996

What 996 Is and Who It’s “For”

• 996 = 9 a.m.–9 p.m., 6 days/week. Many see it as acceptable only for founders or owners with huge upside, not for regular employees on normal salaries or tiny equity.
• Several note that founders’ work (meetings, selling, decisions) is qualitatively different from 12 hours/day of deep technical work, which is far less sustainable.
• Some people do similar hours on their own projects and don’t experience it as “work” in the same way as employment.

Burnout, Health, and Actual Output

• Numerous anecdotes: PhD labs, startups, banking, and medicine where long hours helped careers but caused burnout, health issues, and damaged relationships.
• People describe “pseudo-work”: doomscrolling, socializing, staying late for optics, or shipping low‑quality code that others must fix.
• Many argue you realistically get ~4–6 good hours of deep work per day; beyond that productivity and judgment crater, especially for engineers.

Power, Culture, and Optics

• 996 is framed as a power imbalance: when hours aren’t bounded, “flexibility” benefits employers, not workers.
• Some say 996 culture is mostly theater—for investors, bosses, or “face”—with Slack responsiveness and butts-in-seats mistaken for output.
• Others connect this to erosion of labor rights, noting the weekend and 40‑hour week were hard‑won and are being quietly rolled back.

Geography and Labor Systems

• In China, 996 is seen by some as failed management: people “摸鱼” (mentally check out) for large chunks of the week. There are long lunch/nap breaks, so 12 hours in the office isn’t 12 hours of work.
• China technically bans 996 without overtime pay; enforcement is patchy.
• European commenters highlight legal hour caps, mandatory overtime compensation, and culturally enforced work–life balance as a contrast.

Equity, Class, and Incentives

• Strong theme: 996 only makes sense if you capture founder‑level upside. Early employees with 0.1–3% equity are taking similar lifestyle risk for a tiny share of reward.
• Several frame this as class: owners vs workers, builders vs “redistributors,” and see glorified overwork as wage‑slavery in startup wrapping.

Life Stage, Privilege, and Personal Choice

• Some defend intense grind early in life, especially from poorer backgrounds, as a rational escape strategy.
• Others counter that normalizing 996 harms everyone—especially parents, older workers, and those with other commitments—and that “choice” is constrained by economic desperation.
• Broad agreement: voluntary crunch in short bursts can be meaningful; enshrining 996 as company culture is exploitative and counterproductive.