Sadly, there's no way around this for a new company. It's how the market works today, and competition is fierce.
I think the idea is to add another opportunity to stretch, go out, socialize, and talk about something other than work, which is probably beneficial when working hard problems.
No way around lost productivity, the possibly catastrophic cost of increased bad decisions and mistakes resulting from fatigue and sleep deprivation, and loss of key employees due to burnout?
There is a war around it — employers can hire enough people to the job and workers can refuse to work long hours.
A consistent more than 40 hour work week is a deal breaker for me. I’ll work 50-60 hours on a project if I know I’m spending 20 hours trying to ramp up on a new technology or I’m trying to do something that’s new to me, but that feels different than management expecting you to get 60+ hours of work done
I think the idea is to add another opportunity to stretch, go out, socialize, and talk about something other than work, which is probably beneficial when working hard problems.