The 22-year-old Chief Marketing Officer of Cluely, an AI startup, has quit his job citing 12-hour workdays as one of the reasons.
Daniel Min, a content creator, had joined Cluely as its CMO in May 2025
after graduating from The Wharton School with a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and Operations Management.
However, within four months into the job, things started to “go downhill” for Min and after eight months he gave up a lucrative salary of over $300,000 a year (Rs 2.7 crore approximately).
In an Instagram video, shared on Saturday, Min said: “I thought working all day, grinding 12 hours a day was what you should be doing when you’re at the age of 21. But I started to quickly miss small freedoms like getting dinner with my friends or surprising my brother for his 12th birthday.”
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He further said that though he initially enjoyed his work but after a few months it started to feel monotonous.
“As a leader at the company, I wanted to put my all into it, and in the beginning, the work was super fun, but over time, slowly, it started to get a little bit more monotonous,” he said.
He said the CEO of Cluely, Roy Lee, had noticed the dissatisfaction and asked Min.
“I thought about it for a second, and that’s when I mustered up the courage to tell Roy, I’ve been thinking for a while of leaving, and I proceeded to start crying,” Min revealed. “There’s probably no one else who has looked out for me more than Roy, but it broke me to realise that being at Cluely, this little brotherhood that I spent literally 12 hours a day living with wasn’t the ladder that I wanted to climb.”
