When founders put 996 in their job descriptions or Tweet about their 996 culture it’s a helpful signal to avoid that company.
The only time I’d actually consider crazy schedules was if I was the founder with a huge equity stake and a once in a lifetime opportunity that would benefit from a short period of 996.
For average employees? Absolutely not. If someone wants extraordinary hours they need to be providing extraordinary compensation. Pay me a couple million per year and I’ll do it for a while (though not appropriate for everyone). Pay me the same as the other job opportunities? Absolutely no way I’m going to 996.
In my experience, the 996 teams aren’t actually cranking out more work. They’re just working odd hours, doing a little work on the weekends to say they worked the weekend, and they spend a lot of time relaxing at the office because they’re always there.
dataviz1000 · 3m ago
Another red flag is the one week work trial that pays 1/5 the going rate for equivalent contract work which has become the standard in San Francisco. It is a test not of skills because there was already a several hour coding challenge step before the work trial that establishes skill level. The one week work trial is a test that the prospective employee is willing to work 996 for next to nothing in salary.
This is the standard now and I experienced several times during the hiring process of several different start-ups.
Here is the thing that strikes me the most, during the hiring process these different start-ups were making the stupidest mistakes. The people involved weren't stupid, they were, rather, sleep deprived.
If I could give these different start-ups some advice it would be, get some REM sleep! Otherwise, you are going to be bulldozed by start-ups that are working multiples more efficient hiring far more talented and experienced software engineers because they are including 40 hour work weeks as a part of the deal, offer.
robterrell · 6m ago
If you're smart enough to get hired for one of these roles, and you're willing to work 996, be just a little bit smarter and found your own startup and take all the upside.
stego-tech · 59m ago
These times really do feel like those once-in-a-century redefinitions of work and labor, similar to how we got Child Labor Laws and 40-hour work weeks from the labor movement early last century. Intrinsically, more people are realizing that the former social contract was long ago fed into a shredder, and that the lack of a formal contract will have consequences. Technology broke down the 40-hour work week by enabling more work to be done both outside the office and after traditional working hours, drastically increasing productivity and profit while wages stagnated for decades in the face of skyrocketing costs. Now we’re racing ahead towards a breaking point between Capital cheering shit like 996 and AI job-replacement, while more humans can’t afford rent, or food, let alone education or healthcare on their burrito taxi wages.
Something will eventually have to give, if we aren’t proactive in addressing the crises before us. Last time, it took two World Wars, the military bombing miners, law enforcement assassinating union organizers, and companies stockpiling chemical weapons and machine guns before the political class finally realized things must change or all hell would break loose; I only hope we come to our senses far, far sooner this time around.
ivape · 20m ago
To educate people you just need the internet (communication infrastructure). We can also house and feed everyone if we wanted to. The concept of work has been overblown to the point where it’s everything. I can’t even say war will solve it because war puts everyone to work, which is no different than right now, which is everyone is at work.
Things are not in place for people to spiritually feel what is actually a good life and world.
It may take a generation of people, who think technology and science will allow them to have many lifetimes over and over, to meet their timely end. We will only reevaluate as we see the most well endowed generation (everyone alive today) return to dust in a timely manner, that there was no magical human power that could have saved any of us, and we ought to have just focused on a better world that we’re proud of leaving behind.
Living life like it’s a roguelike with infinite levels makes it the most unfulfilling thing ever. The world our generation will live behind is our product, and a quality product is everything, so much so that you’d be proud to leave it in someone’s hand at the end (in fact, you’d want to). The women’s movement that left us a type of America with those fixes (labors rights, human rights) was such a thing to leave behind, they should fear nothing in death.
supportengineer · 5m ago
I have absolutely zero faith that the current political ruling class will “come to their senses”.
All you have to do is observe their current behavior and you will come to the same conclusion.
When billionaires show you who they are, believe them the first time.
They have not lived through a depression and neither have they lived through any major world wars. They will be curious to see how bad it can get and they believe they will remain untouched from it.
mananaysiempre · 35m ago
It also took Russia going to shit to an extent that got everybody else scared—and that Russia still hasn’t really recovered from, because repeatedly cutting the elite out of your society (however unfairly it’s gotten there) really fucks that society up.
Maken · 19m ago
The same elite is still running Russia today.
analognoise · 16m ago
What?
When America was strongest, we had a large and increasing middle class, and the top marginal tax rate was above 70% - it was in the 90s.
We don’t need “the elite” - they don’t actually “create jobs”, and the “engine of the economy” is just a convenient vehicle for the rich (and private equity) to ruin the middle class further - it was never about “efficient markets”.
If anything what we’ve seen over the last 40 years is that we need better systems.
kevin_thibedeau · 2m ago
There is some benefit from having a pool of people with enough funds to take investment risks that the rank and file can't. They can outmaneuver any planned economy. The problem in the US is that those people have engineered themselves a disproportionate wealth disparity that doesn't generate a collective benefit.
grantdong · 50m ago
In China, its birthplace, '996' always seen as practice of failed management. Because for at least half of the 72-hour workweek, most employee will mentally checkout (in Chinese we call this 摸鱼). Although middle managers know their subordinates are inefficient, they still impose working hour KPI on their team, so they can demonstrate their own value to upper management.
Aurornis · 39m ago
> Because for at least half of the 72-hour workweek, most employee will mentally checkout (in Chinese we call this 摸鱼).
The CEO of one of my employers was smitten with his new China office because they bragged about operating 996.
To everyone else, it was obvious that they weren’t working more. They were just at the office a lot, or coming and going frequently.
When they’d send a video from the office (product demos) barely anyone was at their seats, contrary to their claims of always working.
Their output was definitely not higher than anyone else.
However, they always responded quickly on Slack, day or night, weekend or not. The CEO thought this was the most amazing thing and indicated that they were always working.
unmole · 36m ago
I used to work for Huawei where 996 or worse wasn't uncommon. While middle management definitely pushed for extended working hours, I didn't get the impression that anyone viewed it as failed management. If anything, upper management knew exactly what was happening and was encouraging it.
Hell, you have the likes of Jack Ma glorifying 996, calling it a blessing.
WiSaGaN · 45m ago
China is not the birthplace of so called '996'. Long before tech scene in China, there are a lot of investment banks doing that in HK especially for junior analysts. Calling 996 a China thing is just orientlalism. Everything bad is Chinese, everything good is western.
uonr · 33m ago
At least the recent popularity of the 996 originated in China, and I believe most Chinese people would agree with that. Besides, even if it started in Hong Kong, saying it originated in China is still technically correct.
WiSaGaN · 28m ago
Investment banks in Hong Kong were almost exclusively western back in the days with very few ethnic Chinese in senior management.
drob518 · 12m ago
Having worked at several startups, I’ll say that 996 is a lie. The best startups were ones that worked HARD for 8 to 10 hours, 5 days per week. What I always found at companies “working” 996 (or something close) was that mostly everyone was hanging out in the break room playing foosball or video games (or watching someone else do it). Sure, they were “in the office,” but the productivity of those hours beyond 8 was really low. Everyone would have been better off going home and coming back in fresh tomorrow after a good night’s sleep and having spent some time with friends and family. In fact a startup CEO friend of mine told me that he considered it a win to get 2 to 4 really productive hours per day. He found the rest of his time was typically wasted in meetings that could have been handled via email and in minutia that someone else should have dealt with. If somebody’s telegraphing crazy work hours in a job post, just walk away.
binsquare · 38m ago
I've been part of startups, big corps and have recently started my own startup.
I've also heard from executives and management discuss how they work longer hours (from 1:1s as a dev myself). Now as a founder, many of my peers discuss working 24/7 or close to it. Most don't - but there's a hustle culture that glamorized lack of sleep as a badge of honor.
The reality is that the "work" is very different for these different groups of people. Executives and management work by delegating and chatting people up. Founders can vary between executive duties or building or many various other founder duties. But (L3-5) engineering at corp is basically expected to code nonstop or to work oncall.
Working 996 as an executive is not comparable to 996 as an engineer.
macNchz · 2m ago
> there's a hustle culture that glamorized lack of sleep as a badge of honor
For all of the pop science/bro science/measured self/life optimization stuff that percolates in this world, it’s funny to me that glorifying a lack of sleep persists, when sleep is effectively a performance enhancing drug, and a lack of it effectively makes you dumber.
I recall an anecdote from a sports medicine doctor interviewed somewhere, about how his patients with overtraining syndrome-type issues were overwhelmingly high-powered professionals who were accommodating their Ironman training schedule by sleeping less, as opposed to Olympic athletes who often sleep a lot to properly recover from their training.
jeremyjh · 34m ago
Very true, even true below the executive level. I can be utterly exhausted from lack of sleep and still have productive conversations and keep my team unblocked and productive, but when I try to develop software in that state its a complete shit show, making lots of stupid errors that I waste hours debugging, etc.
stavros · 58m ago
I don't understand this expectation that employees work more, and stigma if you go home on time, yet we don't have a corresponding stigma for when the amount of money that reaches my account is "only" what we agreed my salary would be.
cushychicken · 29m ago
I actually kind of like when companies are upfront about 996 expectations.
The transparency makes it that much easier to avoid them.
dyauspitr · 14m ago
The more upfront they are, the more normalized it gets which encourages other companies to do the same.
Aurornis · 42m ago
Companies that try to demand extreme hours with average pay have very high turnover.
As employees realize they’re getting a bad deal and that they can find a better ratio of pay to hours worked at other companies, they leave.
regentbowerbird · 36m ago
What happens when the companies band together to compress wages? Like what happened with the high-tech employee antitrust litigation.
Individual employees are far more numerous (therefore harder to coordinate) and have way shallower pockets than companies, so the negotiation power is always going to be lopsided.
Aurornis · 14m ago
> What happens when the companies band together to compress wages? Like what happened with the high-tech employee antitrust litigation.
What happened with that litigation is it got shut down and those companies pay some of the highest compensation now.
One of the few jobs you can get that pays that much compensation with fewer educational requirements and better hours than alternatives in that compensation range (surgeon, specialist doctors, lawyers at demanding firms)
I don’t think that’s a great example for your point since by comparison FAANG employees have some of the best pay you can find in an attainable job for someone with a 4 year degree and the demands are lower than many of the similarly paid jobs that require a lot more education.
stavros · 39m ago
Sure, but why does this rhetoric both persist, and only go one way? You never hear anything about an expectation from employers to pay more than what was agreed.
If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
Aurornis · 10m ago
Are you actually agreeing to specific hours? For example, in a contract, as an hourly worker, or with some formal arrangement with the company?
If so, then yes you should only work those hours.
However, if you’re a typical full-time employee in most countries you don’t have agreed upon hours.
> If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
Again, if something was agreed upon you should follow that. In most full-time jobs they’re not going to specify a maximum number of working hours. It’s your job to explain what can be done in a workweek and push back when something can’t be done. If it persists and you don’t like it then you find another job. Vote with your feet.
reaperducer · 15m ago
I don't understand this expectation that employees work more, and stigma if you go home on time, yet we don't have a corresponding stigma for when the amount of money that reaches my account is "only" what we agreed my salary would be.
Since I'm (mostly) work-from-home, my wifi router is configured to firewall my work devices outside of working hours.
This is frustrating for the IT department because it likes to push software updates overnight, but tough noogies.
The company pays for 30% of my internet connection, so it only gets to use my internet connection 30% of the day.
DamonHD · 8m ago
I had a huge row with my prospective US investment banking client manager because we had a conversation that went something like "we'll pay you for 8 hours but we expect you to work 10" (or 12). I said, why lie immdiately in our contract? We could try adjusting the expected hours or the hourly rate or both...
Anyhow I got to be paid for the hours that I actually did for well over a decade on off IIRC, and survived most of the purges of consultants/contractors there over the years, so demanding honesty from management was apparently survivable even if unusual!
bicx · 2m ago
I've found that when I work this kind of long hours for an extended period, I get far too attached to what I'm building and have a difficult time accepting that I need to change anything. Likely this happens because I've sacrificed so much to build up to the current state, and changing it would mean that I wasted time working that could have been spent with loved ones, hobbies, or just enjoying quiet.
When you work long hours on a regular basis, you begin to lose a healthy perspective on work and life.
rapatel0 · 2m ago
In my life I've had the following experiences:
- In grad school, I averaged 4 hours of sleep (6/7 days per week) and about 8 hours on sunday for about 5 months straight crunch.
- In my first startup, I worked 9am to 11pm (had to walk back from the office) for about 6 months.
- During my second startup gig, my son was born and also I had an 8 hour time difference between local time and the primary timezone of the office. I woke up at 4 am and generally went to bed at 10pm most days. Waking up randomly at night to deal with newborn through toddler moments for about 4 years.
My experience with all of this:
Pros:
- Really fun to grind at times and euphoric when something works.
- Build really strong relationships with people in the trenches.
Cons:
- Health suffers greatly so performance sufferes greatly
- I felt like I was working but in retrospect I wasn't really productive:
- Pseudo-working - I ended up spinning plates of unnecessary pseudo-work that didn' move the needle.
- Time Dilation (biggest factor) - 9pm to 12am feels like 30 minutes. That's because my brain was slowing down. The more sleep deprivation, the more this happens during the day.
- Physical Burnout - My body felt tired with a constant low level of pain and my energy levels low. Also, stress eating made me fat.
- Mental Burnout - My mind constantly looked for distractions. Even when trying to focus, I couldn't focus
- Tactical Stupidity - I didn't find clever ways to avoid or fix problems. I just focused on the next thing. I didn't have bandwidth to reason effectively as I normally would.
Overall:
It's definitely useful to do during crunch and a great way to be mission oriented. But when you've attained a degree of understanding, you should be able to find better ways to leverage your time. The brain and body needs downtime to be creative--the best solutions are creative.
Furthermore in the world of agents, we have near infinite leverage. As a community should be engaged in deeper thought, rather than trying to grind towards a finishline that constantly moves.
randomname4325 · 9m ago
True story. I grinded hard at a startup for years. This was a decade ago so the concept of 996 wasn't part of the lore yet. But it was fun. We stayed late and I made life long friends. I worked closely with the founder (really awesome dude) as I was an early-ish employee. The company ended up not working, our equity went to zero and we got what you get when you don't get rich, experience. I ran into the founder randomly on the street years later. He didn't even remember my name. He recognized me and was excited to see me, but he had no idea what my name was. So yah, prioritize your life.
didip · 1h ago
996 as an employee, especially for companies that don’t offer fast growing stocks, is a super bad deal.
996 for a business owner or top exec at a big company? It’s the norm. And the risk-reward makes sense to them.
Fraterkes · 44m ago
In my spare time I code my own projects, I draw, I talk and write about my ideas. So yes, I'm also "working" on stuff for 12 hours a day, but obviously the work I do for myself, based on decisions I made myself, and the talking and thinking, are not at all "work" in the same manner that the drudgery of an actual job is work. The work I do for money is not just time-consuming and tiring, it's hard and boring and most importantly, often meaningless to me.
A ceo trades time and peace for money, and that is arguably difficult in it's own ways. But that doesn't make it work in the same way that what you and I do is work. These people do not work a 100 hours a week. They live charmed lives that also happen to often be exhausting.
manoDev · 48m ago
> 996 for a business owner or top exec at a big company? It’s the norm. And the risk-reward makes sense to them.
It's bad anyway. These people burnout and start making dumb moves to bail out sooner.
gyomu · 10m ago
Heh, at that level the job is just meetings and emails. You can do 996 of meetings and emails for a few millions a year without burning out.
Actual craft tasks like writing code tho? Definitely a recipe for burnout and shittier output, yep.
Kapura · 1h ago
then why do executives keep making such dogshit decisions
zaik · 53m ago
Lack of sleep?
stego-tech · 54m ago
They’re removed from the realities of the working class. They have staff, live in a separate bubble from their workers with different social circles, different services, different mores and norms.
Executives make shitty decisions because they surround themselves with others who view wealth as a leaderboard to be climbed and flaunted, and have no fucking clue how difficult things are for the people doing the actual work creating products/services/value to the company. For those who claim to relate to the plight of the worker, their frame of mind i is stuck in that precise moment just before they became fabulously wealthy, when they were likely busting ass - hence the “hard work pays off”/bootstrap mythos they peddle.
The few executives that do understand these plights, don’t make such shitty decisions, and are either roundly mocked for their lack of growth by those whose wealth was built atop the literal corpses of their workers, or occasionally featured in human interest pieces as an executive that’s strangely generous.
Kapura · 48m ago
maybe i've spent too much time trying to make computers operate efficiently, but it strikes me that if a process a) takes more time than should be necessary and b) produces sub-optimal results, we should maybe pursue other processes.
and stop paying these idiots 7+ figures.
tremon · 35m ago
a) takes more time than should be necessary
b) produces sub-optimal results
Both of these claims are empty. Necessary according to whom? Sub-optimal against which metrics? All industrial processes are inefficient in some way because you're always dealing with engineering trade-offs. Staying in the computer domain: show me a system with optimal latency and I will show you an underutilized system; show me a system optimized for high-throughput and I will show you a system with erratic latency behaviour.
jakelazaroff · 1m ago
[delayed]
jennyholzer · 30m ago
good contrarian comment, +1
jennyholzer · 30m ago
they aren't idiots, they're kings.
you don't just stop paying the king.
jennyholzer · 35m ago
cruelty is fetishized in American (and particularly in corporate/executive) culture
to quote my namesake: "abuse of power comes as no surprise"
reaperducer · 12m ago
cruelty is fetishized in American (and particularly in corporate/executive) culture
Cruelty in business existed for hundreds of years before there even was an America.
spamizbad · 39m ago
I am skeptical that you can get anywhere near 12 hours of productivity out of an engineer. Even in my 20s, I was mentally fatigued after 8 hours of (mostly) work with a few breaks sprinkled in. Once that fatigue sets in your productivity craters.
I’ve noticed people who promote these extreme work hours seem to spend a lot of time posting on (and I assume reading) social media. Perhaps they feel 12 hours is reasonable when they dedicate 4 hours to brainrot (ahem, or “building a personal brand”)
maldonad0 · 1h ago
A materialist culture inevitably leads to this. It is the logical conclusion of a society that atomized the wholeness of life without realizing that the sum of its parts is less than the whole.
But it is the reality the collective chose. I fully expect things to get worse before they get better.
jfengel · 47m ago
It is where the slippery slope leads but a lot of materialist cultures manage to find a midpoint and stick there.
In a sense this isn't even materialist: you are chasing numbers in an account for their own sake. A materialist wants things, and might sacrifice everything else to get them, but doesn't want to do the work for its own sake.
Ultimately this is feeding the ego, the least material thing of all. And I can't actually fault people for that; in the end what else do we have? But even an egotist needs to be able to ask themselves, "am I in fact feeling what I want to feel, or have I missed myself?"
There are certainly those who want the ego rush of feeling like they've worked as hard as they possibly can and taken every chance to show off their skill. But we've fetishized them, and even if they are happy, it often won't achieve the same for us.
maldonad0 · 35m ago
It really is materialist, as numbers in an account is a direct representation for the number of coins you have, which are spent fueling a life full of hedonistic pleasures and vices. The ego is attachment to pleasures and vices.
picafrost · 39m ago
I tell new employees that I will not praise them for working extra hours because I don't want them to. I do not have hard data, but anecdotally, when I see teams adopt this mentality productivity seems to increase. My guess is that it's because they try tidy up the loose ends/ideas that annoy folk into jumping back onto the work laptop later in the evening.
TrackerFF · 13m ago
I've noticed the same here in Europe. Founders are really pushing the "Everyone should be doing 996 minimum", arguing that anything else is simply laziness, and that it is impossible to build a billion dollar company any other way.
But, of course, like many here have noted...there's billion dollar difference in incentives between a founder, and even the early members. For a "rank and file" engineer, you're sacrificing your life to make someone else filthy rich. And if lucky, you'll be left with a payday that's not too different from a regular industry job...
chasebank · 37m ago
For those like me who didn’t know what 996 was: it stands for working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
salomonk_mur · 22m ago
Fuck that shit.
pelagicAustral · 51m ago
I'm more of an 8-3-5 kind of guy
chvid · 12m ago
I put in exactly 37 work hours pr. week. If I for some reason work more one day, I make sure to take time off the next day.
I have "experimented" with working more but I found it unconstructive. Chances of stress is much higher and with stress comes doing stupid things that I afterwards will regret.
I believe this holds for both working for myself and someone else.
time0ut · 22m ago
The market seems bad right now. Companies are offshoring everything they can and squeezing both sides.
At my company, we only hire in India now and the executives are intentionally causing "attrition" in the US by running people into the ground with demands that amount to 996 style work.
monroeclinton · 43m ago
I've found I just loan time from tomorrow's morning if I stay up late working on something. If you're in a good flow, it could be worth it. Other than that, you're likely to be underwater on the loan.
randerson · 7m ago
Borrowing productivity from the future is how I feel about my career as a whole. I spent 30 years working stressful 70-80 hour weeks, only to burn out completely in my late 40s. From high achiever to practically zero executive function. Like my ability to get into a flow state blew a fuse and now I can't get there. Meanwhile all my peers who kept a healthy work-life balance in their 20s and 30s are still doing great.
j_bum · 1h ago
When I was getting my Ph.D., my advisor jokingly told me that his lab has three 8 hour shifts per day, and I could pick two to work.
This was never literally practiced.
But excessive hours were the norm. And I loved it. It helped me launch into a successful career.
But it hurt my relationship with my partner (now wife), and it burned me out.
I miss those days, but I don’t miss what they did to my health.
ddavis · 17m ago
I have a similar experience. I was a devoted PhD student working long hours taking on a lot of responsibility. It burned me out, hurting my productivity. I have mixed feelings about it; I love the friends I made and the things I learned, but I don’t think I should have had to suffer what I suffered. Simultaneously I’m somewhat glad I experienced it then, because now I work in tech and I’ll _never_ work outside of business hours (I’ll hack on personal projects I consider fun if I feel like it). And I’m more productive than my colleagues that do. There’s something mysterious about the contemporary PhD, not all good and not all bad.
malshe · 16m ago
I didn't show up on the first Saturday when I started my Ph.D. program. Next Monday, a professor from _another_ department stopped by my desk to tell me that assistant professors and Ph.D. students are expected to be there at least six days a week. Then he gave examples of a few professors who were there even on Sundays despite being tenured.
Tbh, I was so poorly paid that going to the university on Saturdays wasn't so bad as they had better air conditioning and heating compared to my apartment!
throiijowo9889 · 15m ago
This obsession with the time put-in (either way) is quite silly to be honest. It's a notion inherited from the blue-collar industrial factory labor. If you're working on really hard problems there's no way you're putting in 12 hour stretches. Your diet takes a hit, your sanity takes a hit and so does everything else.
Japan tried this non-sense for a while (colleagues told they used to stay on till 11am !) only to completely fail at all three software revolutions (web/smartphone/ai). China obv. has had much better success, but I don't think this is sustainable. The central-banks in these countries operate in the war-economy mode which can heat things up a lot and work very well, but I think social-burnout effects are quite real.
taminka · 59m ago
not only are you missing out on what makes life great and worth living w/ this arrangement, but from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, working that many hours your productivity plummets (unless you're on stimulants), and it's just straight up more effective to work fewer hours...
frontfor · 56m ago
When 996 makes being able to afford a house easier, many people will be compelled to do it.
HL33tibCe7 · 18m ago
What’s the point in having a house if you only spend one day in it, which realistically you will spend doing chores and sleeping?
boredatoms · 27m ago
Why do you need a nice house you cant spend any time in with that schedule
OutOfHere · 44m ago
It makes affording a casket easier.
Paratoner · 49m ago
Yeah and that's a dystopian dogshit reality to aim for. (Not necessarily implying you are saying that)
petermcneeley · 35m ago
If I spend my Saturday in the summer sun planting trees all day in my yard I feel liberated.
If I spend my Saturday toiling for wages digging with my hands, sweating for hours, just please some land owner I feel exploited.
It is not the work or the hours that is the core problem.
jeremyjh · 30m ago
You aren't going to spend 12 hours a day, 6 days a week working in your garden. When you get hot and tired, you'll stop. I think that is the more relevant difference in this particular topic.
petermcneeley · 16m ago
> When you get hot and tired, you'll stop
No? This is basically the philosophy of the "last man"
Many great things require overcoming the weakness of the flesh. From the moment you understand the weakness of your flesh it should disgust you.
HL33tibCe7 · 20m ago
Maybe it’s just me having low energy levels, but for me, I can’t fathom working 996 while continuing to do focused and deep work consistently.
At the moment I work 9-5, a few meetings per day, so maybe 5-6 hours focused work, and I’m mentally exhausted by the end.
boredatoms · 28m ago
In the broad sense, if theres no ‘home’ time left, theres no reason to buy whatever non-essential services your company likely offers.
hidelooktropic · 40m ago
Do those of us not cool enough to know already get to find out what 996 means?
cromulent · 37m ago
It's the first hyperlink in the article, and the first Google result for "996".
9 AM to 9 PM 6 days a week. It's a "how long do we work" shorthand, like 955 (9 AM to 5 PM 5 days a week) or 864 (8 AM to 6 PM 4 days a week).
TrackerFF · 8m ago
"Work nine to nine, six days a week"
crawshaw · 45m ago
The most interesting point in this post, which resonates with me, is to those of us who work a lot, 996 sounds ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous because to work a lot, you have to fit in the gaps around your life. I have done about 60hrs/week for the last 15 years. My scheduled work is barely 10-4 five days a week, with a lunch break, and with a break three days a week for the gym. To get the hours in I wake up at 5:30 most days and start work, unless a kid needs me, or I'm sick, or one of a dozen other things comes up. I won't take your call at that time, I won't respond to texts, and I'm not going to promise to be up then, because long hours require a lot of flexibility. You don't have to be espousing the four-day workweek or a part-time lifestyle to roll your eyes at the 996. If I can't long-term schedule 60hrs/week, there's no universe where someone's scheduling 72hrs/week. It's just performative nonsense.
I'm sure the people in China who claim to work 996 and those who demand it all know that the truth of hard work is complicated. I'm certain they all work damned hard, and the results are there for the world to see with the amazing success their country is having at absolutely everything. The nature of hard work doesn't fit some silly schedule.
sneilan1 · 9m ago
This is just rage bait.
barbazoo · 40m ago
Wanting to work 12 hours a day is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.
> When someone promotes a 996 work culture, we should push back
And like the author says, it just doesn’t make sense either.
michaelt · 53m ago
> The truth is, China’s really doing ‘007’ now—midnight to midnight, seven days a week
This sounds like the new generation's equivalent of 1980s bosses exhorting people to "give 110%"
thenanyu · 36m ago
Anyone who talks about 996 as a flex clearly has too much time on their hands. Why aren’t you busy working?
reactordev · 32m ago
I would rather be a gig worker off fiver than subject myself to a 996 company culture.
lif · 16m ago
7-11-4
for focused productivity
ryanwhitney · 50m ago
Call me back when the company store is up. I don’t want to grind for my boss’ VC-bux unless I know everyone working here is also all in.
_fw · 45m ago
The biggest problem with this is outsized gains for the company compared to the employee. You sacrifice time with loved ones, wellbeing, mental health… to churn out extra hours for some Series A firm that won’t think twice about showing you the door in a down round.
I’ve seen founders work round the clock again and again. That kind of makes sense.
But Stebbings… I’m not going to put 996 in for any firm in your portfolio. And anybody who does is a mug.
This 996 bullshit is a skill issue. Need extra hours at school to finish your work? That’s a shame, all the clever kids are at home already (working on their side hustles that are 10x more likely to pay off).
It doesn’t surprise me that this stems from China: a place where ‘face’ and hours-behind-the-desk culture are extremely prominent.
People should be able to show up, put a shift in and go the fuck home. Sometimes there are reasons to work a little longer…
But expecting this kind of behaviour is objectively shitty leadership.
mystraline · 40m ago
I found out that it was a very limited wavier in Chinese law that permitted a few companies to do 996 (or 9am to 9pm 6 days a week, or 72 hour workweeks).
Now, I'm seeing US companies demand that here. Like, hell no. My body and health isn't worth what you're paying, and the answer 996'ers aren't paying double, or even 1.5x the position.
Saner parts of the world are discussing 37.5h/weeks, and even going to 4 day workweeks.
I mean, hell, if I'm expected to work gross overtime, I expect overtime pay. Guess like I should get into electrician union.
Kapura · 1h ago
What the actual fuck? People need to read labour history; the weekend was something that people had to fight and literally die for.
jennyholzer · 36m ago
why would i work 996 if i don't have ownership
TrackerFF · 5m ago
The standard answer from owners: You work on something you're really passionate about, and are willing to sacrifice your own time for "the mission", "changing the world", or whatever they frame it is.
Some founders really do hype up their B2B SAAS product as the the Apollo program, and so naturally any engineer will work around the clock to put man on the moon.
jennyholzer · 25m ago
996 means devoting your life to your work.
If you work 996 without either:
a. The opportunity to make millions of dollars
b. Ownership of the means of production
c. No other more dignified employment opportunities
It sincerely appears to me that you are throwing your life away. If you're in this boat, I hope you have a long-term plan.
acuozzo · 13m ago
> It sincerely appears to me that you are throwing your life away.
... or need to provide for dependents and have few other options?
alexnewman · 36m ago
If you don’t want to grind, don’t pick a career where only the toughest survive—like startups. In China, programmers get massages. You could be giving the massages.
I’m not smart, but I worked 7 days a week for a decade. It takes me 40 hours just to warm up, so real work means 100-hour weeks. Yet I’ve built 3 startups, 2 unicorns. In both, I was the dumbest person in the room—but I outworked everyone.
huhkerrf · 7m ago
My brother, if you are taking 40 hours to get to the state where you're warmed up, maybe look into that first.
HL33tibCe7 · 14m ago
Being a founder is a completely different situation which the article is explicitly not talking about.
Although, frankly, even as a founder, 100-hour 7-day weeks aren’t right for the vast majority of people. Clearly it worked for you, which is great, but 99% of people do not have that level of energy, and furthermore are mentally unable to withstand the sacrifices such a schedule imposes on other aspects of life.
OutOfHere · 41m ago
I think the problem is larger, which is that individual workers don't feel empowered to launch a firm of their own. If I am often coding at 11 pm, it's certainly not for any employer.
enraged_camel · 45m ago
996 when working on your own business: normal, expected, and in most cases even required.
996 as an employee: screw that. It might be "worth it" if you command a massive, exec-level salary, but for the overwhelming majority of people it's just foolish.
yesbut · 1h ago
996 culture can pound sand. lame.
jasoneckert · 1h ago
A note of caution: everything is relative, and details are important.
If you love what you do (artist, self-employed, etc.) a 996 culture can be considered a good thing as a certain amount of "good" stress allows us to feel self-actualized.
As is a 996 culture that provides for work-life balance. For example, working from home with flex time for 12 hours where you get to take long breaks whenever you feel like it to run, walk the dog, eat, get coffee, etc., is quite enjoyable as well. Who cares if you're still replying to emails at 7pm if you can do this, right?
Added note: I find it very interesting that this was immediately downvoted. I'm interested in understanding why for those who wish to share their rationale and perspective.
romanhn · 23m ago
If you want to work 996 and that is what makes you feel self-actualized - by all means, go for it, nobody is stopping you. May even allow you to get ahead of the pack (or maybe the quality of your work will suffer in your overworked state - big gamble!).
For me, the big problem in your post is the "996 culture". That means the expectation is that everyone is pushing forward with a similar intensity. Now, perhaps you were talking specifically about individual efforts given your examples of artist and self-employed, but when I think about culture, I think about groups of people, and in that context 996 is problematic.
It only provides work-life balance if there is not much of a "life" to balance, where taking a break once in a while is fulfilling enough. Maaaaaybe this can work in your early 20s, but it basically removes anyone with kids, hobbies, outside interests and responsibilities, and really, anyone with life experience out of the equation. It is a highly exploitative culture, sold under the guise of camaraderie, when anyone who has gone through one or more hype cycles can tell that the majority of these startups will fold with nothing to show for them other than overworked, cynical individuals and another level of normalization of exploitative practices.
Gedalge · 26m ago
> I'm interested in understanding why for those who wish to share their rationale and perspective.
Because it overlooks the dynamics of power distribution.
When there’s a big discrepancy in power, the needs of one party feel justified, and the needs of the other feel like a whim.
Flexibility favors the employee, if and only if it is added on top of explicit office hours. Otherwise, it’s just vagueness that benefits whoever makes the decision of how you should fill them (i.e. your boss).
poly2it · 22m ago
There are certainly people who'd allocate that kind of time to a particular interest if they had the opportunity, me included.
breckinloggins · 25m ago
Likely at least two reasons:
- People simply disagree with you, especially this line: “Who cares if you’re still replying to emails at 7pm if you can do this, right?”
That might work for you but I imagine it left a sour note for some because emailing involves entangling other people into your personal hustle. This can perpetuate “work for show” (especially if you have any power or influence). If you want to silently code into the night and save all the evidence of this for the next morning, that’s one thing. Visible evidence of constant work can be very stressful and draining to others, however.
- HN leans left, weekend HN even more so. This whole thing can feel like “shit you do because we live in a ruthless society that only cares about money”. I don’t agree with the modern left on many things, but I’m definitely coming around to this one. It was - though perhaps in a slightly different context - the original Leftist-owned meaning of “woke”. It’s the idea that you suddenly wake up to the shitty sewer water you’ve been swimming in all your life and look around astonished at everyone else, who all seem to think it’s a perfectly clean and clear place to swim. I suspect some of your downvotes are because of this.
So, in short: you’re entitled to your opinion but it’s phrased as a bit of a lightning rod for those whose values deeply conflict with your own.
Paratoner · 47m ago
Because all of these dog whistles and smokescreens of "I swear it's not the BAD version I'm talking about guys!!" Is retarded and always ends up giving ammo to the psycho AI tech bros finding any excuse to milk extra productivity for less out of minimum wageoids like you or me. Please think before you type.
The only time I’d actually consider crazy schedules was if I was the founder with a huge equity stake and a once in a lifetime opportunity that would benefit from a short period of 996.
For average employees? Absolutely not. If someone wants extraordinary hours they need to be providing extraordinary compensation. Pay me a couple million per year and I’ll do it for a while (though not appropriate for everyone). Pay me the same as the other job opportunities? Absolutely no way I’m going to 996.
In my experience, the 996 teams aren’t actually cranking out more work. They’re just working odd hours, doing a little work on the weekends to say they worked the weekend, and they spend a lot of time relaxing at the office because they’re always there.
This is the standard now and I experienced several times during the hiring process of several different start-ups.
Here is the thing that strikes me the most, during the hiring process these different start-ups were making the stupidest mistakes. The people involved weren't stupid, they were, rather, sleep deprived.
If I could give these different start-ups some advice it would be, get some REM sleep! Otherwise, you are going to be bulldozed by start-ups that are working multiples more efficient hiring far more talented and experienced software engineers because they are including 40 hour work weeks as a part of the deal, offer.
Something will eventually have to give, if we aren’t proactive in addressing the crises before us. Last time, it took two World Wars, the military bombing miners, law enforcement assassinating union organizers, and companies stockpiling chemical weapons and machine guns before the political class finally realized things must change or all hell would break loose; I only hope we come to our senses far, far sooner this time around.
Things are not in place for people to spiritually feel what is actually a good life and world.
It may take a generation of people, who think technology and science will allow them to have many lifetimes over and over, to meet their timely end. We will only reevaluate as we see the most well endowed generation (everyone alive today) return to dust in a timely manner, that there was no magical human power that could have saved any of us, and we ought to have just focused on a better world that we’re proud of leaving behind.
Living life like it’s a roguelike with infinite levels makes it the most unfulfilling thing ever. The world our generation will live behind is our product, and a quality product is everything, so much so that you’d be proud to leave it in someone’s hand at the end (in fact, you’d want to). The women’s movement that left us a type of America with those fixes (labors rights, human rights) was such a thing to leave behind, they should fear nothing in death.
All you have to do is observe their current behavior and you will come to the same conclusion.
When billionaires show you who they are, believe them the first time.
They have not lived through a depression and neither have they lived through any major world wars. They will be curious to see how bad it can get and they believe they will remain untouched from it.
When America was strongest, we had a large and increasing middle class, and the top marginal tax rate was above 70% - it was in the 90s.
We don’t need “the elite” - they don’t actually “create jobs”, and the “engine of the economy” is just a convenient vehicle for the rich (and private equity) to ruin the middle class further - it was never about “efficient markets”.
If anything what we’ve seen over the last 40 years is that we need better systems.
The CEO of one of my employers was smitten with his new China office because they bragged about operating 996.
To everyone else, it was obvious that they weren’t working more. They were just at the office a lot, or coming and going frequently.
When they’d send a video from the office (product demos) barely anyone was at their seats, contrary to their claims of always working.
Their output was definitely not higher than anyone else.
However, they always responded quickly on Slack, day or night, weekend or not. The CEO thought this was the most amazing thing and indicated that they were always working.
Hell, you have the likes of Jack Ma glorifying 996, calling it a blessing.
I've also heard from executives and management discuss how they work longer hours (from 1:1s as a dev myself). Now as a founder, many of my peers discuss working 24/7 or close to it. Most don't - but there's a hustle culture that glamorized lack of sleep as a badge of honor.
The reality is that the "work" is very different for these different groups of people. Executives and management work by delegating and chatting people up. Founders can vary between executive duties or building or many various other founder duties. But (L3-5) engineering at corp is basically expected to code nonstop or to work oncall.
Working 996 as an executive is not comparable to 996 as an engineer.
For all of the pop science/bro science/measured self/life optimization stuff that percolates in this world, it’s funny to me that glorifying a lack of sleep persists, when sleep is effectively a performance enhancing drug, and a lack of it effectively makes you dumber.
I recall an anecdote from a sports medicine doctor interviewed somewhere, about how his patients with overtraining syndrome-type issues were overwhelmingly high-powered professionals who were accommodating their Ironman training schedule by sleeping less, as opposed to Olympic athletes who often sleep a lot to properly recover from their training.
The transparency makes it that much easier to avoid them.
As employees realize they’re getting a bad deal and that they can find a better ratio of pay to hours worked at other companies, they leave.
Individual employees are far more numerous (therefore harder to coordinate) and have way shallower pockets than companies, so the negotiation power is always going to be lopsided.
What happened with that litigation is it got shut down and those companies pay some of the highest compensation now.
One of the few jobs you can get that pays that much compensation with fewer educational requirements and better hours than alternatives in that compensation range (surgeon, specialist doctors, lawyers at demanding firms)
I don’t think that’s a great example for your point since by comparison FAANG employees have some of the best pay you can find in an attainable job for someone with a 4 year degree and the demands are lower than many of the similarly paid jobs that require a lot more education.
If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
If so, then yes you should only work those hours.
However, if you’re a typical full-time employee in most countries you don’t have agreed upon hours.
> If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
Again, if something was agreed upon you should follow that. In most full-time jobs they’re not going to specify a maximum number of working hours. It’s your job to explain what can be done in a workweek and push back when something can’t be done. If it persists and you don’t like it then you find another job. Vote with your feet.
Since I'm (mostly) work-from-home, my wifi router is configured to firewall my work devices outside of working hours.
This is frustrating for the IT department because it likes to push software updates overnight, but tough noogies.
The company pays for 30% of my internet connection, so it only gets to use my internet connection 30% of the day.
Anyhow I got to be paid for the hours that I actually did for well over a decade on off IIRC, and survived most of the purges of consultants/contractors there over the years, so demanding honesty from management was apparently survivable even if unusual!
When you work long hours on a regular basis, you begin to lose a healthy perspective on work and life.
- In grad school, I averaged 4 hours of sleep (6/7 days per week) and about 8 hours on sunday for about 5 months straight crunch.
- In my first startup, I worked 9am to 11pm (had to walk back from the office) for about 6 months.
- During my second startup gig, my son was born and also I had an 8 hour time difference between local time and the primary timezone of the office. I woke up at 4 am and generally went to bed at 10pm most days. Waking up randomly at night to deal with newborn through toddler moments for about 4 years.
My experience with all of this:
Pros:
- Really fun to grind at times and euphoric when something works.
- Build really strong relationships with people in the trenches.
Cons:
- Health suffers greatly so performance sufferes greatly
- I felt like I was working but in retrospect I wasn't really productive:
Overall:It's definitely useful to do during crunch and a great way to be mission oriented. But when you've attained a degree of understanding, you should be able to find better ways to leverage your time. The brain and body needs downtime to be creative--the best solutions are creative.
Furthermore in the world of agents, we have near infinite leverage. As a community should be engaged in deeper thought, rather than trying to grind towards a finishline that constantly moves.
996 for a business owner or top exec at a big company? It’s the norm. And the risk-reward makes sense to them.
A ceo trades time and peace for money, and that is arguably difficult in it's own ways. But that doesn't make it work in the same way that what you and I do is work. These people do not work a 100 hours a week. They live charmed lives that also happen to often be exhausting.
It's bad anyway. These people burnout and start making dumb moves to bail out sooner.
Actual craft tasks like writing code tho? Definitely a recipe for burnout and shittier output, yep.
Executives make shitty decisions because they surround themselves with others who view wealth as a leaderboard to be climbed and flaunted, and have no fucking clue how difficult things are for the people doing the actual work creating products/services/value to the company. For those who claim to relate to the plight of the worker, their frame of mind i is stuck in that precise moment just before they became fabulously wealthy, when they were likely busting ass - hence the “hard work pays off”/bootstrap mythos they peddle.
The few executives that do understand these plights, don’t make such shitty decisions, and are either roundly mocked for their lack of growth by those whose wealth was built atop the literal corpses of their workers, or occasionally featured in human interest pieces as an executive that’s strangely generous.
and stop paying these idiots 7+ figures.
b) produces sub-optimal results
Both of these claims are empty. Necessary according to whom? Sub-optimal against which metrics? All industrial processes are inefficient in some way because you're always dealing with engineering trade-offs. Staying in the computer domain: show me a system with optimal latency and I will show you an underutilized system; show me a system optimized for high-throughput and I will show you a system with erratic latency behaviour.
you don't just stop paying the king.
to quote my namesake: "abuse of power comes as no surprise"
Cruelty in business existed for hundreds of years before there even was an America.
I’ve noticed people who promote these extreme work hours seem to spend a lot of time posting on (and I assume reading) social media. Perhaps they feel 12 hours is reasonable when they dedicate 4 hours to brainrot (ahem, or “building a personal brand”)
But it is the reality the collective chose. I fully expect things to get worse before they get better.
In a sense this isn't even materialist: you are chasing numbers in an account for their own sake. A materialist wants things, and might sacrifice everything else to get them, but doesn't want to do the work for its own sake.
Ultimately this is feeding the ego, the least material thing of all. And I can't actually fault people for that; in the end what else do we have? But even an egotist needs to be able to ask themselves, "am I in fact feeling what I want to feel, or have I missed myself?"
There are certainly those who want the ego rush of feeling like they've worked as hard as they possibly can and taken every chance to show off their skill. But we've fetishized them, and even if they are happy, it often won't achieve the same for us.
But, of course, like many here have noted...there's billion dollar difference in incentives between a founder, and even the early members. For a "rank and file" engineer, you're sacrificing your life to make someone else filthy rich. And if lucky, you'll be left with a payday that's not too different from a regular industry job...
I have "experimented" with working more but I found it unconstructive. Chances of stress is much higher and with stress comes doing stupid things that I afterwards will regret.
I believe this holds for both working for myself and someone else.
At my company, we only hire in India now and the executives are intentionally causing "attrition" in the US by running people into the ground with demands that amount to 996 style work.
This was never literally practiced.
But excessive hours were the norm. And I loved it. It helped me launch into a successful career.
But it hurt my relationship with my partner (now wife), and it burned me out.
I miss those days, but I don’t miss what they did to my health.
Tbh, I was so poorly paid that going to the university on Saturdays wasn't so bad as they had better air conditioning and heating compared to my apartment!
Japan tried this non-sense for a while (colleagues told they used to stay on till 11am !) only to completely fail at all three software revolutions (web/smartphone/ai). China obv. has had much better success, but I don't think this is sustainable. The central-banks in these countries operate in the war-economy mode which can heat things up a lot and work very well, but I think social-burnout effects are quite real.
If I spend my Saturday toiling for wages digging with my hands, sweating for hours, just please some land owner I feel exploited.
It is not the work or the hours that is the core problem.
No? This is basically the philosophy of the "last man"
Many great things require overcoming the weakness of the flesh. From the moment you understand the weakness of your flesh it should disgust you.
At the moment I work 9-5, a few meetings per day, so maybe 5-6 hours focused work, and I’m mentally exhausted by the end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
I'm sure the people in China who claim to work 996 and those who demand it all know that the truth of hard work is complicated. I'm certain they all work damned hard, and the results are there for the world to see with the amazing success their country is having at absolutely everything. The nature of hard work doesn't fit some silly schedule.
> When someone promotes a 996 work culture, we should push back
And like the author says, it just doesn’t make sense either.
This sounds like the new generation's equivalent of 1980s bosses exhorting people to "give 110%"
I’ve seen founders work round the clock again and again. That kind of makes sense.
But Stebbings… I’m not going to put 996 in for any firm in your portfolio. And anybody who does is a mug.
This 996 bullshit is a skill issue. Need extra hours at school to finish your work? That’s a shame, all the clever kids are at home already (working on their side hustles that are 10x more likely to pay off).
It doesn’t surprise me that this stems from China: a place where ‘face’ and hours-behind-the-desk culture are extremely prominent.
People should be able to show up, put a shift in and go the fuck home. Sometimes there are reasons to work a little longer…
But expecting this kind of behaviour is objectively shitty leadership.
Now, I'm seeing US companies demand that here. Like, hell no. My body and health isn't worth what you're paying, and the answer 996'ers aren't paying double, or even 1.5x the position.
Saner parts of the world are discussing 37.5h/weeks, and even going to 4 day workweeks.
I mean, hell, if I'm expected to work gross overtime, I expect overtime pay. Guess like I should get into electrician union.
Some founders really do hype up their B2B SAAS product as the the Apollo program, and so naturally any engineer will work around the clock to put man on the moon.
If you work 996 without either:
It sincerely appears to me that you are throwing your life away. If you're in this boat, I hope you have a long-term plan.... or need to provide for dependents and have few other options?
I’m not smart, but I worked 7 days a week for a decade. It takes me 40 hours just to warm up, so real work means 100-hour weeks. Yet I’ve built 3 startups, 2 unicorns. In both, I was the dumbest person in the room—but I outworked everyone.
Although, frankly, even as a founder, 100-hour 7-day weeks aren’t right for the vast majority of people. Clearly it worked for you, which is great, but 99% of people do not have that level of energy, and furthermore are mentally unable to withstand the sacrifices such a schedule imposes on other aspects of life.
996 as an employee: screw that. It might be "worth it" if you command a massive, exec-level salary, but for the overwhelming majority of people it's just foolish.
If you love what you do (artist, self-employed, etc.) a 996 culture can be considered a good thing as a certain amount of "good" stress allows us to feel self-actualized.
As is a 996 culture that provides for work-life balance. For example, working from home with flex time for 12 hours where you get to take long breaks whenever you feel like it to run, walk the dog, eat, get coffee, etc., is quite enjoyable as well. Who cares if you're still replying to emails at 7pm if you can do this, right?
Added note: I find it very interesting that this was immediately downvoted. I'm interested in understanding why for those who wish to share their rationale and perspective.
For me, the big problem in your post is the "996 culture". That means the expectation is that everyone is pushing forward with a similar intensity. Now, perhaps you were talking specifically about individual efforts given your examples of artist and self-employed, but when I think about culture, I think about groups of people, and in that context 996 is problematic.
It only provides work-life balance if there is not much of a "life" to balance, where taking a break once in a while is fulfilling enough. Maaaaaybe this can work in your early 20s, but it basically removes anyone with kids, hobbies, outside interests and responsibilities, and really, anyone with life experience out of the equation. It is a highly exploitative culture, sold under the guise of camaraderie, when anyone who has gone through one or more hype cycles can tell that the majority of these startups will fold with nothing to show for them other than overworked, cynical individuals and another level of normalization of exploitative practices.
Because it overlooks the dynamics of power distribution.
When there’s a big discrepancy in power, the needs of one party feel justified, and the needs of the other feel like a whim.
Flexibility favors the employee, if and only if it is added on top of explicit office hours. Otherwise, it’s just vagueness that benefits whoever makes the decision of how you should fill them (i.e. your boss).
- People simply disagree with you, especially this line: “Who cares if you’re still replying to emails at 7pm if you can do this, right?”
That might work for you but I imagine it left a sour note for some because emailing involves entangling other people into your personal hustle. This can perpetuate “work for show” (especially if you have any power or influence). If you want to silently code into the night and save all the evidence of this for the next morning, that’s one thing. Visible evidence of constant work can be very stressful and draining to others, however.
- HN leans left, weekend HN even more so. This whole thing can feel like “shit you do because we live in a ruthless society that only cares about money”. I don’t agree with the modern left on many things, but I’m definitely coming around to this one. It was - though perhaps in a slightly different context - the original Leftist-owned meaning of “woke”. It’s the idea that you suddenly wake up to the shitty sewer water you’ve been swimming in all your life and look around astonished at everyone else, who all seem to think it’s a perfectly clean and clear place to swim. I suspect some of your downvotes are because of this.
So, in short: you’re entitled to your opinion but it’s phrased as a bit of a lightning rod for those whose values deeply conflict with your own.