5 ms·

> One thing that I’ve found puzzling over the last ten or so years is the anger directed towards people who choose to work hard That feels somewhat disingenuou

by akavi 12y ago

> One thing that I’ve found puzzling over the last ten or so years is the anger directed towards people who choose to work hard That feels somewhat disingenuous. If 'sama is referring to the sentiments expressed on this board, from what I've seen, it's not anger towards people choosing to work hard, but anger towards demands of hard work of others from those who stand to benefit at their expense. Ie, the anger is towards VCs who talk glowingly of start-up founders working themselves to the bone and, in turn, towards start-up founders who talk glowingly of 0.01% equity-holding employees grinding out hour after overtime hour.

sama 12y ago
Certainly working really hard without an expectation of being compensated it (either with equity or cash) is dumb. I've argued a lot that startups should give employees more equity, and I think that's shifting. Also, most startups I'm aware of, at least in the bay area, pay large salaries at this point.
- coolsunglasses 12y ago
  Equity is a fraction of a dollar bill attached to a line extending from a fishing pole. Reel 'em in.
- ThomPete 12y ago
  But thats kind of the problem. I mean we all love large salaries but it's a symptom of something more fundamental namely that there are a lot of people who work hard but don't have the skills the market need and don't have the means to re-educate themselves. It's not like everyone is getting more, it's that there is a divide where some gets more and a lot gets less. Thats what this is all about. It's no ones fault but it has nothing to do with who works hard or not.
- api 12y ago
  "Also, most startups I'm aware of, at least in the bay area, pay large salaries at this point." ... which is all soaked up by real estate hyperinflation.
  - atom-morgan 12y ago
    This is probably the single biggest factor that's keeping me from moving out to CA. There's a lot of great companies out there and I think I could learn a lot but I also don't want to go broke. Edit: How are people making it without a really high salary or living with three other people?
    - api 12y ago
      I call real estate the "evil sponge." As a region becomes more affluent, the price of real estate appreciates at least in step with this. Due to the leveraged debt financing of RE, the reality is often that price appreciation is a multiple of wage appreciation. This takes pretty much all the surplus capital in a region -- among everyone but the rich -- and locks it up in an inert asset. Think of it this way: a starter home in the Bay Area is about a million dollars. In SoCal -- not cheap by any means -- it's more like $400k. The average AngelList seed round is $400-$600k. So every single house in the Bay Area locks up the capital required to seed fund at least one new venture. What could all those smart people in the Bay Area be doing if all their capital were not locked up by an inert asset? What's worse is that there are idiots who cheer this on because it will supposedly exclude people they don't like (the poor, blacks, etc.) from their neighborhoods. I read a great book called Detroit: A Biography. It explained how RE hustlers used racism to fleece people: first they'd sell a neighborhood to white folks. Then they'd pay black people to walk around in it. Then they'd scare the white folks into selling below market, jack the price back up and sell it to blacks, and meanwhile sell a further-out more expensive neighborhood to those same white folks. Rinse and repeat. I suppose if you harbor these kinds of views it's kind of poetic when they're turned around and used to con you, but it harms everyone else too. I was hoping the housing bubble crash would bring relief, but it's right back up there. Either the entire economy needs to inflate until RE is reasonable again -- which would give us $8 loaves of bread -- or real estate needs to fall over and burn. We need something like the 2008 housing crash with no recovery-- to unshackle the real economy from the rentier asset economy.
      - mathattack 12y ago
        It's not an exact comparison... For instance - if I bought a house in the 1990s for 200K and it's now worth a million dollars, it isn't stealing $800K from anywhere. That's new wealth that I have that I can also put to work. (Even if I don't take a mortgage out on the house, I can invest more of my other money more aggressively, if I'm paying less mortgage, or know that I have a high value asset in my home) I think it's more appropriate to look at the monthly rent differential. Let's say that a 1BR in Palo Alto costs $2,500, and a similar one in Austin costs $1,000. [0] In that case, there is a $1,500 * 12 = $18,000 differential. Let's double it to include how much you have to make to have that much take-home income, and you have a $36,000 per year difference. If an angel-fed startup has 3 employees, then there is a ~100K per year of effective real estate tax. (Approximately 20-25% rather than 100%[1]) The trade-off is, how much more likely are you to succeed and scale based on being in SF vs Austin? [0] I'm basing both #s on the very accurate "Approximate the first Google result" method. [1] One can argue that everything is more expensive in the bay area, but total cost of living comparisons are tough to do. Is it % of spending or absolute dollars? Does it depend on public schools? Quality of goods?
- AdamFernandez 12y ago
  I suppose the sentiments of people who say "don't work hard" can vary. Many people tie working 'hard' to hours put in. I will say there are many schools of thought on this. If I am super focused and work 'hard' for 30 hours a week and enjoy my life the rest of week, how is my productivity and creativity compared to someone who puts in 70 hours? Are they really out-competing me? What does the research show on this, compared to anecdotally stating "All successful startups that I observe work hard at all hours, therefore this is THE way"? You are one of a small group of people that could make this observation. Just because that is common in successful companies, doesn't mean it is the best way.
- dkural 12y ago
  Working too much, to the detriment of your health, sleep, family, and friendships, for any amount of money, even if you are the founder, is dumb. Perhaps Steve Jobs would've caught up with science and stopped his cancer earlier if he took a break. I run a start-up with 100+ people. Vacations, family time, sleep - these are good and ultimately productive things. The normal person works so they can live, be healthy. They don't live so they can work.
  - api 12y ago
    Your startup's employees are far more productive per hour worked than those at 80-hour shops.
  - hsod 12y ago
    Using wild speculation about a man's death to try to further your personal political agenda is a bit macabre, don't you think?
    - dkural 12y ago
      citation: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, authorized by Steve Jobs. What political agenda? I run a company and work a lot, but I think working is only one aspect of human existence and we should try to strike some semblance of balance.
- ryanSrich 12y ago
  > pay large salaries at this point I'd have to disagree. At least based on my definition of large and my experience interviewing in the Valley. For example: If you're making X amount of salary and paying $1500 for a one bedroom in Big City Y, you'd have to make at _least_ $24k more in SV if you wanted a comparable one bedroom apartment. It's probably even more than that as I don't know anyone paying less than $3k for a one bedroom within 10 miles of SF. For a junior dev making $80k in Austin who is moving to SV, getting that $20k bump is certainly plausible and in the above scenario would work out fine. But what about a family of 4? They need a 3 bedroom house. How in the world is that family going to make enough to afford a house northing of $1m? How much would that person have to make to even support half the cost of their houehold? $200k? $400k? Those types of salaries just aren't happening at startups.
  - Eridrus 12y ago
    I'm not sure why the bit about families is relevant. No-one expects people with families to move across the country for work.
    - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
      Why not? Do people with families not need to work?
      - Eridrus 12y ago
        Not every opportunity is great for everyone; people with families generally don't like to travel, that doesn't mean that a job that entails travel is a bad one. Having a family is clearly a choice. And having 3 kids is very different from having 1. These people will always have less material goods and have a harder time scraping by than someone with no dependants when the cost of living is high. This is true of any industry in any expensive area, it's what you should be expecting if you have kids. In any case, the original comment is wrong about housing prices, you get shafted when you try to live right in the heart of SF, pretty much everyone with a family is going to have to commute from somewhere, you can still get comparatively cheap 3 bedroom houses in san jose, and there's still plenty of tech companies with offices in the south bay.
jbhatab 12y ago
I disagree. I think he is talking about the general 'anti-workaholic' attitude. I see it all the time and have personally been called out for wanting to work too much. I don't know enough about China's culture, but I know in America it is looked down upon to work non stop even if it is just for a few years of a person's life.
- mordocai 12y ago
  For good reason. It is both unhealthy and inefficient to work massive amounts of hours. There are multiple studies that show that overall productivity increases when you don't work over 40 hours a week.
  - api 12y ago
    The studies I've seen show productivity falling at 40 hours and dropping off a cliff at 50 for most activities. I don't think the blame for the workaholic culture lies primarily with VCs, though some do encourage this. I think it's mostly a part of the cult of male ego. "I worked 70 hours last week! How many did you work? 50? Wuss! I'm so much more hard-core than you!" People also lie about how many hours they worked. In reality they work maybe 20-40 and then do things like... uhh... hang around in here... for the other 20-40. Again part of the macho one-upmanship thing... putting on an act of working ridiculous hours to look hard.
    - VLM 12y ago
      "I'm so much more hard-core than you!" Its a grind game. Obviously my WoW character level 70 is far superior to your WoW character level 50. Unfortunately companies can be killed by this kind of primitive behavior when the 70 hour/week guy executes less shareholder value add than a 20 hour/week intern. Give someone a stupid metric to aspire to, they'll max it. Might destroy the company in the process, maybe even themselves or their own careers, but they'll max the metric number, thats for sure.
      - api 12y ago
wozniacki 12y ago
One thing that I’ve found puzzling over the last ten or so years is the anger directed towards people who choose to work hard I think there is serious merit to that sentiment. Others in this thread have made very keen observations on this all pervasive national attitude that has blanketed America in the past decade or two. however the biggest issue facing the US is this message that excelling isn't to aspired too, acceptance of who you are and who someone else is is all that matters. It is a self defeating mindset. Don't worry if you fail, you had no choice, you just can't do better. Here let us take care of you.... And fully expecting to be flamed, I give you perhaps, the most lucid and no-nonsense explanation of how this kind of self-defeatist thinking has come about envelope the national psyche, in the form on a nice quip by none other than, Peter Thiel himself: The countercultural in the '60s was the hippies. You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later, and with the benefit of hindsight, that’s when progress ended, and the hippies took over the country. He adds: Today the counterculture is to believe in science and technology. You know, our society, the dominant culture doesn’t like science. It doesn’t like technology. You just look at the science-fiction movies that come out of Hollywood — Terminator, Matrix, Avatar, Elysium. I watched the Gravity movie the other day. It’s like you would never want to go into outer space. You would just want to be back on some muddy island. And so I think we’re in a world where actually believing that a better future is possible that you can have agency and work towards a better future, that is actually radically countercultural. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9034895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9034895 [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM&t=3m22s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM&t=3m22s [3] Technology Stalled in 1970 http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/530901/technology-stalled-in-1970/

by akavi 12y ago

sama 12y ago

Certainly working really hard without an expectation of being compensated it (either with equity or cash) is dumb. I've argued a lot that startups should give employees more equity, and I think that's shifting. Also, most startups I'm aware of, at least in the bay area, pay large salaries at this point.

coolsunglasses 12y ago
Equity is a fraction of a dollar bill attached to a line extending from a fishing pole. Reel 'em in.
ThomPete 12y ago
But thats kind of the problem. I mean we all love large salaries but it's a symptom of something more fundamental namely that there are a lot of people who work hard but don't have the skills the market need and don't have the means to re-educate themselves. It's not like everyone is getting more, it's that there is a divide where some gets more and a lot gets less. Thats what this is all about. It's no ones fault but it has nothing to do with who works hard or not.
api 12y ago
"Also, most startups I'm aware of, at least in the bay area, pay large salaries at this point." ... which is all soaked up by real estate hyperinflation.
- atom-morgan 12y ago
  This is probably the single biggest factor that's keeping me from moving out to CA. There's a lot of great companies out there and I think I could learn a lot but I also don't want to go broke. Edit: How are people making it without a really high salary or living with three other people?
  - api 12y ago
    I call real estate the "evil sponge." As a region becomes more affluent, the price of real estate appreciates at least in step with this. Due to the leveraged debt financing of RE, the reality is often that price appreciation is a multiple of wage appreciation. This takes pretty much all the surplus capital in a region -- among everyone but the rich -- and locks it up in an inert asset. Think of it this way: a starter home in the Bay Area is about a million dollars. In SoCal -- not cheap by any means -- it's more like $400k. The average AngelList seed round is $400-$600k. So every single house in the Bay Area locks up the capital required to seed fund at least one new venture. What could all those smart people in the Bay Area be doing if all their capital were not locked up by an inert asset? What's worse is that there are idiots who cheer this on because it will supposedly exclude people they don't like (the poor, blacks, etc.) from their neighborhoods. I read a great book called Detroit: A Biography. It explained how RE hustlers used racism to fleece people: first they'd sell a neighborhood to white folks. Then they'd pay black people to walk around in it. Then they'd scare the white folks into selling below market, jack the price back up and sell it to blacks, and meanwhile sell a further-out more expensive neighborhood to those same white folks. Rinse and repeat. I suppose if you harbor these kinds of views it's kind of poetic when they're turned around and used to con you, but it harms everyone else too. I was hoping the housing bubble crash would bring relief, but it's right back up there. Either the entire economy needs to inflate until RE is reasonable again -- which would give us $8 loaves of bread -- or real estate needs to fall over and burn. We need something like the 2008 housing crash with no recovery-- to unshackle the real economy from the rentier asset economy.
    - mathattack 12y ago
      It's not an exact comparison... For instance - if I bought a house in the 1990s for 200K and it's now worth a million dollars, it isn't stealing $800K from anywhere. That's new wealth that I have that I can also put to work. (Even if I don't take a mortgage out on the house, I can invest more of my other money more aggressively, if I'm paying less mortgage, or know that I have a high value asset in my home) I think it's more appropriate to look at the monthly rent differential. Let's say that a 1BR in Palo Alto costs $2,500, and a similar one in Austin costs $1,000. [0] In that case, there is a $1,500 * 12 = $18,000 differential. Let's double it to include how much you have to make to have that much take-home income, and you have a $36,000 per year difference. If an angel-fed startup has 3 employees, then there is a ~100K per year of effective real estate tax. (Approximately 20-25% rather than 100%[1]) The trade-off is, how much more likely are you to succeed and scale based on being in SF vs Austin? [0] I'm basing both #s on the very accurate "Approximate the first Google result" method. [1] One can argue that everything is more expensive in the bay area, but total cost of living comparisons are tough to do. Is it % of spending or absolute dollars? Does it depend on public schools? Quality of goods?
AdamFernandez 12y ago
I suppose the sentiments of people who say "don't work hard" can vary. Many people tie working 'hard' to hours put in. I will say there are many schools of thought on this. If I am super focused and work 'hard' for 30 hours a week and enjoy my life the rest of week, how is my productivity and creativity compared to someone who puts in 70 hours? Are they really out-competing me? What does the research show on this, compared to anecdotally stating "All successful startups that I observe work hard at all hours, therefore this is THE way"? You are one of a small group of people that could make this observation. Just because that is common in successful companies, doesn't mean it is the best way.
dkural 12y ago
Working too much, to the detriment of your health, sleep, family, and friendships, for any amount of money, even if you are the founder, is dumb. Perhaps Steve Jobs would've caught up with science and stopped his cancer earlier if he took a break. I run a start-up with 100+ people. Vacations, family time, sleep - these are good and ultimately productive things. The normal person works so they can live, be healthy. They don't live so they can work.
- api 12y ago
  Your startup's employees are far more productive per hour worked than those at 80-hour shops.
- hsod 12y ago
  Using wild speculation about a man's death to try to further your personal political agenda is a bit macabre, don't you think?
  - dkural 12y ago
    citation: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, authorized by Steve Jobs. What political agenda? I run a company and work a lot, but I think working is only one aspect of human existence and we should try to strike some semblance of balance.
ryanSrich 12y ago
> pay large salaries at this point I'd have to disagree. At least based on my definition of large and my experience interviewing in the Valley. For example: If you're making X amount of salary and paying $1500 for a one bedroom in Big City Y, you'd have to make at _least_ $24k more in SV if you wanted a comparable one bedroom apartment. It's probably even more than that as I don't know anyone paying less than $3k for a one bedroom within 10 miles of SF. For a junior dev making $80k in Austin who is moving to SV, getting that $20k bump is certainly plausible and in the above scenario would work out fine. But what about a family of 4? They need a 3 bedroom house. How in the world is that family going to make enough to afford a house northing of $1m? How much would that person have to make to even support half the cost of their houehold? $200k? $400k? Those types of salaries just aren't happening at startups.
- Eridrus 12y ago
  I'm not sure why the bit about families is relevant. No-one expects people with families to move across the country for work.
  - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
    Why not? Do people with families not need to work?
    - Eridrus 12y ago
      Not every opportunity is great for everyone; people with families generally don't like to travel, that doesn't mean that a job that entails travel is a bad one. Having a family is clearly a choice. And having 3 kids is very different from having 1. These people will always have less material goods and have a harder time scraping by than someone with no dependants when the cost of living is high. This is true of any industry in any expensive area, it's what you should be expecting if you have kids. In any case, the original comment is wrong about housing prices, you get shafted when you try to live right in the heart of SF, pretty much everyone with a family is going to have to commute from somewhere, you can still get comparatively cheap 3 bedroom houses in san jose, and there's still plenty of tech companies with offices in the south bay.

jbhatab 12y ago

I disagree. I think he is talking about the general 'anti-workaholic' attitude. I see it all the time and have personally been called out for wanting to work too much. I don't know enough about China's culture, but I know in America it is looked down upon to work non stop even if it is just for a few years of a person's life.

mordocai 12y ago
For good reason. It is both unhealthy and inefficient to work massive amounts of hours. There are multiple studies that show that overall productivity increases when you don't work over 40 hours a week.
- api 12y ago
  The studies I've seen show productivity falling at 40 hours and dropping off a cliff at 50 for most activities. I don't think the blame for the workaholic culture lies primarily with VCs, though some do encourage this. I think it's mostly a part of the cult of male ego. "I worked 70 hours last week! How many did you work? 50? Wuss! I'm so much more hard-core than you!" People also lie about how many hours they worked. In reality they work maybe 20-40 and then do things like... uhh... hang around in here... for the other 20-40. Again part of the macho one-upmanship thing... putting on an act of working ridiculous hours to look hard.
  - VLM 12y ago
    "I'm so much more hard-core than you!" Its a grind game. Obviously my WoW character level 70 is far superior to your WoW character level 50. Unfortunately companies can be killed by this kind of primitive behavior when the 70 hour/week guy executes less shareholder value add than a 20 hour/week intern. Give someone a stupid metric to aspire to, they'll max it. Might destroy the company in the process, maybe even themselves or their own careers, but they'll max the metric number, thats for sure.
    - api 12y ago

wozniacki 12y ago

One thing that I’ve found puzzling over the last ten or so years is the anger directed towards people who choose to work hard I think there is serious merit to that sentiment. Others in this thread have made very keen observations on this all pervasive national attitude that has blanketed America in the past decade or two. however the biggest issue facing the US is this message that excelling isn't to aspired too, acceptance of who you are and who someone else is is all that matters. It is a self defeating mindset. Don't worry if you fail, you had no choice, you just can't do better. Here let us take care of you.... And fully expecting to be flamed, I give you perhaps, the most lucid and no-nonsense explanation of how this kind of self-defeatist thinking has come about envelope the national psyche, in the form on a nice quip by none other than, Peter Thiel himself: The countercultural in the '60s was the hippies. You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later, and with the benefit of hindsight, that’s when progress ended, and the hippies took over the country. He adds: Today the counterculture is to believe in science and technology. You know, our society, the dominant culture doesn’t like science. It doesn’t like technology. You just look at the science-fiction movies that come out of Hollywood — Terminator, Matrix, Avatar, Elysium. I watched the Gravity movie the other day. It’s like you would never want to go into outer space. You would just want to be back on some muddy island. And so I think we’re in a world where actually believing that a better future is possible that you can have agency and work towards a better future, that is actually radically countercultural. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9034895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9034895 [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM&t=3m22s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM&t=3m22s [3] Technology Stalled in 1970 http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/530901/technology-stalled-in-1970/