British man gains fame in China after revealing his grueling 996 work schedule at a tech job

BEIJING (SCMP): A Briton has found unexpected fame on the Chinese internet after revealing his grueling work schedule at a Chinese big tech company, drawing new attention to the country’s so-called 996 work culture.

Jack Forsdike, a Yorkshire native, joined NetEase in Guangzhou in 2022, doing translation work that did not require overtime. In January 2024 he was transferred to the game design department, and the workload increased in April.

Then he realized “how difficult it could be” to keep up with the demanding work schedule, which typically runs from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. As a systems designer for a video game division, he and his team were sometimes forced to work 80-hour weeks to meet deadlines.

“We started work at 10am every day… in April my usual check-out time must have been after 10pm, sometimes until midnight,” the 28-year-old said. “There was a time when I [may have] worked three Saturdays in a row.”

Although overtime wasn’t mandatory, Forsdike said that all team members tried to keep the ball rolling and that he “didn’t want to let them down…didn’t want to delay the project.”

Jack Forsdike posted this photo of himself in happier times on Chinese social media. – Photo: XiaoHongShu

NetEase did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent during China’s Golden Week holiday, when many offices are closed.

In late April, he posted a picture of himself looking exhausted on the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like platform, and asked rhetorically why he took the job. Unpaid overtime is commonplace in many Chinese companies, but few expats have publicly discussed their work experiences on Chinese social media.

Forsdike told the South China Morning Post that his original post, which went viral and received over 265,000 views, was not intended as a complaint. He said he enjoyed working as a game designer and that his job in Guangzhou was generally better paid than in the UK.

A Chinese student at the University of Manchester, including a year as an exchange student in Beijing, Forsdike said he wanted to find work in China after his studies.

In June, Forsdike reposted the same photo and added a different caption: “Why don’t you just stop, I’m too tired?” The new post received more than 383,000 views.

“I think the fact that it got so much attention was because people could empathize… and maybe the post described how they felt,” he told the Post. Forsdike lost his job in June when the company made staff cuts.

The renewed highlighting of the 996 work culture comes after many Chinese Big Tech companies publicly spoke out against excessive overtime. In 2021, a gaming studio owned by Tencent Holdings asked employees to go home by 6 p.m. on some days, and short-video giant ByteDance ended its big week/small week rule that required employees to go home every two weeks to work six days a week.

Wang Chao, an entrepreneur who develops smartphone apps, seen in his office in Shanghai, September 2, 2021. Tech workers often work unpaid overtime in the 996 work culture. – Photo: EPA-EFE via SCMP

But 996 persists in China’s tech sector despite fierce competition and demanding deadlines.

However, complaints about strenuous work schedules have generally become less common amid job cuts in the tech sector. The last complaint that received widespread attention occurred in 2019, when a group of Chinese software developers protested on the developer community GitHub under the codename 996.ICU.

“996 is going to have a huge long-term impact on the business because people are going to get burned out and they’re going to lose a lot of talent,” Forsdike told the Post. “It will affect people’s quality of work if they don’t have enough time to rest.”

Since his release in June, Forsdike has moved from Guangzhou to Harbin, a city in northeast China and his wife’s hometown. He said he is not currently looking for a new job but is spending his free time posting content on social media. “I don’t really plan on finding another 996 job quickly,” he added. – SOUTH CHINA MORNONG POST