Althouse: "The idea of tech workers approaching their jobs with an intense, at times almost religious, devotion is 'part of the DNA of Silicon Valley culture'..."

September 29, 2025

"The idea of tech workers approaching their jobs with an intense, at times almost religious, devotion is 'part of the DNA of Silicon Valley culture'..."

"... said Carolyn Chen, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of 'Work Pray Code.' She also noted that a strain of 'heroic masculine culture' in tech enforces the expectation that people should be working all the time."

From "Would You Work ‘996’? The Hustle Culture Trend Is Taking Hold in Silicon Valley. The number combination refers to a work schedule — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — that has its origins in China’s hard-charging tech scene" (NYT).

33 comments:

Michael said...: They would never disparage a restaurant owner, whose lifestyle is also 996 (and worse since if the business fails the owner loses most/all of their equity.; 9/29/25, 2:38 PM
n.n said...: It's a secular religion with "benefits" garnered in a liberal culture.; 9/29/25, 2:40 PM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/29/25, 2:43 PM
Original Mike said...: "Would You Work ‘996’?"

Did it a lot, and more, over the years, for long stretches, when it was required. Most especially for grant submissions. Also teaching (e.g. when taking on a new course). You do what's required to get the work done.; 9/29/25, 2:44 PM
rehajm said...: Is this story from 1997? I dunno, in hindsight all those people canned from Twitter didn't seem to be doing much...; 9/29/25, 2:44 PM
Original Mike said...: You do what's required to do a good job.; 9/29/25, 2:45 PM
n.n said...: Masculine culture? Women need not apply? Mothers excluded.

247365 is a toxic tale of his, her, our choices as adults with a vested interest in Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.; 9/29/25, 2:46 PM
rehajm said...: ...in my house it's tax season six months out of the year. Now until Oct 15th...the techie's workload seems relatively light and far better compensated...; 9/29/25, 2:47 PM
Jim Gust said...: Isn't that number routine for new lawyers at big firms?; 9/29/25, 2:49 PM
FullMoon said...: Right. AI is replacing high tech guys here.
So much so, that local (over priced) real estate prices are coming down and homes are no longer selling for over-asking in a week or ten days.
Many still employed are sweatin' it, for good reason.; 9/29/25, 2:57 PM
Old and slow said...: When you are working on a big project with smart people, long hours are both expected and rewarding. I've done two week stretches with far more hours than this, and 12 hour days were not uncommon even during normal times. After a 9 or 10 hour day I'd be about to go home and someone would come in to office with something interesting and we'd end up staying a few more hours. I thoroughly enjoyed it.; 9/29/25, 2:57 PM
buwaya said...: Was SOP in the 1980s. They didn't have memes or slogans for it then. And it was mainly guys back then too.; 9/29/25, 3:06 PM
Enigma said...: The classic Silicon Valley overnight-in-the-office culture follows from: (1) obsessive-compulsive or autistic tech workers who know no other existence than work, and (2) startups that hire people seeking to own the next Apple, Microsoft, or Google. This is a unversal in tech firms (beyond China), and common among European or Asian ancestry (these two comprise 99% of tech workers). The 996 term may be Chinese.

Poster Boy: The white guy John Carmack of ID software and the inventor of the technology behind 3D games. He spent his early life full time in dark computer labs inventing stuff while his more charismatic business partner John Romero spoke to the media and pretended to have talent.

It's a niche lifestyle that works for them, but a bunch of the people around them in Silcon Valley are generally normal. The long days also may not consider the free food, on-site entertainment, on-site services like haircuts, on-site massages, on-site day care, nap rooms, and other incentives.; 9/29/25, 3:07 PM
Leland said...: My normal day in Foster City began at 6am and ended after midnight with a break between 4pm and 6pm. There was no "weekend".; 9/29/25, 3:23 PM
Leland said...: My manager at the time was a woman. She's now a VP for a large defense contractor.; 9/29/25, 3:25 PM
tommyesq said...: When at trial, days typically run a minimum of 12 hours - time for that day's testimony and to prepare for the next day (and to argue any motions or the like that might arise, and to debrief with the client, etc.), with the long days starting at least a couple of weeks before trial and running weekends so long as trial is running. Of course, that isn't 365 days a year.; 9/29/25, 3:45 PM
jim said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/29/25, 3:51 PM
jim said...: Yes, I would and I did through my late 20s and early 30s, which is to say the 1980s and 90s. Not precisely the same as now, but we saw ourselves inventing computer technology; there was clear divide between the Cobol-types serving the bean counters and those exploring C/unix and Macs. We were well paid; personally I had no notion of getting rich (and I didn't). Not 100% guys, but the successful women trended toward management (at least where I was).; 9/29/25, 3:54 PM
Mason G said...: Would You Work ‘996’?

When working at one of our factories in another town, I'd do something close, it was more "775,711"- five days of 7AM to 7PM and one of 7AM to 1PM, and then drive two hours home for my one day off.

When it's winter, the roads are icy and everything's covered in snow and you're living out of a hotel, there's really not much else to do but work (aside from watch tv, maybe) so it wasn't all that bad. Plus- the overtime was nice.; 9/29/25, 4:04 PM
Leland said...: I think the real difference from what most of us are saying and the article; 80+ hour weeks is something to do, even for weeks or months at a time. However, if you offered that to me as my normal work schedule for year after year; well probably no.

Let's also talk about the compensation, as it comes to Silicon Valley. The average home price in Redwood City, CA is $1,765,873 according to Zillow. Austin, the Silicon Valley of Texas, is averaging $504,043. California companies here are asking for 72 hours a week. Let's say similar Texas companies want that new graduate to do 60 hours a week. Glassdoor says the average starting Software Engineer salary in Silicon Valley high range is about $200k and Austin is about $181k.

Who is better compensated where? (oh, but the weather and the views...); 9/29/25, 4:39 PM
Mason G said...: "However, if you offered that to me as my normal work schedule for year after year; well probably no."

Yeah, I'd agree with you there.; 9/29/25, 4:41 PM
JaimeRoberto said...: It takes a lot of work to make a successful startup, but the payoff can be huge. If you work those hours you might get that huge payoff, but if you don't, you almost certainly won't.; 9/29/25, 4:48 PM
Mary Beth said...: When you are working on something you are excited about, those long hours don't feel like work. I've done it, but I was working from home and instead of 9-9, it was every minute I didn't have to spend doing something else, long into the night, and seven days a week. Fortunately that was relatively short-term and it was very profitable for many years afterwards with much less time involved.; 9/29/25, 4:50 PM
Lawnerd said...: In grad school I worked every day of the week 9 to 7. I was dirt poor and didn’t have anything better to do. All my friends were working the same hours so it was kind of fun. I later worked at a few start up biotech companies. The hours were not as bad, but it wasn’t 9 to 5. Probably similar to this 996 bullshit. So this is nothing new, it existed in the 90s and 00s at least. The start ups had IPOs and my stock options made up for the grind. Basically, why write about this now, it is not new or unusual.; 9/29/25, 4:55 PM
n.n said...: This is about the capital gap, right?; 9/29/25, 4:56 PM
Lawnerd said...: I saw the comment about trial work. As a first year associate I was on a trial team. Three weeks of nearly 24 hour days in a shitty hotel. We had to keep our doors open at all times and the partners would walk in at any fucking time and ask us to dig through the trial transcripts for “nuggets” to put in the expected JMOL brief. Or to write some bullshit memo. The billable hours were awesome, but it was the shittiest experience of my life.; 9/29/25, 5:00 PM
Big Mike said...: From my perspective as a retired software development manager, I’d like to make a few observations.

First, many software managers are not very good at at managing software development. They don’t have the slightest idea how to evaluate the quality of their staff’s work, but they can keep track (more or less) of hours worked. If you want to get ahead — or even keep your job — working for a manager like that you won’t work 996, you’ll work 7-midnight-7. And managers like that are all over the place.

I once had an employee added to one of my projects, quite senior and quite talented. But I felt, somehow, he was dawdling and getting himself into a time crunch. Sure enough, st the end he led his team in a punishing, 14 hours a day, ten-day effort. Turns out he was used to getting stroked for his hours worked, and he was a bit miffed that I didn’t give him his strokes.

Secondly, sometimes there really are projects that require ridiculous time commitments. We used to call them “death marches,” and I don’t know what they’re called these days. I sometimes get the impression that in Silicon Valley and around Austin they’re called “Tuesday.” I survived three of them, which had quite a negative impact on my family.

Last observation. Over the years I came to realize that people who put in insane efforts at software development were seldom more productive than people who put in 8 or 9 hour days. I think there’s a problem with getting too close to your work, and that a software developer’s creativity benefitted from getting a good night’s sleep and giving their eyes and brain a break from staring at the monitor.; 9/29/25, 5:02 PM
Chick said...: Does anyone work insane hours anymore? Once we figured it out, the CFO made the real money, we were just the horses.; 9/29/25, 5:11 PM
Jupiter said...: Remember that every single one of the frozen corpses on top of Mount Everest was once a highly-motivated person.; 9/29/25, 5:16 PM
Earnest Prole said...: I see the New York Times approaches tech reporting with the same clueless anthropological wonder that it approaches Middle America. People in California tech have been working their asses off for more than thirty years because there’s a Gold Rush on and daylight’s a-burnin.; 9/29/25, 5:22 PM
Deep State Reformer said...: Sounds perfect for those crazed geniuses like the one's behind the FTX crypto rip-off. (Eg. Sam Bankman-Fried et alia.) Reading about their personal lives, such as they were, and assuming the accounts were accurate, show me that 996 is only fit for a subspecies of drug assisted Otaku and no one else. No thanks Dr Schmidt. I believe if we win this thing Dr Schmidt and his cohorts are going against the wall first. Mark my words. Sadly Dr Marvin Minsky, father of AI has died already.; 9/29/25, 5:28 PM
Aaron said...: I already work 8:00 am to 8:00 pm 6 days a week and then about 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday.

Its not just China that works hard.; 9/29/25, 5:46 PM
Aaron said...: 5 days a week.; 9/29/25, 5:46 PM