If I were to sell my soul to work insane hours (80+ per week) I'd work in finance instead of software development. The prospects of making it big in software are pretty slim, even with "hustle", because the important thing is not due to your work ethic as much as luck, capturing the right market, and being able to capitalize on it effectively. If you're doing a startup, you don't often start with much money and won't make good money until you're well past the point of profitability. Contrasting to finance, where you can (apparently, I don't know first hand) pull in mid 6 figures easily if you do your time and get the right clients (and once you get the right clients part of that high work time is meeting the client anyway). I consider workaholism just another form of addiction, and at least I'd like to get paid well for that addiction, and if I had the drive to start a business I'd at least have the capital to do it then.
Beyond this, as an employee I think it is insane for a company to expect you to work the same as a co-founder for relatively little. If the culture was to be working 70 hours per week or essentially always needing to have your phone with you and be available, then it's the sign of a toxic work culture. I can kind of understand around "crunch time" even though I think it's a symptom of bad time management and probably announcing something before you should have. I can kind of understand a founder putting in that much work, even if I do think it's unhealthy, but not an employee.
"If the culture was to be working 70 hours per week or essentially always needing to have your phone with you and be available, then it's the sign of a toxic work culture."
Ops here. Never been on-call or had to work more than 40 hours in the previous 5 years of doing this as a career, but then again, I've always been a consultant in some capacity for multiple clients so YMMV.
The needing your phone with you, yes, but not the 70 hours part. If you have to work 70 hours as an ops your employer is too stingy to get another ops.
Beyond this, as an employee I think it is insane for a company to expect you to work the same as a co-founder for relatively little. If the culture was to be working 70 hours per week or essentially always needing to have your phone with you and be available, then it's the sign of a toxic work culture. I can kind of understand around "crunch time" even though I think it's a symptom of bad time management and probably announcing something before you should have. I can kind of understand a founder putting in that much work, even if I do think it's unhealthy, but not an employee.