Dive Brief:

• The most "toxic, dangerous" thing in technology right now is the promotion of "hustle porn," said Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, while speaking at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal, reports Business Insider.
• "Hustle porn" refers to the work ethic companies are pushing on their employees, Ohanian said. It's the notion that employees are expected to work every hour of the day yet they are not working hard enough.
• The "fetishization" of giving up weekends in favor of coding software has "deleterious effects" on the workforce and overall business, Ohanian said. Physical and mental health of employees should not be reduced to an "afterthought."

Dive Insight:

In a time where moving fast and adopting the agile methods of startups is more attractive than ever, it's hard for businesses to put their people first.

Traditional tech companies and nontech companies striving to modernize are guilty of the "hustle porn" work ethic because it's easy to get caught up in it. As a result, employers are already facing hiring crises and employee burnout.

Companies look to Silicon Valley startups to model how they run IT and ignore the rudimentary flaw in doing so. Companies that are guilty of overworking employees are often too concerned with "hemorrhaging money," Colin Earl, CEO of agile business software company Agiloft, told CIO Dive.

Employers are making investment opportunities contingent on employees meeting "widely aggressive growth targets" which can lead to a bigger issue — losing focus on the things that are most important, Earl said.

Working long hours isn't sustainable for lower level employees or leaders. Productivity and the quality of decision-making will slowly begin to decline and what's created will exist on a "shaky foundation," according to Earl. Perhaps most importantly, internal communication is weakened.

Employees have low morale accompanied by a "thick atmosphere" of "tension and angst." To avoid burnout and resentment, companies should project goals for the long term.

Silicon Valley darlings, like Facebook and Google, tend to push their employees to "marry" their personal and work lives, said Earl. They do this by offering headquarters with unique accommodations and features so employees essentially don't have to choose between personal friends and work friends.

How companies handle employee workloads is contingent on several factors like HR, longevity of goals and work/life balance. But the companies that explicitly promote the hustle mindset are "not just questionable," said Earl, "it's gone over the line into evil."