996 - Hacker News

Posted by genericlemon24 9/6/2025

996(lucumr.pocoo.org)

1058 points | 532 commentspage 8

kanak8278 9/6/2025|

I think Carl Newport had in his book "Deep Work" that Number of Hours or Looking Busy was the measure of being productive in the Industrial Age but doesn't suit the knowledge worker(us/developers).

hidelooktropic 9/6/2025||

Do those of us not cool enough to know already get to find out what 996 means?

svieira 9/6/2025||

9 AM to 9 PM 6 days a week. It's a "how long do we work" shorthand, like 955 (9 AM to 5 PM 5 days a week) or 864 (8 AM to 6 PM 4 days a week).

cromulent 9/6/2025|||

It's the first hyperlink in the article, and the first Google result for "996".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

TrackerFF 9/6/2025||

"Work nine to nine, six days a week"

9cb14c1ec0 9/6/2025||

Most people are productive working 5 or 6 days a week than 6. It's something that most people intrinsically understand. Those that don't are almost exclusively terminally online, chasing status.

markus_zhang 9/6/2025||

A lot of Chinese companies do 996 or 007 but people tend to fake it after a certain timestamp, just to stay there for the sake of staying there. You can’t really tell whether they are productive.

GP-fault 9/7/2025||

Think of all of those young women in China that do those hours looking through a magnifier or microscope to build iPhones and the other export stuff. Don't work it, don't buy it.

chaostheory 9/6/2025||

We already have the research to show that 996 is only sustainable in spurts of a few weeks at most, and it comes with downtime of a few weeks. It’s stupid unless you want an army of zombies.

michaelt 9/6/2025||

> The truth is, China’s really doing ‘007’ now—midnight to midnight, seven days a week

This sounds like the new generation's equivalent of 1980s bosses exhorting people to "give 110%"

currymj 9/6/2025||

not only does a founder capture more upside, they also pay less of a cost. autonomy prevents burnout even under very intense working conditions.

plus the nature of a founder's day to day work is very different. 12 hours a day of management, pitches, meetings, and snap decisions is doable for a long time if you can endure the pain.

12 hours a day of complex technical work under sleep deprivation is just not possible, after a few weeks of this your cognitive function will decline to the point you can't do the job right.

throw-qqqqq 9/6/2025|

“There is never enough time to do it right, but there is always enough time to do it over.”

Though poor management is pervasive, there are small pockets of sanity out there, in my experience.

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