To break the equilibrium of this non-cooperative game, there must be the guidance and intervention of the company.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “InfoQ” (ID: infoqchina), Author: Leo Huang.
As an IT industry insider in the United States, I have always followed the development of domestic IT. The two numbers 35 and 996 are not uncommon in WeChat, whether it is in the Moments of Friends or the official account. The most recent article “A 40-year-old programmer was reprimanded by the post-90s for 996, what happened to this world? 》Successfully put these two numbers in the same title.
“He was aggrieved. My output is not low, not lower than any post-90s who insist on 996. The post-90s leaders also admit this. His output is not a problem, but the leaders think that he is like this My work attitude is not good and I hope he can improve. He said, “Isn’t it enough for me to do my job well? Is it wrong to do fast and do better? I have to do 996 every day to become a foreigner. But the leadership is still Persevere, and even say that even if your ability is strong, if your attitude does not meet the company’s requirements, you may have to discuss whether you want him to resign.”
——Excerpt from “40 Years Old” by tinyfool
This article highlights the awkward situation of older soft workers. In addition to the recently popular topic of “involution”, I also want to talk about some of my thoughts.
The overtime culture and 996 are an important reason for the involution of the programmer’s profession. Without the constraints of the system, this is actually a non-cooperative game. Programmers go to work without time and space boundaries, and eight hours a day cannot be the equilibrium point of the game. Once someone in a team or company starts to work overtime and receives a salary or promotion in return, others will definitely follow suit. Those who are unwilling to work overtime will be eliminated. The final equilibrium point reached is 996. Because this is basically the bottom line for programmers to maintain physical health and family harmony: if you increase the workload, the loss in personal life will exceed the profit in your career; if you reduce the workload, you will suffer in the workplace. In this way, no one can unilaterally change the strategy to obtain greater comprehensive benefits. This is the equilibrium point of this game.
The output under 996 can indeed bring more economic benefits to the company, but can the extra return returned to the individual match everyone’s extra effort? Assuming that the latter is much greater than the former, the biggest beneficiaries of the final equilibrium point of this non-cooperative game are the company and their senior management, not everyone’s good fortune.
Another situation created by 996 is 35. 35 years old has become a recognized workplace watershed for programmers. Older people have a family and a small family. They really can’t fight young people physically, and they are eliminated under this overtime culture. Very natural result.
How to avoid the equilibrium point between 996 and 35? Only rely on corporate culture. Corporate culture, success and failure, and failure.
Screw and 10x Programmer
Why does 996 have its place? I think we should start with the discussion of the value of programmers. Are programmers creative talents or skilled workers? In the article “40 Years Old”, ordinary programmers are described as “cannon fodder”. I think this is an exaggeration. The author’s meaning may be to be a “screw”. It is true that “some companies would rather sacrifice an excellent 10 times programmer than let him ‘bring out 100 ordinary programmers’” under a certain value system. If a company just treats “ordinary programmers” as workers or screws, then what they value is execution and the spirit of hard work-it doesn’t have to be much innovation, because the direction is fixed. For them, screws are better and more productive.
Why is the non-cooperative game of 996 not established in other IT companies? In the book “How Google Works”, Google executives gave their recruitment criteria, which is the so-called “smart creative”: they are not traditional knowledge workers (knowledge workers), but very creative and daring Try, not afraid of failure, “disobedient” engineer.
Such people are called hackers on Facebook. Such people are called creative workers in Netflix. You said, can they use 996 to restrict it? If the project is full of challenges, you can’t stop them from working day and night if you hold a gun against them; conversely, if they find the assigned project boring and the troika can’t pull them, they will either discover their own projects or just Byebye with you. Therefore, such a company will not promote the overtime culture, and there will never be a boss asking why the subordinates leave work when they arrive, because doing so will push your smart creative into the arms of your competitors as quickly as possible.
So the first step to solve this problem is the positioning and value evaluation of the programmer. Different values lead to different company cultures. If the company allows it to be natural, or fundamentally believes that this is a “blessing” for employees and encourages a culture of overtime (not to mention requiring overtime), then this kind of inward rolling vicious competition will occur.
To break this non-cooperative gameWe must have the guidance and intervention of the company. In many IT companies in the United States, the management tried their best to prevent the occurrence of 996. Every Facebook manager—up to the VP, down to the first-line manager—will have an indicator called work-life balance in the semiannual poll. In order to reduce the work pressure of employees, the company added silent mode messages and delayed messages to the office communication application, so as not to disturb everyone’s normal life outside of working hours. I believe that this is a good blessing for programmers who are managed by WeChat and need to reply to boss messages at any time. As a technical director, I am busy at work, but I can freely manage my working hours. Sometimes I choose to work in the quiet hours of the evening. In this case, I try to use the delayed release function in my after-hours communication to the team.
The most important element that affects the game is the incentive of the players in the game, which is also something that the corporate culture can change. The article “40 Years Old” mentioned ten times programmers-in fact there are hundreds of times programmers, here are collectively called ten times programmers. How do companies like Google, Microsoft and Netflix avoid the outflow of tenfold programmers? Ten times the programmer should get ten times the reward. The ten times referred to here is an imaginary number. The specific number varies from company to company.
Netflix gave “rock-star pay” in the book “No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention”, which is the highest price in the market; Google calls it disproportional in “How Google Works” ; Bill Gates believes that the value of a great programmer is ten thousand times that of the average programmer. Therefore, if it is driven by profit, in a company that is ten times as good as programmers, working overtime is not a game strategy for good programmers. Their goal is ten times as much programmers.
In fact, ten times the motivation of programmers comes more from the challenges and sense of accomplishment of the work itself, rather than salary, as mentioned in the book “How Google Works”. When everyone’s incentives are changed, the deadlock in this non-cooperative game is naturally solved. The value of these smart creatives to the company is not measured by their working hours, but by their creativity: They open up new directions for the company and bring more opportunities to the team and the company. This is no longer a zero-sum game. Involution, but a win-win situation; this is not involution, but evolution!
Genius also needs time to accumulate
Back to the suspensionAnother number on the sequencer’s head is “35”: This number is like an alarm clock, ticking, making people anxious. I have led and reviewed hundreds of interviews in my career and recruited a large number of engineers. The word age has never appeared in recruitment discussions.
Of course, we here (the United States) have laws prohibiting all kinds of discrimination on age, gender, etc. in recruitment, but this is not the only reason. Relying on legal deterrence is not enough, because invisible discrimination is actually difficult to grasp empirical evidence, so it is necessary to exclude age and gender discrimination in the company culture.
Why 35 is a hurdle in China is because of the programmer’s value positioning problem we discussed earlier. If you are an intellectual worker, you cannot fight for young people with physical strength and dedication; but if you are looking for smart creative and ten times programmers, that is another matter. Such talents are not produced by working overtime, nor are they determined by age. Geniuses also need time to accumulate. For details, please refer to Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour law. A tenfold programmer I brought was cultivated in eight years.
If programmers are anxious to switch to management, no matter how good the talent is, there is not enough room for development. Understanding this bureau requires a change in the entire industry, because programmers must consider the needs of the industry as a whole in order to ensure the mobility of the workplace. If the entire industry is the cutting line, then they have no choice.
Look forward to the emergence of leading companies
Unlocking the bell still needs to be the person who is the bell — the deadlock of non-cooperative games can also be solved by the game method, but this needs to rise from the game within the company to the game in the industry.
No one likes 996 and 35. Young people nowadays have to think about their 35.
If one or two companies in China can use smart creative as a team to achieve the talent density (talent density) pursued by Netflix, abandon the overtime culture, generate tremendous innovation and ten times the efficiency, and achieve industry First, to attract more smart creatives with their corporate culture and competitiveness, and form positive feedback, then they may become the leaders of this new non-cooperative game, become the target of imitation of competitors, and change the industry game from then on Towards an optimal equilibrium point.
The rapid development of IT and the Internet in China in the last ten years has begun to lead the world in many fields, which is obvious to all around the world. I hope that domestic colleagues can make a breakthrough in the situation of 996 and 35: “The long winds and waves will sometimes hang on the clouds and sail to the sea!”
About the author:
Leo Huang (Huang Lifei), has worked in American technology companies for many years, has more than ten years of software engineer experience, transformed technology management five years ago, is currently the engineering director, and leads a multinational team of nearly 80 people. Personal Chinese blog Writing Is Leading: https://writingisleading.com/.