Ask HN: Are you working 996 hours? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you working 996 hours?

3 pointsderwiki16 comments

9am-9pm, 6 days/week. Working them? Would you? Tricked into 996?

You couldn't pay me enough to sacrifice so much of my life for someone else's business.

But, think of the shareholders!

What if you were in dire straits and needed the money?

Still no. There's a limit to what I'm willing to give up just for money, and giving up that much of my life is well past it.

I've been in dire straits and desperately needed money a number of times, so I know what that's like. This may be a US-centric kind of thing, but when I've been that desperate, I've started a business. Doing that has led to me improving my situation even when the business technically "failed". In fact, being desperate seems to increase the effectiveness of starting my own venture, precisely because it's such a powerful motivator. Failure is not an option and all that.

I'm totally willing to make such sacrifices -- and more -- for my own ventures, where I accrue the equity, business network, and all the other indirect benefits (that will keep benefiting me even if/when the income stops.) I'm just not willing to do it for other people's ventures. That makes no sense to me at all.

Alright, thanks for responding.

996 hours a year? Sure.

I wasn't put on Earth to create shareholder value. Work is the means to an end. The less of it I have to do, the better.

I work as QA during the day, but at night I become a B̶a̶t̶m̶a̶n̶ solo founder. I started to work like this at the end of April and have had almost no days off. With the day job, it is around 12-14 hours per day till now. It's not 996 hours per year, and nobody forced me, but the internal willingness to finish the main development asap. Yeah, that was quite intensive, but I already accomplished most of the task, and now I am gonna slow the pace.

No. I can understand doing so if it's your own company and you have a significant % of the business. But if you are an employee it does not make sense, you will not gain the time back

I'm not getting paid by the hour, so hell no.

If I was paid hourly, hell no.

Yes, I do 996 hours per year. That is exactly 83 hours per month, and as a prime, management can’t divide it any further.

I did that and more when I was trying to get my startup off the ground, but never since and never again.

As an employee hell no. I've done a couple of crunches, but efficiency tanks. Plan better, be more agile, solve the immediate issues rather than getting fancy, so much one can do instead.

No, but if I got paid overtime I'd absolutely do it (or something more reasonable like 50-60 hrs/week)

what is this 'work' you speak of?

No.

But my agents are.

• 996 schedule

• Ads all over SF that just have our logo with no context

• Hacker house in Pac Heights

• Shared space in Hayes (for calls)

• Tech stack is Next.js/React/OPENAI_API_KEY

• Product is AI SOC-2 verification

• The company will fail, I'll pivot into real estate

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