Back in the 90s, at Naughty Dog, we worked 100 hour weeks. After three years, people started to go crazy. By the end of Crash Bandicoot 2, one of the artists we

Back in the 90s, at Naughty Dog, we worked 100 hour weeks. After three years, people started to go crazy. By the end of Crash Bandicoot 2, one of the artists went completely ape about something random on a level we were working on and threw a chair at me. It was at that moment that I realized that our limits were biological and not simply a matter of will. We pulled all-nighters in which only a handful of us were doing more than one trivial task per hour. 100 hour weeks were sustainable if you didn't mind the occasional psychotic outburst. All-nighters were uniformly unproductive. I do not believe that working 130 hours is physically possible for more than a single week. This sounds like "no, really, I deserve to have hundreds of millions of dollars," because "I just worked so hard." I don't believe it. I also think it's a horrible model for entrepreneurs. If you want to produce great work, get enough rest, exercise, and perspective. If early Google employees really did what Marissa says, they should be thankful that they were lucky enough to overcome it, not credit their success to it. We all know early Google employees made an absolute crapload of money. But not because of 130-hour weeks. Because they had the guts to work on a search engine when, in Marissa's words, "There were already twelve search engines and it was unclear why the world needed another one." I remember everyone thinking that. Kudos to Larry, Sergey, Marissa, et al for improving search just because, and later ending up with the most lucrative business model in the history of the world. But shame on Marissa for perpetuating the myth that working stupid hours and abusing yourself (and others) is the path to success. It isn't.