Venture capitalist Harry Stebbings faced a wave of backlash in June after urging European startup founders to increase their work hours — but he now admits there’s some room for nuance when applying his mantra.
Stebbings, founder of 20VC, a firm managing $650 million in funds, advised founders on LinkedIn last month that “7 days a week is the required velocity to win right now,” to compete with startups in Silicon Valley and China.
The post went viral, to Stebbings’ surprise, and sparked a debate on whether China’s brutal “996” work culture — which means working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week — is needed in Europe.
I’ve seen a handful of new startups posting about their 4-day, 32-hour work weeks. I can only imagine they’re bringing on a scuzzton of top talent at middle-of-the-road prices.
When one of them IPOs for a billion dollars, I hope their employees are incredibly annoying about it. I hope they never shut up. I hope my LinkedIn feed is wall-to-wall “look what you can do on four days a week.” I hope they go door to door with a Rolex on both wrists and say “hello, sir/madam, I just wanted you to know I haven’t worked a Friday in five years.” I hope they post pictures of themselves relaxing with a martini at the start of every three-day weekend and people go ballistic in the comments and they don’t even notice because they’re too busy doing interviews with Forbes and Fortune Magazine. I hope I get sick and tired of hearing about four day weeks.
I’m sure as hell tired of hearing about execs that want their employees to burn out.
I’d like to see this motherfucker work for 12 hours every day for 6 days a week for some minimum wage shit. These corporate suits are beyond disconnected from reality.
He probably “works” more than that, because for him his “work” looks like riding a private jet, golfing with business associates, fancy lunches and dinners, or sending emails from his phone on the beach.
“I work this hard, everyone should work this hard!” – someone has no idea what hard work is.
Oh oh oh, they have one for this!
“HaRd WoRk DoEs NoT EqUaL VaLuAbLe WoRk!!”
“As you can clearly see on this chart I made of the value I put on things, the value I put on my own work is the highest, and the rest of you are very low, and you should feel bad that I don’t value your work! What are you going to do about it? Work harder? Haha, that will just make my value go up even higher!”
Who needs a life, religion, and family when you are working as a cog in “profit generator machine 3000”?
Yeah, you gotta work like that, if you’re the one starting the business. Talking to a client who owned several businesses one night over drinks. He said you have to work your ass off for a year and-a-half to two years, then it pretty much runs itself.
One might note that he wasn’t talking about his employees working like that.
Yeah, like, I would be willing to work those hours if I had a significant stake in the company and I had a voice in how the company was run.
As a salaried employee, I’m not doing that.
Well not everything needs to be worth a billion. Certainly no person should ever be that rich.
People with insatiable greed have a mental disorder. They cannot even conceptualize the idea of working a reasonable amount, and being happy with a modest profit.
Maybe we should stop letting the most sociopathic & insatiable people set standards that can never be satisfied.
You gonna pay me a billion dollars to work at your startup? No? Then shut the fuck up, you wannabe-slaver asshole!
Yeah, I’d work 995 if…
- I was being paid twice as much as I am now
- Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are provided.
- You have someone who can do all my chores and errands before I get home.
There’s not enough money you could give me could make up for having Saturday off.
We live in a world of Supply & Demand, and he won’t get the supply of labor he requires unless he meets the demand for proper compensation. It’s the simplest economics there is.
Tencent subsidiary riot games already does this. By soft policies like providing shuttle (only at night/early morning) and free dinner.
these people are physically incapable of saying things meant to scare people without it coming out as supporting the thing they dislike.
no more billion-dollar startups? fucking hell yeah, let’s implement it!
Smells of a Nepo baby
No. It’s obviously not.
