A 22-year-old CEO requires his employees to work 80 hours a week: “we don’t offer work-life balance”

News JVTech A 22-year-old CEO requires his employees to work 80 hours a week: “we don’t offer work-life balance”

A CEO like no other

The 22-year-old CEO of a technology company has sparked controversy over the work schedules he puts his staff through. According to him, working 80 hours a week is a lifestyle choice. After publicly denouncing the working conditions in his company a few weeks ago, the young man suffered a large number of criticisms and threats. In the meantime, he even continued to use his profile on the social network X to add fuel to the fire, before making his guilt and supporting his point (see tweet below)..

Daksh Gupta is the founder of Greptile, an enterprise software company based in San Francisco. The young man posted on X earlier this month that his company “does not offer work-life balance”. He also explained that he made this clear during job interviews so that, during the selection process, no one who did not want to endure endless hours took action.

“No work-life balance”

The public controversy began when he said in a November 8 post that he had recently started “tell candidates during the first interview that Greptile does not offer work-life balance, that typical work days start at 9 a.m. and end at 11 p.m., often later, and that we work on Saturday and sometimes also on Sunday. I emphasize that the atmosphere is very stressful and poor work is not tolerated”.

He added that at first he thought it was wrong to do so, but over time he became convinced that transparency was a good thing.. It seems that in the past, people didn't realize that this work environment required such long hours until they arrived at work on their first day.

The post was intended to showcase the methods Daksh Gupta uses to narrow down the pool of applicants and show that he strives to be transparent about Greptile's demanding culture. But unfortunately (or fortunately from a visibility point of view) for him, his message went viral and made the rounds on social networks. Faced with such controversy, the CEO began receiving emails containing insults and criticism, and even, he said, death threats. But, as he stated in an interview, 80% of people who write to him ask for a job. In the same interview, he explains that working 80 hours a week is necessary because of the natural competition in the startup world.

“This is an extremely competitive space. Nobody cares about the third best company, or even the second best company in any software category”he said. Greptile was founded in 2023 and creates an artificial intelligence assistant that helps software developers navigate and understand their code base. And to stand out in the crowded enterprise software market, he says, you don't have to have a lot of life outside of work.