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Ignoring the "bragging" part, yeah it's normal. You are joining a startup. To you it's just a great opportunity at a job that seemed interesting to you. To the

Ignoring the "bragging" part, yeah it's normal. You are joining a startup. To you it's just a great opportunity at a job that seemed interesting to you. To the founder, it's his life. At 2:30am you might be leaving the bar thinking about whether to call an Uber or a Lyft. Your founders are probably awake thinking about how they're going to get that new feature out the door. I started my own startup a little over 2 years ago. It's pretty normal every night between 2 and 5am for one of the three founders to send a message to another about something they're freaking out about. He's not thinking "Oh it's 3am, I shouldn't email my employee this late". He's thinking "There's something on my mind about my company and I need to get it off my chest". If you start your own company and get a few employees it makes a lot more sense VERY quickly. Don't worry, he/she's just very invested.

7Figures2Commas 11y ago
Even if one is generous and assumes this kind of behavior is typically well-intentioned, it's foolish to believe that it won't become a detriment as you grow your business. A lot of startup founders don't think much about management principles and the importance of perception in an organization, but these things matter. When founders are emailing around the clock, many employees will come away with the perception that they're expected to be available at all hours of the day and night too. Your employees are never going to be as invested as you, so this typically creates stress and dissatisfaction for employees more than it motivates and impresses them. As this Ask HN post demonstrates, a workaholic warrior complex is also a great way to convince your employees that you're an "i" word (insane, insensitive, imbalanced, incompetent, etc.).
- volaski 11y ago
  One of the biggest mistakes I made while working on a past startup was listening to an advice like this. What you say is totally valid if your company is a fortune 500 company, but the type of people who start companies shouldn't strive to become those types of managers covered in business case studies. I made this mistake after reading too many business books. It simply doesn't work. From my experience it fucks up the company culture when a founder tries to "tone it down", because that's not the quality required to make stuff happen when it's in the beginning stage. A competent founder should be able to adapt as the company grows, but shouldn't behave like a fortune 500 CEO from the beginning.
  - 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
    Here's the biggest problem with your approach: in today's market, it's a lot harder for startups to recruit and retain good employees than it is for good employees to find new employers. Just look at the OP: he left an ostensibly good job to join a YC startup and he's already questioning the founder's behavior and competence. When he starts feeling pressured to work insane hours, or completely loses faith in the founder's sanity and competence, how long do you think it will take him to find a new employer that promises something better? At the risk of being overly harsh, if you feel you're incapable of making "stuff happen" without sending random emails at 3 am in the morning or acting like you don't have control over your schedule and business or terrorizing your employees into believing that they need to be online at all hours, you're probably out of your depth and should be honest with yourself about your readiness to run a business with employees. A lot of people in the startup community have deluded themselves into believing that "hard work" is the one and only key to success but by and large, successful businesses are built by doing the right things, not by running around for 18 hours a day like a chicken with its head cut off. Thanks to the funding boom, a lot of chickens with their heads cut off are running companies. Folks like the OP work for them at their own peril.
    - karissa 11y ago
      thank you
    - volaski 11y ago
      Who would you pick if you had following two candidates: 1. A rockstar developer who wants work-life balance 2. Not famous but passionate junior developer who has potential I would always pick 2 over 1. I know because I have made exactly that mistake of hiring #1. And the company culture went to shit. If I was the founder of that company and found out about this I would have a talk with OP and if there's disagreement I would rather let him go than trying to tone it down. Company culture is much more important than one or two rockstar developers. Also you don't attract great employees with a promise of work-life balance--you can only attract "good" employees that way. Great employees are attracted to passion. Go to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and tons of other industry defining founders and ask them if they worked leisurely with work-life balance or ran around like a chicken with its head cut off.

7Figures2Commas 11y ago

Even if one is generous and assumes this kind of behavior is typically well-intentioned, it's foolish to believe that it won't become a detriment as you grow your business. A lot of startup founders don't think much about management principles and the importance of perception in an organization, but these things matter. When founders are emailing around the clock, many employees will come away with the perception that they're expected to be available at all hours of the day and night too. Your employees are never going to be as invested as you, so this typically creates stress and dissatisfaction for employees more than it motivates and impresses them. As this Ask HN post demonstrates, a workaholic warrior complex is also a great way to convince your employees that you're an "i" word (insane, insensitive, imbalanced, incompetent, etc.).

volaski 11y ago
One of the biggest mistakes I made while working on a past startup was listening to an advice like this. What you say is totally valid if your company is a fortune 500 company, but the type of people who start companies shouldn't strive to become those types of managers covered in business case studies. I made this mistake after reading too many business books. It simply doesn't work. From my experience it fucks up the company culture when a founder tries to "tone it down", because that's not the quality required to make stuff happen when it's in the beginning stage. A competent founder should be able to adapt as the company grows, but shouldn't behave like a fortune 500 CEO from the beginning.
- 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
  Here's the biggest problem with your approach: in today's market, it's a lot harder for startups to recruit and retain good employees than it is for good employees to find new employers. Just look at the OP: he left an ostensibly good job to join a YC startup and he's already questioning the founder's behavior and competence. When he starts feeling pressured to work insane hours, or completely loses faith in the founder's sanity and competence, how long do you think it will take him to find a new employer that promises something better? At the risk of being overly harsh, if you feel you're incapable of making "stuff happen" without sending random emails at 3 am in the morning or acting like you don't have control over your schedule and business or terrorizing your employees into believing that they need to be online at all hours, you're probably out of your depth and should be honest with yourself about your readiness to run a business with employees. A lot of people in the startup community have deluded themselves into believing that "hard work" is the one and only key to success but by and large, successful businesses are built by doing the right things, not by running around for 18 hours a day like a chicken with its head cut off. Thanks to the funding boom, a lot of chickens with their heads cut off are running companies. Folks like the OP work for them at their own peril.
  - karissa 11y ago
    thank you
  - volaski 11y ago
    Who would you pick if you had following two candidates: 1. A rockstar developer who wants work-life balance 2. Not famous but passionate junior developer who has potential I would always pick 2 over 1. I know because I have made exactly that mistake of hiring #1. And the company culture went to shit. If I was the founder of that company and found out about this I would have a talk with OP and if there's disagreement I would rather let him go than trying to tone it down. Company culture is much more important than one or two rockstar developers. Also you don't attract great employees with a promise of work-life balance--you can only attract "good" employees that way. Great employees are attracted to passion. Go to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and tons of other industry defining founders and ask them if they worked leisurely with work-life balance or ran around like a chicken with its head cut off.