Rilla’s recruitment site looks like plenty of startup career pages: glossy photos of smiling twenty-somethings, punchy values like “insane speed” and “customer obsession,” and a list of perks that reads like a wish list—free meals, gym membership, health and dental coverage.
Then you hit the line that changes the tone. Many of the listings warn applicants not to apply unless they’re excited about “working ~70 hrs/week in person with some of the most ambitious people in NYC.”
Rilla, a New York-based AI company, sells “virtual ride-along” tools that record, transcribe, and analyze in-person sales conversations—positioning the product as a way to coach reps and improve performance. And the company has become a handy example of a hard-driving workplace trend often labeled 996.
What “996” means — and why it’s back in the conversation
In plain terms, 996 refers to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week—a 72-hour schedule that treats long hours as a badge of commitment. For many workers, that sounds punishing. But Will Gao, Rilla’s head of growth, argues the appeal is cultural: the company looks for people who treat work like an elite sport.
“We look for people who are like Olympian athletes,” Gao says, describing a mindset built around obsession and ambition. He insists the hours are real, but not necessarily rigid. In his telling, someone might work late into the night after a breakthrough idea, then come in later the next day.
That framing—work as a voluntary, high-intensity game—has spread quickly in pockets of tech, especially as AI development has turned into a global sprint. Venture-backed teams feel pressure to ship faster, iterate faster, and grab attention before a competitor does. The simplest lever to pull is time: more hours, more output, more speed. The reality is more complicated.
From China’s tech boom to a legal crackdown
The 996 label rose to wider public attention in China in the mid-to-late 2010s, and it went global as a controversy around 2019, when high-profile executives publicly defended it.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma was among its loudest supporters, calling 996 a “huge blessing.” JD.com founder Richard Liu took an even harder line, writing to staff in 2019: “Slackers are not my brothers!”
But the pushback was just as forceful. Workers complained online about ignored labor laws, unpaid overtime, and burnout. By August 2021, Chinese authorities escalated scrutiny: the Supreme People’s Court and the labor ministry highlighted cases signaling that 996-style overtime practices were illegal.
The result wasn’t a clean disappearance of long-hours culture—but a shift in tone. Advocates became quieter. And when defenders resurfaced, the backlash was swift. In 2024, Baidu PR executive Qu Jing drew outrage after circulating videos dismissing employee well-being with a blunt “I’m not your mother, I only care about results.” She later apologized, and multiple reports said she departed the role soon after.
Why some AI startups still sell the grind
996 has fans well beyond China. Infosys founder Narayana Murthy, for instance, has pointed admiringly to China’s work ethic while arguing that progress demands hard work.
Recruiter Adrian Kinnersley—who works across Europe and North America—says the sharpest 996-style expectations often show up in venture-backed AI startups. The logic is simple, if risky: with funding in hand and competitors moving fast, companies assume longer hours increase the odds of winning.
That mindset also shows up in the way founders hire. Magnus Müller, who co-founded Browser-Use (a startup building tools that help AI systems interact with web browsers), says he wants people who are deeply absorbed in the work. He lives in a “hacker house,” a blended workspace-and-home environment designed for constant iteration. Anyone looking for a standard 40-hour week, he argues, probably won’t fit.
The counterargument: hours aren’t the same as productivity
Not everyone in tech buys the “more hours = more progress” story. Deedy Das, a partner at Menlo Ventures, says founders often confuse raw time with productivity—and that forcing everyone into a grind can backfire.
It can also shrink the hiring pool. Long, inflexible schedules are far harder for workers with families, caretaking responsibilities, or visa pressures. And even for people who opt in, the cost can compound over time.
The health risks are measurable
Japan has a word for death by overwork—karōshi—and the broader health evidence is stark. A joint analysis by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization found that long working hours—defined as 55+ hours per week—were linked to 745,000 deaths worldwide from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016. The analysis also associated 55+ hours with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from ischemic heart disease, compared with a 35–40 hour week.
The real question: is 70 hours actually “worth it”?
Research on productivity tends to find diminishing returns as hours climb, especially once people push into sustained weeks well beyond normal full-time schedules. Output may rise at first, but fatigue and errors start to eat into any gains.
Michigan State University’s workplace guidance summarizes the problem with a blunt comparison: beyond a certain point, the extra hours don’t translate into much extra work—suggesting that someone working 70 hours may deliver roughly similar output to someone working 50.
Even so, companies have incentives to try: fewer hires can mean lower recruiting and training costs. The risk is that burnout, turnover, and mistakes quietly erase those savings.
The UK angle: legal, but not necessarily smart
In the UK, most employees shouldn’t have to work more than 48 hours a week on average under Working Time Regulations—but individuals can opt out. In other words, 996-style schedules can be legal with consent.
And the UK already has its own long-hours islands: corporate law and investment banking are notorious for late nights and heavy weeks, especially around major deals.
At the same time, momentum is building in the opposite direction. The UK’s major four-day week trial—61 companies, run June to December 2022 with no pay cuts—found reduced stress and illness and improved retention, without the productivity collapse skeptics often predict.
Hustle culture isn’t going away — but it’s being tested
Academic and workplace culture author Tamara Myles argues hustle culture is inherently unstable, particularly when workers feel compelled to be “always on.” Still, she points out a key nuance: some companies aren’t hiding 996 expectations—they’re marketing them.
That transparency may be the point. For certain startups, demanding extreme hours is less about universally improving productivity and more about selecting for a specific kind of worker: people willing to make work the center of life, at least for a stretch.
Whether that’s a sustainable way to build companies—or just the fastest route to burnout—remains the question AI’s gold rush keeps forcing into the open.