US Indian CEO admits he Makes Staff work 84 Hours a Week

A US Indian CEO admitted that he makes his staff work 84 hours a week or more, dividing opinion.

Daksh Gupta founded San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company Greptile in 2023 and on X, the 23-year-old revealed that he has started telling applicants that he “offers no work-life balance”.

He said the typical workday starts at 9 am and ends at 11 pm or later.

Employees work Monday through Saturday and sometimes on Sundays.

Daksh’s tweet read: “I emphasise 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 rather than find out on their first day.”

Daksh then asked for input and received varied responses that ranged from angry to patronising. Some accused him of exploiting his six-person team.

One person replied: “It’s great to see that you’re already exploiting workers straight out of college, take advantage as much as you can, people are just meat computers to be used for your own personal gain.”

Another said Daksh’s honesty about the lack of work-life balance was not the problem, instead claiming “the problem is with running your company this way.”

A social media user hit out: “You’ll never be able to hire/retain people with families and your employees will resent you.”

One person took screenshots of three Greptile job listings and wrote:

“So you’re asking a person to work on 14 hours/day – 7 days a week for people to just get a $75k salary which is considered as ‘low-income’ in SF?”

Amid the backlash, Daksh insisted that there are young professionals who are looking to work at a company with a breakneck pace.

He said:

“It might be hard to believe, but there exist people who want this, while a minority. The transparency exists to identify them.”

The CEO previously went through a typical day at his company’s office in the Transamerica Pyramid.

Employees usually start coming in between 8:45 am and 9:15 am from Monday to Friday, beginning with sharing updates and laying out the day’s goals.

Around noon, Daksh Gupta will get lunch. The team either sits together at a table in the office to eat or goes out for lunch.

In the afternoon, “deep work” happens.

Employees are allowed to take an hour-long break per day to go to the gym. Snacks are also available in the office.

For dinner, staff usually order food before returning to work with music in the background.

Some employees work until 9 pm but most stay until 10 pm or 11 pm.