To me this whole thing translates as "zero work-life balance" and spun as if that's a good thing.
Could you point out the parts that made you think that work-life balance was unbalanced at Algolia?
I am 33 years old, married, with a kid and my schedule is mostly oriented towards enjoying time with my family: - I walk my kid to school (8:30am) - I arrive at work between 9am and 10am - I leave work at 5:40pm max - In holidays I have no twitter, no work emails, no GitHub
Not everyone share this balance but we insist a lot on this.
Thanks for reading.
It is true that grit can be taken the way you said. And it's also true that Algolia being a great company to work for we get excited about work and sometime want to deliver outside 9 to 5.
Still we do ensure via regular one on one how people behave/work and we adjust/advise them when we see that they frequently work too much/burn out.
Finding the sweet spot of work life balance is hard. We want people to feel passionate about what they do instead of looking at the clock waiting to finish work.