So, I talked to someone who had worked at AliBaba for a bit (Son Luong Ngoc) and learned a lot. Some of the 996 is related to the company campus providing everything at a pretty low cost and a sort of presentism where being around is rewarded. All that plus the jobs are considered great jobs within China, and there is cut-throat performance competition process.

Also, I think sleeping at work, taking a nap while waiting for something to run, or waiting on another team are encouraged. Excuse the link drop, but if you want to see some pictures of tents set up for sleeping scroll down to the bottom here:

https://corecursive.com/software-world-tour-with-son-luong-n...

To me, from Son's experience, some of it sounds like giant tech campuses in NA, but with competitiveness and cutthroat performance reviews taken to it's logical extreme.

I'd love to hear your stories if you've worked at ByteDance, Alibaba, or any other similar company. What was it like? What do we get wrong from the outside?

Also your experiences could be a fit for my podcast. Hit me up (see profile).