Overtime triggers heated discussion after workers' deaths

IT employees lured by high salaries struggle to strike work-life balance

Debate about working overtime in China's burgeoning information technology sector has resurfaced after the deaths of two staff members at major internet companies.

One employee, who died during the Spring Festival holiday, worked for the short-video platform Bilibili, while the other, who died on Feb 23, was employed by ByteDance, the parent company of the short-video app TikTok, known in China as Douyin.

Both workers, who were in their 20s, had heart attacks, which may have been caused by working overtime.

The late Bilibili employee, a 25-year-old content moderator, died on Feb 4 while working overtime during the Lunar New Year break, according to a statement from the company.

It denied that the employee's death was related to working overtime, as he had worked normal hours before his death. However, the company said it would recruit an additional 1,000 content reviewers this year to spread the workload.

The ByteDance employee, 28, collapsed after a workout session at a company gym at about 7 pm on Feb 21, according to media reports citing internal company memos. He died 41 hours after being sent to a hospital. The company has not given any further information on the worker's death.

Both cases have led to heated discussions about the pressures that technology workers in China face and also on their 996 work schedule (9 am to 9 pm, six days a week).

The hashtag "ByteDance has confirmed the death of 28-year-old employee" has been viewed more than 680 million times on Sina Weibo, while different hashtags on the death of the Bilibili employee have also been viewed hundreds of millions of times.

Huang Hao, 30, who works for an internet startup in Beijing, said his company requires all employees to work at least 11 hours per day.

The bosses are entrepreneurs who believe in hard work and in treating the company as their home. They also encourage their employees to hold such beliefs, Huang said.

In group chats, his team leader publishes a list of the number of working hours for each employee, and Huang said he is often at the bottom of the list because he does not want to put in extra hours.

He said that although there is no written rule about working extra hours, employees know that the list plays an important role in obtaining salary rises and promotion opportunities.

Huang added that many of his colleagues either leave the office to eat dinner, or stay there and play with their phones to add extra work hours before clocking out.

There is no extra pay for working late, apart from a meal subsidy of 30 yuan ($4.70) and a free taxi ride home, he added.

"I do not like this kind of ineffective extra working. I will work late if I actually have more work to do, otherwise I much prefer going home and enjoying my life," he said.

Huang said he has occasionally worked until 1 am or 2 am when he has been busy completing a large project, but in most cases, he leaves work at about 7 pm.

Lin Li, 33, worked for technology giant Huawei in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, from 2011 to 2018 and then for three smaller tech companies. She said working overtime is common practice at IT businesses.

People know that these companies offer high salaries and have demanding work targets, so they are prepared to work additional hours when hired, she said.

Lin said the difference between Huawei and smaller companies is that employees are paid for working extra hours at Huawei, but there are no additional payments at smaller enterprises, which usually want to take advantage of employees by asking them to do more without financial reward.

To complete a project on time, Lin worked for several days until as late as 3 am and started her duties at 8:30 am. But she said she had few complaints, as it was a challenging task and she received extra pay and a large bonus for her efforts.

She said smaller companies want to learn from Huawei about the overtime work culture, but they do not have so much work to do and lack the finances to compensate their employees.