Tencent vows to improve work-life balance after fresh 996 criticism over a worker’s 20-hour shift

  • Tencent managers thanked an employee for raising awareness of work-life balance issues after he lambasted them for praising a colleague’s excessive schedule
  • The employee’s account of the event online sparked new discussions about the tech sector’s notorious 996 work culture that has drawn scrutiny in recent years

Tencent Holdings headquarters pictured on October 23, 2019 in Shenzhen’s Nanshan business district. Photo: Shutterstock
A Tencent Holdings employee sparked fresh debate online about the 996 overwork culture in China’s tech industry after lambasting in a work group chat his team’s plaudits of a colleague’s recent 20-hour shift, pushing the company to respond that it would seek to improve work-life balance.

In his own account of the event that took place on Tuesday evening and was widely circulated online, Fole Zhang Yifei said he criticised his team’s praise of a colleague working “20 consecutive hours at high intensity” to release a promotional page and another “week of consecutive work” to make over 200 modifications to a product design. Zhang works on the team behind WeCom, Tencent’s workplace app.

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