I'm not doing 996.
Short summary
A mother who works at fast-growing AI company Lovable argues that 996 schedules (9am to 9pm, six days a week) are a bad strategy, both for the people working them and for companies that filter out parents and others with real lives outside work. She says boundaries only hold if companies build cultures that protect them and if people stop overriding their own limits.
- Working 996 gets treated as a badge of honor in AI companies, but she argues it confuses long hours with ambition and talent.
- Companies that require 996 as the default borrow against employees' future health and relationships, and that cost never shows up on the balance sheet.
- Excluding parents and caregivers narrows the range of perspectives building the product, and constraints outside work often make people sharper at prioritizing.
Full summary
The author, a mom of two who works at AI coding startup Lovable, argues against the "996" work culture (9am to 9pm, six days a week) that has become a badge of honor in fast-moving AI companies. She loves her job and calls it close to a hobby, but she refuses to frame ambition as a choice between career and parenthood. Her core complaint is that working insane hours is being confused with commitment and talent. She sees AI amplifying tech's old hustle-bro problem: tools that let small teams ship in days what used to take months are supposed to free people up, yet expectations just rise. Every productivity gain gets reinvested into more projects, so AI may eliminate a lot of work without eliminating much working.
Her broader point is that 996 is a bad bet even on its own terms. She describes it as companies capturing short-term output while employees pay later through burnout, health problems, and lost relationships, a liability that never appears on any balance sheet. She doesn't oppose intense sprints around launches or real emergencies. What she objects to is designing an organization where everyone sprints all the time. She also argues it filters out people the industry needs: parents, caregivers, people with health constraints, and experienced operators who have already made the mistakes younger teams are heading toward. Her claim is that a narrower team produces a narrower product. She also makes a case that outside constraints sharpen judgment, because someone who has to leave at 5:30 for soccer practice learns quickly which meetings are unnecessary and which urgencies are just someone senior being stressed.
She describes her own boundaries concretely: she generally avoids nights and weekends, and blocks time for her kids and a non-negotiable gym schedule, all while working at what she calls the fastest-moving company she's been part of. She admits her seniority and credibility make it easier to say no, and that junior people trying to establish themselves in hypercompetitive environments may not have that latitude. Her conclusion is that telling employees to set better boundaries isn't enough. Companies have to build cultures where those boundaries are respected and where people aren't penalized for holding them.