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Because the job market is worse and employers have forced down engineers' bargaining power. And it's a virtuous cycle for them: the more overtime an employee works, the fewer employees they need to hire. On a societal level, this makes jobs even scarcer, which makes employees more desperate, and more are willing to work overtime.

Expressions of asceticism has always been popular with some personalities. It crops up in various new forms every once in a while, "monk mode" was big a while back, and 996 has a lot of the same appeal, you also had Steve Jobs famously living off the floor in his apartment.

I think the appeal is about structure more than anything else.

Because the engineers are coming here to work

> Why is it suddenly becoming popular outside of China?

USA always loved slave labour. That's how it got rich. There were some issues in the 60's when some coloured people demanded rights, but this was quickly solved. /s