4 ms·

I'm a musician. I'm also a freelance developer. I did the startup thing, and it's not for me. Right now I've been programming for about 6 months of the year and

by nerme 16y ago

I'm a musician. I'm also a freelance developer. I did the startup thing, and it's not for me. Right now I've been programming for about 6 months of the year and spending the rest of the time on music. Starting a music project, be it a band or whatever, does have some similarities to a startup. You need a good product, you need to market it, promote it, you've got to start lean, you need to keep at it all the time, etc, etc. My lady gives me a lot of support. She's fine with practicing 3 nights a week, being in the recording studio, sitting on my laptop working on demos or editing recordings. I spend a lot of time working on music! A good 50-60 hours a week, for sure. ...but... I always seem to have time for her, too. Even when I've got a programming contract. You can always make time for the people and things that you love. If you're not making time for them, you don't love them. It really is that simple. Honestly, do you really need to be spending 15 hours a day working on some silly little company? Your daily photo company or whatever it is? That's going to be your pride and joy when you're all alone with a pile of cash? I mean, this is Hacker News. I know what you're motivations are here. They're not art. They don't seem to be love either. I guess that's why I got out of the game. I want love to rule my life, and not the other way around.

Tamerlin 16y ago
It's almost a tradition now that startup = sweatshop. That's the problem -- I have zero tolerance for sweatshops, even though I have nothing against startups. Too many people equate hours with value; reality is that if you're working burnout hours, you're writing bugs (not code) and creating more work for yourself rather than knocking things off of your to do list. There are going to be times when you'll work extra hours if you care about what you're doing, so that's a given. But if you get to a point where you're consistently working ridiculous hours, your SO should drag you away from the computer, slap you silly, and tell you to stop and think about what you're doing, because you're obviously doing it wrong. I've worked for several startups... not once have I encountered a situation where working long hours helped to get the job done, but I have frequently experienced the opposite. In every sweatshop project I've been in, whether a startup or not, I dreaded the first checkout, because invariably I'd spend a large chunk of my day fixing a lot of broken code.
- gte910h 16y ago
  Wise wise words here: "But if you get to a point where you're consistently working ridiculous hours, your SO should drag you away from the computer, slap you silly, and tell you to stop and think about what you're doing, because you're obviously doing it wrong."
  - Tamerlin 16y ago
    I might have had some doubts if I'd seen even one exception, but I haven't. I've never found a long-hours buffoon get as much as I have, and that's in spite of the fact that I wasted so much of my time fixing the idiocy they introduced into the code. Logically, it follows that if you have people working for you who are putting in crazy hours, you should fire them so that they stop preventing your good people from getting their jobs done.

by nerme 16y ago

Tamerlin 16y ago

It's almost a tradition now that startup = sweatshop. That's the problem -- I have zero tolerance for sweatshops, even though I have nothing against startups. Too many people equate hours with value; reality is that if you're working burnout hours, you're writing bugs (not code) and creating more work for yourself rather than knocking things off of your to do list. There are going to be times when you'll work extra hours if you care about what you're doing, so that's a given. But if you get to a point where you're consistently working ridiculous hours, your SO should drag you away from the computer, slap you silly, and tell you to stop and think about what you're doing, because you're obviously doing it wrong. I've worked for several startups... not once have I encountered a situation where working long hours helped to get the job done, but I have frequently experienced the opposite. In every sweatshop project I've been in, whether a startup or not, I dreaded the first checkout, because invariably I'd spend a large chunk of my day fixing a lot of broken code.

gte910h 16y ago
Wise wise words here: "But if you get to a point where you're consistently working ridiculous hours, your SO should drag you away from the computer, slap you silly, and tell you to stop and think about what you're doing, because you're obviously doing it wrong."
- Tamerlin 16y ago
  I might have had some doubts if I'd seen even one exception, but I haven't. I've never found a long-hours buffoon get as much as I have, and that's in spite of the fact that I wasted so much of my time fixing the idiocy they introduced into the code. Logically, it follows that if you have people working for you who are putting in crazy hours, you should fire them so that they stop preventing your good people from getting their jobs done.