Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Microsoft workers decry grueling '996' working standard at Chinese tech firms
Source: The Guardian
Microsoft workers decry grueling '996' working standard at Chinese tech firms
A letter on Github demanded companies comply with labor laws, limiting workers to 40 hours a week versus a 12-hour day standard
Kari Paul
Tue 23 Apr 2019 02.54 BST
Microsoft employees have published a letter on the software development platform Github in solidarity with tech workers in China.
Workers at tech companies in the country have used the Microsoft-owned platform to complain about grueling working conditions and the “996” standard in the industry, a philosophy endorsed by the tech billionaire Jack Ma. The name is based on the idea of working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week.
Microsoft workers called on Chinese tech companies to comply with local labor laws, which limit their workers to 40 hours a week, with a maximum of 36 hours per month of overtime.
“These same issues permeate across full time and contingent jobs at Microsoft and the industry as a whole,” the workers said.
The repository hosting the material is called 996.icu, a reference to a comment from one poster that said such a schedule could land workers in the intensive care unit. Users created a list of more than 150 companies they said have inhumane working conditions, including Huawei, Bytedance (makers of the app TikTok), and Ant Financial (associated with Alibaba). It quickly became one of the fastest-growing GitHub repositories in the service’s history, being starred more than 200,000 times.
-snip-
A letter on Github demanded companies comply with labor laws, limiting workers to 40 hours a week versus a 12-hour day standard
Kari Paul
Tue 23 Apr 2019 02.54 BST
Microsoft employees have published a letter on the software development platform Github in solidarity with tech workers in China.
Workers at tech companies in the country have used the Microsoft-owned platform to complain about grueling working conditions and the “996” standard in the industry, a philosophy endorsed by the tech billionaire Jack Ma. The name is based on the idea of working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week.
Microsoft workers called on Chinese tech companies to comply with local labor laws, which limit their workers to 40 hours a week, with a maximum of 36 hours per month of overtime.
“These same issues permeate across full time and contingent jobs at Microsoft and the industry as a whole,” the workers said.
The repository hosting the material is called 996.icu, a reference to a comment from one poster that said such a schedule could land workers in the intensive care unit. Users created a list of more than 150 companies they said have inhumane working conditions, including Huawei, Bytedance (makers of the app TikTok), and Ant Financial (associated with Alibaba). It quickly became one of the fastest-growing GitHub repositories in the service’s history, being starred more than 200,000 times.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/22/microsoft-workers-decry-grueling-996-working-standard-at-chinese-tech-firms
