社畜

What does 社畜 mean?

A 社畜 is a salaried worker who has accepted that the company sets the terms: overtime without argument, group chats that ping at midnight, days that never fully belong to oneself. The word is used on oneself, rarely at others, and arrives with a tired half-smile rather than open anger. It sits beside the vocabulary of 996 schedules and the 打工人 meme, though 社畜 sounds bleaker: a 打工人 straightens up and goes in, while a 社畜 has stopped counting the hours. Office jokes lean on the livestock metaphor openly: reports weighed like feed, early meetings like milking time.

Where does 社畜 come from?

The word is a loan from Japanese, where 社畜 merges 会社 (company) and 家畜 (livestock), a coinage from the late 1980s. It crossed into Chinese through Japanese drama, anime and business coverage, and around 2019 it settled into daily use on the back of debates about work culture in the tech industry. 日经中文网 published a May 20, 2019 piece on how Chinese white-collar workers had taken the word up.

How to use 社畜

• 凌晨一点还在改周报，他发了条动态：社畜的一天结束了。
  Língchén yì diǎn hái zài gǎi zhōubào, tā fā le tiáo dòngtài: shèchù de yì tiān jiéshù le.
  Still rewriting his weekly report at one in the morning, he posted: another day as a 社畜 is over.
• 面试时HR说弹性工作制，入职后他才知道弹性的是下班时间。
  Miànshì shí HR shuō tánxìng gōngzuòzhì, rùzhí hòu tā cái zhīdào tánxìng de shì xiàbān shíjiān.
  At the interview HR promised flexible hours; after joining, he learned the only flexible thing was when he could leave.