Employees At Xiaomi Work Insane Hours - Just Like Apple

Xiaomi's Vice President of International, Hugo Barra, has revealed the crazy hours that employees at the Chinese smartphone manufacturer work.

In an interview with the BBC, Barra claimed that Xiaomi's standard working hours are from 9.30 in the morning through to 9.30 at night. That's a huge demand to make of staff, even at tech companies.

Here's Barra's answer when asked about the culture at Xiaomi:

Our company working hours are 9.30 in the morning to 9.30 in the evening, and that's just the regular working hours, plus one hour for lunch. But show up in our office here at 11pm and you'll see that 80% of the people are still around often because they're working on something that they feel is so important that they need to spend extra time on it.

Xiaomi's working hours are similar to its biggest rival: Apple. Two former Apple managers revealed in a podcast just how much time the company demands.

Apple employees are expected to reply to emails in the early hours of in the morning, and Sunday evenings become work nights because the company has its exec meeting on Monday. Tim Cook, the company's CEO, is famed for getting into the office early each morning.