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996

(lucumr.pocoo.org)
1002 points genericlemon24 | 3 comments | 06 Sep 25 13:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.199s | source
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whstl ◴[06 Sep 25 15:55 UTC] No.45150377[source]▶
996 is just theater for investors.

Saw this happening even at YC companies. There was always that stupid expectation of overworking, staying until 9.

The reality is that people twiddle thumbs.

And the disorganization and micromanagement power plays are enough to negate any additional worked hour.

This ranges from pure disorganization in terms of what to build to having 3 hour meetings with the whole fucking company where the CEO pretends they have something worthwhile to say for 3 hours.

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graemep ◴[06 Sep 25 16:07 UTC] No.45150486[source]▶
> 996 is just theater for investors.

Investors who have not heard of the research into productivity that says long hours have no significant benefit for skilled work? Who have not heard of diminishing returns? Who have no experience of the reality of working long hours themselves?

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rsynnott ◴[06 Sep 25 16:41 UTC] No.45150788[source]▶
A lot of these VC types, ah, not the smartest, to put it mildly. See their twitters (or, well, their investments; remember WeWork?)
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1. graemep ◴[06 Sep 25 16:59 UTC] No.45150936[source]▶
A lot of their investments are made on the basis of what they can sell it for before it all falls apart.

So in that context theatre in general makes sense. Not sure why long working hours would be - its not something people fund managers about with regard to an IPO, for example, so it probably does not hugely raise exit values.

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2. ForOldHack ◴[06 Sep 25 17:15 UTC] No.45151082[source]▶
You should see the code they crank out. All rated in characters per second/lines of code. And now with AI? Super crap. Ultra processed sterilized caca del Toro.
3. rsynnott ◴[06 Sep 25 18:16 UTC] No.45151595[source]▶
They seem, as a class, very susceptible to dumb trends. This _kind_ of works for them, because occasionally something that looks like a dumb trend turns out to work (remember Facebook games? Still amazed that became a thing), and VCs only require a rather low success rate to operate, but usually a dumb trend is just a dumb trend.

Irritatingly, every time, people use this to claim that the dumb trend is the next big thing. A few years ago, anyone sensible could see that NFTs were bloody ridiculous, but you’d have lots of people on here proclaiming a glorious new NFT-based future, because, after all, the VCs were pumping money into it.