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Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On

• pmcpinto 7y ago
  Time is the most important thing that exists, it's sad to see people promoting this lifestyle. The most problematic it's that some Chinese millionaires are buying/investing in companies across Europe, and probably sooner than later they'll try to force that culture in European companies
  • stkdump 7y ago
    I don't think they will have much luck with that. Also I don't have the feeling that Chinese investors have much interest in interfering with European culture (probably less so than American investors).
  • lnsru 7y ago
    Europeans still remember working 6 days: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wochenarbeitszeit https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wochenarbeitszeit (German only). Official workweek in Germany is 6 days even now, but tech workers tend to work 35 hours than 55. I doubt this is possible in close future. Maybe that’s why salary range ends at 100k€.
• srouhaewaehy 7y ago
  On one side one really needs people working 24/7, on the other I can't get why this would be a requirement. The best development progress is reached when people code for about 30 hours a week.
• lazyjones 7y ago
  The only interesting things about this outrage are the questionable (again) quality of Bloomberg content and the fact that so many people here on HN are triggered and feel victimized by how Ma is running his company on the other side of the globe, to the point where there they are spewing insults and expletives. Does HN need this sort of traffic and comments? I think not. Please don't post/upvote dubious Bloomberg clickbait.
• devoply 7y ago
  Jack Ma is an idiot for doing this for very simple reasons. It's a country of 1 billion people. His company has 5 billion dollars in revenue, they pay their developers like 30k USD. Burning out your brightest is a stupid business strategy. They can afford to hire many more people as they have plenty of money to afford to do so. It's like some stupid idea of machismo. Like be a man! Yeah fuck that noise. It's in fact physically sickening to subject people to this. As they are sitting 12 hours a day for 6 days a week and then probably sleeping all day on the 7th to recover.
  • jedberg 7y ago
    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.
    • roenxi 7y ago
      If you assume you have a huge reserve of capable people, then that will clamp down on wages, but as a manager you still want to optimise the productivity of the employees they have. Extreme overtime doesn't sound like a good idea. May as well hire 2 shifts of people and pay them half as much; aim for higher per-hour performance. 9-9-6 isn't going to get you very much per hour of labour time, the employees will be zombies. 4 shifts of people will get you 24 hour 7-day coverage if you want continuous production if that is what the business needs. Just hold per-hour pay as constant as possible using the reserve of willing workers as leverage.
      • jedberg 7y ago
        I think you missed my point.
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• anbop 7y ago
  Leaving aside the questions around the ethics of 996... is this kind of schedule actually effective? Do companies that work knowledge workers like this actually outperform competitors?
  • onion2k 7y ago
    I spent a good chunk of my twenties working a schedule of 8 hours coding at work followed by 6 hours coding on a side project, with my entire weekend on the side project as well. I didn't have any sort of social life (largely by choice but also because I was remote working in a tiny rural village). It was massively effective. I wrote a ton of great code. I made enough money to quit working for several years and do a startup. When you're young, moderately fit, and ambitious you can crank out a ton of code. However, the important point is that it was my choice to do that. You can't ignore the ethics because that's what makes it wrong - asking people to do it while (even silently) implying bad things will happen if they don't is deeply unethical.
    • pm90 7y ago
      Wow. So much this, thanks for saying this. I feel the same way: I love coding, and do work relentlessly at times but its out of choice and not because anyone asks me to.
    • echelon 7y ago
      Also worth noting is that you spent time working on your own side project. Not for a company that owned your intellectual output. You invested in yourself and your interests.
    • gexla 7y ago
      A side project is much different than a work project. You got your eight hours of work and got to go home and do whatever you pleased. In this case, it was to write more code. Having to corral your brain into the singular focus of an employer's project against deadlines, feedback (sometimes crazy talk,) updates, documentation and other distractions is different. I can happily crank out code all day if it's something I'm doing for myself. As soon as you add the employer, it immediately starts doing my head in. It's completely different work. Some employers are better than others in this regard I suppose.
• inapis 7y ago
  I find 12 hours a day to be too much. And 6 days a week is throwing the mental health of a person off a cliff. I’ve frequently found, personally and observing others, that productivity drops after 6h of continuous work especially if it forces you to think a lot (which is pretty much always in software - you still need to apply your brain to connect the plumbing between APIs) Anything after 6h should either be menial work, cleanup or something else. I’ve found it is usually better to postpone any intense work to the next day. As a solo founder who tried to keep up 12h+ days, I’ve had the same amount of productivity by shutting down my day after 7h. You usually end up stretching things into hours for what would take a couple of minutes with a fresh brain.
  • zorked 7y ago
    People in workspaces with crazy work hours pad the remaining hours with meetings, email, going from here to there and back here. Humans only work so many hours a day. Outlier humans who can work more won't waste their talent/superpower at an employer where their extra time isn't compensated.
    • stkdump 7y ago
      I have to say (as a person currently on a 25-30 hour work week), that I often times find meetings to be the most exhausting part of my job, especially when I am very engaged in them. Coding is like meditation compared to that (thought I couldn't dream of doing it more than 50 hours per week for more than a week or two).
    • maxheadroom 7y ago
      >Outlier humans who can work more won't waste their talent/superpower at an employer where their extra time isn't compensated. Yes and no. Some might compromise the hourly rates for salary, if it comes with fringe benefits - say, having an FAANG on your resume, for example.
    • bigred100 7y ago
      Agree. The best way to work tons of hours is to spend tons of time on low-effort things that can be presented as difficult or important in meetings.
• YjSe2GMQ 7y ago
  Unfortunately China is a repressive country where economic prosperity is anti-correlated with happiness: https://outline.com/mnyw6K https://outline.com/mnyw6K
• mnm1 7y ago
  Those who can stick with a 996 are either stupid or desperate (I assume mostly desperate with enough stupid sprinkled in to keep this going). This idea of working your life away for a piece of shit like Ma needs to die. The culture in such places is absolutely toxic and frankly disgusting, not to mention detrimental to the final product. It's amazing to me that this is the norm in much of Asia and the US. I don't know what exactly is wrong with cultures who share this stupid idea, but it's something very serious. The desperation that drives people to almost kill themselves for work is incredible. It seems to be a form of self enslavement. The alternatives must be truly horrific for people to do this to themselves. They definitely are in the US and I imagine they are worse in China. I think people probably know this and don't need assholes like Ma to not only demand this enslavement of themselves, but also to demand that they enjoy their own enslavement and torture. What a scumbag.
• stuffedBelly 7y ago
  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 demand reasonable work-life balance as "slackers" (from JD's CEO) or lazy is utterly disgusting. I understand sometimes people might need to work a bit overtime to get things done or have on-call duties. We all do, but working 12 hours a day/6 days a week is not sustainable whatsoever. Of all these Chinese entrepreneurs, none of them mentioned even the slightest of their total rewards systems, which makes me think they are avoiding this topic on purpose and all their comments are attempts to put out fire while keeping the status quo, sneaky indeed. To be honest, if someone I manage constantly works crazy hours with no rest for a long period of time, voluntarily or not, I won't even let him/her push any piece of code to production. Fried brains == Disaster Edit: had a discussion with some of my friends from China on this. One of the common arguments is "why are developers whining about work conditions while tons of other occupations such as factory/delivery workers and nurses work long hours with lower pay?" First of all, other occupations having bad work condition does not justify the legitimacy of 996. This is yet another common logical fallacy when it comes to arguments like this. Also, how can people assume workers of other occupations are fine with endless long hours? Did anyone consider the possibility that they never had a systematic way to express their dissatisfaction and just tried going along with it for as long as possible before they were burnt out and got replaced?
  • raverbashing 7y ago
    > 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. When the excuse is feeble, it's because it isn't an excuse, it's just an expression of indifference
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• tedk-42 7y ago
  Pretty interesting discussion. Working in IT and being surrounded by technology means that it's hard to stop 'working' per se. Coding on the weekend for side projects/hobbies while balancing actual 'work' means I'm clocking quite a few hours every week myself banging away on my keyboard. No-one's putting a gun to my head to work these hours. I think awareness of the issue is great as it appears more or less systemic in China to work long hours.
  • golergka 7y ago
    Is it work though? When I learn a new language or framework through the weekend, I usually choose it out of pleasure and interest, not career concerns...
  • techsupporter 7y ago
    The thing is, from my perspective, you're not "working," as in giving your time solely to your employer, on your weekends when you're banging away on your keyboard on side projects. > No-one's putting a gun to my head to work these hours. That's true, and so you can stop doing it or change what you're doing on your off time whenever you like and have no ill consequence for it. For these workers, they don't have that option. Either be at the keyboard, dedicated to the employer, for the requisite time or be fired. We see a lesser version of this in the US IT industry a lot. People are nominally employed for 40 hours per week but management only puts a priority or good focus on the people who do the "above and beyond." Sure, you might officially only be paid for 40 hours most of the time (special circumstances excepted), but when management only gives raises and promotions to the people who are consistently e-mailing at 9:30 at night and slinging code on Sunday, the real rules stand out very quickly.
• thetechlead 7y ago
  996 sounds like a paradise. We startup founders work 24/7. We are either working or thinking about work related stuff when not sleeping. Not that we don't know work-life balance is good for health, but you just can't stop dwelling on it if you have a devotion.
  • teknologist 7y ago
    As a startup founder you're sitting on a nice pile of equity. That's why you are sacrificing more of your life for success. Chinese workers at Alibaba for example mostly do not have any equity at all.
  • aaronbrethorst 7y ago
    that's not healthy. find a hobby, sleep enough, remember to eat. you get to work or build plenty of companies, but you only get one life.
  • warent 7y ago
    Unless you're trying to start, say, a space flight business or a car company, working absurd hours is just stroking ourselves to feel special about the supposedly coveted "startup founder" persona. It's a really boring, old meme at this point. I'm a "startup founder" with a profitable SaaS business, but I also have unrelated hobbies and friends outside of that bubble.
    • thetechlead 7y ago
      Not that I don't have hobbies and friends. I routinely take week long beach vocation to make myself physically isolated from work. Just can't stop thinking about it daily and it's a hellof joy returning to my cubicle start working.
  • reachtarunhere 7y ago
    Because you are going to make the money and reward. Only the most desperate idiots would work that hard for someone else's dream.
• iamleppert 7y ago
  I’m so sick and tired of this guy. His story, his persona, his company, everything. Can the media just stop giving him the attention he so obviously craves? What a sad person.
• helloindia 7y ago
  I'm bit worried about the person(or the group) manning the 996.ICU github. The page states,"This is not a political movement". But, the Chinese govt won't ignore for long, any kind of movement which maligns the reputation of China.
  • earenndil 7y ago
    If the chinese gov't wants to protect their reputation, wouldn't they do better to abolish 996-type working conditions?
    • k_sze 7y ago
      You only need take a look at what's happening to human-rights lawyers and the victims of the melamine-contaminated infant formula scandal in China.
    • helloindia 7y ago
      A recent example. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-xi-protests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-...
• gigatexal 7y ago
  Are all the employees on call SREs? If not: wtf is he thinking?
• cjw3 7y ago
  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/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-says-companies-forcing-staff-work https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3006127/alib...
  • rococode 7y ago
    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.
    • _cs2017_ 7y ago
      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.
      • danpalmer 7y ago
        They compensate their journalists based on how much the articles move the market, so that may explain things.
    • noname120 7y ago
      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.
• human20190310 7y ago
  I'm beginning to suspect that the 996 schedule (and its equivalents in other cultures) aren't actually about productivity; they're about devotion. Devotion isn't something a CEO can explicitly ask for, but a 996 schedule is, so that becomes the expectation even if it actually has a neutral-to-negative impact on productivity. Richard Liu almost made this explicit when he stated that people who didn't adhere to it were not his "brothers". The mystery to me is that if my suspicion is correct, then the CEOs and upper management must think that devotion is ultimately (long-term) more important than productivity is to the bottom line... and I have no idea why. I don't buy the explanation that all of this is just "dumb". Something is up with this.
  • rwallace 7y ago
    Your conclusion is absolutely correct. The explanation is that Homo economicus, the economic optimizing agent, is a leaky abstraction on top of a killer ape. In the modern environment, it's easy to forget that our brains did not actually evolve to deal with money, let alone the high-tech infrastructure of a modern corporation. They evolved to dominate other apes on the African savanna. But evolution does not document its handiwork. Our genes did not give our brains an explanation of game theory and the evolutionary utility function. They gave our brains a propensity to seek power and to feel pleasure when successfully wielding that power to hurt other people. That this behavior was adaptive in the ancestral environment is a historical fact, not represented anywhere in our neurons. So yes, it's not about productivity, it's not about profit. It is, as Orwell put it, about the end goal of a boot trampling a human face, forever. That is the default fate of humanity unless that fate is actively and continually opposed.
    • bigred100 7y ago
      Lately I have the vague opinion that half-baked scientific reasoning and the tendency to come up with evolutionary just so stories is a horrible detriment to modern society. Humanity has come up with a reasonable way to interpret human behavior by human standards through the humanities. I feel content to evaluate other humans by human standards rather than speculating on how he’s actually highly adapted for the African savannah. If he acts like an ape, he belongs in a zoo.
• ilaksh 7y ago
  I'm actually kind of afraid to comment because I'm generally afraid of the Chinese government and I have a feeling they like Jack Ma and also like wage slavery just as much as him. Plus even if there is no government involved Jack Ma has quite a lot of power because of his money. But I feel this is a moral issue. The thing is, the system of employment is the evolution of plain old fashioned slavery. That is where Ma is coming from. He believes that he owns those people. Class is still a very strong part of global society. Just look at the etymology of the word 'employ'. It means using something. Earlier it came from late 14c., implien, emplien "to enfold, enwrap, entangle" The thing that is really tough about this is that it's a subtle form of violence as the vast majority of people (even programmers) are in fact dependant upon keeping their jobs. So in fact the forced overtime is forced labor and is a human rights issue. I think it's going to get worse rather than better because AI, robotics and automation in general are gradually picking up steam. Maybe we can be optimistic though and imagine a time where using people ("employing" them) is recognized as unethical. Maybe we will have that luxury someday if we have machines that are smart and dextrous enough to replace human workers. That probably won't end class structures on it's own though.
  • C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Not sure applying old English words or even western ideas onto a completely different culture helps here.
    • rsln-s 7y ago
      Some things are fairly universal and pertain to human condition in general, even if expressed in very western framework.
• spinach 7y ago
  '“Those who can stick to a 996 schedule are those who have found their passion beyond monetary gains,” Ma wrote.' says a billionaire... That's a pretty wild assumption, especially coming from a billionaire, but I guess he needs to justify treating his employees like crap to himself somehow.
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• m0zg 7y ago
  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" – Upton Sinclair.
• the_jends 7y ago
  When people with equity asks regular employees with salaries to work their ass off unsustainably it is just very insensitive to the inherent difference between them. If owners and top executives were doing an amazing job directing the company then front line employees would not even have to work that hard because the company already has a strategic advantage.
• fouc 7y ago
  No actual meat in this article. Just one short comment. Where's the rest of his comments on the topic?
• ignoramous 7y ago
  Jack Ma is right about working overtime and have work consume your life when 'passion is not limited to monetary gains', but more often than not, these people that are full of passion realise that it was the wrong choice all along, esp considering how short a healthy life is. The regrets people have on their death bed isn't of not having worked hard, but not having had more time for friends and family. https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/ https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/
• jieyuyang 7y ago
  hakuna matata
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• arvinsim 7y ago
  > “Those who can stick to a 996 schedule are those who have found their passion beyond monetary gains,” Ma wrote. And this is why I got disillusioned with the "you should be passionate about your work" mantra. Capitalist companies exploits it for the own benefit.
• kmlx 7y ago
  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 productivity).
  • lazyjones 7y ago
    > 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.
    • kmlx 7y ago
      is this a joke? Jack Ma obviously doesn't read comments off the Internet.
• miaklesp 7y ago
  Passion of his employees is very well observable from garbage quality products they make: trashy APIs, utter trash SDKs, broken endpoints, outages, broken user stories. Amazon also treats its employees like shit but at least their products are usable.
• Proven 7y ago
  What furor? Does he not have the right to free speech? Does he abduct people to work for his company？ If you don’t like it, go to Microsoft China or open your 4-hours a day company
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• ngcc_hk 7y ago
  Inhuman. Sad.
• deleted 7y ago
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• iliketosleep 7y ago
  I assert that there are a great numbers of CEOs who would absolutely love their employees to be working 996 without overtime pay, only most of them won't admit it directly. We cannot expect CEOs to be paragons of virtue - part of the reason they succeed because they discard virtue in favor of profit. Having said that, the solution is not simple. In places like China, it's probably up to the government.
  • alkonaut 7y ago
    Exactly that is why there are laws (in China I guess not). I can't work more than 200h overtime in a year or 48h in 4weeks (meaning that after four 52h weeks I can't do anymore overtime), regardless of whether I'm paid for it or not. So after two 996 weeks my manager would be in criminal territory if I don't get two very short weeks afterwards. In my experience, this seems to actually work too. Crunch time is replaced by slipping or hiring, as it should. These laws don't require that anyone forced anyone to do it - the manager is literally responsible to make sure people don't work too much. Obviously this will happen occasionally anyway, but now it is at least llegal.
    • your-nanny 7y ago
      where are you?
      • alkonaut 7y ago
        Sweden
• black-alert 7y ago
  In some way our brains doesn't seem to be wired for getting rich and famous, most people go very wrong. Being a good and intelligent human being is very different from having just a lot of money and luck.
• ackbar03 7y ago
  The prevalence of 996 shows why China is able to start so many strong tech companies. Discontent reflects the rising awareness for standard of living and ethical or not also sort of implies rising labor costs in future.
  • theseadroid 7y ago
    Strong copycats yes. Strong innovation tech companies? I dont think so.
    • ackbar03 7y ago
      You need to take another look at the landscape bro... This was true a few years ago but less the case now
      • theseadroid 7y ago
        I almost look at it everyday mate :D Most of my classmates are in China. And I still go back to visit my family like once a year. There are attempts to innovate. But I think all the 996 and censorship and other policies to make the populace compliant is working against true innovation. They can take an existing idea and execute with great efficiency. High speed trains, subways, electric vehicles. They are good at mixing ideas from both Western countries and Japan/Korea and other parts of the world. I like that part a lot. But original, novel ideas that will actually work? Not really. The culture there is not structured to promote/refine good ideas.
• a_imho 7y ago
  What about other sectors? What time do non tech workers work in China?
• sgt101 7y ago
  Quite a lot of Romans endorsed slavery and gladiators. As Lenin said - first look who benefits!
• rajacombinator 7y ago
  Alibaba/express/whatever has some pretty jank technology. Maybe they should try working smarter instead of harder?
• farhanhubble 7y ago
  Is it only me or is there an established cause as to why people who become successful search for reasons and 'motivational' phrases, like, 996 and passion or Move fast and break things, to attribute their success to?
• koonsolo 7y ago
  Can someone explain to me how you can be productive for 12 hours on a single day? When I do concentrated programming work, I can maybe do 4 hours, at best 6 hours. It seems I can stretch it when doing more mundane work when I know what needs to be done. But this time is seriously reduced when I have to think about architecture or more complex stuff. The literature also point into this direction, where writers and serious thinkers do these kind of few hours (also see Cal Newport on deep work). I know John Carmack said you can be more productive when you can do more easy tasks to fill up the day, but it ends somewhere. I have a master degree in computer science, and during the exams, my head was full at 20:00. Nothing could get in after that. I know people who could study until 3 in the morning. But you know what, after questioning them, they didn't do shit in the morning. At work, I always had great reviews and my employers loved me (I'm almost 40 now). I always felt I was slacking off because I worked too little. But then I understood, if I work so little and get great reviews, what are those other guys doing? So 12 hours a day? You are just lying to yourself. Those people are slacking off like crazy, and probably can't get anything done during the day. And at the end of the day, they are angry at themselves that they didn't do shit and wasted most of those 12 hours slacking off. But I am sincerely asking to prove me wrong. Is it possible to work 12 productive hours a day? I was always searching for this how some people claim to be able to pull this off. But after investigation, they never really were able to do this.
  • theprotocol 7y ago
    I've had trouble finding a workplace that understood this. Even on the days where I put in 5-6 hours of high quality work I'd attract the suspicion of managers. After that they typically begin to "check on me" regularly to make sure I'm not "slacking." This would go on long-term. I have never worked anywhere where this didn't happen.
    • yvdriess 7y ago
      What I think is fundamental is that employees are not payed for their work, but for their time. The implicit thought pattern is that they feel they own your time.
• sn41 7y ago
  I sometimes think that there's only ever been one economic model - slavery. Various excuses are periodically found to justify it, like aristocracy, caste system, slavery, Gulag, meritocracy, passion, etc. - ultimately, as a society, we do not want fair wages to be given to workers, so that we can consume more, cheaper goods, and glorify a few billionaires as super(wo)men.
  • fuzzfactor 7y ago
    Imagine if you will, a textile mill in North Carolina in the year 1864. Unpaid labor performing most of the factory's value-added activities, along similar lines to how the cotton was raised agriculturally on nearby plantations. Company accountant complains about "$9,800 of total labor cost" for the year, which is about $800 more than it was the year before. "When is it going to end?" is often heard, even though the actual workers recieve no payment and never have, there is still a fundamental cost of labor even in a pure slavery situation. Another year comes & goes, the Civil War ends, slaves are emancipated, and the factory is then required to actually divert some cash directly to the newly christened "employees" for the first time, in the form of a regular paycheck. The accountant has never been so grumpy. "Looks like we're going to have over $15,000 in labor costs this year, thanks to the plumb fool Yankees." And life goes on. When is it going to end? Anyway, I prefer to work a 12-hour day because I get more accomplished than would otherwise be accomplished over two 8-hour days. Relatively speaking, someone else's 16-hour project which takes them two workdays and completes no sooner than 34 hours after assignment, can often be completed in only 12 hours after assignment if all energy is directed continuously until completion. For those that do not have that much ability to focus, I understand.
• negamax 7y ago
  I wonder how many processes are not automated because of peer pressure of 996. Heard stories about when India was just opening as a outsourcing hub, people would use notepad to create HTML pages. As that means more billable hours. No syntax highlighting, macro and other support. Something similar must happen for 996 to be practical.
• golemiprague 7y ago
  People are afraid to speak up and say the truth we all know. Asian culture is about servitude and long hours of meaningless work. This is the way Asians also study and that's why ivy league universities don't want them, because they know they got no talent and no life, a miserable combination which only works for mid managers but not for the leader of our society. The west lost its ability to say, yes, this is our western culture and you know what, it is actually better than Asian slavery. The Sabbath was invented 2000 years ago by the religion which is part of the core of our western civilisation. We should ban Asian after school schools in western countries and should not allow products from companies which doesn't give their employees decent conditions. I am as a capitalist as they come and a business owner but those Ma types make me want to go on barricades with an hammer and sickle
• ataturk 7y ago
  The return of slavery in the modern era.
• digianarchist 7y ago
  I'll do 996 for my company (at least for a few months a year) if they give me a 45% (40 hours -> 72 hours) salary increase.
• mabbo 7y ago
  I'll work those hours, no problem. You will, however, have to make it worth my while. Oh, what's that? You want to pay me the same total compensation as any other company, but make me spend twice as many hours working? No thank you. I'll seek employment elsewhere.
  • mywittyname 7y ago
    I agree with you, but I suspect the people in China subjected to these inhumane work hours don't have the option for a job with better working conditions. I would not be surprised in companies were colluding such that the 996 is the default work week.
• Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
  >Richard Liu, chief executive of Alibaba arch-foe JD.com Inc., said in a recent post on his WeChat moments that, while he would never force staff to work a 996 schedule, people who slacked off were not considered his “brothers.” Holy cow! People went ballistic when Elon said in his post that the employees should hold up for the sake of the company.
• AFascistWorld 7y ago
  Sorry sir, where are the "1 million US jobs" you promised? But it shouldn't be surprising, since his company is so used to milking the "millions" of sellers.
• redleggedfrog 7y ago
  I've seen the code 12 hour days makes. The only benefit Ma is getting is the feeling of power.
• gHosts 7y ago
  So tell which companies _aren't_ run by shit heads and I'll vote with my dollars.
• objektif 7y ago
  What a load of horse shit. This guy became propoganda arm of the chinese communist party.
• mx06v 7y ago
  Meanwhile in China, a 27 years old programmer died suddenly. Is this the bliss Jack Ma talked about? Camera captured video: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av49491980/ https://www.bilibili.com/video/av49491980/
• rick22 7y ago
  554 was most productive from personal experience without lunch break.