For months now, there have been growing indications that San Francisco’s grindcore culture is back and grindier than ever. Hacker houses are buzzing, startup founders are too busy building to drop acid at Burning Man, and “996,” the demanding 72-hour work schedule that goes from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, is the talk of the town. 

One researcher set out to test if San Francisco’s hustle was truly quantifiable or simply social media aura farming. He was shocked by the results. 

Ara Kharazian, an economist at fintech Ramp, said San Francisco-based employees are working more on Saturdays than they were one year ago. By analyzing food and beverage transactions on corporate credit cards, Kharazian found that there’s been a pronounced jump in employee spending activity on Saturdays beginning around noon — when one would ostensibly order a Sweetgreen or Chipotle bowl for lunch — and running until midnight (yikes!).

“This is not happening nationally. Not in New York, Miami, Austin, or any other tech hub,” said Kharazian. “996 is only happening in San Francisco.” 

Though Ramp’s dataset is skewed toward tech-oriented businesses, the Saturday working trend isn’t exclusive to tech companies. “I really didn’t expect this,” said Kharazian. “It’s pretty rare to see such a dramatic shift in people’s spending habits and work habits.”

The 996 concept was first popularized in China in the 2010s, as tech firms like Alibaba, Huawei, and ByteDance rose to prominence in part by pressuring workers to adopt intense routines meant to drive rapid growth. Despite high-profile investors calling on local companies to follow China’s lead (including The Standard Chairman Michael Moritz, who made his case in the Financial Times), Silicon Valley mostly went in the opposite direction — offering cushy perks like unlimited paid time off, summer Fridays, and remote work options. 

Now, 996 has burst into San Francisco’s mainstream as a work routine, a status symbol, and a meme. 

Last month, startup founder Daksh Gupta told The Standard that the prevailing attitude among young techies in San Francisco is “no drinking, no drugs, 996, lift heavy, run far, marry early, track sleep, eat steak and eggs.” The statement was met with both plaudits and ridicule, a divide that’s indicative of the broader debate raging in Silicon Valley on whether the hardcore mentality is necessary or nonsensical. 

“The most common mistake young founders make is forcing everyone to work 24/7 or 996,” said Deedy Das, an investor at Menlo Ventures. “Generally, you don’t build generational companies with a slave-driver mentality.”

There are many theories about why San Francisco has entered its grindcore era. Many see the AI boom as the biggest technological transformation of their lifetimes and want to spend their days fighting for precious market share. Some believe they need to get rich quick, before AGI — artificial general intelligence — arrives and sinks them into a “permanent underclass.” Others fear that their competition across the street — or in China — will out-work them and capture the market.  

Among the examples set by tech leaders are Elon Musk’s “extremely hardcore” ultimatum to X employees, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel’s embrace of Musk’s cutthroat management style, and 20VC’s Harry Stebbings’ advice to startups that “7 days a week is the required velocity to win right now.” 

“Founders have always worked super hard, super long hours, because they have skin in the game,” said Eric Bahn, general partner at Hustle Fund. “It’s the expectation that employees grind 996 that seems new to me.”

For Cyril Gorlla, 23, cofounder and CEO of AI risk-mitigation startup CTGT, regular 14-hour-plus workdays are driven by a maniacal desire to build “bulletproof” AI. “This work culture is not unprecedented when you consider the stringent work cultures of the Manhattan Project and NASA’s missions,” said Gorlla. “We’re solving problems of a similar if not more important magnitude.” 

Gorlla started CTGT after seeing his immigrant family denied loans. Now, he’s working to prevent AI models from making similar mistakes and spitting out discriminatory decisions. The startup, which is backed by Google, Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham, and Twitch cofounder Michael Seibel, hires (only through referrals) people who are “mission-aligned” and excited to work more than 70 hours a week. 

For the CTGT team, the fear of a future shaped by malicious AI — and the promise of fabulous wealth — drives them to work punishing hours at their Financial District office. 

“I tell employees that this is temporary, that this is the beginning of an exponential curve,” said Gorlla. “They believe that this is going to grow 10x, 50x, maybe even 100x.” 

At Mercor, a San Francisco-based startup valued at $2 billion that helps OpenAI and other AI developers find contractors to train new models, job postings specify that employees work six days, with the option to work remotely only on Saturdays. The startup chose this schedule so that its workaholic employees are encouraged to take breaks on Sundays, cofounder and CTO Adarsh Hiremath explained this year on the 20VC podcast. 

It’s a similar story at Cognition, a startup that’s building an AI software engineer called Devin. Employees usually go beyond 996’s 72-hour workweek at the startup’s Atherton mansion, which doubles as living quarters for some staffers. Last month, after the company acquired rival Windsurf, CEO Scott Wu offered buyouts and nine months’ pay to Windsurf employees who weren’t willing to give their all to the job. 

“Cognition has an extreme performance culture, and we’re upfront about this in hiring so there are no surprises later,” Wu explained on X. “We routinely are at the office through the weekend and do some of our best work late into the night.”

Even in China, where the term was popularized, 996 has not been without controversy.

The country’s Supreme Court ruled that forcing workers into a 996 schedule is illegal without extra compensation, but enforcement has been weak. The 966 phenomenon has spurred protests and accusations of modern-day slavery, and has been linked to worker deaths. 

In Silicon Valley, there are vocal critics pushing back against a 996 tide that appears to have started nearly overnight. Menlo Ventures’ Das said the grindcore schedule alienates older job candidates, people with kids, and stifles creative ideas that bloom during downtime. He advises his portfolio companies to build cultures where people want to work hard, not where they’re forced to fill a quota. 

Others have taken to mocking the schedule. One X user joked that they follow 996 by doing nine minutes of coding, nine hours of tweeting, and downing six energy drinks. 

“It’s just an extension of the performative male meme,” Nate Bosshard, the founder and managing partner of Offline Ventures, said on “TBPN” last week. 

Symbolic of San Francisco’s 996 grind is the coworking space StartupHQ, informally known as the Y-Scraper because of the sheer volume of Y Combinator-backed companies working out of the six-story SoMa building. Each floor is home to roughly 10 startups whose employees spend long days, many nights, and most weekends working out of their cubicles. Desks are littered with half-drained cans of Celsius, and DoorDash couriers stream through the lobby in a near-constant rotation of takeout hand-offs.

For Matt Tengtrakool, a founder who works out of StartupHQ, the local interpretation of 996 is different from the way it’s practiced in China.

“When you say you work 996 in SF, it’s more of a mindset that work is your life rather than a rigid routine to follow,” said Tengtrakool, CEO of Givefront, a financial management platform for nonprofits. Even in the Y-Scraper, Tengtrakool said, almost no one is working 12 hours straight every single day. 

“You go to the gym, then come back to work. You take a nap, then you get back to work,” he said. “Work is the default.” 

Miranda Novar, founder of health wearables startup Fort, said almost everyone she knows in San Francisco — herself included — works on the weekend and is incentivized to be loud about it on social media. 

“The role that Twitter plays in the life of an early-stage founder is not necessarily advertising your products to actual customers, but advertising yourself to VCs,” she said. “So of course everyone is using the town square to shout about how they’re so committed to their cause.” 

With Gen Z rhetoric like “The Great Lock In” on the rise, we might just see 996 becoming even more extreme. In fact, there’s already a name for the next stage of grindcore: 007.

“In China, the tech bros say they’re working 007, as in midnight to midnight, seven days a week,” said Jasmine Sun, a San Francisco tech culture writer who recently took a monthlong reporting trip to China. “It’s funny that SF is just discovering 996.”  

In other words, 996 may be over as soon as it started. So when 007 inevitably sweeps San Francisco — you heard it here first.