What are the benefits of 996 culture?

There is a reason the idea of 996 triggers strong reactions. Founders who hate it see a blunt instrument that burns people. Founders who defend it know something about timing and pressure that is hard to explain on a panel. I work with early teams across Malaysia, Singapore, and Saudi. In the messiest months, I have watched a deliberately intense schedule become a tool that concentrates attention. When it is chosen, framed, and measured properly, it can deliver benefits that are hard to achieve with a normal rhythm. The gains are not in the hours alone. They show up in cadence, compounding, and customer truth.

The first benefit is cadence. Early teams drown in context switching. Everyone is doing a little of everything and nothing has a clear heartbeat. A 996 season sets a shared clock. It forces decisions about what actually matters this week. Product reviews stop drifting. Standups get shorter because outcomes are due tonight, not someday. People stop optimising for presentation and start optimizing for delivery. Once the team feels this rhythm, it is easier to keep it even when you later return to sustainable hours. Cadence is a muscle. Intensity trains it fast.

The second benefit is compounding. Skill does not grow in tidy blocks. It jumps when you get enough repetitions close together that your brain finally connects patterns. A sales founder who runs four calls a week learns slowly. A sales founder who runs four calls a day for two weeks hears what customers repeat and what they dodge. The product lead who ships once a fortnight debates theories. The product lead who ships nightly learns the cost of unclear tickets and weak acceptance criteria. Concentrated reps compress learning time. That compression creates visible progress that the team can feel. Nothing is more motivating than momentum you can measure.

Customer truth sits at the center. Long weeks without a clear external reference become theatre. Long weeks pointed at one sharp customer problem become a clean filter. A 996 season works when you name one problem and drive the entire company toward proof. You call your top twenty users in three days. You push micro-fixes by evening and test them at night. You sit on support to feel the friction yourself. The hours are not the point. The density of contact with the customer is the point. If you are not increasing that density, you are just getting tired.

There is also a hiring signal that many founders underestimate. High-tempo seasons reveal who thrives in clarity and who frays in chaos. The people who shine are not the loudest grinders. They are the ones who remove complexity, make teammates faster, and keep promises when the clock is not friendly. In an early company, that signal is gold. It tells you who to entrust with ownership when the stakes rise. It tells you who needs a simpler lane or a different role. Without the pressure, those signals can take a year to surface. With it, you see them in a week.

In markets like Malaysia and Singapore, there is another benefit that is less obvious. Many teams carry cultural politeness into product and delivery. We avoid hard nos. We tolerate vague commitments. A short period of intense hours creates a permission structure to ask for stark clarity. What is the single outcome by Friday. Who owns it. What dies so this can live. People can accept directness when the frame is temporary and the goal is shared. Once the habit of direct clarity is built, you can keep it when the calendar softens again.

In Saudi, I have seen a different nuance. Teams often have strong executive sponsorship and ambitious timelines. A 996 season becomes a way to align external expectations with internal reality. You map what can truly be achieved in two or three weeks of high focus and you show that map to stakeholders daily. The visibility buys trust. The trust buys room for smarter tradeoffs. Intensity with transparency beats normal hours with wishful promises every time.

Cost discipline is another quiet benefit. When you run hot, waste becomes obvious. You spot tools that do not earn their keep. You see meetings that drain energy without unblocking work. You catch projects that absorb hours but serve no customer. In normal rhythms, those leaks feel small. In an intense rhythm, they feel unbearable. The team fixes them because there is no time for nonsense. That discipline persists.

There is also a leadership benefit that matters more than the hours. A founder who sets a 996 season properly learns to make energy visible. You define start and finish dates. You install daily check-ins that measure outcomes, not effort. You rotate responsibilities so no one carries the same weight for too long. You plan recovery time and you keep it. You show that intensity is a tool, not an identity. People follow that kind of leader because the rules are clear and the care is explicit.

None of these benefits appear when 996 is imposed as a default. They appear when it is chosen and bounded. The team needs a clear why. They need to understand the trade you are making and the guardrails that protect health and family. In Southeast Asia, many team members live in multigenerational homes or carry caregiving roles. Respect that reality openly. If you need the entire company in the same rhythm, give real support. Pay for transport after hours. Provide meals that do not wreck sleep. Adjust start times for those handling morning duties. If you treat people like replaceable energy, you lose the very trust that makes intensity effective.

You also need a clean exit. A 996 season should end with two rituals. First, a cut list. What work dies because the concentrated learning changed your priorities. Keep only what earned its place. Second, a reset plan. Name the new baseline hours. Name the habits you keep, like short standups, nightly checklists for the next day, customer calls embedded into product sprints, and a weekly review that rejects pet projects without proof. If you go back to old habits, you wasted the sacrifice.

Founders often ask how long an intense season should last. The honest answer is short enough that people can see the end and long enough to build a rhythm that sticks. Two to four weeks is usually the sweet spot. In my experience, week two is where clarity lands. The noise has been stripped. The essential few tasks repeat. The team starts to move like a unit. This is when the benefits of 996 culture show up without breaking the people who deliver them.

There is a final benefit that matters most. In early companies, ambiguity is the real burn. Not the hours. When you choose a short, intense season with a clear target, you trade ambiguity for certainty of effort. People know what good looks like. They know when they have hit it. That sense of completion is rare in startups and priceless for morale. It beats a slow drip of evenings filled with half-finished work and unclear wins.

So yes, there are benefits, but only if the company treats intensity like a scalpel. Use it to cut through sludge. Use it to compress learning. Use it to reveal real owners and real priorities. Then put it down. Keep the cadence. Keep the customer contact. Keep the discipline. Leave the long weeks behind. If you are considering this, begin with one honest question. What is the single customer problem that would change your trajectory if solved in the next twenty days. If you cannot name it, you are not ready. If you can, gather the team, lay out the rules, set the end date, and build in the recovery. The benefits of 996 culture come from clarity, choice, and closure. The hours are just the vehicle. The lesson that remains is the rhythm that helps you scale without losing yourself.