Asian Tech Press (Sep 9) -- Some Chinese employees complained about a 17% general pay cut after the end of compulsory weekend overtime at ByteDance Ltd., the most popular non-gaming app worldwide TikTok's parent company.
ByteDance suddenly announced two months ago that it would end its weekend overtime policy from Aug. 1, 2021. And starting from August, teams and individuals who have the need can submit overtime applications through the system.
However, there was dissent within the company over the decision. One-third of the employees held an opposing view, saying that they would significantly reduce their income.
August 31 was the first payday after ByteDance canceled compulsory weekend overtime. Once the money reached them, ByteDance employees collectively blew up -- their salaries were sharply reduced! The ByteDance employees who received their paychecks found that their wages were adjusted downward to varying degrees than usual.
Some employees posted that the general adjustment of all staff in ByteDance fell by 17%, especially for employees engaged in R&D and other positions with generally higher wages.
Recently, an employee certified as "ByteDance Senior Backend Software Engineer" posted on a social media platform, saying, "Without overtime pay, I can only drive Didi (China's Uber) to subsidize my family," and attached a picture of getting trip requests.
With the cancellation of weekend overtime policy, is ByteDance employees' salary really going to fall off a cliff?
The weekend overtime policy, commonly known as "996", a gruelling business culture that usually means work hours from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. And 996 is a way of working in Chinese Internet companies, either openly or secretly. More specifically, it means one day off a week, two days off the next week, then a day off again, then two days off again, and so on and so forth. This is 20 days more than normal working days a year, which is equivalent to one more month of work per year.
Some ByteDance insiders told the media that there would be twice the overtime pay for working on Sundays, and its cancellation would mean a pay cut, expected a loss of 100,000 yuan ($15,482) income per year.
According to the information on recruitment platforms, the salary of the ByteDance Senior Backend Software Engineer is RMB 20k-40k. According to such calculation, employees will indeed lose a large amount of income as ByteDance ends compulsory weekend overtime.
(US$1 = 6.4591 yuan)
