Back in 2019, Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke tweeted and made it clear that he worked only 40 hours a week, underscoring that working more was not a mandate for success. But now, that specific tweet seems to have disappeared, along with his convictions, if one has to go by his latest comments on work-life balance. “I’ve never worked through a night,”
Lütke—once an example of entrepreneurial success without slogging long hours—tweeted long back, “The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so,” doubling down on his need for an eight-hour sleep.
Fast forward to 2025, the Shopify founder recently tweeted, “Yea[h,] but this is commonly misunderstood. I’m at home for dinner but I work at least 10 or so hours a day and a lot of the weekend. I don’t want people to get misguided by this meme,” responding to a user who invoked Lütke in a thread citing the founder’s success without extra hours.
The conversation was triggered by the tweet, “You can’t build a world-class company working 40 hours per week or less. It’s simply not possible.”
Yea but this is commonly misunderstood. I’m at home for dinner but I work at least 10 or so hours a day and a lot of the weekend. I don’t want people to get misguided by this meme.
— tobi lutke (@tobi) March 3, 2025
This marked a major deviation from Lütke’s earlier stance (and the now-deleted 2019 tweet). However, this shift seems to be more to be in line with the times, rather than a shift in Shopify’s value systems.
“To ensure you don’t overwork yourself and still have time for your home life and loved ones, you’ll want to put boundaries around your work schedule,” Shopify staff says in their official blog, which occasionally features their CEO in many articles. Funnily, this specific article goes on to advocate, “If you’re expected to work a 40-hour week, only work a 40-hour week.”
“Maybe your manager is flexible and lets you set your own work schedule. If so, create a schedule that works for you and allows you to maintain a work-life balance. That could be four 10-hour days or five eight-hour days,” it further states.
In India, the debate around work-life balance has reached its peak in the past couple of years, triggered by Infosys founder Narayana Murthy invoking World War-II Germans and Japanese in an October 2023 podcast urging Indian youngsters to work 70 hours a week. This invited major backlash and debate in the country.
Earlier this week, a report by Genius Consultants revealed that only 36 per cent of the surveyed employees were satisfied with their current work-life balance. Around 79 per cent of employees admitted that work-related stress negatively affected their personal life.
In a time when multimillionaire CEOs and founders with stock options and stakes in firms want employees with salaries to put in more hours at work, companies have to toe the line carefully to bring about changes to cultivate a more satisfied workforce with work-life balance in the forefront.
