Facebook Co- Founder Dustin Moskovitz Regrets Foolish Sacrifice.
HARLOW: Employees crying at their desks, 85-hour workweeks, answering e-mails 24/7, those are just some of the details of what it is like to work at Amazon according to a bleak reported in "The New York Times" published this week. Amazon now pushing back very hard. Senior VP of worldwide corporate affairs, Jay Carney, saying it's not the case, saying Amazon is a, quote, "incredibly compelling workplace." Either way, this "Times" report prompted a widespread conversation about work culture especially in the tech industry. One unexpected voice has post a challenge to big companies -- break that cycle. He is Facebook co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz. He's also the co-founder and CEO of software firm Asana. Thank you for being here.</s>DUSTIN MOSKOVITZ, FACEBOOK CO-FOUNDER: Thank you, Poppy.</s>HARLOW: It's a fascinating read. And I think it touches -- hits home for a lot of us trying to find that balance. I want to read an excerpt from a piece that you wrote about this in the "Medium." It says and let me quote here, many people believe the weekend and -- let's pull up, sorry, that's the wrong one. All right, here's what it says. "As an industry, we are falling short of our potential. My intellectual conclusion is that these companies are both destroying the personal lives of their employees and getting nothing in return. I wish I had slept more hours and exercised regularly. I wish had made better decisions about what to eat or drink. At times I consume more soda and energy drinks that water. I wish I had made more time for other experiences that helped me grow incredibly quickly once I gave them a chance." All right. We know you worked incredibly hard starting Facebook. You've made $9 billion off of it. Did you think Facebook would be what it is today if you had cut back a lot?</s>MOSKOVITZ: Yes. Thank you for asking me that. You know, I think that's sort of the hardest question here, is like, is it all worth it? Like do you have to work that hard to have that level of success?</s>HARLOW: Yes.</s>MOSKOVITZ: And I really think the answer is no. I actually think if I had worked less, if I had made more time for the things that helped me cultivate energy and be focused better and just be a more centered human, I actually would have been more effective for Facebook and been a better leader.</s>HARLOW: Really?</s>MOSKOVITZ: Been able to use my time more effectively and just formed better relationships.</s>HARLOW: I mean, you talk about throwing out your back in your 20s.</s>MOSKOVITZ: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes, I mean, those things like get in the way, too, for sure. I was -- you know, when that happens, you're basically unable to work for a week and, you know, that's my personal experience but there's also a ton of research that makes it very clear that if you work too hard, you burn out and you increase the risk of those kind of injuries as well as mental health problems.</s>HARLOW: All right. So let's get to some of that research. You also write in this piece, "Many people believe that the weekend and the 40- hour workweek are some sort of great compromise between capitalism and hedonism, but that's not historically accurate." And you point to Henry Ford and you point to sort of the assembly line, et cetera. But wasn't he talking about sort of manual labor on the line, day in, day out. Aren't tech jobs, development jobs, different than that where perhaps 40 hours a week might benefit you -- more than 40 hours a week?</s>MOSKOVITZ: You know, I think there is an argument to that but my intuition is doing creative work actually requires more energy and I think there's ever reason to believe that, you know, working too long would be even harder on people in creative positions. There's also been a lot of research since Henry Ford. I mean, that was, you know, the early part of the 20th century and a lot of people have replicated the studies in other industries, including other, you know, blue-collar jobs like construction.</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>MOSKOVITZ: But also more recently people have even looked at this topic within industries much closer to our own, like the gaming industry.</s>HARLOW: Yes.</s>MOSKOVITZ: And, you know, you just always get the same result and it matches, you know, my personal experience and the experience of a lot of people I've worked with.</s>HARLOW: Well, you say that this mindset, right, that something is just wrong across the board, especially in tech companies. You say the mindset can lead to ageism and sexism. Expand on that a little bit.</s>MOSKOVITZ: Well, yes. So just -- you know, what I've observed is a lot of people, you know, basically in their 20s are able to work these hours for a little bit of time and then later they burn out and realize they kind of have to make room for other parts of their life. But when you're in an intense work environment, those people are being compared to people further along, might be beginning to have babies and start families and they're just not able to work those kinds of hours and raise a family and just means that they end up contrasting poorly if the way they are being measured is on Facetime and the amount of intensity and work hours, you know, they're bringing every week.</s>HARLOW: How do you change mindset at the top? Right? Because one of the issues is, when you work a lot, there's a perception of you that you work all the time and then if you don't, then you're a slacker. So how do you change perception at the top?</s>MOSKOVITZ: You know, it's a difficult problem and you know really -- like I said, I think we need to break the cycle. A lot of it is people signaling off of what has been done in the past. But we have a new generation of leaders and what I've seen is that a lot of the companies that are started by, you know, entrepreneurs that are a little further along in their career, they just build this in as a value from the beginning, they set a great example for their workers by, you know, leaving at a reasonable hour. You mentioned a story earlier about Blake from Tom Hughes, you know, making a point of taking his paternity leave to make sure other employees would as well.</s>HARLOW: Right. Right.</s>MOSKOVITZ: So if's things like that. You know we meet Tea Party --</s>HARLOW: From the top.</s>MOSKOVITZ: Yes. Need to make it clear that this is the culture we're going for and we also need managers who will make sure to think harder about performance.