China Tech workers: I have the rights to work overtime

Two years ago, Chinese tech workers protested on GitHub, the worlds’s largest code host, against grueling overtime hours at some companies, aiming at the industry’s “996” work culture, which referred to the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. workday, six days a week.

Ironically, earlier this month, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company has announced that it will cancel its overtime policy, effective August 1st. An internal survey about whether to abolish its infamous overtime policy was sent out before the announcement. Surprisingly, about one-third of the surveyed employees opposed that abolishment and complained that they would be subject to the same amount of workload but less pay.