AI Workloads Push Tech Employees to 90-Hour Workweeks Despite Promises of Shorter Schedules

Workers at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta say AI is making their jobs harder, not easier

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. The big picture: AI tools are being sold as a way to make work faster and easier. But employees at some of the companies building those tools say the opposite is happening inside their own workplaces. Current and former workers at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google told the BBC that developing AI often involves long hours, weekend shifts, and constant pressure to meet product deadlines. At OpenAI and Anthropic, some employees said major development pushes can last for weeks and involve more than 90 hours of work per week. One former OpenAI technical employee said they worked at least 70 hours most weeks before leaving the company last year. They now work at another AI startup and said their schedule is closer to 50 to 60 hours a week, except during intense release periods known as sprints. "You go in on Saturday or Sunday just to catch up or make sure things aren't broken," the person said. That experience does not line up with the public message from many AI leaders. Google predicted several years ago that AI could help make a four-day workweek possible. Earlier this year, OpenAI encouraged companies to experiment with four-day schedules without cutting pay, saying AI would soon accelerate much of the work people do. The former OpenAI employee said the company did not try a four-day workweek while they were there. Instead, they described regular "crisis meetings," weekend work and "super cut-throat" performance reviews that could lead to sudden layoffs. OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to the BBC's requests for comment. The workload is partly a result of the pace of the AI race. Companies are trying to improve models, build more computing infrastructure, and add AI features to products at the same time. That creates pressure on engineers, researchers and product teams to move quickly and fix problems as they arise. Anthropic has said its Claude tool can work independently for seven hours on some tasks. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said AI will allow smaller teams to do more work. Yet employees say these systems are not reducing the amount of work expected from them. In many cases, they are simply being asked to produce more. Meta workers described being moved onto AI teams with little warning. A current employee and a former employee told the BBC that workers called the process being "drafted." The former employee said people often had little meaningful choice about joining an AI project. "They just move you over," the former employee said. "You can't say no - or if you do, you have to quit." Those teams are working on AI systems for software engineering and other tasks, along with infrastructure that measures how well models can perform work typically done by people. The former employee said the work had no clear endpoint. "You're literally working in teams of people trying to replicate humans doing jobs," the person said. Meta has reportedly softened its reassignment approach, but workers said many employees had already been placed on AI projects. They described late nights, weekend work, and a feeling that they remained on call even when they were not actively working. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. The strain is not limited to people directly building AI models. Amin Shali, a former Google employee, said he left the company in May after seeing internal engineering systems fail more often. He said Google had shifted key resources, including processing units and memory storage, to AI projects, leaving other teams dealing with disruptions. Shali said the problems often required engineers to work through the night. Since leaving Google, he said his sleep and health have improved. He said heavy use of AI tools at large companies "creates a bad culture with excess pressure on engineers." A Google spokesperson declined to comment. Research from UC Berkeley suggests that AI can increase workloads even when it makes individual tasks faster. The study followed hundreds of workers at a US tech company for eight months and found that employees using AI worked at a faster pace, handled more tasks and worked later into the day. They also had to spend time checking AI-generated output. Neil Thompson, an innovation scholar at MIT, said companies are unlikely to give workers more free time when AI creates efficiency gains. Instead, those gains often lead to new tasks, more oversight, and higher expectations. "People assume that 20% less work means four-day weeks," Thompson said. "But new work emerges."

Tech leaders say AI means less work - their staff say they work up to 90 hours a week

For years now, executives at companies that are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars a year into developing various artificial intelligence tools have insisted that the technology will ultimately mean people will spend less of their time working. An engineering director at Google said four years ago that AI would deliver a four-day work week by 2025. Earlier this year, and just one year after that engineering director's prediction, OpenAI took up the challenge, in a manner of speaking. It formally urged companies to start testing out a four-day work week (with no change in pay), claiming that AI will soon be able to speed up so much human labour that the corporate world should prepare itself. However, a former OpenAI technical employee who left the company last year told the BBC the firm never actually trialled the four-day work week it suggested others should try while they were there. Instead, the person described what was often a gruelling work culture marked by frequent "crisis meetings", working on weekends, and "super cut-throat" performance reviews that would see colleagues suddenly let go. "You go in on Saturday or Sunday just to catch up or make sure things aren't broken," the person said. Other companies have also pushed the idea that AI will effectively reduce the number of hours people need to work, for better or worse. Anthropic has boasted that its popular coding tool and chatbot Claude is capable of working on its own for seven hours without a break, essentially a full corporate workday. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has said his company is in the middle of the year when "AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work" and that such tools let far fewer employees do more than they ever could have before. While Meta has since laid off 1 in 10 of its employees, Anthropic's chief executive Dario Amodei has warned that as AI tools inevitably become more productive, it could mean even broader job losses. Despite these claims, workers inside these same tech companies, who are not only developing but using the very AI tools that will purportedly perform at least some of people's work, say they are clocking in far more than the typical five-day, 40-hour work week. US tech workers are typically well-compensated, and while other industries such as investment banking, law and medicine also often see people work long hours, a 14-hour workday was not always the norm in tech. For years, it was a more typical 9-5 office job. But the former OpenAI employee said they would put in at least 70 hours a week, much more than they did in previous tech jobs. The person now works at a start-up also focused on AI, and said their work-life balance has improved, working closer to 50-60 hours a week, "outside of sprints". A "sprint" is term for a common period in technology companies in which people work long hours in the weeks leading up to a release of a new feature or product. Inside AI companies and larger tech companies working furiously on AI projects, however, such sprints can be extreme. At OpenAI and Anthropic, for instance, sprints can stretch on for many weeks and top 90 hours of work in a seven-day period, tech workers that the BBC spoke to for this story said. Neither company responded to BBC requests for comment. At Meta, workers said they have been abruptly pushed onto teams this year doing AI work being treated as urgent. They called it being "drafted", according to one current and one former employee, because people were not given a choice. "They just move you over," the former employee said. "You can't say no - or if you do, you have to quit." They said although Meta recently began to walk back that strict take it or leave us approach, by then many workers had already been forced onto such work. The hours on such teams at Meta are often long, with staff working into the night, on weekends, and feeling they are "on call" during the hours they are not working, according to descriptions of the work from the current and former employees. There are no limits in the US on how many hours a person over the age of 16 can work. In the UK and Europe, for instance, laws limit a working week to 48 hours, including overtime. Meta's current AI projects include the creation of an AI tool that can be used for software engineering and other kinds of work, and building AI model infrastructure that can measure an AI model's success in replicating various tasks, the employees added. "You're literally working in teams of people trying to replicate humans doing jobs," the former employee said. That work, the person added, seems "endless". A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. Even tech workers who are not directly involved in the development of AI tools are facing longer hours due to the technology. A former Google employee, Amin Shali, left the company in May due to the ways in which he claimed AI was negatively impacting his job, like having to often work all hours of the night because internal engineering functions had failed. This was happening more frequently as Google moved crucial resources like processing units and memory storage over to AI projects. A Google spokesperson declined to comment. Since leaving Google, Shali told the BBC that his sleep and overall health had improved. He said he's realised that heavy reliance on AI tools in large tech companies "creates a bad culture with excess pressure on engineers". Some new research suggests that AI tools are making people's workloads even more burdensome. A study out of UC Berkeley followed hundreds of workers at a US tech company for eight months as they used AI. It found the employees "worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day". Neil Thompson, an innovation scholar at MIT, said that even at tech companies leading on AI development, it is unlikely that workers are being told to simply deploy the tools that are supposed to do some of their work and move on. "It leads to a situation where even if there were real time savings, it would be sucked up by the changes, and implementing them, and making sure they worked," Thompson said. The UC Berkeley research found that the workload of tech employees was expanded in part because of the need to constantly check the output of AI tools. In a situation where an employee had smoothed out processes for AI tools, people also tend to fill any time saved with more work, Thompson added, either because they want to or they feel they should do in order to prove their value to an employer. "People assume that 20% less work means four-day weeks," Thompson said. "But new work emerges." As Shali observed: "AI is supposed to be doing so much for us now, so many more people should at least have better health and better sleep." Instead, it seems to be the opposite.

If AI Helps People Work Less, Why Are AI Lab Employees Working So Much?

Publicly, AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are urging other companies to prepare for the AI labor apocalypse, promising productivity boosts so big that businesses will be able to shift to four-day -- or even three-day -- workweeks. These same companies are the earliest of early adopters, openly bragging about how their workforce uses AI tools to tackle upwards of 100% of their normal work tasks. So why, according to a report from the BBC, do former employees of these companies claim that they're working 90-hour weeks, working and taking meetings during weekends, and just generally experiencing the same old Silicon Valley grindset mentality? Part of it almost certainly is the ongoing arms race that the AI labs find themselves in, constantly looking to churn out new versions of their models to top their competitors. Per the BBC's reporting, code sprints remain a staple of the tech company even in the AI era, with teams tasked with working day and night until they finalize a feature or product in an effort to push it out faster. But even outside of crunch time, the publication said that employees of OpenAI reported working 50 to 60 hours a week as the standard. And then there are the executives who seem to think these types of work conditions are acceptable -- necessary even -- to reach their goals. It's not hard to find examples of tech execs lionizing themselves about how much time they put in to get to where they are -- OpenAI President Greg Brockman has documented his own 90-hour work weeks in the past. And then you get guys like Andrew Feldman, cofounder and CEO of AI chip company Cerebras, who say things like, "This notion that somehow you can achieve greatness, you can build something extraordinary by working 38 hours a week and having work-life balance, that is mind-boggling to me." Cerebras seemingly assumes there is only one way to be great, and it is through work, and that working more hours guarantees productivity and is not just an act of performative busyness. Reality is, whatever productivity "gains" have been made via the availability of AI, it has not shortened workdays. If anything, it has extended them. Research published earlier this year by Harvard Business School found that employees who end up working at a faster rate because of their AI usage simply end up working more hours and broadening the scope of their work rather than reducing their hours. A report from the AI Work Institute found that while some employees report saving as much as 11 hours per week thanks to AI, they spend about 6.5 of those gained hours maintaining their AI workflows and fixing mistakes. What seems more likely: that companies will use realized gains from AI deployment to lessen their employees' workloads, or that they'll pile more on their plates to fill the newly "free" hours? You know the answer. Don't go planning that 3-day weekend vacation any time soon.

Tech giants are gaga over AI, but employees say the AI race is making their jobs harder

Employees at some of AI's biggest companies say the AI push is bringing longer hours and heavier workloads Tech companies have spent years promising that AI will help people accomplish more in less time. Inside several companies leading that race, some employees are describing an awkward consequence. More productive tools haven't necessarily produced shorter working days. Workers at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google told the BBC about punishing schedules and AI projects consuming nights and weekends. The twist is that their employers increasingly have evidence that AI really can help people get more done. AI really can help workers do more OpenAI says Codex has become the primary AI work tool across every department, including Legal, Finance, and Recruiting. As its capabilities improved, employees increasingly handed it longer and more complex jobs, while workers also used it to tackle tasks outside their usual roles. Anthropic's internal numbers point in the same direction. More than 80% of code merged into its codebase was authored by Claude as of May, while the typical engineer merged eight times as much code per day during the second quarter of 2026 as in 2024. Anthropic cautions that code volume overstates the true productivity gain, but says the increase still indicates substantial acceleration. Employees aren't getting that time back A former OpenAI technical employee told the BBC they worked roughly 70 hours a week, sometimes using weekends to catch up. Workers at OpenAI and Anthropic said intense release sprints could exceed 90 hours in a seven-day period. Recommended Videos At Meta, one current and one former employee described workers being abruptly moved onto urgent AI projects, with some assignments stretching into nights and weekends. Former Google employee Amin Shali said AI priorities affected him more indirectly. He linked overnight work to internal engineering problems as resources were redirected toward AI projects, and said his sleep and overall health improved after leaving Google. Productivity gains can become workload gains In-progress UC Berkeley research offers a possible explanation. During an eight-month study at a 200-person tech company, researchers found employees using generative AI worked faster and expanded what they attempted. Work also crept into periods that previously acted as breaks, often without managers explicitly asking employees to work longer. OpenAI itself has proposed another outcome for those efficiency gains. Its Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age suggests incentivizing 32-hour or four-day workweek trials when AI reduces routine workloads and operating costs, with reclaimed hours potentially becoming permanently shorter weeks or paid time off. That may be the more important AI productivity question. If these tools really can give companies hours of human labor back, who gets to keep those hours?

OpenAI, Meta and Google workers say AI jobs mean 90-hour weeks, not the four-day workweek companies promised

While AI companies have spent years promising that their technology will make work easier, the people building that technology are describing something very different. Current and former employees at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google told the BBC they are working longer hours than ever, with intense release periods pushing some past 90 hours in a single week. A former OpenAI technical employee said they worked at least 70 hours most weeks before leaving last year. They described regular crisis meetings, weekend shifts, and a cut-throat performance review process that could end in sudden layoffs. OpenAI was also the same company that earlier this year formally urged other companies to start testing a four-day workweek, citing AI's ability to accelerate human labor. The former employee said the company never tried that approach itself while they were there. At Meta, workers described being reassigned to AI teams through a process employees called being "drafted." "They just move you over," one former employee told the BBC. "You can't say no, or if you do, you have to quit." Those teams are working on AI tools for software engineering and infrastructure that measure how well models can replicate human tasks, work the former employee described as endless. Anthropic says more than 80% of the code merged into its codebase was authored by Claude, with engineers merging eight times as much code per day in Q2 2026 compared with 2024. Those gains have also brought higher expectations. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that as AI becomes more capable, broader job losses could follow, yet the people currently building those systems are working harder than ever. An eight-month study at a U.S. tech company found that employees using AI worked faster, took on more tasks, and extended their work into hours that previously served as downtime. The need to check AI-generated output also added to the workload rather than reducing it. MIT innovation scholar Neil Thompson put it plainly: "People assume that 20% less work means four-day weeks. But new work emerges." Former Google employee Amin Shali said his sleep and health improved after leaving his AI-prioritized job. "AI is supposed to be doing so much for us now, so many more people should at least have better health and better sleep." Instead, the experience described by workers across the industry suggests that, at least for the people building AI, the technology has so far done little to shorten the workweek.

Former workers of AI tech leaders say they work for 70 hours a week at least

As AI boasts it'll make life easier for us, it doesn't seem to be having that effect on the people who develop the technology. One of the main benefits of AI, according to many of the big tech companies boasting of it in recent years, has been that it'll make life easier and more convenient. You'll be able to generate a spreadsheet, an agenda, even a short film, in seconds or minutes, and your working day will be markedly shorter thanks to it. However, according to a BBC News report interviewing former employees at Meta, OpenAI, and more, it seems that AI isn't making everyone's lives easier. A former worker at OpenAI, who left the company last year, said that they were working 70 hours a week at a minimum, with that number growing to 90-hours if they were in what big tech refers to as a "sprint." A "sprint" is the name for the period of time before a big feature or app releases, which requires workers to come in for additional hours to push it through. Think of crunch in relation to gaming. A former employee from Meta also said that there now exists something called being "drafted," where a worker can be moved to another team with very short notice and without being able to protest, as they're pushed to do more AI work for urgent tasks. "You can't say no - or if you do, you have to quit," said the former employee. New research also suggests that AI being added to the workplace is only making workloads more burdensome. Neil Thompson, of MIT, said that at big tech companies, the time apparently saved on having AI tools is then sucked away by making changes, "implementing them, and making sure they worked."

OpenAI promised the 4-day workweek, but its employees tell a very different story

For the last few years we kept saying AI was going to take our jobs away. For the last few months we were calling for a 4-day workweek because of the productivity gains AI brings. Now, employees at OpenAI, Anthropic and other artificial intelligence companies are telling a very different story: up to 90 hours of work a week. Inside OpenAI, the pace is very different: the exception or the norm? According to the BBC's original reporting, a former OpenAI employee says that they worked 70 hours a week and went into the office on weekends to keep projects on track. During sprint periods, several OpenAI and Anthropic workers speak of weeks exceeding 90 hours of work. A UC Berkeley study, cited by the BBC, followed hundreds of workers at an American tech company for eight months. According to the results, employees worked faster, took on more tasks and, in addition, worked longer hours. If every minute we gain thanks to AI efficiency can turn into time for new tasks, the reduction simply disappears. Add to that the fact that, as is usually the case, tasks take a bit more time than we initially tend to expect, the possible reduction in working hours really seems far off. The four-day workweek remains very attractive, but those building the AIs that should make it possible show that work is still fundamentally human.