The tech firms embracing a 72-hour working week

The recruitment website is jazzy, awash with pictures of happy young workers, and festooned with upbeat mini-slogans such as "insane speed", "infinite curiosity" and "customer obsession".

Read a bit lower, and there are promises of perks galore: competitive compensation, free meals, free gym membership, free health and dental care and so on. But then comes the catch.

Each job ad contains a warning: "Please don't join if you're not excited about… working ~70 hrs/week in person with some of the most ambitious people in NYC."

The website belongs to Rilla, a New York-based tech business which sells AI-based systems that allow employers to monitor sales representatives when they are out and about, interacting with clients.

The company has become something of a poster child for a fast-paced workplace culture known as 996, also sometimes referred to as hustle culture or grindcore.

In simple terms, it puts a premium on long working hours, typically 9am to 9pm, six days a week (hence "996").

For most of us, that would be gruelling. But according to Will Gao, head of growth at Rilla, its 120 employees simply don't see it that way.

"We look for people who are like Olympian athletes, with characteristics of, you know, obsession, infinite ambition.

"It's people who want to do incredible things and have a lot of fun while doing so," he says.

He insists that while the hours are generally long, there's no rigid structure.

"If I'm like, 'Holy cow, I have a super idea I'm working on', then I'll just keep working until 2 or 3am, then I'll just roll in the next day at noon or something", he explains.

This kind of approach has become extremely popular in the technology sector over the past few years, and for good reason. The development of artificial intelligence (AI) has been taking place at a breakneck pace, and companies around the world are now working flat-out to develop ways in which it can be exploited and monetised.

Huge amounts of money are being ploughed into AI ventures, many of them start-ups. But for every ambitious company founder, the ever-present fear is that someone else will get there first. Speed is of the essence – and tech sector workers are under pressure to work harder, and longer, to get results quickly.

The 996 culture first came to the fore in China a decade ago. It was embraced by tech companies and start-ups at a time when the country was increasingly focused on transforming itself from the world's workshop for cheap goods into a leader in advanced technologies.

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