When founders put 996 in their job descriptions or Tweet about their 996 culture it’s a helpful signal to avoid that company.
The only time I’d actually consider crazy schedules was if I was the founder with a huge equity stake and a once in a lifetime opportunity that would benefit from a short period of 996.
For average employees? Absolutely not. If someone wants extraordinary hours they need to be providing extraordinary compensation. Pay me a couple million per year and I’ll do it for a while (though not appropriate for everyone). Pay me the same as the other job opportunities? Absolutely no way I’m going to 996.
In my experience, the 996 teams aren’t actually cranking out more work. They’re just working odd hours, doing a little work on the weekends to say they worked the weekend, and they spend a lot of time relaxing at the office because they’re always there.
whstl · 1h ago
996 is just theater for investors.
Saw this happening even at YC companies. There was always that stupid expectation of overworking, staying until 9.
The reality is that people twiddle thumbs.
And the disorganization and micromanagement power plays are enough to negate any additional worked hour.
This ranges from pure disorganization in terms of what to build to having 3 hour meetings with the whole fucking company where the CEO pretends they have something worthwhile to say for 3 hours.
graemep · 1h ago
> 996 is just theater for investors.
Investors who have not heard of the research into productivity that says long hours have no significant benefit for skilled work? Who have not heard of diminishing returns? Who have no experience of the reality of working long hours themselves?
akerl_ · 37m ago
The market for this is people who are convinced that the research only proved most people are lazy and unproductive. Surely these wiz kids we’re backing are too jazzed about their startup dreams to have their output decrease after the first 24 hours of constant caffeine and hacking.
ForOldHack · 3m ago
12 hours max then the crash of undecipjerable gibberish. See? Your brain requires rest. My 12 hours days had two naps. While the rest of the team did not, in only a month, everyone but me literally crashed and burned...the first clue was them not finishing sentences. Next was searching for words, and then the pause while they stare off into space. All the Facebook prison experiment.
rsynnott · 33m ago
A lot of these VC types, ah, not the smartest, to put it mildly. See their twitters (or, well, their investments; remember WeWork?)
graemep · 16m ago
A lot of their investments are made on the basis of what they can sell it for before it all falls apart.
So in that context theatre in general makes sense. Not sure why long working hours would be - its not something people fund managers about with regard to an IPO, for example, so it probably does not hugely raise exit values.
Sharlin · 52m ago
Yes, sounds like investors to me.
voidfunc · 43m ago
Theres a lot of very dumb investors.
citizenpaul · 9m ago
>Who have no experience of the reality of working long hours themselves?
The majority of rich people do not work for their money. They inherit or "soft inherit" the money. They do investment stuff because it makes them feel big and powerful and important.
You can tell by their speech patterns. Meet some rich people in real life and pay attention to just how slow their patterns of speech and movement are on average. Most of them act like they don't have a care and all the time in the world. Because they do and they always have. Hustle is for the plebs.
Look back at some of the big scams like Wework, FTX, theranos. I've read the documentaries and its the same story. All the rich people they bilked say the same thing. "THEY PAID SO MUCH ATTENTION TO ME" more or less.
masterj · 58m ago
Yes, many such cases
MrMorden · 15m ago
We have thousands of such caches.
ohdeargodno · 9m ago
>Who have no experience of the reality of working long hours themselves?
The vast, vast majority of investors are nepo babies that inherited dad's company and his trust fund. The rest of them that may have worked have deluded themselves into thinking it was because of their "hard work" they got there
So uh, yeah, they're dumbasses. But even then: they don't care that long hours have no significant benefit: the people that will accept 996 will do it for the same salary as someone doing a 9-5. Don't anthropomophize investors, they never see people, they see numbers.
throwawaybob420 · 45m ago
Investors are dipshits more often than not. Just because someone has money to throw doesn’t mean they know much about many things.
graemep · 34m ago
They also have to be stupid enough not to hire someone why does know things to manage their money for them.
dclowd9901 · 4m ago
Yeah they point to Chinese work culture but I think it probably resembles more Japanese work culture where you're just filling a seat until your boss leaves.
malthaus · 54m ago
what do you mean "even at YC companies" - they are the first to jump on any bandwagon hype train VC's are on.
throwawaybob420 · 44m ago
100%. You can identify what fads are going to hit critical mass based on the amount of YC companies pushing that same particular thing.
robterrell · 2h ago
If you're smart enough to get hired for one of these roles, and you're willing to work 996, be just a little bit smarter and found your own startup and take all the upside.
throwawaymaths · 12m ago
> just a little bit smarter and found your own startup
does that work? how do you convince investors to give you money if you don't have a network/didn't go to stanford?
scubbo · 1h ago
> and take all the upside
And all of the risk.
Encouraging anyone to start their own company is deeply irresponsible. Most startups fail. If you're needing encouragement to do it - if you're not already fully deluded that you're the special snowflake unique genius who will succeed where all others have failed - you shouldn't be doing it.
skeeter2020 · 55m ago
>> Most startups fail.
so how is it different being a salaried employee at one of these companies? You say they're likely to fail; shouldn't you get the bigger lottery ticket then?
jvanderbot · 4m ago
It is different because you collect a salary the whole time and build your resume. Its not like you file an LLC and then receive a check in the mail for two years of whatever you want.
For a CEO founder, 996 is necessary to even have a shot at building and fundraising, and even then you're likely to quickly fail. Instead an IC banks on joining a founder who has funding and can get more while you build and collect a reasonable salary, and save for rainy day.
whstl · 1h ago
First: regular employees are already taking the risk of being jobless some time in the future when joining startups.
Second: there is no CEO in tech taking a smaller salary than their employees.
jvanderbot · 43s ago
Counterpoint: is that because to become a CEO one most first obtain money to fund themselves and others?
An employee has the opposite arrangement, they find a job to receive money. A CEO finds money to have a job.
wombat-man · 1h ago
Well, sure, if you can raise capital then go for it. But if I'm burning savings trying to bootstrap that is just riskier than enjoying a salary with some risk of job loss.
komali2 · 1h ago
> Most startups fail.
So, where's the risk? You still just were working anyway, pulling a salary from someone else's bank account for a couple years. And now you have "Founder" or "Founding Engineer" or "CEO" or "CTO" on your resume. So you didn't have a good exit. So what?
annoyingcyclist · 20m ago
A founder who commits to 996 is as a side effect building a brand of "grit", "hustle", etc with their investors. That gives them options, regardless of whether 996 is actually useful for productivity and regardless of who is actually working harder as a result of 996: a golden jetpack into an executive role elsewhere when the company is sold for scrap, fundraising terms that give them liquidity not available to employees, a VC job, etc. They're also insulated from 996 to a degree that employees aren't. No one is going to count hours or badge swipes for the CTO/CEO of the company, and no one's going to tell them they can't leave the office early to spend time with their family. Even if they do work those hours, their job is different enough from normal employees to provide some protection from burnout.
As a rank and file employee, you get none of that. The investors don't even know who you are. The outcome for you if the company fails is that you're looking for another job while fighting burnout from longer hours and from working somewhere that doesn't respect you enough as a professional to let you manage your own time (which tends to come with other things that encourage burnout). All that to juice an "hours worked" KPI that research tells us is a questionable thing to focus on. You can do better.
yesimahuman · 34m ago
They're taking advantage of kids right out of college that don't know any better and don't have any other personal obligations. Anyone with experience or a few more years of life can see right through it. I agree, if you expect these hours you better be offering significant skin in the game to balance the scales.
NaomiLehman · 1h ago
I don't understand what kind of job, except for some very, very fringe cases like a NASA active mission or an atomic threat, would require a person to pull all-nighters. And how is that productive in the long-term? It's not exactly easy to hire talent.
georgeburdell · 6m ago
I have not pulled an all nighter proper (the worst was going to sleep at 6 and waking up at 7:30), but working late into the night is usually distraction free. During work hours, I feel obligated to quickly respond to coworker's emails and help requests, so most of my own work is worthless during that time unless it’s the equivalent of updating a config file
jaccola · 1h ago
People who enforce 996 or whatever other schedule are treating the symptom and not the cause.
What they really want is for all of their employees to be so in love with the work, so bought into the mission and so compelled by the vision that they want to work until late.
Of course building a company that inspires that is actually very difficult (though is possible for sure) so it’s easier just to enforce a crazy and unproductive schedule.
HPsquared · 1h ago
College trains people for this. Basically anything with strict deadlines. Most of my coursework was done at the latest possible time, in the early hours of the morning. I think these workplaces just carry over that vibe.
Kwpolska · 47m ago
College doesn’t train you for this, you just suck at time management and planning.
skeeter2020 · 52m ago
College does a terrible job of training you for anything like a startup; it's a marathon game, unlike the 12-16 week semester sprint. What you do in the most "polished" college project is like < 25% of what goes into a marketable software product.
CalRobert · 1h ago
It's been popping up in the who's hiring thread, embarrassingly.
That one's [flagged] [dead] at least, fortunately.
couscouspie · 50m ago
Your refusal of 996 is relatable for senior or mid level workers. But that's something less experienced people can not afford and in this market even unlucky seniors are forced to accept things they wouldn't have to 2 or 3 years ago.
malfist · 32m ago
> forced to accept things
Don't be a scab
SomaticPirate · 1h ago
We need to collate this. Is there a repo where we can mention companies that do this? I’ve talked to HR reps who extol their amazing work life balance only to find engineering is expected to work close to a 996
Kwpolska · 47m ago
And can we include on-call in the list as well?
ForOldHack · 9m ago
Crunch time for companies? Making billions? Hire more staff. A lack of planning on your part, does not constute an emergency on my part. The jackpot payday helped, but not by much. I worked from 10 til 10 6 days a week, and the product still stunk in ice.
paulcole · 28m ago
> When founders put 996 in their job descriptions or Tweet about their 996 culture it’s a helpful signal to avoid that company.
Or a helpful signal to join that company if it’s something you’re excited about.
It’s crazy to me that people are so arrogant to say that somebody else is “wrong” for being excited about something.
tikhonj · 17m ago
performative hours ≠ excitement
if folks were actually excited and motivated, you wouldn't need forced hours, you'd just trust people to work in the best way for them
ohdeargodno · 6m ago
996 done on your own time without expectations of it being done can be understood if you're excited about it. It's dumb, it ruins your health and your social experiences, but whatever, you're usually young and dumb. A good employer would actively tell you to slow down and manage your energy if it goes on for too long..
996 mandated by the company is 1/ illegal 2/ straight up illegal 3/ a clear signal that they do not see you as a human being.
Worst case scenario, 996 is dumb. Not a super high bar to clear.
gambiting · 1h ago
I think even if someone offered me couple million a year I still wouldn't do it. My kids will only be kids once - all of the money in the world is completely worthless if you miss out on your family. I appreciate some people here don't feel this way but to me that's not a trade off I would ever make. Especially since as software engineers we are privileged enough to usually command both high salaries and the ability to log off at 4-5pm and not think about work anymore.
gedy · 1h ago
These founders who tout this nonsense are convinced they got to their position by "hustling" (and not their background, privilege, etc) and think motivated employees should do the same (even if it makes no economic sense for them).
Besides, their 996 is the usual nonsense of posting faux thought leader crap on linkedin. Not being shoved Jira tickets and hurry up with it.
stego-tech · 2h ago
These times really do feel like those once-in-a-century redefinitions of work and labor, similar to how we got Child Labor Laws and 40-hour work weeks from the labor movement early last century. Intrinsically, more people are realizing that the former social contract was long ago fed into a shredder, and that the lack of a formal contract will have consequences. Technology broke down the 40-hour work week by enabling more work to be done both outside the office and after traditional working hours, drastically increasing productivity and profit while wages stagnated for decades in the face of skyrocketing costs. Now we’re racing ahead towards a breaking point between Capital cheering shit like 996 and AI job-replacement, while more humans can’t afford rent, or food, let alone education or healthcare on their burrito taxi wages.
Something will eventually have to give, if we aren’t proactive in addressing the crises before us. Last time, it took two World Wars, the military bombing miners, law enforcement assassinating union organizers, and companies stockpiling chemical weapons and machine guns before the political class finally realized things must change or all hell would break loose; I only hope we come to our senses far, far sooner this time around.
lifeisstillgood · 1h ago
We probably need to rethink how companies are structured - there are (many) companies with revenues greater than most countries but are (in theory) dictatorships with no official ability to change course if the one guy who owns the shares does not want to.
Who is the ‘demos’ in a company? Who gets a vote ? Will voting really slow things down?
kriops · 18m ago
As long as the companies in question aren't monopolies on violence, it's a complete non-issue. So with that in mind, why would any sane person want to impose such an inefficient mechanism to allocate resources and make decisions within a company or corporation?
The only good thing about democracy in the context of a state, after all, is that every other alternative is worse. But that is strictly because of the fundamentally violent nature of the concept of a state, which does not apply to companies or corporations.
HighGoldstein · 10m ago
Violence is not always physical. The likes of Meta have subjected the world to unfathomable violence, but we give them a pass because we can't see the scars with our eyes.
graemep · 35m ago
> here are (many) companies with revenues greater than most countries
IS that true? What do you define as the revenue of a country? Tax revenues? That is just the government. GDP/GNP/GNI? That comparison for that should be profit, and only a handful of really big companies (Saudi Aramco, Apple, that sort of size) have a profit as large as the GDP of mid-size middle income countries (e.g. Sri Lanka) or small rich countries (e.g. Luxembourg). There is a long tail of small or poor countries so most countries by number, but most people live in a country with a GDP that is an order of magnitude or two greater than any company's profit.
hiatus · 6m ago
Why would GDP be the proxy for a country's profit? If I pay someone to build a house and another person to tear that house down, both activities contribute to GDP while producing nothing of tangible value.
cyanydeez · 1h ago
Theres a whole swath of positive regulatory structure that would both improve the company and its employees, but capitalism is stuck in the delusion that self interest is the only yardstick we need to concern ourselves with.
Why? Because being poor isnt a structural problem, but a moral or ethical or laziness.
Its fascinating watching business culture basically align with prosperity gospel in that if you can grift it, it _must_ be good/just/right.
aftbit · 1h ago
Can you elaborate on this?
>companies stockpiling chemical weapons and machine guns
I recognize the historical references in the other clauses of this sentence, but I wasn't aware of companies stockpiling chemical weapons for use against workers. I'm not doubting - just curious to learn more about the dark history here.
Thanks!
supportengineer · 2h ago
I have absolutely zero faith that the current political ruling class will “come to their senses”.
All you have to do is observe their current behavior and you will come to the same conclusion.
When billionaires show you who they are, believe them the first time.
They have not lived through a depression and neither have they lived through any major world wars. They will be curious to see how bad it can get and they believe they will remain untouched from it.
AnimalMuppet · 1h ago
Neither have they lived through any serious social upheaval.
jeremyjh · 1h ago
They probably won’t, either.
cyanydeez · 1h ago
The current billionaires seem yo know they're headed to apocalypse since theyre building evil lairs. They know history.
The problem is: power is an addiction and like all addictions, some can manage to cope without and others will a absolutely follow a destructive pattern of behavior
ivape · 2h ago
To educate people you just need the internet (communication infrastructure). We can also house and feed everyone if we wanted to. The concept of work has been overblown to the point where it’s everything. I can’t even say war will solve it because war puts everyone to work, which is no different than the status quo.
Things are not in place for people to spiritually feel what is actually a good life and world.
It may take a generation of people, who think technology and science will allow them to have many lifetimes over and over, to meet their timely end. We will only reevaluate as we see the most well endowed generation (everyone alive today) return to dust in a timely manner, that there was no magical human power that could have saved any of us, and we ought to have just focused on a better world that we’re proud of leaving behind.
Living life like it’s a roguelike with infinite levels makes it the most unfulfilling thing ever. The world our generation will leave behind is our product, and a quality product is everything, so much so that you’d be proud to leave it in someone’s hand at the end (in fact, you’d want to). The women’s movement that left us a type of America with those fixes (labors rights, human rights) was such a thing to leave behind, they should fear nothing in death.
mananaysiempre · 2h ago
It also took Russia going to shit to an extent that got everybody else scared—and that Russia still hasn’t really recovered from, because repeatedly cutting the elite out of your society (however unfairly it’s gotten there) really fucks that society up.
Maken · 2h ago
The same elite is still running Russia today.
mananaysiempre · 13m ago
On the contrary, most of that elite has been rotting in the ground for nigh on a century. The elite I’m speaking of is the one that existed pre-1917 (with some offshoots and cultural descendants surviving until the 1960s). They weren’t saints by any means (in ways that sometimes rhyme quite well with slavers in the US, including the chronology), and I’m no monarchist, but it’s telling what part of e.g. meaningful science, or even good secondary education came out of groups headed by people with pre-October-revolution education (spoiler: all of it).
(To be clear, a university professor in pre-Socialist Russia is very well off compared to most, and except for the for a lucky few the October Revolution treated them accordingly.)
analognoise · 2h ago
What?
When America was strongest, we had a large and increasing middle class, and the top marginal tax rate was above 70% - it was in the 90s.
We don’t need “the elite” - they don’t actually “create jobs”, and the “engine of the economy” is just a convenient vehicle for the rich (and private equity) to ruin the middle class further - it was never about “efficient markets”.
If anything what we’ve seen over the last 40 years is that we need better systems.
kevin_thibedeau · 2h ago
There is some benefit from having a pool of people with enough funds to take investment risks that the rank and file can't. They can outmaneuver any planned economy. The problem in the US is that those people have engineered themselves a disproportionate wealth disparity that doesn't generate a collective benefit.
analognoise · 1h ago
That used to be “industrial policy” - it doesn’t need to be individuals at all. In fact it shouldn’t be - they’re concerned with returns, not jobs and certainly not with any technology that requires a longer timespan to complete.
The Biden administration had excellent industrial policy. Trump had the government steal a 10% share of Intel.
Watching people realize he’s just a criminal loser has been heartening.
andsoitis · 1h ago
> When America was strongest, we had a large and increasing middle class, and the top marginal tax rate was above 70% - it was in the 90s.
I think you got this wrong. According to my sources the highest marginal income tax rate was 39.6%.
It was during the 50s, 60s, and 70s that it never dipped below 70%.
The other thing is that different dimensions of the economy and other societal aspect have different lagging effects so you cannot simply assume causation or correlation between things during the same time frame.
didgetmaster · 1h ago
The 'tax the rich' crowd loves to quote the top marginal rates from 50 years ago; but did anyone ever really pay those rates?
Tax shelters were common in those days with the rich paying accountants and tax attorneys to find ways of avoiding those astronomical rates.
analognoise · 1h ago
Some people tried to evade the system - that’s why we have helicopters. We can just grab them and bring them to court, no problem.
I don’t think “some people didn’t abide the rules” is reason not to make sensible laws.
crossbody · 36m ago
Yeah, sure, helicopters is all you need to catch millions of sophisticated tax evaders using semi-legal loopholes developed and implemented by professional accountants and lawyers.
Read about Laffer Curve for a start.
grantdong · 2h ago
In China, its birthplace, '996' always seen as practice of failed management. Because for at least half of the 72-hour workweek, most employee will mentally checkout (in Chinese we call this 摸鱼). Although middle managers know their subordinates are inefficient, they still impose working hour KPI on their team, so they can demonstrate their own value to upper management.
Aurornis · 2h ago
> Because for at least half of the 72-hour workweek, most employee will mentally checkout (in Chinese we call this 摸鱼).
The CEO of one of my employers was smitten with his new China office because they bragged about operating 996.
To everyone else, it was obvious that they weren’t working more. They were just at the office a lot, or coming and going frequently.
When they’d send a video from the office (product demos) barely anyone was at their seats, contrary to their claims of always working.
Their output was definitely not higher than anyone else.
However, they always responded quickly on Slack, day or night, weekend or not. The CEO thought this was the most amazing thing and indicated that they were always working.
r_lee · 1h ago
It's sad how a lot of things in life now are all about optics.
And it's shocking that it works for leadership/management so well
Sharlin · 43m ago
To executives, responding to communication is equal to working because communication is all that they do. Same reason that so much time is wasted on meetings: for the people who organize meetings they are what work is, rather than wasted time.
herval · 20m ago
Life is always about optics. Medieval kings wore a piece of gold over their heads for optics.
I guess more people are just starting to realize this because many powerful people are actually dropping some of the well-accepted optics (particularly in tech, where people felt they were treated better than the average employee for a long time)
unmole · 2h ago
I used to work for Huawei where 996 or worse wasn't uncommon. While middle management definitely pushed for extended working hours, I didn't get the impression that anyone viewed it as failed management. If anything, upper management knew exactly what was happening and was encouraging it.
Hell, you have the likes of Jack Ma glorifying 996, calling it a blessing.
No comments yet
glhaynes · 1h ago
Because for at least half of the 72-hour workweek, most employee will mentally checkout
Management seeing this and doing the calculation: “if they’re gonna be checked out half the time, we’re really only getting 36 hours of the 40 we’ve been promised.”
herval · 11m ago
That’s sadly the reality of the push to 996. When Google added early breakfast and late dinner, it was the same reasoning: if people stay “in the zone” longer, you end up squeezing out a bit more.
I get the feeling the push to 996 is in part due to the social media epidemic - everyone spends so much time doomscrolling, might as well keep people in the office much longer to account for that extra wasted time too.
Good times
r_lee · 1h ago
Introducing:
9117
The latest innovation in Management (unlocked with the power of AI)
tw1984 · 35m ago
you get yourself a PIP for doing 9-11-7 in some Alibaba teams.
they question the “work enthusiasm” of those who leave office by midnight.
throw565357 · 1h ago
The Chinese government banned ‘996’ a few years ago.
I also never understood how it differed from the popular “death march” project management style popularized by companies like Epic and Microsoft.
PaulHoule · 1h ago
Touch fish?
feisuzhu · 1h ago
It's an over-simplification of Chinese idiom "浑水摸鱼", which is literally 'catching fish in muddy water'. Origninated from Thirty-Six Stratagems (三十六计). It generally mean "to take advantage of a chaotic situation or a crisis". It is later extended to express slacking off.
MonkeyClub · 53m ago
Check out mentally and "go fishing"
WiSaGaN · 2h ago
China is not the birthplace of so called '996'. Long before tech scene in China, there are a lot of investment banks doing that in HK especially for junior analysts. Calling 996 a China thing is just orientlalism. Everything bad is Chinese, everything good is western.
Calavar · 1h ago
China is the birthplace of the term 996. Of course it's not the birthplace of people being coerced into unhealthy work hours - that's been around for thousands of years.
uonr · 2h ago
At least the recent popularity of the 996 originated in China, and I believe most Chinese people would agree with that. Besides, even if it started in Hong Kong, saying it originated in China is still technically correct.
WiSaGaN · 2h ago
Investment banks in Hong Kong were almost exclusively western back in the days with very few ethnic Chinese in senior management.
numpad0 · 1h ago
There is probably little to nothing specifically Chinese about workaholism as a concept, but the word is definitely Chinese(as in language). Dialect continuum for East Asian languages are contained within borders, or in other words, each of the languages expanded and dominated to the full extents of continuum and hit with stagnation at major geographical features before entering the modern era.
drob518 · 2h ago
Having worked at several startups, I’ll say that 996 is a lie. The best startups were ones that worked HARD for 8 to 10 hours, 5 days per week. What I always found at companies “working” 996 (or something close) was that mostly everyone was hanging out in the break room playing foosball or video games (or watching someone else do it). Sure, they were “in the office,” but the productivity of those hours beyond 8 was really low. Everyone would have been better off going home and coming back in fresh tomorrow after a good night’s sleep and having spent some time with friends and family. In fact a startup CEO friend of mine told me that he considered it a win to get 2 to 4 really productive hours per day. He found the rest of his time was typically wasted in meetings that could have been handled via email and in minutia that someone else should have dealt with. If somebody’s telegraphing crazy work hours in a job post, just walk away.
ibejoeb · 1h ago
If you're doing R&D and you're actually into the problem, you're probably devoting the majority of your waking hours to "working" regardless. This is a different 996 than stitching shoe welts 996. Hanging around and passively considering the problem with others can be good, productive work.
If someone who actually like this kind of thing freely enters into it, well, best of luck to you. I think the shouting "996" thing is just stirring up attention.
drob518 · 43m ago
Yea, sometimes you need to take a break and walk outside for a bit, noodling on an issue. I get it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people hanging around the office to be seen at the office.
imajoredinecon · 1h ago
Agreed. I work at a highly successful small company with a reputation for being grindy, and what that looks like in reality is probably 55 hours a week of largely focused productive work: typical core hours are 9-6:45ish, and you work longer a day or two a week and put in the odd evening or weekend hour. It’s hard to imagine working 9-9 every day
randomname4325 · 2h ago
True story. I grinded hard at a startup for years. This was a decade ago so the concept of 996 wasn't part of the lore yet. But it was fun. We stayed late and I made life long friends. I worked closely with the founder (really awesome dude) as I was an early-ish employee. The company ended up not working, our equity went to zero and we got what you get when you don't get rich, experience. I ran into the founder randomly on the street years later. He didn't even remember my name. He recognized me and was excited to see me, but he had no idea what my name was. So yah, prioritize your life.
bad_username · 1h ago
I will forget names of people I haven't seen in a long while but whom I legitimately value and am glad to kave known. And I am not a founder type, who are being exposed to 10x people compared to me. It's just a human thing, don't let it bum you out.
randomname4325 · 57m ago
Totally. The point is, this guy who's mission I dedicated a good portion of life to clearly doesn't think about me at all after the fact. I'm sure he's gratefuland values me. But if I was part of his story he'd remember my name.
shayway · 33m ago
As someone who's just terrible with names, I hate that this is how people interpret it. There are plenty of people who have had a big impact on my life whose names have slipped - and, plenty of inconsequential people whose names stuck for no good reason. It has very little to do with how much that person mattered to me.
Not saying your overall point doesn't stand, but at least for some people remembering a name isn't a consistent indicator of their impact.
binsquare · 2h ago
I've been part of startups, big corps and have recently started my own startup.
I've also heard from executives and management discuss how they work longer hours (from 1:1s as a dev myself). Now as a founder, many of my peers discuss working 24/7 or close to it. Most don't - but there's a hustle culture that glamorized lack of sleep as a badge of honor.
The reality is that the "work" is very different for these different groups of people. Executives and management work by delegating and chatting people up. Founders can vary between executive duties or building or many various other founder duties. But (L3-5) engineering at corp is basically expected to code nonstop or to work oncall.
Working 996 as an executive is not comparable to 996 as an engineer.
macNchz · 2h ago
> there's a hustle culture that glamorized lack of sleep as a badge of honor
For all of the pop science/bro science/measured self/life optimization stuff that percolates in this world, it’s funny to me that glorifying a lack of sleep persists, when sleep is effectively a performance enhancing drug, and a lack of it effectively makes you dumber.
I recall an anecdote from a sports medicine doctor interviewed somewhere, about how his patients with overtraining syndrome-type issues were overwhelmingly high-powered professionals who were accommodating their Ironman training schedule by sleeping less, as opposed to Olympic athletes who often sleep a lot to properly recover from their training.
jeremyjh · 2h ago
Very true, even true below the executive level. I can be utterly exhausted from lack of sleep and still have productive conversations and keep my team unblocked and productive, but when I try to develop software in that state its a complete shit show, making lots of stupid errors that I waste hours debugging, etc.
the_snooze · 1h ago
It's basically a cult at that point. Isolate the followers, give them the carrot of purpose in life, and give them the stick of getting cast out.
stavros · 2h ago
I don't understand this expectation that employees work more, and stigma if you go home on time, yet we don't have a corresponding stigma for when the amount of money that reaches my account is "only" what we agreed my salary would be.
cushychicken · 2h ago
I actually kind of like when companies are upfront about 996 expectations.
The transparency makes it that much easier to avoid them.
dyauspitr · 2h ago
The more upfront they are, the more normalized it gets which encourages other companies to do the same.
cushychicken · 1h ago
That’s a slippery slope argument.
Plenty of employers do not operate with this expectation. In the US, I’d replace “plenty” with “most”.
Plenty of employers recognize an opportunity to differentiate themselves to candidates by publicly not being 996’ers.
JKCalhoun · 1h ago
It took a while, but I reached a point in my career where I just said, "Fuck it", and went for a run (or walk) a few times every day "on the company dime" so to speak.
AnimalMuppet · 1h ago
Take a smoke break. (I mean, don't smoke - that would be very bad for your health. But go outside for 15 minutes.)
Aurornis · 2h ago
Companies that try to demand extreme hours with average pay have very high turnover.
As employees realize they’re getting a bad deal and that they can find a better ratio of pay to hours worked at other companies, they leave.
regentbowerbird · 2h ago
What happens when the companies band together to compress wages? Like what happened with the high-tech employee antitrust litigation.
Individual employees are far more numerous (therefore harder to coordinate) and have way shallower pockets than companies, so the negotiation power is always going to be lopsided.
Aurornis · 2h ago
> What happens when the companies band together to compress wages? Like what happened with the high-tech employee antitrust litigation.
What happened with that litigation is it got shut down and those companies pay some of the highest compensation now.
One of the few jobs you can get that pays that much compensation with fewer educational requirements and better hours than alternatives in that compensation range (surgeon, specialist doctors, lawyers at demanding firms)
I don’t think that’s a great example for your point since by comparison FAANG employees have some of the best pay you can find in an attainable job for someone with a 4 year degree and the demands are lower than many of the similarly paid jobs that require a lot more education.
regentbowerbird · 1h ago
Possibly it's just a one time thing that was limited to just these companies.
Or possibly the incentives that led to this are still in place, and the current judicial climate is way more lenient towards big companies. Who's to say?
GLdRH · 1h ago
That's what unions are for.
stavros · 2h ago
Sure, but why does this rhetoric both persist, and only go one way? You never hear anything about an expectation from employers to pay more than what was agreed.
If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
Aurornis · 2h ago
Are you actually agreeing to specific hours? For example, in a contract, as an hourly worker, or with some formal arrangement with the company?
If so, then yes you should only work those hours.
However, if you’re a typical full-time employee in most countries you don’t have agreed upon hours.
> If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
Again, if something was agreed upon you should follow that. In most full-time jobs they’re not going to specify a maximum number of working hours. It’s your job to explain what can be done in a workweek and push back when something can’t be done. If it persists and you don’t like it then you find another job. Vote with your feet.
masfuerte · 1h ago
I'm British and every job contract I've ever signed included the expected weekly hours. Maybe I got lucky?
paulcole · 27m ago
If they tell you 996 up front then going home on time is 9PM right?
stavros · 23m ago
Yes it is, it's fine if the deal I'm making is 996, then I can judge whether I'm getting paid enough. What I don't like is "you may have to put in the extra hour here and there" and it's 996.
reaperducer · 2h ago
I don't understand this expectation that employees work more, and stigma if you go home on time, yet we don't have a corresponding stigma for when the amount of money that reaches my account is "only" what we agreed my salary would be.
Since I'm (mostly) work-from-home, my wifi router is configured to firewall my work devices outside of working hours.
This is frustrating for the IT department because it likes to push software updates overnight, but tough noogies.
The company pays for 30% of my internet connection, so it only gets to use my internet connection 30% of the day.
DamonHD · 2h ago
I had a huge row with my prospective US investment banking client manager because we had a conversation that went something like "we'll pay you for 8 hours but we expect you to work 10" (or 12). I said, why lie immdiately in our contract? We could try adjusting the expected hours or the hourly rate or both...
Anyhow I got to be paid for the hours that I actually did for well over a decade on off IIRC, and survived most of the purges of consultants/contractors there over the years, so demanding honesty from management was apparently survivable even if unusual!
chanux · 1h ago
It's not a two way street my friend.
j/k. You make a valid point about the limit to expectations from the employer being the sky and yet what the employee get is static.
mrbonner · 2m ago
I read somewhere (not remember though) that in the 2000s, the working culture in Japan was crazy. It was even crazier than the 996. In reality, most just did things inefficiently, i.e, writing a short email would take 20 minutes. So, with all those inefficiencies added up, pouring 14 hours away day didn't seem to contribute much productivity anyway.
rsyring · 1h ago
I've always told my team: focus on being super productive in the 40 hours a week you are working. Then go home and do something that really matters.
My belief has been very few lay on their death bed wishing they had given more to their jobs. But many lay there regretting they didn't invest more in their families.
I also believe that 40 truly focused hours is more productive than many people who do 50+ hour weeks just because of the limitations of human physiology.
There are times when a crunch is warranted but they are much fewer than any would be lead to believe. If, on principle, you take away "overtime" as an option, then it makes your more focused with the time you do have.
I've employed people doing software development mostly billed by the hour for almost 20 years. So my personal wealth is directly tied to how much my team works. And in all that time, there was only once that I asked a dev to do 45 hour weeks for a summer due to exceptional circumstances. And I truly asked, I didn't insist.
I've also personally put in more time than that in some weeks/months, but I compensate by working less when that period is done. And, I always know it's not long term sustainable, so there needs to be a goal in mind.
It's not perfect, but I'm confident my priorities are in the right place. And I'm confident my team benefits greatly by being cared for in this way.
hedora · 1h ago
All the engineers that I’ve worked with that were doing 12 hour x 6 days ended up being drags on the rest of the team. Their 2am fever dream garbage would hit prod, and then it’d take a full time support person to apologize to customers while two full time engineers wasted a week refactoring production into something that worked.
Anyway, I’ve noticed I can only work 6 hours if I write code myself, but can easily hit 10 hours vibe coding / reviewing / writing the tricky bits.
Has anyone tried 10-4 these days? It’s still 40 hours per week, but feels more sustainable.
bad_username · 1h ago
10-4 is great because it removes fragmentation. It gives you one full, non-fragmented fresh day of life, rather than low-energy little bits in the evenings. It's way easier to do something meaningful with the day than with the bits.
To me this fragmentation removal also privided a surprising converse effect: for the 4 days I could think about work uninterrupted and guilt-free which put me in a state of sustained multi-day focus that provided tangible boost to the quality of my results.
For sure it's impossible to do concentrated work for 10 hours straight, but a typical job isn't only concentrated work. Onve you learn what your energy levels are through the day, and manage your workload accordingly and have discipline , it is perfectly possible to have sudtainable full-output 10 hour workdays.
Not for everyone, but definitely beneficial for those who know how to use it.
hamdingers · 25m ago
I tried 10-4 for 6 months at a company that had a mix of people working 4 and 5 days, it made me less productive and more burnt out as a senior engineer.
I have ~5 hours of productive creative energy per sleep, others may be different but that's me. Ideally I give 4 hours to the job, spend 4 hours reviewing/meeting/etc. and have 1 for myself. If I push myself beyond that, I start doing substandard work, so 10-4 meant I either did fewer hours of productive work per week, stole my personal creative hours, or delivered substandard work. I did all three depending on the week, but in any case my productivity overall suffered, that appeared in my peer reviews, and the stress slowly built up until I went back to working 5 days.
slics · 1h ago
This concept of 996 or 007 it may be acceptable to Young people without kids and family obligations for as long as their bodies allow it (without enough sleep, descent food or exercise).
For others with families (spouse, kids, activities for kids, hanging out with friends, spending time with your spouse and friends outside of work) it may not even be an option and may not be able to support it.
Life is like a coin. There are two sides of a coin. Flipping it, it will always land in one side. As a person with a family you have to pick the side that matters otherwise, you are gambling with it. Gambling doesn't always go your way - the cost is higher when it comes to picking work over family.
As a parent myself, I am constantly struggling with picking the right choice. Long hours may pay well, but those long hours also have a negative impact on your family. If you ask, your family rather spend time with you than have a new shiny toy or a big house and a fast car.
NelsonMinar · 47m ago
One thing I appreciated at early Google (2001) was how folks mostly worked normal hours. Roughly 8 hours a day 5 days a week. Maybe a bit longer if you wanted to stay for the free dinner. Maybe you checked email at home in the evening or had a week of being on call. But in general the company did just fine on a humane schedule.
(There were exceptions, particularly the product folks working on early AdWords partnerships. But even in ads most of the engineers kept to more regular hours. I certainly did.)
jackienotchan · 1h ago
The first two quotes are from founders of:
- BrowserUse - Founded 2024
- Greptile - Founded 2023
The third quote is from a VC who has never founded a startup himself and has a clear interest in pushing founders to trade work-life balance for his own quick returns.
So none of these people worked on anything longer than 2 years. I wonder what will happen if we check back in 5–10 years. Will they still be doing and promoting 996, or will they be burned out and have changed their minds? Make your bets.
NaomiLehman · 1h ago
It's comical that the browser use guy tweeted "crazy salaries, 996" and the highest salary they offer is $320k. In SF.
esseph · 48m ago
SF or not, that is 5x the US median wage. There's people in the US that would suit up in gladiator garb and fight to death in an arena for that pay.
NaomiLehman · 37m ago
Sure, but they don't have the absolute most sought-after skills at the peak of the AI bubble? That's the issue. The dude is asking for 996 to work on an LLM/Patchright wrapper library that also works in the cloud. And with these skills, you can get twice or more at more mature corporations.
Technically, they are also writing their own CDP implementation now.
Why work for less if you can work for more, with a better work-life balance?
untrust · 1h ago
Every one of these quotes is from someone who would be junior or midlevel at best at any company. Not trying to be ageist but mid twenty somethings are filled with enthusiasm and fantastical ideas which are yet to be vetted or guided by real world experience. I agree with your skepticism here
spamizbad · 2h ago
I am skeptical that you can get anywhere near 12 hours of productivity out of an engineer. Even in my 20s, I was mentally fatigued after 8 hours of (mostly) work with a few breaks sprinkled in. Once that fatigue sets in your productivity craters.
I’ve noticed people who promote these extreme work hours seem to spend a lot of time posting on (and I assume reading) social media. Perhaps they feel 12 hours is reasonable when they dedicate 4 hours to brainrot (ahem, or “building a personal brand”)
senthil_rajasek · 1h ago
"Burning out on twelve-hour days, six days a week, has no prize at the end. It’s unsustainable, it shouldn’t be the standard and it sure as hell should not be seen as a positive sign of a company."
This
I've worked long hours back in the 2000's. I went home at 4:00AM no one asked me to but because I read somewhere that a certain CEO worked 20hrs a day.
My boss noticed and told me that there was nothing she could offer me for the extra hours.
I still continued to do it only to learn much later what the author posted in the article (see quote).
Working long hours is not a badge of honor, what you produce (in software atleast) is what matters.
didip · 3h ago
996 as an employee, especially for companies that don’t offer fast growing stocks, is a super bad deal.
996 for a business owner or top exec at a big company? It’s the norm. And the risk-reward makes sense to them.
manoDev · 2h ago
> 996 for a business owner or top exec at a big company? It’s the norm. And the risk-reward makes sense to them.
It's bad anyway. These people burnout and start making dumb moves to bail out sooner.
gyomu · 2h ago
Heh, at that level the job is just meetings and emails. You can do 996 of meetings and emails for a few millions a year without burning out.
Actual craft tasks like writing code tho? Definitely a recipe for burnout and shittier output, yep.
herval · 33m ago
As someone who had to 996 as a coder and as a manager, I can guarantee you the burnout is MUCH faster on the latter. A 996 schedule of zoom calls is straight up torture. I could feel myself getting dumber after a few months.
As a coder, you can accommodate downtimes on that schedule. You also see the result of your work (even code compiling is a dopamine hit). None of that exists if you’re meeting customers and investors - you’re playing the odds all day long and have to be 100% on all the time.
NaomiLehman · 1h ago
I burned out after a year and a half of doing that. Not worth it. And after a certain NW, what's the difference? How much money do you need?
Fraterkes · 2h ago
In my spare time I code my own projects, I draw, I talk and write about my ideas. So yes, I'm also "working" on stuff for 12 hours a day, but obviously the work I do for myself, based on decisions I made myself, and the talking and thinking, are not at all "work" in the same manner that the drudgery of an actual job is work. The work I do for money is not just time-consuming and tiring, it's hard and boring and most importantly, often meaningless to me.
A ceo trades time and peace for money, and that is arguably difficult in it's own ways. But that doesn't make it work in the same way that what you and I do is work. These people do not work a 100 hours a week. They live charmed lives that also happen to often be exhausting.
Kapura · 2h ago
then why do executives keep making such dogshit decisions
zaik · 2h ago
Lack of sleep?
stego-tech · 2h ago
They’re removed from the realities of the working class. They have staff, live in a separate bubble from their workers with different social circles, different services, different mores and norms.
Executives make shitty decisions because they surround themselves with others who view wealth as a leaderboard to be climbed and flaunted, and have no fucking clue how difficult things are for the people doing the actual work creating products/services/value to the company. For those who claim to relate to the plight of the worker, their frame of mind is stuck in that precise moment just before they became fabulously wealthy, when they were likely busting ass - hence the “hard work pays off”/bootstrap mythos they peddle.
The few executives that do understand these plights, don’t make such shitty decisions, and are either roundly mocked for their lack of growth by those whose wealth was built atop the literal corpses of their workers, or occasionally featured in human interest pieces as an executive that’s strangely generous.
Kapura · 2h ago
maybe i've spent too much time trying to make computers operate efficiently, but it strikes me that if a process a) takes more time than should be necessary and b) produces sub-optimal results, we should maybe pursue other processes.
and stop paying these idiots 7+ figures.
tremon · 2h ago
a) takes more time than should be necessary
b) produces sub-optimal results
Both of these claims are empty. Necessary according to whom? Sub-optimal against which metrics? All industrial processes are inefficient in some way because you're always dealing with engineering trade-offs. Staying in the computer domain: show me a system with optimal latency and I will show you an underutilized system; show me a system optimized for high-throughput and I will show you a system with erratic latency behaviour.
jakelazaroff · 2h ago
Fair point in general. With regard to 996 specifically, though, I think most of us recognize that we're talking about a system that is both less resilient to stress and fails to achieve higher throughput than the status quo alternative.
jennyholzer · 2h ago
good contrarian comment, +1
jennyholzer · 2h ago
they aren't idiots, they're kings.
you don't just stop paying the king.
jennyholzer · 2h ago
cruelty is fetishized in American (and particularly in corporate/executive) culture
to quote my namesake: "abuse of power comes as no surprise"
reaperducer · 2h ago
cruelty is fetishized in American (and particularly in corporate/executive) culture
Cruelty in business existed for hundreds of years before there even was an America.
MontyCarloHall · 29m ago
A company touting its 996 culture is unfurling a huge red flag that it doesn't have the best talent. The very best companies/workers accomplish extraordinary things in ordinary working hours, because they are extremely good at what they do and thus extremely efficient at it. Work smarter, not harder, as they say. If a company needs to work 996, it simply means it isn't all that smart.
ergl · 5m ago
996 can only be celebrated in a deeply rotted culture without worker rights and labor protections. Embarrasing.
chasebank · 2h ago
For those like me who didn’t know what 996 was: it stands for working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
criddell · 1h ago
My first thought was 9 hour days, 9 days in a row, then 6 days off. At first it sounds nice, but I know out of those 9 hours there would be 4-5 truly great hours and the rest would be meh.
buster · 1h ago
What the heck? And why is everyone even discussing this? What kind of nightmare.
fernandotakai · 1h ago
some social media grifters are boasting this amount of work -- mostly young ai startup founders.
the trouble is, for the amount of work these people claim they are doing, i'm not seeing actual things being shipped.
rkomorn · 1h ago
You'd think that with the 10x speed up from AI-assisted coding combined with the 2.5x working hours from 996, we'd be drowning in unicorn IPOs by now.
salomonk_mur · 2h ago
Fuck that shit.
maldonad0 · 3h ago
A materialist culture inevitably leads to this. It is the logical conclusion of a society that atomized the wholeness of life without realizing that the sum of its parts is less than the whole.
But it is the reality the collective chose. I fully expect things to get worse before they get better.
jfengel · 2h ago
It is where the slippery slope leads but a lot of materialist cultures manage to find a midpoint and stick there.
In a sense this isn't even materialist: you are chasing numbers in an account for their own sake. A materialist wants things, and might sacrifice everything else to get them, but doesn't want to do the work for its own sake.
Ultimately this is feeding the ego, the least material thing of all. And I can't actually fault people for that; in the end what else do we have? But even an egotist needs to be able to ask themselves, "am I in fact feeling what I want to feel, or have I missed myself?"
There are certainly those who want the ego rush of feeling like they've worked as hard as they possibly can and taken every chance to show off their skill. But we've fetishized them, and even if they are happy, it often won't achieve the same for us.
maldonad0 · 2h ago
It really is materialist, as numbers in an account is a direct representation for the number of coins you have, which are spent fueling a life full of hedonistic pleasures and vices. The ego is attachment to pleasures and vices.
imajoredinecon · 1h ago
When you’re too busy to spend the money you make, the observable effect of a pay raise is mostly the number in the account going up faster
kashnote · 37m ago
I also don't agree that any employee should have to work as much as the founders.
But one point that needs to be made: You don't need to sacrifice your health to run a startup. You can get your 8 hours of sleep and exercise every day and still run your startup.
This notion that you have to get 3 hours of sleep and ruin your health is simply a choice - don't do it.
MagMueller · 26m ago
I worked for 2 years in a co-working space full of founders next to ETH Zurich. The most consistent worker? The cleaning lady. Every morning at 6 am, she did not miss a single day.
I grew up in a small village in Germany. 500 people, 5000 cows. Only farmers and a cheese factory. In the factory, we worked on Christmas, Easter, and New Year's Eve every morning at 5 am. Farmers don't take days off because cows don't take days off.
Maybe it's not the most healthy way of life. I don't think it physically requires us to take time.
monroeclinton · 2h ago
I've found I just loan time from tomorrow's morning if I stay up late working on something. If you're in a good flow, it could be worth it. Other than that, you're likely to be underwater on the loan.
randerson · 2h ago
Borrowing productivity from the future is how I feel about my career as a whole. I spent 30 years working stressful 70-80 hour weeks, only to burn out completely in my late 40s. From high achiever to practically zero executive function. Like my ability to get into a flow state blew a fuse and now I can't get there. Meanwhile all my peers who kept a healthy work-life balance in their 20s and 30s are still doing great.
jackdawed · 1h ago
Small business owners work 997 and you don't see them incessantly posting about it. That's the catch, though. They own the business. Founders can subject themselves to 996 all they want but it's a failure of management to expect that from employees for less than 1% equity.
I took a break from tech to open my own bookstore and I definitely work more hours than when I worked at a pre-IPO $7B startup. I'm way less stressed. At least my bookstore doesn't wake me up at 3am 3 nights in a row, and expect me to come to work the next day.
bicx · 2h ago
I've found that when I work this kind of long hours for an extended period, I get far too attached to what I'm building and have a difficult time accepting that I need to change anything. Likely this happens because I've sacrificed so much to build up to the current state, and changing it would mean that I wasted time working that could have been spent with loved ones, hobbies, or just enjoying quiet.
When you work long hours on a regular basis, you begin to lose a healthy perspective on work and life.
picafrost · 2h ago
I tell new employees that I will not praise them for working extra hours because I don't want them to. I do not have hard data, but anecdotally, when I see teams adopt this mentality productivity seems to increase. My guess is that it's because they try tidy up the loose ends/ideas that annoy folk into jumping back onto the work laptop later in the evening.
rapatel0 · 2h ago
In my life I've had the following experiences:
- In grad school, I averaged 4 hours of sleep (6/7 days per week) and about 8 hours on sunday for about 5 months straight.
- In my first startup, I worked 9am to 11pm (had to walk back from the office) for about 12 months.
- During my second startup gig, my son was born and also I had an 8 hour time difference between local time and the primary timezone of the office. I woke up at 4 am and generally went to bed at 10pm most days. Waking up randomly at night to deal with newborn through toddler moments for about 4 years.
My experience with all of this:
Pros:
- Really fun to grind at times and euphoric when something works.
- Build really strong relationships with people in the trenches.
Cons (I felt like I was working but in retrospect I wasn't really productive):
- Pseudo-working - I ended up spinning plates of unnecessary pseudo-work that didn't move the needle.
- Time Dilation (biggest factor) - 9pm to 12am feels like 30 minutes. That's because my brain was slowing down. The more sleep deprivation, the more this happens during the day.
- Physical Burnout - My body felt tired with a constant low level of pain and my energy levels low. Also, stress eating made me fat.
- Mental Burnout - My mind constantly looked for distractions. Even when trying to focus, I couldn't focus
- Tactical Stupidity - I didn't find clever ways to avoid or fix problems. I just focused on the next thing. I didn't have bandwidth to reason effectively as I normally would.
Overall:
It's definitely useful to crunch and a great way to be mission oriented, but crunch cannot be constant. Sometimes you need to eat a pile of shit, but you shouldn't smear shit out and take it one lick at a time.
Furthermore, when you've attained a degree of understanding, you should be able to find better ways to leverage your time. The brain and body needs downtime to be creative--the best solutions are creative.
Finally in the world of agents, we have near infinite leverage. As a community should be engaged in deeper thought, rather than trying to grind towards a finish line that constantly moves.
holtkam2 · 1h ago
I don’t get why people think 996 is even optimal for productivity in the medium or long term. If I work hard past 8pm I can’t sleep - my brain is still whirring. That results in worse sleep -> less memory creation & skill consolidation -> lower productivity.
In my mind, if you cared ONLY about productivity in the medium and long term, you’d probably do something like 9-7-6. So you still get a day off, and don’t work past like, dinner time. Still give yourself time to exercise, still give yourself time for social interaction, sleep can stay dialed in. I think someone doing 976 probably out-competes someone doing 996 in short order.
joshdavham · 11m ago
If an early employee is being made to work as much as a founder, then they should probably be made a co-founder.
ford · 42m ago
I've never understood the risk trade-off for early stage employees (Employees ~4 through ~10-20).
At this stage equity packages are often <0.5% over 4 years. Founders on the other hand may have more like 30% equity at this stage.
But the odds of success are still quite low - <3% is generous.
In venture funded companies I think it's wrong to say that at <10 employees, founders are 60x more responsible for company outcomes (or taking on 60x more risk), even accounting for what they did to start the company.
That being said - I get working hard if you're appropriately rewarded for it. Just less so if it's primarily on behalf of someone else.
djha-skin · 42m ago
My favorite paragraph:
> I’ve pulled many all-nighters, and I’ve enjoyed them. I still do. But they’re enjoyable in the right context, for the right reasons, and when that is a completely personal choice, not the basis of company culture.
j_bum · 3h ago
When I was getting my Ph.D., my advisor jokingly told me that his lab has three 8 hour shifts per day, and I could pick two to work.
This was never literally practiced.
But excessive hours were the norm. And I loved it. It helped me launch into a successful career.
But it hurt my relationship with my partner (now wife), and it burned me out.
I miss those days, but I don’t miss what they did to my health.
ddavis · 2h ago
I have a similar experience. I was a devoted PhD student working long hours taking on a lot of responsibility. It burned me out, hurting my productivity. I have mixed feelings about it; I love the friends I made and the things I learned, but I don’t think I should have had to suffer what I suffered. Simultaneously I’m somewhat glad I experienced it then, because now I work in tech and I’ll _never_ work outside of business hours (I’ll hack on personal projects I consider fun if I feel like it). And I’m more productive than my colleagues that do. There’s something mysterious about the contemporary PhD, not all good and not all bad.
kaladin-jasnah · 1h ago
As someone graduating from undergrad soon, and a intense and passionate person in CS, all of these reasons are seriously making me reconsider the idea of doing a PhD.
I've done the 36-hour straight work grinds, and working from 10 pm to 6 am for multiple days a week. However, I'm tired of doing that, and I've experienced enough burnout already. I'm also not okay with doing highly skilled work for more than 40 hours a week for pay that is almost demeaning—in the range of 35-45k a year. I'm more okay with it at a startup because at least the pay isn't THAT bad at more established ones with multiple rounds of funding. Just like the author, I have people in my life I'd rather devote time to because they bring be happiness. I'd like to have the savings to do practical and important things, such as do on vacation (which I find immensely good for my mental health), buy things for my other hobbies, and buy a house and have enough money to raise kids.
At least in Switzerland, I've heard your coworkers look down on your for NOT taking breaks and leaving at 5. The stipends are a bit nicer. Maybe it's worth it there. Maybe it's worth it anyway because the lack of CS jobs now will translate to requiring a PhD in the future. Maybe I should go through the extended hazing ritual known as a PhD because a startup's work won't be as technically rewarding as a PhD (the only person I know who wanted to do a PhD is now at a startup).
I still don't think the way we want people to work like this is okay. Sometimes I am a 996, but I sure don't want to be one when I need an extrinsic voice screaming into my ear to keep going because I'm not allowed to take a break.
rvba · 1h ago
What are the results of those 36 hour grinds?
malshe · 2h ago
I didn't show up on the first Saturday when I started my Ph.D. program. Next Monday, a professor from _another_ department stopped by my desk to tell me that assistant professors and Ph.D. students are expected to be there at least six days a week. Then he gave examples of a few professors who were there even on Sundays despite being tenured.
Tbh, I was so poorly paid that going to the university on Saturdays wasn't so bad as they had better air conditioning and heating compared to my apartment!
marcosdumay · 1h ago
What students get from the deal is literally the hours they put into it. It's completely different from work.
It is still bad, though. The lab should impose maximum hours, because it does nobody any good if you get out of it burned out.
criddell · 1h ago
If you are working 9-9 x 6 to build a $10 billion company, why not double your head count and halve the hours? If you build that mega unicorn, there will be plenty of money to share and still have more than you will ever need.
Or do the 996 thing and try not to think too much about your Alzheimer’s and heart disease filled future. Maybe leave a big gift to the hospital that takes care of you before you die at way too young of an age.
EvanAnderson · 55m ago
> If you are working 9-9 x 6 to build a $10 billion company, why not double your head count and halve the hours?
Dr. Fred Brooks would like to have a word with you:
I know you’re showing the absurdity of the rest, but:
> why not double your head count and halve the hours?
Because of friction: Not only you need much more HR to hire double the workforce, but people require double the attention, and then a subgroup will invent a sidequest etc.
In most of IT, large famous software were often built by 30 people. That’s valid for Netscape/Firefox, Internet Explorer, Jira, etc.
The best software, like Git, Javascript or Linux, were initially written by 1 person.
zkmon · 42m ago
Back in 1999 in SF, at the peak of dotcom boom, a few startups located down South from the Market street would shutter down their entrances after around dinner time. All people still inside, working over night. I had two of my friends (actually colleagues - we were from a consulting firm) working at those places. It became a norm around that place and youngsters loved that kind of all-nighters.
The new year eve of millennium Dec 31, 1999 - we went to Fishermans's wharf, roamed around and then went back to work at 1 am. No Y2K issues.
herval · 35m ago
Young people tend to enjoy the grind more because they 1) don’t have a social life yet, 2) don’t know what “productive” looks like, so they confuse grinding with progress
pm90 · 31m ago
So it became a prison lol
chvid · 2h ago
I put in exactly 37 work hours pr. week. If I for some reason work more one day, I make sure to take time off the next day.
I have "experimented" with working more but I found it unconstructive. Chances of stress is much higher and with stress comes doing stupid things that I afterwards will regret.
I believe this holds for both working for myself and someone else.
pelagicAustral · 2h ago
I'm more of an 8-3-5 kind of guy
taminka · 2h ago
not only are you missing out on what makes life great and worth living w/ this arrangement, but from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, working that many hours your productivity plummets (unless you're on stimulants), and it's just straight up more effective to work fewer hours...
mythrwy · 1h ago
The stimulants don't help ultimately. You are just taking out a loan that eventually will have to be paid back. With interest.
frontfor · 2h ago
When 996 makes being able to afford a house easier, many people will be compelled to do it.
HL33tibCe7 · 2h ago
What’s the point in having a house if you only spend one day in it, which realistically you will spend doing chores and sleeping?
kevin_thibedeau · 1h ago
China has this figured out. You pay a mortgage on a house that will never be built.
boredatoms · 2h ago
Why do you need a nice house you cant spend any time in with that schedule
OutOfHere · 2h ago
It makes affording a casket easier.
Paratoner · 2h ago
Yeah and that's a dystopian dogshit reality to aim for. (Not necessarily implying you are saying that)
time0ut · 2h ago
The market seems bad right now. Companies are offshoring everything they can and squeezing both sides.
At my company, we only hire in India now and the executives are intentionally causing "attrition" in the US by running people into the ground with demands that amount to 996 style work.
TrackerFF · 2h ago
I've noticed the same here in Europe. Founders are really pushing the "Everyone should be doing 996 minimum", arguing that anything else is simply laziness, and that it is impossible to build a billion dollar company any other way.
But, of course, like many here have noted...there's billion dollar difference in incentives between a founder, and even the early members. For a "rank and file" engineer, you're sacrificing your life to make someone else filthy rich. And if lucky, you'll be left with a payday that's not too different from a regular industry job...
CuriouslyC · 1h ago
I'm currently running 10,2,7 because I'm on fire and need to get the things in my head out into the world, but the idea that I would expect anyone I was working with to pull that kind of weight is just insanity. I sit down and the day flies by as I build foundational software, but that's my passion, my quest. I would only expect that sort of intensity from a collaborator asking for a 50/50 split.
edoceo · 47m ago
Does 10,2,7 mean 10:00h-14:00h seven days a week?
CuriouslyC · 42m ago
no, I go till 2 am pretty much daily. Not a general endorsement or a statement of how hard I can grind, it's actually pretty easy because what I'm doing is very fulfilling right now.
rvba · 1h ago
If you are "working" thrn why are you on HN?
On a side note, there are orgs where everything is done so poorly due to meetings - with no results nor impact. In such cases it is 8 hours of meetings and 4 hours of actual work
CuriouslyC · 49m ago
I like to be able to product plug and thought lead in AI related discussions, and sometimes my agent swarm is fully occupied and I have time to grab a cup of coffee and see what's going on.
petermcneeley · 2h ago
If I spend my Saturday in the summer sun planting trees all day in my yard I feel liberated.
If I spend my Saturday toiling for wages digging with my hands, sweating for hours, just please some land owner I feel exploited.
It is not the work or the hours that is the core problem.
jeremyjh · 2h ago
You aren't going to spend 12 hours a day, 6 days a week working in your garden. When you get hot and tired, you'll stop. I think that is the more relevant difference in this particular topic.
petermcneeley · 2h ago
> When you get hot and tired, you'll stop
No? This is basically the philosophy of the "last man"
Many great things require overcoming the weakness of the flesh. From the moment you understand the weakness of your flesh it should disgust you.
jeremyjh · 1h ago
So you are saying you’ve worked in your garden for 12 hours a day? Multiple days in a row?
petermcneeley · 1h ago
Jokes aside yes people work very hard on things, even for years, if they believe in them. From dawn to dusk; of their own free will.
Work being bad is simply a slave mentality. It is because the slave does not get any return on their effort; only sustenance.
softwaredoug · 1h ago
I have only truly worked this level of intensity at special moments in my career where I felt connected to the mission and people. We were building something very cool. And we all felt immense joy in the craft.
Never at any time did anyone tell us “work X many hours”
If people actually want hard working employees, maybe the answer should be culture first? Hire great people that love working together, on a cool problem, and they’ll do what’s needed? Trust them.
Hiring for 996 says to me you don’t care about innovation or excellence. It says you suck at hiring great talent. And it signals you, as a leader, may not have a healthy relationship to work or leadership. You want control, not excellence.
tedggh · 1h ago
I did and still do sometimes a lot of 60-70 hour weeks, for months. But being in the service industry means you get paid in 15 min increments and the after-business-hour rate is much higher, usually 1.5-2X. So if you do the math it’s actually pretty good money and you will find very little people complaining about it. I never worked in product-first businesses and don’t know how the compensation model is, but there is no way I would work an extra hour that isn’t paid. That should be the norm.
ninetyninenine · 5m ago
Onyx is a company that does this. Do not work for them 7 days a week. They hire desperate people and exploit them.
999900000999 · 34m ago
I'd go the opposite direction.
Work 30 hours a week, but make em count.
Working a 996, but you're playing Pokemon on the clock isn't doing much.
throiijowo9889 · 2h ago
This obsession with the time put-in (either way) is quite silly to be honest. It's a notion inherited from the blue-collar industrial factory labor. If you're working on really hard problems there's no way you're putting in 12 hour stretches. Your diet takes a hit, your sanity takes a hit and so does everything else.
Japan tried this non-sense for a while (colleagues told they used to stay on till 11am !) only to completely fail at all three software revolutions (web/smartphone/ai). China obv. has had much better success, but I don't think this is sustainable. The central-banks in these countries operate in the war-economy mode which can heat things up a lot and work very well, but I think social-burnout effects are quite real.
impulsivepuppet · 1h ago
On the topic of working hours, flexitime is highly addicting and I cannot imagine anything that's better for a software developer. Clock in, have meetings, write code, commit, clock out. Overtime? Just leave early without asking your boss. It just makes sense. Plus, the negotiated working hours per week / working days / mandatory hours can be set to whatever value that makes sense.
Nobody is paying you to sit, people care about the working product.
cm2012 · 1h ago
I don't understand what people spend their time at work on. I have a very successful career, top .01% income for my age bracket, and never worked more than 40 hours at one job in my life.
Rubio78 · 1h ago
Companies that promote the "996" culture (working from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week) are a major red flag for any employee. This model might only be justifiable for a founder with a huge equity stake, never for an average employee without extraordinary compensation. Furthermore, these extended hours don't usually translate into greater real productivity.
This debate is part of a critical redefinition of work. Technology has increased productivity, but wages have stagnated, breaking the social contract. As in the past with labor laws, urgent change is needed to avoid a crisis, prioritizing a quality life and a legacy to be proud of, not senseless exploitation.
nickdothutton · 41m ago
You cannot ask staff to be on afterburners constantly for weeks or months on end. It damages the engine.
ricardobayes · 58m ago
Someone made a back-of-a-napkin calculation that a 165k 9-9-6 job in the UK pays a similar after-tax hourly as a normal 38-hour 75k job.
Your work really turns to shit after 6-7 hours anyway. Your ability to think clearly is hampered without a reset.
barbazoo · 2h ago
Wanting to work 12 hours a day is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.
> When someone promotes a 996 work culture, we should push back
And like the author says, it just doesn’t make sense either.
9cb14c1ec0 · 1h ago
Most people are productive working 5 or 6 days a week than 6. It's something that most people intrinsically understand. Those that don't are almost exclusively terminally online, chasing status.
currymj · 1h ago
not only does a founder capture more upside, they also pay less of a cost. autonomy prevents burnout even under very intense working conditions.
plus the nature of a founder's day to day work is very different. 12 hours a day of management, pitches, meetings, and snap decisions is doable for a long time if you can endure the pain.
12 hours a day of complex technical work under sleep deprivation is just not possible, after a few weeks of this your cognitive function will decline to the point you can't do the job right.
0xbadcafebee · 41m ago
Startup, n. A social group characterized by excessive devotion to a charismatic authoritarian leader, a strong shared vision, and a distinct identity with unique language and symbols. Exerts strong control over its members' lives, often using psychological manipulation to create dedication, compliance, and isolation from external influences.
China's 996 or 007 work schedule is created by desperation. The root problem here is that almost all good industries in China are already cake-spliced by the powerful and privileged, leaving very little for the private sector to compete. As result, every tested and true way to reach profitability is a combat in the bloody sea, which in turn caused the hellish schedule.
So, if you see a SF start up founders started praising 996 schedule, keep a watchful eye, make sure those founders are not in similar desperation.
Also, Elon Musk loved China schedule, I don't really see Twitter improved much since.
HL33tibCe7 · 2h ago
Maybe it’s just me having low energy levels, but for me, I can’t fathom working 996 while continuing to do focused and deep work consistently.
At the moment I work 9-5, a few meetings per day, so maybe 5-6 hours focused work, and I’m mentally exhausted by the end.
mystraline · 2h ago
I found out that it was a very limited wavier in Chinese law that permitted a few companies to do 996 (or 9am to 9pm 6 days a week, or 72 hour workweeks).
Now, I'm seeing US companies demand that here. Like, hell no. My body and health isn't worth what you're paying, and the answer 996'ers aren't paying double, or even 1.5x the position.
Saner parts of the world are discussing 37.5h/weeks, and even going to 4 day workweeks.
I mean, hell, if I'm expected to work gross overtime, I expect overtime pay. Guess like I should get into electrician union.
benoau · 1h ago
There was a HN /jobs post a week ago for "100% in-person, 6 days per week" lol. No thanks!
mystraline · 43m ago
Oh, I remember that as well, but its been removed from Sept 2025 who's hiring. Should have screenshotted it, but instead had a near spit-take.
It was a US robotics company that worked closely with Chinese robotics. Bragging about 996.
I'm suspecting the HN admins removed it cause it looked really bad. And we know that founders here have special capabilities.
thenthenthen · 1h ago
Harry Stebbings is right, but it includes basically everyone, not only ppl trying to 10b companies. Sorry, back to work.
crawshaw · 2h ago
The most interesting point in this post, which resonates with me, is to those of us who work a lot, 996 sounds ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous because to work a lot, you have to fit in the gaps around your life. I have done about 60hrs/week for the last 15 years. My scheduled work is barely 10-4 five days a week, with a lunch break, and with a break three days a week for the gym. To get the hours in I wake up at 5:30 most days and start work, unless a kid needs me, or I'm sick, or one of a dozen other things comes up. I won't take your call at that time, I won't respond to texts, and I'm not going to promise to be up then, because long hours require a lot of flexibility. You don't have to be espousing the four-day workweek or a part-time lifestyle to roll your eyes at the 996. If I can't long-term schedule 60hrs/week, there's no universe where someone's scheduling 72hrs/week. It's just performative nonsense.
I'm sure the people in China who claim to work 996 and those who demand it all know that the truth of hard work is complicated. I'm certain they all work damned hard, and the results are there for the world to see with the amazing success their country is having at absolutely everything. The nature of hard work doesn't fit some silly schedule.
zdc1 · 25m ago
In some Chinese tech companies, 996 isn't the magical pro-capitalist grind it sounds like as they will still have a two hour lunch break, and then also stop for dinner. So ironically, a 996 culture in the USA would be worse than one in Asia. At this point we're just shadowboxing.
hidelooktropic · 2h ago
Do those of us not cool enough to know already get to find out what 996 means?
svieira · 2h ago
9 AM to 9 PM 6 days a week. It's a "how long do we work" shorthand, like 955 (9 AM to 5 PM 5 days a week) or 864 (8 AM to 6 PM 4 days a week).
cromulent · 2h ago
It's the first hyperlink in the article, and the first Google result for "996".
...it's strange that one of my favorite things about working at a sleepaway summer camp was the fact we were more-or-less always working. During the hours in the middle of the day when I wasn't directly responsible for my 16 kids, I was usually planning for what to do once they got back—sometimes by myself, but often with other adults. We all lived together, of course.
The job felt immersive and all-encompassing. My colleagues and I had a singular mission to make the kids' experience as spectacular as possible. It's hard for me to imagine another job replicating that, but maybe it could be done?
michaelt · 2h ago
> The truth is, China’s really doing ‘007’ now—midnight to midnight, seven days a week
This sounds like the new generation's equivalent of 1980s bosses exhorting people to "give 110%"
No comments yet
boredatoms · 2h ago
In the broad sense, if theres no ‘home’ time left, theres no reason to buy whatever non-essential services your company likely offers.
_fw · 2h ago
The biggest problem with this is outsized gains for the company compared to the employee. You sacrifice time with loved ones, wellbeing, mental health… to churn out extra hours for some Series A firm that won’t think twice about showing you the door in a down round.
I’ve seen founders work round the clock again and again. That kind of makes sense.
But Stebbings… I’m not going to put 996 in for any firm in your portfolio. And anybody who does is a mug.
This 996 bullshit is a skill issue. Need extra hours at school to finish your work? That’s a shame, all the clever kids are at home already (working on their side hustles that are 10x more likely to pay off).
It doesn’t surprise me that this stems from China: a place where ‘face’ and hours-behind-the-desk culture are extremely prominent.
People should be able to show up, put a shift in and go the fuck home. Sometimes there are reasons to work a little longer…
But expecting this kind of behaviour is objectively shitty leadership.
ryanwhitney · 2h ago
Call me back when the company store is up. I don’t want to grind for my boss’ VC-bux unless I know everyone working here is also all in.
thenanyu · 2h ago
Anyone who talks about 996 as a flex clearly has too much time on their hands. Why aren’t you busy working?
lvl155 · 47m ago
I think it’s hilarious that CCP companies tout 996. Wasn’t the whole point of communism to avoid slave labor? Let me tell you there’s at least two thousand years of enterprise history to demonstrate how people sucker others to do work for effectively free.
paulcole · 29m ago
> When someone promotes a 996 work culture, we should push back.
What if you like that culture? Should you still push back?
reactordev · 2h ago
I would rather be a gig worker off fiver than subject myself to a 996 company culture.
OutOfHere · 2h ago
I think the problem is larger, which is that individual workers don't feel empowered to launch a firm of their own. If I am often coding at 11 pm, it's certainly not for any employer.
anal_reactor · 39m ago
Programming is simply becoming glorified low-skill job.
midnitewarrior · 44m ago
I see all the equity for 996, but if you burnout before you vest, it's worth nothing.
I'm curious if this is a calculated move by startups to preserve equity and get some people going crazy pushing your product forward rapidly.
saubeidl · 1h ago
This sort of backsliding on labor rights is why we need a tech workers union now more than ever. Go on strike. Starve the exploiters.
lif · 2h ago
7-11-4
for focused productivity
furyofantares · 1h ago
Is this a 16 hour workweek or a 64 hour workweek?
rvba · 1h ago
What are the 10B companies from China that invented anything new btw?
croes · 1h ago
996 at the company isn’t 996 concentrated good work.
enraged_camel · 2h ago
996 when working on your own business: normal, expected, and in most cases even required.
996 as an employee: screw that. It might be "worth it" if you command a massive, exec-level salary, but for the overwhelming majority of people it's just foolish.
mberning · 1h ago
This is basically code for only wanting to hire young people with little or no commitments outside of work. As a bonus they usually undervalue themselves.
ramesh31 · 1h ago
I think it's fine for kids who want to do that. You should try to get yourself into a situation around other motivated kids who want to do something great together as a tight knit focused team at that age; it's fun and you'll make lifelong friends. But by 30 you'll start to understand that work is just a tiny part of life and not really what matters at all. It will naturally shake itself out by then as simply no one will accept it in this country as a widespread policy.
jtr1 · 1h ago
One way of looking at companies advertising 996 is just that it’s a convenient legal proxy for ageism
jennyholzer · 2h ago
why would i work 996 if i don't have ownership
TrackerFF · 2h ago
The standard answer from owners: You work on something you're really passionate about, and are willing to sacrifice your own time for "the mission", "changing the world", or whatever they frame it is.
Some founders really do hype up their B2B SAAS product as the the Apollo program, and so naturally any engineer will work around the clock to put man on the moon.
annoyingcyclist · 1h ago
Don't be silly, you have 0.01% of the company until they dilute you in their next raise.
jennyholzer · 2h ago
996 means devoting your life to your work.
If you work 996 without either:
a. The opportunity to make millions of dollars
b. Ownership of the means of production
c. No other more dignified employment opportunities
It sincerely appears to me that you are throwing your life away. If you're in this boat, I hope you have a long-term plan.
acuozzo · 2h ago
> It sincerely appears to me that you are throwing your life away.
... or need to provide for dependents and have few other options?
swiftcoder · 5m ago
That is covered by option (c) above
colesantiago · 48m ago
How about startups paying the best engineers $996,000/yr for that startup job that requires 996 work culture?
These startups want the best right?
Oh wait, I have my own company where I am the founder doing this for myself when it requires it.
If I had employees I wouldn't want them doing 996 work culture, but if you want to hire ME to do that, that is the price, minimum.
Or it is another way of saying "fuck off".
itsthecourier · 1h ago
when starting up do 996, for at least one or two years. then dial back to normal 955 and chill
Kapura · 2h ago
What the actual fuck? People need to read labour history; the weekend was something that people had to fight and literally die for.
killjoywashere · 1h ago
I have never worked for a company. I have always worked for the government, the taxpayers, quixotically according to a lot of people on the internet, even, dare I say, the citizenry. Most people think these are cush jobs.
I spent decades worked way more than 996, on ships, ashore, in medical school, in residency, on clinical staff while doing entirely uncompensated research. Now I'm a subspecialist physician living in the Valley. I have never worked this little and enjoyed such a high standard of living. One of my seniors said "You don't have to work 2.5 jobs anymore. Just work 1.25 jobs". I work with teams across the spectrum of businesses to figure out how to build the business lines and I see the challenges small companies have. I really do. Not least of which is how the big companies have stacked the deck against new entrants.
Now that I do have some free time I spend it helping my wife build her business, I'm essentially her cofounder. Been incorporated for 8 years now. We think about motivating employees, paying them fairly, the breath-taking amount of money consumed by SaaS, rent, health insurance, travel costs and how that makes it hard to pay employees more. We think about motivating customers and charging them fairly. We see the mind-reeling amounts the big companies charge and then give customer discounts that effectively curb the competition. I see how they get their employees to work harder.
There are two fundamental rules in business:
1) If you're not making money, you're losing money.
2) Don't run out of money.
We watch the end-of-month profit margin going up and down like a rollercoaster. Some months, yeah, "This is great". Some months "Oh, oh, we cannot keep doing this".
We had one employee who really took this whole "I don't have to work ... hard" to heart. She would charge an hour for filling out her timesheet. She consumed her annual sick leave and accumulated PTO in her first 6 weeks. She would bail on scheduled work. Customers loved her but she was literally a net cost to the company money. How? Fixed costs. Overhead is real. Had to let her go. Honestly wasn't a hard conversation with her (she actually never returned some equipment, flat out stole from the company). What was hard was figuring out how to cover those customers and explaining to them why their favorite face of the company was gone.
You want to live a happy, ethical life? Live within your means. But that also entails having the means needed. And everybody else gets a vote. If you live in the US: the whole world wants your quality of life. Even if it's just 10% of the rest of the world, that's still double the entire US population, who are working 996.
varispeed · 1h ago
The thing about 996 that people don’t like to say out loud: it’s just slavery in startup-scented wrapping paper. No whips, no overseer with a shotgun - but the logic is the same. If you don’t belong to the owning class, your “choice” is simply which master you want to burn yourself out for.
People defend it by saying “well, you can always leave.” True - in the same way a sharecropper could always leave one plantation for another. The ladders are pulled higher and higher, so the fantasy of becoming your own master is almost gone. Once capital realises you have no escape, it’s not even 996 anymore, it’s 007. And if you want to eat, you’ll comply.
Of course people will say: “But it’s just about intensity and output, not hours!” Exactly - and that’s the trap. That framing makes you think you’re optimising for craft, while what you’re actually optimising is obedience. You’ll argue about hours vs output forever, but the real divide is class: founder vs employee, owner vs owned.
If you’re a founder working 996 on your own company, that’s your gamble, your risk, your upside. Go for it. But glorifying 996 as a model for employees is essentially advocating wage slavery with a hip new logo.
yesbut · 3h ago
996 culture can pound sand. lame.
alexnewman · 2h ago
If you don’t want to grind, don’t pick a career where only the toughest survive—like startups. In China, programmers get massages. You could be giving the massages.
I’m not smart, but I worked 7 days a week for a decade. It takes me 40 hours just to warm up, so real work means 100-hour weeks. Yet I’ve built 3 startups, 2 unicorns. In both, I was the dumbest person in the room—but I outworked everyone.
huhkerrf · 2h ago
My brother, if you are taking 40 hours to get to the state where you're warmed up, maybe look into that first.
HL33tibCe7 · 2h ago
Being a founder is a completely different situation which the article is explicitly not talking about.
Although, frankly, even as a founder, 100-hour 7-day weeks aren’t right for the vast majority of people. Clearly it worked for you, which is great, but 99% of people do not have that level of energy, and furthermore are mentally unable to withstand the sacrifices such a schedule imposes on other aspects of life.
sneilan1 · 2h ago
This is just rage bait.
jasoneckert · 2h ago
A note of caution: everything is relative, and details are important.
If you love what you do (artist, self-employed, etc.) a 996 culture can be considered a good thing as a certain amount of "good" stress allows us to feel self-actualized.
As is a 996 culture that provides for work-life balance. For example, working from home with flex time for 12 hours where you get to take long breaks whenever you feel like it to run, walk the dog, eat, get coffee, etc., is quite enjoyable as well. Who cares if you're still replying to emails at 7pm if you can do this, right?
Added note: I find it very interesting that this was immediately downvoted. I'm interested in understanding why for those who wish to share their rationale and perspective.
coffeefirst · 1h ago
When I was young and had no real responsibilities and could go without sleep, I drove the passion projects hard. There's no money here, this was all because I loved it and wanted to do it.
In my early 20s I made indie movies. The last feature film was shot in 22 days. We took two days off. The actors weren't needed every day, but the producers usually got coffee at 9:30am to prepare, and we'd wrap up everything between 11pm and 1am. It was a blast, and by the end of production we were toast.
Suffice to say, I don't buy this at all.
There's a time and a place to do a marathon. Starting your own business—fine, I'll buy it. But a marathon is a short term endurance test. It has to end. 98% of the time you should be walking.
romanhn · 2h ago
If you want to work 996 and that is what makes you feel self-actualized - by all means, go for it, nobody is stopping you. May even allow you to get ahead of the pack (or maybe the quality of your work will suffer in your overworked state - big gamble!).
For me, the big problem in your post is the "996 culture". That means the expectation is that everyone is pushing forward with a similar intensity. Now, perhaps you were talking specifically about individual efforts given your examples of artist and self-employed, but when I think about culture, I think about groups of people, and in that context 996 is problematic.
It only provides work-life balance if there is not much of a "life" to balance, where taking a break once in a while is fulfilling enough. Maaaaaybe this can work in your early 20s, but it basically removes anyone with kids, hobbies, outside interests and responsibilities, and really, anyone with life experience out of the equation. It is a highly exploitative culture, sold under the guise of camaraderie, when anyone who has gone through one or more hype cycles can tell that the majority of these startups will fold with nothing to show for them other than overworked, cynical individuals and another level of normalization of exploitative practices.
Gedalge · 2h ago
> I'm interested in understanding why for those who wish to share their rationale and perspective.
Because it overlooks the dynamics of power distribution.
When there’s a big discrepancy in power, the needs of one party feel justified, and the needs of the other feel like a whim.
Flexibility favors the employee, if and only if it is added on top of explicit office hours. Otherwise, it’s just vagueness that benefits whoever makes the decision of how you should fill them (i.e. your boss).
poly2it · 2h ago
There are certainly people who'd allocate that kind of time to a particular interest if they had the opportunity, me included.
breckinloggins · 2h ago
Likely at least two reasons:
- People simply disagree with you, especially this line: “Who cares if you’re still replying to emails at 7pm if you can do this, right?”
That might work for you but I imagine it left a sour note for some because emailing involves entangling other people into your personal hustle. This can perpetuate “work for show” (especially if you have any power or influence). If you want to silently code into the night and save all the evidence of this for the next morning, that’s one thing. Visible evidence of constant work can be very stressful and draining to others, however.
- HN leans left, weekend HN even more so. This whole thing can feel like “shit you do because we live in a ruthless society that only cares about money”. I don’t agree with the modern left on many things, but I’m definitely coming around to this one. It was - though perhaps in a slightly different context - the original Leftist-owned meaning of “woke”. It’s the idea that you suddenly wake up to the shitty sewer water you’ve been swimming in all your life and look around astonished at everyone else, who all seem to think it’s a perfectly clean and clear place to swim. I suspect some of your downvotes are because of this.
So, in short: you’re entitled to your opinion but it’s phrased as a bit of a lightning rod for those whose values deeply conflict with your own.
The only time I’d actually consider crazy schedules was if I was the founder with a huge equity stake and a once in a lifetime opportunity that would benefit from a short period of 996.
For average employees? Absolutely not. If someone wants extraordinary hours they need to be providing extraordinary compensation. Pay me a couple million per year and I’ll do it for a while (though not appropriate for everyone). Pay me the same as the other job opportunities? Absolutely no way I’m going to 996.
In my experience, the 996 teams aren’t actually cranking out more work. They’re just working odd hours, doing a little work on the weekends to say they worked the weekend, and they spend a lot of time relaxing at the office because they’re always there.
Saw this happening even at YC companies. There was always that stupid expectation of overworking, staying until 9.
The reality is that people twiddle thumbs.
And the disorganization and micromanagement power plays are enough to negate any additional worked hour.
This ranges from pure disorganization in terms of what to build to having 3 hour meetings with the whole fucking company where the CEO pretends they have something worthwhile to say for 3 hours.
Investors who have not heard of the research into productivity that says long hours have no significant benefit for skilled work? Who have not heard of diminishing returns? Who have no experience of the reality of working long hours themselves?
So in that context theatre in general makes sense. Not sure why long working hours would be - its not something people fund managers about with regard to an IPO, for example, so it probably does not hugely raise exit values.
The majority of rich people do not work for their money. They inherit or "soft inherit" the money. They do investment stuff because it makes them feel big and powerful and important.
You can tell by their speech patterns. Meet some rich people in real life and pay attention to just how slow their patterns of speech and movement are on average. Most of them act like they don't have a care and all the time in the world. Because they do and they always have. Hustle is for the plebs.
Look back at some of the big scams like Wework, FTX, theranos. I've read the documentaries and its the same story. All the rich people they bilked say the same thing. "THEY PAID SO MUCH ATTENTION TO ME" more or less.
The vast, vast majority of investors are nepo babies that inherited dad's company and his trust fund. The rest of them that may have worked have deluded themselves into thinking it was because of their "hard work" they got there
So uh, yeah, they're dumbasses. But even then: they don't care that long hours have no significant benefit: the people that will accept 996 will do it for the same salary as someone doing a 9-5. Don't anthropomophize investors, they never see people, they see numbers.
does that work? how do you convince investors to give you money if you don't have a network/didn't go to stanford?
And all of the risk.
Encouraging anyone to start their own company is deeply irresponsible. Most startups fail. If you're needing encouragement to do it - if you're not already fully deluded that you're the special snowflake unique genius who will succeed where all others have failed - you shouldn't be doing it.
so how is it different being a salaried employee at one of these companies? You say they're likely to fail; shouldn't you get the bigger lottery ticket then?
For a CEO founder, 996 is necessary to even have a shot at building and fundraising, and even then you're likely to quickly fail. Instead an IC banks on joining a founder who has funding and can get more while you build and collect a reasonable salary, and save for rainy day.
Second: there is no CEO in tech taking a smaller salary than their employees.
An employee has the opposite arrangement, they find a job to receive money. A CEO finds money to have a job.
So, where's the risk? You still just were working anyway, pulling a salary from someone else's bank account for a couple years. And now you have "Founder" or "Founding Engineer" or "CEO" or "CTO" on your resume. So you didn't have a good exit. So what?
As a rank and file employee, you get none of that. The investors don't even know who you are. The outcome for you if the company fails is that you're looking for another job while fighting burnout from longer hours and from working somewhere that doesn't respect you enough as a professional to let you manage your own time (which tends to come with other things that encourage burnout). All that to juice an "hours worked" KPI that research tells us is a questionable thing to focus on. You can do better.
What they really want is for all of their employees to be so in love with the work, so bought into the mission and so compelled by the vision that they want to work until late.
Of course building a company that inspires that is actually very difficult (though is possible for sure) so it’s easier just to enforce a crazy and unproductive schedule.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45105207
Don't be a scab
Or a helpful signal to join that company if it’s something you’re excited about.
It’s crazy to me that people are so arrogant to say that somebody else is “wrong” for being excited about something.
if folks were actually excited and motivated, you wouldn't need forced hours, you'd just trust people to work in the best way for them
996 mandated by the company is 1/ illegal 2/ straight up illegal 3/ a clear signal that they do not see you as a human being.
Worst case scenario, 996 is dumb. Not a super high bar to clear.
Besides, their 996 is the usual nonsense of posting faux thought leader crap on linkedin. Not being shoved Jira tickets and hurry up with it.
Something will eventually have to give, if we aren’t proactive in addressing the crises before us. Last time, it took two World Wars, the military bombing miners, law enforcement assassinating union organizers, and companies stockpiling chemical weapons and machine guns before the political class finally realized things must change or all hell would break loose; I only hope we come to our senses far, far sooner this time around.
Who is the ‘demos’ in a company? Who gets a vote ? Will voting really slow things down?
The only good thing about democracy in the context of a state, after all, is that every other alternative is worse. But that is strictly because of the fundamentally violent nature of the concept of a state, which does not apply to companies or corporations.
IS that true? What do you define as the revenue of a country? Tax revenues? That is just the government. GDP/GNP/GNI? That comparison for that should be profit, and only a handful of really big companies (Saudi Aramco, Apple, that sort of size) have a profit as large as the GDP of mid-size middle income countries (e.g. Sri Lanka) or small rich countries (e.g. Luxembourg). There is a long tail of small or poor countries so most countries by number, but most people live in a country with a GDP that is an order of magnitude or two greater than any company's profit.
Why? Because being poor isnt a structural problem, but a moral or ethical or laziness.
Its fascinating watching business culture basically align with prosperity gospel in that if you can grift it, it _must_ be good/just/right.
>companies stockpiling chemical weapons and machine guns
I recognize the historical references in the other clauses of this sentence, but I wasn't aware of companies stockpiling chemical weapons for use against workers. I'm not doubting - just curious to learn more about the dark history here.
Thanks!
All you have to do is observe their current behavior and you will come to the same conclusion.
When billionaires show you who they are, believe them the first time.
They have not lived through a depression and neither have they lived through any major world wars. They will be curious to see how bad it can get and they believe they will remain untouched from it.
The problem is: power is an addiction and like all addictions, some can manage to cope without and others will a absolutely follow a destructive pattern of behavior
Things are not in place for people to spiritually feel what is actually a good life and world.
It may take a generation of people, who think technology and science will allow them to have many lifetimes over and over, to meet their timely end. We will only reevaluate as we see the most well endowed generation (everyone alive today) return to dust in a timely manner, that there was no magical human power that could have saved any of us, and we ought to have just focused on a better world that we’re proud of leaving behind.
Living life like it’s a roguelike with infinite levels makes it the most unfulfilling thing ever. The world our generation will leave behind is our product, and a quality product is everything, so much so that you’d be proud to leave it in someone’s hand at the end (in fact, you’d want to). The women’s movement that left us a type of America with those fixes (labors rights, human rights) was such a thing to leave behind, they should fear nothing in death.
(To be clear, a university professor in pre-Socialist Russia is very well off compared to most, and except for the for a lucky few the October Revolution treated them accordingly.)
When America was strongest, we had a large and increasing middle class, and the top marginal tax rate was above 70% - it was in the 90s.
We don’t need “the elite” - they don’t actually “create jobs”, and the “engine of the economy” is just a convenient vehicle for the rich (and private equity) to ruin the middle class further - it was never about “efficient markets”.
If anything what we’ve seen over the last 40 years is that we need better systems.
The Biden administration had excellent industrial policy. Trump had the government steal a 10% share of Intel.
Watching people realize he’s just a criminal loser has been heartening.
I think you got this wrong. According to my sources the highest marginal income tax rate was 39.6%.
It was during the 50s, 60s, and 70s that it never dipped below 70%.
Source: https://bradfordtaxinstitute.com/Free_Resources/Federal-Inco...
The other thing is that different dimensions of the economy and other societal aspect have different lagging effects so you cannot simply assume causation or correlation between things during the same time frame.
Tax shelters were common in those days with the rich paying accountants and tax attorneys to find ways of avoiding those astronomical rates.
I don’t think “some people didn’t abide the rules” is reason not to make sensible laws.
Read about Laffer Curve for a start.
The CEO of one of my employers was smitten with his new China office because they bragged about operating 996.
To everyone else, it was obvious that they weren’t working more. They were just at the office a lot, or coming and going frequently.
When they’d send a video from the office (product demos) barely anyone was at their seats, contrary to their claims of always working.
Their output was definitely not higher than anyone else.
However, they always responded quickly on Slack, day or night, weekend or not. The CEO thought this was the most amazing thing and indicated that they were always working.
And it's shocking that it works for leadership/management so well
I guess more people are just starting to realize this because many powerful people are actually dropping some of the well-accepted optics (particularly in tech, where people felt they were treated better than the average employee for a long time)
Hell, you have the likes of Jack Ma glorifying 996, calling it a blessing.
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Management seeing this and doing the calculation: “if they’re gonna be checked out half the time, we’re really only getting 36 hours of the 40 we’ve been promised.”
I get the feeling the push to 996 is in part due to the social media epidemic - everyone spends so much time doomscrolling, might as well keep people in the office much longer to account for that extra wasted time too.
Good times
9117
The latest innovation in Management (unlocked with the power of AI)
they question the “work enthusiasm” of those who leave office by midnight.
I also never understood how it differed from the popular “death march” project management style popularized by companies like Epic and Microsoft.
If someone who actually like this kind of thing freely enters into it, well, best of luck to you. I think the shouting "996" thing is just stirring up attention.
Not saying your overall point doesn't stand, but at least for some people remembering a name isn't a consistent indicator of their impact.
I've also heard from executives and management discuss how they work longer hours (from 1:1s as a dev myself). Now as a founder, many of my peers discuss working 24/7 or close to it. Most don't - but there's a hustle culture that glamorized lack of sleep as a badge of honor.
The reality is that the "work" is very different for these different groups of people. Executives and management work by delegating and chatting people up. Founders can vary between executive duties or building or many various other founder duties. But (L3-5) engineering at corp is basically expected to code nonstop or to work oncall.
Working 996 as an executive is not comparable to 996 as an engineer.
For all of the pop science/bro science/measured self/life optimization stuff that percolates in this world, it’s funny to me that glorifying a lack of sleep persists, when sleep is effectively a performance enhancing drug, and a lack of it effectively makes you dumber.
I recall an anecdote from a sports medicine doctor interviewed somewhere, about how his patients with overtraining syndrome-type issues were overwhelmingly high-powered professionals who were accommodating their Ironman training schedule by sleeping less, as opposed to Olympic athletes who often sleep a lot to properly recover from their training.
The transparency makes it that much easier to avoid them.
Plenty of employers do not operate with this expectation. In the US, I’d replace “plenty” with “most”.
Plenty of employers recognize an opportunity to differentiate themselves to candidates by publicly not being 996’ers.
As employees realize they’re getting a bad deal and that they can find a better ratio of pay to hours worked at other companies, they leave.
Individual employees are far more numerous (therefore harder to coordinate) and have way shallower pockets than companies, so the negotiation power is always going to be lopsided.
What happened with that litigation is it got shut down and those companies pay some of the highest compensation now.
One of the few jobs you can get that pays that much compensation with fewer educational requirements and better hours than alternatives in that compensation range (surgeon, specialist doctors, lawyers at demanding firms)
I don’t think that’s a great example for your point since by comparison FAANG employees have some of the best pay you can find in an attainable job for someone with a 4 year degree and the demands are lower than many of the similarly paid jobs that require a lot more education.
Or possibly the incentives that led to this are still in place, and the current judicial climate is way more lenient towards big companies. Who's to say?
If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
If so, then yes you should only work those hours.
However, if you’re a typical full-time employee in most countries you don’t have agreed upon hours.
> If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
Again, if something was agreed upon you should follow that. In most full-time jobs they’re not going to specify a maximum number of working hours. It’s your job to explain what can be done in a workweek and push back when something can’t be done. If it persists and you don’t like it then you find another job. Vote with your feet.
Since I'm (mostly) work-from-home, my wifi router is configured to firewall my work devices outside of working hours.
This is frustrating for the IT department because it likes to push software updates overnight, but tough noogies.
The company pays for 30% of my internet connection, so it only gets to use my internet connection 30% of the day.
Anyhow I got to be paid for the hours that I actually did for well over a decade on off IIRC, and survived most of the purges of consultants/contractors there over the years, so demanding honesty from management was apparently survivable even if unusual!
j/k. You make a valid point about the limit to expectations from the employer being the sky and yet what the employee get is static.
My belief has been very few lay on their death bed wishing they had given more to their jobs. But many lay there regretting they didn't invest more in their families.
I also believe that 40 truly focused hours is more productive than many people who do 50+ hour weeks just because of the limitations of human physiology.
There are times when a crunch is warranted but they are much fewer than any would be lead to believe. If, on principle, you take away "overtime" as an option, then it makes your more focused with the time you do have.
I've employed people doing software development mostly billed by the hour for almost 20 years. So my personal wealth is directly tied to how much my team works. And in all that time, there was only once that I asked a dev to do 45 hour weeks for a summer due to exceptional circumstances. And I truly asked, I didn't insist.
I've also personally put in more time than that in some weeks/months, but I compensate by working less when that period is done. And, I always know it's not long term sustainable, so there needs to be a goal in mind.
It's not perfect, but I'm confident my priorities are in the right place. And I'm confident my team benefits greatly by being cared for in this way.
Anyway, I’ve noticed I can only work 6 hours if I write code myself, but can easily hit 10 hours vibe coding / reviewing / writing the tricky bits.
Has anyone tried 10-4 these days? It’s still 40 hours per week, but feels more sustainable.
To me this fragmentation removal also privided a surprising converse effect: for the 4 days I could think about work uninterrupted and guilt-free which put me in a state of sustained multi-day focus that provided tangible boost to the quality of my results.
For sure it's impossible to do concentrated work for 10 hours straight, but a typical job isn't only concentrated work. Onve you learn what your energy levels are through the day, and manage your workload accordingly and have discipline , it is perfectly possible to have sudtainable full-output 10 hour workdays.
Not for everyone, but definitely beneficial for those who know how to use it.
I have ~5 hours of productive creative energy per sleep, others may be different but that's me. Ideally I give 4 hours to the job, spend 4 hours reviewing/meeting/etc. and have 1 for myself. If I push myself beyond that, I start doing substandard work, so 10-4 meant I either did fewer hours of productive work per week, stole my personal creative hours, or delivered substandard work. I did all three depending on the week, but in any case my productivity overall suffered, that appeared in my peer reviews, and the stress slowly built up until I went back to working 5 days.
For others with families (spouse, kids, activities for kids, hanging out with friends, spending time with your spouse and friends outside of work) it may not even be an option and may not be able to support it.
Life is like a coin. There are two sides of a coin. Flipping it, it will always land in one side. As a person with a family you have to pick the side that matters otherwise, you are gambling with it. Gambling doesn't always go your way - the cost is higher when it comes to picking work over family.
As a parent myself, I am constantly struggling with picking the right choice. Long hours may pay well, but those long hours also have a negative impact on your family. If you ask, your family rather spend time with you than have a new shiny toy or a big house and a fast car.
(There were exceptions, particularly the product folks working on early AdWords partnerships. But even in ads most of the engineers kept to more regular hours. I certainly did.)
- BrowserUse - Founded 2024
- Greptile - Founded 2023
The third quote is from a VC who has never founded a startup himself and has a clear interest in pushing founders to trade work-life balance for his own quick returns.
So none of these people worked on anything longer than 2 years. I wonder what will happen if we check back in 5–10 years. Will they still be doing and promoting 996, or will they be burned out and have changed their minds? Make your bets.
Technically, they are also writing their own CDP implementation now.
Why work for less if you can work for more, with a better work-life balance?
I’ve noticed people who promote these extreme work hours seem to spend a lot of time posting on (and I assume reading) social media. Perhaps they feel 12 hours is reasonable when they dedicate 4 hours to brainrot (ahem, or “building a personal brand”)
This
I've worked long hours back in the 2000's. I went home at 4:00AM no one asked me to but because I read somewhere that a certain CEO worked 20hrs a day.
My boss noticed and told me that there was nothing she could offer me for the extra hours.
I still continued to do it only to learn much later what the author posted in the article (see quote).
Working long hours is not a badge of honor, what you produce (in software atleast) is what matters.
996 for a business owner or top exec at a big company? It’s the norm. And the risk-reward makes sense to them.
It's bad anyway. These people burnout and start making dumb moves to bail out sooner.
Actual craft tasks like writing code tho? Definitely a recipe for burnout and shittier output, yep.
As a coder, you can accommodate downtimes on that schedule. You also see the result of your work (even code compiling is a dopamine hit). None of that exists if you’re meeting customers and investors - you’re playing the odds all day long and have to be 100% on all the time.
A ceo trades time and peace for money, and that is arguably difficult in it's own ways. But that doesn't make it work in the same way that what you and I do is work. These people do not work a 100 hours a week. They live charmed lives that also happen to often be exhausting.
Executives make shitty decisions because they surround themselves with others who view wealth as a leaderboard to be climbed and flaunted, and have no fucking clue how difficult things are for the people doing the actual work creating products/services/value to the company. For those who claim to relate to the plight of the worker, their frame of mind is stuck in that precise moment just before they became fabulously wealthy, when they were likely busting ass - hence the “hard work pays off”/bootstrap mythos they peddle.
The few executives that do understand these plights, don’t make such shitty decisions, and are either roundly mocked for their lack of growth by those whose wealth was built atop the literal corpses of their workers, or occasionally featured in human interest pieces as an executive that’s strangely generous.
and stop paying these idiots 7+ figures.
b) produces sub-optimal results
Both of these claims are empty. Necessary according to whom? Sub-optimal against which metrics? All industrial processes are inefficient in some way because you're always dealing with engineering trade-offs. Staying in the computer domain: show me a system with optimal latency and I will show you an underutilized system; show me a system optimized for high-throughput and I will show you a system with erratic latency behaviour.
you don't just stop paying the king.
to quote my namesake: "abuse of power comes as no surprise"
Cruelty in business existed for hundreds of years before there even was an America.
the trouble is, for the amount of work these people claim they are doing, i'm not seeing actual things being shipped.
But it is the reality the collective chose. I fully expect things to get worse before they get better.
In a sense this isn't even materialist: you are chasing numbers in an account for their own sake. A materialist wants things, and might sacrifice everything else to get them, but doesn't want to do the work for its own sake.
Ultimately this is feeding the ego, the least material thing of all. And I can't actually fault people for that; in the end what else do we have? But even an egotist needs to be able to ask themselves, "am I in fact feeling what I want to feel, or have I missed myself?"
There are certainly those who want the ego rush of feeling like they've worked as hard as they possibly can and taken every chance to show off their skill. But we've fetishized them, and even if they are happy, it often won't achieve the same for us.
But one point that needs to be made: You don't need to sacrifice your health to run a startup. You can get your 8 hours of sleep and exercise every day and still run your startup.
This notion that you have to get 3 hours of sleep and ruin your health is simply a choice - don't do it.
I grew up in a small village in Germany. 500 people, 5000 cows. Only farmers and a cheese factory. In the factory, we worked on Christmas, Easter, and New Year's Eve every morning at 5 am. Farmers don't take days off because cows don't take days off.
Maybe it's not the most healthy way of life. I don't think it physically requires us to take time.
I took a break from tech to open my own bookstore and I definitely work more hours than when I worked at a pre-IPO $7B startup. I'm way less stressed. At least my bookstore doesn't wake me up at 3am 3 nights in a row, and expect me to come to work the next day.
When you work long hours on a regular basis, you begin to lose a healthy perspective on work and life.
- In grad school, I averaged 4 hours of sleep (6/7 days per week) and about 8 hours on sunday for about 5 months straight.
- In my first startup, I worked 9am to 11pm (had to walk back from the office) for about 12 months.
- During my second startup gig, my son was born and also I had an 8 hour time difference between local time and the primary timezone of the office. I woke up at 4 am and generally went to bed at 10pm most days. Waking up randomly at night to deal with newborn through toddler moments for about 4 years.
My experience with all of this:
Pros:
- Really fun to grind at times and euphoric when something works.
- Build really strong relationships with people in the trenches.
Cons (I felt like I was working but in retrospect I wasn't really productive):
- Pseudo-working - I ended up spinning plates of unnecessary pseudo-work that didn't move the needle.
- Time Dilation (biggest factor) - 9pm to 12am feels like 30 minutes. That's because my brain was slowing down. The more sleep deprivation, the more this happens during the day.
- Physical Burnout - My body felt tired with a constant low level of pain and my energy levels low. Also, stress eating made me fat.
- Mental Burnout - My mind constantly looked for distractions. Even when trying to focus, I couldn't focus
- Tactical Stupidity - I didn't find clever ways to avoid or fix problems. I just focused on the next thing. I didn't have bandwidth to reason effectively as I normally would.
Overall:
It's definitely useful to crunch and a great way to be mission oriented, but crunch cannot be constant. Sometimes you need to eat a pile of shit, but you shouldn't smear shit out and take it one lick at a time.
Furthermore, when you've attained a degree of understanding, you should be able to find better ways to leverage your time. The brain and body needs downtime to be creative--the best solutions are creative.
Finally in the world of agents, we have near infinite leverage. As a community should be engaged in deeper thought, rather than trying to grind towards a finish line that constantly moves.
In my mind, if you cared ONLY about productivity in the medium and long term, you’d probably do something like 9-7-6. So you still get a day off, and don’t work past like, dinner time. Still give yourself time to exercise, still give yourself time for social interaction, sleep can stay dialed in. I think someone doing 976 probably out-competes someone doing 996 in short order.
At this stage equity packages are often <0.5% over 4 years. Founders on the other hand may have more like 30% equity at this stage.
But the odds of success are still quite low - <3% is generous.
In venture funded companies I think it's wrong to say that at <10 employees, founders are 60x more responsible for company outcomes (or taking on 60x more risk), even accounting for what they did to start the company.
That being said - I get working hard if you're appropriately rewarded for it. Just less so if it's primarily on behalf of someone else.
> I’ve pulled many all-nighters, and I’ve enjoyed them. I still do. But they’re enjoyable in the right context, for the right reasons, and when that is a completely personal choice, not the basis of company culture.
This was never literally practiced.
But excessive hours were the norm. And I loved it. It helped me launch into a successful career.
But it hurt my relationship with my partner (now wife), and it burned me out.
I miss those days, but I don’t miss what they did to my health.
I've done the 36-hour straight work grinds, and working from 10 pm to 6 am for multiple days a week. However, I'm tired of doing that, and I've experienced enough burnout already. I'm also not okay with doing highly skilled work for more than 40 hours a week for pay that is almost demeaning—in the range of 35-45k a year. I'm more okay with it at a startup because at least the pay isn't THAT bad at more established ones with multiple rounds of funding. Just like the author, I have people in my life I'd rather devote time to because they bring be happiness. I'd like to have the savings to do practical and important things, such as do on vacation (which I find immensely good for my mental health), buy things for my other hobbies, and buy a house and have enough money to raise kids.
At least in Switzerland, I've heard your coworkers look down on your for NOT taking breaks and leaving at 5. The stipends are a bit nicer. Maybe it's worth it there. Maybe it's worth it anyway because the lack of CS jobs now will translate to requiring a PhD in the future. Maybe I should go through the extended hazing ritual known as a PhD because a startup's work won't be as technically rewarding as a PhD (the only person I know who wanted to do a PhD is now at a startup).
I still don't think the way we want people to work like this is okay. Sometimes I am a 996, but I sure don't want to be one when I need an extrinsic voice screaming into my ear to keep going because I'm not allowed to take a break.
Tbh, I was so poorly paid that going to the university on Saturdays wasn't so bad as they had better air conditioning and heating compared to my apartment!
It is still bad, though. The lab should impose maximum hours, because it does nobody any good if you get out of it burned out.
Or do the 996 thing and try not to think too much about your Alzheimer’s and heart disease filled future. Maybe leave a big gift to the hospital that takes care of you before you die at way too young of an age.
Dr. Fred Brooks would like to have a word with you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
> why not double your head count and halve the hours?
Because of friction: Not only you need much more HR to hire double the workforce, but people require double the attention, and then a subgroup will invent a sidequest etc.
In most of IT, large famous software were often built by 30 people. That’s valid for Netscape/Firefox, Internet Explorer, Jira, etc.
The best software, like Git, Javascript or Linux, were initially written by 1 person.
The new year eve of millennium Dec 31, 1999 - we went to Fishermans's wharf, roamed around and then went back to work at 1 am. No Y2K issues.
I have "experimented" with working more but I found it unconstructive. Chances of stress is much higher and with stress comes doing stupid things that I afterwards will regret.
I believe this holds for both working for myself and someone else.
At my company, we only hire in India now and the executives are intentionally causing "attrition" in the US by running people into the ground with demands that amount to 996 style work.
But, of course, like many here have noted...there's billion dollar difference in incentives between a founder, and even the early members. For a "rank and file" engineer, you're sacrificing your life to make someone else filthy rich. And if lucky, you'll be left with a payday that's not too different from a regular industry job...
On a side note, there are orgs where everything is done so poorly due to meetings - with no results nor impact. In such cases it is 8 hours of meetings and 4 hours of actual work
If I spend my Saturday toiling for wages digging with my hands, sweating for hours, just please some land owner I feel exploited.
It is not the work or the hours that is the core problem.
No? This is basically the philosophy of the "last man"
Many great things require overcoming the weakness of the flesh. From the moment you understand the weakness of your flesh it should disgust you.
Work being bad is simply a slave mentality. It is because the slave does not get any return on their effort; only sustenance.
Never at any time did anyone tell us “work X many hours”
If people actually want hard working employees, maybe the answer should be culture first? Hire great people that love working together, on a cool problem, and they’ll do what’s needed? Trust them.
Hiring for 996 says to me you don’t care about innovation or excellence. It says you suck at hiring great talent. And it signals you, as a leader, may not have a healthy relationship to work or leadership. You want control, not excellence.
Work 30 hours a week, but make em count.
Working a 996, but you're playing Pokemon on the clock isn't doing much.
Japan tried this non-sense for a while (colleagues told they used to stay on till 11am !) only to completely fail at all three software revolutions (web/smartphone/ai). China obv. has had much better success, but I don't think this is sustainable. The central-banks in these countries operate in the war-economy mode which can heat things up a lot and work very well, but I think social-burnout effects are quite real.
Nobody is paying you to sit, people care about the working product.
This debate is part of a critical redefinition of work. Technology has increased productivity, but wages have stagnated, breaking the social contract. As in the past with labor laws, urgent change is needed to avoid a crisis, prioritizing a quality life and a legacy to be proud of, not senseless exploitation.
> When someone promotes a 996 work culture, we should push back
And like the author says, it just doesn’t make sense either.
plus the nature of a founder's day to day work is very different. 12 hours a day of management, pitches, meetings, and snap decisions is doable for a long time if you can endure the pain.
12 hours a day of complex technical work under sleep deprivation is just not possible, after a few weeks of this your cognitive function will decline to the point you can't do the job right.
"You Should Run Your Startup Like a Cult", by Peter Thiel (https://www.wired.com/2014/09/run-startup-like-cult-heres/) (https://archive.is/h7iZl) (2014)
So, if you see a SF start up founders started praising 996 schedule, keep a watchful eye, make sure those founders are not in similar desperation.
Also, Elon Musk loved China schedule, I don't really see Twitter improved much since.
At the moment I work 9-5, a few meetings per day, so maybe 5-6 hours focused work, and I’m mentally exhausted by the end.
Now, I'm seeing US companies demand that here. Like, hell no. My body and health isn't worth what you're paying, and the answer 996'ers aren't paying double, or even 1.5x the position.
Saner parts of the world are discussing 37.5h/weeks, and even going to 4 day workweeks.
I mean, hell, if I'm expected to work gross overtime, I expect overtime pay. Guess like I should get into electrician union.
It was a US robotics company that worked closely with Chinese robotics. Bragging about 996.
I'm suspecting the HN admins removed it cause it looked really bad. And we know that founders here have special capabilities.
I'm sure the people in China who claim to work 996 and those who demand it all know that the truth of hard work is complicated. I'm certain they all work damned hard, and the results are there for the world to see with the amazing success their country is having at absolutely everything. The nature of hard work doesn't fit some silly schedule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
The job felt immersive and all-encompassing. My colleagues and I had a singular mission to make the kids' experience as spectacular as possible. It's hard for me to imagine another job replicating that, but maybe it could be done?
This sounds like the new generation's equivalent of 1980s bosses exhorting people to "give 110%"
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I’ve seen founders work round the clock again and again. That kind of makes sense.
But Stebbings… I’m not going to put 996 in for any firm in your portfolio. And anybody who does is a mug.
This 996 bullshit is a skill issue. Need extra hours at school to finish your work? That’s a shame, all the clever kids are at home already (working on their side hustles that are 10x more likely to pay off).
It doesn’t surprise me that this stems from China: a place where ‘face’ and hours-behind-the-desk culture are extremely prominent.
People should be able to show up, put a shift in and go the fuck home. Sometimes there are reasons to work a little longer…
But expecting this kind of behaviour is objectively shitty leadership.
What if you like that culture? Should you still push back?
I'm curious if this is a calculated move by startups to preserve equity and get some people going crazy pushing your product forward rapidly.
996 as an employee: screw that. It might be "worth it" if you command a massive, exec-level salary, but for the overwhelming majority of people it's just foolish.
Some founders really do hype up their B2B SAAS product as the the Apollo program, and so naturally any engineer will work around the clock to put man on the moon.
If you work 996 without either:
It sincerely appears to me that you are throwing your life away. If you're in this boat, I hope you have a long-term plan.... or need to provide for dependents and have few other options?
These startups want the best right?
Oh wait, I have my own company where I am the founder doing this for myself when it requires it.
If I had employees I wouldn't want them doing 996 work culture, but if you want to hire ME to do that, that is the price, minimum.
Or it is another way of saying "fuck off".
I spent decades worked way more than 996, on ships, ashore, in medical school, in residency, on clinical staff while doing entirely uncompensated research. Now I'm a subspecialist physician living in the Valley. I have never worked this little and enjoyed such a high standard of living. One of my seniors said "You don't have to work 2.5 jobs anymore. Just work 1.25 jobs". I work with teams across the spectrum of businesses to figure out how to build the business lines and I see the challenges small companies have. I really do. Not least of which is how the big companies have stacked the deck against new entrants.
Now that I do have some free time I spend it helping my wife build her business, I'm essentially her cofounder. Been incorporated for 8 years now. We think about motivating employees, paying them fairly, the breath-taking amount of money consumed by SaaS, rent, health insurance, travel costs and how that makes it hard to pay employees more. We think about motivating customers and charging them fairly. We see the mind-reeling amounts the big companies charge and then give customer discounts that effectively curb the competition. I see how they get their employees to work harder.
There are two fundamental rules in business:
1) If you're not making money, you're losing money.
2) Don't run out of money.
We watch the end-of-month profit margin going up and down like a rollercoaster. Some months, yeah, "This is great". Some months "Oh, oh, we cannot keep doing this".
We had one employee who really took this whole "I don't have to work ... hard" to heart. She would charge an hour for filling out her timesheet. She consumed her annual sick leave and accumulated PTO in her first 6 weeks. She would bail on scheduled work. Customers loved her but she was literally a net cost to the company money. How? Fixed costs. Overhead is real. Had to let her go. Honestly wasn't a hard conversation with her (she actually never returned some equipment, flat out stole from the company). What was hard was figuring out how to cover those customers and explaining to them why their favorite face of the company was gone.
You want to live a happy, ethical life? Live within your means. But that also entails having the means needed. And everybody else gets a vote. If you live in the US: the whole world wants your quality of life. Even if it's just 10% of the rest of the world, that's still double the entire US population, who are working 996.
People defend it by saying “well, you can always leave.” True - in the same way a sharecropper could always leave one plantation for another. The ladders are pulled higher and higher, so the fantasy of becoming your own master is almost gone. Once capital realises you have no escape, it’s not even 996 anymore, it’s 007. And if you want to eat, you’ll comply.
Of course people will say: “But it’s just about intensity and output, not hours!” Exactly - and that’s the trap. That framing makes you think you’re optimising for craft, while what you’re actually optimising is obedience. You’ll argue about hours vs output forever, but the real divide is class: founder vs employee, owner vs owned.
If you’re a founder working 996 on your own company, that’s your gamble, your risk, your upside. Go for it. But glorifying 996 as a model for employees is essentially advocating wage slavery with a hip new logo.
I’m not smart, but I worked 7 days a week for a decade. It takes me 40 hours just to warm up, so real work means 100-hour weeks. Yet I’ve built 3 startups, 2 unicorns. In both, I was the dumbest person in the room—but I outworked everyone.
Although, frankly, even as a founder, 100-hour 7-day weeks aren’t right for the vast majority of people. Clearly it worked for you, which is great, but 99% of people do not have that level of energy, and furthermore are mentally unable to withstand the sacrifices such a schedule imposes on other aspects of life.
If you love what you do (artist, self-employed, etc.) a 996 culture can be considered a good thing as a certain amount of "good" stress allows us to feel self-actualized.
As is a 996 culture that provides for work-life balance. For example, working from home with flex time for 12 hours where you get to take long breaks whenever you feel like it to run, walk the dog, eat, get coffee, etc., is quite enjoyable as well. Who cares if you're still replying to emails at 7pm if you can do this, right?
Added note: I find it very interesting that this was immediately downvoted. I'm interested in understanding why for those who wish to share their rationale and perspective.
In my early 20s I made indie movies. The last feature film was shot in 22 days. We took two days off. The actors weren't needed every day, but the producers usually got coffee at 9:30am to prepare, and we'd wrap up everything between 11pm and 1am. It was a blast, and by the end of production we were toast.
Suffice to say, I don't buy this at all.
There's a time and a place to do a marathon. Starting your own business—fine, I'll buy it. But a marathon is a short term endurance test. It has to end. 98% of the time you should be walking.
For me, the big problem in your post is the "996 culture". That means the expectation is that everyone is pushing forward with a similar intensity. Now, perhaps you were talking specifically about individual efforts given your examples of artist and self-employed, but when I think about culture, I think about groups of people, and in that context 996 is problematic.
It only provides work-life balance if there is not much of a "life" to balance, where taking a break once in a while is fulfilling enough. Maaaaaybe this can work in your early 20s, but it basically removes anyone with kids, hobbies, outside interests and responsibilities, and really, anyone with life experience out of the equation. It is a highly exploitative culture, sold under the guise of camaraderie, when anyone who has gone through one or more hype cycles can tell that the majority of these startups will fold with nothing to show for them other than overworked, cynical individuals and another level of normalization of exploitative practices.
Because it overlooks the dynamics of power distribution.
When there’s a big discrepancy in power, the needs of one party feel justified, and the needs of the other feel like a whim.
Flexibility favors the employee, if and only if it is added on top of explicit office hours. Otherwise, it’s just vagueness that benefits whoever makes the decision of how you should fill them (i.e. your boss).
- People simply disagree with you, especially this line: “Who cares if you’re still replying to emails at 7pm if you can do this, right?”
That might work for you but I imagine it left a sour note for some because emailing involves entangling other people into your personal hustle. This can perpetuate “work for show” (especially if you have any power or influence). If you want to silently code into the night and save all the evidence of this for the next morning, that’s one thing. Visible evidence of constant work can be very stressful and draining to others, however.
- HN leans left, weekend HN even more so. This whole thing can feel like “shit you do because we live in a ruthless society that only cares about money”. I don’t agree with the modern left on many things, but I’m definitely coming around to this one. It was - though perhaps in a slightly different context - the original Leftist-owned meaning of “woke”. It’s the idea that you suddenly wake up to the shitty sewer water you’ve been swimming in all your life and look around astonished at everyone else, who all seem to think it’s a perfectly clean and clear place to swim. I suspect some of your downvotes are because of this.
So, in short: you’re entitled to your opinion but it’s phrased as a bit of a lightning rod for those whose values deeply conflict with your own.