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> 996 for a business owner or top exec at a big company? It’s the norm. And the risk-reward makes sense to them.

It's bad anyway. These people burnout and start making dumb moves to bail out sooner.

Heh, at that level the job is just meetings and emails. You can do 996 of meetings and emails for a few millions a year without burning out.

Actual craft tasks like writing code tho? Definitely a recipe for burnout and shittier output, yep.

I burned out after a year and a half of doing that. Not worth it. And after a certain NW, what's the difference? How much money do you need?

As someone who had to 996 as a coder and as a manager, I can guarantee you the burnout is MUCH faster on the latter. A 996 schedule of zoom calls is straight up torture. I could feel myself getting dumber after a few months.

As a coder, you can accommodate downtimes on that schedule. You also see the result of your work (even code compiling is a dopamine hit). None of that exists if you’re meeting customers and investors - you’re playing the odds all day long and have to be 100% on all the time.

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