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Contrary to what this VC believes, it is NOT okay to expect someone to "work 60 hours a week at Facebook and then another 40 hours a week on your side project".

Contrary to what this VC believes, it is NOT okay to expect someone to "work 60 hours a week at Facebook and then another 40 hours a week on your side project". Because starting a business should not be founded on giving up your personal life. Quitting your job to focus on your idea full-time is a perfectly reasonable expectation. Investors need to start doing their homework instead of pushing founders to the burnout limit.

eldavido 11y ago
If you won't do it, someone else will. Life is all about tradeoffs. Just because someone else's is different than yours, doesn't make it bad/wrong/illegal.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >If you won't do it, someone else will. This mentality can be used to justify far too many stupid things.
  - eldavido 11y ago
    This is why it's important to have limits. As a society, we have laws that make it illegal to cross certain boundaries. As an individual, I'm free to set my own limits on what I'll do. For one, I don't work at facebook or other adtech companies because I think the world has enough advertising and I don't like how phone-addicted people are. I just think it's incredibly naive to assume you can have whatever lifestyle you want and be commercially successful. Success is costly ; you have to, almost by definition, be willing to do things other people aren't. I don't know where this idea that you somehow "deserve" to work "only 60 hours per week" comes from -- I just know that there are a lot of incredibly hard-working people in tech, and it's a high-stakes, high-money game, so you're going to get some outliers.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      > I don't know where this idea that you somehow "deserve" to work "only 60 hours per week" comes from Perhaps you missed labor regulations over the last 200 years during the industrial revolution? That's where these ideas come from, that someone can have a solid quality of life without trading 60-100 hours a week of their life away.
      - eldavido 11y ago
        Honest question: do you see modern tech workers as "labor" in the classic sense? I don't but you seem to, I wonder why? My rudimentary understanding of labor law suggests it's not really clear what we are right now.
        toomuchtodo 11y ago
        > Honest question: do you see modern tech workers as "labor" in the classic sense? If they're owners, founders, or have significant equity? No. That's not the vast majority of tech workers though. They're (we? I'm a tech worker) just higher up in the caste system.
        csa 11y ago
        Capital (e.g., VCs) definitely see both founders and programmers as "labor". At best, highly successful founders can be seen as aspirational capital, That said, the vast majority of founders are not perceived that way, and they are not even perceived to have the potential to become anything other than labor. Is this labor in the "classic sense"? "Yes" if you're talking about the capital/labor division. "Conditional no" if you're talking about industrial labor. Capital loves how easy it is these days to get motivated and fairly intelligent people to work for incredibly low wages, especially in the Bay Area. Some of those people actually create value that can be capitalized on. I personally consider this an abuse of labor. I imagine that industrial-style regulation is not needed, as the curtain hiding the grossly misaligned relationships will eventually be pulled back -- most likely in the next big economic downturn.
      - pjlegato 11y ago
        Those regulations are intended to prevent employers from abusing their employees. They do not entitle you to be a successful startup founder for only X hours of work per week. You're not an employee when you're working for yourself.
    - Retra 11y ago
      This all depends on what you consider 'success.' You're gonna be a corpse in the ground sooner or later, and if you spend most your life digging gold out of mines for 20 hours a day, I wouldn't call that a success. It may be a sacrifice. But if all you've got to show for it is wealth, then why bother?
  - pink_dinner 11y ago
    This mentality is how you will succeed. Should you be working 40 hours outside of work forever? No. But, it may be required to push your product/idea to the marketplace. I did the same thing for about a year before I finally quit my day job. I haven't work those kind of hours for many years. If you aren't willing to sacrifice your free time, you probably won't succeed as a business owner and you are better off just working a regular job.
wvenable 11y ago
An "idea" isn't worth much. I have lots of "ideas" but would take time to figure out if any of them are viable. Quitting my job to focus on any of my ideas full time would be financial and personal suicide in all but the very unlikeliest of cases. Given enough personal time I might be able to figure out if an idea is worth betting it all on.
cballard 11y ago
I'd shorten that to: > Contrary to what this VC believes, it is NOT okay to expect someone to "work 60 hours a week at Facebook" Let's get one of these already https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive
- sokoloff 11y ago
  I suspect that tech workers already have that ability for themselves. Don't want to work 60 hours a week at Facebook? Great; don't. What they don't have is the ability to prevent others from doing it. Personally, I like that and hated working in Germany where I was forced to stop working because of an arbitrary hours limit per week.
  - vvanders 11y ago
    While that might apply to some BigCo there's large parts of tech that would really benefit from a WTD(GameDev I'm looking at you).
  - rmc 11y ago
    > What they don't have is the ability to prevent others from doing it Yes they do. They have a law.
    - sokoloff 11y ago
      Citation needed [that tech workers have the ability to prevent others from working 60 hours per week at Facebook].
      - rmc 11y ago
        Vote for politicians who support such a law. Join/form a union that will campaign for that sort of law. Talk to your friends and family to tell them that such a law should be brought in.
        11y ago
galistoca 11y ago
While you're thinking it is NOT okay to work 40 hours on your side project, someone else IS working 60 hours on their side project. So yeah, no one is wrong, you can do whatever you want and you are right based on your own standards I guess.
jkot 11y ago
I agree that its not ok to expect someone ELSE to work that way. But its ok to expect this from yourself.
wslh 11y ago
It depends of your age. Around your twenties you can play with double working while your mental health tolerate it. This is a choice. Personally I feel alienated if I focus on an idea without genuine income, so having a side project gives me the opportunity to receive real income in the meanwhile.

eldavido 11y ago

If you won't do it, someone else will. Life is all about tradeoffs. Just because someone else's is different than yours, doesn't make it bad/wrong/illegal.

forgetsusername 11y ago
>If you won't do it, someone else will. This mentality can be used to justify far too many stupid things.
- eldavido 11y ago
  This is why it's important to have limits. As a society, we have laws that make it illegal to cross certain boundaries. As an individual, I'm free to set my own limits on what I'll do. For one, I don't work at facebook or other adtech companies because I think the world has enough advertising and I don't like how phone-addicted people are. I just think it's incredibly naive to assume you can have whatever lifestyle you want and be commercially successful. Success is costly ; you have to, almost by definition, be willing to do things other people aren't. I don't know where this idea that you somehow "deserve" to work "only 60 hours per week" comes from -- I just know that there are a lot of incredibly hard-working people in tech, and it's a high-stakes, high-money game, so you're going to get some outliers.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > I don't know where this idea that you somehow "deserve" to work "only 60 hours per week" comes from Perhaps you missed labor regulations over the last 200 years during the industrial revolution? That's where these ideas come from, that someone can have a solid quality of life without trading 60-100 hours a week of their life away.
    - eldavido 11y ago
      Honest question: do you see modern tech workers as "labor" in the classic sense? I don't but you seem to, I wonder why? My rudimentary understanding of labor law suggests it's not really clear what we are right now.
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        > Honest question: do you see modern tech workers as "labor" in the classic sense? If they're owners, founders, or have significant equity? No. That's not the vast majority of tech workers though. They're (we? I'm a tech worker) just higher up in the caste system.
      - csa 11y ago
        Capital (e.g., VCs) definitely see both founders and programmers as "labor". At best, highly successful founders can be seen as aspirational capital, That said, the vast majority of founders are not perceived that way, and they are not even perceived to have the potential to become anything other than labor. Is this labor in the "classic sense"? "Yes" if you're talking about the capital/labor division. "Conditional no" if you're talking about industrial labor. Capital loves how easy it is these days to get motivated and fairly intelligent people to work for incredibly low wages, especially in the Bay Area. Some of those people actually create value that can be capitalized on. I personally consider this an abuse of labor. I imagine that industrial-style regulation is not needed, as the curtain hiding the grossly misaligned relationships will eventually be pulled back -- most likely in the next big economic downturn.
    - pjlegato 11y ago
      Those regulations are intended to prevent employers from abusing their employees. They do not entitle you to be a successful startup founder for only X hours of work per week. You're not an employee when you're working for yourself.
  - Retra 11y ago
    This all depends on what you consider 'success.' You're gonna be a corpse in the ground sooner or later, and if you spend most your life digging gold out of mines for 20 hours a day, I wouldn't call that a success. It may be a sacrifice. But if all you've got to show for it is wealth, then why bother?
- pink_dinner 11y ago
  This mentality is how you will succeed. Should you be working 40 hours outside of work forever? No. But, it may be required to push your product/idea to the marketplace. I did the same thing for about a year before I finally quit my day job. I haven't work those kind of hours for many years. If you aren't willing to sacrifice your free time, you probably won't succeed as a business owner and you are better off just working a regular job.

wvenable 11y ago

An "idea" isn't worth much. I have lots of "ideas" but would take time to figure out if any of them are viable. Quitting my job to focus on any of my ideas full time would be financial and personal suicide in all but the very unlikeliest of cases. Given enough personal time I might be able to figure out if an idea is worth betting it all on.

cballard 11y ago

I'd shorten that to: > Contrary to what this VC believes, it is NOT okay to expect someone to "work 60 hours a week at Facebook" Let's get one of these already https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive

sokoloff 11y ago
I suspect that tech workers already have that ability for themselves. Don't want to work 60 hours a week at Facebook? Great; don't. What they don't have is the ability to prevent others from doing it. Personally, I like that and hated working in Germany where I was forced to stop working because of an arbitrary hours limit per week.
- vvanders 11y ago
  While that might apply to some BigCo there's large parts of tech that would really benefit from a WTD(GameDev I'm looking at you).
- rmc 11y ago
  > What they don't have is the ability to prevent others from doing it Yes they do. They have a law.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    Citation needed [that tech workers have the ability to prevent others from working 60 hours per week at Facebook].
    - rmc 11y ago
      Vote for politicians who support such a law. Join/form a union that will campaign for that sort of law. Talk to your friends and family to tell them that such a law should be brought in.
      - 11y ago

galistoca 11y ago

While you're thinking it is NOT okay to work 40 hours on your side project, someone else IS working 60 hours on their side project. So yeah, no one is wrong, you can do whatever you want and you are right based on your own standards I guess.

jkot 11y ago

I agree that its not ok to expect someone ELSE to work that way. But its ok to expect this from yourself.

wslh 11y ago

It depends of your age. Around your twenties you can play with double working while your mental health tolerate it. This is a choice. Personally I feel alienated if I focus on an idea without genuine income, so having a side project gives me the opportunity to receive real income in the meanwhile.