I agree with this sentiment, I happen to work 996 on my own stuff mainly because I love it. I know a lot of people who have jobs and pour themselves into it because they love what they do as well.
I'd say its only an issue once you are being punished for not working 996.
"I personally think that 996 is a huge blessing," he said. "How do you achieve the success you want without paying extra effort and time?"
But its not really a "China" problem. There's a lot of startups and mature companies in the US that have similarly aggressive personalities at the helm who demand a lot from their employees.
My main point was the notion that people are assuming that its universal in China, when its not always true (whether its more prevalent than in the US or not - i dont know).
The only reason I'm even making this point was because how grandparent to my comment made a simple comment about how companies in Shenzen pay a lot, and the response to that was a blanket "but 996" when that might not be true.
It would behove us all to expect and believe that a country is usually more nuanced than the extremes that make it across a border.
Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? You might also find these links helpful for getting the spirit of this site:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html
There's a lot of other companies that want their employees to work overtime, but thats probably true in a lot of countries - probably even in the US.
I wish there was some way of balancing the news coming out of countries - without resorting to censorship. It would remove a lot of prejudice,