“This notion that somehow you can achieve greatness, you can build something extraordinary by working 38 hours a week and having work-life balance, that is mind-boggling to me,” Andrew Feldman, cofounder and CEO of $49.5 billion AI chip company Cerebras, stressed on the 20VC podcast last year. “It’s not true in any part of life.”
As many U.S. workers push for shorter workweeks, America’s founders are still sticking with “grindset” culture as the formula for trillion-dollar success. Feldman is just one of many business leaders, including Google cofounder Sergey Brin and Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary, emphasizing the hard truth of success.
Of course, professionals can stick to a 40-hour workweek and still be happy—but the Cerebras CEO stipulated they won’t be the ones launching the next unicorn or rolling out generation-defining products.
“You can have a great life. You can do many really good things, and there are lots of paths to happiness,” Feldman continued. “But the path to build something new out of nothing, and make it great, isn’t part-time work. It isn’t 30, 40, 50 hours a week. It’s every waking minute. And of course, there are costs.”
The myth of work-life balance—and a 60-hour ‘sweet spot’
