🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 84 (from laksa158)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa084.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/29\/technology\/china-996-jack-ma.html","crawl_time":1772717724,"first_indexed_time":1556556392,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,nytimes!www,\/2019\/04\/29\/technology\/china-996-jack-ma.html s443","src_root_hash":"4566504020376537684","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It. - The New York Times","meta_descriptions":["Chinese programmers once embraced working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. But online, discontent is brewing."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Advertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\nChinese programmers once embraced working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. But online, discontent is brewing.\nAlibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, China. It's one of the Chinese companies that have been blacklisted on GitHub, a global online community for tech workers, for requiring long hours.\nCredit...\nCrab Hu\/EPA, via Shutterstock\nApril 29, 2019\nChina’s richest internet moguls think their employees should work more.\nJack Ma, a founder of the e-commerce titan Alibaba, called long work hours\n“a huge blessing.”\nRichard Liu, who runs the Alibaba rival JD.com, said people who frittered away their days\n“are no brothers of mine.”\nRank-and-file tech workers in China, discouraged by a\nweakened job market\nand downbeat about their odds of joining the digital aristocracy, have other ideas.\nThey are organizing online against what in China is called the “996” culture: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.\nFor years, Chinese tech employees have worked hours that make Silicon Valley’s workaholics seem pampered. Now they are naming and shaming employers that demand late nights. Some programmers are even\nwithholding their creations\nfrom companies that they think overemphasize 996.\n“Ten years ago, people rarely complained about 996,” said Li Shun, a former employee at the search giant Baidu who left to found an online medical start-up. “This industry was booming once, but it’s more of a normal industry now. There are no more giant financial returns. Expecting people to work a 996 schedule on their own like before isn’t realistic.”\nUnusually for China — where independent labor unions are banned and the government comes down hard on populist movements it doesn’t control — the movement is gaining traction.\nMr. Ma\nsoftened his remarks\n. An industrywide conversation has begun. An open letter, sent on Monday to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and signed by 74 lawyers from around the country, urges the government to properly enforce labor laws.\nEven Chinese state media has called on employers to ease back.\n“Under the pressures of a slowing economy, many companies are faced with questions about their survival, and their anxiety is understandable,” a commentary in\nthe People’s Daily\n, the Communist Party mouthpiece, said. “But the solution is not to make employees work as much overtime as possible.”\nAngst about 72-hour workweeks speaks to a deeper gloom in China’s digital industries.\nNot so long ago, 996 symbolized possibility for Chinese tech entrepreneurs. Their country had the vast market. And increasingly, it had the engineering talent. The secret ingredient, the one that supposedly set China’s companies apart from Silicon Valley’s, was the hustle.\nWhile China requires overtime pay, the laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually insists workers are committing their time voluntarily.\nBut hustle is harder to demand of workers\nin a bear market\n. Internet darlings have laid off employees. A torrent of venture investment in tech has slowed to a trickle. As China’s internet industry matures, giant companies like Alibaba and Tencent are looking more like monopolists whose\nworld-swallowing dominance\nleaves little room for upstarts.\nImage\nJack Ma, a founder of Alibaba, called long work hours “a huge blessing,” but has softened his remarks.\nCredit...\nMark Schiefelbein\/Associated Press\nIn China, “there’s not a lot of hope for runners-up anymore,” said Max Zhou, a co-founder of a Beijing mobile software start-up called MetaApp. As a result, he said, smaller companies can no longer use a sense of grander purpose to motivate workers to sacrifice their personal lives.\n“Most companies don’t have a dream anymore,” Mr. Zhou said. “They can only try to fabricate something for their employees.”\nThe 996 debate started last month with a simple post on GitHub, an online community where programmers around the world share code and software tools. An anonymous user posted under the screen name “996icu,” a reference to the place where such hours take engineers: the intensive care unit.\nThe\n996.ICU GitHub repository\n— basically a folder for a project’s files — has since been “starred” more than 230,000 times, indicating people’s level of interest. Hundreds of fed-up tech workers have contributed to the GitHub project. Others have assembled on messaging and social media apps, with little centralized coordination.\nThe Chinese government is eternally fearful of spaces where mass discontent can simmer. It has long barred access to Facebook, Twitter and other global platforms. Years ago, China\nbriefly blocked GitHub, too\n, but engineers protested and the site was unblocked. GitHub, which is\nowned by Microsoft\n, has a policy of posting any takedown requests it receives from governments.\nNagi Zhuge, an engineer at a start-up in the southern province of Hunan, has lived the 996 life for the last two years.\n“My colleagues are too afraid to go home after work,” Mr. Zhuge said. “As a junior employee, I can’t be the first to leave.” He is now an active contributor to the GitHub project.\nImage\nChina's overtime laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually contends that extra hours are being worked voluntarily.\nCredit...\nAly Song\/Reuters\nAcross the different groups, the basic strategy is to push, but not so hard that the Chinese government feels compelled to react.\nThat means no strikes and no demonstrations. In one group on the messaging app Telegram, references to Marx and Lenin are forbidden. The philosophies of communism’s leading lights often run contrary to\nthe way China is run today\n. The government\ncracked down\nagainst a labor rights movement in the tech hub of Shenzhen this year.\nInstead of sit-ins, the tech workers are harnessing the power of memes, stickers and T-shirts. Some have pushed for a holiday to celebrate beleaguered software engineers.\nMr. Zhuge is rallying workers\nto mail paper copies of China’s labor law to Mr. Ma of Alibaba.\n“We’re expressing ourselves very gently, as programmers tend to do,” said Suji Yan, the founder of a start-up in Shanghai called Dimension.\nEven so, many people, in China and elsewhere, remain concerned that the movement will be silenced. A few weeks ago, some Chinese web browsers appeared to have restricted access to the GitHub repository. In response, Microsoft employees started a petition asking the company to decline any requests from the Chinese authorities to censor or remove the 996.ICU repository.\n“Most important for the 996.ICU movement is that GitHub is accessible in China,” the employees wrote in their petition. “We encourage Microsoft and GitHub to keep the 996.ICU GitHub repository uncensored and available to everyone.” The petition, which is also hosted on GitHub, has collected more than 150 public signatures and has been starred more than 4,000 times.\nConcerns about censorship also arose when Twitter users in the United States were blocked from posting links to the 996.ICU repository. The link was incorrectly flagged by Twitter’s spam prevention system, a Twitter spokeswoman said, but users are now able to post it.\nOn GitHub, Chinese tech workers have drawn up a\nblacklist of the tech companies\nwhere the hours are longest. Among the offenders: Alibaba, JD.com, the smartphone maker Huawei and Bytedance, the social media giant behind the short-video platform TikTok.\nImage\nRichard Liu, the founder of JD.com, which is also on the GitHub blacklist.\nCredit...\nJason Lee\/Reuters\nThe\nlist of humane “955” exemplars\nincludes Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as the Chinese social website Douban.\nWritten along the bottom of the 996.ICU group’s\nbright red home page\n: “Developers’ lives matter.”\nAlibaba said it had no comment on 996 beyond Mr. Ma’s social media posts, and JD.com had no comment beyond Mr. Liu’s post. Huawei, whose executives speak proudly of\ntheir hard-charging “wolf culture,”\ndeclined to comment. Bytedance did not respond to a request for comment.\nThe\nGitHub repository\nincludes information about\njob opportunities overseas\n. There is also a list of things people can do to support the movement.\nThe last item on the list: “Go home at 6 p.m. without feeling sorry.”\nKate Conger contributed reporting.\nRaymond Zhong\nis a technology reporter. Prior to joining The Times in 2017, he covered India's fast-moving economy from New Delhi for The Wall Street Journal.\nA version of this article appears in print on\nApril 30, 2019\n, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It.\n.\nOrder Reprints\n|\nToday’s Paper\n|\nSubscribe\nRelated Content\nMore in Technology\nHaiyun Jiang\/The New York Times\nPhoto Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary\/Getty Images\nJordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times\nGrant Hindsley for The New York Times\nEditors’ Picks\nImage by Eric Striffler for The New York Times\nGetty Images\nTrending in The Times\nArash Khamooshi for The New York Times\nTom Ford\nThe New York Times\nJanet Mac\nThe New York Times\nRicardo B. Brazziell\/Austin American-Statesman, via Associated Press\nKristian Thacker for The New York Times\nIshara S. Kodikara\/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\nAmanda Shae Home Team Realty Group\nAmr Alfiky\/Reuters\nAdvertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to content](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/29\/technology\/china-996-jack-ma.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/29\/technology\/china-996-jack-ma.html#site-index)\n\nSearch & Section Navigation\n\nSection Navigation\n\nSearch\n\n[Technology](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/technology)\n\n[Log in](https:\/\/myaccount.nytimes.com\/auth\/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2019%252F04%252F29%252Ftechnology%252Fchina-996-jack-ma.html&asset=masthead)\n\nThursday, March 5, 2026\n\n[Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper)\n\n[Technology](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/technology)\\|‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It.\n\nhttps:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/29\/technology\/china-996-jack-ma.html\n\n- Share full article\n- 77\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/29\/technology\/china-996-jack-ma.html#after-top)\n\nSupported by\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/29\/technology\/china-996-jack-ma.html#after-sponsor)\n# ‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It.\nChinese programmers once embraced working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. But online, discontent is brewing.\n\n- Share full article\n- 77\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/04\/18\/business\/00chinawork-1\/00chinawork-1-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nAlibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, China. It's one of the Chinese companies that have been blacklisted on GitHub, a global online community for tech workers, for requiring long hours.Credit...Crab Hu\/EPA, via Shutterstock\n\nBy Lin Qiqing and [Raymond Zhong](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/raymond-zhong)\n\nApril 29, 2019\n\n[阅读简体中文版](https:\/\/cn.nytimes.com\/technology\/20190430\/china-996-jack-ma\/ \"Read in Simplified Chinese\")[閱讀繁體中文版](https:\/\/cn.nytimes.com\/technology\/20190430\/china-996-jack-ma\/zh-hant\/ \"Read in Traditional Chinese\")\n\nChina’s richest internet moguls think their employees should work more.\n\nJack Ma, a founder of the e-commerce titan Alibaba, called long work hours [“a huge blessing.”](https:\/\/mp.weixin.qq.com\/s\/oc0NugBjpsn1_mBtbib2Lg) Richard Liu, who runs the Alibaba rival JD.com, said people who frittered away their days [“are no brothers of mine.”](https:\/\/tech.163.com\/19\/0412\/18\/ECJ6M1PE00097U7R.html)\n\nRank-and-file tech workers in China, discouraged by a [weakened job market](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/03\/14\/business\/china-economy-slowdown-white-collar-workers.html) and downbeat about their odds of joining the digital aristocracy, have other ideas.\n\nThey are organizing online against what in China is called the “996” culture: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.\n\nFor years, Chinese tech employees have worked hours that make Silicon Valley’s workaholics seem pampered. Now they are naming and shaming employers that demand late nights. Some programmers are even [withholding their creations](https:\/\/github.com\/996icu\/996.ICU\/blob\/master\/awesomelist\/README.md) from companies that they think overemphasize 996.\n\n“Ten years ago, people rarely complained about 996,” said Li Shun, a former employee at the search giant Baidu who left to found an online medical start-up. “This industry was booming once, but it’s more of a normal industry now. There are no more giant financial returns. Expecting people to work a 996 schedule on their own like before isn’t realistic.”\n\nRead more about the ‘996’ culture\n\n[![]()Opinion \\| Bryce Covert The Richest Man in China Is Wrong. 12-Hour Days Are No ‘Blessing.’ April 21, 2019](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/21\/opinion\/jack-ma-996.html)\n\n[![]()Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work? Jan. 26, 2019](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/01\/26\/business\/against-hustle-culture-rise-and-grind-tgim.html)\n\nUnusually for China — where independent labor unions are banned and the government comes down hard on populist movements it doesn’t control — the movement is gaining traction.\n\nMr. Ma [softened his remarks](https:\/\/mp.weixin.qq.com\/s\/0isjrxqQJwWbf1UTF7OGYw). An industrywide conversation has begun. An open letter, sent on Monday to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and signed by 74 lawyers from around the country, urges the government to properly enforce labor laws.\n\nEven Chinese state media has called on employers to ease back.\n\n“Under the pressures of a slowing economy, many companies are faced with questions about their survival, and their anxiety is understandable,” a commentary in [the People’s Daily](https:\/\/www.weibo.com\/ttarticle\/p\/show?id=2309404360947027344911#_0), the Communist Party mouthpiece, said. “But the solution is not to make employees work as much overtime as possible.”\n\nAngst about 72-hour workweeks speaks to a deeper gloom in China’s digital industries.\n\nNot so long ago, 996 symbolized possibility for Chinese tech entrepreneurs. Their country had the vast market. And increasingly, it had the engineering talent. The secret ingredient, the one that supposedly set China’s companies apart from Silicon Valley’s, was the hustle.\n\nWhile China requires overtime pay, the laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually insists workers are committing their time voluntarily.\n\nBut hustle is harder to demand of workers [in a bear market](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/16\/business\/china-economy-first-quarter.html). Internet darlings have laid off employees. A torrent of venture investment in tech has slowed to a trickle. As China’s internet industry matures, giant companies like Alibaba and Tencent are looking more like monopolists whose [world-swallowing dominance](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/05\/31\/technology\/china-tencent-alibaba.html) leaves little room for upstarts.\n\n## Editors’ Picks\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2021\/06\/20\/fashion\/socialqs-2021-artwork\/socialqs-2021-artwork-thumbLarge-v2.jpg)My Boss Didn’t Care That My Mother Was Dying. Help\\!](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/style\/bereavement-grief-boss-unsympathetic.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/12\/12visualUploader-56768-cover\/12visualUploader-56768-cover-thumbLarge.jpg)40 Years and 10,000 Broadcasts In, They’re Still Live on Air](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/01\/business\/media\/anchors-rick-ardon-susannah-carr-perth-australia.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/04ST-DIOR-REVIEW-7-promo\/04ST-DIOR-REVIEW-7-promo-thumbLarge.jpg)Finally, Clothes That Make Light of Luxury](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/style\/dior-saint-laurent-fall-2026.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/29\/technology\/china-996-jack-ma.html#after-pp_edpick)\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/04\/30\/business\/30-JP-CHINAWORKS-02-PRINT\/merlin_105910532_225f733c-2b1a-4385-8550-1c6afaaec1dc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nJack Ma, a founder of Alibaba, called long work hours “a huge blessing,” but has softened his remarks.Credit...Mark Schiefelbein\/Associated Press\n\nIn China, “there’s not a lot of hope for runners-up anymore,” said Max Zhou, a co-founder of a Beijing mobile software start-up called MetaApp. As a result, he said, smaller companies can no longer use a sense of grander purpose to motivate workers to sacrifice their personal lives.\n\n“Most companies don’t have a dream anymore,” Mr. Zhou said. “They can only try to fabricate something for their employees.”\n\nThe 996 debate started last month with a simple post on GitHub, an online community where programmers around the world share code and software tools. An anonymous user posted under the screen name “996icu,” a reference to the place where such hours take engineers: the intensive care unit.\n\nThe [996\\.ICU GitHub repository](https:\/\/github.com\/996icu\/996.ICU) — basically a folder for a project’s files — has since been “starred” more than 230,000 times, indicating people’s level of interest. Hundreds of fed-up tech workers have contributed to the GitHub project. Others have assembled on messaging and social media apps, with little centralized coordination.\n\nThe Chinese government is eternally fearful of spaces where mass discontent can simmer. It has long barred access to Facebook, Twitter and other global platforms. Years ago, China [briefly blocked GitHub, too](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/03\/31\/technology\/china-appears-to-attack-github-by-diverting-web-traffic.html), but engineers protested and the site was unblocked. GitHub, which is [owned by Microsoft](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/06\/04\/technology\/microsoft-github-cloud-computing.html), has a policy of posting any takedown requests it receives from governments.\n\nNagi Zhuge, an engineer at a start-up in the southern province of Hunan, has lived the 996 life for the last two years.\n\n“My colleagues are too afraid to go home after work,” Mr. Zhuge said. “As a junior employee, I can’t be the first to leave.” He is now an active contributor to the GitHub project.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/04\/30\/business\/30-CHINAWORK-02-PRINT\/merlin_141985014_41da793a-fd32-4ec4-ba8c-4773759a287a-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nChina's overtime laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually contends that extra hours are being worked voluntarily.Credit...Aly Song\/Reuters\n\nAcross the different groups, the basic strategy is to push, but not so hard that the Chinese government feels compelled to react.\n\nThat means no strikes and no demonstrations. In one group on the messaging app Telegram, references to Marx and Lenin are forbidden. The philosophies of communism’s leading lights often run contrary to [the way China is run today](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/09\/28\/world\/asia\/china-maoists-xi-protests.html). The government [cracked down](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/02\/06\/world\/asia\/china-workers-protests.html) against a labor rights movement in the tech hub of Shenzhen this year.\n\nInstead of sit-ins, the tech workers are harnessing the power of memes, stickers and T-shirts. Some have pushed for a holiday to celebrate beleaguered software engineers. [Mr. Zhuge is rallying workers](https:\/\/github.com\/CPdogson\/996action\/blob\/master\/black-and-white.md) to mail paper copies of China’s labor law to Mr. Ma of Alibaba.\n\n“We’re expressing ourselves very gently, as programmers tend to do,” said Suji Yan, the founder of a start-up in Shanghai called Dimension.\n\nEven so, many people, in China and elsewhere, remain concerned that the movement will be silenced. A few weeks ago, some Chinese web browsers appeared to have restricted access to the GitHub repository. In response, Microsoft employees started a petition asking the company to decline any requests from the Chinese authorities to censor or remove the 996.ICU repository.\n\n“Most important for the 996.ICU movement is that GitHub is accessible in China,” the employees wrote in their petition. “We encourage Microsoft and GitHub to keep the 996.ICU GitHub repository uncensored and available to everyone.” The petition, which is also hosted on GitHub, has collected more than 150 public signatures and has been starred more than 4,000 times.\n\nConcerns about censorship also arose when Twitter users in the United States were blocked from posting links to the 996.ICU repository. The link was incorrectly flagged by Twitter’s spam prevention system, a Twitter spokeswoman said, but users are now able to post it.\n\nOn GitHub, Chinese tech workers have drawn up a [blacklist of the tech companies](https:\/\/github.com\/996icu\/996.ICU\/blob\/master\/blacklist\/README.md) where the hours are longest. Among the offenders: Alibaba, JD.com, the smartphone maker Huawei and Bytedance, the social media giant behind the short-video platform TikTok.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/04\/18\/business\/00chinawork-3\/00chinawork-3-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nRichard Liu, the founder of JD.com, which is also on the GitHub blacklist.Credit...Jason Lee\/Reuters\n\nThe [list of humane “955” exemplars](https:\/\/github.com\/formulahendry\/955.WLB) includes Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as the Chinese social website Douban.\n\nWritten along the bottom of the 996.ICU group’s [bright red home page](https:\/\/996.icu\/#\/zh_CN): “Developers’ lives matter.”\n\nAlibaba said it had no comment on 996 beyond Mr. Ma’s social media posts, and JD.com had no comment beyond Mr. Liu’s post. Huawei, whose executives speak proudly of [their hard-charging “wolf culture,”](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/12\/18\/technology\/huawei-workers-iran-sanctions.html) declined to comment. Bytedance did not respond to a request for comment.\n\nThe [GitHub repository](https:\/\/github.com\/996icu\/996.ICU) includes information about [job opportunities overseas](https:\/\/github.com\/623637646\/996.Leave). There is also a list of things people can do to support the movement.\n\nThe last item on the list: “Go home at 6 p.m. without feeling sorry.”\n\n*Kate Conger contributed reporting.*\n\n[Raymond Zhong](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/raymond-zhong) is a technology reporter. Prior to joining The Times in 2017, he covered India's fast-moving economy from New Delhi for The Wall Street Journal.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on April 30, 2019, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It.. [Order Reprints](https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY)\n\nSee more on: [Alibaba Group Holding Ltd](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/alibaba-group-holding-ltd), [GitHub Inc](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/github-inc), [Tencent Holdings Ltd](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/tencent-holdings-ltd), [Jack Ma](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/jack-ma)\n\nRead 77 comments\n\n- Share full article\n- 77\n\n***\n## Explore Our Business and Tech Coverage\n### Dive deeper into the people, issues and trends shaping the worlds of business and technology.\n***\n- **40 Years and 10,000 Broadcasts:** Rick Ardon and Susannah Carr [have been delivering the news together](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/01\/business\/media\/anchors-rick-ardon-susannah-carr-perth-australia.html) in Western Australia since 1985 — a Guinness World Record.\n- **Appeal of the iPod:** It’s not exactly going analog, [but people looking to move away from streaming](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/01\/technology\/apple-ipod-music-comeback.html) say Apple’s old device is a small step away from constantly being online.\n- **Corner Office****:** Everette Taylor took over Kickstarter at a low moment for the crowdfunding pioneer, but now he [excitedly points to the ways it has modernized its platform](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/01\/business\/kickstarter-everette-taylor-interview-remote-four-day-workweek.html).\n- **‘Bossware’:** Popularized in 2020, the term [refers to the technology some managers use to supervise](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/01\/business\/bossware-work-surveillance-tools.html) and surveil employees in the workplace. In recent years it’s become more sophisticated and widespread.\n\n## Related Content\n### [More in Technology](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/technology)\n- [OpenAI Amends A.I. Deal With the Pentagon](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/technology\/openai-pentagon-deal-amended-surveillance.html)\n  \n  ![“It’s critical to protect the civil liberties of Americans, and there was so much focus on this, that we wanted to make this point especially clear,” OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, center, wrote on social media.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02biz-openai-deal-fjlc\/02biz-openai-deal-fjlc-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Haiyun Jiang\/The New York Times\n- [Reporters Seek Comment. 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But online, discontent is brewing.\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/04\/18\/business\/00chinawork-1\/00chinawork-1-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nAlibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, China. It's one of the Chinese companies that have been blacklisted on GitHub, a global online community for tech workers, for requiring long hours.Credit...Crab Hu\/EPA, via Shutterstock\n\nApril 29, 2019\n\nChina’s richest internet moguls think their employees should work more.\n\nJack Ma, a founder of the e-commerce titan Alibaba, called long work hours [“a huge blessing.”](https:\/\/mp.weixin.qq.com\/s\/oc0NugBjpsn1_mBtbib2Lg) Richard Liu, who runs the Alibaba rival JD.com, said people who frittered away their days [“are no brothers of mine.”](https:\/\/tech.163.com\/19\/0412\/18\/ECJ6M1PE00097U7R.html)\n\nRank-and-file tech workers in China, discouraged by a [weakened job market](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/03\/14\/business\/china-economy-slowdown-white-collar-workers.html) and downbeat about their odds of joining the digital aristocracy, have other ideas.\n\nThey are organizing online against what in China is called the “996” culture: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.\n\nFor years, Chinese tech employees have worked hours that make Silicon Valley’s workaholics seem pampered. Now they are naming and shaming employers that demand late nights. Some programmers are even [withholding their creations](https:\/\/github.com\/996icu\/996.ICU\/blob\/master\/awesomelist\/README.md) from companies that they think overemphasize 996.\n\n“Ten years ago, people rarely complained about 996,” said Li Shun, a former employee at the search giant Baidu who left to found an online medical start-up. “This industry was booming once, but it’s more of a normal industry now. There are no more giant financial returns. Expecting people to work a 996 schedule on their own like before isn’t realistic.”\n\nUnusually for China — where independent labor unions are banned and the government comes down hard on populist movements it doesn’t control — the movement is gaining traction.\n\nMr. Ma [softened his remarks](https:\/\/mp.weixin.qq.com\/s\/0isjrxqQJwWbf1UTF7OGYw). An industrywide conversation has begun. An open letter, sent on Monday to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and signed by 74 lawyers from around the country, urges the government to properly enforce labor laws.\n\nEven Chinese state media has called on employers to ease back.\n\n“Under the pressures of a slowing economy, many companies are faced with questions about their survival, and their anxiety is understandable,” a commentary in [the People’s Daily](https:\/\/www.weibo.com\/ttarticle\/p\/show?id=2309404360947027344911#_0), the Communist Party mouthpiece, said. “But the solution is not to make employees work as much overtime as possible.”\n\nAngst about 72-hour workweeks speaks to a deeper gloom in China’s digital industries.\n\nNot so long ago, 996 symbolized possibility for Chinese tech entrepreneurs. Their country had the vast market. And increasingly, it had the engineering talent. The secret ingredient, the one that supposedly set China’s companies apart from Silicon Valley’s, was the hustle.\n\nWhile China requires overtime pay, the laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually insists workers are committing their time voluntarily.\n\nBut hustle is harder to demand of workers [in a bear market](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/16\/business\/china-economy-first-quarter.html). Internet darlings have laid off employees. A torrent of venture investment in tech has slowed to a trickle. As China’s internet industry matures, giant companies like Alibaba and Tencent are looking more like monopolists whose [world-swallowing dominance](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/05\/31\/technology\/china-tencent-alibaba.html) leaves little room for upstarts.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/04\/30\/business\/30-JP-CHINAWORKS-02-PRINT\/merlin_105910532_225f733c-2b1a-4385-8550-1c6afaaec1dc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nJack Ma, a founder of Alibaba, called long work hours “a huge blessing,” but has softened his remarks.Credit...Mark Schiefelbein\/Associated Press\n\nIn China, “there’s not a lot of hope for runners-up anymore,” said Max Zhou, a co-founder of a Beijing mobile software start-up called MetaApp. As a result, he said, smaller companies can no longer use a sense of grander purpose to motivate workers to sacrifice their personal lives.\n\n“Most companies don’t have a dream anymore,” Mr. Zhou said. “They can only try to fabricate something for their employees.”\n\nThe 996 debate started last month with a simple post on GitHub, an online community where programmers around the world share code and software tools. An anonymous user posted under the screen name “996icu,” a reference to the place where such hours take engineers: the intensive care unit.\n\nThe [996\\.ICU GitHub repository](https:\/\/github.com\/996icu\/996.ICU) — basically a folder for a project’s files — has since been “starred” more than 230,000 times, indicating people’s level of interest. Hundreds of fed-up tech workers have contributed to the GitHub project. Others have assembled on messaging and social media apps, with little centralized coordination.\n\nThe Chinese government is eternally fearful of spaces where mass discontent can simmer. It has long barred access to Facebook, Twitter and other global platforms. Years ago, China [briefly blocked GitHub, too](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/03\/31\/technology\/china-appears-to-attack-github-by-diverting-web-traffic.html), but engineers protested and the site was unblocked. GitHub, which is [owned by Microsoft](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/06\/04\/technology\/microsoft-github-cloud-computing.html), has a policy of posting any takedown requests it receives from governments.\n\nNagi Zhuge, an engineer at a start-up in the southern province of Hunan, has lived the 996 life for the last two years.\n\n“My colleagues are too afraid to go home after work,” Mr. Zhuge said. “As a junior employee, I can’t be the first to leave.” He is now an active contributor to the GitHub project.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/04\/30\/business\/30-CHINAWORK-02-PRINT\/merlin_141985014_41da793a-fd32-4ec4-ba8c-4773759a287a-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nChina's overtime laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually contends that extra hours are being worked voluntarily.Credit...Aly Song\/Reuters\n\nAcross the different groups, the basic strategy is to push, but not so hard that the Chinese government feels compelled to react.\n\nThat means no strikes and no demonstrations. In one group on the messaging app Telegram, references to Marx and Lenin are forbidden. The philosophies of communism’s leading lights often run contrary to [the way China is run today](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/09\/28\/world\/asia\/china-maoists-xi-protests.html). The government [cracked down](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/02\/06\/world\/asia\/china-workers-protests.html) against a labor rights movement in the tech hub of Shenzhen this year.\n\nInstead of sit-ins, the tech workers are harnessing the power of memes, stickers and T-shirts. Some have pushed for a holiday to celebrate beleaguered software engineers. [Mr. Zhuge is rallying workers](https:\/\/github.com\/CPdogson\/996action\/blob\/master\/black-and-white.md) to mail paper copies of China’s labor law to Mr. Ma of Alibaba.\n\n“We’re expressing ourselves very gently, as programmers tend to do,” said Suji Yan, the founder of a start-up in Shanghai called Dimension.\n\nEven so, many people, in China and elsewhere, remain concerned that the movement will be silenced. A few weeks ago, some Chinese web browsers appeared to have restricted access to the GitHub repository. In response, Microsoft employees started a petition asking the company to decline any requests from the Chinese authorities to censor or remove the 996.ICU repository.\n\n“Most important for the 996.ICU movement is that GitHub is accessible in China,” the employees wrote in their petition. “We encourage Microsoft and GitHub to keep the 996.ICU GitHub repository uncensored and available to everyone.” The petition, which is also hosted on GitHub, has collected more than 150 public signatures and has been starred more than 4,000 times.\n\nConcerns about censorship also arose when Twitter users in the United States were blocked from posting links to the 996.ICU repository. The link was incorrectly flagged by Twitter’s spam prevention system, a Twitter spokeswoman said, but users are now able to post it.\n\nOn GitHub, Chinese tech workers have drawn up a [blacklist of the tech companies](https:\/\/github.com\/996icu\/996.ICU\/blob\/master\/blacklist\/README.md) where the hours are longest. Among the offenders: Alibaba, JD.com, the smartphone maker Huawei and Bytedance, the social media giant behind the short-video platform TikTok.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/04\/18\/business\/00chinawork-3\/00chinawork-3-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nRichard Liu, the founder of JD.com, which is also on the GitHub blacklist.Credit...Jason Lee\/Reuters\n\nThe [list of humane “955” exemplars](https:\/\/github.com\/formulahendry\/955.WLB) includes Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as the Chinese social website Douban.\n\nWritten along the bottom of the 996.ICU group’s [bright red home page](https:\/\/996.icu\/#\/zh_CN): “Developers’ lives matter.”\n\nAlibaba said it had no comment on 996 beyond Mr. Ma’s social media posts, and JD.com had no comment beyond Mr. Liu’s post. Huawei, whose executives speak proudly of [their hard-charging “wolf culture,”](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/12\/18\/technology\/huawei-workers-iran-sanctions.html) declined to comment. Bytedance did not respond to a request for comment.\n\nThe [GitHub repository](https:\/\/github.com\/996icu\/996.ICU) includes information about [job opportunities overseas](https:\/\/github.com\/623637646\/996.Leave). There is also a list of things people can do to support the movement.\n\nThe last item on the list: “Go home at 6 p.m. without feeling sorry.”\n\n*Kate Conger contributed reporting.*\n\n[Raymond Zhong](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/raymond-zhong) is a technology reporter. Prior to joining The Times in 2017, he covered India's fast-moving economy from New Delhi for The Wall Street Journal.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on April 30, 2019, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It.. [Order Reprints](https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY)\n\n## Related Content\n[More in Technology](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/technology)\n\n- ![“It’s critical to protect the civil liberties of Americans, and there was so much focus on this, that we wanted to make this point especially clear,” OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, center, wrote on social media.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02biz-openai-deal-fjlc\/02biz-openai-deal-fjlc-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Haiyun Jiang\/The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/21\/pageoneplus\/21insider-comment\/21insider-comment-square640.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary\/Getty Images\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/23\/multimedia\/00biz-musk-companies-2-02-ctpw\/00biz-musk-companies-2-02-ctpw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Jordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times\n- ![Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, outside federal court in Seattle in 2024 at his sentencing for violating an anti-money-laundering law.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/25\/multimedia\/00biz-cz-memoir-vlbf\/00biz-cz-memoir-vlbf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Grant Hindsley for The New York Times\n\nEditors’ Picks\n\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/10\/10\/autossell\/10listing-billyjoel-still\/10listing-billyjoel-still-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Image by Eric Striffler for The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/multimedia\/03ST-SEXUAL-MARKET-VALUE-fkct\/03ST-SEXUAL-MARKET-VALUE-fkct-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Getty Images\n\nTrending in The Times\n\n- ![Heavy smoke rising from Tehran on Tuesday after U.S.-Israeli airstrikes. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/04dc-assess-vwgf\/04dc-assess-vwgf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times\n- ![Yearning, but with sophistication.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/05\/multimedia\/05ST-FWREVIEW-TOMFORD-top-hjvw\/05ST-FWREVIEW-TOMFORD-top-hjvw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Tom Ford\n- ![A police station that was destroyed by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes in Tehran.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/05\/multimedia\/05int-iran-friends-01-lqbv\/05int-iran-friends-01-lqbv-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/08\/opinion\/08emba\/03emba-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Janet Mac\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/us\/iran-war-powers-promo\/iran-war-powers-promo-square640-v2.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  The New York Times\n- ![Law enforcement officers near the scene of the shooting on Sunday in Austin.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02nat-austin-shooter-1-cjpq\/02nat-austin-shooter-1-cjpq-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Ricardo B. 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Meta Title	‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It. - The New York Times
Meta Description	Chinese programmers once embraced working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. But online, discontent is brewing.
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Boilerpipe Text	Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Chinese programmers once embraced working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. But online, discontent is brewing. Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, China. It's one of the Chinese companies that have been blacklisted on GitHub, a global online community for tech workers, for requiring long hours. Credit... Crab Hu/EPA, via Shutterstock April 29, 2019 China’s richest internet moguls think their employees should work more. Jack Ma, a founder of the e-commerce titan Alibaba, called long work hours “a huge blessing.” Richard Liu, who runs the Alibaba rival JD.com, said people who frittered away their days “are no brothers of mine.” Rank-and-file tech workers in China, discouraged by a weakened job market and downbeat about their odds of joining the digital aristocracy, have other ideas. They are organizing online against what in China is called the “996” culture: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. For years, Chinese tech employees have worked hours that make Silicon Valley’s workaholics seem pampered. Now they are naming and shaming employers that demand late nights. Some programmers are even withholding their creations from companies that they think overemphasize 996. “Ten years ago, people rarely complained about 996,” said Li Shun, a former employee at the search giant Baidu who left to found an online medical start-up. “This industry was booming once, but it’s more of a normal industry now. There are no more giant financial returns. Expecting people to work a 996 schedule on their own like before isn’t realistic.” Unusually for China — where independent labor unions are banned and the government comes down hard on populist movements it doesn’t control — the movement is gaining traction. Mr. Ma softened his remarks . An industrywide conversation has begun. An open letter, sent on Monday to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and signed by 74 lawyers from around the country, urges the government to properly enforce labor laws. Even Chinese state media has called on employers to ease back. “Under the pressures of a slowing economy, many companies are faced with questions about their survival, and their anxiety is understandable,” a commentary in the People’s Daily , the Communist Party mouthpiece, said. “But the solution is not to make employees work as much overtime as possible.” Angst about 72-hour workweeks speaks to a deeper gloom in China’s digital industries. Not so long ago, 996 symbolized possibility for Chinese tech entrepreneurs. Their country had the vast market. And increasingly, it had the engineering talent. The secret ingredient, the one that supposedly set China’s companies apart from Silicon Valley’s, was the hustle. While China requires overtime pay, the laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually insists workers are committing their time voluntarily. But hustle is harder to demand of workers in a bear market . Internet darlings have laid off employees. A torrent of venture investment in tech has slowed to a trickle. As China’s internet industry matures, giant companies like Alibaba and Tencent are looking more like monopolists whose world-swallowing dominance leaves little room for upstarts. Image Jack Ma, a founder of Alibaba, called long work hours “a huge blessing,” but has softened his remarks. Credit... Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press In China, “there’s not a lot of hope for runners-up anymore,” said Max Zhou, a co-founder of a Beijing mobile software start-up called MetaApp. As a result, he said, smaller companies can no longer use a sense of grander purpose to motivate workers to sacrifice their personal lives. “Most companies don’t have a dream anymore,” Mr. Zhou said. “They can only try to fabricate something for their employees.” The 996 debate started last month with a simple post on GitHub, an online community where programmers around the world share code and software tools. An anonymous user posted under the screen name “996icu,” a reference to the place where such hours take engineers: the intensive care unit. The 996.ICU GitHub repository — basically a folder for a project’s files — has since been “starred” more than 230,000 times, indicating people’s level of interest. Hundreds of fed-up tech workers have contributed to the GitHub project. Others have assembled on messaging and social media apps, with little centralized coordination. The Chinese government is eternally fearful of spaces where mass discontent can simmer. It has long barred access to Facebook, Twitter and other global platforms. Years ago, China briefly blocked GitHub, too , but engineers protested and the site was unblocked. GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft , has a policy of posting any takedown requests it receives from governments. Nagi Zhuge, an engineer at a start-up in the southern province of Hunan, has lived the 996 life for the last two years. “My colleagues are too afraid to go home after work,” Mr. Zhuge said. “As a junior employee, I can’t be the first to leave.” He is now an active contributor to the GitHub project. Image China's overtime laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually contends that extra hours are being worked voluntarily. Credit... Aly Song/Reuters Across the different groups, the basic strategy is to push, but not so hard that the Chinese government feels compelled to react. That means no strikes and no demonstrations. In one group on the messaging app Telegram, references to Marx and Lenin are forbidden. The philosophies of communism’s leading lights often run contrary to the way China is run today . The government cracked down against a labor rights movement in the tech hub of Shenzhen this year. Instead of sit-ins, the tech workers are harnessing the power of memes, stickers and T-shirts. Some have pushed for a holiday to celebrate beleaguered software engineers. Mr. Zhuge is rallying workers to mail paper copies of China’s labor law to Mr. Ma of Alibaba. “We’re expressing ourselves very gently, as programmers tend to do,” said Suji Yan, the founder of a start-up in Shanghai called Dimension. Even so, many people, in China and elsewhere, remain concerned that the movement will be silenced. A few weeks ago, some Chinese web browsers appeared to have restricted access to the GitHub repository. In response, Microsoft employees started a petition asking the company to decline any requests from the Chinese authorities to censor or remove the 996.ICU repository. “Most important for the 996.ICU movement is that GitHub is accessible in China,” the employees wrote in their petition. “We encourage Microsoft and GitHub to keep the 996.ICU GitHub repository uncensored and available to everyone.” The petition, which is also hosted on GitHub, has collected more than 150 public signatures and has been starred more than 4,000 times. Concerns about censorship also arose when Twitter users in the United States were blocked from posting links to the 996.ICU repository. The link was incorrectly flagged by Twitter’s spam prevention system, a Twitter spokeswoman said, but users are now able to post it. On GitHub, Chinese tech workers have drawn up a blacklist of the tech companies where the hours are longest. Among the offenders: Alibaba, JD.com, the smartphone maker Huawei and Bytedance, the social media giant behind the short-video platform TikTok. Image Richard Liu, the founder of JD.com, which is also on the GitHub blacklist. Credit... Jason Lee/Reuters The list of humane “955” exemplars includes Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as the Chinese social website Douban. Written along the bottom of the 996.ICU group’s bright red home page : “Developers’ lives matter.” Alibaba said it had no comment on 996 beyond Mr. Ma’s social media posts, and JD.com had no comment beyond Mr. Liu’s post. Huawei, whose executives speak proudly of their hard-charging “wolf culture,” declined to comment. Bytedance did not respond to a request for comment. The GitHub repository includes information about job opportunities overseas . There is also a list of things people can do to support the movement. The last item on the list: “Go home at 6 p.m. without feeling sorry.” Kate Conger contributed reporting. Raymond Zhong is a technology reporter. Prior to joining The Times in 2017, he covered India's fast-moving economy from New Delhi for The Wall Street Journal. A version of this article appears in print on April 30, 2019 , Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It. . Order Reprints \| Today’s Paper \| Subscribe Related Content More in Technology Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary/Getty Images Jordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times Grant Hindsley for The New York Times Editors’ Picks Image by Eric Striffler for The New York Times Getty Images Trending in The Times Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Tom Ford The New York Times Janet Mac The New York Times Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman, via Associated Press Kristian Thacker for The New York Times Ishara S. Kodikara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Amanda Shae Home Team Realty Group Amr Alfiky/Reuters Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Markdown	[Skip to content](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html#site-index) Search & Section Navigation Section Navigation Search [Technology](https://www.nytimes.com/section/technology) [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2019%252F04%252F29%252Ftechnology%252Fchina-996-jack-ma.html&asset=masthead) Thursday, March 5, 2026 [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) [Technology](https://www.nytimes.com/section/technology)\\|‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html - Share full article - 77 Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html#after-top) Supported by [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html#after-sponsor) # ‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It. Chinese programmers once embraced working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. But online, discontent is brewing. - Share full article - 77 ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/04/18/business/00chinawork-1/00chinawork-1-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, China. It's one of the Chinese companies that have been blacklisted on GitHub, a global online community for tech workers, for requiring long hours.Credit...Crab Hu/EPA, via Shutterstock By Lin Qiqing and [Raymond Zhong](https://www.nytimes.com/by/raymond-zhong) April 29, 2019 [阅读简体中文版](https://cn.nytimes.com/technology/20190430/china-996-jack-ma/ "Read in Simplified Chinese")[閱讀繁體中文版](https://cn.nytimes.com/technology/20190430/china-996-jack-ma/zh-hant/ "Read in Traditional Chinese") China’s richest internet moguls think their employees should work more. Jack Ma, a founder of the e-commerce titan Alibaba, called long work hours [“a huge blessing.”](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/oc0NugBjpsn1_mBtbib2Lg) Richard Liu, who runs the Alibaba rival JD.com, said people who frittered away their days [“are no brothers of mine.”](https://tech.163.com/19/0412/18/ECJ6M1PE00097U7R.html) Rank-and-file tech workers in China, discouraged by a [weakened job market](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/business/china-economy-slowdown-white-collar-workers.html) and downbeat about their odds of joining the digital aristocracy, have other ideas. They are organizing online against what in China is called the “996” culture: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. For years, Chinese tech employees have worked hours that make Silicon Valley’s workaholics seem pampered. Now they are naming and shaming employers that demand late nights. Some programmers are even [withholding their creations](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/blob/master/awesomelist/README.md) from companies that they think overemphasize 996. “Ten years ago, people rarely complained about 996,” said Li Shun, a former employee at the search giant Baidu who left to found an online medical start-up. “This industry was booming once, but it’s more of a normal industry now. There are no more giant financial returns. Expecting people to work a 996 schedule on their own like before isn’t realistic.” Read more about the ‘996’ culture [![]()Opinion \\| Bryce Covert The Richest Man in China Is Wrong. 12-Hour Days Are No ‘Blessing.’ April 21, 2019](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/opinion/jack-ma-996.html) [![]()Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work? Jan. 26, 2019](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/business/against-hustle-culture-rise-and-grind-tgim.html) Unusually for China — where independent labor unions are banned and the government comes down hard on populist movements it doesn’t control — the movement is gaining traction. Mr. Ma [softened his remarks](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0isjrxqQJwWbf1UTF7OGYw). An industrywide conversation has begun. An open letter, sent on Monday to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and signed by 74 lawyers from around the country, urges the government to properly enforce labor laws. Even Chinese state media has called on employers to ease back. “Under the pressures of a slowing economy, many companies are faced with questions about their survival, and their anxiety is understandable,” a commentary in [the People’s Daily](https://www.weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404360947027344911#_0), the Communist Party mouthpiece, said. “But the solution is not to make employees work as much overtime as possible.” Angst about 72-hour workweeks speaks to a deeper gloom in China’s digital industries. Not so long ago, 996 symbolized possibility for Chinese tech entrepreneurs. Their country had the vast market. And increasingly, it had the engineering talent. The secret ingredient, the one that supposedly set China’s companies apart from Silicon Valley’s, was the hustle. While China requires overtime pay, the laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually insists workers are committing their time voluntarily. But hustle is harder to demand of workers [in a bear market](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/business/china-economy-first-quarter.html). Internet darlings have laid off employees. A torrent of venture investment in tech has slowed to a trickle. As China’s internet industry matures, giant companies like Alibaba and Tencent are looking more like monopolists whose [world-swallowing dominance](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/technology/china-tencent-alibaba.html) leaves little room for upstarts. ## Editors’ Picks [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/06/20/fashion/socialqs-2021-artwork/socialqs-2021-artwork-thumbLarge-v2.jpg)My Boss Didn’t Care That My Mother Was Dying. Help\!](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/style/bereavement-grief-boss-unsympathetic.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/12/12visualUploader-56768-cover/12visualUploader-56768-cover-thumbLarge.jpg)40 Years and 10,000 Broadcasts In, They’re Still Live on Air](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/business/media/anchors-rick-ardon-susannah-carr-perth-australia.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/04/multimedia/04ST-DIOR-REVIEW-7-promo/04ST-DIOR-REVIEW-7-promo-thumbLarge.jpg)Finally, Clothes That Make Light of Luxury](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/style/dior-saint-laurent-fall-2026.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html#after-pp_edpick) Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/04/30/business/30-JP-CHINAWORKS-02-PRINT/merlin_105910532_225f733c-2b1a-4385-8550-1c6afaaec1dc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Jack Ma, a founder of Alibaba, called long work hours “a huge blessing,” but has softened his remarks.Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press In China, “there’s not a lot of hope for runners-up anymore,” said Max Zhou, a co-founder of a Beijing mobile software start-up called MetaApp. As a result, he said, smaller companies can no longer use a sense of grander purpose to motivate workers to sacrifice their personal lives. “Most companies don’t have a dream anymore,” Mr. Zhou said. “They can only try to fabricate something for their employees.” The 996 debate started last month with a simple post on GitHub, an online community where programmers around the world share code and software tools. An anonymous user posted under the screen name “996icu,” a reference to the place where such hours take engineers: the intensive care unit. The [996\.ICU GitHub repository](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU) — basically a folder for a project’s files — has since been “starred” more than 230,000 times, indicating people’s level of interest. Hundreds of fed-up tech workers have contributed to the GitHub project. Others have assembled on messaging and social media apps, with little centralized coordination. The Chinese government is eternally fearful of spaces where mass discontent can simmer. It has long barred access to Facebook, Twitter and other global platforms. Years ago, China [briefly blocked GitHub, too](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/technology/china-appears-to-attack-github-by-diverting-web-traffic.html), but engineers protested and the site was unblocked. GitHub, which is [owned by Microsoft](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/technology/microsoft-github-cloud-computing.html), has a policy of posting any takedown requests it receives from governments. Nagi Zhuge, an engineer at a start-up in the southern province of Hunan, has lived the 996 life for the last two years. “My colleagues are too afraid to go home after work,” Mr. Zhuge said. “As a junior employee, I can’t be the first to leave.” He is now an active contributor to the GitHub project. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/04/30/business/30-CHINAWORK-02-PRINT/merlin_141985014_41da793a-fd32-4ec4-ba8c-4773759a287a-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) China's overtime laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually contends that extra hours are being worked voluntarily.Credit...Aly Song/Reuters Across the different groups, the basic strategy is to push, but not so hard that the Chinese government feels compelled to react. That means no strikes and no demonstrations. In one group on the messaging app Telegram, references to Marx and Lenin are forbidden. The philosophies of communism’s leading lights often run contrary to [the way China is run today](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-xi-protests.html). The government [cracked down](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/world/asia/china-workers-protests.html) against a labor rights movement in the tech hub of Shenzhen this year. Instead of sit-ins, the tech workers are harnessing the power of memes, stickers and T-shirts. Some have pushed for a holiday to celebrate beleaguered software engineers. [Mr. Zhuge is rallying workers](https://github.com/CPdogson/996action/blob/master/black-and-white.md) to mail paper copies of China’s labor law to Mr. Ma of Alibaba. “We’re expressing ourselves very gently, as programmers tend to do,” said Suji Yan, the founder of a start-up in Shanghai called Dimension. Even so, many people, in China and elsewhere, remain concerned that the movement will be silenced. A few weeks ago, some Chinese web browsers appeared to have restricted access to the GitHub repository. In response, Microsoft employees started a petition asking the company to decline any requests from the Chinese authorities to censor or remove the 996.ICU repository. “Most important for the 996.ICU movement is that GitHub is accessible in China,” the employees wrote in their petition. “We encourage Microsoft and GitHub to keep the 996.ICU GitHub repository uncensored and available to everyone.” The petition, which is also hosted on GitHub, has collected more than 150 public signatures and has been starred more than 4,000 times. Concerns about censorship also arose when Twitter users in the United States were blocked from posting links to the 996.ICU repository. The link was incorrectly flagged by Twitter’s spam prevention system, a Twitter spokeswoman said, but users are now able to post it. On GitHub, Chinese tech workers have drawn up a [blacklist of the tech companies](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/blob/master/blacklist/README.md) where the hours are longest. Among the offenders: Alibaba, JD.com, the smartphone maker Huawei and Bytedance, the social media giant behind the short-video platform TikTok. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/04/18/business/00chinawork-3/00chinawork-3-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Richard Liu, the founder of JD.com, which is also on the GitHub blacklist.Credit...Jason Lee/Reuters The [list of humane “955” exemplars](https://github.com/formulahendry/955.WLB) includes Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as the Chinese social website Douban. Written along the bottom of the 996.ICU group’s [bright red home page](https://996.icu/#/zh_CN): “Developers’ lives matter.” Alibaba said it had no comment on 996 beyond Mr. Ma’s social media posts, and JD.com had no comment beyond Mr. Liu’s post. Huawei, whose executives speak proudly of [their hard-charging “wolf culture,”](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/huawei-workers-iran-sanctions.html) declined to comment. Bytedance did not respond to a request for comment. The [GitHub repository](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU) includes information about [job opportunities overseas](https://github.com/623637646/996.Leave). There is also a list of things people can do to support the movement. The last item on the list: “Go home at 6 p.m. without feeling sorry.” Kate Conger contributed reporting. [Raymond Zhong](https://www.nytimes.com/by/raymond-zhong) is a technology reporter. Prior to joining The Times in 2017, he covered India's fast-moving economy from New Delhi for The Wall Street Journal. A version of this article appears in print on April 30, 2019, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It.. 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Readable Markdown	Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html#after-top) Chinese programmers once embraced working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. But online, discontent is brewing. ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/04/18/business/00chinawork-1/00chinawork-1-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, China. It's one of the Chinese companies that have been blacklisted on GitHub, a global online community for tech workers, for requiring long hours.Credit...Crab Hu/EPA, via Shutterstock April 29, 2019 China’s richest internet moguls think their employees should work more. Jack Ma, a founder of the e-commerce titan Alibaba, called long work hours [“a huge blessing.”](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/oc0NugBjpsn1_mBtbib2Lg) Richard Liu, who runs the Alibaba rival JD.com, said people who frittered away their days [“are no brothers of mine.”](https://tech.163.com/19/0412/18/ECJ6M1PE00097U7R.html) Rank-and-file tech workers in China, discouraged by a [weakened job market](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/business/china-economy-slowdown-white-collar-workers.html) and downbeat about their odds of joining the digital aristocracy, have other ideas. They are organizing online against what in China is called the “996” culture: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. For years, Chinese tech employees have worked hours that make Silicon Valley’s workaholics seem pampered. Now they are naming and shaming employers that demand late nights. Some programmers are even [withholding their creations](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/blob/master/awesomelist/README.md) from companies that they think overemphasize 996. “Ten years ago, people rarely complained about 996,” said Li Shun, a former employee at the search giant Baidu who left to found an online medical start-up. “This industry was booming once, but it’s more of a normal industry now. There are no more giant financial returns. Expecting people to work a 996 schedule on their own like before isn’t realistic.” Unusually for China — where independent labor unions are banned and the government comes down hard on populist movements it doesn’t control — the movement is gaining traction. Mr. Ma [softened his remarks](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0isjrxqQJwWbf1UTF7OGYw). An industrywide conversation has begun. An open letter, sent on Monday to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and signed by 74 lawyers from around the country, urges the government to properly enforce labor laws. Even Chinese state media has called on employers to ease back. “Under the pressures of a slowing economy, many companies are faced with questions about their survival, and their anxiety is understandable,” a commentary in [the People’s Daily](https://www.weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404360947027344911#_0), the Communist Party mouthpiece, said. “But the solution is not to make employees work as much overtime as possible.” Angst about 72-hour workweeks speaks to a deeper gloom in China’s digital industries. Not so long ago, 996 symbolized possibility for Chinese tech entrepreneurs. Their country had the vast market. And increasingly, it had the engineering talent. The secret ingredient, the one that supposedly set China’s companies apart from Silicon Valley’s, was the hustle. While China requires overtime pay, the laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually insists workers are committing their time voluntarily. But hustle is harder to demand of workers [in a bear market](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/business/china-economy-first-quarter.html). Internet darlings have laid off employees. A torrent of venture investment in tech has slowed to a trickle. As China’s internet industry matures, giant companies like Alibaba and Tencent are looking more like monopolists whose [world-swallowing dominance](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/technology/china-tencent-alibaba.html) leaves little room for upstarts. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/04/30/business/30-JP-CHINAWORKS-02-PRINT/merlin_105910532_225f733c-2b1a-4385-8550-1c6afaaec1dc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Jack Ma, a founder of Alibaba, called long work hours “a huge blessing,” but has softened his remarks.Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press In China, “there’s not a lot of hope for runners-up anymore,” said Max Zhou, a co-founder of a Beijing mobile software start-up called MetaApp. As a result, he said, smaller companies can no longer use a sense of grander purpose to motivate workers to sacrifice their personal lives. “Most companies don’t have a dream anymore,” Mr. Zhou said. “They can only try to fabricate something for their employees.” The 996 debate started last month with a simple post on GitHub, an online community where programmers around the world share code and software tools. An anonymous user posted under the screen name “996icu,” a reference to the place where such hours take engineers: the intensive care unit. The [996\.ICU GitHub repository](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU) — basically a folder for a project’s files — has since been “starred” more than 230,000 times, indicating people’s level of interest. Hundreds of fed-up tech workers have contributed to the GitHub project. Others have assembled on messaging and social media apps, with little centralized coordination. The Chinese government is eternally fearful of spaces where mass discontent can simmer. It has long barred access to Facebook, Twitter and other global platforms. Years ago, China [briefly blocked GitHub, too](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/technology/china-appears-to-attack-github-by-diverting-web-traffic.html), but engineers protested and the site was unblocked. GitHub, which is [owned by Microsoft](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/technology/microsoft-github-cloud-computing.html), has a policy of posting any takedown requests it receives from governments. Nagi Zhuge, an engineer at a start-up in the southern province of Hunan, has lived the 996 life for the last two years. “My colleagues are too afraid to go home after work,” Mr. Zhuge said. “As a junior employee, I can’t be the first to leave.” He is now an active contributor to the GitHub project. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/04/30/business/30-CHINAWORK-02-PRINT/merlin_141985014_41da793a-fd32-4ec4-ba8c-4773759a287a-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) China's overtime laws are haphazardly enforced, and the tech industry usually contends that extra hours are being worked voluntarily.Credit...Aly Song/Reuters Across the different groups, the basic strategy is to push, but not so hard that the Chinese government feels compelled to react. That means no strikes and no demonstrations. In one group on the messaging app Telegram, references to Marx and Lenin are forbidden. The philosophies of communism’s leading lights often run contrary to [the way China is run today](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-xi-protests.html). The government [cracked down](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/world/asia/china-workers-protests.html) against a labor rights movement in the tech hub of Shenzhen this year. Instead of sit-ins, the tech workers are harnessing the power of memes, stickers and T-shirts. Some have pushed for a holiday to celebrate beleaguered software engineers. [Mr. Zhuge is rallying workers](https://github.com/CPdogson/996action/blob/master/black-and-white.md) to mail paper copies of China’s labor law to Mr. Ma of Alibaba. “We’re expressing ourselves very gently, as programmers tend to do,” said Suji Yan, the founder of a start-up in Shanghai called Dimension. Even so, many people, in China and elsewhere, remain concerned that the movement will be silenced. A few weeks ago, some Chinese web browsers appeared to have restricted access to the GitHub repository. In response, Microsoft employees started a petition asking the company to decline any requests from the Chinese authorities to censor or remove the 996.ICU repository. “Most important for the 996.ICU movement is that GitHub is accessible in China,” the employees wrote in their petition. “We encourage Microsoft and GitHub to keep the 996.ICU GitHub repository uncensored and available to everyone.” The petition, which is also hosted on GitHub, has collected more than 150 public signatures and has been starred more than 4,000 times. Concerns about censorship also arose when Twitter users in the United States were blocked from posting links to the 996.ICU repository. The link was incorrectly flagged by Twitter’s spam prevention system, a Twitter spokeswoman said, but users are now able to post it. On GitHub, Chinese tech workers have drawn up a [blacklist of the tech companies](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/blob/master/blacklist/README.md) where the hours are longest. Among the offenders: Alibaba, JD.com, the smartphone maker Huawei and Bytedance, the social media giant behind the short-video platform TikTok. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/04/18/business/00chinawork-3/00chinawork-3-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Richard Liu, the founder of JD.com, which is also on the GitHub blacklist.Credit...Jason Lee/Reuters The [list of humane “955” exemplars](https://github.com/formulahendry/955.WLB) includes Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as the Chinese social website Douban. Written along the bottom of the 996.ICU group’s [bright red home page](https://996.icu/#/zh_CN): “Developers’ lives matter.” Alibaba said it had no comment on 996 beyond Mr. Ma’s social media posts, and JD.com had no comment beyond Mr. Liu’s post. Huawei, whose executives speak proudly of [their hard-charging “wolf culture,”](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/huawei-workers-iran-sanctions.html) declined to comment. Bytedance did not respond to a request for comment. The [GitHub repository](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU) includes information about [job opportunities overseas](https://github.com/623637646/996.Leave). There is also a list of things people can do to support the movement. The last item on the list: “Go home at 6 p.m. without feeling sorry.” Kate Conger contributed reporting. [Raymond Zhong](https://www.nytimes.com/by/raymond-zhong) is a technology reporter. Prior to joining The Times in 2017, he covered India's fast-moving economy from New Delhi for The Wall Street Journal. A version of this article appears in print on April 30, 2019, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It.. 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