One thing we tried to make clear in the book is that it's not a static caste system. You can reinvent yourself. You can move up the food chain. So while there are people who are killing themselves, there are others who are doing just fine as consultants or owners of small businesses. I have to go back to the mantra that human beings have not changed.
People can do only about four or five hours of solid work a day.
The reason people work so many hours in the internet industry is because of disorganization. For every bad software release, if they had only slowed things down a little bit, they wouldn't have to go back and redo it. In this economy, people work longer and stupider. Part of what makes things inefficient is culture. It doesn't have to be this way.