996

In China, its birthplace, '996' always seen as practice of failed management. Because for at least half of the 72-hour workweek, most employee will mentally checkout (in Chinese we call this 摸鱼). Although middle managers know their subordinates are inefficient, they still impose working hour KPI on their team, so they can demonstrate their own value to upper management.

The Chinese government banned ‘996’ a few years ago.

I also never understood how it differed from the popular “death march” project management style popularized by companies like Epic and Microsoft.