The recruitment website is jazzy, filled with images of contented young employees, and adorned with positive mini-slogans like “infinite curiosity,” “insane speed,” and “customer obsession.”
As you continue reading, you’ll see that there are other benefits promised, including competitive pay, free meals, a gym membership, free medical and dental care, and more. Here’s the catch, though.
Every job posting includes the following disclaimer: “Please don’t join if you’re not excited about… working ~70 hrs/week in person with some of the most ambitious people in NYC.”
The website belongs to Rilla, a tech company with headquarters in New York that offers AI-based solutions that let businesses keep an eye on salespeople while they’re out and about, engaging with customers.
Often referred to as hustle culture or grindcore, 996 is a fast-paced workplace culture that the company has become somewhat of a poster child for. Essentially, it prioritizes long workdays, usually from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week (hence the “996”).
Most of us would find that exhausting. Yet, Rilla’s 120 employees don’t feel that way, according to Will Gao, head of growth. Olympic athletes are the type of people we seek out because they possess traits like obsession and unending ambition.It’s for those who want to accomplish amazing things and have a great time doing it,” he explains.
He maintains that there is no set structure even if the hours are typically long.He says, “If I’m thinking, ‘Holy cow, I have a super idea I’m working on,’ I’ll just keep working until two or three in the morning, and then I’ll just roll in the next day at noon or something.”
For good reason, this type of strategy has gained a lot of traction in the technology industry in recent years. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance at a rapid rate, businesses worldwide are now frantically trying to figure out how to use and profit from this technology.
Large sums of money are being invested in AI projects, many of which are start-ups. However, every aspirational business owner is constantly afraid that someone else may arrive before them. Speed is crucial, and employees in the tech industry are under pressure to put in more hours and work harder in order to see results more quickly.
‘Slackers are not my brothers’
Another fan was Richard Liu, the creator of the massive online retailer JD.com, who once lashed out at what he perceived to be a deteriorating work ethic in the nation. In a contentious 2019 email to staff, he stated, “Slackers are not my brothers!”
However, this mindset led to a backlash, including a flurry of online complaints alleging that businesses were failing to pay overtime and disregard labor regulations while pressuring workers to put in excessive hours. This outcry was too strong for the government to ignore by 2021, which led to a legal crackdown.
996 is still in existence in China, although its proponents have become much more quiet. One prominent exception was Qu Jing, the former head of public relations of Baidu, who in 2024 vigorously defended a culture of hard labor in a series of social media videos. Her harsh rejection of workers’ well-being, accompanied by the remark, “I’m not your mother, I only care about results,” incited outrage. Despite her later apology, Qu lost her job as a result.
Still, there are supporters of the culture elsewhere.
Narayana Murthy, the founder of the Indian software behemoth Infosys, spoke highly of China’s use of 996 last year. “No individual, no community, no country has ever come up without hard work,” he said in a television interview.
The AI gold rush
Why has the US tech sector decided to follow the trend, then? It seems that a major contributing element was the hasty drive to create AI applications.
“It’s mainly AI companies,” says Adrian Kinnersley, who owns recruitment agencies across North America and Europe. “Those with venture capitalist investment are in a strong competition to create their goods and launch them before their competitors do. This has led people to believe that putting in more hours will help you win the marathon.
A young entrepreneur from Germany named Magnus Müller is in charge of one of those AI start-ups. In order to facilitate the interaction of AI apps with web browsers, he co-founded the company Browser-Use. He and his coworkers constantly share ideas at their “hacker-house,” a combined living and working environment, and he considers putting in long hours at work to be a given.
“What we’re attempting to construct seems difficult to me. Giving AI these additional powers, in my opinion, is a response to the problems we’re trying to address. It’s extremely difficult and competitive, and the rewards usually come when you just put your head deep into a subject and then amazing things start to happen.”
There are now only seven employees at Browser-Use, but more are being hired. According to Müller, he is seeking individuals who share his mindset. He claims that anyone who want to work a 40-hour workweek is unlikely to be accepted.
“We really look for people who are just addicted, who love what they’re doing” , he says. Hey, it’s like playing a game. You seem to be addicted to gaming, and for us, it’s not really work. We simply do what we enjoy.
Others don’t agree. Deedy Das is a partner of Menlo Ventures, a venture capital firm that has invested in technology companies for almost 50 years. According to him, young business owners most frequently make the error of requiring their staff to put in 996-style hours.
“The mistake young entrepreneurs make, in my opinion, is that they consider the number of hours they put in as sufficient and required to consider themselves productive. And that’s where the fallacy lies”. One consequence of such an attitude is expecting your employees to hustle in.
He believes that those who have family and seasoned older workers who “can actually work far less and achieve much more because they know what they’re doing” may become resentful of such a strategy. Continuously working long hours will result in long-term burnout, he adds.
He does, however, acknowledge that different regulations apply to business owners, who have a stake in the outcome and stand to gain greatly from a successful venture.To be honest, if a founder wasn’t putting in 70 to 80 hours a week, I would be stunned. If an early-stage founder isn’t putting in 70 to 80 hours a week, I can personally state that it’s probably not a good investment.”
Tamara Myles, an academic and expert on workplace culture, claims that hustle culture cannot last, particularly if individuals feel pressured to work constantly. There are grey areas, though, she admits.
The subtlety here is that many tech businesses who are embracing the 996 culture are actually promoting it rather than concealing it. “They’re practically selling it as a badge of honor,” she claims.
However, she contends that this does not imply that everyone who consents to work 996 genuinely wants to. “You may be staying because of the current difficult employment market or because you are dependent on your visa. Thus, power dynamics may be involved.
Risks to health
Those that decide to work through the night, however, may have to pay a high price.
There has long been concern about the negative effects of lengthy hours on one’s health. There’s even a term for it: Karōshi. In Japan, a nation with a long history of hard work, so-called salarymen have been known for their unwavering devotion to their employers, helping to sustain the post-war economy.
It relates primarily to heart attacks and strokes that occur in persons who work long hours and indicates death from overwork. In contrast, Karōjisatsu describes individuals who attempt or actually do suicide as a result of stress at work.
Both are recognized by Japanese law, and families may receive compensation from a government program in theory, but it can be challenging to demonstrate that a death was caused by excessive work in reality.
More generally, research released in 2021 by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) found that extended work hours—defined as more than 55 hours per week—were responsible for 745,000 heart disease and stroke deaths globally in 2016.
It found that compared to working 35–40 hours a week, working 55 hours or more increased the risk of dying from heart disease by 17% and the risk of having a stroke by 35%.
The productivity threshold
Then there’s productivity, which is broadly defined as the amount of work completed for each hour worked.
According to studies, production first rises as hours increase, but at a certain point, it begins to fall once more as mental and physical exhaustion sets in. The ‘sweet spot’ is generally accepted to be approximately 40 hours each week.
According to one recent study: “Workers appear to be able to sustain productivity fairly well at about 40 hours per five-day work week, but when people surpass this threshold and work longer hours, their job performance gradually deteriorates due to increased fatigue and unfavorable health conditions.”
Stated differently, after this point is achieved, the additional output from each hour of work begins to decrease.
The desire to hire fewer employees and make them work longer will never go away, though. This is due to the fact that every additional employee has expenses associated with hiring, training, and compensating them.
However, evidence indicates that this strategy may backfire. According to Michigan State University, “an employee working 70 hours per week has almost no difference in output than an employee working 50 hours per week” is an example of how productivity can drop so drastically.
This is not a novel idea. Henry Ford established a model for other powerful manufacturers to follow a century ago when he instituted a 40-hour, five-day workweek and reduced the working hours of his employees at his auto factories.
100-hour weeks
However, some people think that present-day British businesses may learn from the US tech industry.
In a widely shared video, James Watt, the co-founder and former CEO of BrewDog, for instance, stated: “I believe that those who hate their jobs created the entire idea of work-life balance. Therefore, if you are passionate about your profession, you need work-life integration rather than work-life balance.
He then cited a King’s College London study that revealed UK citizens are among the least inclined to think that work should always come first. According to him, it demonstrated that the UK is “one of the least work-oriented countries in the world.”
Watt was accused of acting inappropriately and abusing his position of authority at work in a 2022 BBC program. He criticized “false rumors and misinformation” while expressing regret to anyone who was offended by his actions.
James Taylor, the company’s new CEO, stated last year that BrewDog is “well past” its prior scandals.
Discussions about 996 culture may seem similar to certain people in the UK.
Large corporate law companies in this area offer high-paying jobs, but many require lengthy hours in exchange. A poll conducted by the website Legal Cheek last year found that average workdays are frequently 12 hours or longer.
The financial industry’s wheeling and dealing division, investment banking, is infamous for its long hours and handles stock market launches, mergers, and acquisitions. According to industry insiders, working 65 to 70 hours a week is rather typical and can reach 100 hours during the finalization of a significant contract.
‘Working smarter’?
Is it legal here? According to UK law’s working time laws, most employees shouldn’t be required to work more than 48 hours each week on average. However, if they so want, anyone can opt out and continue working. Therefore, as long as the employee agrees, 996 is permitted.
Ben Wilmott, the head of public policy at CIPD, an association for human resources professionals, disagrees, saying that working long hours does not necessarily result in improved performance.
“There doesn’t seem to be any correlation at all between working long hours and productivity” , according to him.There is substantial evidence that working long hours increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, among other health problems. Therefore, in my opinion, the emphasis should be on working smarter rather than longer—that is, on enhancing management skills, embracing technology, and implementing AI to boost productivity—rather than on extending working hours.
Some activists think a four-day workweek and a reduction in working hours would genuinely help the UK.
They cite the findings of a 2022 pilot project in which 61 organizations decided to reduce all employees’ working hours for six months without lowering their salaries.
It determined that this considerably lowered workplace stress and disease, as well as aided organizations in retaining employees while maintaining productivity.
For good reason, according to recruitment specialist Adrian Kinnersley, the present fervor for 996 is still mostly limited to the technology industry. It’s up for debate whether you need to put in 80 hours a week, but I believe it would be difficult to compete with the current culture of a comfortable 35-hour workweek,” he says.
Magnus Müller, the creator of Browser-Use, says that his colleagues’ work hours in Silicon Valley aren’t particularly noteworthy.
“I’m from a small village in south Germany,” he explains, adding that the farmers there work more than twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and get up at five every day. Additionally, they don’t take any vacations—perhaps only two or three days when they can hire someone to look after their cows. There are, in my opinion, a lot of industries where people work considerably harder, struggle much more, and have increasingly difficult tasks. In my opinion, what we are doing is more akin to kindergarten than anything else.
