13 ms·

Success at Work, Failure at Home

362 points by sethbannon 13y ago

ChuckMcM 13y ago
I very clearly remember the week this clicked in my brain. Being very successful, really crushing it, and whining to my wife that the company should give more vacation, and her reminding me that I had been at work on Christmas Eve. My whole perspective collapsed around that instant. I could see the hit in career path I was going to take by changing my perspective, but I decided to do it anyway. And I have always been glad I made that choice. The challenge is there will always be people who are willing (either consciously or unconsciously) to throw away their family and personal relationships in order to pursue success in their career, and it is difficult, if not impossible to compete against them with the 'balanced life' bit set.
- csallen 13y ago
  > The challenge is there will always be people who are willing (either consciously or unconsciously) to throw away their family and personal relationships in order to pursue success in their career, and it is difficult, if not impossible to compete against them with the 'balanced life' bit set.The challenge is there will always be people who are willing (either consciously or unconsciously) to throw away their family and personal relationships in order to pursue success in their career, and it is difficult, if not impossible to compete against them with the 'balanced life' bit set. This is the part that I think a lot of people don't acknowledge. I supposed that's because in a work environment -- as opposed to something more directly competitive like sports -- you're comparing your performance mostly to your would-be self rather than to others. But it's certainly worth noting that there exist people who not only want to work 80-hour weeks, but can do so consistently and thrive.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  I've often wondered about this, whether it's possible to still be a big career success and compete against those who are willing to give up their whole personal life for it. I'm not entirely certain I've got an answer, but the solution that comes to me is to make use of certain competitive advantages you have that they don't: 1.) When you're heads-down on a goal, you often miss other things that are going on in the world, like technology shifts or social changes that may affect your business. Someone who makes time for a social life will be much better informed about these, because they have more information coming in from friends and acquaintances. 2.) People who work all their time often get very good at repressing their emotions, because emotionally, it really sucks to work all the time. That blinds them to an important source of information, which makes them make poor global optimizations about their time usage because the rational brain isn't as effective as the emotional brain at processing large amounts of not-directly-comparable information. 3.) People who get used to working all the time often get very impatient and feel they must be doing something productive with every moment. This makes them unsuitable for jobs which require that you sit back and wait. The biggest example I can think of of people using these against their competitors is Warren Buffett, who's famously built a massive investment firm by being "patient capital", that's willing to wait out the periodic panics and take advantage of them. While the rest of the financial industry runs around like chickens with their heads off, he sits back in Omaha, with a normal middle-class lifestyle, and waits for their emotions to get the best of them and make them do something. And then he swoops in at reduced prices, buys, and waits for the price to come around again.
  - eitally 13y ago
    It depends on your definition of success and what you want to optimize for.
- mratzloff 13y ago
  > The challenge is there will always be people who are willing (either consciously or unconsciously) to throw away their family and personal relationships in order to pursue success in their career, and it is difficult, if not impossible to compete against them with the 'balanced life' bit set. So don't compete with them.
- cliffcrosland 13y ago
  There appears to be an implicit assumption in many of these comments that success is measured solely by career progress. The vibe seems to be something like: "How can I successfully compete with these folks who do nothing but work?" The truth is, maybe you shouldn't try. Clayton Christensen, author of the mega-influential book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," wrote another book that addresses this issue called, "How Will You Measure Your Life?" In it, he recounts how none of his bright, talented, and good-natured classmates from Harvard Business School graduated with plans to get divorced, become ostracized from their children, and end up in prison. Yet some of them did. He claims that it's easy to optimize for career success because it's straightforward to measure, whereas success in relationships and raising children is only apparent after many years of hard work. Ultimately, the book encourages its readers to determine their own definition for success and build a strategy to achieve it. If your definition of success includes a certain minimum level of career accomplishment, but also strong, happy relationships, and satisfaction from meaningful volunteer work, then you should not optimize solely for career accomplishment. And perhaps you shouldn't feel weighed-down by the need to compete with exclusively-career-focused individuals. Quote from interview with Clayton Christensen putting this advice into practice: "Most people have never thought through how they're going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance. I never work on Saturday. I don’t ever work on Sunday either. If you make that decision on a macro level once, when all the incremental decisions arise on an incremental basis, life is easier." http://www.businessinsider.com/clay-christensen-how-will-you-measure-your-life-2012-5#ixzz2qnrIUs5j http://www.businessinsider.com/clay-christensen-how-will-you...
  - andyidsinga 13y ago
    YES! its worth telling managers and subordinates that we wont be working more than 40 - 50 hours. and that we should work both hard and smart in he alotted time ...then get the F out of work and do other things. i often find it refreshing to hear about the cool things people do when not working and bummed when i hear someone - especially one of my devs - worked through a weekend. then comes the difficult and uncomfortable chore of figuring out what i fucked up that caused them to have to work like that.
- overgryphon 13y ago
  My experience is that people who consistently overwork and choose work over their family life feel that those who don't are lazy. The inability to have reasonable expectations of others, and tendency to look down on coworkers can undermine large projects or create a reputation of being incapable of working with others. This can limit their career, especially at senior levels where employees are expected to coordinate high risk projects across many people or serve as a mentor for newer employees.
Theodores 13y ago
One thing you can do at home is the cooking (including buying the food and the washing up). It is not hard to do if it is something you always do. Serve up a great meal prepared from actual ingredients and enjoy eating it - plus the conversation that goes with it. If you can do this then you are likely to succeed at home. If you can make cooking something you enjoy then that becomes an 'inline hobby', i.e. something to care about, enjoy and look forward to doing. It does not need extra time. You can feel good about yourself for doing it if what you serve is well appreciated. But you have to do it as soon as you get in, put your feet up, watch teevee, allow an hour to pass and it all goes wrong.
- MoosePlissken 13y ago
  > But you have to do it as soon as you get in, put your feet up, watch teevee, allow an hour to pass and it all goes wrong. I totally agree with this. If I plop down on the couch right after getting home from a day of work, inertia tends to keep me there. I'll become almost annoyed that I'm hungry and begrudgingly get up to microwave something really fast. If I go straight to cooking and doing other chores as soon as I get home I tend to eat a much better meal and feel much more relaxed once I do sit down.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  This seems great. But if you have kids and this is your main or 'only' interaction at home, you're going to miss out on a great deal of their lives while you are working weekends, holidays, etc. It is much better than nothing though. And loving your contribution is a great thing. Not arguing against just pointing out that children change the whole game (if you care about watching them grow up in a meaningful way.)
zendev 13y ago
I can relate to this. I am a notoriously bad multi-tasker and when I'm concentrating on a project I had a really hard time paying any attention to my girlfriend. I also found it harder and harder to relate to the struggles that other people have in a normal life. Trying to add something significant to the world comes at a cost: I might not ever be able to have a normal relationship.
- elnate 13y ago
  Chances are the world will keep on spinning without your product. Happiness should be your primary goal.
  - LambdaAlmighty 13y ago
    Why do you assume working on his project doesn't bring him happiness? Also, though I'm sure you are well-meaning, advising strangers how they ought to live their life makes you sound like a prick.
    - elnate 13y ago
      Article is titled: "Success at Work, Failure at Home" and they say they can relate to this. Laments that "...comes at a cost: I might not ever be able to have a normal relationship." I'm not saying working on their project doesn't bring them some happiness, but they hardly sound like they're as happy as they could be. And I'm probably just a prick.
      - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
        I agree with your prior statement (happiness should be your goal, and you probably haven't invented 'sliced bread'). You can't 'have it all' if your work makes you more happy than (or is more important to you than) your relationships/home, you should probably focus on that and divorce/leave/whatever so everyone can move on with their lives. I read the article as a lament. Although maybe I misread and we're both pricks. :D
    - 13y ago
rcjordan 13y ago
It's easy to write about what you should have done after you've made it through the gauntlet.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  Also after you're already loaded. Paraphrasing: I did this and now I'm filthy rich. But if I had to do it again I'd spend more time with my family. By the way, now that I'm rich I do spend more time with my family.
PStamatiou 13y ago
Enjoyed this post - reminds me of something i wrote last year on the same subject http://paulstamatiou.com/simplify/ http://paulstamatiou.com/simplify/
johnrob 13y ago
Key question: did Ironport succeed in spite of his family sacrifice, or because of it? It's not fair to recommend spending more time with the family without addressing what the consequences would have been.
- npc 13y ago
  No matter what, you're always going to be at a disadvantage to someone who is willing to sacrifice more than you, whether that be health or family or anything else. I liked the article but it completely danced around the obvious conclusion which is, "maintaining a healthy relationship with your family is going to cost you time and energy which is going to at least somewhat lessen your chances of success and you have to be okay with that." Edit: I've realized that my last sentence was somewhat ambiguous, I want to make it clear that I in no way support neglecting your family for a chance at economic success. When I said you have to be okay with it, I meant being okay with the risk of failing.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    No matter what, you're always going to be at a disadvantage to someone who is willing to sacrifice more than you, whether that be health or family or anything else. Not always. If you're in a line of work where your own competence matters, sacrificing your health or family life will burn you. It doesn't take long. The relevant issue is that most white-collar workers (even programmers in many dysfunctional organizations) are private-sector social climbers by trade and practice, and competence matters a lot less than image for them. If appearance matters more than capability, extreme sacrifice can help you.
    - npc 13y ago
      >willing There was an important word there that you seemed to miss. I didn't say that he who sacrifices more will always win, but they do have more options available to them, so to speak. Please don't think I'm advocating sacrificing health and family in the name of success, far from it. I just don't like this post facto moralizing that glosses over the difficulty of choosing between working late on something that might be critical to the success of your enterprise and going home to see your wife and kids.
michaelochurch 13y ago
It seems like he felt a need to put in long hours as some sort of morale-improving service, but he actually damaged the team by doing so. Bosses should limit themselves to 8 hours in the office, except during times of crisis (and, even in a startup, to be constantly in crisis mode is bad management). If the work calls for more, do it from home. Why? Because if the CEO works 12 hours per day, the VPs are going to feel a need to work 13, the middle managers work 14, and the grunts have to work 15. Now you have everyone working an inefficient long day, and less is getting done (and less reliably) than if people were working sane hours. You should lead by being available when people need you (which is not the same thing as being a doormat; your willingness to drop other things or sacrifice must be appropriate to the level of the need) but putting in mindless face time just sets a bad example. Low-level investment bankers have to suffer long face time, but CEOs? If your company is going to be a sweatshop where people feel like they need to work 15 hour days or will lose face/status, then what's the point of building it? Startups don't change our biology or remove the fact that virtually no one can work efficiently beyond about 55 hours per week for more than a couple weeks. (That number includes commuting, housework, errands, and assorted nonsense.)
- nicklovescode 13y ago
  I'm curious to see some sort of data on hours worked on startups if that exists. I would guess that the grunt workers feel that they are obligated to work ceoHoursWorked + 3 as you mentioned and the ceo imagines she has to work gruntHoursWorked + 3
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    If I were CEO, I'd probably work long hours, especially early on. But I'd do most of that time from home, so people can leave at 5 or 6 if their work's done. Not because I'm a nice guy, but because I'm realistic and know that working at a sprint pace when it's not needed is going to enervate people and leave them unable to handle a true crisis.
gcb0 13y ago
"All I do is talk to people all day long and so at home, I’d really prefer not to talk much" interesting how people feels different about that. I am the same as the author. But my significant other is the opposite. She spends the day talking, giving lectures, and when she gets home, she wants to talk even more, with someone that responds, because all she does is talk to people that just listen the whole day. Turns out to be a good match. we get home, she talks, I listen.
thrownaway2424 13y ago
So what I'm reading here is why CEOs shouldn't go to the office on weekends and check their mail at dinner. What's glaringly absent from the second part of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either. Those guys have families and their negligible equity certainly doesn't justify 80-hour weeks. It sounds to me like the author would rather have gone home on weekends while the engineers stayed at the office.
- altero 13y ago
  I had similar impression.
- seivan 13y ago
  Got the same impression.
- crusso 13y ago
  I just had the impression that he wished he could have had his cake and eaten it too. He made the familial sacrifices. He had the business success. Now looking back he wished that he would have magically had that success without putting in all the time. Does not compute.
  - sriramk 13y ago
    I suspect he thinks he should have figured out a way to do both and not make it into an explicit trade-off. In fact, I think the entire post is about how "having+eating the cake" is possible if you put some effort into it.
    - crusso 13y ago
      if you put some effort into it That's circular, though. How could he put yet more effort into something besides his business success when he said that he was pouring everything he had into it? I would have respected his viewpoint a lot more if he had just said, "I didn't need to make all that money. My family should have been more important and I should have chosen them over the next shipping date at least 6 out of 10 times. If it had meant missing delivery dates and loss of some contracts, then so be it."
Spooky23 13y ago
I've learned to define success as the whole package -- a brilliant career that results to me coming home to an empty house or a house full of people who resent me is not success. I try make work a 40-hour a week thing, which is often a losing battle. But you need to try and make those 40 hours as productive as humanly possible.
nailer 13y ago
> And that part about sitting on my ass in front of the TV with a cocktail? This ran counter to all of her efforts to teach the kids about pitching in as a family. The message of everyone helping to cook, clean, and be responsible for the household fell completely flat when daddy wouldn’t so much as take out the trash or change a light bulb. Take out the trash and change a lightbulb by all means, but seriously if you're providing for your family, it counts. If his children don't think he's pitching in by paying the rent /mortgage, then something's very wrong.
- dougk16 13y ago
  I'm not a child expert, but I doubt children can really start to rationalize "dad's not around but at least he's providing" until well into their teens. And at that point the damage from having an absent father is probably done.
  - MWil 13y ago
    I'm not a child expert either but it doesn't sound like it would be too hard to at least start having those conversations once they even realize you are at work and aren't just hiding behind the front door for 8 hours (9 years to them)
    - dhimes 13y ago
      It has to be supported by the other spouse. If my wife is working extreme hours to bring in the income, I have to make sure the kids know that's why she can't be here now.
- yitchelle 13y ago
  Really depends on the kid's age. Younger kids (less than 10yrs) are not able to grasp the concept of money or earning money, so explaining that dad is out making money for a roof over their head and putting food on the table is not going to cut it. At that age, they just want close interaction with their dad.
  - 13y ago
Myrmornis 13y ago
I dare say I'll get voted down for not being constructive, but I find the self-help entrepreneurship work-life balance stuff on here really self-involved and kind of tasteless.
- ricardobeat 13y ago
  While I agree with the emotion, there is meaningful discussion to be had. As a sidenote I believe you'd do better to express your opinion without rebuking HN's readership as a whole, under the risk of making your comment just as tasteless.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  How dare a person be concerned about their own life and wellbeing, and not whatever minority group is being promoted this week. Why do rich, White, privileged founders think their lives are of any interest on news.ycombinator.com anyway?
tikhonj 13y ago
I think this is an example of a problem I see with a lot of hard-working cultures like startups. You're always optimizing your productivity locally. It's easy to just say "oh, I'll work harder now" because, simply, you'll get more done than you would otherwise. Today will be more productive. Most importantly, the increased productivity is viscerally obvious. But working too much, making sacrifices at home, having problems with your family, not having enough breaks--all that saps your productivity on a global state. Sure, at any given day, you will accomplish more by working 12 hours than 8. But, over time, you will start accomplishing less per hour, largely without noticing it. And while working longer will still optimize locally, you will actually become significantly less productive overall! This is not a character flaw or anything like that. It's just a result of the fact that local improvements are so much easier to see and understand than global trends. So to counter it, you have to think ahead of time and ideally keep some metrics to measure this explicitly. (Of course, I'm not sure what such metrics would be--measuring productivity is extremely tricky.) There's a particular study that gets linked that found working a single 60-hour week is an immediate improvement, but working consistent 60-hour weeks is actually strictly worse than mostly sticking to 40. But it's so easy to trick yourself into thinking that you have to work those 60 hours because you need to finish more now. It's definitely something you should watch out for. EDIT: http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-less... is the article I was thinking about.
- levlandau 13y ago
  i agree with the spirit of this but the flaw in this reasoning is an assumption that all hours are equal. Working consistent 80 hour weeks is the reason we got the Mac as well as Facebook. The extreme outcome possible due to one locally focused push could far outweigh any other strategy and could also be the maximum of the global state.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    And what's your proof that without 80-hour weeks we wouldn't have got the Mac or Facebook? All of those people were also wearing underwear, so if correlation is all the proof we need around here, then I've got me a new business book to write: Steve's Secret: What Every Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Has In Common I can even try to get data on whether boxers or briefs lead to better marketplace success, and gin up some fake controversy. It'll be the next NYT best-seller. Eric Ries, watch out!
rdl 13y ago
I pretty much am thankful a few times a week that I've never had children. It looks like most of his difficulties at home were due to child rearing tasks; it would otherwise be easy to spend money on things like the yard and housecleaning and laundry, and if spending time with your wife isn't enjoyable in itself, you are doing it wrong. I guess I should be glad at least some people have children, though.
FrankenPC 13y ago
From my observations of having worked around many CEO's is that the job, by its very nature demands total dedication. I believe that attempting to start a family and a funded company at the same time is a sign of a lack of objectivity. It's as if the individual actually believes they can harbor two mistresses at the same time. It's simply not a wise idea. Just an observation. Not trying to make anyone out to be the bad guy.
tdurden 13y ago
> When we started pulling consistent coding weekends, we brought in the entire management team to serve the engineers: We brought them food, washed their cars, got oil changes, took in their dry cleaning, and arranged for childcare for their kids in the office. Sorry, but while admirable, this is not normal. I may differ from most of HN, but I simply don't see the point in making these kinds of sacrifices as an engineer just because I get free dinner or childcare. It isn't healthy...or worth it.
- sokoloff 13y ago
  That's not the point. The management team is showing solidarity with their team by serving them in the only (more symbolic than economically valuable) ways that they can. It's a symbolic (but real) sharing of the sacrifice, not a straight up bribe. Same reason I've come in on Christmas night (we scheduled the work after the families are reasonably in bed, but the calendar still said "12/25") to spend time with my teams doing major site maintenance activities, or why I travelled with the team for a major as-the-ball-dropped New Year's Eve datacenter migration. It's not because I'm especially good at carrying servers or building SAN racks... The engineers make the sacrifice because they believe it's necessary for the product/company to succeed. They feel better about it because their executives are physically present there with them rather than on a golf course or diving into their pools of gold coins...
  - mratzloff 13y ago
    But who plans a New Year's Eve datacenter migration? What kind of major site maintenance is needed on Christmas? It's one thing if it's an unplanned emergency. It's another entirely if it's planned. Planning for work on Christmas or New Year's Eve would be enough to convince me to find employment elsewhere.
    - tdurden 13y ago
      exactly.
    - sokoloff 13y ago
Jimega36 13y ago
As a founder, it appears as if our startup's success or failure depends on us cofounders. This drives me to work insane hours as some sort of ego self rationalization tells me that more work will make it succeed. In general I have seen the work/result correlation hold true. And yet, we all know how luck plays its role. I personally like to think some events are meant to happen or not. Especially when it goes bad - when my startup lost a client in the early days for example it was extremely tough... but we learned so much that the next bigger one went well. Would working more hours have changed anything, I doubt it, so there is more to it than work. More than this, working many hours is sometimes just a way to reduce anxiety of success or failure, at least for me. What's tricky is understanding which hours not to do, how to make more of the ones I do, and being confident that cutting the hours won't affect the bigger picture output too much. Easier said than done.
undershirt 13y ago
I want to relate this to Richard Branson's family advice to Elon Musk sprinkled throughout a recent Google Hangout[1]. > I hope he can find some wonderful people to help him. He's got five children at home, all boys... he just, uh, he needs to... uh, yeah, I hope you can find lots of time. You just got to find lots of people to help you. I can't imagine the kind of family life Elon Musk can have if he has five boys while running two companies. He advises young entrepreneurs to work 70-80 hour weeks as a clear no-brainer way to get ahead. Hearing the hesitation in Richard Branson's voice in the quote above says a lot about this I think. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9y_YSpYxA&feature=share&t=55m50s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9y_YSpYxA&feature=share&t=5...
- cerberusss 13y ago
  Wow thanks for that link. Branson had a really, really hard time answering that question. Actually he didn't answer it at all.
- shortlived 13y ago
  At what point in the vid do they talk about family?
  - undershirt 13y ago
    55:50
coffeemug 13y ago
I'm facing many of the challenges Scott is talking about. I churned through the first part of the essay and thought "yes! yes! yes, yes, let's get to the solution!" But the second part of the essay falls short for me. It's a bit like the depression and the broken hand cartoon[1]. I can't disconnect. I know I'm supposed to turn off my phone, do household chores, and take my wife out to a nice dinner. I know taking the time to do these things makes me happier and more productive. It's not that I don't know this, it's that actually doing it requires enormous discipline, but after spending 80 hours a week slowly changing reality by a sheer force of will, I have no more willpower left for anything else. I also know I don't have to feel like I'm changing reality by a sheer force of will, and in fact, feeling this way is a sign that I have a lot to learn about leadership and about life. But that's not something I can just decide to change either. The problem is very real. The solution, at least for me, is as elusive as ever. [1] http://www.akimbocomics.com/?p=573 http://www.akimbocomics.com/?p=573
- stephen 13y ago
  > The solution, at least for me, is as elusive as ever. If you define "the problem" as "I want to work 80 hours/week + have a healthy family life", well, yes, that's always going to be elusive. I.e. impossible. Pretty sure the answer is to just not work 80 hours/week. > but it's not something I can decide to change either It is probably convenient for you to think that, but unless you have some sort of mental health condition (delusions of grandeur, etc.), I doubt it. One way or the other, you're making choices you want to make. And that's fine, but you might as well be honest with yourself/others about why you're making them, and that you must implicitly be okay with the trade offs.
  - AndrewKemendo 13y ago
    It is probably convenient for you to think that, but unless you have some sort of mental health condition (delusions of grandeur, etc.), I doubt it. So what would you say to the young [insert famous and wealthy figure here]?
    - stephen 13y ago
steven2012 13y ago
My wife and I are going through this right now. My wife has a senior director position in a multi-billion dollar financial company, and I am a programmer at a startup. We just had a child several months ago, and it's been very hard trying to balance work and life. It's actually the hardest thing we've both had to do in our lives. Her job is a minimum of 60-hrs per week, but luckily I'm able to limit my work to 40-hrs per week, my company has been incredibly supportive. But truth-be-told my productivity has been affected by at least 50% over these past few months, especially after my wife and I both went back to work. There's been a lot of guilt from both our ends, due to how much slips through the crack both at work and at home because of trying to raise our kid as best as we can. The key, I hope, is to keep focused as a team, meaning we try to pick each other's slack with no resentment. It's tough living and raising a family in Silicon Valley, due to the demands of work, and given how expensive things like houses in decent areas are.
- DanBC 13y ago
  You're a new parent, you're working 40 hours per week and somehow your employers are incredibly supportive? I don't know what the psychological term is. Cognitive dissonance? Stockholm syndrome?
  - steven2012 13y ago
    After working the first few months and taking days/weeks off whenever I wanted to, I took an entire month off with full pay and no PTO days. They didn't even question it. If I need to take more time off on the order of months, it wouldn't be a problem. On top of that I had to push out some deadlines by a couple of months. That's incredibly supportive in my book.
    - gaius 13y ago
      How do your cow-orkers feel? Would any of them like a month off on full pay to pursue a personal project?
  - namenotrequired 13y ago
shenoybr 13y ago
In my view, this applies not just to CEOs, but other people too. I've seen many around me and myself included, concentrate work so hard to achieve what we thought was best for ourselves and to keep our family happy. However, it would take a toll that our mislabeled 'needy' other halves would bear the brunt off. Switching off from work is absolutely necessary to keep a work life balance going and its necessary to keep in mind that there are other things that are just as important, like our spouses, family and our health, without which all the hard work is essentially meaningless. I personally tell myself at the end of the day that the work never ends, there is always something to do, and it can wait for tomorrow.
andyl 13y ago
Letting down his Harvard MBA spouse. Yeah I can relate to that. Humblebrag.
mchusma 13y ago
Thanks Scott. Great post, really resonated with me as a recently (successfully) exited founder. You were the most helpful, empathetic, & constructive "No" I got from a VC.
bbwharris 13y ago
If you have children and a career, then you have two jobs. Sorry, you don't get a "break", and you shouldn't expect to "unwind". This isn't going to be popular, but its selfish as hell to think that you "deserve" something because of all the hard work you are doing. You don't. The universe is indifferent and life isn't fair. The only thing you can do is make every moment count and do the things that make you happy. If you are feeling the need for a cocktail and an hour in front of the TV, then I'm going to say that you aren't happy.
QuantumGood 13y ago
A simple tip is to look for activities that regenerate, rather than medicate. "Sitting with a cocktail" isn't a solution to anything, it's treading water at best. A classic regeneration activity for couples is dancing. Meditation is another great choice, but isn't for everyone.
knice 13y ago
It seems like I read a story like this several times each month. It is good advice. We all know it deep down. Yet the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" culture of constant work persists. How do we change that? I ask honestly as someone who is reformed. It took nearly losing my marriage for me to establish balance in my life and work. How do we set up an enduring culture of respect for actual balance?
midas007 13y ago
I've seen plenty of startup CEOs that add value and some that subtract value. The ones that subtract value just push to meet arbitrary deadlines and don't pitch in. The ones that add value actively remove burdens (go get lunch) and look to keep people from burning out (send people home or off to the beach).
reuven 13y ago
When I was working at HP, just after graduating from college, the CEO (Lew Platt) announced that he would be stressing work-life balance among employees. He specifically said that he wanted to accommodate working mothers, and especially single-parent families. He officially blessed the idea of job sharing (such that two people could each have a part-time job) and flexible hours, to help in that way. The particularly poignant part of this story was that he learned the importance of such flexibility the hard way: His wife died from cancer, and he was left taking care of his children by himself. Suddenly, he realized how much work it was to raise children, and he decided that HP should try to take into account people's personal needs, such that they could be with their families and have jobs. I don't know how deep those changes really went, and I don't know how many of them have continued until today. But those announcements and attempts to help people balance their personal and professional lives have stayed with me for about two decades. Sure, I work crazy hours (as a freelancer, and also trying to finish a PhD) -- but part of the reason I work late at night is because I value spending time with my wife and children. I cringe when I see startups (and other companies) expecting people, explicitly or implicitly, to sacrifice their family time for the sake of the company except in unusual circumstances. And yet, there's no doubt that for many of these companies, success often does demand more than a simple, 40-hour week. I'm glad that the original author realizes now that he could and should have spent more time with his family. But I do wonder if he is willing to tell the people working at his startups, "Hey, that program can be debugged tomorrow. Go home and spend time with your children. Software can wait, but they can't."
whyme 13y ago
This reminds me of car ownership... When you ask people if they like their car, most will say yes they do; that is until they decide to get a new one. It's then that they quickly come up with a large con list to warrant an upgrade. Afterwards, they will almost always say that last car was never any good. After all look at the current car vs. the con list of the last. The thing is, they'll be doing this again with their new car until they outgrow it or find problems with it too. And my point is: Hindsight is always 20/20 when your current perspective conveniently matches the narrative for your newly made situation.
maaku 13y ago
Thank you.
lilpirate 13y ago
Urges me to startup before all the relationships kick in my life! Being young certainly helps.
clubhi 13y ago
This guy seems like a total piece of shit. He gives little respect to his family or his employees.

362 points by sethbannon 13y ago

I very clearly remember the week this clicked in my brain. Being very successful, really crushing it, and whining to my wife that the company should give more vacation, and her reminding me that I had been at work on Christmas Eve. My whole perspective collapsed around that instant. I could see the hit in career path I was going to take by changing my perspective, but I decided to do it anyway. And I have always been glad I made that choice. The challenge is there will always be people who are willing (either consciously or unconsciously) to throw away their family and personal relationships in order to pursue success in their career, and it is difficult, if not impossible to compete against them with the 'balanced life' bit set.

csallen 13y ago
> The challenge is there will always be people who are willing (either consciously or unconsciously) to throw away their family and personal relationships in order to pursue success in their career, and it is difficult, if not impossible to compete against them with the 'balanced life' bit set.The challenge is there will always be people who are willing (either consciously or unconsciously) to throw away their family and personal relationships in order to pursue success in their career, and it is difficult, if not impossible to compete against them with the 'balanced life' bit set. This is the part that I think a lot of people don't acknowledge. I supposed that's because in a work environment -- as opposed to something more directly competitive like sports -- you're comparing your performance mostly to your would-be self rather than to others. But it's certainly worth noting that there exist people who not only want to work 80-hour weeks, but can do so consistently and thrive.
nostrademons 13y ago
I've often wondered about this, whether it's possible to still be a big career success and compete against those who are willing to give up their whole personal life for it. I'm not entirely certain I've got an answer, but the solution that comes to me is to make use of certain competitive advantages you have that they don't: 1.) When you're heads-down on a goal, you often miss other things that are going on in the world, like technology shifts or social changes that may affect your business. Someone who makes time for a social life will be much better informed about these, because they have more information coming in from friends and acquaintances. 2.) People who work all their time often get very good at repressing their emotions, because emotionally, it really sucks to work all the time. That blinds them to an important source of information, which makes them make poor global optimizations about their time usage because the rational brain isn't as effective as the emotional brain at processing large amounts of not-directly-comparable information. 3.) People who get used to working all the time often get very impatient and feel they must be doing something productive with every moment. This makes them unsuitable for jobs which require that you sit back and wait. The biggest example I can think of of people using these against their competitors is Warren Buffett, who's famously built a massive investment firm by being "patient capital", that's willing to wait out the periodic panics and take advantage of them. While the rest of the financial industry runs around like chickens with their heads off, he sits back in Omaha, with a normal middle-class lifestyle, and waits for their emotions to get the best of them and make them do something. And then he swoops in at reduced prices, buys, and waits for the price to come around again.
- eitally 13y ago
  It depends on your definition of success and what you want to optimize for.
mratzloff 13y ago
> The challenge is there will always be people who are willing (either consciously or unconsciously) to throw away their family and personal relationships in order to pursue success in their career, and it is difficult, if not impossible to compete against them with the 'balanced life' bit set. So don't compete with them.
cliffcrosland 13y ago
There appears to be an implicit assumption in many of these comments that success is measured solely by career progress. The vibe seems to be something like: "How can I successfully compete with these folks who do nothing but work?" The truth is, maybe you shouldn't try. Clayton Christensen, author of the mega-influential book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," wrote another book that addresses this issue called, "How Will You Measure Your Life?" In it, he recounts how none of his bright, talented, and good-natured classmates from Harvard Business School graduated with plans to get divorced, become ostracized from their children, and end up in prison. Yet some of them did. He claims that it's easy to optimize for career success because it's straightforward to measure, whereas success in relationships and raising children is only apparent after many years of hard work. Ultimately, the book encourages its readers to determine their own definition for success and build a strategy to achieve it. If your definition of success includes a certain minimum level of career accomplishment, but also strong, happy relationships, and satisfaction from meaningful volunteer work, then you should not optimize solely for career accomplishment. And perhaps you shouldn't feel weighed-down by the need to compete with exclusively-career-focused individuals. Quote from interview with Clayton Christensen putting this advice into practice: "Most people have never thought through how they're going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance. I never work on Saturday. I don’t ever work on Sunday either. If you make that decision on a macro level once, when all the incremental decisions arise on an incremental basis, life is easier." http://www.businessinsider.com/clay-christensen-how-will-you-measure-your-life-2012-5#ixzz2qnrIUs5j http://www.businessinsider.com/clay-christensen-how-will-you...
- andyidsinga 13y ago
  YES! its worth telling managers and subordinates that we wont be working more than 40 - 50 hours. and that we should work both hard and smart in he alotted time ...then get the F out of work and do other things. i often find it refreshing to hear about the cool things people do when not working and bummed when i hear someone - especially one of my devs - worked through a weekend. then comes the difficult and uncomfortable chore of figuring out what i fucked up that caused them to have to work like that.
overgryphon 13y ago
My experience is that people who consistently overwork and choose work over their family life feel that those who don't are lazy. The inability to have reasonable expectations of others, and tendency to look down on coworkers can undermine large projects or create a reputation of being incapable of working with others. This can limit their career, especially at senior levels where employees are expected to coordinate high risk projects across many people or serve as a mentor for newer employees.

Theodores 13y ago

One thing you can do at home is the cooking (including buying the food and the washing up). It is not hard to do if it is something you always do. Serve up a great meal prepared from actual ingredients and enjoy eating it - plus the conversation that goes with it. If you can do this then you are likely to succeed at home. If you can make cooking something you enjoy then that becomes an 'inline hobby', i.e. something to care about, enjoy and look forward to doing. It does not need extra time. You can feel good about yourself for doing it if what you serve is well appreciated. But you have to do it as soon as you get in, put your feet up, watch teevee, allow an hour to pass and it all goes wrong.

MoosePlissken 13y ago
> But you have to do it as soon as you get in, put your feet up, watch teevee, allow an hour to pass and it all goes wrong. I totally agree with this. If I plop down on the couch right after getting home from a day of work, inertia tends to keep me there. I'll become almost annoyed that I'm hungry and begrudgingly get up to microwave something really fast. If I go straight to cooking and doing other chores as soon as I get home I tend to eat a much better meal and feel much more relaxed once I do sit down.
ItendToDisagree 13y ago
This seems great. But if you have kids and this is your main or 'only' interaction at home, you're going to miss out on a great deal of their lives while you are working weekends, holidays, etc. It is much better than nothing though. And loving your contribution is a great thing. Not arguing against just pointing out that children change the whole game (if you care about watching them grow up in a meaningful way.)

zendev 13y ago

I can relate to this. I am a notoriously bad multi-tasker and when I'm concentrating on a project I had a really hard time paying any attention to my girlfriend. I also found it harder and harder to relate to the struggles that other people have in a normal life. Trying to add something significant to the world comes at a cost: I might not ever be able to have a normal relationship.

elnate 13y ago
Chances are the world will keep on spinning without your product. Happiness should be your primary goal.
- LambdaAlmighty 13y ago
  Why do you assume working on his project doesn't bring him happiness? Also, though I'm sure you are well-meaning, advising strangers how they ought to live their life makes you sound like a prick.
  - elnate 13y ago
    Article is titled: "Success at Work, Failure at Home" and they say they can relate to this. Laments that "...comes at a cost: I might not ever be able to have a normal relationship." I'm not saying working on their project doesn't bring them some happiness, but they hardly sound like they're as happy as they could be. And I'm probably just a prick.
    - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
      I agree with your prior statement (happiness should be your goal, and you probably haven't invented 'sliced bread'). You can't 'have it all' if your work makes you more happy than (or is more important to you than) your relationships/home, you should probably focus on that and divorce/leave/whatever so everyone can move on with their lives. I read the article as a lament. Although maybe I misread and we're both pricks. :D
  - 13y ago

rcjordan 13y ago

It's easy to write about what you should have done after you've made it through the gauntlet.

thrownaway2424 13y ago
Also after you're already loaded. Paraphrasing: I did this and now I'm filthy rich. But if I had to do it again I'd spend more time with my family. By the way, now that I'm rich I do spend more time with my family.

PStamatiou 13y ago

Enjoyed this post - reminds me of something i wrote last year on the same subject http://paulstamatiou.com/simplify/ http://paulstamatiou.com/simplify/

johnrob 13y ago

Key question: did Ironport succeed in spite of his family sacrifice, or because of it? It's not fair to recommend spending more time with the family without addressing what the consequences would have been.

npc 13y ago
No matter what, you're always going to be at a disadvantage to someone who is willing to sacrifice more than you, whether that be health or family or anything else. I liked the article but it completely danced around the obvious conclusion which is, "maintaining a healthy relationship with your family is going to cost you time and energy which is going to at least somewhat lessen your chances of success and you have to be okay with that." Edit: I've realized that my last sentence was somewhat ambiguous, I want to make it clear that I in no way support neglecting your family for a chance at economic success. When I said you have to be okay with it, I meant being okay with the risk of failing.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  No matter what, you're always going to be at a disadvantage to someone who is willing to sacrifice more than you, whether that be health or family or anything else. Not always. If you're in a line of work where your own competence matters, sacrificing your health or family life will burn you. It doesn't take long. The relevant issue is that most white-collar workers (even programmers in many dysfunctional organizations) are private-sector social climbers by trade and practice, and competence matters a lot less than image for them. If appearance matters more than capability, extreme sacrifice can help you.
  - npc 13y ago
    >willing There was an important word there that you seemed to miss. I didn't say that he who sacrifices more will always win, but they do have more options available to them, so to speak. Please don't think I'm advocating sacrificing health and family in the name of success, far from it. I just don't like this post facto moralizing that glosses over the difficulty of choosing between working late on something that might be critical to the success of your enterprise and going home to see your wife and kids.

michaelochurch 13y ago

It seems like he felt a need to put in long hours as some sort of morale-improving service, but he actually damaged the team by doing so. Bosses should limit themselves to 8 hours in the office, except during times of crisis (and, even in a startup, to be constantly in crisis mode is bad management). If the work calls for more, do it from home. Why? Because if the CEO works 12 hours per day, the VPs are going to feel a need to work 13, the middle managers work 14, and the grunts have to work 15. Now you have everyone working an inefficient long day, and less is getting done (and less reliably) than if people were working sane hours. You should lead by being available when people need you (which is not the same thing as being a doormat; your willingness to drop other things or sacrifice must be appropriate to the level of the need) but putting in mindless face time just sets a bad example. Low-level investment bankers have to suffer long face time, but CEOs? If your company is going to be a sweatshop where people feel like they need to work 15 hour days or will lose face/status, then what's the point of building it? Startups don't change our biology or remove the fact that virtually no one can work efficiently beyond about 55 hours per week for more than a couple weeks. (That number includes commuting, housework, errands, and assorted nonsense.)

nicklovescode 13y ago
I'm curious to see some sort of data on hours worked on startups if that exists. I would guess that the grunt workers feel that they are obligated to work ceoHoursWorked + 3 as you mentioned and the ceo imagines she has to work gruntHoursWorked + 3
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  If I were CEO, I'd probably work long hours, especially early on. But I'd do most of that time from home, so people can leave at 5 or 6 if their work's done. Not because I'm a nice guy, but because I'm realistic and know that working at a sprint pace when it's not needed is going to enervate people and leave them unable to handle a true crisis.

gcb0 13y ago

"All I do is talk to people all day long and so at home, I’d really prefer not to talk much" interesting how people feels different about that. I am the same as the author. But my significant other is the opposite. She spends the day talking, giving lectures, and when she gets home, she wants to talk even more, with someone that responds, because all she does is talk to people that just listen the whole day. Turns out to be a good match. we get home, she talks, I listen.

thrownaway2424 13y ago

So what I'm reading here is why CEOs shouldn't go to the office on weekends and check their mail at dinner. What's glaringly absent from the second part of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either. Those guys have families and their negligible equity certainly doesn't justify 80-hour weeks. It sounds to me like the author would rather have gone home on weekends while the engineers stayed at the office.

altero 13y ago
I had similar impression.
seivan 13y ago
Got the same impression.
crusso 13y ago
I just had the impression that he wished he could have had his cake and eaten it too. He made the familial sacrifices. He had the business success. Now looking back he wished that he would have magically had that success without putting in all the time. Does not compute.
- sriramk 13y ago
  I suspect he thinks he should have figured out a way to do both and not make it into an explicit trade-off. In fact, I think the entire post is about how "having+eating the cake" is possible if you put some effort into it.
  - crusso 13y ago
    if you put some effort into it That's circular, though. How could he put yet more effort into something besides his business success when he said that he was pouring everything he had into it? I would have respected his viewpoint a lot more if he had just said, "I didn't need to make all that money. My family should have been more important and I should have chosen them over the next shipping date at least 6 out of 10 times. If it had meant missing delivery dates and loss of some contracts, then so be it."

Spooky23 13y ago

I've learned to define success as the whole package -- a brilliant career that results to me coming home to an empty house or a house full of people who resent me is not success. I try make work a 40-hour a week thing, which is often a losing battle. But you need to try and make those 40 hours as productive as humanly possible.

nailer 13y ago

> And that part about sitting on my ass in front of the TV with a cocktail? This ran counter to all of her efforts to teach the kids about pitching in as a family. The message of everyone helping to cook, clean, and be responsible for the household fell completely flat when daddy wouldn’t so much as take out the trash or change a light bulb. Take out the trash and change a lightbulb by all means, but seriously if you're providing for your family, it counts. If his children don't think he's pitching in by paying the rent /mortgage, then something's very wrong.

dougk16 13y ago
I'm not a child expert, but I doubt children can really start to rationalize "dad's not around but at least he's providing" until well into their teens. And at that point the damage from having an absent father is probably done.
- MWil 13y ago
  I'm not a child expert either but it doesn't sound like it would be too hard to at least start having those conversations once they even realize you are at work and aren't just hiding behind the front door for 8 hours (9 years to them)
  - dhimes 13y ago
    It has to be supported by the other spouse. If my wife is working extreme hours to bring in the income, I have to make sure the kids know that's why she can't be here now.
yitchelle 13y ago
Really depends on the kid's age. Younger kids (less than 10yrs) are not able to grasp the concept of money or earning money, so explaining that dad is out making money for a roof over their head and putting food on the table is not going to cut it. At that age, they just want close interaction with their dad.
- 13y ago

Myrmornis 13y ago

I dare say I'll get voted down for not being constructive, but I find the self-help entrepreneurship work-life balance stuff on here really self-involved and kind of tasteless.

ricardobeat 13y ago
While I agree with the emotion, there is meaningful discussion to be had. As a sidenote I believe you'd do better to express your opinion without rebuking HN's readership as a whole, under the risk of making your comment just as tasteless.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
How dare a person be concerned about their own life and wellbeing, and not whatever minority group is being promoted this week. Why do rich, White, privileged founders think their lives are of any interest on news.ycombinator.com anyway?

tikhonj 13y ago

I think this is an example of a problem I see with a lot of hard-working cultures like startups. You're always optimizing your productivity locally. It's easy to just say "oh, I'll work harder now" because, simply, you'll get more done than you would otherwise. Today will be more productive. Most importantly, the increased productivity is viscerally obvious. But working too much, making sacrifices at home, having problems with your family, not having enough breaks--all that saps your productivity on a global state. Sure, at any given day, you will accomplish more by working 12 hours than 8. But, over time, you will start accomplishing less per hour, largely without noticing it. And while working longer will still optimize locally, you will actually become significantly less productive overall! This is not a character flaw or anything like that. It's just a result of the fact that local improvements are so much easier to see and understand than global trends. So to counter it, you have to think ahead of time and ideally keep some metrics to measure this explicitly. (Of course, I'm not sure what such metrics would be--measuring productivity is extremely tricky.) There's a particular study that gets linked that found working a single 60-hour week is an immediate improvement, but working consistent 60-hour weeks is actually strictly worse than mostly sticking to 40. But it's so easy to trick yourself into thinking that you have to work those 60 hours because you need to finish more now. It's definitely something you should watch out for. EDIT: http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-less... is the article I was thinking about.

levlandau 13y ago
i agree with the spirit of this but the flaw in this reasoning is an assumption that all hours are equal. Working consistent 80 hour weeks is the reason we got the Mac as well as Facebook. The extreme outcome possible due to one locally focused push could far outweigh any other strategy and could also be the maximum of the global state.
- wpietri 13y ago
  And what's your proof that without 80-hour weeks we wouldn't have got the Mac or Facebook? All of those people were also wearing underwear, so if correlation is all the proof we need around here, then I've got me a new business book to write: Steve's Secret: What Every Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Has In Common I can even try to get data on whether boxers or briefs lead to better marketplace success, and gin up some fake controversy. It'll be the next NYT best-seller. Eric Ries, watch out!

rdl 13y ago

I pretty much am thankful a few times a week that I've never had children. It looks like most of his difficulties at home were due to child rearing tasks; it would otherwise be easy to spend money on things like the yard and housecleaning and laundry, and if spending time with your wife isn't enjoyable in itself, you are doing it wrong. I guess I should be glad at least some people have children, though.

FrankenPC 13y ago

From my observations of having worked around many CEO's is that the job, by its very nature demands total dedication. I believe that attempting to start a family and a funded company at the same time is a sign of a lack of objectivity. It's as if the individual actually believes they can harbor two mistresses at the same time. It's simply not a wise idea. Just an observation. Not trying to make anyone out to be the bad guy.

tdurden 13y ago

> When we started pulling consistent coding weekends, we brought in the entire management team to serve the engineers: We brought them food, washed their cars, got oil changes, took in their dry cleaning, and arranged for childcare for their kids in the office. Sorry, but while admirable, this is not normal. I may differ from most of HN, but I simply don't see the point in making these kinds of sacrifices as an engineer just because I get free dinner or childcare. It isn't healthy...or worth it.

sokoloff 13y ago
That's not the point. The management team is showing solidarity with their team by serving them in the only (more symbolic than economically valuable) ways that they can. It's a symbolic (but real) sharing of the sacrifice, not a straight up bribe. Same reason I've come in on Christmas night (we scheduled the work after the families are reasonably in bed, but the calendar still said "12/25") to spend time with my teams doing major site maintenance activities, or why I travelled with the team for a major as-the-ball-dropped New Year's Eve datacenter migration. It's not because I'm especially good at carrying servers or building SAN racks... The engineers make the sacrifice because they believe it's necessary for the product/company to succeed. They feel better about it because their executives are physically present there with them rather than on a golf course or diving into their pools of gold coins...
- mratzloff 13y ago
  But who plans a New Year's Eve datacenter migration? What kind of major site maintenance is needed on Christmas? It's one thing if it's an unplanned emergency. It's another entirely if it's planned. Planning for work on Christmas or New Year's Eve would be enough to convince me to find employment elsewhere.
  - tdurden 13y ago
    exactly.
  - sokoloff 13y ago

Jimega36 13y ago

As a founder, it appears as if our startup's success or failure depends on us cofounders. This drives me to work insane hours as some sort of ego self rationalization tells me that more work will make it succeed. In general I have seen the work/result correlation hold true. And yet, we all know how luck plays its role. I personally like to think some events are meant to happen or not. Especially when it goes bad - when my startup lost a client in the early days for example it was extremely tough... but we learned so much that the next bigger one went well. Would working more hours have changed anything, I doubt it, so there is more to it than work. More than this, working many hours is sometimes just a way to reduce anxiety of success or failure, at least for me. What's tricky is understanding which hours not to do, how to make more of the ones I do, and being confident that cutting the hours won't affect the bigger picture output too much. Easier said than done.

undershirt 13y ago

I want to relate this to Richard Branson's family advice to Elon Musk sprinkled throughout a recent Google Hangout[1]. > I hope he can find some wonderful people to help him. He's got five children at home, all boys... he just, uh, he needs to... uh, yeah, I hope you can find lots of time. You just got to find lots of people to help you. I can't imagine the kind of family life Elon Musk can have if he has five boys while running two companies. He advises young entrepreneurs to work 70-80 hour weeks as a clear no-brainer way to get ahead. Hearing the hesitation in Richard Branson's voice in the quote above says a lot about this I think. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9y_YSpYxA&feature=share&t=55m50s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9y_YSpYxA&feature=share&t=5...

cerberusss 13y ago
Wow thanks for that link. Branson had a really, really hard time answering that question. Actually he didn't answer it at all.
shortlived 13y ago
At what point in the vid do they talk about family?
- undershirt 13y ago
  55:50

coffeemug 13y ago

I'm facing many of the challenges Scott is talking about. I churned through the first part of the essay and thought "yes! yes! yes, yes, let's get to the solution!" But the second part of the essay falls short for me. It's a bit like the depression and the broken hand cartoon[1]. I can't disconnect. I know I'm supposed to turn off my phone, do household chores, and take my wife out to a nice dinner. I know taking the time to do these things makes me happier and more productive. It's not that I don't know this, it's that actually doing it requires enormous discipline, but after spending 80 hours a week slowly changing reality by a sheer force of will, I have no more willpower left for anything else. I also know I don't have to feel like I'm changing reality by a sheer force of will, and in fact, feeling this way is a sign that I have a lot to learn about leadership and about life. But that's not something I can just decide to change either. The problem is very real. The solution, at least for me, is as elusive as ever. [1] http://www.akimbocomics.com/?p=573 http://www.akimbocomics.com/?p=573

stephen 13y ago
> The solution, at least for me, is as elusive as ever. If you define "the problem" as "I want to work 80 hours/week + have a healthy family life", well, yes, that's always going to be elusive. I.e. impossible. Pretty sure the answer is to just not work 80 hours/week. > but it's not something I can decide to change either It is probably convenient for you to think that, but unless you have some sort of mental health condition (delusions of grandeur, etc.), I doubt it. One way or the other, you're making choices you want to make. And that's fine, but you might as well be honest with yourself/others about why you're making them, and that you must implicitly be okay with the trade offs.
- AndrewKemendo 13y ago
  It is probably convenient for you to think that, but unless you have some sort of mental health condition (delusions of grandeur, etc.), I doubt it. So what would you say to the young [insert famous and wealthy figure here]?
  - stephen 13y ago

steven2012 13y ago

My wife and I are going through this right now. My wife has a senior director position in a multi-billion dollar financial company, and I am a programmer at a startup. We just had a child several months ago, and it's been very hard trying to balance work and life. It's actually the hardest thing we've both had to do in our lives. Her job is a minimum of 60-hrs per week, but luckily I'm able to limit my work to 40-hrs per week, my company has been incredibly supportive. But truth-be-told my productivity has been affected by at least 50% over these past few months, especially after my wife and I both went back to work. There's been a lot of guilt from both our ends, due to how much slips through the crack both at work and at home because of trying to raise our kid as best as we can. The key, I hope, is to keep focused as a team, meaning we try to pick each other's slack with no resentment. It's tough living and raising a family in Silicon Valley, due to the demands of work, and given how expensive things like houses in decent areas are.

DanBC 13y ago
You're a new parent, you're working 40 hours per week and somehow your employers are incredibly supportive? I don't know what the psychological term is. Cognitive dissonance? Stockholm syndrome?
- steven2012 13y ago
  After working the first few months and taking days/weeks off whenever I wanted to, I took an entire month off with full pay and no PTO days. They didn't even question it. If I need to take more time off on the order of months, it wouldn't be a problem. On top of that I had to push out some deadlines by a couple of months. That's incredibly supportive in my book.
  - gaius 13y ago
    How do your cow-orkers feel? Would any of them like a month off on full pay to pursue a personal project?
- namenotrequired 13y ago

shenoybr 13y ago

In my view, this applies not just to CEOs, but other people too. I've seen many around me and myself included, concentrate work so hard to achieve what we thought was best for ourselves and to keep our family happy. However, it would take a toll that our mislabeled 'needy' other halves would bear the brunt off. Switching off from work is absolutely necessary to keep a work life balance going and its necessary to keep in mind that there are other things that are just as important, like our spouses, family and our health, without which all the hard work is essentially meaningless. I personally tell myself at the end of the day that the work never ends, there is always something to do, and it can wait for tomorrow.

andyl 13y ago

Letting down his Harvard MBA spouse. Yeah I can relate to that. Humblebrag.

mchusma 13y ago

Thanks Scott. Great post, really resonated with me as a recently (successfully) exited founder. You were the most helpful, empathetic, & constructive "No" I got from a VC.

bbwharris 13y ago

If you have children and a career, then you have two jobs. Sorry, you don't get a "break", and you shouldn't expect to "unwind". This isn't going to be popular, but its selfish as hell to think that you "deserve" something because of all the hard work you are doing. You don't. The universe is indifferent and life isn't fair. The only thing you can do is make every moment count and do the things that make you happy. If you are feeling the need for a cocktail and an hour in front of the TV, then I'm going to say that you aren't happy.

QuantumGood 13y ago

A simple tip is to look for activities that regenerate, rather than medicate. "Sitting with a cocktail" isn't a solution to anything, it's treading water at best. A classic regeneration activity for couples is dancing. Meditation is another great choice, but isn't for everyone.

knice 13y ago

It seems like I read a story like this several times each month. It is good advice. We all know it deep down. Yet the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" culture of constant work persists. How do we change that? I ask honestly as someone who is reformed. It took nearly losing my marriage for me to establish balance in my life and work. How do we set up an enduring culture of respect for actual balance?

midas007 13y ago

I've seen plenty of startup CEOs that add value and some that subtract value. The ones that subtract value just push to meet arbitrary deadlines and don't pitch in. The ones that add value actively remove burdens (go get lunch) and look to keep people from burning out (send people home or off to the beach).

reuven 13y ago

When I was working at HP, just after graduating from college, the CEO (Lew Platt) announced that he would be stressing work-life balance among employees. He specifically said that he wanted to accommodate working mothers, and especially single-parent families. He officially blessed the idea of job sharing (such that two people could each have a part-time job) and flexible hours, to help in that way. The particularly poignant part of this story was that he learned the importance of such flexibility the hard way: His wife died from cancer, and he was left taking care of his children by himself. Suddenly, he realized how much work it was to raise children, and he decided that HP should try to take into account people's personal needs, such that they could be with their families and have jobs. I don't know how deep those changes really went, and I don't know how many of them have continued until today. But those announcements and attempts to help people balance their personal and professional lives have stayed with me for about two decades. Sure, I work crazy hours (as a freelancer, and also trying to finish a PhD) -- but part of the reason I work late at night is because I value spending time with my wife and children. I cringe when I see startups (and other companies) expecting people, explicitly or implicitly, to sacrifice their family time for the sake of the company except in unusual circumstances. And yet, there's no doubt that for many of these companies, success often does demand more than a simple, 40-hour week. I'm glad that the original author realizes now that he could and should have spent more time with his family. But I do wonder if he is willing to tell the people working at his startups, "Hey, that program can be debugged tomorrow. Go home and spend time with your children. Software can wait, but they can't."

whyme 13y ago

This reminds me of car ownership... When you ask people if they like their car, most will say yes they do; that is until they decide to get a new one. It's then that they quickly come up with a large con list to warrant an upgrade. Afterwards, they will almost always say that last car was never any good. After all look at the current car vs. the con list of the last. The thing is, they'll be doing this again with their new car until they outgrow it or find problems with it too. And my point is: Hindsight is always 20/20 when your current perspective conveniently matches the narrative for your newly made situation.

maaku 13y ago

Thank you.

lilpirate 13y ago

Urges me to startup before all the relationships kick in my life! Being young certainly helps.

clubhi 13y ago

This guy seems like a total piece of shit. He gives little respect to his family or his employees.