![]() ![]() ![]() A large number of internet company CEOs I spoke to were quick to crow about their technical competency and operational efficiency, convinced that they can give global titans a run for their money. Long gone are the days when Chinese firms were receptive to foreign wisdom. When the ethos of today’s voluntary “slaves” commingles with the ruthless pursuit of efficiency, for which Chinese internet companies have become infamous, they produce an odd combination - a holier-than-thou attitude that verges on a missionary mentality. What makes 996 endure is that it empowers those who survive it, arming them with the justification to perpetuate a vicious cycle.Īs Bauman argues, “Workaholics with no fixed hours of work, preoccupied with the challenges of their jobs twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, may be found today not among the slaves, but among the elite of the lucky and successful.” Chinese staff are as averse as their foreign peers to overtime, and while financial motivations do incentivize hard work, it’s only up to a point. One may wonder if these people are masochists, but the truth is that they have learned to “lift work itself to the rank of supreme and most satisfying entertainment,” according to the late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in Work, Consumerism and the New Poor.įor executives who build their success on sweat, lengthy work hours, and chronic sleep deprivation, celebrating the blurring of life and work serves primarily to flatter the vanity of workaholics who take this label as a badge of honor.Ĭritics of 996 often point to its exploitative nature, but this is not the full picture. to 9 p.m, six days a week - comes from the media, the public, and employees at the bottom of the pecking order, rather than from “elites” in the top echelons, who are its most fervent adherents. But it’s telling that the harshest criticism of 996 -referring to 9 a.m. I don’t mean in any sense to exculpate 996 work culture and those behind it. A more plausible explanation is that it epitomizes what I call “elite egoism.” Tempting as it is to blame this episode, as some did, on “a culture clash,” or a hamfisted attempt to export “involution” - a byword for dog-eats-dog competition in China - this interpretation scratches the surface. A gaffe could easily negate past achievements and squander goodwill and hard-won gains. Ma’s faux pas and the subsequent furor that engulfed ByteDance is emblematic of the risk-laden business climate China Inc. Did he make it in earnest or in jest? Or perhaps over a drink too many? No matter the answer, that China’s most globalized internet firm should stumble this badly is mind-boggling. I have no idea of the circumstances surrounding Ma’s comment. The irony is that this came as Britain, a bastion of capitalism, was piloting a four-day workweek. Unpaid overtime is already illegal in China, but the state ministry indicated that it was in the process of tightening existing guidelines, according to Bloomberg.Among the people singled out was Joshua Ma, head of TikTok Europe, who said at a dinner that as a “capitalist,” he “didn’t believe” companies should offer maternity leave. In August this year, China's Supreme People's Court and Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security issued a report defining what constitutes overtime, and cases where companies have breached it. In 2019, a group of Microsoft and Github employees published an open letter in support of another online campaign against 996. It comes amid growing resentment against the culture of overwork, which has been blamed for the deaths of several exhausted workers, including a 22-year-old employee at the tech company Pinduoduo. "We hope to contribute to the boycott of '996' and the popularization of '955,'" one of the creators said in a separate post on the question-and-answer site Zhihu. The sheet has already attracted more than 6,000 entries, including from some people claiming to work for some of China's largest companies, Bloomberg first reported.Ī description on the Github page announcing the campaign said that it's aim was to raise awareness so that job seekers can make more informed choices. The Worker Lives Matter campaign wants people to name their employer and detail their working hours in a spreadsheet. These long hours were initially prevalent within the nation's increasingly dominant tech firms, but have seeped into other sectors. ![]() to 9 p.m., six-days-a-week schedule.Ī spreadsheet encouraging people to share their working hours already has more than 6,000 entries.Ĭhinese workers are being encouraged to boycott the excessive "996" work culture that's common in some large firms by adding their names to an online campaign. The number 996 stands for a grueling 9 a.m. Office workers walk along a street during lunch time in Beijing Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty ImagesĪn online campaign is urging Chinese workers to "boycott" the country's '996' work culture. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |