Should company work-intensity culture be judged by specific hours worked (e.g., 996) or by output and obsession with the work?

Edwin Chen · Jul 21, 2025

You have to be willing to work hard and take the 2am call, but people confuse hours worked with value created; hours spent should not be equated with progress

Being able to deliver 10,000 data points by 6am when a customer calls at 3am is what he loves, yet his own best ideas come while walking around rather than at the computer

Scope: willingness to work hard is still required

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Anton Osika · Aug 18, 2025

The right performance bar is 10x impact relative to people at other companies, not a mandated number of hours or days per week

You achieve 10x impact through talent, being good at your job and focus; for some people that requires a huge number of hours but not for everyone, and what he manages against is whether he'd fight to keep you if you said you were leaving

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Brendan Foody · Sep 15, 2025

Intensity is essential to building a generational business, but it should be measured through outputs rather than in-person hours

When the talent market is this competitive it makes more sense to optimize for working with the best people than for FaceTime

Scope: 996 was a description of how the early team worked, never a mandate

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Harry Stebbings · Sep 15, 2025

Companies must shift their language from 996 to impact once they start hiring senior execs from big companies

Stellar execs from large companies will never work 996, so the framing has to become more neutral

47:12 Language must shift from hours to impact for senior hires

Brendan Foody · Sep 15, 2025

What matters in hiring is obsession with the work, not specific hours; the two were tightly correlated early but decouple as a company scales

Early on everyone loved what they did so hours and commitment tracked each other, but that correlation weakens with growth

47:57 Obsession with work not hours is the real hiring signal