Would you work 72 hour weeks?All Work, No Play<\/p>\n
Say a little prayer for AI workers in Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n
In the rush to conquer the AI sector, some startups have adopted a career schedule known as “996” \u2014 a draconian work regimen that first took hold in mainland China, according to Wired<\/a>, in which employees work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week, for a total of a soul-crushing 72 hours.<\/p>\n That’s obviously a grueling routine, but the AI industry demands it because the space is so extremely competitive at the moment; startups are going to bat against each other, legacy tech companies, and overseas AI companies in places like China.<\/p>\n AI startups are gobbling up boatloads of money \u2014 $104.3 billion in the first six months of this year<\/a> \u2014 so the race is on to turn those investment dollars into profit and market share. That pressure is pushing more startups towards the 996 schedule.<\/p>\n “It’s becoming increasingly common,” staffing and recruitment expert Adrian Kinnersley told Wire.\u00a0 “We have multiple clients where a prerequisite for screening candidates before they go for an interview is whether they are prepared to work 996.”<\/p>\n Back to the Future<\/p>\n A tough schedule is nothing new to Silicon Valley, which is stuffed to the gills with industry lore about tech stars booking all-nighters at “velvet sweatshops<\/a>” like Microsoft.<\/p>\n “There’s a really strong and growing subculture of people, especially in my generation \u2014 Gen Z \u2014 who grew up listening to stories of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, entrepreneurs who dedicated their lives to building life-changing companies,” Will Gao, head of growth at AI startup Rilla, told Wired.<\/p>\n But the problem with this work schedule is it chucks out any pretense of work-life balance, taking a\u00a0toll on the bodies<\/a> and minds<\/a> of workers.<\/p>\n It’s also a type of schedule could shut out certain sectors of the population from tech work, such as women<\/a> \u2014 who are usually the primary caretakers<\/a> of children and adult relatives \u2014 who already only make up 35 percent of the STEM workforce in the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n There’s also a dark irony at play: the basic promise of the AI industry is that it will provide an alternative to the soul-crushing jobs to which so many of us are now subjected \u2014 while the very workers tasked with creating that future are being treated like beasts of burden.<\/p>\n