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Alibaba Founder Defends Overtime Work Culture As 'Huge Blessing' (reuters.com)
Alibaba founder and billionaire Jack Ma has defended the grueling overtime work culture at many of China's tech companies, calling it a "huge blessing" for young workers. Reuters reports: The e-commerce magnate weighed into a debate about work-life balance and the overtime hours demanded by some companies as the sector slows after years of breakneck growth. In a speech to Alibaba employees, Ma defended the industry's "996" work schedule, which refers to the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. workday, six days a week. "I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing," he said in remarks posted on the company's WeChat account. "Many companies and many people don't have the opportunity to work 996," Ma said. "If you don't work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996?"
"In this world, everyone wants success, wants a nice life, wants to be respected," Ma said. "Let me ask everyone, if you don't put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?" Ma referred to the tech industry today where some people are without jobs, or working at companies in search of revenue or facing closure. "Compared to them, up to this day, I still feel lucky, I don't regret (working 12 hour days), I would never change this part of me," he said. On Thursday, an unnamed author published an opinion piece in a state newspaper, arguing that 996 violates China's Labor Law, which stipulates that average work hours cannot exceed 40 hours a week. "Creating a corporate culture of 'encouraged overtime' will not only not help a business' core competitiveness, it might inhibit and damage a company's ability to innovate," the author wrote.
"In this world, everyone wants success, wants a nice life, wants to be respected," Ma said. "Let me ask everyone, if you don't put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?" Ma referred to the tech industry today where some people are without jobs, or working at companies in search of revenue or facing closure. "Compared to them, up to this day, I still feel lucky, I don't regret (working 12 hour days), I would never change this part of me," he said. On Thursday, an unnamed author published an opinion piece in a state newspaper, arguing that 996 violates China's Labor Law, which stipulates that average work hours cannot exceed 40 hours a week. "Creating a corporate culture of 'encouraged overtime' will not only not help a business' core competitiveness, it might inhibit and damage a company's ability to innovate," the author wrote.
"Americans!!! Protest China!!! Be our SJW!!! It's to hard and dangerous for ourselves to do!!! You fight for us!!! You don't have anything else to do anyway!!!"
Exploitation.
Talk about a complete lack of respect for people's time, space, mind, and health.
Working 996 sounds like hell to me. How good do you expect people's work to be after they've been at the same thing for so many hours and so many days of the week?
play your employees against each other with implied threats of "if you don't work harder than the person next to you, you will not be successful". This guy should be run out of there with pitchforks.
If I was a new hire at his company, I'd work 4 hours per day, 4 days a week, giving 0 fucks. #440
Stuff like this reminds me of old white supremacists quacking on about how slavery in the old South was a boon to the slaves.
What a piece of work employing psychological techniques to have his employees remain content (and for some, work even harder) with the abuse that they are dealt.
see what happens when you don't have a union?
... it's a blessing for his company (and him financially) anyway.
Jack needs to become EVEN RICHERRR and only your hard, underpaid work can make that happen! Think of poor little Jackie the next time your girlfriend asks when you are coming home.
Jack would do it for you... well, no he wouldn't.
... whose hard work actually gained him a fortune is bad enough at statistics to understand that for the vast majority, hard work will get them just a little extra money at best, but very likely ruin their chances to stay healthy and happy.
Just like the nonsense that sports celebrities speak when inspiring the youth to follow their example - while they should know that most just become wrecks, not highly paid professionals.
Done that....
Moved on!
To the extent I have a choice I will never work "for" a company again.
I am quite open to working WITH any company where a mutually beneficial agreement can be negotiated.
"Let me ask everyone, if you don't put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?"
Not everyone dreams of becoming a sociopathic executive when they grow up. Most just want to live relatively comfortably, have the means to raise a family, be able to afford a few indulgences now and then, and have a good work-life balance.
Civilization is not a zero-sum game.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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This is asking the wrong question. The question is not "when can you ever work 996?", it's "should you ever work 996?" There are plenty of studies that show working overtime is only effective in the short term. The extra hours give extra time to get work done, but they also wear people out. Tired workers are less productive than well rested ones, so the amount of work done on the day someone works overtime is less than expected based on the time they worked. And being tired carries over, so they're less and less productive each day of working overtime. In fairly short order- no more than a few weeks- they're less productive working 996 than they would be working a conventional 40 hour work week, because they're too frazzled to do their best work.
And this isn't something that's limited to people doing physical labor. It holds just as true of people doing mental labor. This is why businesses were willing to accept a 40 hour work week. It wasn't just pressure from the workers; it was also evidence showing that demanding longer work weeks wasn't getting any more work done. It's amazing that so many people have either ignored or refused to learn this.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
"In this world, everyone wants success, wants a nice life, wants to be respected," Ma said. "Let me ask everyone, if you don't put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?"
50% of people are below average. Most of them know they're below average. Success to them means working enough to have a decent life outside of work, not finding excuses to work many more hours in the hope that by incompetence they'll be put in a position of substantial pay for relatively little work--as a ratio of pay vs hours worked.
50% of people are above average. Most of them know they're above average. Success to them means working enough to have a decent life outside of work, not finding excuses to work many more hours in the hope that by some competence they'll be put in a position of substantial pay for relatively little work--as a ratio of pay vs hours worked.
Between 0-20% of people are workaholics. They think working 80 hours/week is good because work is good. It doesn't matter to them that they could live comfortable on 40 hours/week pay nor that there's plenty of other people willing and capable of filling that other 40 hours/week of work. They actively look down on people who don't live to work because to them that's what life is about. They don't understand that "burnout" is code for "I tried living "up"--really sideways--to the absurd expectations of workaholics and finally recognized I'd rather live than work.
What Jack Ma has to say? Being in a position where he can almost force people to pretend to be workaholics just to have a job just to live, I got to say to him: "I personally think that you haven't gotten a bullet through your head yet is a huge blessing," This is the sort of abuse which was, at least principally if not practically, the basis for communistic rejection of capitalism and the exploitation of workers in the name of profit. Of course communism ended up being worse because then the state became the exploiter of workers, but even in the US there's a recognition at least in principle of how abusive and exploitative such actions and viewpoints are.
The one saving grace is a person who is overworked is probably too tired to raise a gun to his head or a knife to his throat. Even in the abject poverty of depressions, you don't see much in the way of constant looting and murder of such assholes even though they practically are begging for it when government is so disinclined to really do anything about it because "freedom". I don't think mob rule is nor should be some sort of great equalizer, but it's definitely quite amazing it doesn't happen a lot more often even with all the horror that it brings.
Certainly what Jack Ma brings isn't blood soaked streets, but the actions he pushes for is the fundamental destruction of time in people's lives for his own ends. That is a much smaller scale, but still very real, horror. It's why there was so much push in countries to enshrine 40 hour work weeks as a limit and overtime as a sort of punishment. Maybe some day Jack Ma will learn this lesson. Maybe all it'd take would be to force him to only work a couple hours a week, to see what his life would be like if he was prevented to do the thing he wanted to do and saw it go to ruin because he wasn't there.
Even from the employer point of view, 996 is probably a bad idea. Who can pretend to be productive for 12 hours in a row, 6 days a week? I take repetitive jobs aside, since it is obviously not what he is talking about.
Well of course no one can really complain about it. When you have billions of "willing" workers (willing at the end of a communist dictatorship GUN), who wouldn't want to do anything BUT work.
True, it is the peace of the grave and of people too exhausted to even think about what kind of country they live in and how that is pretty bad, but it certainly works. Exhausted workers start no riots.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is Rick acting like a god and telling his microverse inhabitants that they can only be truly happy by working for his betterment.
Fucking monster.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
One guy gets lucky. Everyone else loses.
Mr Ma, do *you* work 996?
..and by extension, most large American companies find chinese overtime culture to be a huge blessing as well. No wonder the North American worker has no leverage.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
..UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES.
"I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing," he said in remarks posted on the company's WeChat account. "Many companies and many people don't have the opportunity to work 996," Ma said. "If you don't work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996?"
No shit, I read this and thought "this bastard sounds like an internet troll". What a total piece of shit this guy is. No wonder workers in China commit suicide, who wouldn't being treated that way?
If you work for a company with a 40 hour week policy and in the US are exempt, 10 extra hours is an effective 20% reduction in your effective pay per hour.
Granted, I'm not familiar with Chinese labor regulations or Foxconns policies.
Anyway, time worked over your company's policy, over a period of time (once in a while is fine, circumstances), is a clear sign of under staffing. Unless you get a bonus consummate to the extra time. Or are paid hourly (the contractors).
BlameBillCosby.com
Congratulations for being proud to treat people like slaves and then have the balls to call it opportunity. Time is much more valuable than money. If your employees do not realize that you treat them as slaves just wait another generation or two and treating people like this will no longer be acceptable in China as it isnâ(TM)t in other countries.
"Idle hands are the (capitalist) devil's workshop."
Wage slavery is all the rage in China. Jack Ma should export that idea!
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Do you think professional sports go around asking hopefuls how hard they worked? Because that's what gets you a team slot?
And that's an extremely meritocratic scenario. The conditions you're living in were built by chance. I know mine were. I work hard, but I know the Other Losers did too. I was just luckier. "Working even harder" would change nothing, I'd still be sitting in the musical chair.
It's not every day you get to whitewash a social ill, eh?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
we got them exactly were we want them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States
And you can thank corruption for all this. Idiot people let corruption grow and it weakens any organization, unions too. After that its the simple thing of
vultures to come and devour the pieces unable to resist.
So next time you see an asskisser you can thank him for helping you get where you all are today and you can thank yourself for keeping your mouth shut - it kept you your job didn't it?
It must be true because Jack Ma told us. You are always rewarded 100% of the time for your efforts and promotions are 100% based on merit. There is no arbitrary decisions made by management. There is no luck or chance in the system. And special treatment is absolutely impossible and never occurs ever.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No wife. No kids.
Overtime is the reason I own 7 motorcycles.
Fuck all you fat video game faggots.
Overtime FTW!
people need loving from 6 am to 9 pm every day of the week.
Jack Ma (born Ma Yun, Chinese: ; pinyin: M Yún, [ma yn];[3] born 10 September 1964) is a Chinese business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.
Its kinda confusing, seeing how 'Philanthropy means the love of humanity. '. Is this part of propaganda?
...that after a certain level of wealth, this sort of thing is less about money and more about people.
as soon as he subjects himself to whatever he considers a boon, blessing or huge advantage to those affected. Then we can talk. Before that, he's just doing what he's best at: Bullshitting people.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I can't help but think of them as I do of philatelists. They collect stamps, appraise them, trade them, buy and sell them...
Philantropists probably collect humans. Appraise them...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Using people unwilling or unable to say no to exploitation, has always been the preferred choice for building an empire.
Almost everything about Chinese business culture is vile. Cheating on manufacturing contracts in China is the norm. Copyright and Patent protection is non existent and humans are regarded as disposable cogs.
Jack Ma talks about success and respect - but neither can be achieved by workers when they throw away half of their lives every day for the benefit of their masters.
If you haven't read Paul Midler's book "Poorly Made in China" you need to read it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorly_Made_in_China
American is often accused of having poor business morals and poor worker protections but we are absolute saints compared to the Chinese in this regard.
......for him and his bottom line.
He does make valid points though. There can be a time and place for 996, like when one forms their own new business. And indeed it is easier to do when you're young, healthy, and unencumbered by spouse / kid obligations.
Of course working those hours doesn't guarantee anything. There are multiple paths to success and multiple ways to evaluate when you get there.
The median businessman has no idea how capitalism works, and the 90% percentile is actively opposed to capitalism.
Marginal productivity eventually declines as work day increases, yet this guy still pays the same marginal wage. He's be better off setting a quarter of his money on fire, he could at least cook some dinner with it.
"Behind every great fortune there is crime" --Balzac
change.org/p/13002798
Casteism
You must be doing a shitload of high grade pharmaceuticals if you think your employees are lucky to be working themselves to death for absolutely no compensation.
If you want your employees to perform like this, they need to have a stake in what they are working towards. What kind of delusional fuckwit thinks that a person should willingly sacrifice their chance at having a life to make you a fucking billionaire...
People sure find new and exciting ways to be despicable, amoral shit heels... The fact that we look to these people as leaders is ridiculous.