Indian-American CEO Receives Threats; Post About Co's Long Workweeks Goes Viral

Artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Greptile CEO Daksh Gupta came under fire following his post about the company's long working hours.

He posted, “Recently I started telling candidates right in the first interview that Greptile offers no work-life-balance, typical workdays start at 9 AM and end at 11 PM, often later, and we work Saturdays, sometimes also Sundays. I emphasize 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. Curious if other people do this and if there’s some obvious pitfall I’m missing.”

The post went viral across various social media platforms, including Reddit, which thereby generated a lot of discussion on the company's work culture while also taking a dig at Gupta's opinion on the issue.

A day later, Gupta defended himself and shared a detailed account of responses he received on X. He wrote, “Now that this is on the front page of Reddit and my inbox is 20% death threats and 80% job applications, here’s a follow up: to everyone who is overworked and underpaid at their software jobs esp outside the US, I feel for you, and I’m sorry this struck a nerve. The people that work here had 6-fig 20 hr/week jobs before this, and can go back to them any time. It might be hard to believe but there exist people that want this, while a minority. the transparency exists to identify them(SIC).”

He added, “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. Like people said in the comments, 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. This is NOT meant to be prescriptive. There are brilliant people who run successful companies full of brilliant people who don’t push themselves this hard. Many others started the way we are starting.”

Gupta received flak from one set of users who entailed about the importance of work-life balance, while others supported him by saying that it's the candidate's choice to take up a job.