People Who Want Work-Life Balance Aren't 'Committed To Winning’, According To LinkedIn Co-Founder
We're STILL saying this garbage in 2025?
Getty Images Signature | Canva Pro It is astonishing that in 2025, with the mountains of data we have on the subject, we are STILL debating the validity of work-life balance. Yet here we are!
The latest business leader to criticize the notion of work-life balance is so on the nose it's cliche — the co-founder of LinkedIn, the internet's nexus of brainwormed hustle culture business bros who think wanting to sleep and see your family is a sign of weakness.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman said those who want work-life balance aren't 'committed to winning.'
That sound you hear is a gash being ripped in the time-space continuum by the sheer force of everyone's eyes simultaneously rolling. Now, to be fair, Hoffman made his comments in a deeply stupid video from all the way back in 2014 that has recently resurfaced. Times have obviously changed since then.
In it, Hoffman bloviates about how entrepreneurs who want work-life balance are not actually interested in succeeding. “If I ever hear a founder talking about, ‘this is how I have a balanced life’ — they’re not committed to winning,” Hoffman said in his comments, delivered to a Stanford University class called "How to Start a Startup." "The only really great founders are like, ‘I am going to put literally everything into doing this.'”
Hoffman said he allowed workers to have dinner with their families every night and that's it.
Elsewhere in the video, Hoffman said that when he and his employees were building LinkedIn, most of the staff had families. So he made a rule — you can have dinner with the fam, and then get your butt back to work.
"We said, sure, go home, have dinner with your family," Hoffman told the Stanford students. "Then, after dinner with your family, open up your laptop and get back in the shared work experience and keep working."
This is absolutely insane and dystopian, and framing it as some "shared" bonding experience is diabolical. But don't worry, he made sure to gaslight the students about it. "The people that think that’s toxic don’t understand the start-up game, and they’re just wrong." Okay, whatever you say, Reid!
Despite the changing times — and all the research proving he's wrong — Hoffman has not changed his views since 2014.
You may think that Hoffman has gotten with the times, but it sure doesn't seem that way. In an appearance on the Diary of a CEO podcast just last year, Hoffman reiterated his take, telling host Steve Bartlett that “work-life balance is not the start-up game," and that "you're by nature dead as a start-up" if you give into it.
There's no arguing that success and especially entrepreneurship require extraordinary diligence. But this kind of absurd objection to the simple notion that not every waking hour must be spent on work is not only out of touch with the times, but it's out of touch with the scientific facts.
The United States is among the countries with the worst work-life balance in the world, and the data is conclusive that we're paying the price, with everything from declining mental health to increasing rates of heart disease and stroke.
Hoffman and his ilk couldn't care less about that, of course, but they do care about the other thing being hobbled by poor work-life balance: productivity. Studies have repeatedly shown that burnout, stress, and health problems caused by poor work-life balance lead to high turnover, which in turn decreases productivity and costs companies tons of money in recruitment. Better work-life balance has been shown to have the opposite impact.
Of course, this kind of hustle-culture nonsense is part of LinkedIn's brand — it's THE pre-eminent online community for weird dudes who like to brag about not knowing their children's names because they work so hard or whatever. Hoffman basically has to continue spouting this propaganda. But the data isn't and never has been on his side, and judging from the response to his comments, neither is pretty much anyone else.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
