cawacko
Well-known member
Anyone ever work hours like this? I went through a period where I was doing 60 hour weeks and I thought that was bad but that pales in comparison to this. Respect for those so driven to do this. It's certainly not for everyone.
San Francisco tech startup CEO Daksh Gupta sparked a heated debate when he posted to social media about his company’s controversial “no-work-life-balance” approach, in which employees work at least 84 hours a week, often more.
Though some criticized Gupta’s approach as exploitative, the startup founder said his philosophy attracts talented young people who are looking for an intense, high-stress work environment.
“It might be hard to believe, but there exist people who want this, while a minority. The transparency exists to identify them,” Gupta, 23, wrote on X.
The San Francisco resident said he tells prospective job applicants to Greptile, the artificial intelligence company he helped found in 2023, that working there means working from 9 a.m. to at least 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday, and sometimes Sundays too.
“I emphasize the environment is high stress and there is no tolerance for poor work,” he said in the post.
Greptile, an early stage startup marketing an AI tool for other developers, closed a $4.1 million seed funding round in June, led by Initialized Capital, according to its website. Software engineers at the company can expect to make $120,000 to $200,000 per year, according to job postings on Greptile’s website.
Gupta said he discloses his high expectations to applicants up front in the name of transparency. Said Gupta: “It felt wrong to do this at first, but I’m convinced now that the transparency is good, and I’d much rather people know this from the get go rather than find out on their first day.”
Greptile employees usually trickle into their office, in the Transamerica Pyramid, between 8:45 and 9:15 a.m. Monday to Friday, Gupta told the Chronicle in a brief phone interview from India on Sunday. They start the workday with a huddle to share updates and set goals for the day.
Around noon, Gupta usually picks up lunch for the team at nearby MIXT Salads. The workers usually eat together at a table in the office. Other times they go out for lunch.
“Deep work,” with fewer conversations, happens in the afternoon, Gupta said. At various times employees take a break to go to the gym for about an hour. Snacks are on hand: fruit and yogurt from Costco.
For dinner, the team usually orders food via Uber Eats. Afterward, music plays in the background. Recently it’s Charli xcx’s “Boiler Room” set. If the team needs to buckle down, it’s lo-fi beats. Some employees work in the office until 9 p.m., but most stay until 10 or 11 p.m.
Gupta works in the office from about noon until 5 or 6 p.m. Saturdays and doesn’t go there Sundays, but he said co-founder Soohoon Choi works in the office both days. Gupta said he thinks of the weekends as the time to finish work that piled up or prepare for the next few days.
Gupta said he gets six hours of sleep on average per night. His goal is seven hours. “On a good night,” he hits eight. He wakes up at 7 a.m. and goes on a 15-minute walk to wake up and get some steps in, he said.
He walks 20 minutes to get to the office.
Outside of work, he hangs out with his girlfriend and plays the piano sometimes. Aside from that, “nothing much,” he said.
After Gupta’s post went viral, amassing 1.2 million views on X and 35,000 likes on a Reddit forum, some commenters said Gupta’s expectations are unrealistic and a recipe for burnout.
“You would not be able to perform the basic responsibilities of life outside of work,” one Reddit commenter wrote, adding, “You’d likely struggle to get more than 6 hours of sleep per night when you’re working 14 hour days.”
But others said Gupta’s transparency was admirable. “I would much rather never accept their job offer than start working there and immediately quit,” one Reddit user wrote.
Choi expressed his support for the CEO on X, writing that Gupta and third co-founder Vaishant Kameswaran are “some of the nicest and most understanding people out there” and are flexible if employees have family or health concerns.
Choi also defended the company’s approach. “Yes we work hard,” Choi said. “The nature of startups require a lot f—ing work there is high urgency to get as much work done as possible as fast as possible.”
In a follow-up post, Gupta said he had received a largely positive response to his work philosophy, writing that his inbox was full of “20% death threats and 80% job applications.” He also wrote that his high-octane philosophy “isn’t supposed to be forever because it isn’t sustainable,” adding that the company might adopt a less intense work schedule as it matures.
Gupta wrote that some social media commenters speculated that Gupta’s work approach owed to his Indian heritage, prompting him to clarify: “i am like this not because i an indian but because im san franciscan.”
Gupta appears to have lived in the San Francisco area for less than a year and a half, according to a blog post he wrote on the company’s website in July. After leaving Atlanta, where he studied computer science at Georgia Tech, Gupta wrote that he landed at San Francisco’s airport as “a struggling new grad startup founder.” It is unclear where he lived before Georgia, but in his blog post he refers to being in his “first year in silicon valley.”
Greptile began in 2023 during a hackathon in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood and was launched with the help of startup incubator Y Combinator later that year, according to Greptile’s website. It has six employees and is hiring.
Gupta was drawn to Silicon Valley, he wrote in his blog post, because “this is where the best founders are, so if you’re here, all your friends will be amazing startup founders, and they will encourage you to work harder, you will learn a lot from them, and you will be surrounded by people who understand the thing you’re trying and the thing you are going through.”
S.F. tech founder says 84-hour workweek approach is ‘because I’m San Franciscan’
San Francisco tech startup CEO Daksh Gupta sparked a heated debate when he posted to social media about his company’s controversial “no-work-life-balance” approach, in which employees work at least 84 hours a week, often more.
Though some criticized Gupta’s approach as exploitative, the startup founder said his philosophy attracts talented young people who are looking for an intense, high-stress work environment.
“It might be hard to believe, but there exist people who want this, while a minority. The transparency exists to identify them,” Gupta, 23, wrote on X.
The San Francisco resident said he tells prospective job applicants to Greptile, the artificial intelligence company he helped found in 2023, that working there means working from 9 a.m. to at least 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday, and sometimes Sundays too.
“I emphasize the environment is high stress and there is no tolerance for poor work,” he said in the post.
Greptile, an early stage startup marketing an AI tool for other developers, closed a $4.1 million seed funding round in June, led by Initialized Capital, according to its website. Software engineers at the company can expect to make $120,000 to $200,000 per year, according to job postings on Greptile’s website.
Gupta said he discloses his high expectations to applicants up front in the name of transparency. Said Gupta: “It felt wrong to do this at first, but I’m convinced now that the transparency is good, and I’d much rather people know this from the get go rather than find out on their first day.”
Greptile employees usually trickle into their office, in the Transamerica Pyramid, between 8:45 and 9:15 a.m. Monday to Friday, Gupta told the Chronicle in a brief phone interview from India on Sunday. They start the workday with a huddle to share updates and set goals for the day.
Around noon, Gupta usually picks up lunch for the team at nearby MIXT Salads. The workers usually eat together at a table in the office. Other times they go out for lunch.
“Deep work,” with fewer conversations, happens in the afternoon, Gupta said. At various times employees take a break to go to the gym for about an hour. Snacks are on hand: fruit and yogurt from Costco.
For dinner, the team usually orders food via Uber Eats. Afterward, music plays in the background. Recently it’s Charli xcx’s “Boiler Room” set. If the team needs to buckle down, it’s lo-fi beats. Some employees work in the office until 9 p.m., but most stay until 10 or 11 p.m.
Gupta works in the office from about noon until 5 or 6 p.m. Saturdays and doesn’t go there Sundays, but he said co-founder Soohoon Choi works in the office both days. Gupta said he thinks of the weekends as the time to finish work that piled up or prepare for the next few days.
Gupta said he gets six hours of sleep on average per night. His goal is seven hours. “On a good night,” he hits eight. He wakes up at 7 a.m. and goes on a 15-minute walk to wake up and get some steps in, he said.
He walks 20 minutes to get to the office.
Outside of work, he hangs out with his girlfriend and plays the piano sometimes. Aside from that, “nothing much,” he said.
After Gupta’s post went viral, amassing 1.2 million views on X and 35,000 likes on a Reddit forum, some commenters said Gupta’s expectations are unrealistic and a recipe for burnout.
“You would not be able to perform the basic responsibilities of life outside of work,” one Reddit commenter wrote, adding, “You’d likely struggle to get more than 6 hours of sleep per night when you’re working 14 hour days.”
But others said Gupta’s transparency was admirable. “I would much rather never accept their job offer than start working there and immediately quit,” one Reddit user wrote.
Choi expressed his support for the CEO on X, writing that Gupta and third co-founder Vaishant Kameswaran are “some of the nicest and most understanding people out there” and are flexible if employees have family or health concerns.
Choi also defended the company’s approach. “Yes we work hard,” Choi said. “The nature of startups require a lot f—ing work there is high urgency to get as much work done as possible as fast as possible.”
In a follow-up post, Gupta said he had received a largely positive response to his work philosophy, writing that his inbox was full of “20% death threats and 80% job applications.” He also wrote that his high-octane philosophy “isn’t supposed to be forever because it isn’t sustainable,” adding that the company might adopt a less intense work schedule as it matures.
Gupta wrote that some social media commenters speculated that Gupta’s work approach owed to his Indian heritage, prompting him to clarify: “i am like this not because i an indian but because im san franciscan.”
Gupta appears to have lived in the San Francisco area for less than a year and a half, according to a blog post he wrote on the company’s website in July. After leaving Atlanta, where he studied computer science at Georgia Tech, Gupta wrote that he landed at San Francisco’s airport as “a struggling new grad startup founder.” It is unclear where he lived before Georgia, but in his blog post he refers to being in his “first year in silicon valley.”
Greptile began in 2023 during a hackathon in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood and was launched with the help of startup incubator Y Combinator later that year, according to Greptile’s website. It has six employees and is hiring.
Gupta was drawn to Silicon Valley, he wrote in his blog post, because “this is where the best founders are, so if you’re here, all your friends will be amazing startup founders, and they will encourage you to work harder, you will learn a lot from them, and you will be surrounded by people who understand the thing you’re trying and the thing you are going through.”
