8 ms·

I work for a startup. We're 15 people all told, and by all indications we're doing great. The entire team shows up by 9:30am every day, and the office is empty

I work for a startup. We're 15 people all told, and by all indications we're doing great. The entire team shows up by 9:30am every day, and the office is empty again by 5:30pm, almost like clockwork. I exaggerate a bit... every now and then you might have a couple people stay past 6pm, but that's about it. Overtime is a very rare thing indeed. I find it absurd this meme that to be successful in a startup, you must work yourself to exhaustion every day, sleep very little, and do it again the next day. Or at least, it's not true for any company (startup or otherwise) that I'd ever want to work for.

wdewind 13y ago
A 15 person company is in a completely different place than one in which the founder is the only person and is working on building the basic foundation.
- mkal_tsr 13y ago
  That's exactly where I'm at right now, bootstrapped and solo-founder. It's an interesting beast. I have a tendency to want to do harder sprints because I want to clear out my backlog, clean-up docs, fix some bugs, and then continue on my way, but that's never going to be the reality of the situation for quite a while ... it's all on me. Every bug, email, social-media thing, log entry, bill, server, etc., is on me ... that shit is overwhelming. So I decided to adopt a more "go as you please" policy... only work on things I was interested in or was a blocking issue. I found my burn-outs reduced quite a bit, and now I can see them coming on a lot sooner. On top of that, I get to take breaks from bug fixes to tinker with R&D stuff to remind myself why I'm doing this, what I'm working toward ... which turns into longer working hours with fewer burnouts and more progress ... which is good because it's all on me. So that means my schedule is usually up by 8:30am, showering and coding by 9am and working and taking breaks as I feel like it to be honest. And if something comes up, I try to do that unless I have something that really gets done (like a blocking issue). So a lot of time it can be writing docs at 3:30am because I can't sleep, working 18 hours straight, or taking a weekend to read or visit friends because I've been burning out on a bug. The freedom to build it and enjoy life at the same time, all while working on my pet-project. It's gotten me this far, maybe it can get me farther, shrug, I've never done this before, haha.

wdewind 13y ago

A 15 person company is in a completely different place than one in which the founder is the only person and is working on building the basic foundation.

mkal_tsr 13y ago
That's exactly where I'm at right now, bootstrapped and solo-founder. It's an interesting beast. I have a tendency to want to do harder sprints because I want to clear out my backlog, clean-up docs, fix some bugs, and then continue on my way, but that's never going to be the reality of the situation for quite a while ... it's all on me. Every bug, email, social-media thing, log entry, bill, server, etc., is on me ... that shit is overwhelming. So I decided to adopt a more "go as you please" policy... only work on things I was interested in or was a blocking issue. I found my burn-outs reduced quite a bit, and now I can see them coming on a lot sooner. On top of that, I get to take breaks from bug fixes to tinker with R&D stuff to remind myself why I'm doing this, what I'm working toward ... which turns into longer working hours with fewer burnouts and more progress ... which is good because it's all on me. So that means my schedule is usually up by 8:30am, showering and coding by 9am and working and taking breaks as I feel like it to be honest. And if something comes up, I try to do that unless I have something that really gets done (like a blocking issue). So a lot of time it can be writing docs at 3:30am because I can't sleep, working 18 hours straight, or taking a weekend to read or visit friends because I've been burning out on a bug. The freedom to build it and enjoy life at the same time, all while working on my pet-project. It's gotten me this far, maybe it can get me farther, shrug, I've never done this before, haha.