A new generation of young workers at China's technology giants is demanding an end to forced rankings, harsh working conditions, and the “996” work culture
Financial TimesYuan Yang
Context & Ripple Effects
This story sits at a turning point in Chinese tech's labor arc. Three years earlier, Bloomberg documented the frenzy to hire young talent in an industry where three-quarters of tech workers are under 30 and age discrimination is legal — a labor market built around youth and intensity. This FT report captures that same cohort now pushing back, demanding an end to forced rankings, harsh conditions, and the "996" schedule.
What followed shows how contested that push was: within months, ByteDance limited staff working hours to 10am–7pm, becoming one of the first major Chinese tech firms to formally abandon 996. But the victory proved fragile — after the sector's crackdown-era layoffs, coverage later showed companies squeezing more hours out of fewer staff, with PDD's grueling schedule held up inside the industry as a model.
First-order effects
Young engineers at China's biggest platforms gain bargaining leverage for the first time since the industry's hiring boom, forcing employers like ByteDance to choose between formal hour caps and attrition of the under-30 workforce that staffing depends on.
Forced performance rankings come under direct attack, threatening the review mechanisms giants use to justify their long-hours staffing model.
Second-order effects
When the crackdown and downturn trigger mass layoffs, the balance flips: departing workers report relief at escaping 996, while remaining staff absorb the hours of those cut — turning a labor-reform moment into an intensification one, with PDD's schedule emulated as a competitive benchmark.
Companies that adopted hour reforms face pressure to quietly walk them back or risk falling behind rivals running leaner, harder-working teams.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, Chinese tech labor norms are cyclical rather than structurally reformed: worker power rises with abundant capital and hiring, then collapses when growth slows — leaving 996's abolition dependent on the funding cycle rather than regulation or culture.
That cyclicality keeps the door open for regulators to intervene on overwork as a social-stability issue whenever industry self-correction reverses, though no such rule is evident in the coverage so far.
The trend: Chinese tech's work culture is oscillating between reform and relapse, tracking the industry's capital cycle rather than moving steadily away from 996.
China's tech giants have grown at breakneck speed. But their young professional staff are increasingly unhappy with how they're managed. Our @FTMag cover piece this weekend takes you inside the lives of China's self-styled “code peasants” — w @QianerLiu https://www.ft.com/...
Forced ranking destroys all solidarity between peers. It generates obedience and fear. | Xiang Biao, social anthropology professor Which is exactly the point https://www.ft.com/...
Working conditions in China's booming tech industry are such that software developers launched the campaign “996 ICU”: Working 9am to 9pm, six days a week - as some managers demand - will have you end up in intensive care https://www.ft.com/...
Do read this by @YuanfenYang @QianerLiu on China's tech workforce. “A pervasive sense of the drudgery of uncreative, repetitive tech work has led them to self-identify with manual and agricultural labourers. Many refer to themselves as ‘code peasants’” https://giftarticle.ft.com/…
China's New Power Play: More Control of Tech Companies' Troves of Data Beijing is calling on tech giants to share their information—and asserting its authority over data held by U.S. companies in China as well WSJ 12.6. https://www.wsj.com/...
Postcard from Shenzhen: “He beat 80 other engineering masters graduates for his position, but the company ‘hires masters graduates to do something a high school student could also do,’ he says. When I ask him why, Jun responds, ‘involution.’” @YuanfenYang https://www.ft.com/...
Chinese software developers launched the ‘996 ICU’ awareness campaign, which says that if you work 9am to 9pm, six days a week, you'll end up in intensive care. In two years, they have crowdsourced allegations of mistreatment at 200 Chinese companies https://www.ft.com/... https:…
“Chinese netizens have latched on to a newly fashionable term: “involution” (nei juan). Anthropologist Clifford Geertz posited that ever-increasing amounts of labour had poured in but output remained constant. No innovation had occurred. Geertz called this involution.”
2/ Thanks to all the tech workers who spoke to me and @QianerLiu, often late at night after work. “When we consider why some products succeed, it's not necessarily because they have better technology...it's because they simply have more people labouring away,” said one
3/ In recent years, new ways of complaining about work and management have entered the Chinese lexicon: 996, involution (neijuan), PUA. In an internal memo, Alibaba acknowledged the “immense” dispute over its ‘forced ranking’ system and promised to relax it
While older Chinese tech workers have a stake, both financial and cultural, the younger generation missed out on the years of rapid growth and equity shares, and want an end to long working hours and cut-throat competition https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Jun, a 23-year-old working for Tencent Cloud, beat 80 other engineering masters graduates for his position, although he says the company hires graduates to do what high school students could do. When asked why, he responds, ‘involution’ https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/…
The myth that Marx didn't flesh-out communism still f-cks the world. A ‘republic of freely associating independent producers’ was clear enough. Capitalist state encirclement assured state capitalism's win over soviet (worker coop) republicanism. And so... https://www.ft.com/...
‘While older workers have a stake, both financial and cultural, many of those born after 1995 fear they missed out,’ @yuanfenyang writes. ‘This new generation wants... in short, an end to everything their predecessors thought essential’ https://www.ft.com/...
Last year in China, two young staffers at Alibaba competitor Pinduoduo died: one of them collapsed after work, the other died by suicide. Allegations of abuse and overwork at the country's tech groups have since become the subject of national focus https://www.ft.com/...
Allegations of overwork, abuse and injury at China's large tech companies have become the subject of nationwide debate in the country - @YuanfenYang reports on China's new generation of tech workers and their fight for fair working conditions: https://www.ft.com/...
Next up is an FT Magazine piece on the brutal working conditions behind China's tech boom. Allegations of abuse and overwork at the country's biggest tech groups, including Alibaba and Pinduoduo, have become the subject of national focus https://www.ft.com/...
Despite socialist-era labour protections in Chinese law, local governments are loath to enforce prohibitions on forced overtime. In fact, many seem more inclined to accommodate the companies on which they rely for economic growth and tax revenue https://www.ft.com/...
In 2020, a leaked memo by Alibaba's chief people officer acknowledged the company's forced ranking compensation system, in which nearly every junior staffer got a hefty bonus but the ‘losers’ — or the worst performers — got close to nothing https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.…
“In 2019, in the highly renowned Peking University 17% of all the graduates went into #China Communist party work/govt., up from 11%. In total, counting those who had gone into state-admin./SOEs, 3/4 of graduates had gone “into the system”. @YuanfenYang https://www.ft.com/...
In some ways, #China tech giants know more about citizens than the government, thanks to the personal data they collect. Now Beijing is pressing for access. #tech #privacy #data https://www.wsj.com/...
Data is Power: How Chinese tech giants delicately dance with the government over who collects, controls and uses data. Great look by @Lingling_Wei at a key issue for Chinese tech giants like Alibaba ( $BABA), Tencent ( $TCEHY) and Bytedance. https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ
Important story by @Lingling_Wei on what is quickly emerging as the latest fault line between Beijing and China's tech giants—and by extension, the U.S. Namely, all that user data being stockpiled by Tencent, Alibaba and Bytedance, among others. https://www.wsj.com/...