San Francisco tech workers are working Saturdays now

996 is real

Have you heard of 996? It’s the demanding work schedule that calls for working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. Apparently, it’s the new thing in the San Francisco tech scene, and it’s all anyone can talk about (search Twitter).

So far, this has been a story based on vibes, not data. But I looked at Ramp transaction data and found 996 is real. San Francisco-based employees are increasingly working on Saturdays, and it’s already showing up in spend trends.

The chart above uses Ramp corporate card data to analyze the share of employee transactions for restaurants, delivery, and takeout by hour of the week for San Francisco-based businesses. I compared January through August 2025 to the same months in 2024 and plotted the difference in hourly share. Using shares rather than levels controls for overall growth in card usage. The result is clear: beginning around noon on Saturdays and running through midnight, there’s a pronounced jump in activity this year that wasn’t present last year. During the rest of the week, the differences are small and often negative. The Saturday surge is doing the work.

I want to highlight three things that make this trend unique:

1. It’s new. We did not observe a Saturday bump like this in 2024, 2023, or prior years. The pattern emerges in 2025, which lines up with the recent wave of Bay Area discourse (and hiring trends) around longer hours.

2. It’s specific to San Francisco. Nationally, the Saturday pattern is muted. Even in other major tech hubs, the effect is small. I ran the same analysis for New York and saw only a slight uptick on Saturdays, roughly a quarter the size of San Francisco’s, and it’s concentrated after 8 p.m. That looks more like late dinners than a full extra workday.

3. It’s more than just tech. The Saturday increase shows up across sectors among SF-based companies on Ramp, not only software. If this were purely a handful of AI startups feeding teams on the weekend, we’d expect a narrower footprint. (Caveat: Ramp is skewed toward tech-forward businesses, even if they’re not in tech. But I don’t think all firms, like a standard retail chain, are necessarily adding more employee hours).

Restaurant and delivery receipts are an imperfect measure of work, but for corporate cards, they’re a good proxy for being “on the clock” (team meals, office catering, post-work dinners). The timing and the cross-industry pattern are consistent with a sixth workday becoming more common in the city.

So the headline is simple: the 996 schedule now has a measurable signature in San Francisco’s spending data. It’s recent, it’s local, and it extends beyond tech. If you’ve felt the city’s weekend hustle returning, it’s now quantifiably true.

For more analysis of Ramp spend data, follow me on X and LinkedIn. All data is available for download from Ramp Economics Lab.