File photo: Vinod Khosla, the 71-year-old co-founder of Sun Microsystems and boss of Khosla Ventures
TOI correspondent from Washington: Vinod Khosla has spent decades in Silicon Valley funding companies and entrepreneurs who overturn conventional wisdom, disrupt industries, and remake the future.
His latest quest, for an aide who doesn’t need downtime, is rather more prosaic, but has still prompted furious workplace debates.The 71-year-old co-founder of Sun Microsystems and boss of Khosla Ventures last week sought a chief of staff with a social media post that left the tech world in a tizzy.He offered a front-row seat to some of the most consequential technology bets in the world with a job description that some said resembled a three-year surrender agreement, involving 12-hour workdays and giving up any lingering attachment to weekends.
The successful candidate is expected to work in person in Menlo Park, California, generally from 8 am to 8 pm, while maintaining “around-the-clock availability, including nights and weekends when needed.”The salary? Not disclosed. The job involves evaluating investments, meeting founders, researching emerging technologies and helping Khosla's portfolio companies. Expectations from applicants include “integrity, composure, and low ego.”
In return, they get the chance to learn from a guru whose early bets include OpenAI, DoorDash and Instacart.The advertisement quickly became a referendum on Silicon Valley’s favourite workplace religion: the belief that extraordinary success requires extraordinary hours, echoing a similar call made some years ago by Infosys’ NR Narayan Murthy, who suggested a 70-hour workweek for Indian youth.“Your work-life balance need not apply” and “say good-bye to wife and kids” were some of the jokes that bounced around social media.Khosla, who has never been accused of being short on opinions, stepped in to clarify matters. “Jokes aside honest truth is this job has no specific hours requirement but is intense. I work 80 hours/week and this person needs to keep up. Doing, learning & more.... and very fun,” he said in a follow-up post.
While trolls trashed the prospect of a tortured existence, joking that the phrase “I’m just heading out” might qualify as grounds for firing, some prominent tech figures saw a career-making opportunity.Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian endorsed the role as one that could change a person’s life, while Matteo Franceschetti, founder of sleep-technology company Eight Sleep, said he would take it himself if he were not busy running his own company, prompting Khosla to tell him, “As one of our portfolio entrepreneurs, I prefer you build Eight Sleep!”
Born in Pune, India, Khosla studied at IIT Delhi before earning degrees at Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford Graduate School of Business.He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982, helping build one of the defining companies of the early internet era, before establishing Khosla Ventures in 2004.Today, his firm invests across AI, software, healthcare, energy and climate technology and has built a reputation for backing unconventional ideas early, betting on technologies that established investors might consider too risky.He is also known for blunt, sometimes abrasive interventions in public debates.
In June, he excoriated Stanford students who protested Google CEO Sundar Pichai during a commencement address, describing their actions as “biased, idiotic, short-sighted and very selfish.”The students were objecting to Google’s contracts and links to the Israeli government and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).It is this combination- visionary investor, relentless operator and unapologetically combative personality- that makes the chief-of-staff opening so intriguing.
“It is intense, always on, fun, never boring, but fulfilling/ rewarding.Not for the faint of heart, not for your average person, not the average VC, but for someone who wants to take on a lot + a ton of responsibility to do and build awesome things in the world with someone who has a relentless mission,” pitched in Kristina Simmons, a former Khosla aide who is now a Founder and Managing Partner of Overwater Ventures, an early-stage VC firm.So for all the jokes about forfeiting weekends and surrendering to the 80-hour week, Khosla’s pitch boils down to a quintessential Silicon Valley bargain: trade a chunk of your life for a crash course in how the future is financed.Whether that sounds like a dream job or an endurance test may depend on one’s appetite for ambition -- and how much sleep one is willing to sacrifice for it.