> Because for at least half of the 72-hour workweek, most employee will mentally checkout (in Chinese we call this 摸鱼).
The CEO of one of my employers was smitten with his new China office because they bragged about operating 996.
To everyone else, it was obvious that they weren’t working more. They were just at the office a lot, or coming and going frequently.
When they’d send a video from the office (product demos) barely anyone was at their seats, contrary to their claims of always working.
Their output was definitely not higher than anyone else.
However, they always responded quickly on Slack, day or night, weekend or not. The CEO thought this was the most amazing thing and indicated that they were always working.
To executives, responding to communication is equal to working because communication is all that they do. Same reason that so much time is wasted on meetings: for the people who organize meetings they are what work is, rather than wasted time.
Life is always about optics. Medieval kings wore a piece of gold over their heads for optics.
I guess more people are just starting to realize this because many powerful people are actually dropping some of the well-accepted optics (particularly in tech, where people felt they were treated better than the average employee for a long time)
The CEO of one of my employers was smitten with his new China office because they bragged about operating 996.
To everyone else, it was obvious that they weren’t working more. They were just at the office a lot, or coming and going frequently.
When they’d send a video from the office (product demos) barely anyone was at their seats, contrary to their claims of always working.
Their output was definitely not higher than anyone else.
However, they always responded quickly on Slack, day or night, weekend or not. The CEO thought this was the most amazing thing and indicated that they were always working.