\n<\/p>\n
M<\/span>y current cultural comfort food is The Gilded Age, Julian Fellowes\u2019 deeply silly Manhattan toffs-in-bustles drama, in which one storyline (summarily dealt with due to lack of taffeta-rustling opportunities, I suspect) features a tycoon\u2019s downtrodden steelworkers going on strike for \u201c888\u201d: eight hours each of work, sleep and recreation.<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t a revolutionary demand in the 1880s. The slogan, coined by the utopian social reformer Robert Owen, dates from 1817 (his New Lanark mill workers still did 10.5-hour days, though). Even then, it wasn\u2019t unprecedented: apparently, a 16th-century Spanish ordinance limited New World construction workers to eight-hour days.<\/p>\n So what would Owen or Philip II of Spain think of \u201c996\u201d? That\u2019s working 9am to 9pm, six days a week \u2013 72 hours of grind. Originating in the Chinese tech industry, 996 was described as a \u201cblessing\u201d by the e-commerce behemoth Alibaba\u2019s founder, Jack Ma. Chinese workers disagreed, mobilising against it online, and launching \u2013 and winning \u2013 court cases against employers.<\/p>\n Now 996 is back (although it probably never went away; in 2022, the FT reported discontent among UK TikTok employees at expectations of 12-hour days). In Silicon Valley, \u201cgrinding \u2018996\u2019 is the way to get ahead\u201d, according to the New York Times. Wired found job listings explicitly stating absurdly long hours are expected (and applicants shouldn\u2019t apply unless \u201cexcited\u201d by that) and recruiters being instructed that a willingness to work 72-hour weeks was non-negotiable. The San Francisco Standard proclaimed: \u201cGrindcore culture is back and grindier than ever\u201d, with one founder summarising the vibe as: \u201cNo drinking, no drugs, 996, lift heavy, run far, marry early, track sleep, eat steak and eggs.\u201d Another posted on X: \u201cWe routinely are at the office through the weekend and do some of our best work late into the night.\u201d Sign me up!<\/p>\n I don\u2019t get it. Hadn\u2019t we all fallen out of love with hustle culture? We\u2019ve witnessed the overwhelming success of four-day week initiatives with almost all trial participants electing to continue. We\u2019ve looked at other countries and realised more enlightened approaches to reconciling family, community, life and work don\u2019t necessarily come at a productivity cost, and make for happier, healthier citizens. The average working week in the Netherlands is 32.1 hours, but the OECD\u2019s economic survey says it has been \u201coutperforming peers\u201d economically; it ranks fifth in the newest World Happiness Report (the US is 24th).<\/p>\n I keep reading, too, about the new work-agnosticism, especially among the young. Respondents to Deloitte\u2019s 2024 Gen-Z and Millennial survey ranked work-life balance as the most important factor in choosing an employer (and \u201cthe most admired trait among their peers\u201d). Randstad\u2019s workmonitor 2025 surveyed 26,000 people in 35 countries and also concluded work-life balance was the top motivator, coming ahead of pay for the first time.<\/p>\n So what fresh, fire emoji, locked-in hell is this? I have two theories. Maybe it\u2019s the last gasp of a dying philosophy; the \u201cextinction burst\u201d, if you will, of grindcore? Alternatively, research published this year indicates what we all suspected: overwork makes your brain go funny. \u201cOverworked individuals exhibited significant changes in brain regions associated with executive function and emotional regulation,\u201d the researchers concluded, and looking at some of Silicon Valley\u2019s prominent alumni, that tracks. Surely only people with \u201cstructural brain changes \u2026 in regions linked to cognition and emotion\u201d \u2013 as the study puts it \u2013 could think this work culture is healthy or productive?<\/p>\n Tech bros love novelty, so maybe we can convince their addled brains that their inhumane working practices are old hat with audacious alternatives. But what? My own work equation (equal parts scrolling, blank staring, hen husbandry and hot drinks) is too complex \u2013 and unsuccessful \u2013 to catch on. I\u2019m tempted to suggest 0\/0\/0, but that requires a tireless 24\/7\/365 commitment to overthrowing capitalism. The majority of people I asked actually dream of working three-day weeks (not far off the economist John Maynard Keynes\u2019 quixotic 15 hours), but I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s buzzy enough. How about a 1:12 ratio of Teams meetings to tea breaks? Or one day in the office, six days screaming into the void (make SIV the new WFH)? An hour\u2019s work, an hour questioning your life choices, then a lifetime hiding in the woods? I reckon with a catchy name and a rumour it makes you immortal, any of these could be Silicon Valley\u2019s next big thing.<\/p>\n Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My current cultural comfort food is The Gilded Age, Julian Fellowes\u2019 deeply silly Manhattan toffs-in-bustles drama, in which one storyline (summarily dealt with due to lack of taffeta-rustling opportunities, I suspect) features a tycoon\u2019s downtrodden steelworkers going on strike for \u201c888\u201d: eight hours each of work, sleep and recreation. That wasn\u2019t a revolutionary demand in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[12118,956,6034,14550,7268,15679,514,3038],"class_list":{"0":"post-26048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-beddington","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-emma","11":"tag-inhumane","12":"tag-sad","13":"tag-whatevers","14":"tag-work","15":"tag-wrong"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}