10 ms·

Work versus Life. Greatness versus Family

186 points by johnjlocke 13y ago

pyrrhotech 13y ago
Great article. More people need to stand up to their bosses when long hours are requested day in and day out. I had a chat with my boss just the other day after I was forced to work all weekend. I told him, if it happens again, I'm leaving for a different company. He apologized profusely and gave me an extra 2 days vacation to make up for it. This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. I get 10 emails a week from recruiters and founders trying to get me to come work for them. Don't put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit. This is 2013, it costs approximately 20-30k to live a good life with all the success of the last 2000 years of productivity. There is no reason at all to work all the time. Work a normal 40-50 hours a week, save at least half your paycheck and enjoy the rest of your life. If you simply do that, you'll have complete autonomy over your life at age 35 and will only have to work if you choose to. Otherwise you could choose to work 0 hours a week, spend all the time you want with your family, and hack at open source projects, travel, read, exercise, or generally do whatever you want. We have the power, not the employers.
- atmosx 13y ago
  Great comment. Too bad it doesn't apply to my reality. Still, I loved it.
- Nicholas_C 13y ago
  >This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. Maybe you live in Silicon Valley, but not everyone does, and not everyone is an engineer. In a lot of professions grinding out 60+ hours is the only way to set yourself apart from coworkers and move up the ladder. Moving upwards may not be that important for an engineer who starts at $100k, but for most people who start out in the $50-$70k range it's the only way to enjoy a higher standard of living, better vacations, and pay off student loans faster. I would like to work 40 hours every week but I don't want to be stuck making <$100k for the rest of my life.
  - pyrrhotech 13y ago
    My comment was mostly targeted to young silicon valley engineers with big salaries but often pushed to work long hours and feel uncomfortable but don't know how to stand up for themselves. However, I don't think anyone should be consistently working over 60 hours a week for any reason. When I say working, I should clarify that I mean going to an office where you have an authority figure telling you that you have to do x, y, and z for them to get a paycheck. I love programming on my own projects and could see myself "working" on those 60 hours a week, but I'd never work that hard to make anyone else rich. However, even for your own projects, you still need to set aside plenty of time to eat meals with your family, play with your kids (if you have any), eat healthily, exercise, and meditate. Balance of life is the most statistically proven path to increasing your happiness and well-being. For those making less than 6 figures, I don't think working ridiculous hours is the answer. For one if you can't think of anything else, become an engineer! I mean you are already on hacker news, what are you waiting for?
    - Nicholas_C 13y ago
      Ah, yes. > I mean you are already on hacker news, what are you waiting for? Haha, I have definitely considered it. I love programming as a hobby to create neat scripts, automate things, and gather/analyze data, but I enjoy finance as a career. Even the hours aren't too bad as I am working with enjoyable/smart people in my current role.
  - agilebyte 13y ago
    Have you considered moving to a different country where you would have a good standard of living without having to climb up on a ladder?
    - Nicholas_C 13y ago
      I wasn't saying my standard of living was poor, I was saying I'd like an even higher one.
      - judk 13y ago
- RussianCow 13y ago
  It actually makes me uneasy that 40-50 hours is considered "normal". I know 40+ hours a week is very typical for any fulltime job, but that's SO much time. Between that and driving, cooking, sleeping, doing housework, etc, we have practically no free time (or at least I don't). I also don't feel that I'm any more productive after about 30-35 hours a week; anything over that and I may get burned out, which negates any benefit from the extra time. Maybe I'm alone, but I doubt it.
  - pyrrhotech 13y ago
    I agree, I'd actually much prefer 30 or 35 to 40-50, but our society isn't set up well for that. There are tons of employers who will pay you market rate for normal effort --- normal being defined as 40-50 hours/week of diligent work. What you can do tho is put up with the 40-50 hours a week for a decade and then have the rest of your life to decide what you want to do with each hour of your day and not worry about how much society thinks you should dedicate to working.
    - georgemcbay 13y ago
      There are many employers who will pay you market rate for 40-50 hours of presence, half of it spent frittering away time on the Internet. But essentially none who will pay you nearly as much for a true solid 20-25 hours of real effort without all the "looking busy" time wasting.
      - pyrrhotech 13y ago
        This too. Another reason I am for financial independence
      - RussianCow 13y ago
        Yeah... I really wish it were the other way around, because I hate wasting all those hours, knowing that nothing good came out of that time.
    - cafard 13y ago
      Someone I know works where a new regime is enforcing hours: 9 to 6. Effectively they have reinvented detention. (NB: don't tell me about Google and Cisco, because this isn't. A fair part of their staff is very effective at 35 hours per week, and another fair part is ineffective at any.)
- wbeckler 13y ago
  You worked all weekend and then your boss gives you back just 2 vacation days? Great job!
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    You're being sarcastic, but there are times I'd be happy to be able to convert weekends to more vacation days.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  it costs approximately 20-30k to live a good life... save at least half your paycheck These two things are incompatible for all but high earners. Spend $30k & sock away $30k, pre-taxes that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $85k. Not an obscene salary by any measure, but hardly everyone in their mid twenties is in that position.
  - christiangenco 13y ago
    I'd wager (from various salary polls here, the nature of the tech industry, significant above-average intelligence and a hacker mindset) that the majority of HNers are in a position to save half of their income while living the good life.
  - johnjlocke 13y ago
    It's not what you make, it's what you keep. In SV, it's hard to keep much. That's the trick.
  - BillyMaize 13y ago
    I would agree its a bit unrealistic to be able to save half of what you make, unless you are in a relationship. I only make 52.4k a year in a very low cost of living area but once she starts making some money my living expenses will be so low I think it could easily happen.
- lolwutf 13y ago
  I know we're not supposed to do this around here, but I'll do it anyway.... HEAR! HEAR!
- mikegreco 13y ago
  Hold on... you live and work in silicon valley and you claim you can get by on 30k a year expenses? Horseshit. The cheapest rent I've seen around here is 1500 a month, and that's almost 20 grand a year right there. Add standard utilities, food, insurance, and commuting costs and you're already pushing 30k. That's assuming you don't have student loans to worry about. I totally agree that the power is in our hands, but it is far less simple to make that work then you are letting on. There is a reason salaries in the valley are so high... it's damn expensive to live here. If you're in a position where you may get fired for not putting in 60 hour weeks, more often than not your options are work 60 hour weeks or hope you get another gig before you're forced to move out of the valley.
  - pyrrhotech 13y ago
    Roommates or live in the east bay. Or a tiny space on the peninsula. Those are the only financially responsible choices. Personally I own a house in Hayward I bought for $340k and have a roommate. My direct housing costs are about $1100/month, and total expenses around $2500 including all travel, luxuries, etc. Sure that may not be as fun as renting the $3000/month apartment in SF. You have to make choices. Would you rather achieve financial independence at 35 and live with roommates or in a less desirable neighborhood or be forced to work into your 40s? Not saying either choice is correct for everyone, but I definitely made my mind consciously on that question.
  - judk 13y ago
    Reverse it. The salaries drove up the cost of housing. Standard auction economics.
- 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
  > This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. I get 10 emails a week from recruiters and founders trying to get me to come work for them. Don't put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit. 1. To be in the top 5% of earners nationally, you need a household income of more than $180,000/year[1]. In the San Francisco Bay Area (which includes the Peninsula and South Bay), you'd need household income of $350,000 to be in the top 5% of local earners. Most single twenty-something engineers in Silicon Valley are not earning more than either number. 2. Emails from outside recruiters != decent job offers. Recruiters are drawn to warm bodies, so they'll talk to anyone who they think they might be able to put in front of a company. While some companies choose to work with them, keep in mind that because a relatively small percentage of new hires typically come through recruiters, candidates brought to a company via one are often at a disadvantage right off the bat. 3. A lot of companies here, particularly startups, expect work and work-related activities ("culture fit" often involves extracurricular "fun") to be a big part of your life. What that translates to in terms of hours will vary, but if you believe that those founders attempting to lure you away from your current job are offering you a straight 40 hour work week that guarantees you your weekends, you're probably going to be disappointed. I'm not saying "put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit" (it almost never makes sense) but the notion that "you can do whatever you want" and take advantage of the hot job market in Silicon Valley is a bit unrealistic. Based on how your current employer responded to your threat to quit, it sounds like you have made yourself invaluable to your employer. But if you think that a big-name tech company or hot startup would respond as favorably to the same threat because "we have the power, not the employers", I suspect you'd be in for a rude awakening. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-p...
  - nilkn 13y ago
    Regarding (1), it seems you're comparing individual incomes with household incomes. Due to the prevalence of dual-income households, this is a fatal mistake. Two engineers married in Silicon Valley, both one year out of college, will easily hit $180k in combined income, probably even $200k or more. That's why the local 5% mark is as high as $350k for households.
- PaulHoule 13y ago
  I have had some cases where recruiters gave me an easy way out of a bad job. I've had some recruiters place me in a position that doubled my pay and challenged me towards greatness. Another recruiter gave me a really hard sell when I owed the IRS a lot of back taxes... If it wasn't for me they might not have pared down the project plan to something achievable and the might never have gotten the i's dotted and t's crossed and got the product in the hands of the customers, but my boss very specifically denied me recognition for my success. The average recruiter, however, is filling a hole that is left behind by somebody who burned out. He's hoping that you can hit the ground running without any training, which is rarely realistic, particularly considering that 80% of programming work is doing what management expects to deliver 20% of the value. Because they haven't trained any of the other people working on the project you'll find that it's difficult to get any questions answered of the order of "how do I get this build consistently?", "how do I get this to build in less than an hour?", "which module is the right place to add that functionality?", "which applicationContext.xml file actually gets deployed to the assembly and how?" and stuff like that.. In a case like that you're set up to fail and you need to "think different" and start with the 80% of the work that gets you 20% of the way there, and then when the special job comes around where you're the best in the world you can sprout solutions like mushrooms.
smrtinsert 13y ago
I wouldn't chase 'greatness' anymore than I would chase 'happiness'. I like the sentiment of the piece though even though his equating study with career in the Adams quote annoyed me.
return0 13y ago
> historically Great Person could have been great while also being dedicated and present for their family Don't forget that those people had the wife or some others raising their children, something that was generally not considered men's work.
- needacig 13y ago
  So true, and still true for many (lucky?) men.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Also don't forget that the role of the wife went way beyond merely raising children and taking care of the house and home.
mattgreenrocks 13y ago
Isaacson's book on Jobs mentions a few times that several people close to Jobs saw in him a hole that he tried to fill by succeeding through his work. Jobs himself speculates that he may have become more prone to cancer by running Apple and Pixar. I realize all of that is speculative, but, damn, there has to be a point at which almost all of us would step back and say it isn't worth it. Why bust your ass, endanger your health, and stress yourself out so you can make someone else a load of cash? (Also notice that many people who insist on the need for ridiculous hours often get something out of it: management, VCs, etc.)
- judk 13y ago
  Steve Jobs had a diverse set of talents and skills, but medical science was not among them.
- mcone 13y ago
  > Why bust your ass, endanger your health, and stress yourself out so you can make someone else a load of cash? One aspect that is often overlooked is that Jobs was an adoptee. My partner is also adopted, and I can tell you that she will struggle with deep rooted fears and self-confidence issues for life. She is also a workaholic. This is not a conscious decision she makes but rather a learned method for dealing with, and perhaps ignoring, her pain. It's easy to look at things objectively as a third-party observer. My personal opinion is that Jobs did not have a choice in the matter. Work was his coping mechanism to deal with his pain. Larry Ellison is also adopted, and I find it interesting that he was close friends with Steve Jobs. The two are quite similar in many ways.
general_failure 13y ago
This reminded me of Heinlein's quote. A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  "Jack of all trades, master of none."
  - HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
    I prefer Jack of all Trades, Master of many.
    - freshhawk 13y ago
      I prefer Master of All Things Known to Humanity! But, as the aphorism points out, there's a gap between reality and your preference. We all have the same number of hours in a day and mastery is relative.
      - einhverfr 13y ago
        But specialization comes with heavy costs too, which is why cross-training was so trendy in automotive manufacturing for a while. If folks specialize they often lose the ability to coordinate their actions with eachother. The way I look at it is that human beings are as bound by the CAP Theorem as computers are, except that humans are fundamentally unable to achieve full consistency. All specialization and generalization needs to be done with that in mind, namely that all knowledge is incredibly local.
- icebraining 13y ago
kyleblarson 13y ago
To a lot of people greatness IS having a family and/or a fun life that is not defined by what you do to pay the bills.
freshhawk 13y ago
"If a boss is feeling insecure about how their company is performing, then leaning on their employees for more hours is one of the few ways that they can feel like they’re turning the cogs towards success." A very important point and very well stated. If I knew of any internet slang signifying a virtual standing ovation I would put it here. It frequently also comes with pushing an atmosphere of artificial urgency and high interest technical debt (save an hour today and cost the company weeks in a few months) because all are based on panicked short term thinking.
- tslathrow 13y ago
  Mostly disagree. My banking years (age 21-23) were really rough (100+ hour workweeks), but it definitely meant we learned much faster and earned significantly more over the long run. I tend to lose interest if I'm not actively competing against my peers. Now I just enjoy my job way too much to consider scaling back the hours.
swinnipeg 13y ago
Not the biggest Jack Welch fan, but I think his quote on work life balance is most accurate: "There's no such thing as work-life balance, there are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences." You don't need to rationalize spending more time with your family and less at work or vice-versa, just be honest about the consequences of it. I worked a ton before I had a family, 7 days a week, always online. Now that I have scaled back I do accomplish less work, and I am 100% ok with that. My choice is more time with my wife and kids, and slightly less money (and alot less chance of a big $$ windfall), but I couldn't be happier.
AndrewKemendo 13y ago
Nelson Mandela had a great quote on this topic in the context of his relationship or lack thereof with his children. I don't remember it verbatim but it was basically: You (my children) all taken care of you have what you need to live, I am working to make sure that the same is true for all the other South African children. That really hit home for me because instead of looking at spending more time with my family, I looked at using my time wisely toward massive structural goals which would have positive outcomes on the world population.
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  Shame on you for not getting your priorities straight and putting your family first! Not really. I am only saying this because I've seen you shaming someone in other thread and wanted to show you a first-hand example that shaming is bad for constructive discussions.
- carls 13y ago
  This reminds me of something I once read of Ralph Nader: Karen Croft, a writer who worked for Nader in the late 1970s at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, once asked him if he had ever considered getting married. She reports: "He said that at a certain point he had to decide whether to have a family or to have a career, that he couldn't have both. That's the kind of person he is. He couldn't have a wife—he's up all night reading the Congressional Record." [1] There's a part of me that admires the sense of devotion to a personal vision or mission. I believe it's this unrelenting, screw-the-consequences, type of drive that create greatness. At the same time, as a young single man in his 20s, I am still wrestling with my own personal choices and opinions on this matter. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader
- hoka 13y ago
  It's somewhat shortsighted, however. What if, by showing compassion to your family / children, you inspired them to benefit the world? If you inspire three of your children to do what you would have done yourself, you potentially get 3x the output of world-saviness. Slightly trolly, I know, but just being devil's advocate.
mikekij 13y ago
Can I upvote this like 30 times?
brnstz 13y ago
From the recent Penn Jillette AMA on reddit: "I'm very very careful with my time. I try to do nothing that someone else could do. So, I write, I perform and I spend time with my family." http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1opzae/penn_jillette_here_ask_me_anything/ccue825 http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1opzae/penn_jillette_h... This doesn't answer the dichotomy of work vs. family, but puts it in a different context. What is the most effective way to spend your time? The president's daughter scrapes her knee, but there's also a school shooting? I think Obama's gonna be giving a speech, and Michelle's on neosporin duty. (West Wing spoiler alert 2003) The president's daughter is kidnapped? Well, I hope John Goodman is available, it's about to get Season 4 cliffhanger in here. Someone else can be president. Right now it's not the most effective use of Martin Sheen's time.
- judk 13y ago
  When the Twin Towers fell, President Bush finished reading the book he was reading to a classroom of kids. The West Wing President Bartlett stepped down because it would be a national security threat to have the President subject to ransom demands.
  - lmm 13y ago
    >When the Twin Towers fell, President Bush finished reading the book he was reading to a classroom of kids. Which is one of the few things I respect him for, and I never understood why he got so much hate for it.
    - harvestmoon 13y ago
      I don't know. I think it's more of a panic response than the right response. Imagine this: "Kids, as President of the United States, I'm responsible for a lot of things. I just got a call that I have to take care of. I'm sorry. But I promise I'll come back and finish reading this book to you some other time."
  - brnstz 13y ago
    I don't particularly think it's important how Bush spent 7 minutes in response to an unprecedented situation. If he spent the next 7 months (or even 7 hours) going on a book reading tour, well... 9/11 was a confusing day. I was actually in a classroom at that exact same time, a mile uptown from the WTC. The professor got a whisper about the first plane, and then another about the second. I recall we broke class after the second. It's an easy target to criticize Bush, because it's a comical situation, but it has no real substance. I agree in the West Wing situation, there is a national security concern. But why? Shouldn't this "great" man be able to use his power justly for the greater good, and not let things get personal? No, he understands he wouldn't be able to resist that temptation. Relinquishing his power is showing that his family is more important to him.
paulrademacher 13y ago
Director James Cameron: "Anybody can be a father or a husband. There are only five people in the world who can do what I do, and I'm going for that." He said this to his then-wife :-)
brannon 13y ago
Reminds me of Clayton Christensen's book How Will You Measure Your Life? which deals with questions of dividing time between work and family. It isn't long and I'm glad I read it (though I wouldn't call it a page turner). One of the points he makes is that your family life is like any other investment, and you need to actively invest in it to be able to get a good return later in life.
akulbe 13y ago
This is something that I wrestle with on a regular basis. I am not a top engineer... I am not even an engineer at all. I work in support and want to move over to programming. Reading the writing on the wall... programming is the future, if you want to make a good life for yourself from working in technology. That said, I have a little girl about to hit 2 years old and a wife of almost 5 years. And I'm going to hit 40 in about 2 weeks. I don't learn as quickly and easily I learned when I was much younger. I know it takes some serious chops and time investment to learn to code. I guess that I just have to trust that I'll get "there" eventually... a little bit at a time. While I want to continually improve and make a good life for my family... it would be a total travesty to do it at their expense. btw, the struggle I refer to is the fact that for turning 40 soon... I don't feel old. I just feel like I should have accomplished more with my life, by this time. Know what I mean? Edited: punctuation
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Go for it. Start small. Bite off just a little at a time. Understand that age is neither good nor bad. There is a lot of ageism in the industry, so one thing you should be prepared to do is strike out on your own if you need to (either part-time as moonlighting or otherwise).
- lmm 13y ago
  Well, 40 is the traditional time to worry about these things. It's when you have to finally face up to the reality that you're probably not going to change the world yourself. Most people don't.
einhverfr 13y ago
I think one of the key things is that work life and family life in the internet age need not be so separate. Household businesses can thrive and work together to accomplish great things, with unconventional organizational structures (or entirely informal ones). When LedgerSMB forked I remember working late hours in a hotel room with my wife and son (I had a contract for my business that took me out of town, and we all decided it would only work if we all went), and having sessions with Chris Murtagh who would be typing with one hand, and cradling his infant son in the other. Almost every work break would be spent with my family, except for lunch that year (and only that year). Almost every hour not spent with my family would be spent working. Work and family formed the warp and weft of my life. Fast forward five years, and what's happened is that these have become even more integrated. I schedule my work around family time, and my family time around work. In emergencies I may have to rebalance. But these are all deeply integrated. In the distant past, this was actually the norm, so it is not that I can do something today that none of the great men in the past could do, but rather that I can return to the solutions which have worked. To some extent the internet enables this, but it isn't really enabling something new. It is rather re-enabling something very old. Interestingly I don't think double entry accounting was invented by monks sitting in monasteries, but by the collaboration of merchants (whose families were effectively helping run the businesses). Many of the great things we take for granted today were actually built in such a way.
jl6 13y ago
I read that people on their deathbeds, when asked about their regrets, wished they hadn't spent so much time worrying, and had spent more time with their families.
Xixi 13y ago
When I entered university I was assigned to an alumni who would be my mentor: the IT director of a large French car maker. We really met only once, but he told me one thing that has sticked to this day (paraphrased): "To live a healthy and happy life you need to balance three aspects: work, family and personal. People will tell you you need to balance work and family. But you have to recognize that sometimes you will need to spend time as you please: do not feel ashamed for it." Life is not just work and family, and nobody should be a slave of either.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Jgrubb 13y ago
  "Life is not just work and family, and nobody should be a slave of either." I might have this tattooed on me somewhere. Thank you.
PaulHoule 13y ago
Most people who work like dogs don't attain greatness. My thesis advisor chose work over family. He left his lover and hardly ever saw his son until his son was forced to move in with him at the age of 14. (At which point you've really missed the chance to bond with him) Back in grad school he was often the only professor working on Sunday -- I worked Sundays most of the time but I usually took Saturdays completely off. I still go by the physics sometime on the weekend and his door is the only one open with the lights on. He got a tenured professorship and a defined benefit pension but his work as a physicist has been solidly average (like the average physicist) A lot of hard work cost him his family and won him some kind of security which is hard to find today, but he definitely didn't achieve greatness.
- harvestmoon 13y ago
  Most people who don't work like dogs don't attain greatness either. I'd even guess that people who work harder are more likely to attain greatness.
GrinningFool 13y ago
When I was 22 or so, my wife asked me what my biggest fear was. At the time, aside from concerns around her health and safety, it was "that nobody will know who I was after I die". Time and perspective change our priorities. It is possible to become great person without ever having a successful IPO. Without ever having a product in the first place. And certainly without giving up most of your life in the likely-to-fail attempt to become 'great' (ie, known and a financial success), at the opportunity cost of living your life. Because lets face it - our success rate is pretty dismally low. Most of us - no matter how smart, no matter how driven - won't achieve "greatness" in the sense alluded to here. We will be neither the next Jobs nor the next Gates nor the next Zuckerburg. We will write code. We will make products that may or may not make a difference in people's lives. We will earn salaries that are unreasonably out of proportion to what we actually do (take it while it lasts!). Most of the people who will remember us are in this closed community of startups. And once we stop producing, most of them will forget us. Some of us will go on to something more - but not most. Except for a select few of us, nobody will look back at you in 50 years and say "wow, this dude... this dude was an awesome coder/businessman/marketer/designer". But your kid might look back at you in 50 years and say "he was an awesome dad". Your community might remember you for the assistance you gave. And many, many more might remember you for the difference you made in their lives through your interactions with them. There's nothing wrong with trying for the 'greatness' discussed in the original post. But never lose sight of the fact that this kind of success is only one path. And, frankly, you have your whole life to get there -- the long path taken by most of the people who are successful in that way. TL;DR: There is greatness in things other than the work you do and the money you make.
- return0 13y ago
  Am I the only one who finds this line of thinking defeatist?
  - pjmorris 13y ago
    I'm curious about this reaction. I read the OP as saying 'everything you do matters, not just what shows up on the product or financial radar'. What's your read?
normloman 13y ago
A little off topic, but I find it hilarious when he declares that he will succeed where great men have failed ... because he has hipchat. How is hipchat better than IRC or Jabber? Don't these protocols do the same thing for free (as in freedom and pizza).
jacksonlatka 13y ago
I could not agree with this more. In my case, the very product I'm working on is all about kids and family. It seems ironic when giving all I can to make the product succeed is taking away from enjoying time with my wife, and kids while they are young. Sometimes it seems like we can only pick two: - family - startup - health I know the balance can be achieved, but is it balance we are looking for? I have a fear of being mediocre at both. But, we can do better than this. I can do better.
cmollis 13y ago
john adams clearly had already made his money when he said that. I believe his son did his own studying of 'politics and war' just as his father did.. just as we do and, unfortunately or otherwise, just as our sons will.
artsim 13y ago
I can not believe no one has posted this yet, so here it goes “Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – Work, Family, Health, Friends and Spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – Family, Health, Friends and Spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it. Work efficiently during office hours and leave on time. Give the required time to your family, friends and have proper rest. Value has a value only if its value is valued.” - Bryan Dyson – Former CEO of Coca Cola

186 points by johnjlocke 13y ago

Great article. More people need to stand up to their bosses when long hours are requested day in and day out. I had a chat with my boss just the other day after I was forced to work all weekend. I told him, if it happens again, I'm leaving for a different company. He apologized profusely and gave me an extra 2 days vacation to make up for it. This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. I get 10 emails a week from recruiters and founders trying to get me to come work for them. Don't put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit. This is 2013, it costs approximately 20-30k to live a good life with all the success of the last 2000 years of productivity. There is no reason at all to work all the time. Work a normal 40-50 hours a week, save at least half your paycheck and enjoy the rest of your life. If you simply do that, you'll have complete autonomy over your life at age 35 and will only have to work if you choose to. Otherwise you could choose to work 0 hours a week, spend all the time you want with your family, and hack at open source projects, travel, read, exercise, or generally do whatever you want. We have the power, not the employers.

atmosx 13y ago
Great comment. Too bad it doesn't apply to my reality. Still, I loved it.
Nicholas_C 13y ago
>This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. Maybe you live in Silicon Valley, but not everyone does, and not everyone is an engineer. In a lot of professions grinding out 60+ hours is the only way to set yourself apart from coworkers and move up the ladder. Moving upwards may not be that important for an engineer who starts at $100k, but for most people who start out in the $50-$70k range it's the only way to enjoy a higher standard of living, better vacations, and pay off student loans faster. I would like to work 40 hours every week but I don't want to be stuck making <$100k for the rest of my life.
- pyrrhotech 13y ago
  My comment was mostly targeted to young silicon valley engineers with big salaries but often pushed to work long hours and feel uncomfortable but don't know how to stand up for themselves. However, I don't think anyone should be consistently working over 60 hours a week for any reason. When I say working, I should clarify that I mean going to an office where you have an authority figure telling you that you have to do x, y, and z for them to get a paycheck. I love programming on my own projects and could see myself "working" on those 60 hours a week, but I'd never work that hard to make anyone else rich. However, even for your own projects, you still need to set aside plenty of time to eat meals with your family, play with your kids (if you have any), eat healthily, exercise, and meditate. Balance of life is the most statistically proven path to increasing your happiness and well-being. For those making less than 6 figures, I don't think working ridiculous hours is the answer. For one if you can't think of anything else, become an engineer! I mean you are already on hacker news, what are you waiting for?
  - Nicholas_C 13y ago
    Ah, yes. > I mean you are already on hacker news, what are you waiting for? Haha, I have definitely considered it. I love programming as a hobby to create neat scripts, automate things, and gather/analyze data, but I enjoy finance as a career. Even the hours aren't too bad as I am working with enjoyable/smart people in my current role.
- agilebyte 13y ago
  Have you considered moving to a different country where you would have a good standard of living without having to climb up on a ladder?
  - Nicholas_C 13y ago
    I wasn't saying my standard of living was poor, I was saying I'd like an even higher one.
    - judk 13y ago
RussianCow 13y ago
It actually makes me uneasy that 40-50 hours is considered "normal". I know 40+ hours a week is very typical for any fulltime job, but that's SO much time. Between that and driving, cooking, sleeping, doing housework, etc, we have practically no free time (or at least I don't). I also don't feel that I'm any more productive after about 30-35 hours a week; anything over that and I may get burned out, which negates any benefit from the extra time. Maybe I'm alone, but I doubt it.
- pyrrhotech 13y ago
  I agree, I'd actually much prefer 30 or 35 to 40-50, but our society isn't set up well for that. There are tons of employers who will pay you market rate for normal effort --- normal being defined as 40-50 hours/week of diligent work. What you can do tho is put up with the 40-50 hours a week for a decade and then have the rest of your life to decide what you want to do with each hour of your day and not worry about how much society thinks you should dedicate to working.
  - georgemcbay 13y ago
    There are many employers who will pay you market rate for 40-50 hours of presence, half of it spent frittering away time on the Internet. But essentially none who will pay you nearly as much for a true solid 20-25 hours of real effort without all the "looking busy" time wasting.
    - pyrrhotech 13y ago
      This too. Another reason I am for financial independence
    - RussianCow 13y ago
      Yeah... I really wish it were the other way around, because I hate wasting all those hours, knowing that nothing good came out of that time.
  - cafard 13y ago
    Someone I know works where a new regime is enforcing hours: 9 to 6. Effectively they have reinvented detention. (NB: don't tell me about Google and Cisco, because this isn't. A fair part of their staff is very effective at 35 hours per week, and another fair part is ineffective at any.)
wbeckler 13y ago
You worked all weekend and then your boss gives you back just 2 vacation days? Great job!
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  You're being sarcastic, but there are times I'd be happy to be able to convert weekends to more vacation days.
sliverstorm 13y ago
it costs approximately 20-30k to live a good life... save at least half your paycheck These two things are incompatible for all but high earners. Spend $30k & sock away $30k, pre-taxes that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $85k. Not an obscene salary by any measure, but hardly everyone in their mid twenties is in that position.
- christiangenco 13y ago
  I'd wager (from various salary polls here, the nature of the tech industry, significant above-average intelligence and a hacker mindset) that the majority of HNers are in a position to save half of their income while living the good life.
- johnjlocke 13y ago
  It's not what you make, it's what you keep. In SV, it's hard to keep much. That's the trick.
- BillyMaize 13y ago
  I would agree its a bit unrealistic to be able to save half of what you make, unless you are in a relationship. I only make 52.4k a year in a very low cost of living area but once she starts making some money my living expenses will be so low I think it could easily happen.
lolwutf 13y ago
I know we're not supposed to do this around here, but I'll do it anyway.... HEAR! HEAR!
mikegreco 13y ago
Hold on... you live and work in silicon valley and you claim you can get by on 30k a year expenses? Horseshit. The cheapest rent I've seen around here is 1500 a month, and that's almost 20 grand a year right there. Add standard utilities, food, insurance, and commuting costs and you're already pushing 30k. That's assuming you don't have student loans to worry about. I totally agree that the power is in our hands, but it is far less simple to make that work then you are letting on. There is a reason salaries in the valley are so high... it's damn expensive to live here. If you're in a position where you may get fired for not putting in 60 hour weeks, more often than not your options are work 60 hour weeks or hope you get another gig before you're forced to move out of the valley.
- pyrrhotech 13y ago
  Roommates or live in the east bay. Or a tiny space on the peninsula. Those are the only financially responsible choices. Personally I own a house in Hayward I bought for $340k and have a roommate. My direct housing costs are about $1100/month, and total expenses around $2500 including all travel, luxuries, etc. Sure that may not be as fun as renting the $3000/month apartment in SF. You have to make choices. Would you rather achieve financial independence at 35 and live with roommates or in a less desirable neighborhood or be forced to work into your 40s? Not saying either choice is correct for everyone, but I definitely made my mind consciously on that question.
- judk 13y ago
  Reverse it. The salaries drove up the cost of housing. Standard auction economics.
7Figures2Commas 13y ago
> This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. I get 10 emails a week from recruiters and founders trying to get me to come work for them. Don't put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit. 1. To be in the top 5% of earners nationally, you need a household income of more than $180,000/year[1]. In the San Francisco Bay Area (which includes the Peninsula and South Bay), you'd need household income of $350,000 to be in the top 5% of local earners. Most single twenty-something engineers in Silicon Valley are not earning more than either number. 2. Emails from outside recruiters != decent job offers. Recruiters are drawn to warm bodies, so they'll talk to anyone who they think they might be able to put in front of a company. While some companies choose to work with them, keep in mind that because a relatively small percentage of new hires typically come through recruiters, candidates brought to a company via one are often at a disadvantage right off the bat. 3. A lot of companies here, particularly startups, expect work and work-related activities ("culture fit" often involves extracurricular "fun") to be a big part of your life. What that translates to in terms of hours will vary, but if you believe that those founders attempting to lure you away from your current job are offering you a straight 40 hour work week that guarantees you your weekends, you're probably going to be disappointed. I'm not saying "put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit" (it almost never makes sense) but the notion that "you can do whatever you want" and take advantage of the hot job market in Silicon Valley is a bit unrealistic. Based on how your current employer responded to your threat to quit, it sounds like you have made yourself invaluable to your employer. But if you think that a big-name tech company or hot startup would respond as favorably to the same threat because "we have the power, not the employers", I suspect you'd be in for a rude awakening. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-p...
- nilkn 13y ago
  Regarding (1), it seems you're comparing individual incomes with household incomes. Due to the prevalence of dual-income households, this is a fatal mistake. Two engineers married in Silicon Valley, both one year out of college, will easily hit $180k in combined income, probably even $200k or more. That's why the local 5% mark is as high as $350k for households.
PaulHoule 13y ago
I have had some cases where recruiters gave me an easy way out of a bad job. I've had some recruiters place me in a position that doubled my pay and challenged me towards greatness. Another recruiter gave me a really hard sell when I owed the IRS a lot of back taxes... If it wasn't for me they might not have pared down the project plan to something achievable and the might never have gotten the i's dotted and t's crossed and got the product in the hands of the customers, but my boss very specifically denied me recognition for my success. The average recruiter, however, is filling a hole that is left behind by somebody who burned out. He's hoping that you can hit the ground running without any training, which is rarely realistic, particularly considering that 80% of programming work is doing what management expects to deliver 20% of the value. Because they haven't trained any of the other people working on the project you'll find that it's difficult to get any questions answered of the order of "how do I get this build consistently?", "how do I get this to build in less than an hour?", "which module is the right place to add that functionality?", "which applicationContext.xml file actually gets deployed to the assembly and how?" and stuff like that.. In a case like that you're set up to fail and you need to "think different" and start with the 80% of the work that gets you 20% of the way there, and then when the special job comes around where you're the best in the world you can sprout solutions like mushrooms.

smrtinsert 13y ago

I wouldn't chase 'greatness' anymore than I would chase 'happiness'. I like the sentiment of the piece though even though his equating study with career in the Adams quote annoyed me.

return0 13y ago

> historically Great Person could have been great while also being dedicated and present for their family Don't forget that those people had the wife or some others raising their children, something that was generally not considered men's work.

needacig 13y ago
So true, and still true for many (lucky?) men.
einhverfr 13y ago
Also don't forget that the role of the wife went way beyond merely raising children and taking care of the house and home.

mattgreenrocks 13y ago

Isaacson's book on Jobs mentions a few times that several people close to Jobs saw in him a hole that he tried to fill by succeeding through his work. Jobs himself speculates that he may have become more prone to cancer by running Apple and Pixar. I realize all of that is speculative, but, damn, there has to be a point at which almost all of us would step back and say it isn't worth it. Why bust your ass, endanger your health, and stress yourself out so you can make someone else a load of cash? (Also notice that many people who insist on the need for ridiculous hours often get something out of it: management, VCs, etc.)

judk 13y ago
Steve Jobs had a diverse set of talents and skills, but medical science was not among them.
mcone 13y ago
> Why bust your ass, endanger your health, and stress yourself out so you can make someone else a load of cash? One aspect that is often overlooked is that Jobs was an adoptee. My partner is also adopted, and I can tell you that she will struggle with deep rooted fears and self-confidence issues for life. She is also a workaholic. This is not a conscious decision she makes but rather a learned method for dealing with, and perhaps ignoring, her pain. It's easy to look at things objectively as a third-party observer. My personal opinion is that Jobs did not have a choice in the matter. Work was his coping mechanism to deal with his pain. Larry Ellison is also adopted, and I find it interesting that he was close friends with Steve Jobs. The two are quite similar in many ways.

general_failure 13y ago

This reminded me of Heinlein's quote. A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man

6d0debc071 13y ago
"Jack of all trades, master of none."
- HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
  I prefer Jack of all Trades, Master of many.
  - freshhawk 13y ago
    I prefer Master of All Things Known to Humanity! But, as the aphorism points out, there's a gap between reality and your preference. We all have the same number of hours in a day and mastery is relative.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      But specialization comes with heavy costs too, which is why cross-training was so trendy in automotive manufacturing for a while. If folks specialize they often lose the ability to coordinate their actions with eachother. The way I look at it is that human beings are as bound by the CAP Theorem as computers are, except that humans are fundamentally unable to achieve full consistency. All specialization and generalization needs to be done with that in mind, namely that all knowledge is incredibly local.
icebraining 13y ago

kyleblarson 13y ago

To a lot of people greatness IS having a family and/or a fun life that is not defined by what you do to pay the bills.

freshhawk 13y ago

"If a boss is feeling insecure about how their company is performing, then leaning on their employees for more hours is one of the few ways that they can feel like they’re turning the cogs towards success." A very important point and very well stated. If I knew of any internet slang signifying a virtual standing ovation I would put it here. It frequently also comes with pushing an atmosphere of artificial urgency and high interest technical debt (save an hour today and cost the company weeks in a few months) because all are based on panicked short term thinking.

tslathrow 13y ago
Mostly disagree. My banking years (age 21-23) were really rough (100+ hour workweeks), but it definitely meant we learned much faster and earned significantly more over the long run. I tend to lose interest if I'm not actively competing against my peers. Now I just enjoy my job way too much to consider scaling back the hours.

swinnipeg 13y ago

Not the biggest Jack Welch fan, but I think his quote on work life balance is most accurate: "There's no such thing as work-life balance, there are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences." You don't need to rationalize spending more time with your family and less at work or vice-versa, just be honest about the consequences of it. I worked a ton before I had a family, 7 days a week, always online. Now that I have scaled back I do accomplish less work, and I am 100% ok with that. My choice is more time with my wife and kids, and slightly less money (and alot less chance of a big $$ windfall), but I couldn't be happier.

AndrewKemendo 13y ago

Nelson Mandela had a great quote on this topic in the context of his relationship or lack thereof with his children. I don't remember it verbatim but it was basically: You (my children) all taken care of you have what you need to live, I am working to make sure that the same is true for all the other South African children. That really hit home for me because instead of looking at spending more time with my family, I looked at using my time wisely toward massive structural goals which would have positive outcomes on the world population.

vdaniuk 13y ago
Shame on you for not getting your priorities straight and putting your family first! Not really. I am only saying this because I've seen you shaming someone in other thread and wanted to show you a first-hand example that shaming is bad for constructive discussions.
carls 13y ago
This reminds me of something I once read of Ralph Nader: Karen Croft, a writer who worked for Nader in the late 1970s at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, once asked him if he had ever considered getting married. She reports: "He said that at a certain point he had to decide whether to have a family or to have a career, that he couldn't have both. That's the kind of person he is. He couldn't have a wife—he's up all night reading the Congressional Record." [1] There's a part of me that admires the sense of devotion to a personal vision or mission. I believe it's this unrelenting, screw-the-consequences, type of drive that create greatness. At the same time, as a young single man in his 20s, I am still wrestling with my own personal choices and opinions on this matter. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader
hoka 13y ago
It's somewhat shortsighted, however. What if, by showing compassion to your family / children, you inspired them to benefit the world? If you inspire three of your children to do what you would have done yourself, you potentially get 3x the output of world-saviness. Slightly trolly, I know, but just being devil's advocate.

mikekij 13y ago

Can I upvote this like 30 times?

brnstz 13y ago

From the recent Penn Jillette AMA on reddit: "I'm very very careful with my time. I try to do nothing that someone else could do. So, I write, I perform and I spend time with my family." http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1opzae/penn_jillette_here_ask_me_anything/ccue825 http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1opzae/penn_jillette_h... This doesn't answer the dichotomy of work vs. family, but puts it in a different context. What is the most effective way to spend your time? The president's daughter scrapes her knee, but there's also a school shooting? I think Obama's gonna be giving a speech, and Michelle's on neosporin duty. (West Wing spoiler alert 2003) The president's daughter is kidnapped? Well, I hope John Goodman is available, it's about to get Season 4 cliffhanger in here. Someone else can be president. Right now it's not the most effective use of Martin Sheen's time.

judk 13y ago
When the Twin Towers fell, President Bush finished reading the book he was reading to a classroom of kids. The West Wing President Bartlett stepped down because it would be a national security threat to have the President subject to ransom demands.
- lmm 13y ago
  >When the Twin Towers fell, President Bush finished reading the book he was reading to a classroom of kids. Which is one of the few things I respect him for, and I never understood why he got so much hate for it.
  - harvestmoon 13y ago
    I don't know. I think it's more of a panic response than the right response. Imagine this: "Kids, as President of the United States, I'm responsible for a lot of things. I just got a call that I have to take care of. I'm sorry. But I promise I'll come back and finish reading this book to you some other time."
- brnstz 13y ago
  I don't particularly think it's important how Bush spent 7 minutes in response to an unprecedented situation. If he spent the next 7 months (or even 7 hours) going on a book reading tour, well... 9/11 was a confusing day. I was actually in a classroom at that exact same time, a mile uptown from the WTC. The professor got a whisper about the first plane, and then another about the second. I recall we broke class after the second. It's an easy target to criticize Bush, because it's a comical situation, but it has no real substance. I agree in the West Wing situation, there is a national security concern. But why? Shouldn't this "great" man be able to use his power justly for the greater good, and not let things get personal? No, he understands he wouldn't be able to resist that temptation. Relinquishing his power is showing that his family is more important to him.

paulrademacher 13y ago

Director James Cameron: "Anybody can be a father or a husband. There are only five people in the world who can do what I do, and I'm going for that." He said this to his then-wife :-)

brannon 13y ago

Reminds me of Clayton Christensen's book How Will You Measure Your Life? which deals with questions of dividing time between work and family. It isn't long and I'm glad I read it (though I wouldn't call it a page turner). One of the points he makes is that your family life is like any other investment, and you need to actively invest in it to be able to get a good return later in life.

akulbe 13y ago

This is something that I wrestle with on a regular basis. I am not a top engineer... I am not even an engineer at all. I work in support and want to move over to programming. Reading the writing on the wall... programming is the future, if you want to make a good life for yourself from working in technology. That said, I have a little girl about to hit 2 years old and a wife of almost 5 years. And I'm going to hit 40 in about 2 weeks. I don't learn as quickly and easily I learned when I was much younger. I know it takes some serious chops and time investment to learn to code. I guess that I just have to trust that I'll get "there" eventually... a little bit at a time. While I want to continually improve and make a good life for my family... it would be a total travesty to do it at their expense. btw, the struggle I refer to is the fact that for turning 40 soon... I don't feel old. I just feel like I should have accomplished more with my life, by this time. Know what I mean? Edited: punctuation

einhverfr 13y ago
Go for it. Start small. Bite off just a little at a time. Understand that age is neither good nor bad. There is a lot of ageism in the industry, so one thing you should be prepared to do is strike out on your own if you need to (either part-time as moonlighting or otherwise).
lmm 13y ago
Well, 40 is the traditional time to worry about these things. It's when you have to finally face up to the reality that you're probably not going to change the world yourself. Most people don't.

einhverfr 13y ago

I think one of the key things is that work life and family life in the internet age need not be so separate. Household businesses can thrive and work together to accomplish great things, with unconventional organizational structures (or entirely informal ones). When LedgerSMB forked I remember working late hours in a hotel room with my wife and son (I had a contract for my business that took me out of town, and we all decided it would only work if we all went), and having sessions with Chris Murtagh who would be typing with one hand, and cradling his infant son in the other. Almost every work break would be spent with my family, except for lunch that year (and only that year). Almost every hour not spent with my family would be spent working. Work and family formed the warp and weft of my life. Fast forward five years, and what's happened is that these have become even more integrated. I schedule my work around family time, and my family time around work. In emergencies I may have to rebalance. But these are all deeply integrated. In the distant past, this was actually the norm, so it is not that I can do something today that none of the great men in the past could do, but rather that I can return to the solutions which have worked. To some extent the internet enables this, but it isn't really enabling something new. It is rather re-enabling something very old. Interestingly I don't think double entry accounting was invented by monks sitting in monasteries, but by the collaboration of merchants (whose families were effectively helping run the businesses). Many of the great things we take for granted today were actually built in such a way.

jl6 13y ago

I read that people on their deathbeds, when asked about their regrets, wished they hadn't spent so much time worrying, and had spent more time with their families.

Xixi 13y ago

When I entered university I was assigned to an alumni who would be my mentor: the IT director of a large French car maker. We really met only once, but he told me one thing that has sticked to this day (paraphrased): "To live a healthy and happy life you need to balance three aspects: work, family and personal. People will tell you you need to balance work and family. But you have to recognize that sometimes you will need to spend time as you please: do not feel ashamed for it." Life is not just work and family, and nobody should be a slave of either.

deleted 13y ago
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Jgrubb 13y ago
"Life is not just work and family, and nobody should be a slave of either." I might have this tattooed on me somewhere. Thank you.

PaulHoule 13y ago

Most people who work like dogs don't attain greatness. My thesis advisor chose work over family. He left his lover and hardly ever saw his son until his son was forced to move in with him at the age of 14. (At which point you've really missed the chance to bond with him) Back in grad school he was often the only professor working on Sunday -- I worked Sundays most of the time but I usually took Saturdays completely off. I still go by the physics sometime on the weekend and his door is the only one open with the lights on. He got a tenured professorship and a defined benefit pension but his work as a physicist has been solidly average (like the average physicist) A lot of hard work cost him his family and won him some kind of security which is hard to find today, but he definitely didn't achieve greatness.

harvestmoon 13y ago
Most people who don't work like dogs don't attain greatness either. I'd even guess that people who work harder are more likely to attain greatness.

GrinningFool 13y ago

When I was 22 or so, my wife asked me what my biggest fear was. At the time, aside from concerns around her health and safety, it was "that nobody will know who I was after I die". Time and perspective change our priorities. It is possible to become great person without ever having a successful IPO. Without ever having a product in the first place. And certainly without giving up most of your life in the likely-to-fail attempt to become 'great' (ie, known and a financial success), at the opportunity cost of living your life. Because lets face it - our success rate is pretty dismally low. Most of us - no matter how smart, no matter how driven - won't achieve "greatness" in the sense alluded to here. We will be neither the next Jobs nor the next Gates nor the next Zuckerburg. We will write code. We will make products that may or may not make a difference in people's lives. We will earn salaries that are unreasonably out of proportion to what we actually do (take it while it lasts!). Most of the people who will remember us are in this closed community of startups. And once we stop producing, most of them will forget us. Some of us will go on to something more - but not most. Except for a select few of us, nobody will look back at you in 50 years and say "wow, this dude... this dude was an awesome coder/businessman/marketer/designer". But your kid might look back at you in 50 years and say "he was an awesome dad". Your community might remember you for the assistance you gave. And many, many more might remember you for the difference you made in their lives through your interactions with them. There's nothing wrong with trying for the 'greatness' discussed in the original post. But never lose sight of the fact that this kind of success is only one path. And, frankly, you have your whole life to get there -- the long path taken by most of the people who are successful in that way. TL;DR: There is greatness in things other than the work you do and the money you make.

return0 13y ago
Am I the only one who finds this line of thinking defeatist?
- pjmorris 13y ago
  I'm curious about this reaction. I read the OP as saying 'everything you do matters, not just what shows up on the product or financial radar'. What's your read?

normloman 13y ago

A little off topic, but I find it hilarious when he declares that he will succeed where great men have failed ... because he has hipchat. How is hipchat better than IRC or Jabber? Don't these protocols do the same thing for free (as in freedom and pizza).

jacksonlatka 13y ago

I could not agree with this more. In my case, the very product I'm working on is all about kids and family. It seems ironic when giving all I can to make the product succeed is taking away from enjoying time with my wife, and kids while they are young. Sometimes it seems like we can only pick two: - family - startup - health I know the balance can be achieved, but is it balance we are looking for? I have a fear of being mediocre at both. But, we can do better than this. I can do better.

cmollis 13y ago

john adams clearly had already made his money when he said that. I believe his son did his own studying of 'politics and war' just as his father did.. just as we do and, unfortunately or otherwise, just as our sons will.

artsim 13y ago

I can not believe no one has posted this yet, so here it goes “Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – Work, Family, Health, Friends and Spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – Family, Health, Friends and Spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it. Work efficiently during office hours and leave on time. Give the required time to your family, friends and have proper rest. Value has a value only if its value is valued.” - Bryan Dyson – Former CEO of Coca Cola