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Chinese Devs Using GitHub to Protest 996 Workweek (9am – 9pm, 6 days/week)
- chillacy 8y agoHere's the actual protesting: https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues
- computerlab 8y agoSome translations for flavor: Issue: "10 5 5 imperialist American code peasant sneaks out of work" https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1738 https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1738 Issue: "The last two weeks we've had morning meetings at 7am, leave work at 11pm, no breaks on the weekend...I'd like to ask, how much does a trip to the ICU cost?"... "About 8,000RMB / day" https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1752 https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1752 Issue: "2:00, clock out, go home, shower, sleep" https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1732 https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1732 Issue: "(Foreign Enterprise CTO Position) Australian Tech Unicorn Seeks Chinese-Area Leadership" https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1700 https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1700 Issue: "Support this, 996 is inhumane and must stop, but always there's someone who needs to perform, work overtime for the boss to see" https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1742 https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1742
- minimaxir 8y agoNotably, the repo has set records in terms of GitHub Stars in a day: https://github.com/trending https://github.com/trending Likely because of the Star button the webpage proper.
- smudgymcscmudge 8y agoWhat’s the old record?
- earenndil 8y agoI believe it was freecodecamp (or something like that), because they had a github tutorial that told people to make an account and star their repo.
- cjhanks 8y agoAre you a talented dev in China tired of 996? American and EU companies are looking for you.
- mc32 8y agoPerhaps, but if they have the influence and ability to effect change it benefits many more than just the ones who can move abroad.
- contingencies 8y ago欢迎大家来珠海跟我们工作! Come work with us in Zhuhai!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- AresStreamer 8y agoDo you work in 955?
- contingencies 8y agoMost people are 955 with occasional overtime, I work more like 666...
- sniperjzp 8y agoI worked in EU (Paris, France) for a year, was paid about 30% less than working in China, not to mention high living cost in Paris. The benefit is people DO have work-life balance. I'm working in US right now, one of FAANG, I'm paid way more (>4x) than EU and China, sometimes I still need to work till midnight, but not as hard as when I was in China.
- muzani 8y agoAmerican? No. The visa system is the worst in the world. I got past a few interviews, only to hit a block on the visa thing. I've stopped applying since Trump became president, as things will only get worse.
- geyang 8y agoIt is taking longer and longer to get a work visa to the US if you work in ML or quantum computing. US don't want us.
- currymj 8y agothere is some chance this will completely reverse around February 2021 if a different administration is elected. the current White House has promoted paranoia towards China, and made a general push to curtail even legal immigration.
- sodosopa 8y agoThe US people and companies do. We just have incompetent leadership in our government, we're waiting it out too.
- whoisjuan 8y agoI always had a question about hiring Chinese engineers remotely. Is it easy to handle salary payments to China and will the Chinese Firewall interfere with any web development activity they have to do? Is anyone here doing it?
- mariopt 8y agoNot sure about this but I think yes. China has network filtering software for VPNs, in fact, the more advanced anti VPN blocker tools are Chinese due to the firewall. They have several websites blocked like Google, Facebook (no OAuth integrations). Anything that involves networking might suffer. They would probably get a police visit if the firewall has triggers for sshing into a server (common in devops). Not joking: https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/issues/420#issuecomment-262202196 https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/issues/420#issuecomment-262... Maybe they could work but would have serious limitations I guess. In a "communist" country, don't even know if they have a tax status for freelancing given the government behaviour. The only work around would be to have a based company in China to outsource.
- outloudvi 8y agoHaving a based company in China is not really a good idea unless you have a great market in China. You have to treat data seriously (not the privacy part, but the censorship and available-for-government-to-read part, like Russia). Things like Apple saving data of mainland China Apple IDs in GZData concerned a lot of people. [EDIT: Typo fix]
- gaotongfei 8y ago"Is it easy to handle salary payments to China " - yes, through Paypal "will the Chinese Firewall interfere with any web development activity they have to do" - Most of the Chinese programmers know how to bypass the firewall by using VPN or shadowsocks. Rails developer here, I have been following remote job listing sites for a really long time. Its frustrating when most of them set limitation as for "US"/"EU"/"NA" citizens only.
- smudgymcscmudge 8y ago
- rememberlenny 8y agoThis kind of expression helps humanize the otherwise distance created between the Chinese development world and the otherwise Western portrayal. A few thoughts from my experience living in China. When living in China, I didn't see any appeal in the overworking culture. Most developers with families worked normal hours. People who were single made time to spend time with friends. I didn't see the overwork ethic it in a positive light at all. Keeping in mind normal developers salaries in tier 1 cities for China is sub-1k USD a month. In tier 2 cities, I can only imagine it gets exponentially lower and so forth for smaller cities.
- gaotongfei 8y agoI work in Shanghai, my first full-time job as a Rails developer was more than 2k dollars a month(I was just graduated with only a little development experience), and I think that's about the average in Shanghai.
- rememberlenny 8y agoGood to know. My experience there was approximately 8 years ago. Im curious how much base salary has increased.
- zachguo 8y agoThe salary data is way outdated. All of my developer friends who returned to first-tier cities in China earn >4k USD per month. Even nannies generally earn more than 2k USD per month, it's hard to survive in tier-1 cities with 1k USD per month.
- AresStreamer 8y agoI do not think that would return if they are paid under 2k USD, and that doesn’t mean most of developers could earn more than 4k USD in China
- dougmwne 8y agoFunny. I just read about 996 in a comment on another HN post today. I couldn't believe that schedule could actually exist in Chinese workplace culture so I started doing some research. Sure enough, this hellish schedule is actually quite common and official at major Chinese startups and tech companies. It seems like it's not as common at western companies operating in China. There's even a joke about 007: 0AM-0AM, 7 days a week. Of course this flies in the face of my own experience that for the majority of people, productivity tops out at 40 hours per week unless it's for very short periods of crunch time. It's odd to see people so burnt out they've lost the self awareness to see that they've stopped adding value with their perpetual motion.
- atr_gz 8y agoIt's not just tech - lots of jobs require people to work 6 days a week in China.
- thatfrenchguy 8y agoIn general it’s fascinating how the lack of constraints around time makes for worse code, business processes and tooling: if you can only 35 hours a week (RIP that French labor minister who thought reducing the number of working hours would create jobs) you better automate all that stuff you’d do manually if you could work 60 hours a week.
- rqs 8y agoI mean you don't know that until recently? I'm pretty sure if you ask any Chinese IT worker about this, they probably have some story to share. BTW, now you know if Chinese programmers are seeking oversea jobs, they are probably not trying to enter your company to steal your techs. No, more likely they're just 996 refugees :)
- 594kJ 8y agoAnother funny part is that there are actually a portion of coders who not only agree on but also advocate such 996 culture. One of my roommate is an example who believes it's beneficial to the young workers (for seemingly high salary of course). He's heading to Huawei after graduation. Bonus part: he doesn't like tech/CS per se. Choosing this profession is purely out of the interest of $$$
- Aeolun 8y agoI remember reading on HN before that this ‘draconian’ schedule included both a 2 hour lunch and a 2 hour nap after said lunch. While it would still be crazy, it wouldn’t be quite as crazy as it seems any more.
- dikei 8y agoNormally, the 2 hour is for both lunch + nap, not 2 + 2 hour.
- ceohockey60 8y agoThis self advocacy is encouraging and long overdue IMO. The Chinese colloquial term for developer is "码农". Its literal English translation is "code peasants" -- not the most flattering or respectful way to call software engineers. I've recently heard horror stories, where 9-9-6 is no longer enough inside one of the Chinese tech giants, and 10-10-7 is expected (10am-10pm, 7 days/week) I hope this brings about some positive change and won't just get blocked by the authority.
- Arcantium 8y agoWhy not just 9-9-7? Was there any reasoning behind starting and finishing at 10? Its still a 12 hour day.
- SenHeng 8y agoAvoiding rush hour traffic.
- ceohockey60 8y agoNot sure to be honest, were just anecdotes I heard.
- jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 8y agoMaybe just a playful way of making a more clear distinction between the two
- 4faramita 8y agoBecause you will be leaving at 10 or even 12 anyway, this way you can work for 3 hours more everyday
- rqs 8y agoIt could be funny to see the repo/GitHub gets blocked because of this. If it did, that will be a good wake up call for somebody who still sleeping.
- jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 8y ago
- shanghaikid 8y agoThat's why china is developing so fast than most countries.
- brianpgordon 8y agoIf this is the cost, let them have it. It's not worth that human cost just to be ahead.
- dionian 8y agoit doesnt work though, it's counter-productive to some extent
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 07d046 8y agoAn interesting aspect of this is that this is an online protest on a platform that the Chinese government doesn't control. They normally exercise strict control over their internet to prevent movements from getting out of their control (for example, censoring #metoo when it starts trending). Would the Chinese government be willing to block GitHub? Surely that would be damaging to China's tech industry. What if people started creating repositories with nothing but information about topics that the Chinese government considers sensitive (like the Tiananmen Square massacre or other human rights abuses)?
- judge2020 8y agoThey've censored the entire website in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China
- pcr0 8y ago> online protest on a platform that the Chinese government doesn't control False (for Chinese residents). China used to block GitHub but stopped doing that when they realized they could politely ask GitHub to block access to certain pages from Chinese IPs. [0] [0]: https://qz.com/718465/chinas-fierce-censors-try-a-new-tactic-with-github-asking-nicely/ https://qz.com/718465/chinas-fierce-censors-try-a-new-tactic...
- 07d046 8y agoInteresting, I wasn't aware of that. I wonder if anything will happen with this protest then. For communists, the Chinese government isn't fond of labor protests.
- smudgymcscmudge 8y agoThat appears to be the first and last time they received a request from China. https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns On the other hand, Russia...
- teknologist 8y agoInteresting. I'm curious about whether the time they hijacked Baidu Analytics to launch a huge denial of service attack against GitHub was considered "politely" asking or not.
- taobility 8y agoso GFW and censorship is not working as the media said.
- swuecho 8y agoit works. but IT worker are more likely to have the knowledge to use VPN.
- jasonhansel 8y agoSo...will the censors risk blocking all of GitHub for this?
- vfulco2 8y agoSo will we see github banned very soon?
- discordance 8y agoI collaborated on a project with developers at QQ a few years back and here are a couple of anecdotes: 1. A 32 year old (!) developer I was working with one-on-one from QQ had a heart attack two weeks before, but was pressured (while in hospital) to come back to work as soon as possible. 2. At the QQ office, I watched an entire group (50+ developers) have a nap heads down at their desk after lunch. If any developers from China are listening in. Leave your company, take your colleagues and start one with better conditions. You are some of best engineers I've worked with and deserve better.
- 07d046 8y agoA Chinese friend once had a wisdom tooth taken out and was back in the office that afternoon.
- jwong_ 8y agoTaking naps during lunchtime is very common in Chinese offices
- uranusjr 8y agoThat heart attack incident is terrible. The nap part, however, is not particularly concerning. Nap after lunch is encouraged in the Chinese culture, and schools have a dedicated “noon nap” slot. Your Chinese coworkers likely nap not because they are so tired they have to, but because they and everyone else have done it their whole lives (and why not, napping feels good).
- geezerjay 8y ago> Your Chinese coworkers likely nap not because they are so tired they have to, but because they and everyone else have done it their whole lives (and why not, napping feels good). ...unless institutionalized scheduled napping was established to extact just a tad more of energy from overworked servants. Just saying.
- freetiger18 8y agoIt could be a custom. However, as a Chinese, my feeling is that the custom arises from the de facto 69x (x could be 5, 6 or 7) schedule of Chinese high schools, which is even harsher than that of Chinese companies.
- OnlyRepliesToBS 8y agotech is sociopath food
- titicaca123 8y agoI wish there will be more people know this outside China. It is against the law yet the government kept a close eye on it. It is not just in IT industry, there are a lot jobs where people are forced to work more than 9 hours a day.
- joe_222 8y agoIn the meantime do not pay for working overtime or pay very few.
- teknologist 8y agoIt's often not a conscious decision to adopt a "996" schedule but just happens anyway in Chinese tech firms. I remember visiting the Alibaba campus some time ago and they had devs sleeping in tents in the office at 8pm on a weekend. Their boss proudly told me that he was making them all stay to have them finish a feature he wanted shipped the following week.
- aztack 8y agoAfter a week of 10a-11p and 2 weeks of 10a-10p x 6, I feel terrible. My son asked me when I leave home: "Are you going to work to earn money so you can by me more toys?" "yah!" 996 is not optional, but mandatory, and is written on the contract.
- MC93 8y agothey collected more than 100000 stars in github within 50 hours!!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ghostyusheng 8y agostill fuck more working time and no repaid.
- recolic 8y agoHi may be someone can work as "007": working from 0:00 to 0:00, 7 days/week.