[aetherson]

There's this narrative that you see a lot of people here express. The narrative is that there are no trade-offs to be made in terms of success and quality of life -- that the most work output you can get from people is also when you ask relatively little of them and dedicate yourself to their happiness.

You should be suspicious of people telling you that the world has no trade-offs, that everything's win-win.

While there is of course a point beyond which trying to work people harder is strictly counterproductive, that point is, for most people, well north of 40 hours a week. It's probably well north of 80 hours a week. Your 81st hour in the week is almost certainly nowhere near as productive as your 35th hour is, but it's probably not negatively productive.

And if you specifically hire for people who can be productive in long weeks, you can definitely find people who can add productivity to the 80th hour and beyond.

Those people may quickly become unhappy. They may eventually (or rapidly) burn out. And you may be a real dick if you ask this of people. But it's one way to get a lot of value, fast.

I don't think that companies ought to routinely ask for very long hours. But that's because I think that it's inhumane, not because the universe has created natural law that says that long working hours remove productivity.