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How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup

183 points by VuongN 12y ago

guiye 12y ago
this is a feeling that every father have: the contradiction between beeing with our family and trying to make a better future for them, just find a balance soon
ryhanson 12y ago
I too am a young father, my daughter is almost 10 months old. Last week I just recently left the startup I was a part of. I was getting paid an alright salary for it being an early startup who had raised funding or launched yet. I made it a point to make sure I didn't stay late at the office unless it was an absolutely necessity. So I didn't have the extreme hours to deal with, but rather the uncertainty... Not knowing if your next paycheck is going to be one of your lasts or not is not a way I want to live. Having a family to provide for is a bigger and much more important job than grinding out code for a startup that has the potential to be big. Because of the uncertainty and risks that come with working in a startup, I pursued other options. I ended up talking with a smaller software development agency here that has the startup atmosphere in the office (doesnt feel like some corporate job). They are very well off and there is very little chance of them failing or running out of work. The increased salary and full benefits were easily enough for me to leave the startup where I had a slightly less salary, but 20% equity. The 20% equity definitely had the potential to have some huge payoffs, but I wouldn't see those for atleast 5 years, and I much rather have guaranteed stability now rather than hoping for it to come later.
digitalengineer 12y ago
I think most people here have read REWORK, but for those that did not, there's a chapter for the workaholic. http://37signals.com/rework/ http://37signals.com/rework/
VuongN 12y ago
A couple of friends from the HN community & IRC helped edit this piece. Just thought I'd share with others as well.
- karmajunkie 12y ago
  It's a beautiful piece. I well remember that same feeling. I've been meaning for some time to write a piece about what my "startup dedication" (more accurately, my workaholism) cost me: friends, divorce (and a lot of money with that one), self respect, peace of mind... Always seem to have a difficult time finding the words. It's good that you found your own words, but know when to say when. It doesn't have to be this hard.
  - VuongN 12y ago
    Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I hope you have or will find your words and your own happiness. Take care.
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- kokey 12y ago
  It certainly resonates with me. Co founder of a bootstrapped startup with a 7 month old son, and office far away from friends or family. I'm working many more hours per week than I've worked anywhere else over my 20 year career, because I want to have it all: to live close to friends and family and have more free time for both.
  - VuongN 12y ago
    Good luck! I think we all share a dream of having the ability to control Time to satisfy our thirst for creativity and at the same time take care of our love ones. Here's to dreaming, right?! :)
- OldCoder 12y ago
  Vuong, you're welcome :P I helped with structure. But the piece, like the decision, is yours. The fact you're thinking about decisions, and were moved to compose the piece, bodes well. Keep the fact we're allotted only so much Time in the World in mind and, for you, it'll work out. Time, again, Time. You'll have the day in the meadow, daisies and all.
rjf1990 12y ago
Even though I'm not a father I very much enjoyed this piece.
lynchdt 12y ago
My son is a few months old and I work for an early-stage start-up. Man, stop coding at 2am - what you're hacking will need re-hacking in the morning. Go home to your daughter. There will always be tasks on your board. The only sure thing is your daughter will grow up - quicker than your start-up will fail.
- rralian 12y ago
  Oh it's quite likely his startup will fail before his daughter grows up. Same for all of us. That's just the numbers.
babo 12y ago
Cats in the cradle, about the same subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s5r2spPJ8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s5r2spPJ8g
tijs 12y ago
There is no rule that people working at startups need to work more hours than anybody else for the startup to 'be real'. Do yourself a favor and close up shop at 6 and have dinner with your family. Your weekly productivity will go up as your 'restless soul' finds the peace it needs. Your happiness levels will go up and your effective productivity will follow suit.
- dvirsky 12y ago
  I've worked in two early stage start-ups since I became a dad a few years ago, as employee 1 and 2. I do a few things to help me stay involved as a father: 1. Unless there's a real emergency, which is rare, I leave the office around 6-7, even if I still have work planned for today. It's not really early but it leaves me a couple of hours with my kids (I live really close to work, like a 10 minute motorcycle ride). 2. If I still have urgent work to complete, I just continue work from home after they are in bed and I've spent some time with my wife. If you have to work late, this makes for more productive midnight-crunching, because you're at home with your family, you've eaten a proper dinner and not some pizza, had a shower, etc. 3. Once a week I leave work early (around 4pm) and pick my kids up from day care, and I dedicate my entire afternoon to having fun with them. Of course not every early stage start-up would agree to that, but luckily both my last employers were start-ups founded by young dads as well, and they were understanding, and do this themselves as well.
  - conorh 12y ago
    6-7pm seems very late to me, but I guess it depends what time you start at, and what time your kids go to sleep at. That wouldn't leave me much time with my kids. I usually stop work around 4:30 in order to have enough time with the kids before bedtime.
    - bentcorner 12y ago
      I'm the same way (leave around 4:30). For awhile in my career I was coming home around 7, and my wife still reminds me about it from time to time, and is thankful I come home earlier now.
sidcool 12y ago
This has always been my quandary. What in an ideal life should a human do? Dedicate his time to his professional dreams or to his family. Doing excess of any induces a longing for the other.
- whytaka 12y ago
  Desires that can be satisfied are blessings, are they not?
josefresco 12y ago
There is no amount of money that can make up for missing dinner times, bed times, play times and even bad times that you experience with your kids. Don't fool yourself into thinking "once I get this right, I'll have all the time in the world to spend with my kids". This will never happen, and if it does it will be too late to form that close bond, and share your life with your kids. I'm in to work (my own business) at 7:30, leave by 5 at the latest and make sure to drop all my stress/anxieties at the door. I have weekends off, and rarely miss events or chances to ditch work and support my two girls.
- viame 12y ago
  I don't have a wife or kids but this is a nice answer, thanks.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    Thanks for sharing. I don't think you need a wife and kids to have this outlook on work. If you have a family (mom, dad, uncles, aunts etc.), or friends or even a hobby, balancing those with work is key, and unlike your job/startup those "people" in your life will be around a lot longer and will enrich your life more.
- deleted 12y ago
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- purephase 12y ago
  Agreed 100%. My little girl is almost 2 and I while I can't say I've been there for every moment, she has been my priority #1. There are too many precious moments and missing just one of them is an awful feeling. To each their own, but I would never sacrifice a moment with my daughter unless is was absolutely necessary. As contrary as it might seem to people in the startup bubble, the importance placed on most day-to-day work is an illusion. Pop the bubble and hug your kids. In the long run, that relationship will mean much, much more to you.
justinpaulson 12y ago
No one's tombstone says "Devoted Employee". I realized when my daughter was born that I don't have to achieve anything in this world other than to make her life wonderful. Me being there is part of that. I have also realized as I've grown older that we are all just going to die. I had focused for a long time on establishing myself, on building something, on achieving some financial or personal goal, and then it all hit me that it really won't matter. The thing I really need to focus on is enjoying every moment of my life before it is over. And being with my family is the most enjoyment I ever feel. Now, obviously everyone doesn't feel the same way or have the same priorities and I'm not telling anyone how they need to feel, but personally this realization has lifted a weight off of my shoulders and caused me to enjoy life more and more every day. Edit: That being said...I usually make sure to leave work at 5, and if I still feel like I need to do some more, I wait until I put my daughter to bed to fire up the laptop.
fasteo 12y ago
Beautifully written. Exactly how I feel nowadays, but every time I think about it, the great Walter White comes to my mind: We are not doing it for our families; we are doing it because we fcking like what we do, we feel fcking alive doing it and we are fcking good at it.
marcelsalathe 12y ago
Founders with kids: http://priceonomics.com/founders-with-kids/ http://priceonomics.com/founders-with-kids/
davedx 12y ago
As a contractor who's interested in startups and who has a 6 month daughter, I can certainly empathize. Throughout all of my crazy ideas, side projects, contracts in different timezones, bits of overtime, all of it, I've constantly kept a check on myself that I don't spend too much time away from my family. I decided not to pursue a potential CTO position at a promising startup because it might have required me to work abroad for months at a time. One of the things that has influenced me here was an article that did the rounds a few years ago. I think it was this one, "Top five regrets of the dying" [1]: "2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship." Do not miss your kids growing up, you might regret it forever. Good luck! :) [1] http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five...
- czbond 12y ago
  Your situation is mine exactly. I founded 2 startups, one died - one is going strong, but I left to create a better balance. The "regrets of the dying" was the exact article that made me re-shape everything. I've even turned down some VPE/CTO roles to avoid the endless barrage of work.
jmspring 12y ago
"Being the “professional” in a startup world, pushing last hopes of entrepreneurial youth" If you feel that "being professional" includes the need to push yourself and miss events you can't recapture, it's not being "professional" -- especially if you are an employee. Startups that push the "we are a family -- we work hard, play hard, stay late together" are in a sense delusional -- yes the thrill of building a company is compelling, but unless it is your own company - you are sacrificing yourself unnecessarily for someone else's benefit. There will always be another startup, but early months of a child's life where changes are there daily, hourly.
Killah911 12y ago
Seriously! How are people giving "advice" to this guy? It's not a F#$%ing blog post, it's a work of art... Do you guys write in to HBO after every episode of Silicon Valley? It's an great piece (IMHO) & if it helps you reflect, then it's done its job. It's not a problem do be solved (yes, I know... that's what we do... but really though....)
- douglee650 12y ago
  i think the reaction people are having is that it's more of a navel-gazing, wallowing piece - the focus is still on the "artistry" of the father's poetic ability, as opposed to the subject, who seems to be there to adorn as a backdrop.
- justinpaulson 12y ago
  Settle down guy, people are just discussing their feelings about the situation. People do get on forums and discuss episodes of silicon valley after they have aired, and they discuss it with their friends/coworkers in real life. Are these comments not the appropriate place to voice our feelings/insights/experiences with the subject of the post??
  - Killah911 12y ago
    feelings/insights/experiences are fine. Comments were condemning the author for staying at work till 2am.... that's just plain crazy to me. I wouldn't be surprised if he took some creative licenses and that's totally OK to do in a poem. I'm just glad that he shared a work of art which is relevant to our community. If it evokes emotions, reflections, that's fine... If we look at it as a blog post asking us to solve his problem for him, that's something else. We don't need to solve the author's problem (i.e. by giving him advice on finding work life balance). Quite frankly, this piece made me think of the illusions we create for ourselves. In some ways, we're happy to always be busy. I for one, wouldn't really know what to do with "free" time (probably start another side project). I agree that this is the place to discuss this matter. I guess I typically hold HN to a higher standard and generally the comments are very insightful.
apierre 12y ago
I have a 9 months old daughter. I've been trying productivity techniques for years but I must say she has been the best motivator ever. Knowing that I have to collect her from nursery, help with the bedtime routine, I need to finish as much work as possible during the day, no time to waste. At the beginning, it was just impossible for me to think finishing working at 6pm but in fact, I just feel better in my mind and my productivity skyrocketed since then. Not to mention that I also stopped wasting time with bad projects and client. Have a baby! Best pomodoro ever ;)
michaelochurch 12y ago
Uncorrelated but perhaps relevant blog post I wrote this morning, on the value of time: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/if-youll-ever-die-dont-apply/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/if-youll-ever... The only people who care about excellence are the excellent, and we almost never get to call the shots (we're bad at politics). Since the people evaluating our work are in no way qualified to assess excellence or even slightly-better-than-mediocre-goodness, most of our work is just a commodity, and the price is set by the winner's curse: schmucks who haven't learned (either by raising children, or by having people close to them get sick and die) how finite time is. It's better to compete to excel than to compete to suffer, but the software/startup world is run by people who don't value excellence in the least, and who wouldn't be qualified to evaluate it even if they did. So that steers us toward "compete to suffer" dynamics, also known as "fish frying" (http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/).
Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
"My dear Daughter, Wait for me." Of all the things that might happen, much as we'd like it to be different, I can guarantee that this is one which won't happen. However upsetting it may be now (or looking back in the future), time isn't going to wait for you and all those firsts, all those events and experiences you miss, won't wait and won't happen again. We tell ourselves it isn't a choice but for many of us it is. Most of us could earn enough money to support our family comfortably in a relatively regular 9 - 5 job. We might not be personally as satisfied and we might not be as financially well off, but we can choose one possible version of our life over another. It's absolutely fair to say that you have to balance the needs of being a "good" father (which let's remember is a subjective term in many ways), against your own personal needs (and indeed the needs of your partner, the rest of your family and so on), but most people reading this board are fortunate enough that there genuinely is an element of choice. No-one should tell you that working long hours so your child need never go without (or so you're personally happy and the time you spend with them you do so without resentment) is better or worse than coaching their sports team and being there every bath time, but whatever you decide to do, I think the most important thing is to accept that you're doing it because you made a conscious decision - ultimately that's going to be the only way you'll be at peace with it. And if you haven't made a conscious decision, the for heavens' sake sit down with your other half and do so. Of all the outcomes, doing what you're doing without thinking about what you want and what works best for your family maybe the only truly bad one.
- lmg643 12y ago
  I would agree with this. People have a way of heavily discounting the present in favor of the uncertain future. It becomes a habit, almost an addiction, to medicate feelings in the present (FUD - perhaps their anxiety over being a parent, even). A friend of mine uses the term "future tripping" - I like it. I will give this guy a lot of credit for honesty. It's tempting to pretend that starting a company is something you are doing solely to provide a better life for others, when the truth is it is just as often, if not more so, for the self-actualization need of the founder. From the wife/kid's perspective - they want you to be happy, but they also want you to be present and engaged. From that perspective, what you do to make the money isn't so important as the fact that you can provide, and be part of the fun. "believing that this is the great sacrifice I must make, the choice I took upon myself for the betterment of the family, for you, but I know that’s not entirely true A little or a lot, it’s for me This addiction or obsession I seem to have with work"
kungfooey 12y ago
Nope. Nope. Nope. She won't wait for you, mate. Time doesn't wait. If you want to be with your family, they have to be your priority before any fame, glory, and wealth from your ability to churn out ideas or sling some code. Don't live a life of regret. Make do with less. Maybe get there slower, but be a happier person. I'm in a similar situation in that I have two young children (under 5) and I am the co-founder of a small-ish startup in healthcare. I make sure to leave every day at 5pm so I can be with my kids for a few hours. If I have a busy week, I'll get up earlier (5 or 6am) and get my work done earlier in the day. If additional work needs to get done, it gets done after they go to bed. Importantly, my co-founders also have families and value them as I do. If that were not the case, I would not be involved in this company.
lkrubner 12y ago
I think Paul Graham summed up the situation fairly well when he wrote: "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast." and this: "Combine all these multipliers, and I'm claiming you could be 36 times more productive than you're expected to be in a random corporate job." and the reasons why we might want to do a startup: "For example, one way to make a million dollars would be to work for the Post Office your whole life, and save every penny of your salary. Imagine the stress of working for the Post Office for fifty years. In a startup you compress all this stress into three or four years. You do tend to get a certain bulk discount if you buy the economy-size pain, but you can't evade the fundamental conservation law. If starting a startup were easy, everyone would do it." http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html That essay can be read both as an inspiration and as a warning. On the positive side, it is good to realize how much you can achieve in a few short years. On the negative side, you must be wholly focused on one thing during those few short years. The rest of your life needs to put on hold. A personal anecdote: I am a bit of a news junkie, and I typically spend an hour or two a day reading the news, but when I had my own startup, I gave up reading the news. For the years 2003 to 2004, and for most of 2006, I rarely read the news. That was a huge change of personal habits for me. But avoiding the news was important for me to stay focused. I would write code for 12 hours a day, sometimes 14 hours a day. I think one has to have a very narrow focus during the first year or two of a startup.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  That's predicated on things working out. In the real world the chances are very large that you will simply lose the years and get nothing back for it. And even if things work out, nothing will give you back the first four years of your childs life. Been there, done that.
- teekert 12y ago
  The !POTENTIAL! return is correlated with the amount of "focussing on one thing during those short few years". You may end up loosing your kids childhood while still working normal hours the rest of your/his/her life. That is provided not to much of your own money is in your startup, if that is the case you loose even more.
silverbax88 12y ago
As a parent (of now a teenager who is barreling towards college) - I would advise to work a lot, but work will always be there. Your kids will not. Your life should be what you do when you are not working - not the other way around. Many years ago, I was working 80+ hour weeks, week after week, and my daughter was very young. Consistently, I would not even SEE her from Thursday morning until Saturday afternoon. I burned out on that job. I felt shell-shocked. I went to dinner with my wife and realized that we had grown apart. I hated that. I hated missing my daughter growing up. I hated that my daily thoughts were about work, what was happening with work, and that my interactions with my coworkers had overridden my interaction with my family. So I decided that my life would revolve around my family, and who I was outside of work, not the other way around. Over the years I have changed jobs, started companies, had wild success, had some failures, but through it all I felt even-keel because it all felt like my LIFE was the same. The cubicles, the coworkers, the employees, those all change but my wife and daughter, the life we share, that has been constant. I actually don't feel like I've changed jobs at all even though in reality I've worked at about 6 different places and started 2 companies. Don't think that work and success will make it alright in the end. It won't. Don't believe people who think you are slacking because you aren't working 100 hours a week. Those people aren't executing efficiently. I can promise you this is true because I have left a trail of Type A 'go-go-go' personalities in my wake because they couldn't match my output and drive, even though they were burning midnight oil and I was at home watching Jeopardy! with the fam. I guess what I'm trying to say is don't listen to all of those people who are making horrible mistakes. Work hard, but read 'The Power of Full Engagement' by Tony Shwartz and realize that you can work like mad and relax and you will beat the crap out of everyone around you.
- omilu 12y ago
  thanks for this! best thing i read all day.
koonsolo 12y ago
I go to work for my family, and I go home for my family.
- VuongN 12y ago
  A very short and sweet thought. Love it. My wife and I have a pact: we'll live for our children and family but we'll always continue to develop ourselves. This way, there is never a resentment toward the people you love. I, too, work and go home for my family.
dpeck 12y ago
Intense, and newly sharpened, focus on earnings is a common trait of new fathers. Its a beneficial trait, but one that has to be appropriately governed. A nice bit of prose about that struggle and the ways we coddle ourselves as we get too far out of line.
ttcbj 12y ago
I really appreciate this poem. I have a two year old and a six month old, and I had no conception of how I committed I would feel to my children until I had them. I actually took some risks and worked super hard in my mid-20s to mid-30s, prior to having kids. I am so glad I did it then. Another way to read this post, if you are young, is as a warning - you may think it is scary or hard to take risks now, but go for it. When you have children, it will be much, much harder. Every minute you are working, you will feel torn that you aren't with your kids, and every minute you are with your kids, you will feel torn that you aren't working (to provide for them). If you can use your twenties to gain some financial freedom and control of your time, it is really worth it. I went through a period of thinking that I had 'wasted' my 20s on hard work, while everyone else was partying/backpacking/skiing/whatever. I now realize that my 20s (and early 30s) were an investment for a vastly better reward - the time and financial freedom to be with my family in my late 30s/early 40s when my children are young. I couldn't be happier with the outcome of those choices, and I didn't really see it coming, because I did not understand the depth of feeling I would have for my children. But for the young people out there in their 20s - your opportunity cost will never be lower. Go for it. Invest in yourself. Working until 10pm on something you care about won't always be without painful tradeoffs. Forgoing income to try to start something won't always be so easy.
nasmorn 12y ago
My rule is that I spend enough time with the kids if I rather go working than be with them. That said I never work more than 45 hours a week and sometimes only 30. Might not work if you do 60 or 80
normloman 12y ago
Oh for fucks sake, go home. This is your kid we're talking about. If getting a 9 to 5 job means spending more time with your kid, I promise you won't regret it. Better yet, keep your start up, just work a regular day. You only think you need to work long hours. You don't. You'll be more productive just working a regular schedule. I can't believe we're even debating this. Reality check people: Your kids should come before your job.
laohu 12y ago
The endless "hours matter" debate. For me, it's been a revolution at RescueTime. I had a 5 year old and new born when I started. You structure your day right, you should be able to get done what is useful in a day's work in around 5-6 hours for most days. Otherwise, you need to restructure your day. You're doing something wrong-- excess communications, excess task-switching, excess research, over-engineering or something. By consistently paying attention to getting the most out of the hours between 0830/0900 and 1530/1600, I am able to get at least 3-4 hours a day with my kids. There's the odd day where I get back on the computer after they are in bed. The simple truth is you can restructure your work to match your life with kids, you cannot restructure your kids to match your life with work.
hrish2006 12y ago
Hey thanks for sharing! . It's beautifully written.
- VuongN 12y ago
  Thank you. I really appreciate the kind words. -V.
hrish2006 12y ago
Hey thanks for sharing! . It's beautifully written.
maaku 12y ago
Be there for your daughter, or you are not her father. I feel sorry and pity for you. I would suggest thinking about another job (and btw, it is 100% possible to work normal hours at a startup).
mantis369 12y ago
I think you have to pick one. Startup or kids. You can work at a burnout pace for 5 years in the hope of getting rich, or you can be there for your young children. In my opinion, if you're going to try the startup thing, there's nothing stopping you from having kids afterwards. Except that if your startup(s) didn't succeed, your skills might translate perfectly into a career that can sustain a family. And having gone that route, you might have missed out on opportunities to bond with a good partner.
- smileysteve 12y ago
  Or you can work at your startup at a sustainable pace. From a lean startup perspective, the more burnout pace you work at, the less likely you are to close the feedback loop and actually produce the right feature. From a Mythical Man hour perspective, you're more likely to be less productive the more burnout pace that you try to maintain.
  - mantis369 12y ago
    I don't think VCs are interested in anyone who wants to work at a sustainable pace. Also, the piece we're discussing doesn't make it sound like the author works at a sustainable pace.
hajderr 12y ago
Frankly, startup or no startup. You can only do so much work within a day. With a bit of planning and discipline you can manage to stay effective and be a part of the family while building your startup.
amurph 12y ago
So, I am the child of a startup founder. Roughly a year before I was born my dad founded a startup. Throughout most of my early childhood he would routinely be working for 10+ hours at the office and then work after me and my sibling were put to sleep. Plus, he was usually travelling 4-5 days a month trying to pitch his idea (we didn't live in a big center for startups). Basically, he wasn't there. I love my dad. A lot. He is still one of my favorite people, and when I come home it's always a joy to talk to him. But, he just wasn't around all that often as a kid, and I know he really tried, but you just can't be in two places at once. Honestly, I think it was a lot harder on my mom, what with the financial difficulties (especially when the startup eventually went belly up for a bit) raising me and my sibling on her own, all that stuff. I'm not angry at my dad, he did something he really wanted to do, and worked really hard at it, but you know you can't stop growing when you're five. The only piece of 'advice' I have is try to carve out a regular time for being with your kids. Every Friday night, my dad would take me and my sibling down to the lake, and we'd get food, and talk, and play at an arcade (I still can totally beat him at Space Invaders, by the way), and that w as a really meaningful time for me and my sister, especially on the weekends he was working, or when we found him passed out in his chair after working all night.
haily 12y ago
What if, instead of "My dear daughter, Wait for me.", why not "My dear daughter, join me.". It's the journey. Take your daughter with you on your journey to build your experiences together. When she is ready, she will branch off to continue with her journey. She will then learn from you and take your grand children on her journey and so on...
jader201 12y ago
This is a good reminder, to me, of why I have chosen to delay any ambitions of my own startup until after my kids are grown and no longer want to spend (as much) time with me. However, I think it's important to remember that we can just as easily get caught in the trap of being present with our family, but not "present", because we're stuck in a 9-5 job that is sucking the soul out of us. I'm currently in a position that consists about 80% meetings and 20% reading/responding to email, when I would so much rather be coding. I come home feeling unfulfilled, and am irritated way too easily. Some people can still cope with a job like this and separate themselves from it as to not affect their home life. I wish I was one of those, but I'm not. And since I recognize that I'm not, I have chosen to find -- and have found -- another job that without a doubt will not have this impact on me. If you're in the same boat, and are not able to cope and separate yourself from the drudgery of your 9-5 job, find one that you enjoy better. And I personally think it's worth even taking a cut in pay, if you can and if you have to.
beat 12y ago
Two weeks ago, my daughter asked me if she could give up on college for a while and come work with me on my startup instead. She's 20 now. I couldn't be more pleased or proud. For years, I worked in "safe" enterprise jobs, rather than the risk of startups, for the financial security of my children. They're adults now, and I'm starting over in many ways. I'm twice the age of the "startup founder" trope. It feels very natural to me now. As for my daughter... she has the entrepreneurial spirit. She wants to be challenged, to learn and grow in ways she won't get to do in college. Working for me, she'll get to do things she wouldn't get to do in a slower, safer business. And she has a strong self-interest, too - if it succeeds, I'll become very wealthy, almost as a side effect. As my heir, she eventually benefits from that as well. So from the point of view of both her learning and her long-term financial security, helping me is the best thing she can do for herself. Smart kid.
thom 12y ago
Bill Foster: I'm the Bad Guy? Sergeant Prendergast: Yeah. Bill Foster: How'd that happen? I did everything they told me to. Did you know I build missiles? I helped to protect America. You should be rewarded for that. But instead they give it to the plastic surgeons, you know they lied to me. Sergeant Prendergast: Is that what this is about? You're angry because you got lied to? Is that why my chicken dinner is drying out in the oven? Hey, they lie to everyone. They lie to the fish. But that doesn't give you any special right to do what you did today. The only that makes you special is that little girl. Now let's go. Lets go!
Spooky23 12y ago
You have to make choices. I choose my wife, son & future kids as priority #1. That choice came with costs -- I'd probably be the CIO of a pretty major org at this point, but that means 10-12 hour days that I won't do. That doesn't mean that life is over, it just means that you need to be more strategic about opportunities, and may need to scope out some roles.
VuongN 12y ago
I've read everyone's comment thus far. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for allowing me the honor to be part of your discussion. I figured that we're not trying to find a correct answer here. But knowing our community of engineers, hackers, lovers etc. we'd always trying to solve any problems coming our way :) My humble opinion is: feelings are honesty trying to express themselves. Even if we can't solve the problem of "feelings", I'm quite happy we can search for it together as a group. I wrote this piece during a tough part of the startup last year. I recently looked at it again and realized it wasn't just about me but rather about all my friends, I actually do refer to you folks on here as "friends", with the common dream. I think at some point on one train-ride home or another, we've searched for some sort of understanding and hope to know that we're not the only one. Today, I'm happy to know that my "friends" do share the same feeling at one point or another. And we are not alone. -Vuong.
rmgraham 12y ago
I work from home for a startup. My daughter is in the next room, I can hear her watching Curious George. And I still teared up reading the poem, because I could have written it myself. I don't know about the author, but for me the startup part of the equation is a symptom, not a cause.
OneOneOneOne 12y ago
Here is a calculation that might put things in perspective... Your age + 25 This is how old you will be when a kid born this year graduates from college (typical undergrad.) If you are waiting to have kids add those years to your age.
bronson 12y ago
"How can I explain to you The Gods and Angels had clipped Daddy’s wings?" Because they didn't. Daddy's own choices and values have apparently clipped his wings. Hope you're OK with it. It's nice writing but ultimately it reads like a thin excuse. I hope daddy uses better time management in the future.
laureny 12y ago
It's a bit of a disturbing read for a couple of reasons: - Going to an early stage start up as a young father is not a sacrifice, it's a selfish act. You are thinking more about yourself and what you want to do (and not do) rather than what's best for your family. Hate the idea of a 9-to-5 job? Well, suck it: the regular hours and clockwork and guaranteed paycheck will go a long way toward making your family more stable and stress free. Maybe it's a good time to also ask yourself if there are no hidden reasons behind choosing this line of work. I know I've seen fathers do this because they didn't realize they were not interested in the chores involved in raising a young age infant. - I'm guessing the infant is less than two years old (the text mentions diapers) so I'm shocked that this text is not giving credit to who really, really deserves it: the Mom. At that age, the infant doesn't really care much whether Daddy is around at night time or to play with toys, but this father really needs to realize how much stress his work situation is putting on his wife. I have a two year old son and I quit the start up I was working at before his birth. I felt it just wouldn't be fair to my wife to stay there. There will always be start ups to join should I ever want to try this again, but a child growing up is an opportunity that doesn't occur often in one's life.
- VuongN 12y ago
  I wrote this during a very tough run at the startup. Perhaps let me share a little bit more so that is it in context. First and foremost, most credits, indeed go to my wife and family. The reason why I didn't mention my wife in this piece other than "You’re the only cool shade in the hottest of days/For a weary soul/that your Mother saved many years ago" is because this was a letter to my daughter. This piece was part of a collection of my thoughts from last year (when I was thirty) and I did thank my wife and family when I publish it: http://vuongnguyen.com/thirty-ba-muoi.html http://vuongnguyen.com/thirty-ba-muoi.html. I'm 31 last month and I've been with my wife for 11 years now. We're best friends in many way and we support each other in our own dreams. Before my daughter was born, I was mostly doing consulting. I made sure I spent time walking and taking care of my wife. I made it a point to never miss a doctor appointment or any pregnancy/childbirth classes we have together. I really appreciated every step of the way. Then my daughter was born, I stopped accepting new clients (as mentioned in the piece). Spent time with my wife and newborn. Then I stayed home for another three months with my daughter so my wife could return to work. When I joined the startup, after much discussion and encouragement from my wife, I also made a promise to never miss any doctor appointment. That is still true. I feel blessed that I was able to afford much flexibility with my family and I never take it for granted. I know many other folks who go through a much more difficult time. I think there is much more I could do and of course I'll continue to do my very best to be a good person every day. This was written as a personal thought and shared because I wanted to feel for myself and others, that we are not sitting alone on that home-bound train, if that makes any sense. I hope that clarifies things a bit more. -V.
orky56 12y ago
Having been recently married and with no kids yet, I am fortunate enough to have a supportive wife who is letting me pursue a partially selfish dream of founding a startup. The glamor of the pursuit has long since faded. Execution is my hammer for every type of hurdle while Time lurks in the shadows conspiring with Denial and Self Doubt. I hope that I'll have the perfect lifestyle that will allow me to spend quality time with the ones I have chosen to be with and have brought into this world. Quality time can only exist if they are provided for with more than just love, but also a roof over their head, money to pay bills, and food on their plates. What we all seek is security and founding a startup puts the burden on you more often than a corporate job. There is no get rich quick scheme here but I have to try to see if I can achieve immortality by killing myself through hard work. If I am a mere mortal, I will succumb to the daily grind having a bit more certainty of my capabilities and a steady paycheck.
ThomPete 12y ago
When I moved to New York to join 80/20, I left my then girlfriend and our son who was 3 back in Denmark for almost a year. A lot of my (now) wifes friends told her that I was crazy to do that, that their husbands would never do that to them or their kids and that I chose career instead of family. The thought of disrupting ones life for something uncertain is to many the #1 fear and is the reason why many say "we would love to live and work abroad" but when it comes down to it they don't. My thinking one the choice I made was tactially problematic, it is never a good idea move away from certainty in the short run. But strategically I feel like I made the right decision and for a very simple reason. Your kids grow up and while they might adore you when they are young they will also grow up and become their own individual. And while I definitely want to see them grow up I also want to be there with them when they are older and perhaps even be something other than a dad. Lifes complicated and there are no right or wrong choices. All we can do is trust our intution and that might sometimes be trusting what seems counter intuitive. We all now live together in NY and had another son. And while I certainly understand the difficulty of finding the balance between you and your family but never forget that there will be a point where you are not that type of father anymore and by that time if you are not careful you loose whats just as important as seeing your kids grow up, you loost your ability to define you as more than a dad.
angersock 12y ago
From my mother's sleep I fell into the Startup, And I hunched in its pixel mines unable to doze. Sixty miles from home, loosed from its dream of life, I ran into black tasks and the nightmare deadlines. When I was canned they washed me out of the company with no equity. (all apologies to Randall Jarrell)
akras14 12y ago
First comment on Hacker News. Related to this poem 100% and it brought tears to my eyes. And I usually don't get poetry.
__abc 12y ago
I work in a rapid growing startup that requires more than 8 hours a day and I have two young children. My priorities are 1 - Children 2 - Marriage 3 - Living arrangements / lifestyle (sans work) 4 - Career (but I take my career VERY seriously, I've been an executive for 9 years and I'm 33) My routine 1 - Alarm goes off at 4:30 am 2 - I pickup around the house, toss in laundry as needed 3 - Catch the 5:45 am train to be into the office roughly @ 6:15 am 4 - I leave the office @ 5:30 pm to catch the 5:50 pm train to be home roughly @ 6:15 pm 5 - I play with the kids 6 - We then eat dinner together as a family 7 - I bathe and put both kids to bed around 7:30 - 8:00 pm 8 - I help pick up the rest of my house with my wife, it usually ends @ 8:30 pm (we talk a lot while doing this) 9 - My wife and I sit down on the couch/porch/etc and hang out for a few hours while I also work 10 - I'm usually in bed by 11 - 11:30 pm If I have more work to do that evening I might have my laptop out while hanging out with my wife or stay up later. This is usually 4 nights out of the week. Things that shift to "once in a while" given my priorities 1 - A full 8 hours of sleep 2 - Seeing that television show 3 - Seeing that movie 4 - Random nights out with friends 5 - Etc These simply just take a back seat. Things I never miss, and spend as much time with as someone working a standard 9-5 (although I do head into the office earlier than most) 1 - My kids (first and foremost) 2 - My wife 3 - My house 4 - My career and type of company I appreciate being involved with To me, I keep the things that matter most and give up things that I found out I didn't really need (for context, I never really watched a lot of television). This schedule works for me and I end up working 10 hours a day and never miss a beat with my kids. PS. I also about twice a day, for 5 minutes, FaceTime with my wife/kids while at work. It's a nice break and a chance for me to see them during the day given I miss them in the morning.
brikmaster 12y ago
I like the sentiment. When I started my first true startup, after being an executive in a high profile one, we put our own capital in and then literally 6 months later, we conceived triplets spontaneously while having a 2 year old son. While I was terrified of what would happen with the startup and the family, there was no question to me that we had to stay on the path. That startup ultimately was sold in a good outcome and I am now two startups past that. My kids are now 11 and 9*3. They know that I work in startups and many times they visit the office and hangout. While I have some regrets, like flying to Europe every 2-3 weeks post acquisition for over a year, I want my kids to know that I do what I do because I love it and it is how I put bread on the table. While I don't wish my life choices on them, I want them to know that being the master of their own destiny is a choice their dad has fully embraced whatever they decide. All of that said, even when I was flying to Europe, I made it a point to move heaven and earth to be home with them every single weekend during that period of time and was actively and highly engaged while at home. While you can choose to work hard, you also have to choose to be a great father and role model IMO. Great piece.
developer786 12y ago
Not so long ago I posted a message I then reposted and managed a -4 Karma somehow. I was going to take a big leap in to a post with salaries far beyond what I would pay myself. Many here told me to take the risk, go for it etc etc. But I chose my family over a fat pay-check. No regrets!

183 points by VuongN 12y ago

guiye 12y ago

this is a feeling that every father have: the contradiction between beeing with our family and trying to make a better future for them, just find a balance soon

ryhanson 12y ago

I too am a young father, my daughter is almost 10 months old. Last week I just recently left the startup I was a part of. I was getting paid an alright salary for it being an early startup who had raised funding or launched yet. I made it a point to make sure I didn't stay late at the office unless it was an absolutely necessity. So I didn't have the extreme hours to deal with, but rather the uncertainty... Not knowing if your next paycheck is going to be one of your lasts or not is not a way I want to live. Having a family to provide for is a bigger and much more important job than grinding out code for a startup that has the potential to be big. Because of the uncertainty and risks that come with working in a startup, I pursued other options. I ended up talking with a smaller software development agency here that has the startup atmosphere in the office (doesnt feel like some corporate job). They are very well off and there is very little chance of them failing or running out of work. The increased salary and full benefits were easily enough for me to leave the startup where I had a slightly less salary, but 20% equity. The 20% equity definitely had the potential to have some huge payoffs, but I wouldn't see those for atleast 5 years, and I much rather have guaranteed stability now rather than hoping for it to come later.

digitalengineer 12y ago

I think most people here have read REWORK, but for those that did not, there's a chapter for the workaholic. http://37signals.com/rework/ http://37signals.com/rework/

VuongN 12y ago

A couple of friends from the HN community & IRC helped edit this piece. Just thought I'd share with others as well.

karmajunkie 12y ago
It's a beautiful piece. I well remember that same feeling. I've been meaning for some time to write a piece about what my "startup dedication" (more accurately, my workaholism) cost me: friends, divorce (and a lot of money with that one), self respect, peace of mind... Always seem to have a difficult time finding the words. It's good that you found your own words, but know when to say when. It doesn't have to be this hard.
- VuongN 12y ago
  Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I hope you have or will find your words and your own happiness. Take care.
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kokey 12y ago
It certainly resonates with me. Co founder of a bootstrapped startup with a 7 month old son, and office far away from friends or family. I'm working many more hours per week than I've worked anywhere else over my 20 year career, because I want to have it all: to live close to friends and family and have more free time for both.
- VuongN 12y ago
  Good luck! I think we all share a dream of having the ability to control Time to satisfy our thirst for creativity and at the same time take care of our love ones. Here's to dreaming, right?! :)
OldCoder 12y ago
Vuong, you're welcome :P I helped with structure. But the piece, like the decision, is yours. The fact you're thinking about decisions, and were moved to compose the piece, bodes well. Keep the fact we're allotted only so much Time in the World in mind and, for you, it'll work out. Time, again, Time. You'll have the day in the meadow, daisies and all.

rjf1990 12y ago

Even though I'm not a father I very much enjoyed this piece.

lynchdt 12y ago

My son is a few months old and I work for an early-stage start-up. Man, stop coding at 2am - what you're hacking will need re-hacking in the morning. Go home to your daughter. There will always be tasks on your board. The only sure thing is your daughter will grow up - quicker than your start-up will fail.

rralian 12y ago
Oh it's quite likely his startup will fail before his daughter grows up. Same for all of us. That's just the numbers.

babo 12y ago

Cats in the cradle, about the same subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s5r2spPJ8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s5r2spPJ8g

tijs 12y ago

There is no rule that people working at startups need to work more hours than anybody else for the startup to 'be real'. Do yourself a favor and close up shop at 6 and have dinner with your family. Your weekly productivity will go up as your 'restless soul' finds the peace it needs. Your happiness levels will go up and your effective productivity will follow suit.

dvirsky 12y ago
I've worked in two early stage start-ups since I became a dad a few years ago, as employee 1 and 2. I do a few things to help me stay involved as a father: 1. Unless there's a real emergency, which is rare, I leave the office around 6-7, even if I still have work planned for today. It's not really early but it leaves me a couple of hours with my kids (I live really close to work, like a 10 minute motorcycle ride). 2. If I still have urgent work to complete, I just continue work from home after they are in bed and I've spent some time with my wife. If you have to work late, this makes for more productive midnight-crunching, because you're at home with your family, you've eaten a proper dinner and not some pizza, had a shower, etc. 3. Once a week I leave work early (around 4pm) and pick my kids up from day care, and I dedicate my entire afternoon to having fun with them. Of course not every early stage start-up would agree to that, but luckily both my last employers were start-ups founded by young dads as well, and they were understanding, and do this themselves as well.
- conorh 12y ago
  6-7pm seems very late to me, but I guess it depends what time you start at, and what time your kids go to sleep at. That wouldn't leave me much time with my kids. I usually stop work around 4:30 in order to have enough time with the kids before bedtime.
  - bentcorner 12y ago
    I'm the same way (leave around 4:30). For awhile in my career I was coming home around 7, and my wife still reminds me about it from time to time, and is thankful I come home earlier now.

sidcool 12y ago

This has always been my quandary. What in an ideal life should a human do? Dedicate his time to his professional dreams or to his family. Doing excess of any induces a longing for the other.

whytaka 12y ago
Desires that can be satisfied are blessings, are they not?

josefresco 12y ago

There is no amount of money that can make up for missing dinner times, bed times, play times and even bad times that you experience with your kids. Don't fool yourself into thinking "once I get this right, I'll have all the time in the world to spend with my kids". This will never happen, and if it does it will be too late to form that close bond, and share your life with your kids. I'm in to work (my own business) at 7:30, leave by 5 at the latest and make sure to drop all my stress/anxieties at the door. I have weekends off, and rarely miss events or chances to ditch work and support my two girls.

viame 12y ago
I don't have a wife or kids but this is a nice answer, thanks.
- josefresco 12y ago
  Thanks for sharing. I don't think you need a wife and kids to have this outlook on work. If you have a family (mom, dad, uncles, aunts etc.), or friends or even a hobby, balancing those with work is key, and unlike your job/startup those "people" in your life will be around a lot longer and will enrich your life more.
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purephase 12y ago
Agreed 100%. My little girl is almost 2 and I while I can't say I've been there for every moment, she has been my priority #1. There are too many precious moments and missing just one of them is an awful feeling. To each their own, but I would never sacrifice a moment with my daughter unless is was absolutely necessary. As contrary as it might seem to people in the startup bubble, the importance placed on most day-to-day work is an illusion. Pop the bubble and hug your kids. In the long run, that relationship will mean much, much more to you.

justinpaulson 12y ago

No one's tombstone says "Devoted Employee". I realized when my daughter was born that I don't have to achieve anything in this world other than to make her life wonderful. Me being there is part of that. I have also realized as I've grown older that we are all just going to die. I had focused for a long time on establishing myself, on building something, on achieving some financial or personal goal, and then it all hit me that it really won't matter. The thing I really need to focus on is enjoying every moment of my life before it is over. And being with my family is the most enjoyment I ever feel. Now, obviously everyone doesn't feel the same way or have the same priorities and I'm not telling anyone how they need to feel, but personally this realization has lifted a weight off of my shoulders and caused me to enjoy life more and more every day. Edit: That being said...I usually make sure to leave work at 5, and if I still feel like I need to do some more, I wait until I put my daughter to bed to fire up the laptop.

fasteo 12y ago

Beautifully written. Exactly how I feel nowadays, but every time I think about it, the great Walter White comes to my mind: We are not doing it for our families; we are doing it because we fcking like what we do, we feel fcking alive doing it and we are fcking good at it.

marcelsalathe 12y ago

Founders with kids: http://priceonomics.com/founders-with-kids/ http://priceonomics.com/founders-with-kids/

davedx 12y ago

As a contractor who's interested in startups and who has a 6 month daughter, I can certainly empathize. Throughout all of my crazy ideas, side projects, contracts in different timezones, bits of overtime, all of it, I've constantly kept a check on myself that I don't spend too much time away from my family. I decided not to pursue a potential CTO position at a promising startup because it might have required me to work abroad for months at a time. One of the things that has influenced me here was an article that did the rounds a few years ago. I think it was this one, "Top five regrets of the dying" [1]: "2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship." Do not miss your kids growing up, you might regret it forever. Good luck! :) [1] http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five...

czbond 12y ago
Your situation is mine exactly. I founded 2 startups, one died - one is going strong, but I left to create a better balance. The "regrets of the dying" was the exact article that made me re-shape everything. I've even turned down some VPE/CTO roles to avoid the endless barrage of work.

jmspring 12y ago

"Being the “professional” in a startup world, pushing last hopes of entrepreneurial youth" If you feel that "being professional" includes the need to push yourself and miss events you can't recapture, it's not being "professional" -- especially if you are an employee. Startups that push the "we are a family -- we work hard, play hard, stay late together" are in a sense delusional -- yes the thrill of building a company is compelling, but unless it is your own company - you are sacrificing yourself unnecessarily for someone else's benefit. There will always be another startup, but early months of a child's life where changes are there daily, hourly.

Killah911 12y ago

Seriously! How are people giving "advice" to this guy? It's not a F#$%ing blog post, it's a work of art... Do you guys write in to HBO after every episode of Silicon Valley? It's an great piece (IMHO) & if it helps you reflect, then it's done its job. It's not a problem do be solved (yes, I know... that's what we do... but really though....)

douglee650 12y ago
i think the reaction people are having is that it's more of a navel-gazing, wallowing piece - the focus is still on the "artistry" of the father's poetic ability, as opposed to the subject, who seems to be there to adorn as a backdrop.
justinpaulson 12y ago
Settle down guy, people are just discussing their feelings about the situation. People do get on forums and discuss episodes of silicon valley after they have aired, and they discuss it with their friends/coworkers in real life. Are these comments not the appropriate place to voice our feelings/insights/experiences with the subject of the post??
- Killah911 12y ago
  feelings/insights/experiences are fine. Comments were condemning the author for staying at work till 2am.... that's just plain crazy to me. I wouldn't be surprised if he took some creative licenses and that's totally OK to do in a poem. I'm just glad that he shared a work of art which is relevant to our community. If it evokes emotions, reflections, that's fine... If we look at it as a blog post asking us to solve his problem for him, that's something else. We don't need to solve the author's problem (i.e. by giving him advice on finding work life balance). Quite frankly, this piece made me think of the illusions we create for ourselves. In some ways, we're happy to always be busy. I for one, wouldn't really know what to do with "free" time (probably start another side project). I agree that this is the place to discuss this matter. I guess I typically hold HN to a higher standard and generally the comments are very insightful.

apierre 12y ago

I have a 9 months old daughter. I've been trying productivity techniques for years but I must say she has been the best motivator ever. Knowing that I have to collect her from nursery, help with the bedtime routine, I need to finish as much work as possible during the day, no time to waste. At the beginning, it was just impossible for me to think finishing working at 6pm but in fact, I just feel better in my mind and my productivity skyrocketed since then. Not to mention that I also stopped wasting time with bad projects and client. Have a baby! Best pomodoro ever ;)

michaelochurch 12y ago

Uncorrelated but perhaps relevant blog post I wrote this morning, on the value of time: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/if-youll-ever-die-dont-apply/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/if-youll-ever... The only people who care about excellence are the excellent, and we almost never get to call the shots (we're bad at politics). Since the people evaluating our work are in no way qualified to assess excellence or even slightly-better-than-mediocre-goodness, most of our work is just a commodity, and the price is set by the winner's curse: schmucks who haven't learned (either by raising children, or by having people close to them get sick and die) how finite time is. It's better to compete to excel than to compete to suffer, but the software/startup world is run by people who don't value excellence in the least, and who wouldn't be qualified to evaluate it even if they did. So that steers us toward "compete to suffer" dynamics, also known as "fish frying" (http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/).

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago

"My dear Daughter, Wait for me." Of all the things that might happen, much as we'd like it to be different, I can guarantee that this is one which won't happen. However upsetting it may be now (or looking back in the future), time isn't going to wait for you and all those firsts, all those events and experiences you miss, won't wait and won't happen again. We tell ourselves it isn't a choice but for many of us it is. Most of us could earn enough money to support our family comfortably in a relatively regular 9 - 5 job. We might not be personally as satisfied and we might not be as financially well off, but we can choose one possible version of our life over another. It's absolutely fair to say that you have to balance the needs of being a "good" father (which let's remember is a subjective term in many ways), against your own personal needs (and indeed the needs of your partner, the rest of your family and so on), but most people reading this board are fortunate enough that there genuinely is an element of choice. No-one should tell you that working long hours so your child need never go without (or so you're personally happy and the time you spend with them you do so without resentment) is better or worse than coaching their sports team and being there every bath time, but whatever you decide to do, I think the most important thing is to accept that you're doing it because you made a conscious decision - ultimately that's going to be the only way you'll be at peace with it. And if you haven't made a conscious decision, the for heavens' sake sit down with your other half and do so. Of all the outcomes, doing what you're doing without thinking about what you want and what works best for your family maybe the only truly bad one.

lmg643 12y ago
I would agree with this. People have a way of heavily discounting the present in favor of the uncertain future. It becomes a habit, almost an addiction, to medicate feelings in the present (FUD - perhaps their anxiety over being a parent, even). A friend of mine uses the term "future tripping" - I like it. I will give this guy a lot of credit for honesty. It's tempting to pretend that starting a company is something you are doing solely to provide a better life for others, when the truth is it is just as often, if not more so, for the self-actualization need of the founder. From the wife/kid's perspective - they want you to be happy, but they also want you to be present and engaged. From that perspective, what you do to make the money isn't so important as the fact that you can provide, and be part of the fun. "believing that this is the great sacrifice I must make, the choice I took upon myself for the betterment of the family, for you, but I know that’s not entirely true A little or a lot, it’s for me This addiction or obsession I seem to have with work"

kungfooey 12y ago

Nope. Nope. Nope. She won't wait for you, mate. Time doesn't wait. If you want to be with your family, they have to be your priority before any fame, glory, and wealth from your ability to churn out ideas or sling some code. Don't live a life of regret. Make do with less. Maybe get there slower, but be a happier person. I'm in a similar situation in that I have two young children (under 5) and I am the co-founder of a small-ish startup in healthcare. I make sure to leave every day at 5pm so I can be with my kids for a few hours. If I have a busy week, I'll get up earlier (5 or 6am) and get my work done earlier in the day. If additional work needs to get done, it gets done after they go to bed. Importantly, my co-founders also have families and value them as I do. If that were not the case, I would not be involved in this company.

lkrubner 12y ago

I think Paul Graham summed up the situation fairly well when he wrote: "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast." and this: "Combine all these multipliers, and I'm claiming you could be 36 times more productive than you're expected to be in a random corporate job." and the reasons why we might want to do a startup: "For example, one way to make a million dollars would be to work for the Post Office your whole life, and save every penny of your salary. Imagine the stress of working for the Post Office for fifty years. In a startup you compress all this stress into three or four years. You do tend to get a certain bulk discount if you buy the economy-size pain, but you can't evade the fundamental conservation law. If starting a startup were easy, everyone would do it." http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html That essay can be read both as an inspiration and as a warning. On the positive side, it is good to realize how much you can achieve in a few short years. On the negative side, you must be wholly focused on one thing during those few short years. The rest of your life needs to put on hold. A personal anecdote: I am a bit of a news junkie, and I typically spend an hour or two a day reading the news, but when I had my own startup, I gave up reading the news. For the years 2003 to 2004, and for most of 2006, I rarely read the news. That was a huge change of personal habits for me. But avoiding the news was important for me to stay focused. I would write code for 12 hours a day, sometimes 14 hours a day. I think one has to have a very narrow focus during the first year or two of a startup.

jacquesm 12y ago
That's predicated on things working out. In the real world the chances are very large that you will simply lose the years and get nothing back for it. And even if things work out, nothing will give you back the first four years of your childs life. Been there, done that.
teekert 12y ago
The !POTENTIAL! return is correlated with the amount of "focussing on one thing during those short few years". You may end up loosing your kids childhood while still working normal hours the rest of your/his/her life. That is provided not to much of your own money is in your startup, if that is the case you loose even more.

silverbax88 12y ago

As a parent (of now a teenager who is barreling towards college) - I would advise to work a lot, but work will always be there. Your kids will not. Your life should be what you do when you are not working - not the other way around. Many years ago, I was working 80+ hour weeks, week after week, and my daughter was very young. Consistently, I would not even SEE her from Thursday morning until Saturday afternoon. I burned out on that job. I felt shell-shocked. I went to dinner with my wife and realized that we had grown apart. I hated that. I hated missing my daughter growing up. I hated that my daily thoughts were about work, what was happening with work, and that my interactions with my coworkers had overridden my interaction with my family. So I decided that my life would revolve around my family, and who I was outside of work, not the other way around. Over the years I have changed jobs, started companies, had wild success, had some failures, but through it all I felt even-keel because it all felt like my LIFE was the same. The cubicles, the coworkers, the employees, those all change but my wife and daughter, the life we share, that has been constant. I actually don't feel like I've changed jobs at all even though in reality I've worked at about 6 different places and started 2 companies. Don't think that work and success will make it alright in the end. It won't. Don't believe people who think you are slacking because you aren't working 100 hours a week. Those people aren't executing efficiently. I can promise you this is true because I have left a trail of Type A 'go-go-go' personalities in my wake because they couldn't match my output and drive, even though they were burning midnight oil and I was at home watching Jeopardy! with the fam. I guess what I'm trying to say is don't listen to all of those people who are making horrible mistakes. Work hard, but read 'The Power of Full Engagement' by Tony Shwartz and realize that you can work like mad and relax and you will beat the crap out of everyone around you.

omilu 12y ago
thanks for this! best thing i read all day.

koonsolo 12y ago

I go to work for my family, and I go home for my family.

VuongN 12y ago
A very short and sweet thought. Love it. My wife and I have a pact: we'll live for our children and family but we'll always continue to develop ourselves. This way, there is never a resentment toward the people you love. I, too, work and go home for my family.

dpeck 12y ago

Intense, and newly sharpened, focus on earnings is a common trait of new fathers. Its a beneficial trait, but one that has to be appropriately governed. A nice bit of prose about that struggle and the ways we coddle ourselves as we get too far out of line.

ttcbj 12y ago

I really appreciate this poem. I have a two year old and a six month old, and I had no conception of how I committed I would feel to my children until I had them. I actually took some risks and worked super hard in my mid-20s to mid-30s, prior to having kids. I am so glad I did it then. Another way to read this post, if you are young, is as a warning - you may think it is scary or hard to take risks now, but go for it. When you have children, it will be much, much harder. Every minute you are working, you will feel torn that you aren't with your kids, and every minute you are with your kids, you will feel torn that you aren't working (to provide for them). If you can use your twenties to gain some financial freedom and control of your time, it is really worth it. I went through a period of thinking that I had 'wasted' my 20s on hard work, while everyone else was partying/backpacking/skiing/whatever. I now realize that my 20s (and early 30s) were an investment for a vastly better reward - the time and financial freedom to be with my family in my late 30s/early 40s when my children are young. I couldn't be happier with the outcome of those choices, and I didn't really see it coming, because I did not understand the depth of feeling I would have for my children. But for the young people out there in their 20s - your opportunity cost will never be lower. Go for it. Invest in yourself. Working until 10pm on something you care about won't always be without painful tradeoffs. Forgoing income to try to start something won't always be so easy.

nasmorn 12y ago

My rule is that I spend enough time with the kids if I rather go working than be with them. That said I never work more than 45 hours a week and sometimes only 30. Might not work if you do 60 or 80

normloman 12y ago

Oh for fucks sake, go home. This is your kid we're talking about. If getting a 9 to 5 job means spending more time with your kid, I promise you won't regret it. Better yet, keep your start up, just work a regular day. You only think you need to work long hours. You don't. You'll be more productive just working a regular schedule. I can't believe we're even debating this. Reality check people: Your kids should come before your job.

laohu 12y ago

The endless "hours matter" debate. For me, it's been a revolution at RescueTime. I had a 5 year old and new born when I started. You structure your day right, you should be able to get done what is useful in a day's work in around 5-6 hours for most days. Otherwise, you need to restructure your day. You're doing something wrong-- excess communications, excess task-switching, excess research, over-engineering or something. By consistently paying attention to getting the most out of the hours between 0830/0900 and 1530/1600, I am able to get at least 3-4 hours a day with my kids. There's the odd day where I get back on the computer after they are in bed. The simple truth is you can restructure your work to match your life with kids, you cannot restructure your kids to match your life with work.

hrish2006 12y ago

Hey thanks for sharing! . It's beautifully written.

VuongN 12y ago
Thank you. I really appreciate the kind words. -V.

hrish2006 12y ago

Hey thanks for sharing! . It's beautifully written.

maaku 12y ago

Be there for your daughter, or you are not her father. I feel sorry and pity for you. I would suggest thinking about another job (and btw, it is 100% possible to work normal hours at a startup).

mantis369 12y ago

I think you have to pick one. Startup or kids. You can work at a burnout pace for 5 years in the hope of getting rich, or you can be there for your young children. In my opinion, if you're going to try the startup thing, there's nothing stopping you from having kids afterwards. Except that if your startup(s) didn't succeed, your skills might translate perfectly into a career that can sustain a family. And having gone that route, you might have missed out on opportunities to bond with a good partner.

smileysteve 12y ago
Or you can work at your startup at a sustainable pace. From a lean startup perspective, the more burnout pace you work at, the less likely you are to close the feedback loop and actually produce the right feature. From a Mythical Man hour perspective, you're more likely to be less productive the more burnout pace that you try to maintain.
- mantis369 12y ago
  I don't think VCs are interested in anyone who wants to work at a sustainable pace. Also, the piece we're discussing doesn't make it sound like the author works at a sustainable pace.

hajderr 12y ago

Frankly, startup or no startup. You can only do so much work within a day. With a bit of planning and discipline you can manage to stay effective and be a part of the family while building your startup.

amurph 12y ago

So, I am the child of a startup founder. Roughly a year before I was born my dad founded a startup. Throughout most of my early childhood he would routinely be working for 10+ hours at the office and then work after me and my sibling were put to sleep. Plus, he was usually travelling 4-5 days a month trying to pitch his idea (we didn't live in a big center for startups). Basically, he wasn't there. I love my dad. A lot. He is still one of my favorite people, and when I come home it's always a joy to talk to him. But, he just wasn't around all that often as a kid, and I know he really tried, but you just can't be in two places at once. Honestly, I think it was a lot harder on my mom, what with the financial difficulties (especially when the startup eventually went belly up for a bit) raising me and my sibling on her own, all that stuff. I'm not angry at my dad, he did something he really wanted to do, and worked really hard at it, but you know you can't stop growing when you're five. The only piece of 'advice' I have is try to carve out a regular time for being with your kids. Every Friday night, my dad would take me and my sibling down to the lake, and we'd get food, and talk, and play at an arcade (I still can totally beat him at Space Invaders, by the way), and that w as a really meaningful time for me and my sister, especially on the weekends he was working, or when we found him passed out in his chair after working all night.

haily 12y ago

What if, instead of "My dear daughter, Wait for me.", why not "My dear daughter, join me.". It's the journey. Take your daughter with you on your journey to build your experiences together. When she is ready, she will branch off to continue with her journey. She will then learn from you and take your grand children on her journey and so on...

jader201 12y ago

This is a good reminder, to me, of why I have chosen to delay any ambitions of my own startup until after my kids are grown and no longer want to spend (as much) time with me. However, I think it's important to remember that we can just as easily get caught in the trap of being present with our family, but not "present", because we're stuck in a 9-5 job that is sucking the soul out of us. I'm currently in a position that consists about 80% meetings and 20% reading/responding to email, when I would so much rather be coding. I come home feeling unfulfilled, and am irritated way too easily. Some people can still cope with a job like this and separate themselves from it as to not affect their home life. I wish I was one of those, but I'm not. And since I recognize that I'm not, I have chosen to find -- and have found -- another job that without a doubt will not have this impact on me. If you're in the same boat, and are not able to cope and separate yourself from the drudgery of your 9-5 job, find one that you enjoy better. And I personally think it's worth even taking a cut in pay, if you can and if you have to.

beat 12y ago

Two weeks ago, my daughter asked me if she could give up on college for a while and come work with me on my startup instead. She's 20 now. I couldn't be more pleased or proud. For years, I worked in "safe" enterprise jobs, rather than the risk of startups, for the financial security of my children. They're adults now, and I'm starting over in many ways. I'm twice the age of the "startup founder" trope. It feels very natural to me now. As for my daughter... she has the entrepreneurial spirit. She wants to be challenged, to learn and grow in ways she won't get to do in college. Working for me, she'll get to do things she wouldn't get to do in a slower, safer business. And she has a strong self-interest, too - if it succeeds, I'll become very wealthy, almost as a side effect. As my heir, she eventually benefits from that as well. So from the point of view of both her learning and her long-term financial security, helping me is the best thing she can do for herself. Smart kid.

thom 12y ago

Bill Foster: I'm the Bad Guy? Sergeant Prendergast: Yeah. Bill Foster: How'd that happen? I did everything they told me to. Did you know I build missiles? I helped to protect America. You should be rewarded for that. But instead they give it to the plastic surgeons, you know they lied to me. Sergeant Prendergast: Is that what this is about? You're angry because you got lied to? Is that why my chicken dinner is drying out in the oven? Hey, they lie to everyone. They lie to the fish. But that doesn't give you any special right to do what you did today. The only that makes you special is that little girl. Now let's go. Lets go!

Spooky23 12y ago

You have to make choices. I choose my wife, son & future kids as priority #1. That choice came with costs -- I'd probably be the CIO of a pretty major org at this point, but that means 10-12 hour days that I won't do. That doesn't mean that life is over, it just means that you need to be more strategic about opportunities, and may need to scope out some roles.

VuongN 12y ago

I've read everyone's comment thus far. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for allowing me the honor to be part of your discussion. I figured that we're not trying to find a correct answer here. But knowing our community of engineers, hackers, lovers etc. we'd always trying to solve any problems coming our way :) My humble opinion is: feelings are honesty trying to express themselves. Even if we can't solve the problem of "feelings", I'm quite happy we can search for it together as a group. I wrote this piece during a tough part of the startup last year. I recently looked at it again and realized it wasn't just about me but rather about all my friends, I actually do refer to you folks on here as "friends", with the common dream. I think at some point on one train-ride home or another, we've searched for some sort of understanding and hope to know that we're not the only one. Today, I'm happy to know that my "friends" do share the same feeling at one point or another. And we are not alone. -Vuong.

rmgraham 12y ago

I work from home for a startup. My daughter is in the next room, I can hear her watching Curious George. And I still teared up reading the poem, because I could have written it myself. I don't know about the author, but for me the startup part of the equation is a symptom, not a cause.

OneOneOneOne 12y ago

Here is a calculation that might put things in perspective... Your age + 25 This is how old you will be when a kid born this year graduates from college (typical undergrad.) If you are waiting to have kids add those years to your age.

bronson 12y ago

"How can I explain to you The Gods and Angels had clipped Daddy’s wings?" Because they didn't. Daddy's own choices and values have apparently clipped his wings. Hope you're OK with it. It's nice writing but ultimately it reads like a thin excuse. I hope daddy uses better time management in the future.

laureny 12y ago

It's a bit of a disturbing read for a couple of reasons: - Going to an early stage start up as a young father is not a sacrifice, it's a selfish act. You are thinking more about yourself and what you want to do (and not do) rather than what's best for your family. Hate the idea of a 9-to-5 job? Well, suck it: the regular hours and clockwork and guaranteed paycheck will go a long way toward making your family more stable and stress free. Maybe it's a good time to also ask yourself if there are no hidden reasons behind choosing this line of work. I know I've seen fathers do this because they didn't realize they were not interested in the chores involved in raising a young age infant. - I'm guessing the infant is less than two years old (the text mentions diapers) so I'm shocked that this text is not giving credit to who really, really deserves it: the Mom. At that age, the infant doesn't really care much whether Daddy is around at night time or to play with toys, but this father really needs to realize how much stress his work situation is putting on his wife. I have a two year old son and I quit the start up I was working at before his birth. I felt it just wouldn't be fair to my wife to stay there. There will always be start ups to join should I ever want to try this again, but a child growing up is an opportunity that doesn't occur often in one's life.

VuongN 12y ago
I wrote this during a very tough run at the startup. Perhaps let me share a little bit more so that is it in context. First and foremost, most credits, indeed go to my wife and family. The reason why I didn't mention my wife in this piece other than "You’re the only cool shade in the hottest of days/For a weary soul/that your Mother saved many years ago" is because this was a letter to my daughter. This piece was part of a collection of my thoughts from last year (when I was thirty) and I did thank my wife and family when I publish it: http://vuongnguyen.com/thirty-ba-muoi.html http://vuongnguyen.com/thirty-ba-muoi.html. I'm 31 last month and I've been with my wife for 11 years now. We're best friends in many way and we support each other in our own dreams. Before my daughter was born, I was mostly doing consulting. I made sure I spent time walking and taking care of my wife. I made it a point to never miss a doctor appointment or any pregnancy/childbirth classes we have together. I really appreciated every step of the way. Then my daughter was born, I stopped accepting new clients (as mentioned in the piece). Spent time with my wife and newborn. Then I stayed home for another three months with my daughter so my wife could return to work. When I joined the startup, after much discussion and encouragement from my wife, I also made a promise to never miss any doctor appointment. That is still true. I feel blessed that I was able to afford much flexibility with my family and I never take it for granted. I know many other folks who go through a much more difficult time. I think there is much more I could do and of course I'll continue to do my very best to be a good person every day. This was written as a personal thought and shared because I wanted to feel for myself and others, that we are not sitting alone on that home-bound train, if that makes any sense. I hope that clarifies things a bit more. -V.

orky56 12y ago

Having been recently married and with no kids yet, I am fortunate enough to have a supportive wife who is letting me pursue a partially selfish dream of founding a startup. The glamor of the pursuit has long since faded. Execution is my hammer for every type of hurdle while Time lurks in the shadows conspiring with Denial and Self Doubt. I hope that I'll have the perfect lifestyle that will allow me to spend quality time with the ones I have chosen to be with and have brought into this world. Quality time can only exist if they are provided for with more than just love, but also a roof over their head, money to pay bills, and food on their plates. What we all seek is security and founding a startup puts the burden on you more often than a corporate job. There is no get rich quick scheme here but I have to try to see if I can achieve immortality by killing myself through hard work. If I am a mere mortal, I will succumb to the daily grind having a bit more certainty of my capabilities and a steady paycheck.

ThomPete 12y ago

When I moved to New York to join 80/20, I left my then girlfriend and our son who was 3 back in Denmark for almost a year. A lot of my (now) wifes friends told her that I was crazy to do that, that their husbands would never do that to them or their kids and that I chose career instead of family. The thought of disrupting ones life for something uncertain is to many the #1 fear and is the reason why many say "we would love to live and work abroad" but when it comes down to it they don't. My thinking one the choice I made was tactially problematic, it is never a good idea move away from certainty in the short run. But strategically I feel like I made the right decision and for a very simple reason. Your kids grow up and while they might adore you when they are young they will also grow up and become their own individual. And while I definitely want to see them grow up I also want to be there with them when they are older and perhaps even be something other than a dad. Lifes complicated and there are no right or wrong choices. All we can do is trust our intution and that might sometimes be trusting what seems counter intuitive. We all now live together in NY and had another son. And while I certainly understand the difficulty of finding the balance between you and your family but never forget that there will be a point where you are not that type of father anymore and by that time if you are not careful you loose whats just as important as seeing your kids grow up, you loost your ability to define you as more than a dad.

angersock 12y ago

From my mother's sleep I fell into the Startup, And I hunched in its pixel mines unable to doze. Sixty miles from home, loosed from its dream of life, I ran into black tasks and the nightmare deadlines. When I was canned they washed me out of the company with no equity. (all apologies to Randall Jarrell)

akras14 12y ago

First comment on Hacker News. Related to this poem 100% and it brought tears to my eyes. And I usually don't get poetry.

__abc 12y ago

I work in a rapid growing startup that requires more than 8 hours a day and I have two young children. My priorities are 1 - Children 2 - Marriage 3 - Living arrangements / lifestyle (sans work) 4 - Career (but I take my career VERY seriously, I've been an executive for 9 years and I'm 33) My routine 1 - Alarm goes off at 4:30 am 2 - I pickup around the house, toss in laundry as needed 3 - Catch the 5:45 am train to be into the office roughly @ 6:15 am 4 - I leave the office @ 5:30 pm to catch the 5:50 pm train to be home roughly @ 6:15 pm 5 - I play with the kids 6 - We then eat dinner together as a family 7 - I bathe and put both kids to bed around 7:30 - 8:00 pm 8 - I help pick up the rest of my house with my wife, it usually ends @ 8:30 pm (we talk a lot while doing this) 9 - My wife and I sit down on the couch/porch/etc and hang out for a few hours while I also work 10 - I'm usually in bed by 11 - 11:30 pm If I have more work to do that evening I might have my laptop out while hanging out with my wife or stay up later. This is usually 4 nights out of the week. Things that shift to "once in a while" given my priorities 1 - A full 8 hours of sleep 2 - Seeing that television show 3 - Seeing that movie 4 - Random nights out with friends 5 - Etc These simply just take a back seat. Things I never miss, and spend as much time with as someone working a standard 9-5 (although I do head into the office earlier than most) 1 - My kids (first and foremost) 2 - My wife 3 - My house 4 - My career and type of company I appreciate being involved with To me, I keep the things that matter most and give up things that I found out I didn't really need (for context, I never really watched a lot of television). This schedule works for me and I end up working 10 hours a day and never miss a beat with my kids. PS. I also about twice a day, for 5 minutes, FaceTime with my wife/kids while at work. It's a nice break and a chance for me to see them during the day given I miss them in the morning.

brikmaster 12y ago

I like the sentiment. When I started my first true startup, after being an executive in a high profile one, we put our own capital in and then literally 6 months later, we conceived triplets spontaneously while having a 2 year old son. While I was terrified of what would happen with the startup and the family, there was no question to me that we had to stay on the path. That startup ultimately was sold in a good outcome and I am now two startups past that. My kids are now 11 and 9*3. They know that I work in startups and many times they visit the office and hangout. While I have some regrets, like flying to Europe every 2-3 weeks post acquisition for over a year, I want my kids to know that I do what I do because I love it and it is how I put bread on the table. While I don't wish my life choices on them, I want them to know that being the master of their own destiny is a choice their dad has fully embraced whatever they decide. All of that said, even when I was flying to Europe, I made it a point to move heaven and earth to be home with them every single weekend during that period of time and was actively and highly engaged while at home. While you can choose to work hard, you also have to choose to be a great father and role model IMO. Great piece.

developer786 12y ago

Not so long ago I posted a message I then reposted and managed a -4 Karma somehow. I was going to take a big leap in to a post with salaries far beyond what I would pay myself. Many here told me to take the risk, go for it etc etc. But I chose my family over a fat pay-check. No regrets!