I worked 996 in China as a British expat and am relieved to be fired

• Jack Forsdike is a British citizen who worked for two years at a Chinese tech giant in Guangzhou.
• He experienced 996 when he became a game designer in 2024 and soon realized why he was feared.
• He told BI how 996 took control of his life and that it was only the bare minimum expected of him.

This is an essay as told, based on a conversation with Jack Forsdike, a 28-year-old British expat from Manchester who worked from 2022 to 2024 for one of China’s biggest game developers. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider verified Forsdike’s hiring.

When I first learned that I would be subjected to China’s infamous 996 hours, I was actually excited.

At that point, I had been working in Guangzhou for almost two years as an English-Chinese interpreter for a local tech giant.

But my passion was in game design, so it was my dream come true when my employer offered me a development role in January 2024.

HR told me straight up that my hours would increase drastically.

As a performer, I got used to an office life from seven. Instead, developers were expected to work from 10am to 10pm every day, six days a week.

That’s not what our contracts said, but it was understood as the norm.

At the time, being put on 996 felt like I was being recognized. I had the idea that those working hours meant that I was part of a serious, valuable team and that my productivity mattered.

I soon realized how naive I was.

Life did not exist outside of 996

My 996 life didn’t start right away; I had just gotten married and asked my manager if I could leave the office early some days and not work every Saturday.

He agreed. As long as I could do my job, he said.

But eventually the work started to pile up. I should be in sometime Saturday or Sunday. Some days, I started leaving work at midnight.

Within months, my 996 program was in full swing. I spent my waking hours either leaving the office, being in the office, or arriving at the office.

Working weekends wasn’t going to pat me on the back. Even on Sundays, I learned that it was normal to see a third of the office around.

The worst month was April when my team was under pressure to meet a deadline. Western game developers use the term “crunch” to describe grinding unpaid overtime before a big release.

The normal 996 already felt like “crunch”, so this was “crunch” on steroids. There was a period where I worked 12- to 14-hour shifts for three weeks straight – about 20 extra days at the office without any rest.

I usually arrived at the office just before 10am for breakfast – where all meals were subsidized in the company canteen. Then I would work until 12:30, when it was time for lunch.

We enjoyed the privilege of a 90 minute lunch break during which I was able to grab a coffee with friends from the office and vent for an hour or so. I think that was one of the reasons I survived the 996 routine.

Then I would work again before having a quick dinner, after which I continued the rest of the night. This wasn’t really treated as overtime – my bosses regularly scheduled meetings from 9pm.

I would go home after midnight, take a shower and go straight to bed. Then I would get up and do it again.

Life outside of work was non-existent. I barely had face time with my wife. I stopped playing tennis, which is one of my favorite hobbies, and I couldn’t train. Every meal I ate was at the office cafeteria.

I began to realize that my health had taken a hit. I was losing muscle mass and gaining weight. It was getting unbearable, but I just prayed that the pressure would ease.

This was going to be my life

An ongoing knock was that we never saw the senior managers who made the decisions keeping us in the office. They were assigning deadlines from above and our team leaders were powerless to negotiate.

But what really hit my morale was the realization that this was a long-distance wait.

Lots of people work crazy hours at home in the UK. However, there is usually light at the end of the tunnel, such as a job or a promotion.

In 996, these hours are minimal. Everyone from my manager to my colleagues to my friends on other teams know that this professional life is endless and demanding, yet they all seem resigned to it.

With 996 as the industry standard, my colleagues were afraid that if they changed companies, they would end up in a tougher role.

I finally took a break in May. Labor Day is one of the biggest holidays in China’s “Golden Week” and I negotiated a longer period of leave as a condition of transitioning to my new role.

When I returned, I found out that most of my team, including myself, had been fired. Our project was essentially done, but the company decided to go back to an earlier stage of development of our game.

I was disappointed, especially since I had just worked crazy hours for this company. But a wave of relief washed over me too.

996 made me realize that I had been missing so much in my life outside of work and being laid off hit the reset button for me.

Senior managers need to know that the 996 mentality is simply outdated. It doesn’t make your teams more productive because it crushes morale and tired teams make more mistakes.

After leaving the office for good at the end of my 28-day notice in June, I spent some time away from work with my wife in the frozen city of Harbin.

My dream is still to make games in China, but I’m not sure if any company could attract me to work 996 hours again. There’s too much I’d lose.