That is generally not compatible with the American way of working - especially in the startup scene - where ever second you're not working is considered a second that your competitor companies have over you.
Working down to the bone, "every second", will lead to serious burn out. Your mental health suffers, as do your relationships.
I won't make any assumptions about who you are or how you work, but I tend to see this mindset from new blood who wants to get the edge over others. I understand this mindset, as it's very productive - like a short sprint - but it's not sustainable.
If you want to last the whole race, you need to pace yourself.
For you. I worked remotely for an American consulting company a while back and you were expected to be reachable during the business hours and respond in less than 30 minutes. If you missed that window more than once, that number shrank to 10 minutes. The turnover rate was high.
I agree with everything you're saying, but not all remote employers agree with us.
As long as you reply in your 30 minute deadline, i dont see how you still can't do what he's doing. I have my phone on me all the time and if there's an emergency or some sort of window where i must reply, i hop on the phone or go back to the desk and get it done.
That said, my reply wasn't intended to be a blanket statement of all remote workers.
One example of where it doesn't work is at U-Haul. A lot of uhaul customer service is people sitting at home glued to their computers, waiting for calls. There is no 30 minute window there.
My point was that it's not as impossible as the comment author made it seem. A balance between "riding in the park" and "answering my client within 30 minutes" is possible here.
While on one hand I am strongly against employee-abuse and working over an 8-hour day: I guarantee my employer that I'm available near-instantly for 8 hours straight (barring lunch) and I have my head down working during that time. Then I disconnect, and go love my family.
As such, my employer trusts me and if I ever did happen to disappear off on a bike into the forest they have no concerns I wouldn't handle my work. I call it an "honest 8", so they are guaranteed to get what they pay for with no concerns of me screwing off, and everyone is always on the same page.
All that said, I do not work well with mediocre people who don't try hard in everything they do, and put pride into their work. So I might be an oddball in the US, and fit in better with a less abusive, but more orderly, stringent society like Germany. Where coincidentally, most of my family came from to begin with so it may just be a difference in cultural norms passed down.
Many other corps in many other parts of the US are perfectly compatible with what was described.
In a previous life, I was chained to the desk 8-5 with lunch breaks - but that's one of the reasons I left.
Are you sure? Having experts in a given field isn't an advantage to look for? The mere fact that you're able to turn on a dime if necessary without having to reorganise thousands of employees and projects towards your new goal?
If your definition of "startup" includes "doing things that literally anybody else with enough money could do" and "trying to establish a monopoly at all costs", speed and agility are things you need. Unfortunately, that's the definition that most of SV seem to use. But if you're trying to push boundaries and do something new with experts in your chosen field? Not so much.
1) It gives you time to reflect on whether the direction you are going makes sense and is aligned with others.
2) It gives you time to sleep and exercise, which makes you more focused and effective at work.
3) It removes the illusion that you can ignore planning/reflection and just pour more hours into something in order to make it successful.
4) If you are demanding people work really bad hours as a matter of course, then that scares experienced hands away. Given that most employees won't see any payout from an exit, those with experience will demand to be paid in cash and will demand that much more if you expect long hours.
It took me too many years in the industry to figure this out. When I'm in "get it done" mode spanning consecutive long days, I do not think calmly or clearly enough to recognize the opportunities along the way that I could have taken to achieve my goal faster/better. Since realizing this, I cannot count how many times I have come in the next morning with new and better ideas and approaches after reflecting on the previous day's sprint during my own, calm, personal time.
No wonder why almost all of them go straight into the wall, head down.
More lile, every second you are not at your desk appearing to work. I've seen this in established companies in the US too, so it's not exclusive to startups