San Francisco tech CEO reveals why he thinks staff should work 80 hours a WEEK
A San Francisco startup founder ruffled some feathers in the tech world this month when he freely admitted on social media that he makes his employees work 84 hours a week or more.
Daksh Gupta, 23, founded artificial intelligence company Greptile last year and wrote on X that he's started to tell applicants that he 'offers no work-life-balance.'
The CEO said the typical workday starts at 9am and ends at 11pm or later. Employees work Monday through Saturday and sometimes on Sundays too.
'I emphasize the environment is high stress, and there is no tolerance for poor work,' Gupta said of what he tells Greptile interviewees. 'It felt wrong to do this at first but I’m convinced now that the transparency is good, and I’d much rather people know this from the get go rather than find out on their first day.'
Gupta then asked for input and received a wide variety of responses that ranged from angry to patronizing. Some argued he was exploiting his six-person team.
'It's great to see that you're already exploiting workers straight out of college, take advantage as much as you can, people are just meat computers to be used for your own personal gain,' one person replied to his post, which got more than 1.6 million views.
Another person wrote that Gupta's honesty about the lack of work-life-balance wasn't the problem, instead saying 'the problem is with running your company this way.'
Others were even more blunt with the young CEO, telling him that this isn't the way to gain loyal employees.
Daksh Gupta, 23, sparked an impassioned dialogue about work-life balance in tech startups after saying he makes his employees work 84 or more hours per week
His post on X went viral all over the internet and got a variety of different reactions
'You'll never be able to hire/retain people with families and your employees will resent you,' one person clapped back.
Someone else took screenshots of the three jobs Greptile has listed on its website.
They wrote: 'So you’re asking a person to work on 14 hours/day - 7 days a week for people to just get a $75k salary which is considered as “low-income” in SF?'
A business development representative role can make as little as $75,000, while a senior software engineer can make as much as $200,000.
Greptile, an early stage startup marketing an AI tool for developers, closed a $4.1 million seed funding round in June, led by Initialized Capital, according to its website.
Gupta insisted that many young professionals are looking to work at a company with a breakneck pace.
'It might be hard to believe, but there exist people who want this, while a minority. The transparency exists to identify them,' he wrote on X.
In an interview with The Sacramento Bee, Gupta went through a typical day his company's office in the Transamerica Pyramid, a 48-story skyscraper in the financial district of San Francisco.
Pictured: The Transamerica Pyramid, a 48-story skyscraper in the financial district of San Francisco
Greptile employees usually filter into the office (pictured above) at around 8:45am to 9:15am from Monday to Friday. Some employees work until 9pm but most stay until 10pm or 11pm
Greptile employees usually filter in at around 8:45am to 9:15am from Monday to Friday. They start with a huddle to share updates and lay out the goals for the day.
Around noon, Gupta will pick up lunch for the team at nearby MIXT Salads. The team either sits together at a table in the office to eat or goes out for lunch.
'Deep work,' as he calls it, happens in the afternoon. Fewer conversations happen during this time.
Employees are allowed to take an hour-long break per day to go to the gym. Snacks are also available in the office: fruit and yogurt from Costco.
For dinner, they usually order food through Uber Eats. Then they get right back to work with music playing in the background. Lately, they've been playing Charli XCX's 'Boiler Room' set or lo-fi beats when they really need to buckle down.
Some employees work until 9pm but most stay until 10pm or 11pm.
After Gupta's post went viral on X and Reddit, he said he had received a largely positive response to how he runs his office, writing that his inbox had '20 percent death threats and 80 percent job applications.'
He clarified that these extreme hours aren't supposed to be long-term.
Gupta (center) takes a selfie with co-founders Soohoon Choi (left) and Vaishant Kameswaran
'This way of working isn’t supposed to be forever because it isn’t sustainable. It’s the first year or two of a startup which is like reaching escape velocity,' he wrote.
Greptile Co-founder Soohoon Choi defended the CEO on X, writing that Gupta and third co-founder Vaishant Kameswaran are 'some of the nicest and most understanding people out there' and are flexible if employees have family or health concerns.
Choi also argued the company's approach is typical of startups, especially ones in the tech industry.
'Yes we work hard,' Choi said. 'The nature of startups require a lot f***ing work, there is high urgency to get as much work done as possible as fast as possible.'
Greptile got its start in 2023 during a hackathon in San Francisco and was later picked up by startup accelerator Y Combinator, which helped the company launch.
In a July blog post, Gupta said he was drawn to Silicon Valley because 'this is where the best founders are, so if you're here, all your friends will be amazing startup founders, and they will encourage you to work harder.'
