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
... or need to provide for dependents and have few other options?
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.
Expecting someone else with far lesser incentives is not even sustainable. I remember putting in a lot of hours at my previous company, i enjoyed doing it and i was learning at my first job, there are weeks where i put in those hours but those are for myself and what i'm building and it's insanity to expect that even to myself.
The metric is the output, independent of time you put in; alot of startups need those hours at times it's important to get things done but setting it as a culture and take pride is so naive of a thought.
i love high performing individuals delivering more output, than subpar individuals working delivering much lesser value and not just working for sake of it.
For evil-aligned founders it's important to realize that exploiting workers is one of the best trod paths to success. If you can get away with it without causing a revolt you're almost certainly getting more for your money. So being up front with 996 is absolutely in your interests. Being hard-core, 10x, cracked (pick your generation's euphemism) is just good marketing. Be prepared to cut anyone who burns out, try to get people without any ties or those who can't afford to quit. Maybe even create a cult of personality around yourself.
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.
Also, if you want to work 996, you'd better not have a family -- if you do, you're neglecting them whether or not you think you can "juggle things" just fine.
The first comment on my post was "fuck off". I'm not trying to push my working style on anyone else, I simply like to work hard. What's wrong with that?
After a certain point though, you're laundering the idea of mistreatment through your own identity. For example, maybe 1 in a million Chinese textile workers really does feel like stitching together Disney branded tee shirts is their life's calling. That doesn't mean that everyone else should subsist below the poverty line because they won't step up to meet that person's 996 dedication. Many people will scorn your eagerness to work, especially if you're not producing anything revolutionary or novel with your effort.
It's all about what you have at the end of the day. If you put in 10 years at companies that underpaid you, mistreated you and never gave you significant equity, you were simply taken advantage-of and refuse to admit it. If you really are a 10x engineer then yeah, I'd argue you wasted your time and haphazardly threw away your talent for a zero-net lifestyle.
Yea I don't think I've ever pulled an all-nighter that was "worth it" outside of school. School is temporary and you're probably only pulling all-nighters your last year.
But work is different. You are working for the majority of your life. If you set your standard of life to prioritize work over your mental AND physical health, you're not going to make it past retirement (if you haven't already burnt out).
And yes, 4 hours/day in the morning, intent here is just for most mentally demanding work to take place then
Overall, the above is to serve as a core time structure/focus principle (so to be clear, am NOT claiming ALL types/levels of work can be fitted into just 16h/wk -- tho ~30h/wk is worth striving for, imo)
the idea is to optimize for quality, and grind as needed in the later part of the work day.
Creativity comes in bursts and can’t be scheduled. Happiness and health move with the seasons. Treating humans as divisible units of 1 hour blocks of factory farmed ROI will never yield amazing results.
It’s sad to see the more technology and automation we invent the more we become slaves to the cult of pseudo-productivity, virtue signalling hours at work in place of meaningful output or results.