stuffedBelly

> You're just wasting time and space with your insults and rhetoric

I engage in arguments but where do you see insults?

I know very well you can read comments and profiles. I've had an HN account since 2011 and it gave me enough time to become well versed in finance. Plus I call myself software engineer because I work in quantitative finance and software engineering is big part of it. I'm also a CFA charterholder and not putting it on my HN profile doesn't make me less versed in finance.

It's ok if you don't want to engage in arguments, but don't assume you know someone by simply skimming through their HN profiles.

I work in finance and am sorry but you don't sound like a legit investor if you measure the effectiveness of your capital towards startups by work hours. What about their revenue models, plans for growth, talent structure and market niche? Why do you expect them to work longer hours as long as they have deliverables on time? Also, working longer hours may introduce potential compliance/HR costs (mental/physical problems due to overwork, people leaving due to work-life balance issue), which could be deadly for early startups.

> I'm sure that they do in the overwhelming majority of successful startups

You would need to back up this statement with evidence and show positive correlation between longer work hours and success of startups.

Nope, this is not true (from someone I know who's working at Bloomberg).

The keyword is "voluntary". Alibaba doesn't have this problem but many other companies do. The fact anti-996 has gained tons of attention makes me doubt it's just an immature movement started by a couple of crybabies.

I actually read Jack Ma's initial memo on this matter in Chinese. His stance was pretty clear that he endorses 996. He later "clarified" that he disagrees with this sentiment after people became enraged by his words.

These two assumptions don't really contribute to the whole 996 discussion.

Plus for many people, at certain stage, family/relationship/life/health becomes much more important than making millions.

corrected. Thanks.

Jack Ma's comment on this matter is full of logical fallacy. Forcing employees to stick to the 996 schedule with no overtime pay is not equivalent to someone finding their own passion and work restless towards their own goal. He somehow mixed up these two completely different things while avoided talking about the lack of overtime pay or even basic respect for employees in many corporations.

Labeling people who demand reasonable work-life balance as "slackers" (from JD's CEO) or lazy is utterly disgusting.

I understand sometimes people might need to work a bit overtime to get things done or have on-call duties. We all do, but working 12 hours a day/6 days a week is not sustainable whatsoever. Of all these Chinese entrepreneurs, none of them mentioned even the slightest of their total rewards systems, which makes me think they are avoiding this topic on purpose and all their comments are attempts to put out fire while keeping the status quo, sneaky indeed.

To be honest, if someone I manage constantly works crazy hours with no rest for a long period of time, voluntarily or not, I won't even let him/her push any piece of code to production.

Fried brains == Disaster

Edit: had a discussion with some of my friends from China on this. One of the common arguments is "why are developers whining about work conditions while tons of other occupations such as factory/delivery workers and nurses work long hours with lower pay?"

First of all, other occupations having bad work condition does not justify the legitimacy of 996. This is yet another common logical fallacy when it comes to arguments like this. Also, how can people assume workers of other occupations are fine with endless long hours? Did anyone consider the possibility that they never had a systematic way to express their dissatisfaction and just tried going along with it for as long as possible before they were burnt out and got replaced?

downvote all you want...

thanks for sharing. My own "prestigious" alma mater has been involved in the scandal and I'm really worried the kind of message it sends to younger generations...that money can move mountains and hard-work does not matter...

Google's profit is driven primarily by ads. The old web is no longer the primary target for Google. Companies like this should probably stop pretending they are non-profit charity or labeling themselves as enablers of a 'better world'. At least this way people would have more realistic expectation, but hey, why should a mega-corp care what people really want...

A step in the right direction but hope universities could undo some damage by admitting students who were previously rejected/waitlisted because they were not "qualified" (ironically). Systematic cheating has always been there as long as there is profit involved, but I am still extremely sad that it got its way into all these so-called prestigious institutes...

long hours != work hard

so sad people in that forum even don't realize it and are so proud of their so-called "hard work" while getting exploited by their employers.