Indian-American CEO says ‘20% death threats and 80% job applications…’ after post about company’s 84-hour workweeks

Daksh Gupta, the Indian American CEO of San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Greptile, has said he received death threats and job applications after posting about the company's long workweeks.

In a long text post on X (formerly Twitter), Gupta doubled down on his company's strategy regarding employee work hours and called out hate directed towards him from the social discussion site Reddit.

Gupta came under fire for revealing that he only hired candidates after informing them that the company has “no work-life balance” and asked for advice for “some obvious pitfall I’m missing”.

CEO Tells Candidates: 'No Work-Life Balance'

In a post on X on November 9, Gupta wrote, “Recently I started telling candidates right in the first interview that Greptile offers no work-life-balance, typical workdays start at 9 AM and end at 11 PM, often later, and we work Saturdays, sometimes also Sundays. I emphasize the environment is high stress, and there is no tolerance for poor work. It felt wrong to do this at first, but I’m convinced now that the transparency is good, and I’d much rather people know this from the get-go rather than find out on their first day. Curious if other people do this and if there’s some obvious pitfall I’m missing."

The post made its way from X to other social media sites, including Reddit and LinkedIn. It generated lots of discussions on company culture, work hours and striking the right balance, with Gupta catching jabs for his outlook on the issue.

CEO Defends Stance: '20% death threats and 80% job applications'

A day later, Gupta took to X again to defend himself and shared that his initial post led to responses which included death threats and job applications.

He wrote, “Now that this is on the front page of Reddit and my inbox is 20% death threats and 80% job applications, here’s a follow up: to everyone who is overworked and underpaid at their software jobs esp outside the US, I feel for you, and I’m sorry this struck a nerve. The people that work here had 6-fig 20 hr/week jobs before this, and can go back to them any time. It might be hard to believe but there exist people that want this, while a minority. the transparency exists to identify them(SIC).”

He added, “This way of working isn’t supposed to be forever because it isn’t sustainable. It’s the first year or two of a startup, which is like reaching escape velocity. Like people said in the comments, as we mature, we’ll hire older, more experienced people who have families and can’t work 100 hours a week, and naturally, we would adapt like any good organization. This is NOT meant to be prescriptive. There are brilliant people who run successful companies full of brilliant people who don’t push themselves this hard. Many others started the way we are starting.”

He also called out Indians online for the hate posts, saying, “lot of indian hate coming from this post so i want to clarify that i am like this not because im indian but because im san franciscan.” (sic)

Gupta's defence was met with many people questioning if he learnt anything from the previous responses on why work-life balance is essential, while others were more supportive, saying that taking up a job is each candidate's choice.

In response to a user, Gupta said, “More people reached out asking to join than I expected, most that are bored at large companies and looking for some excitement, which we have an overwhelming abundance of.”