https://brodzinski.com/2025/08/ai-hustle-culture.html Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business * Home * Slacker Manifesto * About * Contact Fundamental Flaw of Hustle Culture Written by Pawel Brodzinski on August 14, 2025 in culture hustle culture It's all over the news. AI companies force their engineers to permanent crunch mode. Expectation for working long hours is like a badge of honor in Lovable job ads. Google defined a 60-hour work week (at the office) as a productivity sweet spot. But in the spirit of one-upmanship, everyone was beaten by Scott Wu, Cognition CEO. He announced 6-day work at the office, 80-hour weeks as the new norm. "We don't believe in work-life balance--building the future of software engineering is a mission we all care so deeply about that we couldn't possibly separate the two." You see? All it takes to suck twice as many hours from every engineer is to stop believing in work-life balance. Voila! Why All the Hustle? The visible reasons for all that hustle are obvious. Everyone understands that, at the end of the day, there will only be a very few winners of the AI race. They will get rich. Everyone else will go bust. To make things worse, the bubble has been pumped to its limits. If you want to get a prediction that AGI is just around the corner, there's no shortage of optimists. However, notably, after GPT-5's lackluster premiere, Sam Altman mentioned that AGI is not a very useful term. Seemingly, the rest of the AI crowd needs to catch up. The extreme hustle culture they install in their companies clearly suggests that they believe AGI is around the corner. Otherwise, how would we explain 60/70/80-hour workweeks? I mean, these are smart people. They do realize such work is not sustainable, right? Right? Cynicism OK, I'm not naive. There's a ton of cynicism behind the hustle culture. The top leaders do it because everyone else does it, too. And people fall for this trap. Given all the hype, it's easy to promise mountains of gold to everyone. If. You. Hustle. Just. A. Little. Bit. More. People will rationalize it by asking themselves a question: Am I fine coping with that toil for a couple of years and then walk away with $10M? Seems like an acceptable tradeoff, doesn't it? CEOs of AI companies prey on that. However, I believe that they know the correct question should be: Am I fine shortening my life for 1-2 years because of the toil when someone dangles $10M in front of me? The answers to these questions might be different. But if you expect prominent AI figures suggesting such an alternative vantage point, well, don't hold your breath. They will cynically exploit the opportunity even if it improves their odds of succeeding only marginally. After all, everyone else is doing the same. The Cost of Extreme Hustle Culture What's fascinating is that it's a herd behavior. No one seems to stop and validate whether hustle culture even works. Not even companies historically known to be data-driven, like Google. It's as if a simple linear approximation was all they could conceive: twice as many hours, twice as much work done. Any team lead with even meager experience would disagree. It's kinda obvious that the last hour of continuous work would be less productive than the first, when we've been well-rested. So, how about adding a few more hours each day? And then replacing one rest day with another workday? If you need to spell it out for you, here it is. It means more mistakes, more rework, more context switching tax. And even more toil. Which generates rework of the rework. A vicious cycle. At some point, and rather quickly, each additional hour has diminishing returns. Then, at some point, each additional hour has a negative return, i.e., it decreases the total output delivered. If you wonder why Henry Ford introduced a 5-day, 40-hour workweek in 1926, while keeping a 6-day pay, it's not because he was an altruist. He wanted better overall productivity. And, surprise, surprise, he got what he wanted. Economics of Crunch Mode Sure, a factory floor in 1926 is an entirely different environment from an engineering office a century later. Yet Ford's was hardly the only such experiment. Across many examples, it's extremely hard to find any argument that supports the hustle culture. "We have omitted from this list countless other studies that have shown similar results across the board in a great number of fields. Furthermore, although they may exist, we have not been able to find any studies showing that extended overtime (i.e., more than 50 hours of work per week for months on end) yielded higher total output in any field." Note, it's about total output, not output per hour. Now, when dozens of research papers from different contexts tell the same thing, I tend to listen. So when it comes to the most recent trend for crunch mode in AI startups, there are two potential explanations. 1. Extreme hustle culture and extended crunch don't work. Thus, AI startups are harming themselves. 2. AI startups are so completely different that they operate under a different set of rules. Because they surely employ human beings similar to you and me. At a risk of oversimplifying matters, these companies do software engineering. A fancy and cutting-edge flavor, I give them that, but software engineering nonetheless. They are not that different. Well, put two and two together. Data-Driven? Data-Driven My Arse If either of them, celebrity CEOs, had actually looked at the data, they might have realized that they're harming their businesses. Of course, they're harming their people, too. Yet I wouldn't expect enough empathy or reflection from Sam Altmans of this world to make it a viable point in a discussion. If they want cutting-edge and speed, they'd be better off going against the tide and sticking to healthy work conditions. Ultimately, these companies have no shortage of investment money, and if AGI is, indeed, just months ahead, they could burn through some of those dollars by hiring more. Even more so, given that raising funds for these startups is easier than ever. You don't even need to tell what you're working on, let alone release anything. That is, unless AGI is not even remotely close and they know it all along (but won't say, as then it would be harder to attract investors' dollars). Extended Crunch Mode Story There are industries known for crunch mode (I'm looking at you, game dev), and there's no shortage of stories about how extended hustle was behind well-known disasters. I had a chance to listen to a creative director from CD Projekt RED speaking about their engineering culture just weeks before the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. During Q&A, inevitably, he was asked whether they would release on an announced date (which had already been moved a couple of times). "There's no other option," was his answer. We know how it ended. "Buggy as hell" was the reviewers' consensus. The game was pulled from sale on PlayStation. And shareholders filed a class action lawsuit over the share price drop. Quite a launch party, if you ask me. CD Projekt RED has extended crunch mode to thank for all that fun stuff. In an interesting twist, after they dropped the hustle and started working in a more sustainable way, they were able to recover from the initial disaster. Unsustainability of Hustle Culture The camel's back is already broken, but I'll add one more straw. People will burn out working under such a regime. Some of them will last months, some quarters, some may even last years. But break they will. Again, I don't expect empathy from the celebrity CEOs, but the consideration of their bottom lines is what they're paid for, isn't it? So, what's the cost of replacing an expert engineer specialized in AI, again? Given the outrageous poaching offers we see, it's absurdly high. And I don't even mention all the time lost before a company manages to hire a replacement. Yes, precisely the time that seems to be precious enough to make CEOs force their engineering teams to toil for 6 days and 80 hours a week. It. Is. Not. Sustainable. Never has been. Never will be. --------------------------------------------------------------------- If similar topics are interesting, I cover anything related to early-stage product development (and, inevitably, AI) on the Pre-Pre-Seed Substack. AI culture leadership organizational culture productivity work environment -The Most Underestimated Factor in Estimation Comments Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment * [ ] [ ] Notify me of followup comments via e-mail Name * [ ] Email * [ ] Website [ ] [ ] Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. [Post Comment] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] D[ ] More posts * Fundamental Flaw of Hustle Culture August 14, 2025 * The Most Underestimated Factor in Estimation August 1, 2025 * The Renaissance of Full-Stack Developers July 18, 2025 * Flailing Around with Intent July 3, 2025