Chinese Authorities Say Overtime '996' Policy is Illegal (reuters.com) 127
China's Supreme People's Court said the overtime practice of "996", working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week, is illegal, taking aim at the controversial policy that is common among many Chinese technology firms. From a report: China's top court and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security on Thursday published guidelines and examples on what constituted as overtime work, saying they were focusing on the issue as it had attracted widespread attention recently. While the authorities used a case involving a parcel delivery company to explain why "996" was illegal, working such hours had become a badge of honour for some Chinese companies and employees.
Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Sequoia Capital's Mike Moritz have highlighted it as a competitive advantage the country had over the United States. But a backlash surfaced in 2019, prompting a public debate about work hours in China's tech industry that has continued. Last month, TikTok owner ByteDance on Friday said that it would formally end its weekend overtime policy from Aug. 1, two weeks after its short-video rival Kuaishou announced a similar decision. The court and ministry's criticism of "996" also comes amid a wide ranging Beijing-led regulatory crackdown on country's technology giants that has targeted issues from monopolistic behaviour to consumer rights.
Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Sequoia Capital's Mike Moritz have highlighted it as a competitive advantage the country had over the United States. But a backlash surfaced in 2019, prompting a public debate about work hours in China's tech industry that has continued. Last month, TikTok owner ByteDance on Friday said that it would formally end its weekend overtime policy from Aug. 1, two weeks after its short-video rival Kuaishou announced a similar decision. The court and ministry's criticism of "996" also comes amid a wide ranging Beijing-led regulatory crackdown on country's technology giants that has targeted issues from monopolistic behaviour to consumer rights.
Tha authorities are worried (Score:5, Funny)
The employees spend too much time being watched by their companies and not enough time being watched by the party.
Re:Th[e] authorities are worried [about BIG!] (Score:3)
Interesting paradox there. The Chinese could use big companies as an excuse to make their government even bigger, but I haven't heard them saying anything about wanting smaller government. What worries me is that they may be doing it for sane economic reasons. Using their ideology as camouflage? How dare they!
In contrast, most American politicians say they want more competition and smaller government, but then they write the rules of the game the way the lobbyists pay them to do it. The result is more and m
Well it's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
US capitalists have been sending jobs overseas for years because of their low wages and poor worker protection laws. Now maybe that will be coming to a slow but definite end as countries like China crack down on worker abuse. Maybe it will catch on in other countries where workers are regularly abused and exploited by corporations. I recommend Noam Chomsky's new book, Consequences of Capitalism" if you are interested in reading about it.
Re: Well it's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Well it's about time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Well it's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
the party will find it very easy to overlook any excessive overtime issues.
Unlikely, as "the party" aka the government has to pay for the sicknesses of its workers, oops - citizens.
I really wonder why /. is so full with completely idiotic ideas about China and its party.
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They don't, though. China and the US are essentially the only semi-developed countries in the world that don't have universal healthcare.
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China has universal healthcare since Mao took it over. ...
Oops
(And they had it roughly 3000 years - yes that is one three with three zeros - before that time under emperor rule)
China is after/besides old ancient Egypt the leading country with universal health care, and I doubt it was dropped during the turmoils of the wars between WWI and WWII)
Re: Well it's about time (Score:4, Insightful)
In the 2010s, there was a big controversy in the CCP. Should they focus on rapid growth, or focus on making the country more equal? People were taking sides.
Xi Jinping came along and said, "Let's focus on growth and focus on making the country more equal. Do both." That is how he came into power.
Re: Well it's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
It's got nothing to do with that. The fact is that even though Xi is a monster he does genuinely care about poverty and raising the living standards of Chinese citizens.
996 is a hold over from the bad old days. There was little else to do and everyone was doing it. It's a hallmark of poverty. Xi hates the thought of people living that way.
Re: Well it's about time (Score:2)
Re: Well it's about time (Score:2)
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Or all investments will go to other countries with absolutely no labor law, like in Africa for example, to be able to drive production costs low and keep a good (and adjustable) margin. And China won't be able to compete against that just like the West couldn't.
Note that it's a good thing to improve the condition in said countries though. for what we see of the Chinese example, exploitation seems better than misery.
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Care to enumerate the countries in Africa that have no labour laws?
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There you go: https://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/p... [ituc-csi.org]
Plenty of replacement for China.
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what we are seeing is China returning to it's Socialist/Maoist ideals, but this time from a position of power and having learned from the mistakes of the past.
It's not clear that they have learned from the mistakes of the past.
The only way communism can work is without violent suppression of mass segments of the population.
Re: Well it's about time (Score:2)
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The US never tried to be communist, so your comment is a strawman at best, at worse a knee-jerk response without even reading what you were responding to. Don't do that.
Re: Well it's about time (Score:2)
Re: Well it's about time (Score:2)
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It's not about "Communism", "Socialism", or "Maoist ideals", it's all about authoritarianism.
PR China is the world's largest corporation, using state-sponsored capitalism; everyone is born into the system and there's no way out. The heirarchy are there by familial power, wealth, and/or political wrangling, with new blood rising up from outside through meeting corporate objectives. All are there because they can squeeze the most out of their individual fiefdoms - eehrr - divisions, and chant the corporation'
Re:Well it's about time (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you mean to imply that the US has decent wages and good worker protection laws? Better than China's, granted, but actually decent? From where I'm sitting, the lower class in the US seems to be outright predated on and lacking any meaningful workplace protection at all.
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I wouldn't say good, but better than some other countries.
Other countries have better protections still.
The U.S. worker protections are middling at best. We are going to need more union protections to improve this and unfortunately we haven't been pushed there yet.
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Wrong job for you (Score:2)
If you're a career US software developer and you are NOT enrolled in your company's 401k, taking the match (free money!) so that you can later live off that investment, here's something to think about -
You're in entirely the wrong career field in that case.
Good software developers are people who naturally think logically. People for whom arithmetic comes fairly easy.
If you aren't taking the match, you should perhaps look into an artistic field instead. Because you probably aren't a logical thinker and you d
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Having a 401K is not the same as owning the means of production and/or living on passive income. IF and when you get to the point that you can live off of the investments without touching the principal, THEN you will no longer be working class. Note that most people don't get to that point. They get to a point where their savings and the interest will last longer than they will, then they retire. These days, people in lower paying professions may not get that far.
So taking advantage of the 401K with matchin
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> Having a 401K is not the same as owning the means of production
It's *precisely* owning the means of production - the foundries, the factories, and the ships. That's who owns the vast majority of such means of production in the US - people who checked the box marked "401k".
That's 99.99% of 401k, anyway. It's technically possible to put assets such as real estate in a 401k, but rarely would a 401k offer "weird" investments like that. Virtually all are mutual funds - owning the means of production.
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Try hopping on one of those ships and giving an order. Be amazed as you are handed over to authorities at the next port.
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You seem to be conflating the concepts of ownership vs management, and sole versus collective.
Are you under the impression that the person who can give orders in your department (the manager) *owns* the department?
Further, are you under the impression that in a communist or socialist country, every person can go to any factory and start giving orders?
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I never made any comment about Communism since we are not Communist. Note that the term "working class" pre-dates communism and is still used in economics. It is not the same as what Marx called the proletariat.
The manager isn't the owner, but the person far enough up the chain that nobody can fire them probably is. Sometimes the real owners are a small group of people who have made sure that collectively they hold at least 51% of the voting stock. They have the final decisions, they own the company. In exc
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> The manager isn't the owner, but the person far enough up the chain that nobody can fire them probably is.
Yep. Let's see who that person is. The CEO can be fired by the board. The board can be fired by the stockholders. The stockholders can be fired by - nobody. So as you said, that's who the owners are, the stockholders. The 401k peeps.
I've been a CEO fired by the board, at the request of the stockholders. The company wasn't doing well and it became clear that it was time for me to "resign".
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More specifically, the major shareholders with voting shares. That would not be through a 401K.
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85% of public companies have only ever had one class of shares. Meaning all shares are one-share-one-vote, from the IPO onwards.
About 10% had time-limited share classes typically lasting seven years. In some cases, this allows the people who built the company to continue to have control of it through the process of taking it public. That is, they don't relenquish control on the very day that they do the IPO. 5% continue to have more than one share class.
More often, the preferred shares have LESS or NO voti
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And how many have a small group with a controlling vote? How often are people with a 401K invited to exercise a vote?
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> And how many have a small group with a controlling vote?
We could estimate that like so:
100% of public companies exist
Minus 85% never had more than one class of shares = 15%
Minus ~8% are past the 7-year mark = 7%
Minus 4% preferred shares (converted from loans) don't have voting rights = 3%
Plus less than 1% the founders retained most of the stock = 4%
Around 4% of public companies remain controlled by the early people.
A small number of companies have a one-person-one-vote practice instead of one-share-one
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Minus 85% never had more than one class of shares = 15%
Not demonstrated. Having a small core of majority stockholder (or even a single majority shareholder) does not require 2 classes of stock., so back to 100% here.
Minus ~8% are past the 7-year mark = 7%
Not relevant if they only had one class of stock, back to 100%
Minus 4% preferred shares (converted from loans) don't have voting rights = 3%
Possibly, so 96%.
A small number of companies have a one-person-one-vote practice instead of one-share-one-vote. Obviously a small number of people can't dominate in those companies.
True enough for that small number.
Honestly, the rest of your analysis is more akin to numerology than logic.
I am aware of how shareholder voting and proxies work, not connect that somehow to the case of a 401K where most people don't even get a detailed breakdown of what
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Dude you can look up these numbers yourself if you don't want trust me. Or, instead of *looking* them up, you can *make up* numbers if your goal is to whine about something you've imagined, regardless of the fact it has no basis in reality.
> most people don't even get a detailed breakdown of what the fund has invested in.
You HAVE TO get a full breakdown before you're allowed to invest. You can close that window without without looking at it, but you HAVE TO click "I have read it" before you can buy in.
Yo
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I'm not questioning your numbers, I'm questioning their relevance to the questions at hand. The numbers were no more relevant than the GDP of Honduras no matter how accurate.
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You've asked several very good questions.
Again, I'd be glad to answer any, or you can look at them up.
For a moment it seemed like you were looking for an excuse to not participate in owning the means of production. Of course anyone looking for an excuse can find one, or just make one up.
The difference between the joint stock system and the communist system is that you get to decide which companies you fund and own, vs which companies you don't. So someone can just decide not to participate and they wouldn't
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It just occurred to me what you may have been thinking.
Were you thinking that maybe a few rich people who are NOT the founders of the company might buy a controlling interest, or a significant percentage?
For a sample big company, let's use one from smack dab in the middle of S&P 100, Oracle (number 50 largest company in the S&P). They have a market cap (total stock value) of $250 billion. So that's a typical big company.
For "richest" people, let's say someone who is in the top 20 richest people, but
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This is where leverage comes in. For example, Warren Buffett owns a bit over 30% of Berkshire Hathaway. It's not the classic 51%, but this is after he has donated a lot to philanthropy now that he's in his 70s. Prior to his wife's death, he describes his personal control of BH as "unassailable". He still has a big chunk of voice in the company. Meanwhile, BH holds a controlling interest in 70 companies [wikipedia.org]. If you have a lot of money, you get to leverage other people's money. I didn't dig any deeper to see wh
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Zero of those are public companies. You can't buy shares of Acme, because it's a subsidiary of Berkshire.
If you want to stop talking about public companies (companies you can buy stock in), most companies are owned by one person - the person who works there. Kate's Cakes, DJ Kevin,. Middleton Wedding Photography (aka Sarah).
The discussion so far has been about public companies, companies you can buy stock in. Which is most large companies.
Ps - that's in the chart you linked to (Score:2)
By the way, you can see that for yourself if you take a glance at the chart you linked to. See the column that says "ownership percentage"? See how it's a bunch of 100? That means it's a fully owned subsidiary of Berkshire. You can't invest in it.
If you see one or two where Berkshire owns 40% or 60%, that's a joint venture. Again, not a company you can invest in.
If you'd like we can go back to talking about companies you can invest in.
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That's simply a matter of Buffett's strategy. It nevertheless shows how he can control all of those companies (which were bought at some point) and only need to come up with part of the cost himself. The same strategy can be and sometimes is used with public companies.
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Yes, there are some people who want to "go in halfsies" with Buffet, because dude is really fucking good at investing.
But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the investments you and I can make - the thousands of public companies.
Seriously dude of you don't want to own companies like Microsoft, Walmart, and General Mills, just - don't. You really don't have to try to justify it to me.
I'm in the US, where we don't try to force people to put resources into companies if they don't want to.
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I think you've missed my point. The entirety of it is that unless you have enough in your 401K to live on only that without diminishing the principal, or you own a business where other people are working for your profit, you are working class. That means the vast majority of people in the U.S. including highly paid engineers.
The big lie in the U.S. is that white collar means not working class. That working class is synonymous with wearing some kind of dirty work clothes and sweating a lot. Ironically, some
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You can call anyone you want "working class" or "Bourgeoisiex or whatever you want. I suppose you can call me a giraffe in your own head and doesn't make any difference.
The fact is, over 90% of millionaires in the US became millionaires by consistently contributing to their 401K. Most of them never made over $100K in any year.
By slowly and steadily acquiring ownership of companies (aka stock), you build up $500K or $2 million or whatever and you can love off that. Lots and lots and lots of people do that.
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And that has what exactly to do with being working class or not for most of their lives?
You skipped the question before, what is your problem with someone being working class?
Also note, the median income in the U.S. is 31K, not 100K.
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Thanks for the chat. I think we've pretty much covered as much as we will usefully cover. Have a great week.
I question your math. (Score:2)
If you ARE doing the 401k, you're an owner of all the big companies. After a while you'll be able to live off that passive income.
Dude...your math sucks...or else you and I have different ideas of what "live" or "while" means. I'd not be so confident you can live passively off matching 401k. Either you're independently wealthy and starting with a huge trust fund to begin with, or you're assuming the following:
You started investing at age 22
You've never been unemployed
You'll never get have a major medical emergency
Social Security will still be a thing when you retire
You'll earn a software engineer's salary all your life
Your p
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I'd be curious to see your math, because it doesn't line up for me.
You said 15% of your income. We're talking about software developers in the US. Let's be conservative and say developers only average $80K / year in the US.
15% of $80K / year is $1,000 / month.
At the long-term average return of the market, $1,000/month for 20 years is $7,182,592.28. Seven million dollars.
Again with average returns, that'll produce $700K/year forever.
Now let's take inflation into account. Long term average inflation in the U
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I friggin knew better (Score:2)
Lol I knew $7 million sounded awfully high, but I didn't double check my math. I should have. I got an extra zero in there.
> At 10% annual return, you're talking $700k after 20 years
Yeah $760K at 10%. The average return long term has been a little over 10%, something like 10.4%.
Of course after you're retired, you're no longer saving for retirement, so that's 15% l as income you need. You aren't paying payroll taxes; hopefully you've paid off the mortgage (or mostly so), the kids are grown and gone, so yo
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Do you mean to imply that the US has decent wages and good worker protection laws? /quote
You should watch the Netflix Documentary American Factory. It's pretty interesting.
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Do you mean to imply that the US has decent wages and good worker protection laws? Better than China's, granted, but actually decent? From where I'm sitting, the lower class in the US seems to be outright predated on and lacking any meaningful workplace protection at all.
Well - where are you sitting from. Seems that your premis is among the worst in the world - so give me some citations on how the wealthy are being predators.
\ Considering that at a certain point the less prosperous can get free child care free cell phones, free WIC, medicaid, massively subsidized Section 8 housing. What is your demand - Make poor people have to spend nothing at all? otherwise they are being predated?
I've already provided the citations in previous posts - but you need to prove your ca
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If lower wages and fewer worker protections were that attractive then manufacturing would move from Europe to the US.
The reason it goes to China is not because labour is cheaper or people work longer hours, it's mostly because they have built up their supply chains to be world-beating. If you build anywhere else you will just be shipping components from China to that place for assembly, which adds delays and means you need to store them or try JIT.
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Do you really believe that a regime that deals with demonstrations by sending in the army to slaughter thousands actually "cares" about worker abuse ?
All these recents anouncements by the CCP about worker rights, privacy protection, etc are just the usual CCP propaganda trying to convince the naive and gullible that the CCP are actually the Good Guys (tm).
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You realize that was 32 years ago?
Current policy is driven by Xi Jinping, and he hates poverty. More than he hates Uighurs even.
If you stop imaging China as some sort of cartoon villain, twirling it's moustache and cackling manically, and actually look at Xi's background, he does actually care about reducing poverty and abuse of workers.
Of course it also has the added benefit to him that it makes him more popular and keeps him and the CCP in power, but none the less the attempts to improve conditions for th
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Re: Well it's about time (Score:3)
The irony that this abuse occurs in a communist country while complaining about capitalism lol.
BuT rEaL SoCiALiSm HaS nEvEr BeEn TrIeD!1!1!1!1!1
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Communism != Socialism
also
Chinese Communism != USSR Communism
Wikipedia has a long article all about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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US capitalists have been sending jobs overseas for years because of their low wages and poor worker protection laws. Now maybe that will be coming to a slow but definite end as countries like China crack down on worker abuse.
Companies will just reclassify their employees as independent contractors. Just watch.
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Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man.
In Soviet Russia on the other hand ... uh ... wait a minute...
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US capitalists have been sending jobs overseas for years because of their low wages and poor worker protection laws. Now maybe that will be coming to a slow but definite end as countries like China crack down on worker abuse. Maybe it will catch on in other countries where workers are regularly abused and exploited by corporations. I recommend Noam Chomsky's new book, Consequences of Capitalism" if you are interested in reading about it.
Differential outlook. It is not surprising that manufacturers look for the least expensive way to make what they are making.
Now what happens, is that after a certain amount of time, those low paid workers do indeed raise their standard of living. Eventually the country where the jobs went will then lose jobs to other lower paid countries. https://www.outsidethebeltway.... [outsidethebeltway.com]
Parts of this were to avoid Trumps tarriffs, but https://asiatimes.com/2020/11/... [asiatimes.com]. Thailand to Vietnam https://vietnaminsider.vn/th [vietnaminsider.vn]
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Then the jobs start to be done by robots. China is automating factories even faster than in the US and Europe (in part because they're newer installations so more flexible). Even the scum at Foxconn have realized that they can only abuse people to a certain degree before they start to fight back, so much of the iToy assembly lines are being automated as much as possible.
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Then the jobs start to be done by robots. China is automating factories even faster than in the US and Europe (in part because they're newer installations so more flexible). Even the scum at Foxconn have realized that they can only abuse people to a certain degree before they start to fight back, so much of the iToy assembly lines are being automated as much as possible.
I've long said that we have to prepare for the Post-work world. There has to be a tipping point. While early industries that automate recognize temporary profits, in the long run, we are reducing customers.
Things like economy of scale can be lost, as well as non-working people don't buy much, go on vacations, and have money to spend.
Now it is beyond any doubt that this is going to happen. But in typical human fashion our lack of planning might make the situation rather deadly. Nothing like a horde of
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Boston Dynamics Spot is on the verge of being able to replace most security guards. Garbage collection is being automated in Europe. John Deere's 'precision farming' is replacing farmhands while improving the productivity of farms. Improvements in reliability have decimated the market for PC and server techs. Facebook is checking code and automatically fixing errors. An AI can scan pathology slides for several types of cancer faster and more accurately than a human. A team of lawyers found 85% of erro
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Boston Dynamics Spot is on the verge of being able to replace most security guards. Garbage collection is being automated in Europe. John Deere's 'precision farming' is replacing farmhands while improving the productivity of farms. Improvements in reliability have decimated the market for PC and server techs. Facebook is checking code and automatically fixing errors. An AI can scan pathology slides for several types of cancer faster and more accurately than a human. A team of lawyers found 85% of errors inserted in a pile of contracts in 8 hours, an AI found over 90% in 26 seconds. Automatic transcription and calendaring/groupware has taken a huge bite out of the call for secretaries. Long haul truck drivers are likely to be a thing of the past within a decade, along with most heavy equipment operators.
It's a new world. I'm not sure if it's exciting or scary.
If we plan well, it can be exciting. I suspect we won't plan, and do a big quick depop.
I had a manager who espoused ~996 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Simple: he didn't trust you. He thought you'd be working more if you were in the office.
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Ask him if he wants people to get shit done or people who waste his time. Personally, I'd prefer the former, but if he prefers the latter, hey, to each their own.
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I hope you left the company ASAP. Sociopaths like that need to be shown that's not okay since they clearly can't understand that on their own.
Personally, I don't think there's a wage high enough for me to work 996 but then I'm not the materialistic type. Yeah, sure, if it's crunch time I'll pitch in for the team but 996 as a lifestyle is horrible.
Of course I'm lucky enough to live in a nation wealthy enough to where I can find decent enough work at decent enough pay without giving up my personal life. I ass
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Foxconn workers (Score:2)
China's Supreme People's Court said the overtime practice of "996", working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week, is illegal, taking aim at the controversial policy that is common among many Chinese technology firms.
Will this also apply to Foxconn workers [nikkei.com] assembling the iPhone [bbc.com] and other gadgets [bbc.com] who work 60+ hours through forced overtime and night shifts [chinalaborwatch.org]?
Is 996 really an advantage? (Score:5, Insightful)
In software, you have 6h of peak creativity, tops....if you're good at it. Hours 7-12 are mostly garbage. If you're smart, you do stupid tasks for an hour when you arrive and an hour before you leave...e-mails, forms, update your Jira tickets, etc. I assure you that most of those 72h worked are garbage that produced little value. I bet most of the employees were just trying to look busy.
Ask any experienced programmer. We get these delusions that we'll stay up late and "crank this one out." I'm fucking old as shit and still get about 5 cups of coffee in me and fall for the delusion. With each hour, you do less and less productive work, spend more time spacing out, and most importantly, make more mistakes. I've had many evening crunches for clients where I felt good leaving the office late...at night, seeing all the city lights and commuting home on the subway with drunk party people instead of routine commuters like me. Then I wake up the next morning, review my work and it's fucking garbage. I've had many late nights of work, where I've had to throw it out because the tired brain hones in on details rather than considering the big picture...plus you just work so much slower with each hour. You're really impaired. It's fun to ride the adrenaline and its super macho to say you stayed up so late, but when my coworkers do it, my first reaction is..."I hope someone else carefully reviewed your work."...it's a reaction of suspicion and dread, not admiration.
But my experience aside, by logic, we should be dominated by 996 firms. This is nothing new. All the top games should come from 996 shops. All the best business software should...all the best devices. They should be the most innovative in the world. I know Google, Tesla, and Apple are not 996 shops. You're expected to work hard, but most Googlers I know leave after 8h. A 12h day is definitely not routine for them.
OK, TikTok is successful, but is it really that impressive? Do normal software companies look at TikTok and think "Man...I wish my team could put out quality like THIS!!!"
For industry insiders, we know that it's not about working hard. Working hard is useless. You want to work smart. You can dig a big hole with a bunch of hard working ByteDance employees and shovels or just hire an excavator and do it for a fraction of the cost and time. Results matter, not effort. Shitty employees usually whine about how hard they worked...mostly because it's a metric that's hard to disprove. Good employees brag about what they delivered, not how long they spent working on it. The best programmers tend to deliver code pretty fast with fewer lines than less experienced ones.
I think Jack Ma is either a fool or cynic. I don't know enough about him to say which. Either he's a true believer and thinks he's making a difference and is blind to the evidence against it...or he's a cynic treating his company like a cult. By forcing a culture where your life is ByteDance and nothing else matters, you retain your top talent...and use 996 as leverage...oh, you want to go home before 9PM? If you really please me and deliver above and beyond, I'll let you go home at 8pm and see your kids before bed...otherwise, stay until 9 like the rest of the schlubs. ByteDance is your family now!!! Forget your wife, your kids, your loved ones, we're all you need!! It's sick and disgusting...but most importantly...is it worth it to an investor or consumer? There's no evidence 996 produces better results and the most successful and admired companies don't do shit like this. It makes Jack Ma rich, but it doesn't make his products better.
Re:Is 996 really an advantage? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not only right about coding & intellectual/knowledge work, it's also true about factory workers. Anything over 35-40 hours (Does that figure ring any bells?) is chasing diminishing returns & employers just end up paying more for the same productivity & having to implement more elaborate & comprehensive quality controls to catch anything that needs 'do-overs.' Overtime does work in the short-term if used sporadically but once it becomes habitual, the declines in productivity start to kick in. There's more than 100 years of research on this. Executive hubris is too dogmatic to overcome. They want everyone to work themselves into dysfunctional relationships with their families, no friends, ill-health & a shortened life-span... just like they do.
Please remind me again... why are we spending so much time at work?
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> All the top games should come from 996 shops.
Yeah. And all the top games ship with so many defects that they launch a >10GB update immediately after you put the disc in for the first time. And Sony, at least, somehow manages to have such a dodgy network stack on the Playstation that what should be a 20-minute download on my home internet usually takes hours before I can actually play.
That should say plenty about the effectiveness of "crunch time" and "996" in producing quality product.
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LOL... my bad. I read that as "All the top games come from 996 shops." without the "should". But considering the news that's come out about the working conditions at EA, Rockstar, Blizzard, and the like over the past several years; I think my brain was just correcting for an erroneously-added word in the original sentence.
Results speak for themselves. (Score:2)
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Yeah, I'm curious how many hours of actual WORK a developer working the 996 schedule accomplishes in an average week. I'd imagine that it's around 30, like most other software development houses. The rest of the time is spent socializing (if you're stuck in the office, that's where you're going to socialize!) and fixing defects from the prior nights sloppy coding binge.
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Ma is 56, he's old enough to remember when 996 was a necessity for most people in China. Poverty was everywhere and 996 was the only way to drag yourself out of it.
From his perspective it may even have worked, since China got a lot richer and most people have a much better standard of living now. Worse still, he sees these young people who just want to do 9-5 and then enjoy the rest of their lives as lazy. He did 996, why shouldn't they? Why should be pay them good wages just to slack off and only do half a
Results matter, not intent (Score:2)
From his perspective it may even have worked, since China got a lot richer and most people have a much better standard of living now. Worse still, he sees these young people who just want to do 9-5 and then enjoy the rest of their lives as lazy. He did 996, why shouldn't they? Why should be pay them good wages just to slack off and only do half a day's work?
We are seeing the same thing in the West due to the pandemic. Some folk think that people absolutely must be in the office, it's how they have always worked and how they think they get the best from people. Maybe they spent most of their career in an office with shitty work/life balance, so why would these kids have it easier and expect good money for it?
Data matters. Jack needs to collect it. 996 is a leap of faith, but there's no evidence and a micro or macro level it achieves the stated goal. Working hard is nothing new. If working hard was the major factor in success, you'd see a very clear trend of the top companies that produced the best product working harder. 996 is extreme for most of the globe. If 996 was based in fact and reality, the world would be dominated by East Asian companies. EVERY European car maker would be failing. I don't know
Stop thinking about knowledge workers (Score:2)
Indian farmers were working so hard that they weren't stopping to drink water and we're getting kidney failure. The local doctors thought they'd found some new disease and there was a huge panic until they found out it was just the old disease of poverty and exploitation
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There's the thing about very rich people. We'll discount the trust fund babies, that took no skill of any kind (though people may for some reason assume they have some). Then there's those that started rich and got richer. They may have some skill, but it's a lot easier when you're born on 3rd base. Just as common are those who started rich and churned a lot to slowly bleed off their wealth. They tend to proclaim themselves geniuses and people who don't look closely at the books may believe them. Finally, t
Worker's Utopia (Score:2)
Workers must like working, so more work for everyone!
Whenever the PRC sides with labor it is pure coincidence. Despite having a socialist revolution they never handed any real power over to workers. Contrary to the charter of their own Constitution.
P.S. yes, China a one-party socialist republic [non-democratic]. The concept of communism is kind of meaningless now that they've moved so far away from that "experiment"
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Communism will work great as soon as they remodeled man into someone who prefers working to earning money.
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Bad as it might be, China's current government is still orders of magnitude better than what it replaced. Millions died of starvation every year, not because of shortage of food but because it was more profitable to export that food so starving peasants couldn't afford it. The generation that remembers that life are almost all gone now, but it's still very much in the consciousness of the entire country what life was like before Mao.
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Managed to miss an entire forest for a sapling. Congratulations.
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China considers itself democratic. Like every other one party system.
To vote, you join the party, and vote for the factions inside of that party.
You obviously also vote about who is in the party leadership etc.
They consider multi party systems as evil as it promotes factions that want to pull/push the country into different directions, instead of working together and compromising.
A two party system, with an idiotic election/voting system, is the worst of all "democratic" systems.
factory's will take an hit from this! (Score:2)
factory's will take an hit from this!
Anyone who works unpaid 40 is an imbecile. (Score:2)
If you think you really need that job to support your life style, you've conflated need and want again.
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I used to be a theatre techie (lights, sets, props, etc.) in my early 20s, and 100 hour weeks were our norm. It was love for the art, and pride in our product. Then I met a couple of 40 year-old theatre techies and thought, "Holy crap, I don't want to be like that."
Competitive advantage? (Score:2)
Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Sequoia Capital's Mike Moritz have highlighted it as a competitive advantage the country had over the United States
That is nonsense. It is a disadvantage. They will be sick often, the work quality will be bad etc. p.p.
You probably have a high rate of people leaving for minimal better paid jobs etc.
Wait but not Japanese Black Companies? (Score:2)
They also do unpaid overtime that is not just illegal but just as bad.