Under pressure
Workplace culture under scrutiny as companies demand longer hours from employees
Increasing competition in China’s tech industry putting the squeeze on its employees
Many skeptical that ‘996 schedule’ will lead to better results
Investigation launched into one firm for possible violation of labor laws
After living and working for years in Silicon Valley, Califonia, Wang Jianzong came back in 2015 to work in China’s Silicon Valley – Shenzhen, a tech hub in South China’s Guangdong Province.
“I met a friend who still works in Silicon Valley a few days ago. He envies my life now and asked me to look for job opportunities for him in China,” he told the Global Times.
Working as a senior product manager at Ping An Technology and focusing on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, Wang travels from time to time to different places and works long hours.
“It’s a completely different working pace from those days in San Jose,” he said, adding that when he worked at a US tech firm years ago, it was much less intense.
China has been on the rise as a technology superpower in recent years, with a number of its unicorn companies taking dominant positions around the world.
Human Cost
A Hurun Report indicated in 2018 that a new unicorn company – one which is valued at $1 billion or more and not yet listed – is born every three days in China, and some reports suggested that China is quickly catching up with the US in sectors such as AI. In addition to government support and growing investment, tenacious and hardworking entrepreneurs are seen as a major driving force behind the rapid growth of the tech sector.
But this growth comes at a specific human cost. Hangzhou-based Internet firm Youzan is reportedly mulling an extension of its working hours by adopting the so-called 996 schedule: Its employees are expected to work from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week.
At its annual conference, employees were encouraged to work long hours and that not separating their work from their personal lives is in line with the company’s corporate culture, a netizen who claimed to be a Youzan employee said in a post shared online.
The company’s senior executives cited Huawei as an example at the conference by saying that family members should be supportive when employees need to work long hours.
Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei, once persuaded Li Yuzhuo, a senior executive, to get divorced when Li complained about not being able to take care of his family because of the crazy work pace, according to media reports.
Huawei, known for its “wolf culture”, encourages employees to work aggressively and follow rigorous discipline, and many believe that is what has led to its success today.
Ya Ji, a former employee of Huawei, spent more than three years at the Chinese company but now works at a foreign company in Beijing.
At Huawei, he used to work from 9:30 am to 10 pm and sometimes longer than that, since “there were lots of missions to complete,” he said. Ya and most of his colleagues worked at least one day on weekends.
“Sometimes we had to work overnight when there was an emergency, but that didn’t happen often and we could have a rest for the whole morning the next day,” he told the Global Times.
To preserve his health and take better care of his family, Ya quit Huawei and began working at a foreign company in late 2018. He said his current workload is about one third of what it was at Huawei.
Although he doesn’t make as much as he did at Huawei, Ya is satisfied. “At least I can go home early every day to be with my family and get enough sleep on the weekend.”
Wolf spirit
Chinese internet companies are mainly private enterprises, which have experienced all kinds of ups and downs, an insider close to BAT – Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, China’s three internet giants – told the Global Times.
“Ambition and dedication are always
“Working overtime is sometimes a good sign that you are still creating value for your corporation. It shows that your team remains valuable and dynamic.” An insider close to China’s top three internet giants