TikTok Owner ByteDance Mandates Shorter Working Hours

ByteDance ordered its employees to end their day by 7 p.m., becoming one of the first tech companies in China to officially mandate shorter working hours. From a report: Staff in China should only work from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Mondays to Fridays and will need to seek permission to stay beyond those hours at least one day in advance, according to an internal document on Monday that was seen by Bloomberg News. The country's grueling work pace -- known as "996" because employees often labor from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week -- was long celebrated by tech billionaires from Alibaba's Jack Ma to JD founder Richard Liu. But it's come under renewed scrutiny this year, fueled by deaths associated with overwork and a growing chorus of social media complaints. With President Xi Jinping calling on the country to work toward "common prosperity," authorities have stepped up warnings against employers to refrain from unreasonable overtime and other violations.

seek permission? vs being told I need you to stay

[Joe_Dragon]

seek permission? vs being told I need you to stay late and I need to come in on saturday So if you could be here at around....9 that'd be great.

Re:Communism is great!

[AmiMoJo]

It doesn't say what breaks they get. 1 hour for lunch or two 30 minute breaks would be 8 hours a day, i.e. the standard 40 hour week that many other countries have.

The UK is usually 37.5 hours a week and some European countries are less. France is 35 hours.

It also doesn't say what holiday entitlement they have. 5.6 weeks is the legal minimum in the UK (4 weeks discretionary, plus 8 public holidays for most people) but again in Europe it's often more than that.

Re:

[Opportunist]

I can be here at 9. Don't expect me to be awake or productive, though.

Working for yourself is easy

[Opportunist]

If Jack Ma works 996, it's for himself, for his own wealth and quite understandable.

If he does it for anyone else, he's a moron.

He doesn't

[rsilvergun]

One of the major news outlets did a story about CEOs in their long work hours. Keep in mind this was a story that was supposed to show how hard they worked. I'm not sure if the journalist who wrote it intentionally botched to the story or if the CEOs were just that clueless, but every single one described a 12-hour day with a lot of breaks, time off to spend with their kids, and nothing but a bunch of low stress meetings where they made simple decisions. They probably did about 2 hours a day of actual work.

Re:

[timeOday]

I do bet almost all of them worked slavishly to get there though. One thing that is interesting to factor in is how people regard you. Mark Zuckerberg is very unpopular with the public lately. On the other hand, he's the boss and therefore god-emperor to everybody he personally interacts with on a day-to-day basis. Not unlike POTUS. Strange combo.

Re:

[The Evil Atheist]

I do bet almost all of them worked slavishly to get there though.

+5 Funny.

Re:

[Dale512]

I remember that article too. Most of them included routine life items in their work day that the rest of us have to contend with on our own time. Some of those examples from the article included exercise time, dropping off / picking up dry cleaning, grocery shopping, yoga classes, etc. I'm not saying those things don't factor into a person's day, but none of the rest of us get to count that as time we've spent working. The reality is those people are simply not existing in the same reality as the rest

Re:

[Opportunist]

Why they need to exist at all is still a mystery to me.

The new aristocracy is as useless as the old one was.

Re:

[StormReaver]

And now the rest of the world needs to wake up and reduce its working hours. An 8-hour work day not only provides no real productivity benefit, but rather actively encourages mistakes. After about 4 or 5 hours of concentration, mental fatigue sets in that doesn't go away without a decent period of sleep. At that point, concentration and focus suffer, and errors start accumulating. Then more debt starts accumulating that takes more time to fix than would have been spent if work had just stopped entirely.

And

Re:

[Firethorn]

An 8-hour work day not only provides no real productivity benefit, but rather actively encourages mistakes.

Now imagine how bad it'd have to be for a "996", which is 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.

Japan was doing something similar, and found that their productivity was less than people working fewer hours, in total, because the Japanese were basically filling up the extra hours with bullshit.

If you're "working" 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, I can imagine that you're including every meal as "working", you're napping during it, bullshitting with other employees, etc...

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

I wonder how many hours per week Jack Ma or other billionaires personally spend using a washing machine, cooking, washing dishes, doing the shopping, cleaning their homes, etc.? How many hours per week do the rest of us spend doing it?

Weekends are free work! Not work free...

[SlideWRX]

Woo! 8 hours during the week! The boss can only pressure me to make up the time on the weekends! After those 18 hour/day weekends, the work week will feel like a vacation... PS I would have read the article but it was blocked.