[Silhouette]

996 is not unheard of in Silicon Valley, but in startups, where you have a remote promise of making big bucks.

It doesn't even make sense in a startup. If you're not a founder with significant control and a big share of the equity then your chances of a FIRE exit are slim to none and it makes no sense to sacrifice your personal life like that for someone else's business. If you are a founder with a big stake then you need to be showing good judgement and making sensible decisions and the chances that you are doing that if you're putting in 72+ hours/week are also slim to none. Workaholics tend to be terrible managers and even worse executives and not just because they assume it's OK to abuse other employees by expecting them to be workaholics too.