"Work 996, Sick ICU"
Written by | Zhang Xiaochen Shi Yuexin
Edit | Shen Jiayin
Operational | Qu Xinyu
Original production of "Look at the World" magazine
Bad news came, ByteDance Wu died after 41 hours of rescue, only 28 years old. He left behind his wife, who was two months pregnant, and a mortgage of more than twenty thousand a month.
Wu is an image algorithm engineer in byteDance's video architecture department, and has been in a different place for eight years with his wife and married for three years.
Confirmed by byte employees, the next morning, Wu's Feishu signature had been changed by her wife: "My kind, intelligent and handsome XXX of Ai Xinxin's wife has left forever." XX, I love you forever. You can go with confidence. ”
According to ByteDance's report, at 18:00 on the evening of February 21, Wu entered the company's gym, and after exercising for an hour, Wu felt dizzy, and then was sent to the ICU, and finally died.
Chat records of Wu's wife circulating online (Source: Internet)
Public opinion has once again focused on the problem of overtime and overwork in large factories. Some netizens said sadly, "Bytes and hearts, you can only choose one beat."
Internet practitioner Cryolite once said in the surging bar:
The current overtime situation of employees of Internet companies is sad, and I myself suffer from it. But there are still many people willing to join, the main reason is two points, the first is to consider a better platform for their own long-term career planning help, all the bad factors of the platform can be regarded as "short-term costs" and "overcomeable difficulties", "patience will pass"; the second is that with the changes in the Internet market environment, entrepreneurial companies want to surpass opponents in a certain track, or even just make achievements to let large factories buy, need to pay more effort than before, achieve faster speed, it is possible to succeed. This makes even entrepreneurial companies, small-scale companies, may not be able to give people a balanced life, but may work overtime more fiercely. So 996 has been defaulted to a condition that employees need to endure. Frankly, it's sad.
ByteDance Response (Source: Network)
Returning to individual employees, overtime affects not only the quality of life, but also the physical health that directly emerges, according to a report released by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization in Environment International, compared with 35-40 hours of work per week, people who work more than 55 hours of work have a 17% increased risk of heart disease and a 35% increase in the risk of stroke.
Over the years, there have been many deaths due to overtime alone.
To this day, the website with the domain name of 996.icu is still running, and the page is jumping out and dazzling pink.
"The '996' working system, that is, arriving at work at 9 a.m. every day, working until 9 p.m., working 6 days a week." As soon as it came up, the organizers of the website gave the definition of "996".
In 2018, the "anti-996" movement took off on the Internet, and programmers registered domain names in their community (Github), using the meaning "work 996, sick ICU." At that time, the direct trigger for the action of Internet practitioners was the sudden death of many programmers in the company due to fatigue.
The participants in the operation listed on the website a list of companies that implement "996" in China, and also attached the provisions of the existing laws that need to be crossed a few screens to see the final legal provisions, from the Constitution of the People's Republic of China to the Implementation Measures of the Ministry of Labor on the Implementation of the State Council's Regulations on the Working Hours of Employees, to prove that the "996" as an enterprise institutional arrangement is illegal. Three years have passed, and the "996" and two weekends a month can only be closed for a single week" system is no longer unique to the Internet industry, and other industries have begun to follow suit in the past few years.
In July and August last year, Kuaishou and ByteDance, two Internet companies that set "996" and "Big and Small Week" as the system, issued internal letters announcing the end of the system that had been in place for several years.
On August 26, the Supreme People's Court and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security clarified in a document entitled "Typical Cases of Labor and Personnel Disputes (Second Batch)" that "996" (referring to "working hours from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., working 6 days a week") seriously violates the provisions of the law on extending the upper limit of working hours, and the relevant company rules and regulations should be found to be invalid.
But has overtime really ended here?
During the Spring Festival this year, an auditor of the Wuhan branch of Station B was suspected of suddenly dying of cerebral hemorrhage in the early morning of February 5 due to overtime work during the New Year, at the age of 25.
The deceased cousin said that during the Spring Festival, the cousin did not go home for the New Year, and chose to stay in Wuhan to work overtime, the work intensity is very large, sometimes need to work for nearly 12 hours continuously.
Subsequently, Station B issued an internal letter in response to the matter, confirming the news that the employee died due to large-scale cerebral hemorrhage after ineffective rescue. However, it is denied that the deceased died suddenly due to overtime: after internal attendance verification, the employee commuted to work normally according to the work plan, working from 9:30 to 18:30, doing five days off and two, and there was no overtime in the week before the incident.
Station B response (source: network)
But the frequent accidental deaths of employees in large factories still make this group particularly distressing.
Liang Meng, an associate professor at the College of Humanities and Development at China Agricultural University, has been following Internet companies since 2002. In 2019, she published her postdoctoral outbound report called Overtime.
In 2010, Liang Meng found in her internship that even if there is no mandatory regulation, many programmers will still take the initiative to come to the company on weekends. For them, the lines of code they have in their hands are not as simple as work, but a project that they really agree with and can decide the pace of their work.
In Liang Meng's view, this is the basic appearance of China's first generation of Internet companies: the founders are mostly "turtles", Internet companies that have joined Silicon Valley abroad, and have learned "engineer culture". However, after the rapid entry of China's Internet into the era of mobile Internet, it seems that everything has changed: the company no longer needs creative employees, the mobile Internet can not talk about the degree of technological breakthroughs, it has entered the stage of application technology, and the development method has changed from the original "waterfall flow" to "agile development".
The "agile development" way of working is fragmented and immediate, and it is eager for programmers to be "long" in the office and ready to deal with unexpected situations. At this time, "996" and "big and small weeks" appeared, and Internet companies used various measures and set up different systems to extend the on-the-job time of employees, and even institutionalized them.
The original relaxed Internet working environment is no longer, "engineer culture" has become "brick moving culture", and the creativity of employees is no longer the standard of enterprise employment, but is good at calculating how to use their own compensation system to make "big and small weeks" and "996" sustainable.
Looking back at the "anti-996" action that occurred in 2018, Liang Meng believes that the key to the problem is not why programmers oppose overtime, but overtime for nearly 20 years, why did they think of rebelling at this point in time?
"According to the labor law, under the '996' work system, only 2.275 times the current wage can be obtained in the economic account." At the end of the 996.icu's website, the activists calculated a sum of money, seemingly responding to employees who opposed the cancellation of "996" in the investigation: "Developers' lives matter."
*The following is an interview with Liang Meng (See The World = V Liang Meng = Liang)
Why overtime for 20 years
Only to think of rebelling?
V: Many Internet companies have now developed benefits such as free meals, taxi reimbursement, rental subsidies, etc., and you think in the book that these "benefits" have become a new control tool, which has increased the working hours of workers to some extent. Do you think that as a welfare and system setter, you have hoped from the beginning that these "benefits" can increase the working hours of workers?
Liang: In my opinion, Internet companies can be divided into two stages or types: the first type is the Internet enterprises that developed from the PC side at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, represented by "BAT". As the first generation of Internet companies, its products are Internet infrastructure, the founders from foreign Internet companies, such as Microsoft, Google learned a set of "engineer culture", and profoundly influenced the company they founded, in the corporate culture is more obvious embodiment.
The "benefits" offered by such companies are designed to land the concept of "engineer culture". For example, these companies not only provide canteens, but also wash clothes, exercise, cut hair, nail art and even take care of children in the company, but the logic of letting employees "stick" to the company is not obvious.
In the second stage, the product has changed, becoming a mobile terminal, mainly mobile APP. The technology behind this product has not actually changed much, but the pace of work has accelerated, and the work has been cut more finely, so the company's requirements for work efficiency have become higher.
At the same time, the mainland is at the forefront of the world in the field of mobile Internet, and the market competition is also the most intense, making these Internet companies face severe competitive pressure, and there are words such as "winner-take-all on the track" and "Internet companies only have the first, no second". Coupled with the pressure given to them by post-listing capital, mobile Internet companies are under increasing pressure.
In the process of combining with the local management culture, the "engineer culture" is largely and automatically abandoned by the new generation of companies. This makes the second generation of Internet companies, such as ByteDance's programmers more instrumental, in the production process of the product, the programmer's right to speak, the sense of ownership and pride of the product have been greatly weakened.
Therefore, the first stage of the company's welfare system is to build a sense of "home" and let employees have a sense of belonging and pride.
But in the second stage, the company is trying to make employees stay in the company longer, such as setting the taxi time to 10 o'clock, establishing a "big and small week" salary system, and so on.
V: The welfare system provided by the first generation of Internet companies to employees, and even provided kindergartens and laundry rooms, what is the difference between this and the welfare system of government departments, state-owned enterprises and other departments?
Liang: Early Internet companies not only paid their employees well, but also wanted to create a comfortable and free environment. These companies believe that this corporate culture is the real driving force for innovation, and the development of the industry requires innovation. By the second generation of Internet companies no longer need to innovate, "fast" has become more important. The product framework has long been set, and it has become a new goal to quickly enter and occupy the market.
The welfare system of state-owned enterprises or traditional units may be more like a shelter system. The organization is responsible for the life and death of employees, and employees have a sense of identification and loyalty to the organization. There is also a view that these benefits are a kind of compensation, because the salary of state-owned enterprises is not high, but together with the benefits of divided houses, canteens, attached kindergartens, etc., they will not feel too bad in the labor market.
In general, Internet companies promote "engineer culture" and ultimately pursue efficiency. The welfare system within the system is more hoped that through these benefits, employees will have recognition and loyalty to the enterprise organization, or a kind of compensation.
V: At present, the relevant departments have made it clear that "996" is illegal and require relevant companies to repeal the relevant regulations. Do you think the connection between "996" and the rise of the mobile Internet is inevitable?
Liang: The phenomenon of overtime has existed since the beginning of Internet companies, so in my opinion, what should actually be asked is: "Why has overtime always existed, but only after 20 years did you think of rebelling?" "That's the root of the problem.
According to the classification of labor sociology, elite companies implement a system of responsibility autonomy, which does not force overtime, but sets deadlines. It emphasizes the employees' mastery of the rhythm of work and the use of corresponding resources, while those small companies have always been more strictly managed, such as the need to punch in and the requirements of working hours. Therefore different types of companies are always responsible for autonomy and strict requirements for the division.
But in the era of mobile Internet, employees of elite companies have gradually lost control of their work in the "responsibility autonomy" model. The company requires that you can only eat at 7 o'clock and go to 6:30 a.m. Programmers find that they have to work overtime, whether it makes sense or not, and they have to touch the fish until 10 o'clock.
When the "big and small week" is implemented, the fish must also be touched in the company for a day.
The point of anger among workers is not overtime itself, but because they have lost control of the pace of their work, which is different from the education they received in colleges.
In the college, everyone has a clear imagination of advocating academic research and free space, but the actual situation after work has broken their imagination. Autonomy and free space are suppressed, and they do not get the resources they want at work, leaving only the employers to demand of them.
This gave rise to opposition to the "996" operation, and the "sudden death from overwork" was actually only "the last straw that crushed the camel".
Double pay for overtime
It is to make the "big and small weeks" "last"
V: Kuaishou and Byte have said goodbye to the "big and small week", when an internal survey showed that one-third of the people disagreed, and many people thought that "overtime is not good to get double wages?" "What do you think of such a statement? What is the reason behind this?
Liang: Employees are familiar with the company's previous set of salary calculation methods, and it is clear that they may have a decline in salary and remuneration after the end of the "big and small week". This makes sense, but it is also one-sided: they do see an immediate wage decline. If a company takes its own salary level as competitive, whether it works overtime for a long time, the company will definitely match the salary and level of employees.
If the enterprise is the boss in the industry, but the income of employees is the middle and lower reaches of the industry, the enterprise will not be able to leave employees, and the employees will be lost in large quantities. The salary cake of the enterprise is so large, sooner or later it will score points for everyone. Even if overtime is abolished, the employee's income will be reduced in a short period of time, and it will always be sent out later.
The second concern of employees is that they think that canceling the "big and small week" may not be useful, because they are well aware that the "big and small week" is only a non-important factor that causes their own work stress and busyness. Even if the "big and small week" is canceled, the work is still done. Since you have to lose money in a short period of time and the original work has to be done, what is the use of canceling the "big and small weeks"?
996.icu is actually not against the "big and small week", but against the unreasonable pressure that enterprises put on employees. "Big and small weeks" is one of the aspects, including the assessment incentive system, the corresponding requirements for career promotion, and so on. Macroscopically speaking, the whole society also puts a lot of pressure on young people: marriage, house, children, "996" is only one aspect, even if it changes, the impact on them may not be so great.
V: You wrote about two mobile Internet companies in the book, A and B, and you can probably guess that one of them is ByteDance. You mentioned that their salary calculation method, such as "size week" has double salary, in fact, to a certain extent, the "996" and "size week" rationalization. What is the mechanism behind this? Is it just a pay calculation method?
Liang: The salary calculation method may not necessarily be to rationalize overtime, so that the salary is set to maximize compliance with labor law. Labor law for overtime has corresponding requirements, if the company has formulated a system of overtime in the system, but the salary is not in accordance with overtime, once the worker is told, the whole system is difficult to continue. This system can only be enforced if it complies with labor laws, which is where HR in large companies is very clever.
V: Although "996" is now illegal, many programmers have expressed that they think that they are willing to "996" when they can bear it physically. They want to make more money when their physical condition allows, so that they don't have a job after the age of 35. What do you think of this idea?
Liang: The biggest difference between young people and middle-aged and elderly people is physical strength, compared to staying up late, middle-aged and elderly people are better than young people who have just graduated. But middle-aged people have a wealth of experience, and their understanding of products and familiarity with the system are incomparable to those of young people.
However, Internet companies have chosen young people, which is related to how the second generation of Internet companies use labor, in the eyes of enterprises, employees only need to "move bricks" is enough, do not need to understand the product. If you can't reach the rate I'm asking for, switch.
V: In a document titled "2020 Beijing New Generation migrant worker monitoring report", the official definition of programmers as a kind of "new generation of migrant workers", do you think this positioning is appropriate?
Liang: Previously, the authorities classified riders as migrant workers, which I think is very normal. But as far as programmers are concerned, this is certainly not right.
Migrant workers mean that they are both farmers and workers, and now the employees of large factories are all university graduates, with a degree of at least 211 or a graduate. These people's files are written as "cadre identities", and they are no longer peasants, so what are they migrant workers? We can call them floating populations.
But programmers have a downward trend in their own class perception, and companies are becoming more and more strict in their management, and they will be eliminated at the age of 35. Their sense of crisis is also getting stronger, but it has not declined to the level of migrant workers.
*The accompanying figures in this article, unless attributed, are referenced to Visual China