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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/feb/17/ai-startups-work-culture-san-francisco>
"Not long after the terms “996” and “grindcore” 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’t taken a weekend off in more than six months.
The woman who joked that she’d 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’t you rather be wearing slippers?
“If you go to a cafe on a Sunday, everyone is working,” 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. “Sometimes I’m
coding the whole day,” he says. “I do not have work-life balance.”
Another startup employee, who came to San Francisco to work for an early-stage
AI company, showed me dismal photos from his office: a two-bedroom apartment in
the Dogpatch, a neighborhood popular with tech workers. His startup’s founders
live and work in this apartment – from 9am until as late as 3am, breaking only
to DoorDash meals or to sleep, and leaving the building only to take cigarette
breaks. The employee (who asked not to use his name, since he still works for
this company) described the situation as “horrendous”. “I’d heard about 996,
but these guys don’t even do 996,” he says. “They’re working 16-hour days.”
Startups have never been particularly glamorous. When I started reporting on
the industry a decade ago, people were cashing in on the new mobile app
economy, and coders were chugging Soylent to stay at their desks longer.
Startups then, too, were defined by hustle culture, high-octane energy and the
pursuit of growth at all costs – ideas that, to some extent, have remained in
the bloodstream of the industry.
But in the last year, as the magic dust of artificial intelligence has settled
in San Francisco, the vibe among tech workers does seem different. The
excitement about a new epoch in tech – and all the money that comes with it –
is now tempered with anxieties about the industry, and the economy. Some
workers are going all in on AI while also questioning whether all that AI is
good for the world. Others are effectively training machines to do their jobs
better than they can. And many of the same workers who are racing to build the
future are now wondering if the future they’re building has a place for them in
it."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
