It's almost a tradition now that startup = sweatshop. That's the problem -- I have zero tolerance for sweatshops, even though I have nothing against startups.

It's almost a tradition now that startup = sweatshop. That's the problem -- I have zero tolerance for sweatshops, even though I have nothing against startups. Too many people equate hours with value; reality is that if you're working burnout hours, you're writing bugs (not code) and creating more work for yourself rather than knocking things off of your to do list. There are going to be times when you'll work extra hours if you care about what you're doing, so that's a given. But if you get to a point where you're consistently working ridiculous hours, your SO should drag you away from the computer, slap you silly, and tell you to stop and think about what you're doing, because you're obviously doing it wrong. I've worked for several startups... not once have I encountered a situation where working long hours helped to get the job done, but I have frequently experienced the opposite. In every sweatshop project I've been in, whether a startup or not, I dreaded the first checkout, because invariably I'd spend a large chunk of my day fixing a lot of broken code.