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A comment on Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On. Parent comment

Re:Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On by jpking on Monday April 15, 2019 @08:54AM (#19664918)
I don't think that these 12 hour days are full of productivity. My partner spent some time in the summer as a researcher at a key lab in Shanghai. She observed that researchers put in long hours (if the boss was around) but often spent time on their phones and repeated experiments mindlessly.

Kai-Fu Lee discusses this culture in the Founders Fund podcast Anatomy of Next. He suggests that many of the workers will be the only ones in their family who have high paid office jobs. The rest work in factories, farms and other manual labor. Thus, they see an opportunity to be successful and lift their family out of poverty.

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Re:Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On by hylaride on Monday April 15, 2019 @09:12AM (#19665012)
Reminds me of a few business trips I did to Korea about 8 years ago. Loooooong hours, but lots of 'make work' projects and redoing everything because a manager didn't like or approve of some minor subset.
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Re:Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On by jpking on Monday April 15, 2019 @09:28AM (#19665109)
The redoing my partner saw was often because an experiment didn't result in what the researcher expected. Rather than try to figure out what went wrong (or why their expectations were wrong), they'd spend lots of time repeating exactly the same thing.
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Re:Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On by scruple on Monday April 15, 2019 @12:17PM (#19666449)
That's equal parts hilarious and frightening and sad at the same time.
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Re:Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On by matz1 on Monday April 15, 2019 @09:15AM (#19665036)
>but often spent time on their phones and repeated experiments mindlessly

For some people this is called breaks.

Yes, you shouldn't do 12 hours full working, you should take sufficient number of breaks in between.

This will fit the 996 system.

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Re:Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On by jpking on Monday April 15, 2019 @09:26AM (#19665101)
You could look at it that way. Hours of time would be spent like this toward the end of the day so why not just go home?

In addition, mindlessly repeating experiments isn't a break.

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Re:Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On by matz1 on Monday April 15, 2019 @09:29AM (#19665113)
During breaks you can go home as well

What constitutes a breaks of course different for each person. Maybe some prefer go to gym instead or going for coffee, or simply just strolling around.

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Re:Jack Ma Again Endorses Extreme Overtime as Furor Rages On by colejohnson66 on Monday April 15, 2019 @09:58AM (#19665318)
> During breaks you can go home as well

Not always true. In the US, you can be required to stay on premises, but it must be paid.

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