{"id":21999,"date":"2026-02-17T13:37:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T12:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/17\/12-hour-days-no-weekends-the-anxiety-driving-ais-brutal-work-culture-is-a-warning-for-all-of-us\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T13:37:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T12:37:15","slug":"12-hour-days-no-weekends-the-anxiety-driving-ais-brutal-work-culture-is-a-warning-for-all-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/17\/12-hour-days-no-weekends-the-anxiety-driving-ais-brutal-work-culture-is-a-warning-for-all-of-us\/","title":{"rendered":"12-hour days, no weekends: the anxiety driving AI\u2019s brutal work culture is a warning for all of us"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Francisco\u2019s AI startups are pushing workers to grind endlessly, hinting at pressures soon hitting other sectors<\/p>\n

Not long after the terms \u201c996\u201d and \u201cgrindcore\u201d entered the popular lexicon, people started telling me stories about what was happening at startups in San Francisco<\/a>, ground zero for the artificial intelligence<\/a> economy. There was the one about the founder who hadn\u2019t taken a weekend off in more than six months. The woman who joked that she\u2019d given up her social life to work at a prestigious AI company. Or the employees who had started taking their shoes off in the office because, well, if you were going to be there for at least 12 hours<\/a> a day, six days<\/a> a week, wouldn\u2019t you rather be wearing slippers<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go to a cafe on a Sunday, everyone is working,\u201d says Sanju Lokuhitige, the co-founder of Mythril, a pre-seed-stage AI startup, who moved to San Francisco in November to be closer to the action. Lokuhitige says he works seven days a week, 12 hours a day, minus a few carefully selected social events each week where he can network with other people at startups. \u201cSometimes I\u2019m coding the whole day,\u201d he says. \u201cI do not have work-life balance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nSan Francisco\u2019s AI startups are pushing workers to grind endlessly, hinting at pressures soon hitting other sectors
\nNot long after the terms \u201c996\u201d and \u201cgrindcore\u201d entered the popular lexicon, people started telling me stories about what was happening at startups in San Francisco, ground zero for the artificial intelligence economy. There was the one about the founder who hadn\u2019t taken a weekend off in more than six months. The woman who joked that she\u2019d given up her social life to work at a prestigious AI company. Or the employees who had started taking their shoes off in the office because, well, if you were going to be there for at least 12 hours a day, six days a week, wouldn\u2019t you rather be wearing slippers?
\n\u201cIf you go to a cafe on a Sunday, everyone is working,\u201d says Sanju Lokuhitige, the co-founder of Mythril, a pre-seed-stage AI startup, who moved to San Francisco in November to be closer to the action. Lokuhitige says he works seven days a week, 12 hours a day, minus a few carefully selected social events each week where he can network with other people at startups. \u201cSometimes I\u2019m coding the whole day,\u201d he says. \u201cI do not have work-life balance.\u201d Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

San Francisco\u2019s AI startups are pushing workers to grind endlessly, hinting at pressures soon hitting other sectors Not long after the terms \u201c996\u201d and \u201cgrindcore\u201d entered the popular lexicon, people started telling me stories about what was happening at startups in San Francisco, ground zero for the artificial intelligence economy. There was the one about …<\/p>\n

12-hour days, no weekends: the anxiety driving AI\u2019s brutal work culture is a warning for all of us<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":22000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21999"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}