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I think about this a bit because I have kids. I simply refuse to not spend time with them. If success at a startup is predicated on spending all your waking hou

I think about this a bit because I have kids. I simply refuse to not spend time with them. If success at a startup is predicated on spending all your waking hours working, I'm doomed to never succeed. I don't think this is the case. Strategy and design are two good examples of areas where more hours doesn't necessarily mean better. It is better to be slower and right. Setting the tone and pace for others is a riskier part of this. Will employees stay late if the founder is never there for dinner?

tptacek 16y ago
You & me both, Ivan. And like every other controversy on HN, "hard vs. smart" isn't a real debate. I've got 2 kids; they were 2 and 0.5 at the end of my first company, and 11 and 9 now. And one of the people from whom I learned the most about business was also a founder with kids. So, I'm particularly interested in the dynamics of startups and family life. One thing I saw work remarkably well was company culture. You can easily create an inclusive and family-oriented culture: have the whole team be local, do lots of dinners and offsites, have after-dinners work-hours where kids are OK, make sure the families get to know each other. At the first startup I ever worked for, the office was a very large apartment on the north side of Chicago. There was a full kitchen, they cooked dinners, and evening hours were --- at least in the beginning --- of a different character than daylight hours; people worked, but the whole environment was more social, less button-up, and more welcoming. I don't think they really did this on purpose. It was just very friendly and family-oriented group of people. But I can't see a reason why it would be hard to duplicate and extend the idea. Just set an objective, to allow people to routinely work longer hours when necessary while causing minimal strain on families. Then come up with practices that support the objective. I can think of 10 ideas for that off the top of my head. I'm sure you can come up with 20. It's kind of remarkable that so few new companies do this (if they did, they'd be made of stupid not to advertise it). Most startups advertise a culture that is almost the opposite of that idea.
- ivankirigin 16y ago
  If the biggest barrier to hiring at a startup is that most people think the situation too risky, then anything that might push normal people towards startups is good. I can easily imagine people stressed at large companies that choose startups for better work-family balance (which isn't the same as fewer working hours) that would join a startup just for the family culture. Maybe one reason big companies get slower is that as they age, the young folks start having kids. This translates to less and worse work than before, but the blame is on the company which didn't shift it's culture. I guess some of these ideas wouldn't scale, but to my knowledge, they haven't been tried at scale.

tptacek 16y ago

You & me both, Ivan. And like every other controversy on HN, "hard vs. smart" isn't a real debate. I've got 2 kids; they were 2 and 0.5 at the end of my first company, and 11 and 9 now. And one of the people from whom I learned the most about business was also a founder with kids. So, I'm particularly interested in the dynamics of startups and family life. One thing I saw work remarkably well was company culture. You can easily create an inclusive and family-oriented culture: have the whole team be local, do lots of dinners and offsites, have after-dinners work-hours where kids are OK, make sure the families get to know each other. At the first startup I ever worked for, the office was a very large apartment on the north side of Chicago. There was a full kitchen, they cooked dinners, and evening hours were --- at least in the beginning --- of a different character than daylight hours; people worked, but the whole environment was more social, less button-up, and more welcoming. I don't think they really did this on purpose. It was just very friendly and family-oriented group of people. But I can't see a reason why it would be hard to duplicate and extend the idea. Just set an objective, to allow people to routinely work longer hours when necessary while causing minimal strain on families. Then come up with practices that support the objective. I can think of 10 ideas for that off the top of my head. I'm sure you can come up with 20. It's kind of remarkable that so few new companies do this (if they did, they'd be made of stupid not to advertise it). Most startups advertise a culture that is almost the opposite of that idea.

ivankirigin 16y ago
If the biggest barrier to hiring at a startup is that most people think the situation too risky, then anything that might push normal people towards startups is good. I can easily imagine people stressed at large companies that choose startups for better work-family balance (which isn't the same as fewer working hours) that would join a startup just for the family culture. Maybe one reason big companies get slower is that as they age, the young folks start having kids. This translates to less and worse work than before, but the blame is on the company which didn't shift it's culture. I guess some of these ideas wouldn't scale, but to my knowledge, they haven't been tried at scale.