If we ignore setting and presume an international audience, then it makes sense to also ignore the minimums in laws and reduce it to base principles. Which makes grind culture even worse.

If you regularly work more than 40 hours a week you are being exploited. Regardless of your profession, wage, ownership stake, or what claims your local laws would let you pursue.

This extends very nicely to monthly and annual labor statistics. 72 hour weeks for certain irregular situations like “bringing in the harvest” may not be exploitive, so long as the ratio of hours worked to hours elapsed drops beneath 24%. (5/7/3).

Some jobs need exempt employees because they run on call rotations and so forth,

Being on call with highly flexible hours absolutely is not sufficient to make you federally exempt. There are only three things:

1. You’re a bonna fide manager of the organization empowered to sets the schedule and can hire additional staff as needed.
2. You work in a specifically exempted profession, regardless of schedule.
3. Your non-overtime compensation puts you over a specific dollar amount threshold.

And, as with most things, your state may have stricter rules. You may also have an employment agreement that grants overtime even if you would be otherwise exempt. But as with the rest of the minimum wage, the federal rule sets a floor that your employer can’t go under without risking you suing them for stolen wages.

Overtime rules are 50% wage after 40 hours except for management (based on job duties, not whether or not you’re salaried) and certain professions paid at least a certain wage.

996 is a 72 hour week, so 32 of overtime being paid at time-and-a-half. Which means 48 pay-hours, on top of the regular 40 means… Uh… Eww.

I think I’ll just skip to the end and assume anyone advocating 996 is a racist dirtbag, thank you very much. (In addition to being an exploitive bootlicker…)