Every time someone invokes "996" I think about how much it sounds like the last defense of the unarmed.

If you've spent any time at all on Twitter in the past 18 months, you know the term: 9am to 9pm, six days a week. It's a schedule so common in parts of the tech industry that it's been turned into a cultural shorthand.

The idea is simple: if you're not winning with brilliance, win with hours. Work harder. Work longer. Work more. Work will set you free, etc. But when I hear someone talk about how they "just outworked everyone," I wonder what else they had to offer...

My theory is this: the companies and individuals who embrace 996 as their primary strategy have already lost. They're advertising their weakness, not their strength. Because the dirty secret of 996 culture is that it’s compensating for a lack of leverage elsewhere.

You won't hear this at an SF happy hour, but the reason some people have to work twelve hours a day is because their ideas aren't good enough to survive on eight.

I've done long hours.

As a tech writer, I did it just to keep up.

There were stretches where I thought working until midnight was proof that I cared. But over time, it got hard to ignore a pattern: the people who moved with the most velocity weren't the ones who stayed latest. They were the ones who made something so good that it carried itself.

A well-designed product gets shared while you're asleep. A novel insight keeps echoing long after you hit publish. A useful tool does more work than its creator ever could. An essay that cuts through pays dividends for a fucking decade.

The grind-maxxed founder is trying to row the boat harder.

The leverage-maxxed founder has a sail.

The mythology of 996 flatters the striver, making success feel like something you can earn through sheer effort. And in a way, that's comforting. It's easier to believe that success is a function of time rather than taste, judgment, or timing. The person pulling 80-hour weeks gets to feel righteous. The person making twice as much while working half as hard must have cheated.

There's a reason 996 culture flourishes in companies that haven't figured out product-market fit. If you have something people want, you don't need to run your team into the ground to move units. If you don't, all that's left is momentum theater. I've seen teams work twelve-hour days trying to brute-force their way to growth. It rarely ends well. They burn out before they break through.

There is such a thing as productive obsession. But obsession without insight is just pathology. As a journalist, I remember interviewing a founder who prided himself on being the first one in and the last one out. His team resented him. I can't imagine his family felt any different. Even his investors were growing tired of bathing in his sweat without seeing his results. He wasn't a good strategist, but he loved meetings. He wasn't a great builder, but he was great at demanding updates. He ended up optimizing for motion over progress.

That company doesn't exist anymore.

Worshipping the grind is a side effect of status anxiety. If you don't have credentials, or a network, or a novel idea, then you need to show you're serious. And what better way than by staying in the office when everyone else goes home and tweeting about it? It’s peacocking: look how hard I'm trying. But effort is not value. Hours are not outcomes. Work is not the same as progress.

If your only edge is effort, you're replaceable. There is always someone who can work longer. Someone younger, hungrier, more desperate. There is no long-term moat in exhaustion. And if you do somehow win that way, you might not like the prize. You'll have built a system that only functions when you're suffering.

The folks I admire tend to have an unfair advantage that has nothing to do with time. Some are unusually good at sales. Some are brilliant at design. Some are masters at simplifying complex systems. The point is: they’re playing on a different axis entirely. They don't need to work 996 because they can do more in four hours than most people do in twelve. And they often do.

You rarely hear great founders say, "I just outworked everyone." You hear them say, "We found something people wanted, then we built it." You hear them say, "We knew a secret."

You hear them say, "We think differently."

If the best thing you can say about your company is that you're all working hard, then you're not saying much at all.

Maybe this sounds harsh. Maybe it is. But I’d rather tell the truth than romanticize suffering. The most valuable companies in the world weren’t built by people working the longest hours. They were built by people who found leverage. Intellectual leverage. Product leverage. Distribution leverage. All the hours in the world won’t save you if you’re playing the wrong game.

The next time someone brags about 996, ask them what they’re building. Ask them what they know that others don’t. Ask them what would keep working if they stopped. Because if the answer is "nothing," then they haven’t built a company.

They’ve just built a fucking treadmill.