According to Jack Ma, billionaire founder of Alibaba Group, you need to work 12 hours a day, six days a week if you want to cut it at Alibaba. I suppose it makes sense, given Alibaba’s meteoric rise in recent years but for someone like Jack Ma to come out and pretty much endorse overtime work culture? That’s unhealthy.
Ma is apparently a huge fan of the industry’s notorious 996 work culture- working 9am to 9pm, for six days a week. He said as much in an internal meeting where he lauded the toxic culture by saying that the company basically doesn’t need people who are looking for a regular eight hour shift when it comes to work, according to a post on Weibo.
“To be able to work 996 is a huge bliss. If you want to join Alibaba, you need to be prepared to work 12 hours a day, otherwise why even bother joining.”
Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba
With the tech industry already littered with horror stories about employees not only dying unexpectedly but also committing suicide due to stress, these comments have understandably caused an uproar on Weibo.
“A load of nonsense, and didn’t even mention whether the company provides overtime compensation for a 996 schedule,” wrote one commenter on the Weibo post. “I hope people can stick more to the law, and not to their own reasoning.”
“The bosses do 996 because they’re working for themselves and their wealth is growing,” another comment read. “We work 996 because we’re exploited without overtime compensation.”
While it may sound alarming for Jack Ma to say what he said, this is something thats been going on for years. Even in the world of gaming, there is what is known as crunch—mandatory overtime, usually as part of a final push to finish a game. You would think that developers would want to cut down on crunch culture but when Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser proudly disclosed that the team were working “100 hour weeks” to finish Red Dead Redemption 2 last year, you cant help but to think that employers view it as some sort of twisted achievement of sorts.
Work life balance is paramount to keeping turnover low and employees happy. Studies have shown that a happy employee is a more productive employee. It’s about time that companies did away with draconian culture that champions uncompensated overtime. Putting employees in a position where it seems like they have no choice but to put in the extra work is not only manipulative but also exploitative. It’s no wonder that most graduates in South Korea are turning down opportunities to work for Samsung in favour of starting their own Youtube channels or even farming.
It’s 2019, maybe don’t treat your employees like slaves? Just some food for thought.
