6 ms·

It's not that you demand every working moment of your employees time, it's that you need it. One of the things you're quickly taught is that you do everything

by pbiggar 16y ago

It's not that you demand every working moment of your employees time, it's that you need it. One of the things you're quickly taught is that you do everything you can to ensure the success of your startup. You need employees with the same priorities and intrinsic motivation as you have, or else you're less likely to succeed.

Swizec 16y ago
Every WORKING moment. Not every moment. Big and very important difference. Hell, I'm a founder and if all I spent my time on was my startup I"d go insane, stop having good ideas and so on. It would ruin everything.
cookiecaper 16y ago
Employees aren't going to have the same motivation unless they get the same rewards. I've always thought it was absurd when execs would come in super pissed off that everyone wasn't pulling super long hours to ensure that the exec got his bonus. That's nice that you get a bonus Mr. Executive, but your workforce doesn't exist to sell its life away for your special benefit. I agree with the parent. It is very important that everyone get some time off. I would be hesitant to work for anyone that was so overt about not valuing a proper work-life balance. My applications to multiple startups, including YC startups, have been stopped because they say things like "Make this the most important thing in your life." My job / money will never be the most important thing in my life. Most important in my life is my family and nothing is going to supplant that. If you make like you aren't going to be OK with that, it's an instant deal-breaker and I'd be reluctant to continue talking to anyone that advocates such a bad situation. We all like computers and we're all excited to build useful things, but give me a break; anyone who cares more about their startup than the general well-being of himself or his family, which well-being includes proper work-life balance, is severely misguided. I just talked to a friend who told me who distraught he is that he spent almost every waking hour of the last two years working. He told me he felt like 23 and 24 were empty years filled with nothingness. Yes, he made a lot of money working so much, but it wasn't worth it. It never really is.
- pbiggar 16y ago
  > Employees aren't going to have the same motivation unless they get the same rewards. Not at all. I work relatively long hours now, in my regular job at Mozilla. You know why? Because I love it! If I'm bored, I work, because that's what I do in my spare time too. The point is intrinsic motivation. You're talking about extrinsic motivation. The latter will never be as good as the former. > My applications to multiple startups, including YC startups, have been stopped because they say things like "Make this the most important thing in your life." I think if you're applying for startups, you should apply to one at a later stage. I can't think of many startups who can afford to take on early employees who aren't putting their life-and-soul into it. There's nothing wrong with you not to want to do this, of course.
  - xentronium 16y ago
    Motivation is somewhat limited resource. And I believe that rested developer performs much better than tired one.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    I wonder how much you get paid? I could see myself working just for fun, if I were certain that my salary will take care of me for the rest of my life. An example would be being an university professor with tenure, maybe? It would basically be advanced fuck-you money - you don't have the millions in the bank, but you have a guaranteed substantial monthly paycheck for the rest of your life. In corollary, whatever you do, you just do for fun. So you help out your company just for fun, and because you can. Otherwise, much as I would like to donate my time to my employer for fun, I just can not afford it.
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pbiggar 16y ago
I think I've given the wrong impression here. Everyone is disagreeing, and probably rightly for how I've phrased it, so let me try again. I'm not saying that I believe our employee was lazy because he refused to work Sundays. I feel that we hired someone who wasn't sold on the whole startup thing, and treated an early stage startup as if it were a regular job. I recall a talk from an early Googler, who worked 100 hour weeks for the first five years. Startups need dedication, not because of some kind of culture, or because some exec says so, but because everything is constantly falling apart and it always needs work. You could surely do them differently (perhaps a low-stress startup), but that is another animal altogether. So the point is you need someone intrinsically motivated to make the startup succeed. Anyone else is the wrong fit.
- Swizec 16y ago
  I think it's just that people show their intrinsic motivation in different ways. I consider developing to be a creative kind of job, one where more arse-in-seat time means lower or even negative productivity. Our designer gets off with even less work than my developers. It's about keeping a fresh mind so you can churn out your best stuff. Instead of churning out a lot of mediocre stuff. Perhaps when we're big enough to have code monkeys there will be time for people wanting to spend such insane hours working :)
  - pbiggar 16y ago
    > I consider developing to be a creative kind of job, one where more arse-in-seat time means lower or even negative productivity. As much as I would like to believe this, I don't think it's true. Looking at people who do PhDs, including myself, they work 60-80 hour weeks because you can get more done in that time than working 40 hour weeks. Every startup founder ever has worked extremely long hours. Googlers and Mozillians are in the office long past 5pm. Certainly your productivity drops on a sliding scale probably after 20 hours of work, but to suggest that 100 hours does not get more done than 40 is pure fiction.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago

by pbiggar 16y ago

Swizec 16y ago

Every WORKING moment. Not every moment. Big and very important difference. Hell, I'm a founder and if all I spent my time on was my startup I"d go insane, stop having good ideas and so on. It would ruin everything.

cookiecaper 16y ago

Employees aren't going to have the same motivation unless they get the same rewards. I've always thought it was absurd when execs would come in super pissed off that everyone wasn't pulling super long hours to ensure that the exec got his bonus. That's nice that you get a bonus Mr. Executive, but your workforce doesn't exist to sell its life away for your special benefit. I agree with the parent. It is very important that everyone get some time off. I would be hesitant to work for anyone that was so overt about not valuing a proper work-life balance. My applications to multiple startups, including YC startups, have been stopped because they say things like "Make this the most important thing in your life." My job / money will never be the most important thing in my life. Most important in my life is my family and nothing is going to supplant that. If you make like you aren't going to be OK with that, it's an instant deal-breaker and I'd be reluctant to continue talking to anyone that advocates such a bad situation. We all like computers and we're all excited to build useful things, but give me a break; anyone who cares more about their startup than the general well-being of himself or his family, which well-being includes proper work-life balance, is severely misguided. I just talked to a friend who told me who distraught he is that he spent almost every waking hour of the last two years working. He told me he felt like 23 and 24 were empty years filled with nothingness. Yes, he made a lot of money working so much, but it wasn't worth it. It never really is.

pbiggar 16y ago
> Employees aren't going to have the same motivation unless they get the same rewards. Not at all. I work relatively long hours now, in my regular job at Mozilla. You know why? Because I love it! If I'm bored, I work, because that's what I do in my spare time too. The point is intrinsic motivation. You're talking about extrinsic motivation. The latter will never be as good as the former. > My applications to multiple startups, including YC startups, have been stopped because they say things like "Make this the most important thing in your life." I think if you're applying for startups, you should apply to one at a later stage. I can't think of many startups who can afford to take on early employees who aren't putting their life-and-soul into it. There's nothing wrong with you not to want to do this, of course.
- xentronium 16y ago
  Motivation is somewhat limited resource. And I believe that rested developer performs much better than tired one.
- Tichy 16y ago
  I wonder how much you get paid? I could see myself working just for fun, if I were certain that my salary will take care of me for the rest of my life. An example would be being an university professor with tenure, maybe? It would basically be advanced fuck-you money - you don't have the millions in the bank, but you have a guaranteed substantial monthly paycheck for the rest of your life. In corollary, whatever you do, you just do for fun. So you help out your company just for fun, and because you can. Otherwise, much as I would like to donate my time to my employer for fun, I just can not afford it.

deleted 16y ago

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deleted 16y ago

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pbiggar 16y ago

I think I've given the wrong impression here. Everyone is disagreeing, and probably rightly for how I've phrased it, so let me try again. I'm not saying that I believe our employee was lazy because he refused to work Sundays. I feel that we hired someone who wasn't sold on the whole startup thing, and treated an early stage startup as if it were a regular job. I recall a talk from an early Googler, who worked 100 hour weeks for the first five years. Startups need dedication, not because of some kind of culture, or because some exec says so, but because everything is constantly falling apart and it always needs work. You could surely do them differently (perhaps a low-stress startup), but that is another animal altogether. So the point is you need someone intrinsically motivated to make the startup succeed. Anyone else is the wrong fit.

Swizec 16y ago
I think it's just that people show their intrinsic motivation in different ways. I consider developing to be a creative kind of job, one where more arse-in-seat time means lower or even negative productivity. Our designer gets off with even less work than my developers. It's about keeping a fresh mind so you can churn out your best stuff. Instead of churning out a lot of mediocre stuff. Perhaps when we're big enough to have code monkeys there will be time for people wanting to spend such insane hours working :)
- pbiggar 16y ago
  > I consider developing to be a creative kind of job, one where more arse-in-seat time means lower or even negative productivity. As much as I would like to believe this, I don't think it's true. Looking at people who do PhDs, including myself, they work 60-80 hour weeks because you can get more done in that time than working 40 hour weeks. Every startup founder ever has worked extremely long hours. Googlers and Mozillians are in the office long past 5pm. Certainly your productivity drops on a sliding scale probably after 20 hours of work, but to suggest that 100 hours does not get more done than 40 is pure fiction.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago