An Indian-origin CEO got a free lesson from social media on the importance of work-life balance after posting about an employee pulling three all-nighters in a row. Karun Kaushik, the co-founder and CEO of Y Combinator-backed startup Delve, took to X a few hours ago to reveal that an engineer on his team worked through three full nights in a row.
Kaushik found the engineer busy at work after stepping into the office one morning. He shared a photograph of the moment on the social media platform X, writing: “When you step into the office and your founding AI engineer is on his 3rd all nighter. This team never stops shipping.”
The tone of his post was appreciative, but many social media users – including anti-aging millionaire Bryan Johnson – pointed to the many drawbacks of going long periods without sleep.
The reactions
Bryan Johnson was among the most prominent critics of the post. The American entrepreneur, who has invested millions of dollars into his anti-aging regime, shared the many pitfalls of pulling all-nighters. He equated it to “shipping death” in play on the CEO’s words.
{{/usCountry}}Bryan Johnson was among the most prominent critics of the post. The American entrepreneur, who has invested millions of dollars into his anti-aging regime, shared the many pitfalls of pulling all-nighters. He equated it to “shipping death” in play on the CEO’s words.
{{/usCountry}}“3 all nighters = impaired glucose metabolism, elevated cortisol, reduced BDNF, increased IL-6, shortened telomeres, cognitive decline, suppressed immunity, and cardiovascular strain. Shipping death,” Johnson wrote in response to Kaushik’s post.
Several other X users also blamed the Indian-origin co-founder for overworking his team and urged him to implement better work-life balance.
“Yeah, it’s not something to be proud of. Overworking people at the cost of their health for your company is pretty gross,” wrote X user Jake Manger.
“3 all nighters means they are hallucinating harder than the LLMs they are using,” another joked.
“How can you even remotely be productive that way? Unless of course he’s sleeping at work,” X user Faraz Khan asked.
In a follow-up post, Kaushik joked that the engineer’s GitHub access would be revoked if he did not get more than 10 hours of sleep that night.