

Fuck Glory – Startups are One Long Con (2011) - dpeck
http://unicornfree.com/2011/fuck-glory-startups-are-one-long-con

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malanj
It seems like this is one big false dichotomy. A venture funded startup
doesn't have to be a death slog. Some people just like working harder than
others.

Don't slate them because it doesn't suit you. 100 hour weeks aren't for
everyone. The best I can do is ±80 hour week while remaining productive. But I
like doing that, and I've done that most of my life.

Yes, there are lots of people who get sucked into the image and don't know
what they're getting themselves into. The same goes for boring career paths at
one of the big accounting firms.

Funded startups can be fun. Working super hard can be fun. Doing something
that other people think is cool (glory) can be fun. It's great that you're
doing well with a relaxed bootstrap approach. It doesn't mean you have to
force that as the only option. Horses for courses.

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drdeca
What's a -80 hour workweek?

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saurik
It is not clear to me that the Venture Capitalist, maligned by this article,
is not also working a death slog, trading his youth for glory: I do not get
the impression that Paul Graham spends his days relaxing and "enjoying life",
and not himself working long, weariful hours. The core thesis of this article
--that the concept startups are a con by people to extract value from you--
doesn't hold much weight to me: if anything, it is a way for one group or
generation to rationalize their own behavior by teaching it as "the way" for
the next: it you've wasted your own life, you will be motivated to fight to
claim it was not in vain, overestimating the benefits and tying your actions
to abstract unmeasurables, such as "glory".

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malandrew
Meh. If startups aren't for you, then do something else. There is a lot more
to get out of them than striking it rich or "glory". For the most part, if you
don't truly believe that the product/software/hardware a startup is trying to
build should exist, then you probably shouldn't be there in the early days
when you're likely to be working longer hours to be successful.

Personally, one of the biggest draws for me isn't the glory or the opportunity
to get rich, but instead the opportunity to build something I believe needs to
exist and the opportunity to create something entirely new in the world from
scratch and be responsible for the majority of important design decisions.
I've learned far more than I would hacking on someone else's legacy code
(unless I had the privilege of working on the legacy code of truly great
engineers I respect) or by being told what to build and how to build it
(again, unless that person happens to be brilliant at making those types of
decisions).

Those who work at startups should do so for the same reason that people who
work long hours on open-source projects do so; they are makers that are
building something they believe should exist.

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etanazir
“Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside
the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the
numbers of regiments and the dates.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

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michaelwww
This is so true it hurts and young people will avert their eyes from it. No
one wants to believe that youth can be wasted in the pursuit of money and
glory to spend in old age.

