AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
A new all-consuming work culture is the latest craze among Silicon Valley tech companies. It's called 996, working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. And it seems like a big shift from just a few years ago when pingpong tables, nap rooms and other perks were the trademarks of a job in tech. To tell us more about it, we're joined by Margaret O'Mara. She's a professor of history at the University of Washington and the author of "The Code: Silicon Valley And The Remaking Of America." Welcome to the program.
MARGARET O'MARA: Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: So can you tell me more about this 996 schedule? Where does it come from, and what does it entail? It sounds kind of scary to me.
(LAUGHTER)
O'MARA: It certainly does. It has its origins in China's tech industry. This was something that became such a pattern that actually the Chinese government tried to ban it 'cause it was leading to such overwork by young tech workers, and tech workers themselves were pushing back against it. It's a work schedule that doesn't really allow you to have much of a life.
RASCOE: But now it's showing up in some U.S. tech companies.
O'MARA: Yeah, it's definitely, you know, crossed over the Pacific. But look, the tech industry has always been a pretty hard-charging place. And even though we have the pingpong tables and the climbing walls and the free food, you know, part of the reason all those things were there at these companies was to encourage people to keep working and stay at the office and have no reason to leave.
RASCOE: How big is this trend? Is it just a few firms, or is this, you know, seeming to be widespread?
O'MARA: Well, I think probably, if you look and see when people are clocking in and clocking out, the 996 is probably just a few places or maybe even just a few individuals.
RASCOE: And so is this different from the past, or is this a kind of a return to form for tech companies? - this idea of, like, just grind it out, you know, you're working on code all day and all night and stuff?
O'MARA: The Valley has always had this California casual exterior and this workaholic interior. But this is something that is a change in vibe, so to speak, from a few years ago. If we dial back to the early years of the COVID pandemic when tech companies were growing fast, adding a lot of workers, the tech market was really tight, and workers had a bit of an upper hand. They were pushing back against their employers.
And that has really changed. The tech market is not as tight as it was. There have been a lot of layoffs. Big companies and the leaders of big companies have kind of taken back control and said, you know, we're going to set the pace, and you're going to follow it.
RASCOE: Well, how feasible is working a schedule like this, especially for people with families? I mean, it seems like it would be impossible if you're working 12 hours a day, six days a week.
O'MARA: Yeah, and it does exclude a whole bunch of people that might have other obligations - not only people who might want to be doing things outside of work, but for caregiving reasons can't work all the time and put work before everything else. And so for an industry that already has a kind of - a demographic homogeneity - it skews young, it skews male. If you're celebrating a culture of extremely hard work - of sleeping under your desk, of subsisting on pizza and ramen noodles and not paying attention to anything others - outside the office - then you are really further reinforcing that homogeneity and making it a domain of people who are willing to work hard and don't have any other obligations on them.
RASCOE: Is there a link that you see between this new approach or this approach in Silicon Valley and trends in the US economy? And also, is this about AI and the changes that are coming there? Do people need to show that they're worth more than AI or something?
O'MARA: Well, I think that's it. I mean, workers have to work hard to show their worth. It is a job market where there are threats of layoffs. There also are threats of being replaced by AI, particularly if you're a coder. I mean, that's the job category that's been, you know, listed as the No. 1 endangered species in the new AI labor revolution, potentially.
RASCOE: Do you see any relationship between this trend and the brighter changes in culture and politics that we're seeing?
O'MARA: I think these two things are closely connected - not necessarily the same thing, but they're kind of different dimensions of the same trend. Let's face it, when we talk about Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley is a giant industry. You know, many hundreds of thousands of people work there, but, you know, there's a great deal of concentration of power at the very top with a few very, very wealthy entrepreneurs and investors, Elon Musk being one of them, who many of whom have become very openly political and have become very vocal supporters of Donald Trump.
And so there really has been a sea change away from the kind of Obama-era Silicon Valley that was all about, we're making the world a better place, and this is kinder, gentler capitalism, and you can work hard, but you can make the world better. And so that kind of idealism - that's not something at the forefront anymore.
RASCOE: That's Margaret O'Mara, professor of history at the University of Washington. Thank you so much for joining us.
O'MARA: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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