A San Francisco startup founder ruffled some feathers in the tech world this month when he openly admitted on social media that he makes his employees work 84 hours a week or more.
Daksh Gupta, 23, founded artificial intelligence company Greptile last year wrote on X that he starts telling applicants that he “doesn’t offer work-life balance.”
The CEO said the typical workday starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 11 p.m. or later. Employees work from Monday to Saturday and sometimes also on Sundays.
“I emphasize that the environment is very stressful, and there is no tolerance for bad work,” Gupta said of what he told interviewee Greptile. “At first it felt wrong to do this, but I now believe the transparency is good, and I would much rather people know this from the start rather than discover it on day one.”
Gupta then asked for input and received a wide variety of responses, ranging from angry to condescending. Some claimed he was exploiting his team of six people.
“It’s great to see you’re already exploiting workers right out of college, take advantage as much as you can, people are just meat computers that you can use for your own personal gain,” someone replied to his post, which got more than 1, 6 million views.
Another person wrote that Gupta’s honesty about the lack of work-life balance was not the problem, saying instead, “The problem is that your business is being run this way.”
Others were even more blunt with the young CEO, telling him that this is not the way to recruit loyal employees.
Daksh Gupta, 23, sparked impassioned dialogue about work-life balance at tech startups after saying he makes his employees work 84 or more hours a week
His post on
“You will never be able to hire/retain people from families and your employees will resent you,” one person clapped back.
Someone else took screenshots of the three jobs Greptile listed his website.
They wrote: ‘So you’re asking someone to work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week so people can just get a $75,000 salary, which is considered “low income” in SF?’
A business development representative can earn as little as $75,000, while a senior software engineer can earn as much as $200,000.
Greptile, an early-stage startup marketing an AI tool for developers, closed a $4.1 million seed funding round led by Initialized Capital in June, according to its website.
Gupta emphasized that many young professionals are looking for a job in a fast-paced company.
‘It may be hard to believe, but there are people who want this, even if they are a minority. The transparency exists to identify them,” he wrote on X.
In an interview with The Sacramento BeeGupta spent a typical day at his company’s office in the Transamerica Pyramid, a 48-story skyscraper in San Francisco’s financial district.
Pictured: the Transamerica Pyramid, a 48-story skyscraper in San Francisco’s financial district
Greptile employees typically enter the office around 8:45 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. Monday through Friday (pictured above). Some employees work until 9 p.m., but most stay until 10 or 11 p.m.
Greptile employees typically arrive Monday through Friday between 8:45 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. They start with a meeting to share updates and set goals for the day.
Around noon, Gupta picks up lunch for the team at nearby MIXT Salads. The team sits together at a table in the office to eat or goes out to eat.
‘Deep work’, as he calls it, happens in the afternoon. Fewer conversations take place during this period.
Employees are allowed to take an hour break per day to go to the gym. Snacks are also available at the office: fruit and yogurt from Costco.
For dinner, they usually order food through Uber Eats. Then they immediately get back to work with music in the background. Lately they’ve been playing Charli XCX’s ‘Boiler Room’ set or lo-fi beats when they really have to give in.
Some employees work until 9 p.m., but most stay until 10 or 11 p.m.
After Gupta’s post went viral on X and Reddit, he said he has received mostly positive responses to the way he runs his office. He wrote that his inbox contained “20 percent death threats and 80 percent job applications.”
He clarified that these extreme hours should not apply for the long term.
Gupta (center) takes a selfie with co-founders Soohoon Choi (left) and Vaishant Kameswaran
‘This way of working cannot last forever, because it is not sustainable. It is the first year or two of a startup that is akin to reaching breakout velocity,” he wrote.
Greptile co-founder Soohoon Choi defended the CEO on
Choi also argued that the company’s approach is typical of startups, especially those in the technology industry.
“Yes, we work hard,” Choi said. “The nature of startups requires a lot of work, there is a high urgency to get as much work done as quickly as possible.”
Greptile started in 2023 at a hackathon in San Francisco and was later picked up by startup accelerator Y Combinator, which helped the company launch.
In a July blog post, Gupta said he was drawn to Silicon Valley because “this is where the best founders are, so if you’re here, all your friends will be great startup founders, and they’ll encourage you to work harder.”