By Bryce Covert, Published The Straits Times, 23 Apr 2019
Mr Jack Ma, the richest man in China and founder of e-commerce company Alibaba, is a big fan of extreme overwork.
He recently praised China's "996" practice, which refers to those who put in 12-hour days - 9am to 9pm - six days a week. This is not a problem, he said in a recent blog post, but a blessing.
The response from others in China was swift.
"If all enterprises enforce a 996 schedule, no one will have children," one person argued on the same platform. "Did you ever think about the elderly at home who need care, the children who need company?"
It even prompted a response from Chinese state media, which reminded everyone: "The mandatory enforcement of 996 overtime culture not only reflects the arrogance of business managers, but is also unfair and impractical."
Managers who think like Mr Ma can be found the world over.
In the United States, Mr Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla, has argued that "nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week".
Uber reportedly used the internal mantra, "Work smarter, harder and longer". (It's now just "smarter" and "harder".) It has also rebranded second jobs as clever "side hustles".
WeWork decorates its co-working spaces with phrases like "Don't stop when you're tired, stop when you are done". Other tech and business gurus try to sell us on "toil glamour".
The truth is that they're all wrong.
Workers certainly suffer when forced to put in extreme hours. But business fares just as poorly. No one benefits from people pushing themselves to the brink of exhaustion.
One of the reasons Mr Ma said he supports 996 culture is that people who work longer get the "rewards of hard work".
But they are apparently not in store for monetary rewards. A group of academics just released research finding that working longer hours than someone else in the same job doesn't earn you more money; instead, it leads to a 1 per cent decrease in wages. Another analysis similarly found that after 40 hours a week, there is no clear financial return for clocking more hours.
Excessive work effort has even been linked, perversely, to worse career outcomes.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention warned that putting in extra hours is associated with poorer health, including weight gain, higher alcohol and tobacco use, and increased injury, illness and even mortality. Health researchers have found that overwork is linked to a higher risk of heart disease and stroke.
Mr Ma went so far in his post as to say that those who aren't willing to put in such long hours need not apply to work at Alibaba. He is only shooting himself in the foot.
There's a ceiling on how much more someone can get done by simply spending more time at work. After about 48 hours a week, a worker's output drops sharply, according to a Stanford economist. Other research has appeared to support this finding.
While there might be an initial burst of activity from overworking, people who work more than 55 hours a week perform worse than those who go home at a normal hour and get some rest.
There are other costs to employers. An eldercare facility in Sweden that tried a six-hour work day reportedly found that nurses took fewer sick days and were more productive. Fatigued workers cost employers US$100 billion (S$135.7 billion) in lost productivity.
This all became obvious to the US business community long ago. As unions pushed for a 40-hour work week in the 1800s, business leaders who acquiesced found that their companies became much more profitable and productive.
In 1914, Henry Ford took the lessons of these experiments to heart and cut shifts in his plants to eight hours without reducing pay, leading to an output boom. By 1938, that 40-hour work week was enshrined into law by the Fair Labour Standards Act, which requires time-and-a-half pay beyond that.
The strength of the law has been whittled away over recent decades, however, to the point that millions fewer Americans are guaranteed extra pay for extra work than in 1979. That allows employers to push more employees to put in more hours essentially free.
Then US President Barack Obama proposed an update in 2016 that would have offered new or strengthened overtime protection to more than 13 million workers; it was struck down by the courts. President Donald Trump's version, proposed last month, will help 8.2 million fewer workers, thanks to a lower salary threshold and a failure to index it to inflation.
Business leaders seem to have forgotten the lessons they learnt in the past: Humane schedules benefit employee and employer alike.
China might have its 996 culture, but the US doesn't fare much better. Nearly a third of Americans put in 45 hours or more each week; nearly 10 million clock 60 or more. The average European puts in 7 per cent to 19 per cent less time on the job.
Policies like a strong overtime rule can help people return to a world where everyone does better by working less. Business leaders like Mr Ma have to get with the programme. Glorifying those who sacrifice nearly all their waking hours at the altar of work harms everyone, from the chief executive to the custodian.
NYTIMES
Mr Jack Ma, the richest man in China and founder of e-commerce company Alibaba, is a big fan of extreme overwork.
He recently praised China's "996" practice, which refers to those who put in 12-hour days - 9am to 9pm - six days a week. This is not a problem, he said in a recent blog post, but a blessing.
The response from others in China was swift.
"If all enterprises enforce a 996 schedule, no one will have children," one person argued on the same platform. "Did you ever think about the elderly at home who need care, the children who need company?"
It even prompted a response from Chinese state media, which reminded everyone: "The mandatory enforcement of 996 overtime culture not only reflects the arrogance of business managers, but is also unfair and impractical."
Managers who think like Mr Ma can be found the world over.
In the United States, Mr Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla, has argued that "nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week".
Uber reportedly used the internal mantra, "Work smarter, harder and longer". (It's now just "smarter" and "harder".) It has also rebranded second jobs as clever "side hustles".
WeWork decorates its co-working spaces with phrases like "Don't stop when you're tired, stop when you are done". Other tech and business gurus try to sell us on "toil glamour".
The truth is that they're all wrong.
Workers certainly suffer when forced to put in extreme hours. But business fares just as poorly. No one benefits from people pushing themselves to the brink of exhaustion.
One of the reasons Mr Ma said he supports 996 culture is that people who work longer get the "rewards of hard work".
But they are apparently not in store for monetary rewards. A group of academics just released research finding that working longer hours than someone else in the same job doesn't earn you more money; instead, it leads to a 1 per cent decrease in wages. Another analysis similarly found that after 40 hours a week, there is no clear financial return for clocking more hours.
Excessive work effort has even been linked, perversely, to worse career outcomes.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention warned that putting in extra hours is associated with poorer health, including weight gain, higher alcohol and tobacco use, and increased injury, illness and even mortality. Health researchers have found that overwork is linked to a higher risk of heart disease and stroke.
Mr Ma went so far in his post as to say that those who aren't willing to put in such long hours need not apply to work at Alibaba. He is only shooting himself in the foot.
There's a ceiling on how much more someone can get done by simply spending more time at work. After about 48 hours a week, a worker's output drops sharply, according to a Stanford economist. Other research has appeared to support this finding.
While there might be an initial burst of activity from overworking, people who work more than 55 hours a week perform worse than those who go home at a normal hour and get some rest.
There are other costs to employers. An eldercare facility in Sweden that tried a six-hour work day reportedly found that nurses took fewer sick days and were more productive. Fatigued workers cost employers US$100 billion (S$135.7 billion) in lost productivity.
This all became obvious to the US business community long ago. As unions pushed for a 40-hour work week in the 1800s, business leaders who acquiesced found that their companies became much more profitable and productive.
In 1914, Henry Ford took the lessons of these experiments to heart and cut shifts in his plants to eight hours without reducing pay, leading to an output boom. By 1938, that 40-hour work week was enshrined into law by the Fair Labour Standards Act, which requires time-and-a-half pay beyond that.
The strength of the law has been whittled away over recent decades, however, to the point that millions fewer Americans are guaranteed extra pay for extra work than in 1979. That allows employers to push more employees to put in more hours essentially free.
Then US President Barack Obama proposed an update in 2016 that would have offered new or strengthened overtime protection to more than 13 million workers; it was struck down by the courts. President Donald Trump's version, proposed last month, will help 8.2 million fewer workers, thanks to a lower salary threshold and a failure to index it to inflation.
Business leaders seem to have forgotten the lessons they learned in the past: Humane schedules benefit employee and employer alike, writes @brycecovert https://t.co/ZDwHLcQ7I3— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) April 22, 2019
Business leaders seem to have forgotten the lessons they learnt in the past: Humane schedules benefit employee and employer alike.
China might have its 996 culture, but the US doesn't fare much better. Nearly a third of Americans put in 45 hours or more each week; nearly 10 million clock 60 or more. The average European puts in 7 per cent to 19 per cent less time on the job.
Policies like a strong overtime rule can help people return to a world where everyone does better by working less. Business leaders like Mr Ma have to get with the programme. Glorifying those who sacrifice nearly all their waking hours at the altar of work harms everyone, from the chief executive to the custodian.
NYTIMES
What China's tech workers think of '996' culture
By Lin Qiqing and Raymond Zhong, Published The Straits Times, 1 May 2019
China's richest Internet moguls think their employees should work more. Mr Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce titan Alibaba, called long work hours "a huge blessing". Mr Richard Liu, who runs Alibaba rival JD.com, said people who frittered away their days "are no brothers of mine".
Rank-and-file tech workers in China, discouraged by a weakened job market and downbeat about their odds of joining the digital aristocracy, have other ideas. They are organising online against what in China is called the "996" culture: 9am to 9pm, six days a week.
For years, Chinese tech employees have worked hours that make Silicon Valley's workaholics seem pampered. Now they are naming and shaming employers that demand late nights. Some programmers are even withholding their creations from companies that they think overemphasise 996.
"Ten years ago, people rarely complained about 996," said search giant Baidu's former employee Li Shun, who left to found an online medical start-up. "This industry was booming once, but it's more of a normal industry now. There are no more giant financial returns. Expecting people to work a 996 schedule on their own like before isn't realistic."
Unusually for China - where independent labour unions are banned and the government comes down hard on populist movements it does not control - the movement is gaining traction.
Mr Ma softened his remarks. An industry wide conversation has begun. An open letter, sent on Monday to China's Ministry of Human Resources and signed by 74 lawyers from around the country, urges the government to properly enforce labour laws.
Even Chinese state media has called on employers to ease back. "Under the pressures of a slowing economy, many companies are faced with questions about their survival, and their anxiety is understandable," a commentary in the People's Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, said. "But the solution is not to make employees work as much overtime as possible."
Angst about 72-hour workweeks speaks to a deeper gloom in China's digital industries. Not so long ago, 996 symbolised possibility for Chinese tech entrepreneurs. Their country had the vast market. And increasingly, it had the engineering talent. The secret ingredient, the one that supposedly set China's companies apart from Silicon Valley's, was the hustle.
While China requires overtime pay, the laws are haphazardly enforced and the tech industry usually insists workers are committing their time voluntarily. But hustle is harder to demand of workers in a bear market. Internet darlings have laid off employees. A torrent of venture investment in tech has slowed to a trickle.
As China's Internet industry matures, giant companies like Alibaba and Tencent are looking more like monopolists whose world-swallowing dominance leaves little room for upstarts.
In China, "there's not a lot of hope for runners-up anymore", said Mr Max Zhou, a co-founder of a Beijing mobile software start-up called MetaApp. As a result, he said, smaller companies can no longer use a sense of grander purpose to motivate workers to sacrifice their personal lives. "Most companies don't have a dream anymore," Mr Zhou said. "They can only try to fabricate something for their employees."
The 996 debate started two months ago with a simple post on GitHub, an online community where programmers around the world share code and software tools. An anonymous user posted under the screen name "996icu", a reference to the place where such hours take engineers: the intensive care unit.
The 996.ICU GitHub repository - basically a folder for a project's files - has since been "starred" more than 230,000 times, indicating people's level of interest. Hundreds of fed-up tech workers have contributed to the GitHub project. Others have assembled on messaging and social media apps, with little centralised coordination.
The Chinese government is eternally fearful of spaces where mass discontent can simmer. It has long barred access to Facebook, Twitter and other global platforms. Years ago, China briefly blocked GitHub, too, but engineers protested and the site was unblocked. GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, has a policy of posting any take-down requests it receives from governments.
Mr Nagi Zhuge, an engineer at a start-up in the southern province of Hunan, has lived the 996 life for the last two years. "My colleagues are too afraid to go home after work," he said. "As a junior employee, I can't be the first to leave." He is now an active contributor to the GitHub project.
Across the different groups, the basic strategy is to push, but not so hard that the Chinese government feels compelled to react. That means no strikes and no demonstrations. In one group on the messaging app Telegram, references to Marx and Lenin are forbidden. The philosophies of communism's leading lights often run contrary to the way China is run today.
The government cracked down against a labour rights movement in the tech hub of Shenzhen this year. Instead of sit-ins, the tech workers are harnessing the power of memes, stickers and T-shirts. Some have pushed for a holiday to celebrate beleaguered software engineers. Mr Zhuge is rallying workers to mail paper copies of China's labour law to Mr Ma of Alibaba. "We're expressing ourselves very gently, as programmers tend to do," said Mr Suji Yan, founder of a start-up in Shanghai called Dimension.
On GitHub, Chinese tech workers have drawn up a blacklist of the tech companies where the hours are longest. Among the offenders: Alibaba, JD.com, smartphone maker Huawei and ByteDance, the social media giant behind the short-video platform TikTok. The list of humane "955" exemplars includes Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as Chinese social website Douban.
Written along the bottom of the 996.ICU group's bright red home page: "Developers' lives matter." Alibaba said it had no comment on 996 beyond Mr Ma's social media posts, and JD.com had no comment beyond Mr Liu's post. Huawei, whose executives speak proudly of their hard-charging "wolf culture", declined to comment. ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment.
The GitHub repository includes information about job opportunities overseas. There is also a list of things people can do to support the movement. The last item on the list: "Go home at 6pm without feeling sorry."
NYTIMES
By Lin Qiqing and Raymond Zhong, Published The Straits Times, 1 May 2019
China's richest Internet moguls think their employees should work more. Mr Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce titan Alibaba, called long work hours "a huge blessing". Mr Richard Liu, who runs Alibaba rival JD.com, said people who frittered away their days "are no brothers of mine".
Rank-and-file tech workers in China, discouraged by a weakened job market and downbeat about their odds of joining the digital aristocracy, have other ideas. They are organising online against what in China is called the "996" culture: 9am to 9pm, six days a week.
For years, Chinese tech employees have worked hours that make Silicon Valley's workaholics seem pampered. Now they are naming and shaming employers that demand late nights. Some programmers are even withholding their creations from companies that they think overemphasise 996.
"Ten years ago, people rarely complained about 996," said search giant Baidu's former employee Li Shun, who left to found an online medical start-up. "This industry was booming once, but it's more of a normal industry now. There are no more giant financial returns. Expecting people to work a 996 schedule on their own like before isn't realistic."
Unusually for China - where independent labour unions are banned and the government comes down hard on populist movements it does not control - the movement is gaining traction.
Mr Ma softened his remarks. An industry wide conversation has begun. An open letter, sent on Monday to China's Ministry of Human Resources and signed by 74 lawyers from around the country, urges the government to properly enforce labour laws.
Even Chinese state media has called on employers to ease back. "Under the pressures of a slowing economy, many companies are faced with questions about their survival, and their anxiety is understandable," a commentary in the People's Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, said. "But the solution is not to make employees work as much overtime as possible."
Angst about 72-hour workweeks speaks to a deeper gloom in China's digital industries. Not so long ago, 996 symbolised possibility for Chinese tech entrepreneurs. Their country had the vast market. And increasingly, it had the engineering talent. The secret ingredient, the one that supposedly set China's companies apart from Silicon Valley's, was the hustle.
While China requires overtime pay, the laws are haphazardly enforced and the tech industry usually insists workers are committing their time voluntarily. But hustle is harder to demand of workers in a bear market. Internet darlings have laid off employees. A torrent of venture investment in tech has slowed to a trickle.
As China's Internet industry matures, giant companies like Alibaba and Tencent are looking more like monopolists whose world-swallowing dominance leaves little room for upstarts.
In China, "there's not a lot of hope for runners-up anymore", said Mr Max Zhou, a co-founder of a Beijing mobile software start-up called MetaApp. As a result, he said, smaller companies can no longer use a sense of grander purpose to motivate workers to sacrifice their personal lives. "Most companies don't have a dream anymore," Mr Zhou said. "They can only try to fabricate something for their employees."
The 996 debate started two months ago with a simple post on GitHub, an online community where programmers around the world share code and software tools. An anonymous user posted under the screen name "996icu", a reference to the place where such hours take engineers: the intensive care unit.
The 996.ICU GitHub repository - basically a folder for a project's files - has since been "starred" more than 230,000 times, indicating people's level of interest. Hundreds of fed-up tech workers have contributed to the GitHub project. Others have assembled on messaging and social media apps, with little centralised coordination.
The Chinese government is eternally fearful of spaces where mass discontent can simmer. It has long barred access to Facebook, Twitter and other global platforms. Years ago, China briefly blocked GitHub, too, but engineers protested and the site was unblocked. GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, has a policy of posting any take-down requests it receives from governments.
Mr Nagi Zhuge, an engineer at a start-up in the southern province of Hunan, has lived the 996 life for the last two years. "My colleagues are too afraid to go home after work," he said. "As a junior employee, I can't be the first to leave." He is now an active contributor to the GitHub project.
Across the different groups, the basic strategy is to push, but not so hard that the Chinese government feels compelled to react. That means no strikes and no demonstrations. In one group on the messaging app Telegram, references to Marx and Lenin are forbidden. The philosophies of communism's leading lights often run contrary to the way China is run today.
The government cracked down against a labour rights movement in the tech hub of Shenzhen this year. Instead of sit-ins, the tech workers are harnessing the power of memes, stickers and T-shirts. Some have pushed for a holiday to celebrate beleaguered software engineers. Mr Zhuge is rallying workers to mail paper copies of China's labour law to Mr Ma of Alibaba. "We're expressing ourselves very gently, as programmers tend to do," said Mr Suji Yan, founder of a start-up in Shanghai called Dimension.
On GitHub, Chinese tech workers have drawn up a blacklist of the tech companies where the hours are longest. Among the offenders: Alibaba, JD.com, smartphone maker Huawei and ByteDance, the social media giant behind the short-video platform TikTok. The list of humane "955" exemplars includes Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as Chinese social website Douban.
Written along the bottom of the 996.ICU group's bright red home page: "Developers' lives matter." Alibaba said it had no comment on 996 beyond Mr Ma's social media posts, and JD.com had no comment beyond Mr Liu's post. Huawei, whose executives speak proudly of their hard-charging "wolf culture", declined to comment. ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment.
The GitHub repository includes information about job opportunities overseas. There is also a list of things people can do to support the movement. The last item on the list: "Go home at 6pm without feeling sorry."
NYTIMES
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