Working at a startup might mean extra long days and endless work, but for this co-founder the task of building his startup over the last seven months has meant little to no sleep and 18 hour- working days.
In a post on LinkedIn, Tushar S shared a lengthy post for his co-founder Abhinash, who has been working on developing their company, Vaani, which is developing human-like Voice AI systems.
Introducing his colleague, the CEO said that Abhinash Khare starts his day at 8 am and works till 2 am in the night. He even sleeps close to his computer systems so he can quickly start work in the morning without wasting any time.
Read the viral post here:
“His bed is 3 feet away from his computer systems, and he jumps straight to the screen as soon as he wakes up. No water, no morning routine — straight to work to build AI infrastructure for our homegrown start-up Vaani Research Labs. It’s been almost 7 months of coding until 2 AM, waking up at 8 AM, and diving right back into research papers and code,” the post read.
Tushar added that while he did not want to “glorify the hustle”, he and his co-founder were willing to push the boundaries for the sake of their company.
“Building a start-up is tough. Building a start-up without any resources or funding is tougher.
Building a start-up by quitting a high-paying (and I mean CRAZY high-paying) job with no external backing? That’s next-level,” he added.
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“Grinding to slow death”
While some admired the duo for their passion for their work, many LinkedIn users blamed the post for promoting toxic work culture.
“This is the new way of praising toxic culture. A good rested mind and body can do wonders, as a co founder you should try to reduce the workload on him even if he wants to do it! think in long term!,” one user said.
“This kind of grinding is a “toxic work culture” and I don’t see any point in praising it in public. I totally understand how hard it is to bootstrap a startup but at the same time it’s important to focus on a sustainable and organic growth rather than grinding to slow death,” another user said.
Responding to the criticisms, the CEO said with essentially two workers in the company, they have no choice but to work long hours. “Most of you have showed a concern about our health and work-life balance. Of course, nobody wants to grind day-in day-out for months; but sometimes you just have no choice and no resources,” he wrote. (Also read: Shloka Mehta’s startup co-founder on Ambani bahu’s 3 best qualities)