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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 fi

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
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
echelon 7y ago
996 is fine if you're a founder of a company. It's not okay for ill-compensated workers that will never become billionaires. We don't have much time on this planet. Why should he expect others to be droning slaves for him? People should enjoy what little life they have, not spend most of their time as cogs in a machine.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  > It's not okay for ill-compensated workers that will never become billionaires. What if everyone who does it will become millionaires? What if everyone who does it understands the tradeoffs involved and makes an informed decision that you disagree with?
  - m0zg 7y ago
    That's like if you said "what if everyone won a lottery". You know full well this sweatshop bullshit produces very few millionaires, and millions of burn-outs.
  - learc83 7y ago
    Neither of things are true, so what's your point?
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      Ali Baba is the Amazon of China. It is enormously profitable. I assume that in return for working so hard, the employees are paid quite well, or else they would find better jobs. I guess the unsupported claim that they're "ill-compensated" out of the blue was what annoyed me.
      - learc83 7y ago
        It looks like the average senior software engineer salary at Alibaba is around $30k. That's well above the average annual salary in China, but it's about average for a software developer, and no one is going going to become a millionaire working for those wages. Also long hours are normal in China. If your choice is to work for one of 50 companies that all have insane schedules, it's hardly informed consent.
rococode 7y ago
> Labeling people who demand reasonable work-life balance as "slackers" or lazy is utterly disgusting. Worth clarifying that the "slackers" comment came from JD.com's founder Richard Liu, not Jack Ma. edit: removed comments on whether he endorses it or not since it seems like there are contradicting statements from him. My current impression is that he disagrees with forced overtime but wants his employees to work similar hours voluntarily (although I suspect this is a common sentiment among business execs).
- stuffedBelly 7y ago
  corrected. Thanks.
- stuffedBelly 7y ago
  I actually read Jack Ma's initial memo on this matter in Chinese. His stance was pretty clear that he endorses 996. He later "clarified" that he disagrees with this sentiment after people became enraged by his words.
- benj111 7y ago
  "My current impression is that he disagrees with forced overtime but wants his employees to work similar hours voluntarily" If your boss says they want you to work overtime 'voluntarily', what do you do? Doesn't sound very voluntary, and middle managers actually doing the enforcement aren't going to treat it like that, especially when they get targets.
baybal2 7y ago
Sounds almost funny in light of how much the company is messed up on tech side. It has one of the biggest tech workforce in China, but they can't make Taobao frontpage work moderately well. It is almost as if they felt "giving up" on that. Having worked with them on their DC project in 2016, I can attest that the rest of the company is not different. They are constantly loosing managerial cadres, and almost all Alibabers I knew can attest of the company feeling "ungoverned" and "in state of Brownian motion"
thetechlead 7y ago
Worked at Alibaba. Not trying to defend the company, just offering my observation. They do work much longer hour as compared to most American companies (like Google, I worked at too), even longer than the average Chinese ones. However, 9-to-9 doesn't mean people work 12 hour straight and nobody forcing anyone to stay at work until 9. Chinese work schedule includes 30 minutes to 1 hour extra napping time at noon, and Alibaba has on-campus canteens and facilities so employees go gym/game after dinner then back to work a little longer before leaving. When I was working there I usually leave right after dinner so the actual work hour was around 8.5-9 hours a day. And our team never work on weekends (except for around 11.11 the annual shopping craze). However I do work at night and weekends at home, voluntarily. They do pay well though.
- stuffedBelly 7y ago
  The keyword is "voluntary". Alibaba doesn't have this problem but many other companies do. The fact anti-996 has gained tons of attention makes me doubt it's just an immature movement started by a couple of crybabies.
  - thetechlead 7y ago
    Definitely not immature. People have all the right to do so, and Chinese laws protect labor rights. And I do agree that the reason you are working overtime and whether it's voluntary make a big difference.
- raducu 7y ago
  But does it matter if you work continuously 9-9? If I stay on premise 9-9 I still regard that as work -- that still is my time that I'm selling to the company. Can you raise a child if you are away 9-9? You wake up at 7AM, return home at 10PM, how is that even considered a life worth living? That's just insane if you ask me.
  - thetechlead 7y ago
    > But does it matter if you work continuously 9-9? If I stay on premise 9-9 I still regard that as work -- that still is my time that I'm selling to the company. In many countries, lunch and dinner breaks are unpaid time - in theory you are free to go home and do whatever you want. In China, noon break can be two hour long including napping. And the free dinners of IT companies are actually incentives to lure you staying longer on campus. Of course you can leave earlier or even on your own schedule if raising a child, however, for young people most prefer staying overtime enjoying free facilities companies provide them, like food and gyms they have to pay off-campus otherwise.
fsloth 7y ago
I think you have to compare to this other organizations with up-or-out mentality like the big name consultancies and so on. The point is not to offer a "sustainable worklife". The whole point is to chew through fresh graduates as fast as you can. They are fuel for the fire. And China has many, many hungry and young graduates. It's kinda fair to say this out loud. People know what they are getting into. Some people actually enjoy this and thrive in such a high strain environment. The losers are the people who think they have to do this to "prove themselves" and just suffer and burn out. Those who survive get promoted, and perpetuate the culture. The only pathology I see is that if people think this is the only way to run a technology company and start aping the practice - which is a likely outcome.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
and nurses work long hours with lower pay The Longer The Shifts For Hospital Nurses, The Higher The Levels Of Burnout And Patient Dissatisfaction https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3608421 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3608421 Nurses seek to reduce long hours and fatigue https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2015/02/01/nurse-group-seeks-reduction-in-long-hours-to-reduce-fatigue/22103201/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2015/02/01/nurse-... January 31, 2012 — State laws against mandatory overtime hours for nurses are effective, researchers reported in an article published online August 29, 2011, in Nursing Outlook. "Nurses routinely work long shifts, often as long as 12 hours straight," said Carol Brewer, PhD, RN, FAAN, a professor at the School of Nursing, University at Buffalo, New York, in a news release. "These laws were intended to prevent hospitals from piling mandatory overtime on top of such shifts, a practice that research shows can increase the likelihood of mistakes." https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/757834 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/757834
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Id be more worried about tired medical staff missing things like detecting sepsis.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  As a doctor you are 1 mistake away from potentially killing somebody, which can easily end up you being in jail, your license permanently removed and life ruined. And lets be honest, most doctors have killed by negligence/mistake in their lives, this is pure statistics and reality that few want to admit. After screwup everybody just hopes family/hospital will not investigate and move on. Treatment of medical staff, mainly doctors is pretty ridiculous compared to easy life we (most of us) have in IT. What I mean by example - the by far the biggest employer - university hospital is forcing employers overtime, nightshifts which are properly debilitating, and not 1, but easily 4-5 in a row. At the end of such a row, the doctor feels drunk and sluggish when discussed with. Which 3rd world country do you think I discuss? One of the biggest hospitals in Switzerland. I have tons of stories from friends of us - like cantonal hospital in Bern, where chef of whole department set up the badge-sharing system that forced his doctors to share badges over weekend with others who didn't work,so they could do more overtime (unpaid of course) because the Swiss laws prohibited them from doing so, and entrance badge system was programmed accordingly). You don't want to participate, good bye (also to your career in whole country). 2018 story. My advice - stay healthy, just don't go to hospital unless you have to. At the end, just drop dead.
powerapple 7y ago
Well, 996 is good thing to balance the imbalance. There are plenty of people looking for positions with good pay, and for those who can afford to worry about 'quality of life', they can simply move on to other positions and have other people enjoy these good paid jobs. So everyone will have their chance to get exploited and move on afterwards. Once most people are happy with what they have, no one would work for 996 companies and things will change. It is exactly the same thing as manufacture jobs moving to Asian countries. It is very good for Asian workers.
geodel 7y ago
Well you have got all the logic correct except that there are millions upon millions looking for 'cushy' IT jobs in developing world. So when IT worker complains about being burnt they can be replaced before they even spell 'overtime'. This is true in India, China or Korea. At least these are ones I am directly aware of. Also as much employee or employers claim that they are developing and maintaining a hugely complex systems. Most of it are age old 3-tier applications. Employers can easily replace most of the grunt workers with another lot. Average employees know this and that's why they put up with these demands. It is not like companies are lining up to hire run of the mill CRUD devs in these countries. I personally know many folks once they are laid off it would take anywhere between 3-12 month to get next job. So what remains are few exceptional developers/engineers who can negotiate better benefits and working hours independently with companies. Companies absolutely do not feel any need to extend same level of respect and perks to everyone.

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

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

echelon 7y ago

996 is fine if you're a founder of a company. It's not okay for ill-compensated workers that will never become billionaires. We don't have much time on this planet. Why should he expect others to be droning slaves for him? People should enjoy what little life they have, not spend most of their time as cogs in a machine.

BurningFrog 7y ago
> It's not okay for ill-compensated workers that will never become billionaires. What if everyone who does it will become millionaires? What if everyone who does it understands the tradeoffs involved and makes an informed decision that you disagree with?
- m0zg 7y ago
  That's like if you said "what if everyone won a lottery". You know full well this sweatshop bullshit produces very few millionaires, and millions of burn-outs.
- learc83 7y ago
  Neither of things are true, so what's your point?
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    Ali Baba is the Amazon of China. It is enormously profitable. I assume that in return for working so hard, the employees are paid quite well, or else they would find better jobs. I guess the unsupported claim that they're "ill-compensated" out of the blue was what annoyed me.
    - learc83 7y ago
      It looks like the average senior software engineer salary at Alibaba is around $30k. That's well above the average annual salary in China, but it's about average for a software developer, and no one is going going to become a millionaire working for those wages. Also long hours are normal in China. If your choice is to work for one of 50 companies that all have insane schedules, it's hardly informed consent.

rococode 7y ago

> Labeling people who demand reasonable work-life balance as "slackers" or lazy is utterly disgusting. Worth clarifying that the "slackers" comment came from JD.com's founder Richard Liu, not Jack Ma. edit: removed comments on whether he endorses it or not since it seems like there are contradicting statements from him. My current impression is that he disagrees with forced overtime but wants his employees to work similar hours voluntarily (although I suspect this is a common sentiment among business execs).

stuffedBelly 7y ago
corrected. Thanks.
stuffedBelly 7y ago
I actually read Jack Ma's initial memo on this matter in Chinese. His stance was pretty clear that he endorses 996. He later "clarified" that he disagrees with this sentiment after people became enraged by his words.
benj111 7y ago
"My current impression is that he disagrees with forced overtime but wants his employees to work similar hours voluntarily" If your boss says they want you to work overtime 'voluntarily', what do you do? Doesn't sound very voluntary, and middle managers actually doing the enforcement aren't going to treat it like that, especially when they get targets.

baybal2 7y ago

Sounds almost funny in light of how much the company is messed up on tech side. It has one of the biggest tech workforce in China, but they can't make Taobao frontpage work moderately well. It is almost as if they felt "giving up" on that. Having worked with them on their DC project in 2016, I can attest that the rest of the company is not different. They are constantly loosing managerial cadres, and almost all Alibabers I knew can attest of the company feeling "ungoverned" and "in state of Brownian motion"

thetechlead 7y ago

Worked at Alibaba. Not trying to defend the company, just offering my observation. They do work much longer hour as compared to most American companies (like Google, I worked at too), even longer than the average Chinese ones. However, 9-to-9 doesn't mean people work 12 hour straight and nobody forcing anyone to stay at work until 9. Chinese work schedule includes 30 minutes to 1 hour extra napping time at noon, and Alibaba has on-campus canteens and facilities so employees go gym/game after dinner then back to work a little longer before leaving. When I was working there I usually leave right after dinner so the actual work hour was around 8.5-9 hours a day. And our team never work on weekends (except for around 11.11 the annual shopping craze). However I do work at night and weekends at home, voluntarily. They do pay well though.

stuffedBelly 7y ago
The keyword is "voluntary". Alibaba doesn't have this problem but many other companies do. The fact anti-996 has gained tons of attention makes me doubt it's just an immature movement started by a couple of crybabies.
- thetechlead 7y ago
  Definitely not immature. People have all the right to do so, and Chinese laws protect labor rights. And I do agree that the reason you are working overtime and whether it's voluntary make a big difference.
raducu 7y ago
But does it matter if you work continuously 9-9? If I stay on premise 9-9 I still regard that as work -- that still is my time that I'm selling to the company. Can you raise a child if you are away 9-9? You wake up at 7AM, return home at 10PM, how is that even considered a life worth living? That's just insane if you ask me.
- thetechlead 7y ago
  > But does it matter if you work continuously 9-9? If I stay on premise 9-9 I still regard that as work -- that still is my time that I'm selling to the company. In many countries, lunch and dinner breaks are unpaid time - in theory you are free to go home and do whatever you want. In China, noon break can be two hour long including napping. And the free dinners of IT companies are actually incentives to lure you staying longer on campus. Of course you can leave earlier or even on your own schedule if raising a child, however, for young people most prefer staying overtime enjoying free facilities companies provide them, like food and gyms they have to pay off-campus otherwise.

fsloth 7y ago

I think you have to compare to this other organizations with up-or-out mentality like the big name consultancies and so on. The point is not to offer a "sustainable worklife". The whole point is to chew through fresh graduates as fast as you can. They are fuel for the fire. And China has many, many hungry and young graduates. It's kinda fair to say this out loud. People know what they are getting into. Some people actually enjoy this and thrive in such a high strain environment. The losers are the people who think they have to do this to "prove themselves" and just suffer and burn out. Those who survive get promoted, and perpetuate the culture. The only pathology I see is that if people think this is the only way to run a technology company and start aping the practice - which is a likely outcome.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

and nurses work long hours with lower pay The Longer The Shifts For Hospital Nurses, The Higher The Levels Of Burnout And Patient Dissatisfaction https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3608421 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3608421 Nurses seek to reduce long hours and fatigue https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2015/02/01/nurse-group-seeks-reduction-in-long-hours-to-reduce-fatigue/22103201/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2015/02/01/nurse-... January 31, 2012 — State laws against mandatory overtime hours for nurses are effective, researchers reported in an article published online August 29, 2011, in Nursing Outlook. "Nurses routinely work long shifts, often as long as 12 hours straight," said Carol Brewer, PhD, RN, FAAN, a professor at the School of Nursing, University at Buffalo, New York, in a news release. "These laws were intended to prevent hospitals from piling mandatory overtime on top of such shifts, a practice that research shows can increase the likelihood of mistakes." https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/757834 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/757834

C1sc0cat 7y ago
Id be more worried about tired medical staff missing things like detecting sepsis.
saiya-jin 7y ago
As a doctor you are 1 mistake away from potentially killing somebody, which can easily end up you being in jail, your license permanently removed and life ruined. And lets be honest, most doctors have killed by negligence/mistake in their lives, this is pure statistics and reality that few want to admit. After screwup everybody just hopes family/hospital will not investigate and move on. Treatment of medical staff, mainly doctors is pretty ridiculous compared to easy life we (most of us) have in IT. What I mean by example - the by far the biggest employer - university hospital is forcing employers overtime, nightshifts which are properly debilitating, and not 1, but easily 4-5 in a row. At the end of such a row, the doctor feels drunk and sluggish when discussed with. Which 3rd world country do you think I discuss? One of the biggest hospitals in Switzerland. I have tons of stories from friends of us - like cantonal hospital in Bern, where chef of whole department set up the badge-sharing system that forced his doctors to share badges over weekend with others who didn't work,so they could do more overtime (unpaid of course) because the Swiss laws prohibited them from doing so, and entrance badge system was programmed accordingly). You don't want to participate, good bye (also to your career in whole country). 2018 story. My advice - stay healthy, just don't go to hospital unless you have to. At the end, just drop dead.

powerapple 7y ago

Well, 996 is good thing to balance the imbalance. There are plenty of people looking for positions with good pay, and for those who can afford to worry about 'quality of life', they can simply move on to other positions and have other people enjoy these good paid jobs. So everyone will have their chance to get exploited and move on afterwards. Once most people are happy with what they have, no one would work for 996 companies and things will change. It is exactly the same thing as manufacture jobs moving to Asian countries. It is very good for Asian workers.

geodel 7y ago

Well you have got all the logic correct except that there are millions upon millions looking for 'cushy' IT jobs in developing world. So when IT worker complains about being burnt they can be replaced before they even spell 'overtime'. This is true in India, China or Korea. At least these are ones I am directly aware of. Also as much employee or employers claim that they are developing and maintaining a hugely complex systems. Most of it are age old 3-tier applications. Employers can easily replace most of the grunt workers with another lot. Average employees know this and that's why they put up with these demands. It is not like companies are lining up to hire run of the mill CRUD devs in these countries. I personally know many folks once they are laid off it would take anywhere between 3-12 month to get next job. So what remains are few exceptional developers/engineers who can negotiate better benefits and working hours independently with companies. Companies absolutely do not feel any need to extend same level of respect and perks to everyone.