I worked in China's brutal 996 work culture: When I was laid off, I was relieved

Business Insider I worked in China's brutal 996 work culture: When I was laid off, I was relieved Article by Matthew Loh • 25M • 5 minutes read Forsdike said the long hours under China's 996 culture took a toll on his mental and physical health. This is a narrated essay based on a conversation with Jack Forsdike, a 28-year-old British expat from Manchester who worked for one of China's largest game developers from 2022 to 2024. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified Forsdike's employment. When I first learned I would be working in China's infamous 996 work system, I was actually excited. 996 stands for 9am to 9pm work — six days a week. By that point, I had been working in Guangzhou for nearly two years as an English-Chinese interpreter at a local tech giant. But my passion was game design, so it was a dream come true when my employer offered me a development role in January 2024. HR told me straight out that my working hours would increase drastically. As an interpreter, I was used to an office life that ended at seven. Developers, on the other hand, were supposed to work from ten to ten every day, six days a week. This wasn't in our contracts, but it was understood as the norm. At the time, it felt like I was being recognized through the 996 work culture. I thought these working hours meant that I was on a serious, valuable team and that my productivity mattered. I soon realized how naive I was. Forsdike studied Chinese at university for six years before moving to Guangzhou to work there. My life didn't exist outside of the 996 work culture My 996 life didn't start right away. I had just gotten married and asked my manager if I could leave early some days and not work every Saturday. He agreed. As long as I could do the work that was expected of me, he said. But eventually the work started piling up. I had to come into the office on some Saturdays or Sundays. Some days I couldn't go home until midnight. After a few months, my 996 schedule was in full swing. I spent my waking hours either leaving the office, being in the office, or getting to the office. Working on weekends didn't get me a pat on the back. Even on Sundays, I found that it was normal for a third of the office to be full. Worst month: April The worst month was April, when my team was under pressure to meet a deadline. Western game developers use the term "crunch" to describe unpaid overtime before a big release. Regular 996 already felt like "crunch," so this was "crunch" on steroids. There was a time when I worked 12- to 14-hour shifts for three weeks—about 20 days of overtime in the office without any rest breaks. "My face shape is like a potato," Forsdike wrote in a social media post on a day he worked overtime. Typically, I would reach the office just before 10 a.m. for breakfast—where all meals in the company cafeteria were subsidized. Then I would work until 12:30 p.m., until it was time for lunch. We enjoyed the privilege of a 90-minute lunch break, during which I could grab coffee with office friends and let loose for an hour. I think that was one of the reasons I survived the 996 routine. Then we would continue working before grabbing a quick dinner, after which we would plow through the rest of the night. This wasn't really treated as overtime - my bosses regularly scheduled meetings at 9pm. I would get home after midnight, shower and go straight to bed. Then I would get up and start all over again. No time for leisure A life outside of work was nonexistent. I barely had any time with my wife. I had stopped playing tennis, which is one of my favorite hobbies, and I couldn't exercise. Every meal I ate was in the company cafeteria. Forsdike said he noticed that he spent almost no time with his new wife after work in 996. I started to realize that my health was suffering. I was losing muscle and gaining weight. It became unbearable, but I just prayed that the pressure could be relieved. On top of that, we never saw the senior managers who made the decisions that kept us in the office. They set deadlines from above, and our team leaders were powerless to negotiate. But what really hit my morale was understanding that this was a long-term expectation.