Not lengthy after the phrases “996” and “grindcore” entered the favored lexicon, individuals began telling me tales about what was taking place at startups in San Francisco, floor zero for the bogus intelligence economic system. There was the one concerning the founder who hadn’t taken a weekend off in additional than six months. The lady who joked that she’d given up her social life to work at a prestigious AI firm. Or the workers who had began taking their sneakers off within the workplace as a result of, effectively, should you have been going to be there for not less than 12 hours a day, six days every week, wouldn’t you fairly be carrying slippers?
“In the event you go to a restaurant on a Sunday, everyone seems to be working,” says Sanju Lokuhitige, the co-founder of Mythril, a pre-seed-stage AI startup, who moved to San Francisco in November to be nearer to the motion. Lokuhitige says he works seven days every week, 12 hours a day, minus a couple of fastidiously chosen social occasions every week the place he can community with different individuals at startups. “Typically I’m coding the entire day,” he says. “I would not have work-life stability.”
One other startup worker, who got here to San Francisco to work for an early-stage AI firm, confirmed me dismal pictures from his workplace: a two-bedroom house within the Dogpatch, a neighborhood well-liked with tech employees. His startup’s founders reside and work on this house – from 9am till as late as 3am, breaking solely to DoorDash meals or to sleep, and leaving the constructing solely to take cigarette breaks. The worker (who requested to not use his identify, since he nonetheless works for this firm) described the scenario as “horrendous”. “I’d heard about 996, however these guys don’t even do 996,” he says. “They’re working 16-hour days.”
Startups have by no means been significantly glamorous. Once I began reporting on the business a decade in the past, individuals have been cashing in on the brand new cell app economic system, and coders have been chugging Soylent to remain at their desks longer. Startups then, too, have been outlined by hustle tradition, high-octane vitality and the pursuit of progress in any respect prices – concepts that, to some extent, have remained within the bloodstream of the business.
However within the final 12 months, because the magic mud of synthetic intelligence has settled in San Francisco, the vibe amongst tech employees does appear completely different. The thrill a few new epoch in tech – and all the cash that comes with it – is now tempered with anxieties concerning the business, and the economic system. Some employees are going all in on AI whereas additionally questioning whether or not all that AI is sweet for the world. Others are successfully coaching machines to do their jobs higher than they’ll. And most of the identical employees who’re racing to construct the longer term at the moment are questioning if the longer term they’re constructing has a spot for them in it.
The remainder of us could also be ambiently conscious of those anxieties, however they’re already tangible and keenly felt contained in the tech business. Even the largest tech corporations, as soon as identified for coddling staff with on-site massages and barber retailers, have scaled again perks as they’ve escalated the expectations of employees. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have every been candid about their predictions that AI will change some junior and mid-level engineers at their corporations, and have respectively known as for his or her workforces to be extra “environment friendly” and “extraordinarily onerous core” as waves of layoffs set staff on-edge. Tech corporations laid off a few quarter of 1,000,000 employees world wide in 2025, based on a report revealed by RationalFX. In lots of these layoffs, AI was cited as a predominant issue, even when the complete cause for layoffs is commonly extra advanced.
“In the event you have been a software program engineer 5 years in the past, you would sort of write your ticket,” says Mike Robbins, an government coach who has labored with corporations like Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and Airbnb. Now, the stability of energy has shifted away from tech employees, lots of whom are left feeling anxious about their work efficiency. “When corporations turn into much less scared about dropping staff, then they could be a little extra forthright by way of what they need and be just a little extra demanding.”
Robbins, who wrote the guide Carry Your Entire Self to Work, was requested to talk to corporations and their leaders about subjects like worker burnout, wellbeing and belonging – high priorities within the years throughout and shortly after the pandemic. “Fairly frankly, we’ve stopped speaking about all that,” he says. Now, firm leaders need recommendation on subjects like change, disruption and uncertainty within the office.
These themes – change, disruption and uncertainty – are every a part of the gas that has pushed tech employees to place in additional hours, at a better depth. Funding in synthetic intelligence corporations reached document highs in 2025, but employees are feeling shortage in methods they haven’t earlier than.
“It’s undoubtedly one thing that’s on everybody’s thoughts,” says Kyle Finken, a software program engineer at Mintlify, which makes an AI instrument for builders. “I believe lots of people are involved like, ‘Oh, am I going to have a job in three years?’”
Regardless of his fears, Finken, like many different startup staff I spoke to, feels energized by the “extraordinary innovation” taking place in synthetic intelligence and believes that there’ll nonetheless be loads of jobs for software program engineers sooner or later, even when these jobs look completely different from the pure coding roles of right now. He and different tech employees characterised the present second as a very artistic and productive time in tech, the place individuals are devoting further hours to work not as a result of their employers demand it however out of real curiosity within the new instruments and capabilities. For instance, Garry Tan, the pinnacle of the well-known startup accelerator Y Combinator, just lately bragged that he “stayed up 19 hours” enjoying round with Claude Code.
Even those that felt excited concerning the tempo of change acknowledged that AI was quickly augmenting their work, in ways in which might have unsure outcomes for the roles of the longer term. “That is undoubtedly not an period of complacency,” says Finken.
One cause for working so many hours is to maintain up with instruments and expertise which can be altering almost each day. In the event you take the weekend off, you possibly can miss a serious growth, which makes it more durable to maintain up with what opponents are doing. One more reason is to have one thing to indicate future employers, particularly as extra junior-level jobs are changed by AI.
“Nobody hires junior builders any extra,” says Lokuhitige, the Mythril co-founder. Touchdown a job now requires “doing one thing cool”, he says, like constructing a brand new product or fixing an issue that will get acknowledged as helpful by bigger corporations. Job postings for entry-level tech jobs have dropped by a 3rd since 2022, based on Certainly’s Hiring Lab, whereas job postings requiring not less than 5 years of expertise have risen. In the event you’re not grinding at a startup, you’re lacking the prerequisite to get employed sooner or later.
What this implies for the remainder of us
Whereas economists are torn about whether or not AI will change most jobs or simply change them, they appear aligned in the concept AI has already reshaped a substantial amount of entry-level work and can proceed to take action. A paper revealed by Stanford researchers in November discovered “substantial declines in employment for early-career employees” in industries uncovered to AI and recommended that areas the place change is already occurring could possibly be like a “canary within the coalmine” for the remainder of the economic system. The Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, has recommended AI might get rid of about half of all entry-level jobs in white-collar industries inside the subsequent 5 years.
The top of the Worldwide Financial Fund just lately predicted that 60% of jobs in superior economies can be eradicated or reworked by synthetic intelligence, “like a tsunami hitting the labour market”. In San Francisco, you possibly can already see the early indicators, as Uber drivers compete with self-driving Waymos, and baristas are changed by robotic espresso bars. Skilled enterprise companies that assist the tech business have additionally been negatively affected by the layoffs. The stress to grind within the tech world could possibly be an early sign – a harbinger for what many different industries will really feel quickly.
Robbins, the manager coach, says that corporations as soon as regarded to Silicon Valley as a mannequin of how they need to function, all the way down to emulating insurance policies like limitless trip days or adopting perks like free lunch within the workplace.
“There was an idealization of tech and Silicon Valley for a very long time throughout the enterprise world. A few of that has modified,” he says. “Now, individuals aren’t asking me to inform them what’s occurring within the Valley in order that they’ll undertake it, the identical approach they have been a decade in the past.”
Slightly than a mannequin of how we must always all work, the tech business could also be a premonition for the anxiousness and makes an attempt to compensate which can be coming for all of us.