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Silicon Valley bosses responded to times of crisis by turning the screw on workers. Now, China's tech bosses seem ready to do the same.
Mark Zuckerberg, Andy Jassy, and other CEOs have resorted to layoffs, return-to-office mandates, and other policies prioritizing "efficiency" in the past two years to combat a sell-off among investors who grew concerned that tech companies became over-bloated and distracted with "fake work" during the pandemic. They planned to show the market that their companies could still deliver out-sized returns and form a central part of the economy — with leaner operations.
With around 363,000 workers laid off since January 2023, many staff were left feeling burned out as they took on more work. But bosses were rewarded.
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg said layoffs were part of an "efficiency" era. The company's market capitalization has climbed from around $300 billion to $1.26 trillion since it announced it was laying off 13% off its workforce in November 2022. Other Silicon Valley companies have witnessed a similar turnaround.
Chinese tech companies seem willing to take Silicon Valley's efficiency mantra even further.
That's according to a new report from the Financial Times, which notes that bosses in China are upping the pressure on workers after the country's top five tech companies lost around $1.3 trillion in market value since 2021.
For instance, Richard Liu, the veteran business leader at the helm of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, recently told staff over a video call that employees who "prefer to enjoy life" are "not our brother" and that "we should not be working together," the Financial Times reported Monday.
It's not the first time Liu, whose company's share price fell by roughly half in 2023, has talked tough to employees about the company's direction. In an internal memo in December, the tech boss told employees that "we need to change, or there's no way out for our company," Bloomberg reported.
A key reason this tone has emerged is competition.
Big names on China's tech scene, like JD.com and Jack Ma's Alibaba, have faced a threat from fast-growing newcomers like Pinduoduo, the sister company of online marketplace Temu. Pinduoduo has also been called out for a culture of "extreme overtime" by the likes of the China Labor Watch, a nonprofit organization focused on labor rights in China.
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As the FT report noted, workers are increasingly using the term "neijuan," which translates roughly to "involution," to describe extreme pressure to outdo competitors, while having smaller and smaller teams to work with. Ma's Alibaba, for instance, cut around 20,000 workers last year.
Chinese tech workers have been no strangers to aggressive work policies over the years.
During their growth in the 2010s, several tech companies in China adopted a so-called "996" working system that demanded 12-hour days from 9 a.m., six days a week.
This policy was once advocated by Chinese business titans such as Ma. Though this brutal working pattern has faced a regulatory crackdown from Beijing, business leaders aren't giving up in their bid to find new ways to pressure workers during a new period of crisis.
Last month, videos posted to Chinese social media showed Qu Jing, public relations lead at internet giant Baidu, setting out expectations of workers, such as being prepared to travel for 50 straight days on business.
"I only care about results," she said in one video.
Qu left Baidu after her comments were made public, but the ferocity of what China's tech workers are hearing isn't abating.
As long as China's economy continues to stutter and competitors claw for consumers, those who want to work in its tech sector may have to keep bending to their bosses' diktats.
