They honestly looked surprised when I offered to be the first and walked out.
nothing quite stings like being woken up from sleeping underneath your desk at 8 am, not having left the office for a week and smelling like a rabid dog and being told that your level of commitment is disappointing.
I've done three bootstrapped startups (none ever raised VC capital), and while I usually work every day of the week, it is typically 4-10 hours a day.
A lot of startups put in 60.
60 is a lot, but if you're maybe 'first 6' people and a major shareholder ... it's not unreasonable.
80% can do 40 hours.
20% can do 60 hours.
5% can do 80 hours.
1% can do 100 hours.
There are people who struggle to do 40 hours of quality work and there are people who can work all the time with very little sleep. Neither proves anything about the other.
I mean, there are just 168h in every week and I sleep about 70 of them. I could probably go with 60 if I wanted, but that still just leaves ~1h per day for non-work related tasks.
Maybe these people are counting their breaks and when they're sitting on the toilet thinking about a problem. If this is the case, I would get to >80h work a week too.
But this also covers the hours I'm laying in bed and try to fall asleep.
It works like this: they are always working.
Basically anything they do that is not 'work' is a 'break'.
So food, gym, maybe watching a film. That's literally in their view a 'break' from working.
I know people like this - and I go into this mode myself sometimes.
Your default behaviour is to be 'working'. That's what waking hours are for.
Mind you 'reading HN' probably counts basically as 'work' in their minds, similarly reading the news.