996
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996 Culture
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The article discusses the '996 culture' in China, where employees work 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week, and the HN discussion revolves around the ethics and sustainability of such a work culture.
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996 for a business owner or top exec at a big company? It’s the norm. And the risk-reward makes sense to them.
It's bad anyway. These people burnout and start making dumb moves to bail out sooner.
Actual craft tasks like writing code tho? Definitely a recipe for burnout and shittier output, yep.
As a coder, you can accommodate downtimes on that schedule. You also see the result of your work (even code compiling is a dopamine hit). None of that exists if you’re meeting customers and investors - you’re playing the odds all day long and have to be 100% on all the time.
A ceo trades time and peace for money, and that is arguably difficult in it's own ways. But that doesn't make it work in the same way that what you and I do is work. These people do not work a 100 hours a week. They live charmed lives that also happen to often be exhausting.
But it is the reality the collective chose. I fully expect things to get worse before they get better.
In a sense this isn't even materialist: you are chasing numbers in an account for their own sake. A materialist wants things, and might sacrifice everything else to get them, but doesn't want to do the work for its own sake.
Ultimately this is feeding the ego, the least material thing of all. And I can't actually fault people for that; in the end what else do we have? But even an egotist needs to be able to ask themselves, "am I in fact feeling what I want to feel, or have I missed myself?"
There are certainly those who want the ego rush of feeling like they've worked as hard as they possibly can and taken every chance to show off their skill. But we've fetishized them, and even if they are happy, it often won't achieve the same for us.
Working a substantive job contributing positively to the work is among the most important and fulfilling things one can do with their life, alongside raising a family
This was never literally practiced.
But excessive hours were the norm. And I loved it. It helped me launch into a successful career.
But it hurt my relationship with my partner (now wife), and it burned me out.
I miss those days, but I don’t miss what they did to my health.
I've done the 36-hour straight work grinds, and working from 10 pm to 6 am for multiple days a week. However, I'm tired of doing that, and I've experienced enough burnout already. I'm also not okay with doing highly skilled work for more than 40 hours a week for pay that is almost demeaning—in the range of 35-45k a year. I'm more okay with it at a startup because at least the pay isn't THAT bad at more established ones with multiple rounds of funding. Just like the author, I have people in my life I'd rather devote time to because they bring be happiness. I'd like to have the savings to do practical and important things, such as do on vacation (which I find immensely good for my mental health), buy things for my other hobbies, and buy a house and have enough money to raise kids.
At least in Switzerland, I've heard your coworkers look down on your for NOT taking breaks and leaving at 5. The stipends are a bit nicer. Maybe it's worth it there. Maybe it's worth it anyway because the lack of CS jobs now will translate to requiring a PhD in the future. Maybe I should go through the extended hazing ritual known as a PhD because a startup's work won't be as technically rewarding as a PhD (the only person I know who wanted to do a PhD is now at a startup).
I still don't think the way we want people to work like this is okay. Sometimes I am a 996, but I sure don't want to be one when I need an extrinsic voice screaming into my ear to keep going because I'm not allowed to take a break.
There are several European countries offering PhD programs for Non-Europeans and I bet there will be more soon, seeing as the US is somewhat problematic with science currently.
Worth a conderation, maybe? "The most important step a man can take is always the next one." :))
Switzerland does actually seem to have stipends that if transferred to the US, could allow me to return with some US-acceptable levels of savings. The only other option is getting big tech internships at a US PhD, which seems to be advisor dependent.
Tbh, I was so poorly paid that going to the university on Saturdays wasn't so bad as they had better air conditioning and heating compared to my apartment!
It is still bad, though. The lab should impose maximum hours, because it does nobody any good if you get out of it burned out.
If you love what you do (artist, self-employed, etc.) a 996 culture can be considered a good thing as a certain amount of "good" stress allows us to feel self-actualized.
As is a 996 culture that provides for work-life balance. For example, working from home with flex time for 12 hours where you get to take long breaks whenever you feel like it to run, walk the dog, eat, get coffee, etc., is quite enjoyable as well. Who cares if you're still replying to emails at 7pm if you can do this, right?
Added note: I find it very interesting that this was immediately downvoted. I'm interested in understanding why for those who wish to share their rationale and perspective.
- People simply disagree with you, especially this line: “Who cares if you’re still replying to emails at 7pm if you can do this, right?”
That might work for you but I imagine it left a sour note for some because emailing involves entangling other people into your personal hustle. This can perpetuate “work for show” (especially if you have any power or influence). If you want to silently code into the night and save all the evidence of this for the next morning, that’s one thing. Visible evidence of constant work can be very stressful and draining to others, however.
- HN leans left, weekend HN even more so. This whole thing can feel like “shit you do because we live in a ruthless society that only cares about money”. I don’t agree with the modern left on many things, but I’m definitely coming around to this one. It was - though perhaps in a slightly different context - the original Leftist-owned meaning of “woke”. It’s the idea that you suddenly wake up to the shitty sewer water you’ve been swimming in all your life and look around astonished at everyone else, who all seem to think it’s a perfectly clean and clear place to swim. I suspect some of your downvotes are because of this.
So, in short: you’re entitled to your opinion but it’s phrased as a bit of a lightning rod for those whose values deeply conflict with your own.
For me, the big problem in your post is the "996 culture". That means the expectation is that everyone is pushing forward with a similar intensity. Now, perhaps you were talking specifically about individual efforts given your examples of artist and self-employed, but when I think about culture, I think about groups of people, and in that context 996 is problematic.
It only provides work-life balance if there is not much of a "life" to balance, where taking a break once in a while is fulfilling enough. Maaaaaybe this can work in your early 20s, but it basically removes anyone with kids, hobbies, outside interests and responsibilities, and really, anyone with life experience out of the equation. It is a highly exploitative culture, sold under the guise of camaraderie, when anyone who has gone through one or more hype cycles can tell that the majority of these startups will fold with nothing to show for them other than overworked, cynical individuals and another level of normalization of exploitative practices.
Because it overlooks the dynamics of power distribution.
When there’s a big discrepancy in power, the needs of one party feel justified, and the needs of the other feel like a whim.
Flexibility favors the employee, if and only if it is added on top of explicit office hours. Otherwise, it’s just vagueness that benefits whoever makes the decision of how you should fill them (i.e. your boss).
Something will eventually have to give, if we aren’t proactive in addressing the crises before us. Last time, it took two World Wars, the military bombing miners, law enforcement assassinating union organizers, and companies stockpiling chemical weapons and machine guns before the political class finally realized things must change or all hell would break loose; I only hope we come to our senses far, far sooner this time around.
(To be clear, a university professor in pre-Socialist Russia is very well off compared to most, and except for the for a lucky few the October Revolution treated them accordingly.)
When America was strongest, we had a large and increasing middle class, and the top marginal tax rate was above 70% - it was in the 90s.
We don’t need “the elite” - they don’t actually “create jobs”, and the “engine of the economy” is just a convenient vehicle for the rich (and private equity) to ruin the middle class further - it was never about “efficient markets”.
If anything what we’ve seen over the last 40 years is that we need better systems.
The Biden administration had excellent industrial policy. Trump had the government steal a 10% share of Intel.
Watching people realize he’s just a criminal loser has been heartening.
I think you got this wrong. According to my sources the highest marginal income tax rate was 39.6%.
It was during the 50s, 60s, and 70s that it never dipped below 70%.
Source: https://bradfordtaxinstitute.com/Free_Resources/Federal-Inco...
The other thing is that different dimensions of the economy and other societal aspect have different lagging effects so you cannot simply assume causation or correlation between things during the same time frame.
Tax shelters were common in those days with the rich paying accountants and tax attorneys to find ways of avoiding those astronomical rates.
I don’t think “some people didn’t abide the rules” is reason not to make sensible laws.
Read about Laffer Curve for a start.
It’s clear all that “don’t tax the rich, they create jobs!” Is just trash. Noise. We have 40 years of data, it doesn’t work.
But still, someone ignores all that to tell me the Laffer Curve, every time. What’s also amazing is that they don’t really understand it themselves. Wild.
Even the most staunch conservative wants the rich to pay their "fair share" of taxes. The only legitimate debate is about what constitutes 'fair'. The flat tax advocates will at least give you a real number (10%, 15%, or even 20%). Progressives will never give you a number. Why?
Lots of totally baseless assumptions and accusations in your comment. I wonder where on Dunning-Kruger curve you are at regarding this topic.
Your comment lost all credibility right here
Things are not in place for people to spiritually feel what is actually a good life and world.
It may take a generation of people, who think technology and science will allow them to have many lifetimes over and over, to meet their timely end. We will only reevaluate as we see the most well endowed generation (everyone alive today) return to dust in a timely manner, that there was no magical human power that could have saved any of us, and we ought to have just focused on a better world that we’re proud of leaving behind.
Living life like it’s a roguelike with infinite levels makes it the most unfulfilling thing ever. The world our generation will leave behind is our product, and a quality product is everything, so much so that you’d be proud to leave it in someone’s hand at the end (in fact, you’d want to). The women’s movement that left us a type of America with those fixes (labors rights, human rights) was such a thing to leave behind, they should fear nothing in death.
This is laughably reductive. Certainly the Internet can help people get educated and pop some comfort bubbles, but it's not automatic. Many (most?) humans need personal attention from others to learn. Even fewer place a value on what they're taught, much less learning itself. A significant number of people must have supervision and some proding to become functioning, literate, and informed adults.
All that said, I'd agree with most of your other points.
I fully stand by that most people are not educated in school.
Another way of putting is, the number TWO is greater than ZERO, but I’d prefer if we not compare ZERO to anything.
This is quite a bold claim. So I guess girls in Afghanistan are just as educated as those in Norway?
All you have to do is observe their current behavior and you will come to the same conclusion.
When billionaires show you who they are, believe them the first time.
They have not lived through a depression and neither have they lived through any major world wars. They will be curious to see how bad it can get and they believe they will remain untouched from it.
The problem is: power is an addiction and like all addictions, some can manage to cope without and others will a absolutely follow a destructive pattern of behavior
It will be apocalypse for us, but a glorious new age of feudalism for them. Why else would they be building castles and describing ideal societies of feudal oaths.
Every single person in the country, regardless of political affiliation should know them as most dangerous domestic enemy.
Who is the ‘demos’ in a company? Who gets a vote ? Will voting really slow things down?
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.
Econ is a crock.
The only good thing about democracy in the context of a state, after all, is that every other alternative is worse. But that is strictly because of the fundamentally violent nature of the concept of a state, which does not apply to companies or corporations.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation
It's tragic - but not accidental - there's no mention of any of this in schools or any public memory of it.
What we’ve learned over the last half century is that extreme wealth disparities lead to extreme power disparities. Coercion doesn’t just emanate from the state.
Why? Because being poor isnt a structural problem, but a moral or ethical or laziness.
Its fascinating watching business culture basically align with prosperity gospel in that if you can grift it, it _must_ be good/just/right.
>companies stockpiling chemical weapons and machine guns
I recognize the historical references in the other clauses of this sentence, but I wasn't aware of companies stockpiling chemical weapons for use against workers. I'm not doubting - just curious to learn more about the dark history here.
Thanks!
As employees realize they’re getting a bad deal and that they can find a better ratio of pay to hours worked at other companies, they leave.
If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
If so, then yes you should only work those hours.
However, if you’re a typical full-time employee in most countries you don’t have agreed upon hours.
> If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
Again, if something was agreed upon you should follow that. In most full-time jobs they’re not going to specify a maximum number of working hours. It’s your job to explain what can be done in a workweek and push back when something can’t be done. If it persists and you don’t like it then you find another job. Vote with your feet.
In most countries there are labor laws which specify fulltime working week as 35-42.5 hours.
Any time more than that should be logged in as overtime and compensated properly.
If it’s a great company, people will work extra hours to move ahead, knowing it will pay off in their careers. “Great company” is always relative to the individual and where they are in their careers.
As people mature in their careers, they split off into “people with equity who continue to work hard for it” and “people without equity who have a good work/life balance”.
But as long as there’s the promise of a life-changing development, people will (sometimes rationally) work outside of their agreed hours.
Individual employees are far more numerous (therefore harder to coordinate) and have way shallower pockets than companies, so the negotiation power is always going to be lopsided.
What happened with that litigation is it got shut down and those companies pay some of the highest compensation now.
One of the few jobs you can get that pays that much compensation with fewer educational requirements and better hours than alternatives in that compensation range (surgeon, specialist doctors, lawyers at demanding firms)
I don’t think that’s a great example for your point since by comparison FAANG employees have some of the best pay you can find in an attainable job for someone with a 4 year degree and the demands are lower than many of the similarly paid jobs that require a lot more education.
Or possibly the incentives that led to this are still in place, and the current judicial climate is way more lenient towards big companies. Who's to say?
The transparency makes it that much easier to avoid them.
Plenty of employers do not operate with this expectation. In the US, I’d replace “plenty” with “most”.
Plenty of employers recognize an opportunity to differentiate themselves to candidates by publicly not being 996’ers.
Since I'm (mostly) work-from-home, my wifi router is configured to firewall my work devices outside of working hours.
This is frustrating for the IT department because it likes to push software updates overnight, but tough noogies.
The company pays for 30% of my internet connection, so it only gets to use my internet connection 30% of the day.
Anyhow I got to be paid for the hours that I actually did for well over a decade on off IIRC, and survived most of the purges of consultants/contractors there over the years, so demanding honesty from management was apparently survivable even if unusual!
j/k. You make a valid point about the limit to expectations from the employer being the sky and yet what the employee get is static.
The CEO of one of my employers was smitten with his new China office because they bragged about operating 996.
To everyone else, it was obvious that they weren’t working more. They were just at the office a lot, or coming and going frequently.
When they’d send a video from the office (product demos) barely anyone was at their seats, contrary to their claims of always working.
Their output was definitely not higher than anyone else.
However, they always responded quickly on Slack, day or night, weekend or not. The CEO thought this was the most amazing thing and indicated that they were always working.
And it's shocking that it works for leadership/management so well
I guess more people are just starting to realize this because many powerful people are actually dropping some of the well-accepted optics (particularly in tech, where people felt they were treated better than the average employee for a long time)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/210z3FRgTPU
Carry a clipboard around too.
Maybe a paper notebook is the new clipboard these day though, some moleskin hipster thingy, nice fountain pen with a nib, I dunno.
Anyone else have suggestions on how to shine on management in 2025?
Hell, you have the likes of Jack Ma glorifying 996, calling it a blessing.
Only young people can support this schedule, how a company like that is expecting senior and experienced people to stay?
I also never understood how it differed from the popular “death march” project management style popularized by companies like Epic and Microsoft.
On paper, PRC employment law is pretty strong on employee side compared to USA.
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.”
9117
The latest innovation in Management (unlocked with the power of AI)
they question the “work enthusiasm” of those who leave office by midnight.
I get the feeling the push to 996 is in part due to the social media epidemic - everyone spends so much time doomscrolling, might as well keep people in the office much longer to account for that extra wasted time too.
Good times
I mean thinking about it rationally, China is huge. It doesn't make sense to use the '996 practice' to judge the morality of all of China.
So, while it's 12 hours at the office, it's not 12 hours working at your desk. It's probably more like 8-9 hours by American standards where you have a quick lunch, don't take an afternoon siesta etc.
The mythology of the ultra-hard-working Chinese is just that. Americans work pretty damn hard too but the optics are different. Americans also consider the hours at work as wasted time, with people who are irrelevant to their "real" life (the L in WLB), whereas the Chinese consider the socialization and the relationships of work to be pretty core to their life experience.
Also, the Chinese don't raise their own kids. The grandparents raise the kids while the parents focus on earning money for the family. The parents in turn are expected to raise their grandkids. Some kids don't even live with their parents until they get a bit older (around 10-12).
The West is still mostly oblivious to the Chinese way of life.
The only time I’d actually consider crazy schedules was if I was the founder with a huge equity stake and a once in a lifetime opportunity that would benefit from a short period of 996.
For average employees? Absolutely not. If someone wants extraordinary hours they need to be providing extraordinary compensation. Pay me a couple million per year and I’ll do it for a while (though not appropriate for everyone). Pay me the same as the other job opportunities? Absolutely no way I’m going to 996.
In my experience, the 996 teams aren’t actually cranking out more work. They’re just working odd hours, doing a little work on the weekends to say they worked the weekend, and they spend a lot of time relaxing at the office because they’re always there.
And all of the risk.
Encouraging anyone to start their own company is deeply irresponsible. Most startups fail. If you're needing encouragement to do it - if you're not already fully deluded that you're the special snowflake unique genius who will succeed where all others have failed - you shouldn't be doing it.
Second: there is no CEO in tech taking a smaller salary than their employees.
An employee has the opposite arrangement, they find a job to receive money. A CEO finds money to have a job.
That's not just false but very often false.
Never said they weren't. But they're taking _less_ risk because they are at least taking a salary the whole time.
So, where's the risk? You still just were working anyway, pulling a salary from someone else's bank account for a couple years. And now you have "Founder" or "Founding Engineer" or "CEO" or "CTO" on your resume. So you didn't have a good exit. So what?
We have a difference of understanding of what "startup" and "failure" mean. I'm not just saying "most startups don't have an exit event" - I'm saying "most startups make negligible money (either through revenue or investment), so the founders are taking a loss the whole time they're working".
If that's not correct, then a) I need to update my mental model of the whole situation, and b) thank you for bringing it to my attention!
This sounds like the new generation's equivalent of 1980s bosses exhorting people to "give 110%"
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