So many studies say this will lead to far less productivity for anything remotely knowledge work, especially over a long period.
Meanwhile smarter companies are going to a 4 day work week. investopedia.com/four-daywork-week-study-success-…
Silicon Valley AI Startups Are Embracing China’s Controversial ‘996’ Work Schedule
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Davriellelouna@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-china-996-work-schedule/
Comments
neblem@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
flightyhobler@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Nothing to do with productivity. It’s all about small dick energy CEOs wanting to validate and underline their self-perceived superior status. “How dare the little people work as little time as me?”
whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Yeah they’re not going for productivity, they’re an AI company. They just want the appearance of it to juice up their valuation or to stroke an executive’s ego.
hovercat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
It honestly blows my mind how these “leaders” get paid billions of dollars to run their companies into the ground because they have no fucking clue how real humans operate.
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
known as “996,” or 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. In other words, it’s a 72-hour work week
Tl;dr
Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
fuck that
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
I’d consider it for:
- The right job
- The right money
But it’s going to have to be the kind of job I would put in those kinds of hours for free, and get paid at least triple what is reasonably expected.
CerineArkweaver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Any company that wants me to work a “996“ can fuck ALLLLLLLLLL the way off
atticus88th@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As long as I get paid 2.5x my 40hr pay sure. Otherwise my fellow unionized tech bros are collectively saying “go fuck yourself”
thejml@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
If I was in my 20’s I’d have thought about that 2.5x offer. Now that I’m in my 40’s I can say i wouldn’t even do it for 5x. You can’t buy back missed time, no matter how much money you have.
Part of me says that I’d do it for 20x… but I’d just end up quitting in a few months, take my money and retire early.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
After 6 months you’d have enough to retire to Vietnam. Another 6 and you’d have enough to pay yourself a low salary forever.
Another 6 and you’d fund a small house in a smaller town where you can retire, and another 6 and you’d be dead from stress.
ccunning@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I did it (we called it 6x12s) for about 2-3 years in my 30s. At the time it felt worth it; food, lodging, and transportation were all covered as well. I don’t really regret it most days but looking back years later I think it may have damaged friendships more than I’d realized until recently.
There’s no fucking way I’d do it now. Now I’m just one bad day away from rage quitting and retiring. Unfortunately I’m in a great position with a great boss and a reasonable work load and ample coverage and support and never been denied time off so that bad day isn’t likely to come anytime soon.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The founders can do all the 996 they want, but if they want to have their employees do the same, they should offer a fair share of the company at least.
crusa187@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Sorry, best we can do is offer a .00001% stake and pretend like it’s your ticket to early retirement.
whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
That’s ok, they can promise more because there’s a special privileged ‘preferred’ stock that the bigger investors and executives get that’s prioritized for sales and dividends before anyone else’s.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You are not kidding. I have some experience with startup stock options and… it’s not pretty.
Before anyone retorts with remarks about “phantom stock” and other similar offers, I want you to do some math.
Figure out what the ‘strike price’ of that stock is likely to be when it matures, and calculate what the payout will be. Then figure out capital gains tax and subtract that. Divide what’s left over by the amount of unpaid overtime (hours in excess of 40 a week) you’re going to put in for the maturation window. Lastly, compare these figures to other testimonials in your field, and also, look up typical yearly bonus figures for more mature companies. You’re going to see that it’s not a lot of cash for the extra time, that it’s nowhere near your base pay rate, and more established companies are going to do a better job of compensating folks for less effort. You may even find that with a 996 grind-set, it might pay out less than taking a second job at retail.
I can also warn you that if the company sells instead of going IPO, you may get a much smaller payout than all that. I was in a situation where they threw the advertised strike price in the trash, and negotiated a sale of everyone’s stock to the buying company for much, much less.
nthavoc@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Say no to 72 hour work weeks. Working more hours does not increase quality of work or even quantity, but is does increase stress and suicide rates. Stop accepting it’s OK to be ground into dust just so you can barely earn a living. Tell those CEO’s to take their jobs and shove it, especially in Sililcon Valley. That place is no longer the pinnacle of technological innovation it was in the late 90’s. It’s been nothing but a guilded shithole bastion for technocrats.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Honestly even in the late 90s it was going down. I don’t think DEC or Amiga or something else cool you can remember have anything to do with the Silicon Valley.
After the original Intel and other hardware things fame, it’s a place that mostly collected parasites living off the dotcom bubble and then profanation and oligopolization of tech. The least important part - the companies making suddenly popular user applications and websites. Their main effect was negative - they reduced diversity, competition and redundancy in that.
In any case … “AI startups”.
I’m so morally prepared to dance when that bubble finally bursts. A lot of today’s rattling of sabers depends on the promise of AI workers, AI drones, AI everything so that a crime would involve only a few real humans.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
vomits in trashcan
BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That counts as your break. 🤨
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Fuck right off.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
I thought “996” meant 9 hours on Monday, 9 hours on Tuesday, 6 hours on Wednesday, then a 4-day weekend.
Texas_Hangover@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
That sounds pretty sweet.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
I kept pushing my previous employer for a midnight-8pm Saturday, and a 4AM-midnight Sunday shift, but couldn’t get them to approve it. 40 hours a week, 5-days off.
Geodad@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That sounds like a good way to have your entire workforce quit on you…
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
It’s a startup, the goal is to get people who work for vaporous promises of future wealth So you squeeze them as hard as you can imagine then the company collapse and you take their work and sell it to private equity aka “angels”
jaykrown@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I would work that many hours a week as long as I got paid +$1 million a year. Otherwise, it would just make more sense to start my own business.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
If you’re going to work that hard to make some rich guy richer, why wouldn’t you do that for yourself?
I had that revelation 30 years ago, and I’ve been mostly self-employed since. Even in those times when I wasn’t, I was still working for my own benefit, not anyone else’s. Those jobs didn’t last long. I can only work for myself. I’m a good boss, I get away with everything.
jaykrown@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s a good question, what do you suggest I research to find out what to do for myself? I’m thinking about starting my own recycling business in the future, but that’s about it.
ordinarylove@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
why are they working so much, they don’t do anything
darkpanda@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Will they be introducing company stores next?
vane@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
People are stupid, they have whole nature around them, but they are killing it to create computers and escape the planet.
That’s sad.aesthelete@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What’s really sad about it is that most of the shit they believe is complete garbage and they won’t build a super-intelligence nor escape the planet no matter how much of their finite time they pump into these futile efforts.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Reminder: authority only exists because we let it.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Authority is the right word, nothing in this is about actual products or traditional economic value.
It’s feudal (or crook) impression economy. That “AI” is liked by people who can afford to continuously waste money on it. Such schedules are liked by the same people. They are the “Silicon Valley elite” or whatever.
I’ve read once a description by Russia’s ambassador to Persia during Qajars how this historically worked.
So - Qajar Persian court, they’ve received, say, 2 (I don’t remember, maybe 6) modern (for that moment) Russian cannons as a gift. What do they do with the cannons? The cannons stay with the court and are shot for fun at an empty ground with no aim, while the whole court and the monarch moan “ja-a-a-n” with every shot.
It’s the same. The oligopolization of tech has made these people so much money and connections with other such people who have money, that they don’t care about results at all. It’s all shared impressions of what they “already have”. They don’t have to “run to stay on the same place”. They don’t have to compete - they collectively own search, social media, what we use instead of pen and paper, everything.
Or a more traditional example (I might have gotten the years wrong, but I think the idea doesn’t suffer) - a bunch of knights in XV-century tournament armor are not a very good army compared to cuirassed musketeers with a wagenburg and actual discipline, but the societies are built the way that those real soldiers are very rare, expensive and present only in select important areas during real honest-to-god war. While on their tournament the gentry may pretend it’s still XII century and they are competing in useful things.
Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Actually saying that they want slave labor is considered bad public relations.
meeeeetch@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Our product will make all jobs obsolete. That’s why we need to work our employees to death making it!
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes, work yourself to death for the profits of the oligarchy, you morons. See what thanks you get.
Hasherm0n@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
A sense of pride and accomplishment, right?
Right…?
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Silicon Valley Workforces Embracing Controversial ‘Kill The Asshole CEOs’ Strategy
horse@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Kobe Bryant dedicated all his waking hours to basketball, and I don’t think there’s a lot of people saying that Kobe Bryant shouldn’t have worked as hard as he did.
Yeah, but he was working to achieve something for himself and not to make some parasite richer.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I avoided this issue by embracing the completely non-controversial “become a contractor” work schedule. When you’re a temp they specifically want you NOT to work overtime without prior authorization - because they have to pay for it. And as a software dev I found being a contractor was perfectly acceptable. I was always treated identically with employees except for a few special things like company meetings. And I got paid almost twice as much hourly vs being an employee. Sure, I had to buy my own health insurance and I didn’t get paid time off, but when you double your salary those are non-issues. Job security as an employee? Don’t kid yourself. My job security was that there are contract jobs everywhere.
PattyMcB@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I wouldn’t do it for money… I’d do it for a SHITLOAD of money (and then collect unemployment once the bubble bursts, as a soft-retirement)
fubarx@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Management is on 1034.
simplejack@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I gots to find me one of those jobs. My wife and I are in middle management and are more like 10-12 hour days, 5 to 6 days a week. I’m not a fan.
ImmersiveMatthew@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Embracing? This is been the reality for many startups for a long time. Same with many game devs and animation studios too. Many technical jobs grind their staff despite being the most profitable industries. It is almost like the more money you make, the more you abuse your staff.
rhvg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Culture revolution, 996, USA has imported so many good stuff from China. Next one should be removing president term limit I guess?
MasterBlaster@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Already on that. In progress.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
USA hasn’t yet built anything like “three gorges” hydroelectric plant, tho
rhvg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
We did enough environmental damage with other stuff so that the mega hydro plant is not necessary
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Good, keep those freaks away from the rest of us.
droopy4096@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
that probably goes along with that $20M zuck offered to AI professionals. Yeah, we’ll pay you $20M a year, you’ll be spent around 6mon into the job your productivity will be 60% so… (taps calculator) we get f#ck all for a sh%t ton of money and destroy people… letsdoit!
sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Give me a devent chunk of the company so I make proportional profits. Otherwise, no thanks.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Yeah I start thinking about extreme property damage at 48 hours of work.
FelixCress@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Maybe in the USA. It is 37.5h where I am.
HamFistedVegetarian@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Sign up to that shit and you are part of the problem. Fuck that.
socialsecurity@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
People making 400k... Sure kinda makes sense for a few years but they want to every 150k worker to do the same and thats what this shill slop is about