Tech CEO criticized after sharing how much work she does in a day

A tech company founder has come under fire after revealing her day in the life and how much - or little - work she does.

While most of us feel like we need a new brain and body after what a long - but at the same time quick - year 2023 feels like it's been, some people may've had a slightly easier ride.

One person who's come under fire for publicly sharing their typical workload in the past is founder of media tech startup Zette Media, Yehong Zhu.

X/@yehongzhu

Back in 2022 she revealed just what a day in the life of her job looks like, and let's just say, it's not a surprise she hasn't done the same for 2023 given the backlash she faced.

Zhu took to X - formerly known as Twitter - to reveal what she does 'on a day-to-day basis,' proceeding to list out some of her daily tasks.

"In case you were wondering, here's a day in the life of a startup founder in Silicon Valley," Zhu explains.

First up, it's approving engineering for their beta of Zette Media.

This sees the CEO 'pour over' Figma mocks (mock-ups for her investor deck) and 'greenlighting' the ones she wants.

Next, she goes to pick up some company 'swag' but finds that the water bottles she ordered are 'nowhere to be found.'

X/@yehongzhu

Then, as Zhu explains: "I go to pick up my new business cards instead. They are slightly ruined by the printers, and our brand color is an off-green instead of highlighter yellow.

Ugh, okay. Not ideal. I ping my Chief of Staff about getting a refund. He’ll have to sort this out later."

Zhu is then asked by her marketing team to go over TikTok strategy, explaining that she 'slack[s] them sometimes'.

She then looks at drafts of conference materials and promises to do final edits by the end of the day.

After that, she goes on to start 'building relationships with journalists' and sends those asking 'questions' the company media kit.

Zhu then updates the media kit and looks at emails from 'a bunch of investors' - she decides to 'snooze all their emails' and makes a 'mental note' to respond next week.

She then tried to look at the Figma mocks again and checks her schedule for the next day, texted her mum, and looks at X.

By this point it's 6:37 pm, the sun is setting, and she decides to post the X thread she just wrote.

Well, some weren't thrilled to see the amount of work the CEO was doing, with one user saying: "'Texting your mom' as one of the 14 things you got done in a work day."

Another said: "It's so sick I used to have a job where I did nothing all day. Congrats," while a third simply said that Zhu's daily tasks were 'not work.'

X/@yehongzhu

But others loved the CEO sharing an insight into her life: "Love it! Thanks for sharing. I'm starting my journey as an entrepreneur next month, so this is cool."

What do you think of the CEO's so-called workload?

Zhu told UNILAD at the time: "Despite what people think about how hard or not I work, my real job as a CEO is to do whatever is necessary for my startup to succeed.

"We don’t have a growth marketer yet, so until we hire for one it’s my job to generate attention for my startup. I would say that I did that very successfully with my tweets.

"From this X thread we got more attention and signups to our waitlist than a month’s worth of paid advertising. I took a risk and it paid off, and putting my startup in front of new users matters more to me than any negative comments I might receive in the process."