People have been saying that YCombinator and the general hackernews culture encourages people to work 80+ hours a week. I would like to put that to rest right n

People have been saying that YCombinator and the general hackernews culture encourages people to work 80+ hours a week. I would like to put that to rest right now. It's just not true. Yes, people who work for YCombinator startups tend to work a lot of hours. There is a simple reason for that: Anything worth doing is hard. It takes time and passion and constant attention. There is no free lunch. Paul Graham isn't a damn cult leader. He just talks sense. Imagine you have only 3 months to build something so impressive that a venture capitalist will give you a million dollars to continue building it. What would you do? Work a four day week like 37Signals? Or spend every minute you have working hard to make something amazing? People get defensive when they feel that you're implying they aren't working hard enough. Starting a company (especially a YC company) is an extraordinary situation that calls for extraordinary measures. Please stop making a big deal about the hours people work and focus more on what they build.