996

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.

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