Here’s a job pitch you don’t see often.
What if, instead of “work-life balance,” you had no balance at all—your life was your work… and work happened seven days a week?
Did I say days? I actually meant days and nights, because the job I’m talking about wants you to know that you will also work weekends and evenings, and that “it’s ok to send messages at 3am.”
Also, I hope you aren’t some kind of pajama-wearing wuss who wants to work remotely; your butt had better be in a chair in a New York City office on Madison Avenue, where you need enough energy to “run through walls to get things done” and respond to requests “in minutes (or seconds) instead of hours.”
To sweeten this already sweet deal, the job comes with a host of intangible benefits, such as incredible colleagues. The kind of colleagues who are not afraid to be “extremely annoying if it means winning.” The kind of colleagues who will “check-in on things 10x daily” and “double (or quadruple) text if someone hasn’t responded”—and then call that person too. The kind of colleagues who have “a massive chip on the shoulder and/or a neurodivergent brain.”
That’s right, I’m talking about “A-players.” There are no “B-players” here, because we all know that B-players suck. But if, by some accident, the company does onboard someone who “isn’t an A-player,” there’s a way to fix it: “Fast firing.”
“Please be okay with this,” potential employees are told.
“Only A-players can hire A-players,” says the company, and you know that it is staffed with A-players because its most recent Team page (since removed) was made up entirely of young dudes and an AI-enhanced HR dog named Hurin who “enforces 7-day work week & remote ban.”
If you live for this kind of grindcore life, you can join a firm that has “Tier 1” engineers, a “Tier 1” origin story, “Tier 1” VC investors, “Tier 1” clients, and a “Tier 1” domain name for which the CEO splashed out $12 million.
Best of all, you’ll be working for a boss who “slept through most of my classes” until he turned 18 and then “worked 100-hour weeks until I became a 100x engineer.” He also dropped out of college, failed as a “solo founder,” and has “a massive chip on my shoulder.” Now, he wants to make his firm “the greatest company of all time” and is driven to win “so bad that I’m sacrificing my life working 7 days a week for it.”
He will also “eat dog poop if it means winning”—which is a phrase you do not often see in official corporate bios. (I emailed to ask if he would actually eat dog poop if it would help his company grow. He did not reply.)
Fortunately, this opportunity to blow your one precious shot at life is at least in service of something truly important: AI-powered advertising.
Lean in
Yes, this was the pitch made by Icon, “The AI Admaker,” a few weeks ago. I came across the company’s job listings thanks to some bemused social media posts, and I wondered if it was all some kind of elaborate, anti-capitalist joke.
But Icon CEO Kennan Davison really did buy the icon.com domain for $12 million, and the company has touted investments from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and NFL star Saquon Barkley (who has become a noted tech investor).
In the last few weeks, Icon has modified its “values” statement slightly, removing the lines about sending messages at 3 am and working in the office seven days a week. It has also removed its Team page; Hurin the HR dog is nowhere to be found, though the line about eating dog poo remains in the CEO’s bio.
(You still need to be an A-player who will run through walls, be extremely annoying, and “have a massive chip on the shoulder and/or a neurodivergent brain.” Also, work must be “a key part of your identity/fulfillment in life.”)
The “hustle culture” here sounds like something from a farce—although the tech industry has always had different degrees of grind. (What were all those dotcom-era job perks but ways to keep employees in the office?) Startups in particular have often stressed long hours for the prospect of future rewards. And of course, video game “crunch” is legendary for brutal work hours like this.
But at least there was talk about work-life balance and avoiding burnout. Not at Icon.
In places like China, this kind of “give your life to the company” attitude flourishes in the high-tech sector, though even there it is only known as “996”: 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. In a piece published this week, The New York Times noted that Silicon Valley has developed an obsession with China and its work habits, including the 996 system.
Long hours are also common in places like Japan, which even has a term (“karoshi”) for “death by overwork.”
Some of this is relative, of course; to many Europeans, common American working hours can feel like too much.
But Icon and its VC backers appear unapologetic about a total commitment to the company. The reward is the prospect of “generational wealth.”
Would you work—or have you worked—a job like this? If so, was it sustainable? For how long? And did you, in the end, acquire “generational wealth”?
It all feels rather inhuman to me… but that may just show that I’m not an A-player.
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