{"id":214587,"date":"2026-02-17T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/17\/12-hour-days-no-weekends-the-anxiety-driving-ais-brutal-work-culture-is-a-warning-for-all-of-us-ai-artificial-intelligence\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T14:35:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T19:35:15","slug":"12-hour-days-no-weekends-the-anxiety-driving-ais-brutal-work-culture-is-a-warning-for-all-of-us-ai-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/17\/12-hour-days-no-weekends-the-anxiety-driving-ais-brutal-work-culture-is-a-warning-for-all-of-us-ai-artificial-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"12-hour days, no weekends: the anxiety driving AI\u2019s brutal work culture is a warning for all of us | AI (artificial intelligence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

12-hour days, no weekends: the anxiety driving AI\u2019s brutal work culture is a warning for all of us | AI (artificial intelligence)<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/ng-interactive\/2026\/feb\/17\/ai-startups-work-culture-san-francisco<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-17 13:55:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Not long after the terms \u201c996\u201d and \u201cgrindcore\u201d 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\u2019t taken a weekend off in more than six months. The woman who joked that she\u2019d 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\u2019t you rather be wearing slippers?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go to a cafe on a Sunday, everyone is working,\u201d 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. \u201cSometimes I\u2019m coding the whole day,\u201d he says. \u201cI do not have work-life balance.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s founders live and work in this apartment \u2013 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 \u201chorrendous\u201d. \u201cI\u2019d heard about 996, but these guys don\u2019t even do 996,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re working 16-hour days.\u201d<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12-hour days, no weekends: the anxiety driving AI\u2019s brutal work culture is a warning for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":214588,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/0dc04be29cbd720664313a65c08e776ecae088ea\/0_1012_4091_3273\/master\/4091.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=3568863089989ed2e94df48fff54f1dd","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214589,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214587\/revisions\/214589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}