Shopify CEO Tobias Lutke appears to have shifted his stance on work-life balance.
Lutke was formerly regarded as a brilliant example of modern man's search for achievement without working long hours.
In 2019, the founder of Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify stated on X (previously known as Twitter) that working 80 hours per week is not required for success and that he himself only worked 40 hours per week.
The tweet has since been deleted, in what seems like a sign of the times, Hindustan Times reports.
At a time when Silicon Valley is emphasising efficiency above work-life balance, Lutke appears to have changed his tune.
In the now-deleted post, he declared he grew his company to USD 125 billion, while not working beyond 40 hours a week. Now, he insists that he works 10 hours a day.
“The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so. I need 8ish hours of sleep a night. Same with everybody else, whether we admit it or not,” he wrote in the post from 2019.
Now, Lutke is no longer of the same opinion.
Replying to a post talking about his advocacy for work-life balance from early March, he said that his opinions are “commonly misunderstood.”
“I’m at home for dinner but I work at least 10 or so hours a day and a lot of the weekend,” he wrote.
Lutke's opinion appears to have shifted at a time when Silicon Valley employees are increasingly under pressure to perform better.
Meta, for example, announced a 4,000-person workforce reduction, penalising employees seen as “underperformers.”
