Every time I am stressed by work, I think of this obnoxious work "ethic", and I feel better.

In other news, what happened to AI? Isn't it supposed to make life easier? Work for one weekend day, no health insurance, etc - we back to preindustrial oligarchy, fam?

We need unions in this industry so badly

Brilliant, 996 yourself out of a job.

How are they going to recruit for that without paying megabucks

There will be no liberation with AI. Hasn’t been with any other tech. Output always fills the space/time created

A lot of people working these jobs are being paid millions per year, it's really not the right group to feel bad for. Also nearly everyone I know who does this loves it

with this and the recent Windsurf “acquisition”, what’s even the draw to startups anymore? 25% base pay increase for 80% more hours (not even considering overtime) with equity that is tantamount to useless (with or without Windsurf being the new norm)? super hard pass and I hope everyone with half a brain does the same

AI is being used as an excuse to strip away every labor norm and law in the name of “not being left behind”, with a product that has yet to truly be earth shattering on the scale it’s been predicted to be. hard not to see the current slate of VCs and founders as leechs

Everything we know about systems resilience shows that 60% to 80% utilization is the sweet spot. We treat our silicon topology better than our human topology.

The Chinese 996 work schedule is indeed hard work but it doesn't mean working 72 hours according to how westerners calculate working hours. For one, tech workers arrive at the office at 9am, not that they start working at 9am: once they arrive they simply head to the office cafeteria to have breakfast between 9am and 10am. And it's really common to spend one hour each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Unlike westerners who'd be happy eating some cold sandwiches for lunch, the Chinese are rather picky about their food being hot and served with soup. Second, the Chinese have a weird culture of napping at the office after lunch. Not just some nap pods here and there, but institutionalized naps with day beds for all. So right off the bat, you deduct up to four hours of non-working time from twelve hours of in-office time. Finally, the Chinese also have a culture of not leaving before their bosses leave the office. This means even if a worker has finished all assigned tasks, the worker simply kills time and waits for their boss to leave. It might be reading internal documentation, or it might be something less productive.

996 refers to time in office, not time worked. The actual hours worked is closer to 48 hours per week than 72 hours.

It's a race to the bottom, and it hurts all of us.

This is true. Everyone I have visited in SV is working from wake to sleep, at some Airbnb, where you are expected to just exist there. It’s slavery.

I have worked hours like that, for years. Over time, i learned that it's mainly good if you don't know what you're doing, and you want to waste lots of time, and not be at your sharpest. While also often feeling like crap.

The next time I'm leading a team, I'm leaning towards 40 solid hours/wk being the official way to go.

Up to around 60 hours/wk of mixed-solidity work is also sustainable long-term for most people, without ill health effects iff some of that will be much lower-productivity time and the people don't have daily family obligations and the overall stress isn't too high.

But if some people wanted to try 50-60 hours and a mix of pace themselves, I'd probably have them structure it so that they appeared to 40-hour colleagues as if they were also doing 40 hours. Which means no slacking off in front of them, nobody getting disturbed on off hours with messages or pull request reviews, etc.

Does anyone else feel more productive doing about 4 hours per day? I really have found it to be a sweet spot and since it’s so sustainable (endurance pace), I enjoy getting a couple hours in during weekend early mornings.

The only boss I'd work 996 for is myself.

This should be illegal, outright.

Monetary systems and their economies are innately dystopian, and that can't be changed, but given that I'm a reluctant capitalist. Simply because the other option is much worse and incomparably more dishonest. But if private industry wants to remain relatively unrestricted it has to operate in good faith. Which means not pushing the envelope toward de facto slavery conditions, as is its nature to do. It needs self-control. If industry can't control itself, it's making the case for being hyper-regulated. And then its down-hill from there.

Industry and labor are in an inescapable social contract, the balance of which determines wider society's quality of life. Both factions have to commit to the middle, relatively speaking.

In part, that means that the job market standard doesn't evolve to six days of double shifts. Hire a second shift, and retreat from the type of psychopathy that advanced society wisely left behind.

“The 996 work culture is, in fact, a symptom of corporate incompetence.”

Only when management is unable to deliver real results to investors do they fall back on saying, “Look, we’re all working passionately, we’re doing 996!” The implicit message is: “Even though I’m incapable, we’re working hard—please keep investing in us.” It’s a methodology of working for performance theater, not actual productivity.

I’ve worked as a professional executive in China for over 20 years. From 2000 to 2008, I grew in foreign enterprises. After 2010, I joined Chinese internet companies and worked with many firms, mainly focusing on IT governance to meet IPO-level audit requirements.

One principle has remained consistent throughout my career:

Overtime is a sign of managerial failure. And when a company turns overtime into culture, it is collective incompetence—from the organization and its leadership. That should be a source of shame.

When I began working in Chinese internet companies around 2010, leadership both appreciated my capabilities and deeply resented my foreign-corporate mindset. They felt I always touched their most painful nerve: that 996 is a mark of failure. They found it hard to work with me because I always structured everything with clarity, and what they hated most was clarity. I spoke in logic and market truths; they hated that, always insisting they were “crossing the river by feeling the stones.”

So when I see Silicon Valley now embracing 996, I know this is the final straw for the AI bubble:

When people start working for the performance, not for the purpose, the collapse is already on its way.