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.

Comments

There is a name for this ..,

[UnknownSoldier]

Exploitation.

Talk about a complete lack of respect for people's time, space, mind, and health.

Re:There is a name for this ..,

[gweihir]

It is even worse: The productivity you get this way is wayyyy lower than with a 40h week. I can only think it is some idea that the underclass has to be tortured and a tiny number of those that take the torture without complaining and ask for more can be lifted up.

Re:There is a name for this ..,

[quantaman]

It is even worse: The productivity you get this way is wayyyy lower than with a 40h week. I can only think it is some idea that the underclass has to be tortured and a tiny number of those that take the torture without complaining and ask for more can be lifted up.

Productivity per hour goes down, and you eventually burn out or piss off employees entirely until they just quit, but at least for that stretch productivity will be way up.

That's one of the reason you need labour laws and/or unions. Employees compete with each other, so they'll feel pressured to outwork the other, and it's profitable for management to encourage this, meaning you'll get eventually reach a "996" workplace culture.

The big issue I see is 996 is crazy enough that you don't actually have a personal life. For 6 days of the week you literally only have 4 hours to get home, shop, eat, etc. You can't join a sports team, you can't go on a date, you basically have 1 day a week to build a life. Maybe you can endure it for your 20s, but what do you do when you're done?

Re:There is a name for this ..,

[apoc.famine]

I work less now than I ever have, and I'm vastly more productive than I've ever been.

This is for a couple of reasons.

1) I can take public transportation, and triage emails before I get in in the morning, and take care of a few things after I leave so there's less built up in the morning. I show up with a list of what needs to be done, and no need to waste 20 minutes filtering.
2) My shit is organized. I put a lot of time and effort into that, and I offload a lot of mental energy by not having to remember a lot of things. That means I've got a lot more mental energy to spend on what I really need to be thinking about.
3) When I'm not productive I leave. Ass in the seat doesn't produce results just because that's happening. A rested brain can do awesome shit. The trick is making sure that it gets rest, and you don't just assume that more thinking time will produce awesome results. It won't.
4) (2a) I kick off at quitting time even if I'm mid-flow. I just lay down some quick notes about where I'm at and what needs to happen next. I dump what it's in my head, and then walk away with a clear head, leaving that for tomorrow. Tomorrow 3 minutes of skimming and I'm not doing that shit, because somehow in the last 12 hrs my brain realized that's not what I should be doing, and I now know what I really should be doing. I swear, 2/3 of the time that I brain-dump and leave, I come back the next day knowing that that's not going to be productive.

I've dropped some 10s, and even a few 12s, and none of them were as productive as my regular 7s are.

Re:There is a name for this ..,

[apoc.famine]

As I hinted at, one of the big things I've found working less is that I spend less time going down the unproductive rabbit-hole without noticing. That's something that's really easy to do, especially if you're mentally fatigued and "just trying to get it done so I can go home".

When it's quitting time I jot down some notes (often just drop a few lines to a paragraph of comments and/or pseudo code) and pack it up. The next day I often look at the direction I was intending to go and realize that it's not going to be productive.

Had I spent a few more hours the night before banging at it, I might have realized it as well, but regardless, that time would have been lost. The difference is that I'm in well rested and mentally sharp in the morning, and not dragging because I put in a late night being unproductive. I'm still where I left off, just far more equipped to move forward than I would have otherwise been.

The times that it looks like I was on the right track, I often come in with a mental framework for how to quickly move on from that and push pretty deep into the problem I'm trying to solve. That's the brain working overnight when I was resting it, and the energy and focus to execute available. Again, that makes for a damn productive morning that I might not otherwise have had.

Stuff like this

[sjames]

Stuff like this reminds me of old white supremacists quacking on about how slavery in the old South was a boon to the slaves.

Re: Stuff like this

[Anonymous Coward]

Republicans were liberals at the time and conservatives were Democrats, so yes, he would be considered a liberal or at best a RINO today.

It's not rewriting history, it's understanding history.
The Republican party as you know it came about it when Barry Goldwater pulled conservatives to the Republican party, mostly over anger over the of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

see what happens when you don't have a union?

[Joe_Dragon]

see what happens when you don't have a union?

Re:classic

[jrumney]

Also the "if you don't do it while you're young" thing only works when companies are burning out their employees and forcing them out of the industry in their 30s.

The one lucky guy among the millions...

[ffkom]

... 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.

Re:The one lucky guy among the millions...

[gweihir]

It is even worse than that: Preaching hard work will get _him_ less money, because individual productivity peaks at around 40h/week and drops above that. This guy mast have gotten really lucky, because he does not even understand the basics of work. Not that different from the average CEO, though.

"Success"

[nmb3000]

"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.

The wrong question

[rgmoore]

If you don't work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996?

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.

Productivity

[manu0601]

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.

Re:Productivity

[gweihir]

There are some very old studied done by Henry Ford and others. They wanted to optimize worker efficiency. They found that the best outcome is at 8h per day, 5 days a week for manual work and 6h per day, 5 days a week for mental work. Work more and your productivity drops due to mistakes, sick-days (even if uncompensated, you are still not working) and other effects.

Of course, the US has forgotten that and China has probably never found out. In both cases, the mistaken thinking is that the more you exploit your workers, the better the profits. That is patently untrue, but requires dropping greed and the superiority complex of the average capitalist and rationally looking at facts instead. Few people with money or a deep desire for money are capable of that.

Re:Productivity

[gweihir]

It is pretty clear Ford wanted to optimize his profits. Hence both the work-time reduction and the better wages must have been beneficial to his profits. And they were.

What got lost is very basic things and they did not get lost. There are just ignored by the current failures we have as "industry leaders". Ford war a real capitalist. He had no problem doing things that benefited his workers as long as long as they benefited his profits. Modern employers usually claim to be capitalists, but they do not even understand the concept. Instead they are basically slave-holders of the worst kind that think their employees must be miserable, work as long as possible and paid the minimum possible and that this is the best approach. This fundamentally fails at being "capitalist". Not only does it results in less absolute productivity, it also reduces the amount of goods employees can buy and thereby reduces cash-flow and market-size. About the worst things you can do to capitalism. It also leads to them not having access to the best workers, namely those that have new ideas or can really optimize things. Stupidity, arrogance and short-sighted greed.

Tom Sawyer

[mentil]

It's not every day you get to whitewash a social ill, eh?