You're still not covering the core of his argument. He also says:
>“If you find a job you like, the 996 problem does not exist; if you’re not passionate about it, every minute of going to work is a torment,” Ma said in a post on his Weibo account on Sunday.
The point he's making is not that 996 is bad, he's saying it's bad for people who aren't passionate about what they do. It only works for people who are passionate about their jobs.
Now let's take that into consideration shall we, do you think he's saying that it's fine for you to turn up to BABA and do a 9-5 and tell your boss that you're not passionate enough to do 996? Hell No! In fact he says:
> if you’re not passionate about it, every minute of going to work is a torment
So here's the choice he's laying out - either you're passionate and you're happy to work 996 (and by corollary you need to work 996 to demonstrate your passion or commitment) or every moment is a torment and clearly you shouldn't be employed there.
So no, he's not endorsing forcing people to work 996. He's endorsing forcing people to pretend they want to work 996. Which by the way, isn't sustainable for most people no matter how passionate they are.
Sounds very B/W. "You either love it, or it's a torment."
I think there's a lot of gray space between, that is actually fine. "I don't completely love the job, but it can be fun sometimes, and it pays the bills."
It sounds like something someone trying to manipulate you would say, if I think about it. The usual: "taking two extreme sides and creating a false dichotomy".
Passionate or not, there's only a certain amount of real productive work you can do in a certain amount of time, and there's more to life than spending all of it working and barely recovering from that work. At some point, I'd still like to hang out with friends or family, do sports, go drinking, live life.
>“If you find a job you like, the 996 problem does not exist; if you’re not passionate about it, every minute of going to work is a torment,” Ma said in a post on his Weibo account on Sunday.
The point he's making is not that 996 is bad, he's saying it's bad for people who aren't passionate about what they do. It only works for people who are passionate about their jobs.
Now let's take that into consideration shall we, do you think he's saying that it's fine for you to turn up to BABA and do a 9-5 and tell your boss that you're not passionate enough to do 996? Hell No! In fact he says:
> if you’re not passionate about it, every minute of going to work is a torment
So here's the choice he's laying out - either you're passionate and you're happy to work 996 (and by corollary you need to work 996 to demonstrate your passion or commitment) or every moment is a torment and clearly you shouldn't be employed there.
So no, he's not endorsing forcing people to work 996. He's endorsing forcing people to pretend they want to work 996. Which by the way, isn't sustainable for most people no matter how passionate they are.