Originally posted on LinkedIn
Yesterday there was a post (and I quote): “The 996 shouldn’t be the norm. But in the early years of a startup, intensity is non-negotiable 🚨”. 𝐖𝐓𝐅???
996 is a work culture of working from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Famous mainly in China, now spreading in SF… and apparently some people want to import it to LatAm.
I think the people advocating for extreme (and in my mind, unreasonable) work intensity are dead wrong for several reasons:
1️⃣ Past a certain point, working more doesn’t mean producing more. The most productive hours are the first 4-5 hours of focused work, then the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Quality > Quantity, always.
2️⃣ It’s a perfect burnout recipe. Burning yourself and your team out is the easiest way to kill morale and spike turnover. You need to take care of your talent, not squeeze it dry.
3️⃣ It kills creativity. Good ideas don’t come from exhaustion — they come from rest and having experiences outside of work. And without innovation, any “disruptive” company (startup or otherwise) will die.
4️⃣ It creates a toxic culture. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It might help you produce more at first, but you’ve already wrecked the culture — good luck trying to fix it later.
5️⃣ It limits your talent pool. This also excludes incredibly talented people who have families, hobbies, or simply… a life.
6️⃣ Most importantly — it’s genuinely unnecessary. Burning out isn’t the only way to build a company (and I’d argue it’s the least sustainable). If the founders (or the founding team) aren’t doing well, the company won’t be doing well either.
Let’s talk about working better, not working more.
PS — What really gets me is that the original post came from an HRTech company 🫠