Tencent and ByteDance end notorious 996 working schedule - PingWest

Tencent and ByteDance end notorious 996 working schedule

Tencent and Bytedance became China’s first major tech companies to officially end its 996 exhausting work culture after two companies rolled out healthier work schedule.

Detail:

Tiktok owner ByteDance informed its 100,000 employees that it will implement a 1075 schedule, which means 10am to 7pm, five days a week. Meanwhile, in a post on Chinese career and social networking platform Maimai, a couple of unidentified Tencent employees disclosed that the company officially started a 965 schedule, 9am to 6pm, five days a week.

Employees who work overtime must seek for permission from line manager, every department must follow the new policy to pay employees extra salary for working overtime outside office hours or on weekdays.

Tencent and ByteDance’s latest policy quickly went virtual on Chinese social media, with many netizens remain skeptical about the implementation of their new work schedule.

“My workload won’t reduce even if work hours decrease, it doesn’t make any sense if my line manager ask me to work overtime at home,” an unidentified ByteDance employee share his view on Maimai.

Context:

996 is an exceptionally long working hours schedule that force employees to work 12 hours from 9 am to 9 am for six days a week.

Although China’s labour law bars employees from working more than eight hours a day and 44 hours a week, Chinese tech giants has been ignoring the law to adopt this exhausted working schedule to boost work capacity.

However, the death of a Pinduoduo worker, triggered a wave of intense criticism of the long hours commonly practiced at China's tech companies.

In response to growing public pressure, internet companies including Tencent, ByteDance and Kuaishou Technology have taken initial steps to cancel long working hours.

In June, Lightning & Quantum Studio Group, a game studio owned by Tencent Interactive Entertainment Group (IEG) has implemented a new policy that encourage employee to go home at 6pm on Wednesday and leave the office before 9pm for the rest of the week.

Under the new policy, workers were guaranteed weekends off. If employee are required to finish urgent projects on Saturdays and Sundays, management needs to justify the team schedules so that no employee work overtime for two consecutive days.

Meanwhile, Kuaishou has ended its overtime work schedule commonly referred as" big and small week”, which required employee to work six-day week every fortnight.