I'd retort: do people still think that working 80 hour weeks makes you more productive than working 50 hour weeks? [1] [2] [3] In a startup, your competitive a

I'd retort: do people still think that working 80 hour weeks makes you more productive than working 50 hour weeks? [1] [2] [3] In a startup, your competitive advantage is rarely going to be how many hours you work - how can it be, when you're playing against large well-capitalized companies that can assign entire teams at the drop of a hat and thereby outwork you tenfold? Rather, you rely on some combination of: - underdoing the competition (you can't do everything as 1-10 people, so you have to fail and iterate quickly with minimal effort and learn as much as you can from each iteration); - personal / professional connections (OK, so you can spend more time here, but it's often not going to be behind a computer or at the office, and it will be very hard to measure productivity-wise); - blind luck (which isn't in your control anyways, so don't waste your time trying); - the innovator's dilemma (which isn't really in your control either, but gives you a several-year headstart while larger companies slowly figure out that your market is lucrative enough for them to bother with). Finally: from personal experience, the productivity gains of working 80 hour weeks are illusory. I make more mistakes, incur more technical debt, work on fewer of the right problems and more of the wrong ones, take on stress that impacts my decision-making and communication skills... [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/12/working-hours http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/12/working-... [2] https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/crunchmode/econ-crunch-mode.html https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/crunc... [3] http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf