I am firmly in the other camp when it comes to the common theme on here that anything above a 40 hour workweek is a sign of poor management of time and people. It's one thing to be forced to do those work hours against one's will, and I'll grant that doing so is bad business practice. However, when you are working in a startup environment, especially if you're burning through other people's money, there should be a fire lit under your ass.<p>A few weeks ago, my startup[1] did a crunch mode week before releasing our beta to the first set of users. We had promised access to the application on a certain day, and I am absolutely never going to be convinced that missing a deadline that you've promised someone else is an okay thing to do, as the article suggests as a form of self-punishment. In doing so, I did a few things in order to take care of my one employee. First, I said that lunch and dinner would be covered by the company, since we were both staying there until the nighttime hours. Second, I made a Costco run and got us anything would could need to snack on or drink during the week (not very expensive when you're buying for two people). Third, immediately following our successful launch on a Monday, he had Tuesday and Friday off. It's very important that when you're not on crunch that it feels like you're not on crunch, and you "make up" for the time that you burned through.<p>I am always of the opinion that if you're not willing to put in a ton of hours, there's someone just as smart and focused as you that is. I think my perspective has been forever changed, though, because I've been on deployments where we worked 12 hours a day for 9 months straight with no holidays, doing knowledge work I might add. Becoming accustomed to that makes everything that comes after it seem incredibly easy.<p>Both my employee and I feel incredibly lucky to be working on something that we both really believe has a chance to succeed greatly, and it is so much a part of our lives that when we're not at work we're thinking of more ways we can improve our product. When you're that deep into an idea, be it a business, hobby, love interest, etc., the amount of time you spend on it always seems like not enough. I think people bristling about long work hours are doing so because they haven't found something that makes them feel this way.<p>[1] <a href="http://pleenq.com" rel="nofollow">http://pleenq.com</a>