I worked at Ant Financial for a time (startup acquihire) and spent some time working in offices in both Beijing and Hangzhou. As an American 996 was surprising

I worked at Ant Financial for a time (startup acquihire) and spent some time working in offices in both Beijing and Hangzhou. As an American 996 was surprising but also doesn't quite live up to it's name, or at least not at Ant afaik. In practice the typical "996" day would usually go something like this: - ~9:30 - 10am Arrive, commutes could vary as you might imagine - 10 - 11:30am Morning meetings, usually a team stand-up or two - 12 - 1:30pm Lunch, typically 1.5 hours - 1:30 - 7pm Most work is done during this period, with some meetings later in the day - 7 - ~8:30pm Team dinner, sometimes in the office and sometimes at a nearby restaurant* - 8:30 - 9/10pm People start to leave * - I was a visitor in the China offices so that could've affected how long we spent at dinner or how often we actually left the office for it On top of the large breaks it was fairly common that the work day was filled with breaks and naps and such, so I didn't really observe people actually working for much longer than most western offices but it did tend to increase the bonds of teams by keeping them together for the entire day. As for working Saturdays... I asked various colleagues about it and was told that it was rare, only when it was absolutely necessary to ship something on a set schedule. Another thing I found interesting was that our office in the US had Tue/Thur work from home days and when folks from the China offices would visit they were just as surprised as I was when I first heard about 996. Some of them asked me how I would get any work done from home or how management could enforce it. In general I saw that management in China placed a lot of value in office time even though the levels of productivity seemed to match it even less than in western offices.