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Team behind censored spreadsheet exposing brutal 996 Big Tech work hours deletes project after widespread crackdown
- A viral spreadsheet called WorkingTime detailing hours at Big Tech companies has disappeared from platforms operated by Tencent, Kingsoft and Zhihu
- The project remained accessible on GitHub until it was deleted on Friday, after the team previously suspended updates
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The popularity of a spreadsheet documenting long working hours at Chinese Big Tech companies has pushed censors to strip it from several domestic platforms and the team responsible for it to terminate the project after it had remained accessible on Microsoft’s GitHub.
The spreadsheet named WorkingTime encouraged employees of tech giants like Tencent Holdings, ByteDance, Meituan and Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post, to share their schedules amid widespread criticism of 996 – an unofficial industrywide schedule of 9am to 9pm, six days a week – even as tech firms have pledged to end the practice.
The project went viral in China last month, but the spreadsheet and related discussions have since disappeared from the internet.
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“The first and biggest non-technical difficulty we encountered was that our document was repeatedly reported, banned and deleted,” the team told the Post, asking to stay anonymous. “We don’t know how we could have done better, since we didn’t receive any feedback from the platforms.”
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How China censors the internet
How China censors the internet
The spreadsheet was initially shared on Tencent Docs, a collaborative Google Docs-like platform, and was deleted roughly a week after it went online.
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