The people you want aren't the people who leave at 5:00 pm and are drinking every night by 5:30. I agree with you there. I doubt that's all you'll get in Austin

The people you want aren't the people who leave at 5:00 pm and are drinking every night by 5:30. I agree with you there. I doubt that's all you'll get in Austin. A lot of New York/Bay Area people are moving to Austin, Seattle and NC to raise families and most of them have aged out of their heavy-drinking days. Nor do you (should you, anyway) want the people who work 75-hour weeks at their startups and don't learn any new skills except the one or two things in the critical path of their assigned project (the rest of their work being grunt work they learn nothing from). Those people will suffer a lot to keep their jobs and because they overestimate the career benefit of what they're doing, but they rarely produce anything good. So you don't want the Austin stereotype (leaves at 5:00, drinking by 5:30) or the Bay Area/New York stereotype (all-in on his employer's assigned work, burns out in 15 months, gets fired but walks away with a tiny sliver of equity that prevents you from forgetting his existence entirely). I agree with you on both. (Not to say that those stereotypes describe everyone in those regions; they don't.) You want the people who leave at 5:00pm and then work on things that interest them for 3 hours. (Or get up early and work on side projects before coming to you.) Those are the people with the good ideas. Not the workaholic corporate stooges, and not the semi-retired slackers. Also, there's absolutely nothing wrong with working an 8-hour day if you do it efficiently. Hell, an efficient 5-hour day is probably better than what most corporates put in, even if they're in the office for 10+ hours (that's about shared suffering and its social purposes, not efficiency).