Chinese Devs Using GitHub to Protest 996 Workweek (9am – 9pm, 6 days/week) | Hacker News Reader

Chinese Devs Using GitHub to Protest 996 Workweek (9am – 9pm, 6 days/week)

996.icu

241 pointscomputerlab74 comments

I collaborated on a project with developers at QQ a few years back and here are a couple of anecdotes:

1. A 32 year old (!) developer I was working with one-on-one from QQ had a heart attack two weeks before, but was pressured (while in hospital) to come back to work as soon as possible. 2. At the QQ office, I watched an entire group (50+ developers) have a nap heads down at their desk after lunch.

If any developers from China are listening in. Leave your company, take your colleagues and start one with better conditions. You are some of best engineers I've worked with and deserve better.

A Chinese friend once had a wisdom tooth taken out and was back in the office that afternoon.

Taking naps during lunchtime is very common in Chinese offices

That heart attack incident is terrible. The nap part, however, is not particularly concerning. Nap after lunch is encouraged in the Chinese culture, and schools have a dedicated “noon nap” slot. Your Chinese coworkers likely nap not because they are so tired they have to, but because they and everyone else have done it their whole lives (and why not, napping feels good).

> Your Chinese coworkers likely nap not because they are so tired they have to, but because they and everyone else have done it their whole lives (and why not, napping feels good).

...unless institutionalized scheduled napping was established to extact just a tad more of energy from overworked servants.

Just saying.

It could be a custom. However, as a Chinese, my feeling is that the custom arises from the de facto 69x (x could be 5, 6 or 7) schedule of Chinese high schools, which is even harsher than that of Chinese companies.

> Leave your company, take your colleagues and start one with better conditions.

That company would last a month in China's gladiatorial business environment. It's not individual companies whimsically deciding to abuse the workers. It's the general intensities of the Chinese market (where you can't just invent something, file a patent and rest and count cash).

This self advocacy is encouraging and long overdue IMO.

The Chinese colloquial term for developer is "码农". Its literal English translation is "code peasants" -- not the most flattering or respectful way to call software engineers.

I've recently heard horror stories, where 9-9-6 is no longer enough inside one of the Chinese tech giants, and 10-10-7 is expected (10am-10pm, 7 days/week)

I hope this brings about some positive change and won't just get blocked by the authority.

Why not just 9-9-7? Was there any reasoning behind starting and finishing at 10? Its still a 12 hour day.

Avoiding rush hour traffic.

Not sure to be honest, were just anecdotes I heard.

Maybe just a playful way of making a more clear distinction between the two

Because you will be leaving at 10 or even 12 anyway, this way you can work for 3 hours more everyday

It could be funny to see the repo/GitHub gets blocked because of this. If it did, that will be a good wake up call for somebody who still sleeping.

That was my initial thought as well seeing as you can freely and anonymously discuss. But perhaps it's in the government's interest to have the people openly criticize these capitalist practices that have a negative impact on public health?

the gov does not care the individual at all.

The chinese Companies that implement 996 are blocking the site in their browsers: http://www.abacusnews.com/digital-life/chinese-browsers-bloc...

Well, 10-10-7 is outdated, code peasants are now joking about themselves as Double O Seven

Funny. I just read about 996 in a comment on another HN post today. I couldn't believe that schedule could actually exist in Chinese workplace culture so I started doing some research. Sure enough, this hellish schedule is actually quite common and official at major Chinese startups and tech companies. It seems like it's not as common at western companies operating in China. There's even a joke about 007: 0AM-0AM, 7 days a week.

Of course this flies in the face of my own experience that for the majority of people, productivity tops out at 40 hours per week unless it's for very short periods of crunch time. It's odd to see people so burnt out they've lost the self awareness to see that they've stopped adding value with their perpetual motion.

It's not just tech - lots of jobs require people to work 6 days a week in China.

In general it’s fascinating how the lack of constraints around time makes for worse code, business processes and tooling: if you can only 35 hours a week (RIP that French labor minister who thought reducing the number of working hours would create jobs) you better automate all that stuff you’d do manually if you could work 60 hours a week.

I mean you don't know that until recently? I'm pretty sure if you ask any Chinese IT worker about this, they probably have some story to share.

BTW, now you know if Chinese programmers are seeking oversea jobs, they are probably not trying to enter your company to steal your techs. No, more likely they're just 996 refugees :)

Another funny part is that there are actually a portion of coders who not only agree on but also advocate such 996 culture. One of my roommate is an example who believes it's beneficial to the young workers (for seemingly high salary of course). He's heading to Huawei after graduation.

Bonus part: he doesn't like tech/CS per se. Choosing this profession is purely out of the interest of $$$

Are you a talented dev in China tired of 996? American and EU companies are looking for you.

Perhaps, but if they have the influence and ability to effect change it benefits many more than just the ones who can move abroad.

欢迎大家来珠海跟我们工作! Come work with us in Zhuhai!

Do you work in 955?

Most people are 955 with occasional overtime, I work more like 666...

I worked in EU (Paris, France) for a year, was paid about 30% less than working in China, not to mention high living cost in Paris. The benefit is people DO have work-life balance. I'm working in US right now, one of FAANG, I'm paid way more (>4x) than EU and China, sometimes I still need to work till midnight, but not as hard as when I was in China.

American? No. The visa system is the worst in the world. I got past a few interviews, only to hit a block on the visa thing. I've stopped applying since Trump became president, as things will only get worse.

This. Fortune 500s in China might not pay salaries as high as BATs (20-50% lower) nor sell dreams of being an early engineer at a startup. They do however offer 40 day work weeks with minimal overtime or shift, a good salary (development/tech is one of the highest paid professions in China as in the US), and plenty of work-life time to pursue hobbies/family/projects.

Any job in Beijing? Or remote.

Here's the actual protesting: https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues

Some translations for flavor:

Issue: "10 5 5 imperialist American code peasant sneaks out of work"

https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1738

Issue: "The last two weeks we've had morning meetings at 7am, leave work at 11pm, no breaks on the weekend...I'd like to ask, how much does a trip to the ICU cost?"... "About 8,000RMB / day"

https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1752

Issue: "2:00, clock out, go home, shower, sleep"

https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1732

Issue: "(Foreign Enterprise CTO Position) Australian Tech Unicorn Seeks Chinese-Area Leadership"

https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1700

Issue: "Support this, 996 is inhumane and must stop, but always there's someone who needs to perform, work overtime for the boss to see"

https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/issues/1742

Notably, the repo has set records in terms of GitHub Stars in a day: https://github.com/trending

Likely because of the Star button the webpage proper.

What’s the old record?

I believe it was freecodecamp (or something like that), because they had a github tutorial that told people to make an account and star their repo.

I always had a question about hiring Chinese engineers remotely. Is it easy to handle salary payments to China and will the Chinese Firewall interfere with any web development activity they have to do? Is anyone here doing it?

Not sure about this but I think yes. China has network filtering software for VPNs, in fact, the more advanced anti VPN blocker tools are Chinese due to the firewall.

They have several websites blocked like Google, Facebook (no OAuth integrations). Anything that involves networking might suffer. They would probably get a police visit if the firewall has triggers for sshing into a server (common in devops). Not joking: https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/issues/420#issuecomment-262...

Maybe they could work but would have serious limitations I guess. In a "communist" country, don't even know if they have a tax status for freelancing given the government behaviour.

The only work around would be to have a based company in China to outsource.

Having a based company in China is not really a good idea unless you have a great market in China. You have to treat data seriously (not the privacy part, but the censorship and available-for-government-to-read part, like Russia).

Things like Apple saving data of mainland China Apple IDs in GZData concerned a lot of people.

[EDIT: Typo fix]

"Is it easy to handle salary payments to China " - yes, through Paypal

"will the Chinese Firewall interfere with any web development activity they have to do" - Most of the Chinese programmers know how to bypass the firewall by using VPN or shadowsocks.

Rails developer here, I have been following remote job listing sites for a really long time. Its frustrating when most of them set limitation as for "US"/"EU"/"NA" citizens only.

Looking for some 996ers of your own? This might not be the best time and to place to ask about that.

Absolutely not. Quite the contrary. If they are unhappy with this conditions (and they rightfully are), it seems like an opportunity to hire them and give them reasonable work hours.

I have met several Chinese programmers through out the years and was always impressed with their skills and work ethics.

I’m sorry to question your motives. Somehow I horribly misread the tone of your comment the first time around.

We can find method to solve the Firewall，for example，Shadow Socks or buy some vpn service。For openweb。

An interesting aspect of this is that this is an online protest on a platform that the Chinese government doesn't control. They normally exercise strict control over their internet to prevent movements from getting out of their control (for example, censoring #metoo when it starts trending). Would the Chinese government be willing to block GitHub? Surely that would be damaging to China's tech industry.

What if people started creating repositories with nothing but information about topics that the Chinese government considers sensitive (like the Tiananmen Square massacre or other human rights abuses)?

They've censored the entire website in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China

> online protest on a platform that the Chinese government doesn't control

False (for Chinese residents). China used to block GitHub but stopped doing that when they realized they could politely ask GitHub to block access to certain pages from Chinese IPs. [0]

[0]: https://qz.com/718465/chinas-fierce-censors-try-a-new-tactic...

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that. I wonder if anything will happen with this protest then. For communists, the Chinese government isn't fond of labor protests.

That appears to be the first and last time they received a request from China. https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns

On the other hand, Russia...

Interesting. I'm curious about whether the time they hijacked Baidu Analytics to launch a huge denial of service attack against GitHub was considered "politely" asking or not.

I remember reading on HN before that this ‘draconian’ schedule included both a 2 hour lunch and a 2 hour nap after said lunch.

While it would still be crazy, it wouldn’t be quite as crazy as it seems any more.

Normally, the 2 hour is for both lunch + nap, not 2 + 2 hour.

It is taking longer and longer to get a work visa to the US if you work in ML or quantum computing. US don't want us.

there is some chance this will completely reverse around February 2021 if a different administration is elected. the current White House has promoted paranoia towards China, and made a general push to curtail even legal immigration.

The US people and companies do. We just have incompetent leadership in our government, we're waiting it out too.

This kind of expression helps humanize the otherwise distance created between the Chinese development world and the otherwise Western portrayal.

A few thoughts from my experience living in China. When living in China, I didn't see any appeal in the overworking culture.

Most developers with families worked normal hours. People who were single made time to spend time with friends. I didn't see the overwork ethic it in a positive light at all. Keeping in mind normal developers salaries in tier 1 cities for China is sub-1k USD a month. In tier 2 cities, I can only imagine it gets exponentially lower and so forth for smaller cities.

I work in Shanghai, my first full-time job as a Rails developer was more than 2k dollars a month(I was just graduated with only a little development experience), and I think that's about the average in Shanghai.

Good to know. My experience there was approximately 8 years ago. Im curious how much base salary has increased.

The salary data is way outdated. All of my developer friends who returned to first-tier cities in China earn >4k USD per month. Even nannies generally earn more than 2k USD per month, it's hard to survive in tier-1 cities with 1k USD per month.

I do not think that would return if they are paid under 2k USD, and that doesn’t mean most of developers could earn more than 4k USD in China

That's why china is developing so fast than most countries.

If this is the cost, let them have it. It's not worth that human cost just to be ahead.

it doesnt work though, it's counter-productive to some extent

It's often not a conscious decision to adopt a "996" schedule but just happens anyway in Chinese tech firms.

I remember visiting the Alibaba campus some time ago and they had devs sleeping in tents in the office at 8pm on a weekend. Their boss proudly told me that he was making them all stay to have them finish a feature he wanted shipped the following week.

After a week of 10a-11p and 2 weeks of 10a-10p x 6, I feel terrible. My son asked me when I leave home: "Are you going to work to earn money so you can by me more toys?" "yah!" 996 is not optional, but mandatory, and is written on the contract.

I wish there will be more people know this outside China. It is against the law yet the government kept a close eye on it. It is not just in IT industry, there are a lot jobs where people are forced to work more than 9 hours a day.

So...will the censors risk blocking all of GitHub for this?

So will we see github banned very soon?

they collected more than 100000 stars in github within 50 hours!!

so GFW and censorship is not working as the media said.

it works. but IT worker are more likely to have the knowledge to use VPN.

Hi may be someone can work as "007": working from 0:00 to 0:00, 7 days/week.

still fuck more working time and no repaid.

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