5 ms·

And now we have companies saying "we're not a 9-5" and even companies with "996" schedule which basically means "we discriminate against people with kids"

by dheera 5y ago

na85 5y ago
Oh good grief, does 996 mean what I think it does?
- SmellTheGlove 5y ago
  It depends. How do you like to spend 72 hrs of your week?
- cercatrova 5y ago
  9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. This is most prevalent in China though, with their somewhat lax labor laws, I have never seen this in the western world (codified into a number like 996 I mean, I assume investment banking and the like pull >100 hours a week).
  - ano88888 5y ago
    And they call themselves "communists" with their somewhat capitalist lax labor laws. What an irony.
    - moehm 5y ago
      Simpsons Already Did It™ https://youtu.be/zzt0xBXTNhI?t=200 https://youtu.be/zzt0xBXTNhI?t=200
    - SoylentYellow 5y ago
      They are still adhering to Marxism. Capitalism is one step on the path. Next is socialism, then communism.
    - VelkaMorava 5y ago
      Well, the US and Europe call themselves capitalist, yet there are huge barriers to enter some of the fields (e.g. in the Czech Republic the number of mobile operators is defined by law, essentially a state-imposed oligopol). Useless regulations (primarily EU), trade embargos, huge subsidies to companies which don't need them, absurd patents (my favourite one being Apple patenting the shape of a rectangle with rounded corners)... So now what?
  - madengr 5y ago
    The Japanese actually have a word for death by over-work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Aperocky 5y ago
    Having interned a long time ago in such a company: No check in time - just arrive anytime before 10. Lunch break is easily 2 hours, naps included. Dinner break is another 1.5 hours, people would walk laps and sometimes play basketball. Everyone hang around until 9PM because then there's free food and free rides home (also traffic is much better). only applies for weekdays, some people check in on Saturdays for a few hours. Of course this is not busy time in general - when people do the real 996 for a bit - but that can't last, and everyone knows it. I've heard the situation has started to change as well - hopefully it gets fully stamped out.
    - puchatek 5y ago
      This has anecdotally been described as US work ethic to me. Ostensibly long hours and few vacation days but if you need to run an important errand on company time nobody will bat an eye.
    - stef25 5y ago
      Add good quality child care / babysitting and I'll sign right now.
  - unmole 5y ago
    > This is most prevalent in China though, with their somewhat lax labor laws Like a lot of things in China, the problem isn't with the laws but the selective enforcement of it. The labour law says: > 36 The State shall practise a working hour system wherein labourers shall work for no more than eight hours a day and no more than 44 hours a week on an average. There's also a widespread practice of making employees who have been with the company for more than 8 years or so quit and rejoin after a month to bypass some other labour law provision I don't fully understand.
  - tfcata 5y ago
    Sadly although everyone knows this is simply a giant show to marginally make the bosses feel more at ease about the productivity, nobody has the guts to stand out and say this is just nonsense, such a waste of time.
TuringNYC 5y ago
Companies declaring 996 is good in a way -- helps you filter them out (or in) depending on your preference. I think companies pitching "work life balance" but not subscribing to it in reality are worse. Better to know the deal upfront. FWIW, early in my career I would welcome 996 as long as it came with rewards. Now I prefer high intensity, constrained 9-6, but with high scale.
- namelosw 5y ago
  Unless in China, unfortunately, if people filter out "996" companies there are not many decent options left. In reality, companies in tech sectors don't declare themselves as "996", because they're by default "996". Companies that work 40 hours per week would declare themselves as "965" or "955" because it's rare and attractive. Let's have a glance at how bad it is: As an example, the work schedules for "FANG" companies are relatively sane. The counterparts in China would be "BATJ" (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, JD), and Uber-like counterparts (Bytedance, Meituan, Didi), their work schedule all largely exceeded 40 hours. The worse of them all is Pinduoduo, the very successful competitor to Alibaba's Taobao, they work 13 days before they get one day off (6 days on one week and 7 days on the other). It's even uglier if we dig down to the rabbit holes: 1. Job with lower pay doesn't mean less working time, it's often the opposite. 2. "996" doesn't mean it stops are 9 pm. If a recruiter is being "honest" and says they're a "996" company, be prepared to work till 11pm for most of the days, and over midnight sometimes. 3. More often than not, the salary package IS the amount people get. There is no extra pay for overworking. People are working overtime because the deadlines are ridiculous and they don't want to lose their job, because most jobs are the same anyway and they have to go through the fierce competition process again. 4. The most toxic one: overwork for nothing. The leader of the team wanted to show his/her competency to the boss by letting everybody just sit there and overwork, even though there's no real task to be done at all! At the bottom line, there are still a few decent options that like Google and Microsoft in China, but the competition is even more fierce.
  - celticninja 5y ago
    I have one response to all that.. fuck that noise. On that basis I work 864, but I guess in China people are just another natural resource from which to extract value, once all the value is extracted (burned out) they dump that person and take the next one off the heap. Its a sad state of affairs that the Chinese think that this work ethic sets them apart from the rest of the world. It does in a way, but what it really allows is for the chinese government and chinese companies to make them work longer for less and to feel like they are special for doing so. There is a reason that the west has labour/employment laws that protect people from this sort of exploitation. Sad to see that the chinese people have fallen for this sort of bullshit.
gmargari 5y ago
Just for the record: "996 was deemed illegal by China's Supreme People's Court on the 27th of August 2021" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

And now we have companies saying "we're not a 9-5" and even companies with "996" schedule which basically means "we discriminate against people with kids"

by dheera 5y ago

And now we have companies saying "we're not a 9-5" and even companies with "996" schedule which basically means "we discriminate against people with kids"

na85 5y ago

Oh good grief, does 996 mean what I think it does?

SmellTheGlove 5y ago
It depends. How do you like to spend 72 hrs of your week?
cercatrova 5y ago
9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. This is most prevalent in China though, with their somewhat lax labor laws, I have never seen this in the western world (codified into a number like 996 I mean, I assume investment banking and the like pull >100 hours a week).
- ano88888 5y ago
  And they call themselves "communists" with their somewhat capitalist lax labor laws. What an irony.
  - moehm 5y ago
    Simpsons Already Did It™ https://youtu.be/zzt0xBXTNhI?t=200 https://youtu.be/zzt0xBXTNhI?t=200
  - SoylentYellow 5y ago
    They are still adhering to Marxism. Capitalism is one step on the path. Next is socialism, then communism.
  - VelkaMorava 5y ago
    Well, the US and Europe call themselves capitalist, yet there are huge barriers to enter some of the fields (e.g. in the Czech Republic the number of mobile operators is defined by law, essentially a state-imposed oligopol). Useless regulations (primarily EU), trade embargos, huge subsidies to companies which don't need them, absurd patents (my favourite one being Apple patenting the shape of a rectangle with rounded corners)... So now what?
- madengr 5y ago
  The Japanese actually have a word for death by over-work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Aperocky 5y ago
  Having interned a long time ago in such a company: No check in time - just arrive anytime before 10. Lunch break is easily 2 hours, naps included. Dinner break is another 1.5 hours, people would walk laps and sometimes play basketball. Everyone hang around until 9PM because then there's free food and free rides home (also traffic is much better). only applies for weekdays, some people check in on Saturdays for a few hours. Of course this is not busy time in general - when people do the real 996 for a bit - but that can't last, and everyone knows it. I've heard the situation has started to change as well - hopefully it gets fully stamped out.
  - puchatek 5y ago
    This has anecdotally been described as US work ethic to me. Ostensibly long hours and few vacation days but if you need to run an important errand on company time nobody will bat an eye.
  - stef25 5y ago
    Add good quality child care / babysitting and I'll sign right now.
- unmole 5y ago
  > This is most prevalent in China though, with their somewhat lax labor laws Like a lot of things in China, the problem isn't with the laws but the selective enforcement of it. The labour law says: > 36 The State shall practise a working hour system wherein labourers shall work for no more than eight hours a day and no more than 44 hours a week on an average. There's also a widespread practice of making employees who have been with the company for more than 8 years or so quit and rejoin after a month to bypass some other labour law provision I don't fully understand.
- tfcata 5y ago
  Sadly although everyone knows this is simply a giant show to marginally make the bosses feel more at ease about the productivity, nobody has the guts to stand out and say this is just nonsense, such a waste of time.

TuringNYC 5y ago

Companies declaring 996 is good in a way -- helps you filter them out (or in) depending on your preference. I think companies pitching "work life balance" but not subscribing to it in reality are worse. Better to know the deal upfront. FWIW, early in my career I would welcome 996 as long as it came with rewards. Now I prefer high intensity, constrained 9-6, but with high scale.

namelosw 5y ago
Unless in China, unfortunately, if people filter out "996" companies there are not many decent options left. In reality, companies in tech sectors don't declare themselves as "996", because they're by default "996". Companies that work 40 hours per week would declare themselves as "965" or "955" because it's rare and attractive. Let's have a glance at how bad it is: As an example, the work schedules for "FANG" companies are relatively sane. The counterparts in China would be "BATJ" (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, JD), and Uber-like counterparts (Bytedance, Meituan, Didi), their work schedule all largely exceeded 40 hours. The worse of them all is Pinduoduo, the very successful competitor to Alibaba's Taobao, they work 13 days before they get one day off (6 days on one week and 7 days on the other). It's even uglier if we dig down to the rabbit holes: 1. Job with lower pay doesn't mean less working time, it's often the opposite. 2. "996" doesn't mean it stops are 9 pm. If a recruiter is being "honest" and says they're a "996" company, be prepared to work till 11pm for most of the days, and over midnight sometimes. 3. More often than not, the salary package IS the amount people get. There is no extra pay for overworking. People are working overtime because the deadlines are ridiculous and they don't want to lose their job, because most jobs are the same anyway and they have to go through the fierce competition process again. 4. The most toxic one: overwork for nothing. The leader of the team wanted to show his/her competency to the boss by letting everybody just sit there and overwork, even though there's no real task to be done at all! At the bottom line, there are still a few decent options that like Google and Microsoft in China, but the competition is even more fierce.
- celticninja 5y ago
  I have one response to all that.. fuck that noise. On that basis I work 864, but I guess in China people are just another natural resource from which to extract value, once all the value is extracted (burned out) they dump that person and take the next one off the heap. Its a sad state of affairs that the Chinese think that this work ethic sets them apart from the rest of the world. It does in a way, but what it really allows is for the chinese government and chinese companies to make them work longer for less and to feel like they are special for doing so. There is a reason that the west has labour/employment laws that protect people from this sort of exploitation. Sad to see that the chinese people have fallen for this sort of bullshit.

gmargari 5y ago

Just for the record: "996 was deemed illegal by China's Supreme People's Court on the 27th of August 2021" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system