Spreadsheet sharing gruelling hours in China’s tech world goes viral as 996 culture persists

Frustrations over gruelling work hours in China’s tech industry have come together in a new online campaign asking employees at some of the country’s most well-known companies to divulge their schedule, as the so-called 996 culture – working 9am to 9pm, six days a week – persists despite increased public scrutiny.

A collaborative spreadsheet that encourages people to share information about their companies’ work hours is being widely circulated this week, having received more than 3,500 entries by Wednesday. They include input from those working for well-known Chinese internet giants such as Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post, as well as Tencent Holdings, ByteDance and Meituan.

The information shared includes job title, location, daily start and end times, lunch hour and number of work days each week.

The spreadsheet, named WorkingTime, had been viewed more than 10 million times by Tuesday, one of the project’s founders wrote in a post published on Zhihu, China’s Quora-like Q&A platform. Along with three other graduating college students who have all received job offers from internet companies, the founder wants to help provide jobseekers some transparency over the industry’s work culture. None of the founders revealed their real names.

“Overtime is prevalent among domestic companies and there is no supervision at all, especially among internet companies,” the founder wrote. “We hope to make some contributions toward boycotting 996 and popularising 955.”

The founder has declined to speak with the Post, saying that they are not accepting media interviews at the moment.

On a page on coding platform GitHub aimed at explaining the project, the founders said that they are still standardising the submission process and public access to the project with the help of lawyers. They will enable download for the spreadsheet after they sort out legal issues, they wrote.