By Barbara Salopek
Silicon Valley’s 996 work culture is often framed as commitment, but it undermines innovation. Drawing on experience and research, Barbara Salopek explores how overwork breeds fear, conformity, and silence, as well as how competitive advantage stems from psychological safety, learning, and leadership practices that prioritise insight over hours worked.
The illusion of dedication.
I have been there. At twenty-five, I managed a customer relations department in a fast-growing start-up. My days began at seven and ended close to eight in the evening. The pace was relentless, the stakes high, and the pressure constant. At first, I thought this was what success looked like: intensity, long hours, and competition. But behind the glossy façade of ambition, the company was crumbling from within: mistrust, political games, and fear had replaced collaboration. Nobody felt safe to speak up or admit mistakes.
After one exhausting year, I left – and realised that overwork may sustain performance for a quarter, but it silently kills innovation in the long run.
Silicon Valley’s “996” culture – working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week – has become a global symbol of commitment. But in truth, it is a symptom of panic, not progress.
The real signal behind 996
996 is more than a schedule; it is a cultural signal. It tells people that time matters more than trust, and presence more than progress.
When organisations celebrate long hours, they unintentionally punish reflection, experimentation, and creative risk-taking; the very foundations of innovation.
Research supports this. Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety, the belief that you can speak up without fear of humiliation or punishment, was the single strongest predictor of high-performing, innovative teams. Psychological safety is not about comfort or leniency. It is about creating conditions where people can take interpersonal risks, challenge assumptions, and share half-formed ideas.
In contrast, 996 normalises fear. How? Very simply, it tells people: stay late, don’t question, just deliver. The result is efficiency without evolution.
Why 996 kills innovation
1. Exhaustion breeds conformity
Creativity requires cognitive space: time to reflect, connect ideas, and experiment. And creativity is not like a pizza that you can order when you are hungry for it. It requires a relatively fresh brain and clear eyes. Under constant fatigue, the brain defaults to routine patterns, a phenomenon psychologists call functional fixedness. We stop seeing new possibilities because we are too tired to question old ones. Teams caught in perpetual motion may produce more output but fewer breakthroughs.
In cultures dominated by overwork, mistakes are more likely to be hidden than discussed. People avoid suggesting controversial ideas that could backfire. This leads to organisational silence, where everyone appears busy but no one is learning. In innovation, silence is the loudest danger signal.
2. The psychological cost of speed
996 glorifies speed as if faster automatically means better. Yet when fear replaces safety, teams shift from problem-solving to self-protection. They focus on avoiding blame rather than exploring solutions. Managers under pressure tend to micromanage, which further erodes trust.
The irony is that fear slows organisations down. Without open dialogue, problems escalate unseen until they require crisis management. The constant “panic productivity” creates short-term busyness and long-term fragility. The more time leaders demand, the less thinking they receive.
Just because the market is in panic does not mean we have to be as well. In such situations, we need to be calm and, as Norwegians like to say, breathe with your stomach i.e. slowly.
3. What drives innovation instead
The opposite of 996 is not laziness; it is psychological safety combined with accountability. In my work with innovation teams, the most successful leaders model three core behaviours:
- Show vulnerability. Admit what you don’t know, and invite others to help solve it. This turns authority into credibility. People open up more to those who are human; leaders who show they are just like them.
- Listen actively. When people share ideas, don’t interrupt, dismiss, or instantly evaluate. Curiosity builds ownership. As much as I love to talk, I’ve learned that others love to talk too — and my role as a leader is often to stay quiet and listen with curiosity.
- Clarify roles and goals. Ambiguity breeds anxiety. When people know their scope, they dare to experiment within it.
These small habits have a disproportionate impact. They create a sense of collective responsibility, where failure becomes feedback, not a threat. Innovation flourishes in environments where people feel both trusted and challenged.
4. Lessons from adaptive cultures
Companies known for innovation, whether in Scandinavia, Japan, or Silicon Valley itself succeed not because of endless hours but because they design for learning. They intentionally protect space for reflection, exploration, and collaboration.
The idea is not to copy “Google’s 20 percent time,” but to understand what it represents: a protected environment where curiosity is safe and learning is valued as much as results. These organizations replace “hours logged” with “experiments run.” They measure innovation by hypotheses tested, not weekends sacrificed.
Leaders who want to compete on innovation must reframe productivity from effort to insight. The goal is not to do more, but to think better.
Replace fear with focus
996 is not a symbol of dedication, it is a red flag. It signals a culture that confuses exhaustion with excellence. Innovation depends on energy, not depletion; on trust, not terror.
Leaders who genuinely want speed must first create safety. Without it, every new idea feels like a risk too big to take.
Remember Formula 1: there is no room for fear or ambiguity when changing tyres in the middle of a race. Asking employees to sprint 996 and to innovate in that state is like asking a pit crew to redesign the car mid-lap. It will never work, and we both know it.
The companies that will win the next decade are not those that run the fastest, but those that learn the fastest.
The companies that will win the next decade are not those that run the fastest but those that learn the fastest.
Three shifts every leader can start this week:
- Replace “Who made this mistake?” with “What did we learn?” or “How can we not repeat it next time”
- Replace “Work harder” with “Let’s experiment more and learn faster.”
- Replace “Be perfect” with “Be curious.”
When organisations stop glorifying exhaustion and start rewarding learning, innovation returns naturally. Because the real shortcut to performance is not more time in the office, it’s the courage to make thinking safe again.
Barbara Salopek
