996 vs. 4-Day Work Week: What founders actually chose

Editor’s note 

Last week, we tried something new: a live debate on one of the most polarizing topics in startup culture right now. Over 100 of you joined us for a "996 vs. 4-Day Work Week” debate, featuring: 

• Cyril Gorlla (23-year-old YC founder who's raised $7.2M from Google for AI safety company CTGT)

• Artem Kroupenev (2x founder and VP of Strategy at Augury, an industrial IoT unicorn).

I expected the room to split predictably: young founders would vote for grind culture, experienced operators for balance.

The results? Not even close...

Here's what each side got right — and the tactical frameworks you can steal regardless of which camp you're in.

The principle ⚛️

Hustle culture and work-life balance both obsess over the same question, just with opposite answers: what fails first under pressure?

If you're scrolling LinkedIn lately, you'd think the answer is obvious. Posts about 996 are racking up engagement, and the recent reporting suggests there might be something to it. 

An analysis of corporate card data found that San Francisco-based employees are increasingly working on Saturdays, with a pronounced jump in restaurant and delivery spending starting around noon and running through midnight — a pattern that didn't exist in 2024, 2023, or prior years. 

But what do other founders and current startup employees actually have to say about all this? 

We asked our audience two questions at the end of our debate: 

1. Which team would you actually join? 

2. Which philosophy would you bet/invest on?

The results showed a preference for 4-day work weeks in BOTH cases — 81.82% said they'd join the 4-day work week team, and 58.82% said they'd invest in it. 

This wasn't a room full of burnt-out middle managers. About a third of attendees were founders themselves. The overwhelming preference reveals something important: the market is increasingly skeptical of hustle theater.

Both founders on stage agreed on almost everything — mission-driven culture, in-person collaboration, hiring people who care. But they had fundamentally different fears about what breaks first under pressure.

The Case for 996: Mission > Hours 

On one side of the ring is Cyril Gorlla, representing the 996 approach. 

As a seed-stage founder, he says he’s constantly navigating fatality events that await him around every corner. His answer: he and his team pull 14-hour days, regularly capping off 50 to 60-hour weeks. 

“This work culture is not unprecedented when you consider the stringent work cultures of the Manhattan Project and NASA’s missions,” he told the San Francisco Standard. “We’re solving problems of a similar if not more important magnitude.” 

It’s this mission-driven intensity that has become the rallying cry for CTGT’s long days and nights. As for what that looks like in practice, here’s how Cyril does it: 

• Build in-person "collegiate" environments. CTGT works together in person to foster what Cyril calls an almost collegiate academic environment, where intellectual discussion is encouraged. “That in-person collaboration is really key to maintaining that culture,” he says.

• Provide infrastructure for peak performance. Cyril offers his team Equinox gym memberships, catered meals, and other support so employees can focus on doing their best work for longer periods.

• Hunt for 90/10 solutions. Cyril referenced Paul Buchheit's (creator of Gmail) 90/10 rule: find solutions where 10% of the effort gets 90% of the return.

• Screen for life outside of work. Counterintuitively, Cyril asks candidates about hobbies and what they do outside of work. "We look for people who have a vibrant life outside of work," he said. 

The goal: hire people who can turn off to avoid burnout, but who think about problems naturally.

The stage caveat: Cyril was explicit that this intensity isn't sustainable long-term. "No one is doing this because they're gonna be working hundred-hour weeks for their entire lives,” he says. “Everybody knows this is a temporary facet of our current stage." 

The case for a  4-day work week: Energy management > time management

Artem's framework isn't about working less — it's about working sustainably. His company doesn't actually do 4-day work weeks every week; they do them every other week. "In general, productivity doesn't drop. In some cases, it goes up," Artem says, citing studies on 4-day work weeks.

His contrarian insight: "996 culture actually drives productivity down because people, over time, burn out.”

He cites that China outlawed 996 five years ago.  If the country known for intense work culture had to dial it back, that's a data point worth noting, Artem says. 

As for how Artem responds to critics of a full day during the work week for the rest of corporate America, he points to these tactics that work for Augury.

Key tactics for sustainable intensity:

• Measure outcomes, not effort. Artem's team has a strong culture of single-threaded ownership, with clear key results and deliverables. "Within the time that they have, they are tasked with being efficient, effective, and to deliver on the work they need to get done. And then when they need to take time off, take time off."

• Build team-driven accountability. "If you're on a team, others hold you accountable," Artem explained. The accountability comes from collaboration and mission alignment, not top-down surveillance. This peer pressure is more effective — and more sustainable — than founder-driven intensity.

• Reward emergency work explicitly. When someone has to work through the weekend to put out a fire, "you need to make sure that you reward those people who pull through for that specific thing and respect the fact that they gave up that weekend. Give something back to them as part of your culture." This builds trust that intensity is the exception, not the baseline.

The common ground: What both sides agree on

Despite the polarized framing, Cyril and Artem aligned on some fundamentals:

1. In-person collaboration drives creativity. Even Artem's 4-day work week company values face-to-face interaction. The debate isn't remote vs. in-person — it's about how to structure time together.

2. Hire for intrinsic motivation, not compliance. Cyril: "We're not counting hours." Artem: "People really think about the problems we're solving in the shower." Both want people who care about the work itself.

3. Build systems to prevent burnout. Cyril provides personal well-being support. Artem builds in recovery time. Different tactics, same goal: keep people operating at their best for longer.

4. Stage matters more than philosophy. Cyril acknowledged his approach is "a temporary facet of our current stage." Artem noted that even he would "have to hustle like everybody else" at the seed stage. The question isn't which philosophy is "right" — it's which is right for your current reality.

Lastly, neither side is instituting work policies for the sake of optics or LinkedIn content. Cyril himself noted that "people who are terminally online about their work and constantly posting about how much they work" show a "negative correlation" with actual quality of work and product. The media circus around 996 culture "is not productive in and of itself." 

Both are optimizing for what helps their teams solve important problems.

Which failure mode should you optimize against?

If you're facing “fatality events”:

• You're at seed stage with competitors who could ship first, or one missed deal could end you

• Do this: Implement Cyril's screening for "vibrant life outside of work" to avoid hiring people who'll burn out. Use the 90/10 rule when priorities pile up. Be explicit that the current intensity is temporary.

If you're optimizing for sustainability:

• You have product-market fit, you're seeing team exhaustion, or you have senior hires/parents who can't sustain 60-hour weeks

• Do this: Test Artem's "every other week" 4-day model. Build single-threaded ownership so time off doesn't create bottlenecks. When someone works a weekend, give them explicit recovery time back.

If you're not sure:

Ask Artem's question: "Would I want to work at this company every day?" If the answer is no, you're burning too hot.