Recently, improving workplace wellness for employees has been a priority for plenty of companies. The efforts may not have always been effective, but it was a cause for some companies to be ready to pull out all the stops to achieve. One CEO has no intention of going with the flow and is proud of it.
Brutal Honesty Goes Viral
At 22, Daksh Gupta is the CEO of AI software startup Greptile and adamantly opposes the concept of work-life balance. He is so convinced in his belief that work comes first that he has it “spelled” out in online job descriptions.
In a post on X last month, Gupta wrote, “Recently I started telling candidates right in the first interview that Greptile offers no work-life balance, typical workdays start at 9 am and end at 11 pm, and we work Saturdays, sometimes also Sundays. I emphasize that the environment is high-stress, and there is no tolerance for poor work. It felt wrong to do this at first, but I’m convinced now that the transparency is good, and I’d much rather people know this from the get-go than find out on their first day.”
The post has been viewed by over a million people, and this brutal honesty drew lots of attention to Gupta. The resulting reaction was mixed on the social platform. In a follow-up post on X, Gupta said he received “20% death threats and 80% job applications.”
Gupta isn’t too worried about the backlash to his post. The “internet rule” for anything opinionated or controversial is that someone somewhere will disagree.
“I have no vitriol for anyone who replied, no matter how negatively,” he says.
Intense and Difficult
Gupta was still a student in 2022 at Georgia Tech when he started his AI startup. The goal was to help software teams catch bugs.
“I liked the idea of becoming really extraordinary at a very specific thing because I want to become really, really good. Instead of calling my workplace ‘dynamic’ and ‘fast-paced,’ I want to be very transparent and say it is intense and difficult. We work extremely long hours because we’re trying to outwork our competition.”
Gupta wants to work alongside others who have the same level of dedication he has to make something bloom from scratch. The Gen Z CEO oversees a team of six and has made the nature of startup culture clear.
“If you are not one of the small number of people who enjoy that and thrive in it and seek it out, then you probably shouldn’t work for me. I’m not asking people to work any amount of time because I don’t have the authority to do that. What I’m saying is that’s how hard we work here. I literally say we don’t have work-life balance in the job description.”
Gupta looks up to leaders who are successful founders, like Parker Conrad of cloud-based HR platform Rippling and Aaron Levie of enterprise cloud company Box.
“I personally didn’t know what a startup would be like when I started. I suspect most people don’t know,” he says.
Working 100-Hour Weeks
Gupta acknowledges that this type of work culture isn’t sustainable in the long term. After a year or two, he hopes he’ll feel more confident in the business so he can relax more.
“I don’t think it’s healthy past that point, and it’s probably not productive,” he says.
Lack of sleep is inevitable in 80-plus-hour weeks. Sleep deprivation affects thinking speed, reasoning, and creativity. Additionally, not having downtime can affect relationships, exacerbate stress, and impact health.
That may all be true, but Gupta, for now, is all in.
“I think from the outside, it can seem kind of silly that someone cares this much about enterprise software, but I care about it, and other people care about it a lot. I care in the way an athlete cares about their sport, or an instrumentalist cares about their instrument,” he says.
