We Don't Believe in Work-Life Balance

[sigseg1v]

Ever since the recent AI fad, more and more of these types of people have come out of the woodwork.

Every random unknown business now truly believes that they have built something novel and revolutionary. They have the audacity to see difficult things being invented by geniuses and think "wow, I can do it too". They think that they must succeed at all costs; their employees must work unlimited hours and they must use unlimited resources because nothing is more important.

It's kind of sad to watch, knowing that in a couple years nobody will care and their company will have produced nothing of value, while the negative consequences of their "progress at all costs" will still be felt by individuals and the world.

[fanatic2pope]

I think it is more of a function of the new political reality. Companies see a rare opportunity to roll back hard won worker rights and they are going for it.

[Magmalgebra]

This is so much better than a decade ago! No underhanded "we're a family" - the company says "you will work 60 hours a week and take a big risk" and employees can say yes or no.

[rfwhyte]

The depressing reality is none of these people actually believe in their vaunted missions or purposes or whatever nonsense they spout to justify the exploitation of their employees, they believe in money, and are willing to say and do absolutely anything to get it.

[marcusb]

To borrow from the old saying, he may not believe in work-life balance, but work-life balance believes in him. He isn't building a "performance culture", he's gambling (whether he realizes it or not) on a liquidity event or reaching some sort of competitive moat before employee burnout, turnover, and technical debt overwhelms the company.

[Bluescreenbuddy]

Yes of course the people making millions don't believe in work life balance. They stand to gain the most from it

[htrp]

Relevant to this conversation

>So, I ask, why, exactly, is Cognition worth $10 billion? And why did it have to raise $300 million after raising “hundreds of millions” according to Bloomberg in March? Where is the money going? It doesn’t seem to have great revenue, Carl Brown of the Internet of Bugs revealed it faked the demo of “Devin the AI powered software developer” last year, and Devin doesn’t even rank on SWE-benchmark, the industry standard for model efficacy at coding tasks.

[1] https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-money-trap/

[akaike]

Of course, he doesn’t believe in it.He profits from it most. Having me time or family time, who cares as long as the money flows, right?

[paulrpotts]

I will not forget Argo AI trying to convince me that if I stayed with the company for four years, by then my equity would be worth an estimated $700,000. I made it just over a year in stressful, high-pressure environment, with a toxic manager; I knew it was time for my weekly one-on-one because my heart rate monitor would start giving me warnings. He loved to humiliate individual employees in our scrum team meetings; at one point I called him out on it and demanded that he apologize for his unprofessional bullying. He actually did, but our working relationship was never good after that.

Anyway, my enormous efforts and long hours got me a "meets expectations" review. The company imploded just after I completed that first year, and so my equity was worth nothing. Good times!

[ncr100]

Sounds like a misallocation of resources.

Can he be replaced with AI, and hire 2x the number of people with his salary?

[NotGMan]

This would be great if you'd be guaranteed eg 5M $ after ~5 years of doing so. Mostly set for life.

Obiously it won't happen :)

This type of work is only if you own the business yourself since you're the one who profits.

[usernamed7]

this is such a shortsighted and myopic view. And wrong, it's also wrong. We should stop giving people like this a voice because they are the dumbest people to be listening to. Maybe this makes sense in cultures were 80 hour work weeks is a norm, but it's not the way things are done in the west and with good history.

[andrewstuart]

Childish management approach.

Both the buyout and the 80 hour weeks are stupid.

[burnt-resistor]

It's a weak Hobson's choice without much leverage, thankfully.

[burnt-resistor]

This is what happens when workers are weak, don't have unions, or have sensible labor laws.

[Bendy]

He’s not fooling anyone. In the words of Spiderman, “Look at him! Look at him and laugh!”

[rfwhyte]

"We don't believe in work life balance, we believe in exploiting our employees."

[calmbonsai]

Oh ffs, these guys again?! See "Devin demo". It's very disappointing this person continues to be given a platform to spout heinous bullshit.

FWIW, I don't believe in work/life balance over short intervals as I feel intensity beats consistency, BUT work/life balance over long (months) intervals is absolutely critical to being a healthy decent human.

One also must consider timing wrt perceived opportunity costs. It's fine for folks with real skin in the game to make these sorts of decisions for themselves, but it's amoral to force them upon others who are playing the same game for vastly different stakes.

[metaltyphoon]

Disgusting