daksh Gupta
Credit: X/@dakshgup
CEO of the San Francisco-based AI startup Greptile Daksh Gupta received death threats after he spoke about his company’s demanding work culture.
In his post on X, the CEO wrote, “Recently, I started telling candidates right in the first interview that Greptile offers no work-life balance. Typical workdays start at 9 a.m. and end at 11 p.m., often later, and we work Saturdays, sometimes also Sundays.”
“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. Curious if other people do this and if there’s some obvious pitfall i’m missing,” Gupta added.
Gupta’s social media post where he wrote about his company’s 84-hour workweeks and minimal work-life balance, waged a war online and users found it fostering a toxic work culture.
He shared an update to his post defending his stance after having received plenty of responses, ranging from death threats to job applications.
The CEO said, “Now that this is on the front page of Reddit and my inbox is 20% death threats and 80% job applications. To everyone who is overworked and underpaid at their software jobs, especially outside the US, I feel for you, and I’m sorry this struck a nerve.”
“This way of working isn’t supposed to be forever because it isn’t sustainable. it’s the first year or two of a startup which is like reaching escape velocity.”
He said, “As we mature we’ll hire older, more experienced people who have families and can’t work 100 hours a week, and naturally we would adapt like any good organization.”
He clearly mentioned that his post was not meant to be a perspective as there are” brilliant people who run successful companies that don’t push themselves this hard.”
On having received racial backlash over his post, Gupta said, “lot of indian hate coming from this post so i want to clarify that i am like this not because im indian but because im san franciscan.”