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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
by 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 agoedit: 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 agoRecently, 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 agoThey compensate their journalists based on how much the articles move the market, so that may explain things.
- noname120 7y agoThis 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.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> Do you think never having to work 996 in your life is an honour to boast about?” he said Why wouldn't you think this?
- robjan 7y agoDifferent culture. Even here in HK, people wear their overtime as a badge of honour (if you check IG before bedtime, everyone is taking pics of their nearly empty office with a timestamp). Your standing is society is elevated by being important enough that you had to stay at work until midnight and people will say "oh they're so hard working"
- rayiner 7y ago> Why wouldn't you think this? Because you’re Asian? (My dad once asked me, when he perceived I was slacking as a teenager: “Do you know how to work a sixteen hour day?” Worked fine for him—he grew up in a village in Bangladesh and sent two kids to college in the United States. Writ large, it seemed to work pretty well for Japan and Korea as well, which went from developing nations to developed nations in a few generations. In a place like China, you have to work hard. Most do it on a farm or factory. You’re lucky if you can do it in an office.)
- salawat 7y agoI'm genuinely not seeking to troll or start a flame war here, so I apologize profusely if I speak out of line, I'm just looking to understand the current Chinese mindset. All that working hard is to catch up to a country that pushed the envelope on a 40 hour work week, and at least made an effort to respect the right of the worker to have a life outside the office? I find the argunent/cultural value unconvincing when most of the country's innovation has been fostered through copycatting, IP theft, and exploitative market gatekeeping. I don't mean any offense, nor do I assert the United States is saintly in the non-abuse of workforce, or in any trade related department really, but given what we've been finding out about Chinese IP hijacking, their hostile trade practices, and personal experience working with Chinese H-1B's (whom if I catch trying to pull that 996 nonsense, I send home after 40 hours), I do think it's just an underhanded tactic used by authority figures on a vulnerable population. The fruits of passion are best grown without compulsion. Play unites artist and engineer as Tao does one in the state of no mind. One cannot be moved or inspired by heaven and earth stuck behind a screen toiling for one's master. Hell, weren't the Chinese the same culture who brought us the gem of wisdom that "one who lacks control of oneself brings only strife when faced with the responsibility to control something larger than themselves"[Confucius paraphrased]? Where have these workers had the time to develop as healthy individuals? Not just to gather academic knowledge, but the wisdom born of personal folly to employ that intelligence well? For a wealthy man in a purportedly communist regime, Mr. Ma seens, at least to me, whether he realizes it or not, to be falling into the worst tendencies of capitalistic practices hook, line, and sinker. The People suffer under the boot of a man who has grown so accustomed to the creature comforts afforded by his position that he has forgotten the reason he is where he is in the first place. To usher the Chinese people to a new age of glory and prosperity. At least, that's the Party line, is it not? Surely others see the disconnect here, or am I just mad, and completely out of tune with the zeitgeist/realpolitik?
- achow 7y agoBloomberg did it again - false reporting?* It is very weird. Others reports this: “No one likes working at a company that forces you to do ‘996’. Not only is it inhumane, it’s unhealthy and even more unsustainable for long periods – plus workers, relatives and the law do not approve of it,” he said. “In the long term, even if you pay a higher salary, employees will all leave.” https://www.techinasia.com/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-companies-forcing-staff-work-overtime-foolish https://www.techinasia.com/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-companies... * https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
- Traster 7y agoYou're still not covering the core of his argument. He also says: >“If you find a job you like, the 996 problem does not exist; if you’re not passionate about it, every minute of going to work is a torment,” Ma said in a post on his Weibo account on Sunday. The point he's making is not that 996 is bad, he's saying it's bad for people who aren't passionate about what they do. It only works for people who are passionate about their jobs. Now let's take that into consideration shall we, do you think he's saying that it's fine for you to turn up to BABA and do a 9-5 and tell your boss that you're not passionate enough to do 996? Hell No! In fact he says: > if you’re not passionate about it, every minute of going to work is a torment So here's the choice he's laying out - either you're passionate and you're happy to work 996 (and by corollary you need to work 996 to demonstrate your passion or commitment) or every moment is a torment and clearly you shouldn't be employed there. So no, he's not endorsing forcing people to work 996. He's endorsing forcing people to pretend they want to work 996. Which by the way, isn't sustainable for most people no matter how passionate they are.
- Aeolun 7y agoHah, I’m passionate enough, but if I had to work 996 I would be destroyed in a week.
- megous 7y agoSounds very B/W. "You either love it, or it's a torment." I think there's a lot of gray space between, that is actually fine. "I don't completely love the job, but it can be fun sometimes, and it pays the bills." It sounds like something someone trying to manipulate you would say, if I think about it. The usual: "taking two extreme sides and creating a false dichotomy".
- rmrfrmrf 7y agoThe headlines are different, but the content is the same. If you read into the SCMP headline, what it's actually saying is that Jack Ma expects employees to want to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week, without being forced.
- ttflee 7y agoApparently, SCMP is owned by Alibaba. This could be interpreted as a conflict of interest to report anything about Alibaba founder in this context.
- paulsutter 7y agoShouldn’t that make them even more likely to express his actual opinion?
- guywhocodes 7y agoShould 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.
- Grustaf 7y agoSure but isn’t Ma smart enough to say what he wants to say, I don’t think he wants newspapers to alter his message.
- boomboomsubban 7y agoBoth pieces cover what he said without altering his message, they just highlight different parts to completely change the tone and fit their editorial guidelines. Ignore anything that isn't a quote, and he is saying people that don't want to work extreme hours just don't love money.
- Grustaf 7y agoSeems almost tautological.
- marcus_holmes 7y agoJournalists 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.
- skrebbel 7y agoWhat does a badly paid Bloomberg reporter have to gain by making me feel like Jack Ma is a mean person?
- rmrfrmrf 7y agoBloomberg reporters get bonuses for writing stories that affect the market. Seriously.
- stuffedBelly 7y agoNope, this is not true (from someone I know who's working at Bloomberg).
- CogitoCogito 7y agoI've heard this so many times and it just seems so ludicrous. How does one even prove that a specific article "affected the market". What degree need an article "affect the market" in order to qualify? How does one measure this? To whom does a reporter submit a "reimbursement for market effect" form? I mean I guess if I saw some proof of these claims I might change my mind, but at the moment it seems totally naive. edit: Here's an article that discusses it (for the moment I'll just assume their anonymous sources are correct which is a bit ridiculous to assume coming from a rival news source): https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12?r=US&IR=T&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa... > There's nothing wrong with a news story moving the market: It means a story is important. I think this is really the key. Bloomberg's news is financial in nature. Basically any big story will have a market effect. So basically in this instance "moving the market" might just be equivalent to "being a big story". So if it's bad to give bonuses based upon market-moving stories, it's bad to give bonuses on big stories. Regardless the whole thing side-steps the important question anyway. Are the articles they post actually true? That's the only thing people should concern themselves with.
- rqs 7y agoIt will be easier to understand if you've followed the movement. Most of those companies are not forcing their employees to work 996 on paper. But if you don't, then first, your team leader will give you some hint to ask you to stay longer. If you still don't, you will be fired for any number of reasons (KPI is too low for example). Because of that, the company actually don't need to force it's employees. It just keep giving them tasks which cannot be finished without work 996, plus some peer pressures (One of it is "Boss's still here, you can't leave"). Jack Ma's "forcing staff to work overtime are ‘foolish’" statement is basically the same thing: You need to fight for your own future. On the surface, it's correct, but underneath it, he's trying to make you believe Personal strive === Overwork. It worth notice that Jack Ma also said "If you love your job, 12 hours is not very long" (“如果你热爱（工作），其实12个小时不算太长”[0]) just days ago. Hit: If you don't work 12 hours a day, you don't love your job. Some background: Jack Ma is a lair who also likes to pretend to be a Life Advisor, he will sometime throw out some bullshit to convince others to sacrifice for him. You need to read between lines. > “Those who can stick to a 996 schedule are those who have found their passion beyond monetary gains,” Ma wrote. You see what's going on here :) [0] https://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2019-04-12/doc-ihvhiewr5310241.shtml https://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2019-04-12/doc-ihvhie... Edited to fix some grammar problem. Hope that will make it easier to read. Thanks for pointing out :) Yes, I fixed it again.
- drukenemo 7y agoNice comments, but may I suggest that you check your spellings before posting? Lots of things I had to interpret what you meant to say based on mispellings.
- jimmytucson 7y agoThis is the essence of “fake news”. Most people think fake news is reporting false information. But nowadays it’s relatively easy to fact-check something. Much more onerous is selecting facts to report on so as to tell a story that fits an agenda. It’s harder to recognize, and hey—it’s facts! What could go wrong?
- OedipusRex 7y agoWhat exactly about this is fake news?
- alistairSH 7y agoThat's his point - both pieces are factually correct, but give completely opposing interpretations of those facts. It's harder to recognize "fake news" when the "fake" part is heavy editorializing of an otherwise truthful set of news.
- b_tterc_p 7y agoFake news is generally understood to be baseless lies. Incorrect or misleading news describes most of all genuine news coverage.
- wavefunction 7y ago"News" has always been heavily editorialized from the start. "Fake news" is just propaganda presented as "news."
- alistairSH 7y agoThere used to be some news outlets that were mostly even-keeled with their interpretation of facts. That's decreasingly the case.
- baud147258 7y ago> This is the essence of “fake news”. No, it's opinions and editorializing. Because if all news that are made to fit an agenda are "fake news", all news would be "fake"
- mikeash 7y agoHe said two things: people should work extreme overtime, and companies should not force them. These two articles are each focusing on one. They’re not contradictory.
- basetop 7y agoThis is why I wish we had a topics based news aggregator. A site which lists topics and under each topic, you get a list of different headlines and sources ( hopefully from different countries and with different perspectives and ideologies ). That way, we can see what different media groups are saying about the same event. Google news and other social media used to do this until they got pressured to "localize" the news and favor "authoritative" sources. What is shocking is how the same event is covered so differently by different countries and media groups. But the only way you would know this is if you actively search for news which is getting more difficult and which hardly anyone does.
- CodeCube 7y agoSounds like a potential startup ... if you can do it right (how would you identity the "same event": algorithmically? Curated? Crowd-sourced (tags)?)
- basetop 7y agoPerhaps one part curation, two parts crowd source and three parts algorithm? I don't think you can entirely automate this because there are nuances and issues of categorization. I'd like to see it user/community driven. A user generates a topic and one headline. Then other users and the algorithm add headlines to the topic. And if there are two similar topics, it would require a curator intervention to join the topics. Also, "sourcing + hashing" the articles and headlines so that you can see a "diff" of the articles and headlines in case the media companies change or alter the articles/headlines without informing their customers would be nice. But if anyone tried this, I'm sure the media companies would attack the startup and of course with the new EU copyright laws, it might open the startup to lawsuits or takedown requests. Not to mention many countries might simply ban it outright.