If You Hate 996, You're Not Fighting Alone | QDaily's Report on Young People at Work

Our survey found that 54% of people steer clear of companies that demand 996 when they job hunt.

When it comes to work, young people have always been a little "contradictory."

On one hand, traditional workplace values like "dedication" and "ideals" no longer stir much in them; on the other, "I always feel like what I'm doing doesn't mean anything" suggests they still weigh things other than money. The office cynicism packed into phrases like "work is a battle" and "the workplace is cruel" turns them off, yet the workplace maxims that circulate on WeChat official accounts — "if you're not mid-level by 30, you're done for," "if your salary doesn't double, the job-hop was wasted" — still leave them doubting themselves. They say "colleagues are colleagues; don't talk about friendship at work", then admit that their social circle at the company is still an important part of their lives.

The QDaily Research Lab has run a number of open-ended surveys on work before, covering relationships with coworkers, the boundary between work and life, office language, company hiring and benefits, the difference between students and working professionals, workplace discrimination and "office politics", the subtler moods of office life, interview experiences, and why people quit or go back to school — among others. Each time we got a large number of answers from a wide range of angles.

Building on those, from February to March 2019 we put out a survey that let young people talk at length about life on the job. These are people known for "asserting their individuality," for insisting on boundaries between people, and for embracing difference and diversity — we wanted to know what they run into at work, and whether the many changes of 2018 and 2019 had reached them. In short, we wanted a more systematic picture of how young people today think about "work."

Posted on social media, the survey drew 3,353 valid responses. Respondents were mostly born in the 1980s and 1990s, and mostly female; most held at least an associate or bachelor's degree, more than 80% were in full-time jobs, and most worked in first- or second-tier cities. Few had more than ten years of work experience, and 30% were still on their first job (below, "career newcomers"). They came from every industry, with the three largest groups in IT/telecom/electronics/internet (below, "internet"), culture/media/entertainment/sports (below, "media and entertainment"), and finance.

Basically, this is a sample that leans heavily toward "young urban professionals" — especially young women.

8 Facts About Young People's Work Lives That You Might Find Interesting

The survey turned up plenty of interesting results.

Some were what we expected. For instance:

1. A third of young professionals plan to switch jobs, or are looking right now

Setting aside students still in school or on internships, 62% of the rest were "employed, with no plans to switch," while "employed but planning to switch" and "currently job hunting" came to 27% and 7%. In other words, during the survey period roughly one in three young professionals was planning to move or already looking.

2. "A new job every three years" is fairly common

Since a good share of respondents were still on their first job and had never been through a full "job search – onboarding – departure" cycle, we used "time spent at the previous company (among those who had switched at least once)" as a rough measure of how long different age groups stay in one position.

Taking the median of each answer choice and weighting it by votes, we get about 3.1 years for people born in the 1980s and 1.5 years for those born in the 1990s. Because the 1990s cohort has shorter work histories and more unstable elements mixed in — short internships, still hunting for a direction, less experience standing their ground — we think the 1980s figure is the more representative one.

LinkedIn's 2014 Job-Hopping Report also found that Chinese professionals stay an average of 2.8 years (34 months). All told, three years seems to be about how long people can stand one job these days.

3. Men and women pick jobs by roughly the same standards, though women care a bit more about the atmosphere

Because women made up such a large share of respondents, on the question "Why did you take your current job?" we focused on comparing what each gender wanted.

Most measures showed no real difference. The few options that differed by more than 3 percentage points were "good company atmosphere" (23% of women, 19% of men), "I know someone there / it makes things easy" (4% of women, 8% of men), and "an iron rice bowl, stable" (9% of women, 6% of men) — and none of them was the leading reason for either group.

4. Overtime is common, but it takes different forms in different industries

As an earlier report of ours noted, as the internet has spread, the "merging of work and life" has become a trend. But the kind of overtime — or overtime in disguise — varies by industry and role. Take the traditional kind, staying late: the three industries with the most overtime days per week are real estate/construction (1.5 days), finance (1.3 days), and internet (1.3 days). Take the newer kind, being on call at all hours: the industries with the largest share of people on standby are media and entertainment (40%), services (35%), and real estate/construction and business services (both 33%).

Our survey also showed that some workplace lore isn't very accurate. For instance:

5. "Money doesn't matter for your first job"

People with different amounts of experience choose jobs differently. Among those with experience (at least one job change behind them), the top three reasons for taking a job were "I'm good at it / interested in it," "I can learn something," and "the pay is high." Among career newcomers still on their first job, the most common answer was actually "I ended up here without really meaning to," followed by "I can learn something," with "I'm good at it / interested in it" third.

Every young person fresh out of school has heard the line "money doesn't matter for your first job." Our survey suggests it needs a second half: when you pick a first job, it's less that "money doesn't matter" than that "you're not sure what does." And while money can't be left out of the conversation, it is never the No. 1 reason — first job or not.

6. "Bosses love dangling big promises and talking up ideals"

Perhaps because most companies have figured out that "this generation of young people isn't so easy to fool," the top answer to "What empty promises have your boss or HR made you?" was "nothing at all" (43%), ahead of "a promotion and a raise" (40%). "Shares or options," a promise we have made fun of many times, came third, and only at 9%. This kind of plausible-sounding vision talk seems to get used less often than we assumed — at least, companies don't often try it on young employees.

7. "Every company loves overtime"

In fact, on "How much overtime does your job require each week," the most common answer was "none" (35%), ahead of "no fixed hours, on call at all times" (28%) and 1-2 days (21%). More telling: among the eight common reasons for overtime we listed, "the work genuinely isn't finished" (64%) came first, far ahead of "I don't dare leave while my boss or coworkers are still there" (14%) and "my company promotes an overtime culture" (13%). Overtime does depend on the industry and the job, but it doesn't reach the level of "every company loves overtime." People complain endlessly about overtime culture, true, but overtime for personal reasons is more common.

8. "Forget about friendship at work"

The QDaily Research Lab once ran an open-ended question, "What problems have you run into with workplace friendship?", and got 2,410 answers. The top-ranked ones nearly all leaned toward "there is no friendship at work" and "keep colleagues and friends apart."

In practice, though, our answers say otherwise: in this survey, in every age group, more than half admitted to "having friends at the company," and fewer than 30% were sure they had made no friends there at all.

7 More Numbers on the Small Details of Work Life

In "Those Unreliable Workplace Survival Guides" we already pushed back on some of the "workplace wisdom" that stirs up needless panic. This time we're using the seven numbers below to show more of the real, easily missed details of working life:

69%

The share who answered "unpaid" to "Is your overtime compensated?" One likely reason overtime goes unpaid: overtime in disguise — "sometimes or always having to keep an eye on work" (78%), "sometimes or always having to answer coworkers' messages outside working hours" (84%) — is too common.

1/3

The share of individuals hit by the "economic downturn" that began late last year. The most common effects were a smaller year-end bonus (16%), changed working hours (5%), and a pay cut (4%). The downturn's reach at the industry and company level was wider still: 57% said they had seen or felt moves such as cost control (35%), staff or business restructuring (27%), and bonuses cut or cancelled (22.4%).

1 hour

The "migratory bird" commute — outer ring to city center, suburbs to the CBD, sometimes one city to another — is not the daily reality for most young professionals: 77% spend less than an hour on the road each day.

190 people

The number who "never block coworkers from their Moments feed, but don't let coworkers see their own posts either." Only 14 people said the opposite: "every one of my Moments posts is open to coworkers, but I never look at theirs." Young people seem to watch their coworkers more than they show them.

3 hours

70% of people goof off for three hours or less a day at work, and only 17% have no time to goof off at all. More notable: even among the young people who work overtime because "the work genuinely isn't finished," 49% still doggedly goof off for over an hour a day. As the saying goes, the deadline is the primary productive force — but without goofing off there would be no deadline. Goofing off, it turns out, is a basic right of the modern workplace.

7.14

Young people's workplace anxiety index today. The "work stress index" is 6.47 and the "work motivation index" is 5.29 (all out of 10). Plainly, anxiety and stress have not converted into motivation for them: there are more office drones than workplace warriors.

64%

The share who belong to a coworker chat group that keeps the boss out. Two-thirds of them say they chime in occasionally; the rest mostly lurk. The catch: nearly half of the people in those groups (48%) also said they had "muted every company chat group." Joining is one thing; muting is another, and it shows no mercy.

7 Small "Level-Ups" You'll Probably Go Through After Starting Work

The QDaily Research Lab once ran a survey called "What Are You Most Anxious About After Graduating?" Of the 7,304 answers it received, the work-related option "I don't like my current job, but I don't know what I want to do either" came first, with 1,362 people agreeing.

But "not knowing what you're doing or what you should be doing" is only the short prologue to the long story of workplace trouble. The office is a game of grinding and leveling up; drawing on what people told us in the survey, here are the stages worth bracing for:

1. Should you go into a "hot" industry?

People pick hot industries for the same few reasons: "lots of opportunities," "high pay," "fast promotions." Looking only at reasons for taking a job, "the pay is high" came up most often in three industries — internet and finance (both 31%) and real estate/construction (27%). According to the most recent data from the National Bureau of Statistics, "information transmission, computer services and software" and "finance" top the list of average annual industry wages at 133,150 yuan and 122,851 yuan; "real estate" ranks 13th at 69,277 yuan. By income or by chatter, these have indeed been the industries with the strongest presence on social media in recent years.

Of course, being hot carries risk. In the survey, the industries with the largest share of people hit by an "industry winter" were internet (40%), transport and logistics (39%), finance (38%), and real estate/construction and manufacturing (both 37%) — several of them the popular ones. QDaily has reported on this before.

2. Is a "gap year" or a stretch without work a big deal?

Young people have long been cast as the impulsive type who would "quit on the spot over one disagreement, unfazed by a year out of work." In fact, over 60% of respondents had gaps of no more than three months, and only 2.8% actually managed "more than a year without working." The average gap was 64 days for people born in the 1980s and even shorter, 57 days, for those born in the 1990s (career newcomers excluded from both). The so-called gap year barely exists; most people would rather rest a couple of months and go back to work.

3. How do you balance warmth and distance when talking to coworkers?

Answering a coworker, women's favorite phrases were "OK~" (46%), "mm-hm" (39%), and "hahahaha" (30%), while men said "OK" most often (33%), followed by "OK~" (32%) and "mm-hm" (28%). Even when both are playing the office nice guy, men and women don't do it the same way.

4. How do you say "no" gracefully at work?

Asked "How do people in your job pass the buck gracefully?", only 18% put a hand on their heart and said "I have never done that." So for most people, saying no politely without damaging a relationship is a permanent necessity. Among the "nonviolent noncooperation" lines we listed for the office, the classic three — "you'd have to ask so-and-so about that" (42%), "I need to check with my boss first" (34%), and "it's going through the process" (31%) — never go out of fashion. In today's little red book of office jargon they rank about where "abandon" ranks in the CET-4/6 vocabulary list: the first word everyone memorizes, and the one nobody gets past.

5. Should you be "nice" at the office?

The QDaily Research Lab found earlier that "being nice doesn't get you very far at work", and the survey confirms it indirectly: more than half (52%) admitted to having lost their temper or gotten emotional at the office. The traditional subordinate who "swallows the anger, does as told, and stays invisible" doesn't seem to be in demand in young people's workplaces.

6. Is "talking about pay with coworkers" really that touchy?

Talking about pay with coworkers may once have been called a workplace taboo, but for young people it stopped being sensitive long ago: 52% have discussed their income with coworkers other than their boss or HR. With flatter management, more transparency, and the push for equal pay for equal work, the rule that "talking about money is fine, and handled well it may even earn you points" appears to be spreading into the office.

7. Should you commit to changing careers?

As we said, most of young people's workplace anxiety comes down to "direction," and the worry accumulates with age: asked what they worry about most at work, people born in the 1990s said "too little money" (52%), while those born in the 1980s said "burnout, or hitting a ceiling" (49%).

Since we were on career direction, we also asked how willing people were to change fields: "want to switch" and "don't want to switch" were neck and neck, both near 40%. But among those who wanted to switch, only 28% had done anything about it; for the rest, "I want to change careers" was still talk.

Finally, 9 Tips You Might Find Useful

We also drew some hard-won lessons out of the survey. For instance:

1. Don't look only at paid annual leave; the invisible benefits matter too. For both the 1980s and 1990s cohorts, the most useful benefits after the ever-reliable "annual leave" (77%) and "flexible hours" (55%) were "health checkups" (54%) and "housing subsidies" (52%). A 2017 report from the software company Qualtrics and the investment firm Accel Partners likewise found that "long-term, stable security," "flexible working hours," and "chances for professional training" were the forms of workplace care millennials valued most.

2. It's fine not to like the 996 schedule; it really isn't well liked. 54% say they steer clear of companies that demand 996 when they job hunt. And if you truly hate overtime, saying so early isn't necessarily useless: among those who refused to accept 996, close to 60% (59%) succeeded in avoiding heavy or disguised overtime.

3. If your boss makes you change your WeChat display name to "company + name," or orders you to answer instructions within three minutes, at least 60% of people will feel as offended as you do (and if you think "both of those are fine by me," at least 5% will agree with you too).

4. To avoid sinking early into daily commute hell, it's worth living within a two-hour round trip of the office, even in a megacity like Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou. In the survey, only 6% were long-haul commuters spending more than two hours on the road. The Road Traffic Safety Research Center under the Ministry of Public Security has published average commute times for China's 36 largest cities — even in a first-tier city like Shanghai it is only 57.6 minutes.

5. "Changing careers after the age of X" is not as frightening as it sounds; what's usually missing is the will to act. Among people with more than three years of experience, "switched careers successfully, and don't regret it" was consistently the largest group, holding steady at around 21% of everyone — more than "switched and failed" and "switched successfully but regret it" combined.

6. "Crying at the office" is really no big deal: 37% of people in the survey have done the same thing you did.

1. If you got along with a coworker, keep in touch after you leave. Among people who have left a job, 76% stay in contact with former colleagues, and half the time the reason is personal friendship rather than business. "No contact" and "contact for work only" together add up to just 30%. Plastic office friendship isn't the whole story.

2. Not wanting to repost the company's sponsored posts has nothing to do with being dedicated. 44% refuse to give the company free advertising on their own Moments feed, and people born in the 1990s guard that private social space more closely (46% of them refuse, against 35% of the 1980s cohort).

3. Adults need praise too, including from the boss. In an earlier quiz by the QDaily Research Lab, 78% of respondents said they cared a great deal about praise from their direct manager. Researchers in Canada and South Korea also ran a study that found an adult's mood depends heavily on the relationship with the boss, and that the effect grows stronger after 40.

4. There's no need to burden yourself with "love the work you do." In the survey, working people rated their own "fit with their career" at 5.84 on average, and their "fondness for the job" lower still, at 5.52 (both out of 10). But if your own score is well below the average, it may be time to change jobs.

Work is unquestionably part of our lives, sometimes the largest part. When young people talk about it, the ideal and the reality inevitably diverge, and both optimism and pessimism have their place. The findings above may not strike you as new. But if they get you to think again about what work is — so that you neither shrink your own feelings down to "it's just a job" nor let talk of "financial freedom," "winning at life," or "leveling up your career" persuade you that work is the only thing life can be — that may be the larger point of running this survey at all.

Cover image and illustrations by Zheng Shuya