Billionaire Jack Ma (馬雲) again encouraged tech workers to embrace the industry’s extreme-overtime culture, defying a growing social media backlash.
The Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) cofounder once more endorsed the sector’s infamous 12-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week routine as de rigueur for passionate young workers.
In a lengthy blog post on Sunday, China’s richest man expanded on comments from last week, in which he dismissed people who expect a typical eight-hour office lifestyle.
“As I expected, my comments internally a few days ago about the 996 schedule caused a debate and non-stop criticism,” Ma wrote. “I understand these people, and I could have said something that was ‘correct.’ But we don’t lack people saying ‘correct’ things in the world today, what we lack is truthful words that make people think.”
Ma’s earlier comments stoked a fierce ongoing debate over tales of programmers and founders dying from unrelenting stress.
Chinese tech workers last month protested labor conditions on the online code-sharing community GitHub under the banner 996.ICU, which quickly became the site’s most popular topic.
Beyond Ma, several of China’s most prominent industry figures have also weighed in on the controversy.
Richard Liu (劉強東), chief executive of Alibaba arch-foe JD.com Inc (京東), said in a post on his WeChat (微信) moments that, while he would never force staff to work a 996 schedule, people who slacked off were not considered his “brothers.”
On Sunday, Ma said forcing employees to work grueling hours was “inhumane” — but that some wanted to do so.
“Those who can stick to a 996 schedule are those who have found their passion beyond monetary gains,” he wrote.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained