A striking observation has emerged from American business commentary: "Silicon Valley has completely lost its way. In an industry that once prided itself on disrupting outdated business models, the tech world's brightest minds have decided to play 19th-century factory owners."

This critique reflects a disturbing trend that business observers have noted – the 996 work culture from the East is gaining ground in Silicon Valley. What was once mocked as "modern slavery" by American media has now captured the hearts of Silicon Valley's tech elite.

**The Rapid Surge**

The signs were evident years ago. The best advocate for American-style 996 is workaholic Elon Musk, the tech maverick who habitually pulls all-nighters in his workshops and holds both himself and others to extremely high standards.

Musk's belief in overtime has long been unabashed and explicit. As early as 2018, he posted on the platform then known as Twitter, complaining that "you can't change the world working 40 hours a week." When asked how many hours humans should work per week, Musk suggested that weekly hours could be maintained at 80 hours, with exceptional cases reaching 100 hours. He noted that 80 hours is a threshold because "human suffering increases exponentially after 80 hours."

In 2022, after taking over Twitter, Musk immediately sent extremely tough emails to all employees, demanding they commit to work with higher intensity, with those unable to accept this given the immediate option to take severance and leave.

Over the past year, Musk seems to have transcended even these limits, directly breaking through the 80-hour pain threshold. He claims that his government efficiency department team members average 120 hours per week, with daily work hours reaching an astonishing 17.1 hours – essentially "working from the moment you wake up."

The 996 culture is spreading like a virus throughout Silicon Valley, with more companies making it a prerequisite for employee recruitment. For instance, AI startup Rilla explicitly states in its job postings that employees must work more than 70 hours per week, advising candidates who cannot accept this condition to withdraw. Thoughtfully, Rilla offers free breakfast, lunch, and dinner for employees, including Saturdays.

Another startup's CEO stated that in a startup's first two years, implementing a 996 work system is virtually the only option besides having no alternatives.

On social platforms like Reddit, American users express anger and bewilderment at the 996 invasion in various ways. More extreme voices point directly at Musk – the "American spokesperson" for the 996 spirit. One user named Inquisitive_Azorean commented: "Our business oligarchs like Elon Musk advocate for implementing these things in America while simultaneously complaining about declining American birth rates."

Demanding employees burn out their lives in struggle while requiring them to have more children – isn't this schizophrenic?

**Learning from Europe? Learning from China?**

Tech innovation companies represented by Silicon Valley once carried the optimistic prophecy of technology liberating human labor. As early as 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes boldly predicted that by the end of the 20th century, high-level automated mass production could replace most work, requiring people to work only 15 hours per week, with abundant time available to pursue the art of living.

Although Keynes' envisioned "15-hour work week" has not yet become universal reality, an undisputed fact is that the 20th century can indeed be called a "pastoral era" of generally declining labor time and gradually increasing leisure time.

Looking back to 1900, American manufacturing workers were still accustomed to working from "first light to dark," averaging over 60 hours per week. Thanks to waves of technological innovation and surging labor rights movements, this number slowly declined. In 1938, Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, formally establishing the legal standard of no more than 40 hours per week.

During the post-war golden age (1945-1973), a typical American middle-class family model was that an adult male working about 40 hours per week could earn a stable income sufficient to support the family, while his wife could stay home managing household affairs and caring for children.

After the golden age ended, although American wage levels stagnated, dual-income families became mainstream, and the gig economy gradually emerged, Americans' average weekly working hours continued to decline steadily. According to Statista data, as of 2024, Americans' average weekly working hours had dropped to 34.3 hours, equivalent to 1,799 annual working hours.

However, among major Western developed economies, Americans remain representatives of diligence and hard work, with 1,799 annual working hours significantly higher than Italy's 1,734 hours, Japan's 1,611 hours, Britain's 1,524 hours, France's 1,500 hours, and Germany's 1,343 hours.

It can be said that compared to the relatively relaxed work pace of continental Europe, when facing the impact of high-intensity "996" work culture from the East, America – the economic engine of the Western world – became the most vulnerable breakthrough point in the Western world.

In fact, domestic complaints about "excessive working hours" in America have long existed. Polls show that 49% of Americans feel stressed and burned out at work. Just last March, with strong support from numerous California legislators, leftist politician Bernie Sanders submitted the "32-Hour Work Week Act" to both houses, calling for the gradual implementation of a four-day work system within 3-4 years without cutting wages, thereby reducing the legal 40-hour work week to 32 hours.

Sanders believes that compared to 1938 when the 40-hour work week was established, American worker productivity has increased by 400%, but the development gains have been mostly pocketed by corporate executives and Wall Street investors, while workers' legal working hours and actual income have stagnated. In the current era of AI and robotics sparking a new technological revolution, it's time to change this unfair situation and let America's working class "share the benefits."

Sanders' proposal won cheers from young people, and America seemed to be on the path toward aligning with Western Europe. However, to Sanders' great dismay, before the work-hour reduction proposal could pass through Congress, a powerful current from the East emerged halfway, striking directly at the heart of Silicon Valley in California and igniting a raging fire.

The more ironic point is that the first to overturn the table was precisely the tech industry that Sanders and others had high hopes for – the industry expected to shorten human working hours. But thinking carefully, this isn't contradictory. Sanders envisioned the liberating power of the tech industry, while those vigorously promoting 996 are the owners and executives of tech companies – people who extract enormous profits from the tech explosion. For them, the need for acceleration far exceeds the need for leisure.

This indeed shows that discussing only productivity without discussing production relations is pure nonsense.

**Scholarly Justification**

Chinese internet "entry theory" once famously stated: "After entry, there will naturally be great scholars to justify our doctrine." When 996 invaded California, though it faced cultural resistance, it still needed great scholars to debate against the masses in the face of surging public opinion.

The "great scholars" are divided into two schools: the first is the "delayed gratification school," and the second is the "sacrifice for country school."

The core doctrine of the "delayed gratification school" is concise and full of temptation: innovation requires sacrifice, and sacrifice will ultimately bring enormous returns. Its representative figure is precisely Musk.

Musk and others believe that to achieve technological breakthroughs and capital returns, tech company practitioners must invest extraordinary work intensity in the short term. However, this sacrifice can yield rich rewards. Employees who dedicate themselves not only change the world but can also gain huge returns as "early shareholders" if the company successfully goes public or is acquired at high prices, winning financial freedom for the rest of their lives.

In other words, 996 is a tempting magical transaction. The "delayed gratification school" sells young engineers a tempting "Faustian bargain": use current precious life time (health, family, personal life) as collateral to exchange for a free future guaranteed by enormous wealth.

The "delayed gratification school" is rooted in American business tradition, filled with American individualism and the atmosphere of capitalism's primitive savage accumulation. In comparison, "sacrifice for country" has a more weighty sense of grand narrative, placing overtime in the dimensions of geopolitics and historical evolution, constructing new narrative strategies: overtime is to defend America's technological hegemony, a geopolitical competition that cannot be lost.

Venture capitalist Harry Stebbings is a typical representative of this school. He firmly believes that when Chinese tech companies are already practicing the more stringent "007" work model, lazy European and American counterparts who don't strive to catch up will lose the initiative in the heated competition of the US-China tech war.

To win this competition, Western tech companies urgently need to invest unprecedented labor intensity and incubate more tech companies. Stebbings even believes 996 is far from enough – European and American employees should learn from the advanced Eastern experience of 007. He asserts confidently, "If you want to build a $100 million company, you can work 5 days a week, but if you want to build a $10 billion company, you must work 7 days a week."

Behind Stebbings stand numerous American investment giants. When 996 first gained fame in the Western world, they cast envious glances at this mysterious force. Sequoia Capital venture capitalist Mike Moritz claimed that Silicon Valley has become mentally confused by discussing "life inequality," while in China, employees work 6-7 days a week, 14 hours a day, making doing business in China easier than in California.

Angel investor Jason Calacanis of companies like Uber, Thumbtack, and Wealthfront said we must engage in direct confrontation with China's 996 work system – you can attack them on social media (which is meaningless), or you can formulate your own winning plan.

To defeat China in the tech war, American financial giants decided to "learn from the enemy's advanced techniques to defeat the enemy," using 996 to defeat 996. Unfortunately, none of these investors participate in actual R&D processes.

Various countries' elites have truly achieved "different mountains and rivers, same wind and moon" in manipulating their own young people into overtime work.

**Local Adaptation**

While scholarly eloquence can attract some ambitious young people, most people's reaction remains indifferent. To promote 996, some American companies have begun to explore locally adapted methods.

The core of this approach is: giving employees choices, allowing them to freely decide whether to accept high-intensity work arrangements under the premise of incentives and voluntariness.

Ritchie Cartwright, founder of San Francisco-based telemedicine company Fella & Delilah, recently posted on LinkedIn that he decided to adopt an incentive-based approach to attract some employees to accept the 996 work system. Specific measures include allowing employees to voluntarily sign up for 996, with those willing to join receiving a 25% salary increase and 100% equity increase, while others can maintain their original work pace. Reportedly, less than 10% of employees have signed up.

Less than 10% – one must say this is quite dismal.

In other words, so far, 996's cultural export to Silicon Valley is a story of American business owners and angel investors using various grand narratives to coerce and entice young employees into accepting long working hours. Currently, California's political circles and employee groups are not buying it, instead favoring Sanders' 32-hour work week.

Perhaps for a long time to come, American workers will need to face the historic dilemma of "learning from Europe" or "learning from China."

This choice implies the question: Has technology actually made life better?

Silicon Valley was once a pioneer representative of technological progress, carrying expectations of making labor more free. However, technology doesn't necessarily lead directly to worker welfare. As automation equipment and AI large models replace more and more human labor, workers' competition for remaining positions will only become more intense.

The high-intensity labor culture of "if you don't do it, someone else will" may have replaced the essence of innovation, alienating it into a sacrifice for corporate profit growth. Technology hasn't liberated labor; instead, it has become a tool for accelerating worker consumption.

The coexistence of humans, technology, and capital may be the greatest challenge facing Silicon Valley.