I’m a former workaholic who put in countless 60-100 hour weeks, and mostly I made that choice on my own, but I sincerely wish I had heeded the warnings sooner. My 60-100 hour weeks weren’t 50-150% more productive, ever. They were just exhausting, maybe permanently.

I wasn’t so much trying to make my example a reason, as to say that I relate my own experience to the wealth of evidence.

> The level of stress isn't linear as the weekly number of hours increases.

This is true, and I definitely can relate to that as well. And I’d still feel the same way, now, if I’d only ever worked 50 hours in a week.

I’ll also add that the level of stress isn’t even consistent over multiple sustained weeks of the same level of overwork. When I even could work a 60 hour week, the second one in a row was much harder. The next one drastically harder still, and so on. And my probably-permanent burnout wasn’t from one particularly long week, it was from sustaining 60-100 hour weeks for about six months straight, with a lot of prior stressors, while developing a very strong internal rejection of sustaining anything like it while it was happening. In the end it was an action motivated by a sense of duty to address problems that put me in this position as fully as I could, so I could move on and never overwork for anyone or anything ever again.

But I’m cautious even saying all of that now, because any way I frame it suggests there’s an overwork compromise that might make sense. There isn’t. In hindsight, the first week I put too much of myself into work was one too many.

I don't have a lot of data on current <10 person startups, so maybe it's all different now. But the times I was working 80-100 hour weeks were just not time well spent. It was not, "How can I deliver the most in the time I have?" It was "OMG pressure makes me so anxious I'm going to work all the time to avoid thinking about the stakes." It was more drama than effectiveness.

And people have been saying so for a long time. E.g.: https://lostgarden.home.blog/2008/09/28/rules-of-productivit...

Overall, I think the tech industry needs to do a better job of calling out the self-centered, narcissistic, libertarian, objectivist, wannabe billionaire, hustle culture types. These are the types of people who won't think twice about working on Facebook's algorithms to improve user engagement at the detriment of society and our mental health.