Ma obviously doesn't read comments off the Internet.

Re: Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

#90

Post by cbsks »

afarrell wrote: post #77
echelon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

996 is fine if you're a founder of a company. It's not okay for ill-compensated workers that will never become billionaires. We don't have much time on this planet. Why should he expect others to be droning slaves for him? People should enjoy what little life they have, not spend most of their time as cogs in a machine.

>996 is fine if you’re a founder Is it? You have production access to the company’s most important relationships. If you’re falling asleep in meetings or just unable to exercise emotional intelligence, that seems pretty bad for the company. EDIT: falling asleep in meetings is bad, not good.

It is. Because then the overtime is completely self-imposed.
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