[acthrowthrow123]

I agree, using a world "willing" is overstretch - it's more many of them don't have a choice. Competition is huge, most cannot simply move to live and work abroad. There was a recent movement of chinese millennials giving up the rat race to "lie flat". My chinese friend says 996 is unfortunately normal there and she wish she could live somewhere else without. For me this 996 is just modern type of slavery.

You have 24 hours every day. with 996 you:

- spend 8h sleeping,

- 12h working,

- at least 1h commuting both ways

that leave you only 3h left that you spend probably to eat, take shower, do grovery. Not much space for anything else.

I think I would prefer a prison life in some scandinavian country - at least you get a lot of free time to read all the books on your reading list.

[guard0g]

This 996 culture also exists in Taiwan (a democracy). Hard-work is a core part of Chinese Confucian philosophy (as is competitiveness). Many of my Chinese & Taiwanese coworkers have told me they emigrated overseas to US and EU just so they can work less (while still working more than everyone else in the company).

While slavery is forced labor, 996 is more about people trying to get ahead. During my wall street days, I elected to work 8 am - 2 am, 7 days a week for subpar pay, all because of future potential rewards. Many of my peers dropped out due to the pressure and didn't stick around for the big payoffs. If you interview them, no doubt they would consider themselves "slave labor."

[Claude_Shannon]

... how were you even able to sleep? You were working 18 hours daily, were you even able to go back to home to sleep? I'm not even talking about preparing food, groceries, and so on.