
Watch a VC use my name to sell a con - jwwest
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/
======
antirez
Humans are not designed to:

1) Stay long hours sitted, immobile. It ruins your health.

2) To provide a steady high quality output in creative disciplines (writing
code qualifies) for more than a 4/5 hours a day (add to this the time to do
breaks, install your updates, check news sites, fix the email client, and
you'll reach the 7/8 hours per day figure).

It makes sense in a startup to work hard in crucial weeks, you can sustain
that for a few days both from the point of view of your body and your
productivity, but making this the rule is just plain silly.

Also, remember that a startup has a small percentage of probabilities of
making you rich, so better for you to also enjoy life while working at a
startup. Try hard in your working hours (but it is more a matter of doing the
right things than the wrong things for a lot of hours), but enjoy life when
it's 6 pm.

What's silly is that also VCs are likely to don't really get more return from
you by overworking you, but there is nothing than humanity has seen more often
than a silly boss that feels more comfortable if you are overworking yourself.

~~~
rapind
I respect your opinion Antirez, but I hear so much speculation about work
habits that I have to ask you: Is this your opinion / experience, or is it
based on some specific research / study you can point to?

As a fellow developer I'd love this to be true, however a meme / fad started
during my working career in rich cultures stating that hard work isn't
rewarding or is unnecessary. I question this.

My father taught me to work hard, as his father taught him, etc, and this
basically states that my father was being scammed. Doesn't every generation at
some point rebel against the previous generation's beliefs? Could it be that
the whole work less theme (apparently based on science?) is simply rebellion?

All I know is that I plan to teach my kids that working hard for something is
itself a reward. That you can't appreciate anything you didn't work for, and
the harder you work for it, the more you appreciate it. I also expect this
will help them survive in a hyper competitive global workplace.

Maybe if we consider maintaining physical fitness to be part of our daily
work, then I'd be on board with these thoughts. I.e. 4-5 hours at a desk being
creative, and 3+ hours of some sort of physical exertion.

~~~
danielsoneg
I suspect two differences:

First, "working hard" and working the sort of insane, body-destroying hours
that Arrington & co are advocating are two different things. It's good to work
hard, be diligent, and get things done, but balance is essential. Arrington
doesn't agree.

Second, Work for our parents and grandparents involved physical labor in some
degree - ours does not. Our work takes a huge toll on the body for what seems
so sedentary, and requires (I'd suspect) much more demanding mental processes,
which are also extremely draining.

So yes, work hard - as did your father and his father - but don't kill
yourself, and don't spend it all in what my doctor calls the Chicken position.

~~~
electromagnetic
IMO "working hard" constitutes working an 8-hour day and not being a slack ass
in your duties.

My day job is construction, mainly because I'm good at it. I find it every bit
as stressful and mentally draining as when I've been doing sedentary work (I
worked as a reviewer). The main difference is that the stress can often be
used (when you have to nail in a certain position and it just happens there's
a 1/8th inch steel plate on the stud, stress makes it a lot easier, and you're
not stressed when the nail is driven).

I've said elsewhere here that we get highschool educated guys who can't read
tape measures and who can't do basic trigonometry, and it's sad that we get
guys in who've failed highschool, but you give them a pencil, a tape and a
pair of tin snips and they can do trig, but they've failed math in highschool.

So given I am college educated, it is offensive (not that you personally
offended me, I've received enough derogatory comments from doctors and the
likes to realize that many peoples hundred-thousand dollar educations simply
served to make them very stupid; that said a retired economics professor was
happy as shit - he'd been writing newspaper articles for years about the
shortages of 'unskilled' and 'semi-skilled' labour is crippling the economy)
when people assume physical labour jobs require little mental ability.

My father taught me to work hard. He was a coder; he's taught me electrical,
plumbing, concrete/floor laying, drywall, plastering, brick laying, roofing,
welding, etc. He never taught me programming, because he didn't want me
working for someone else my whole life (he's owned 4 businesses, all
successful and profitable in his lifetime). He was happy as shit when I called
to cancel my trip to see him next year, because I told him I'm looking to buy
property to rent and start a property management company (I literally have all
the skills necessary to turn a $90,000 piece of shit into $180,000 in the
local market, meaning turning 1 $900 a month house rental into two $1200-1500
month unit rentals).

~~~
danielsoneg
Yeah, I wasn't sure of how to approach the mental aspect - I didn't mean to
say construction or other physical labor required little mental ability,
because I've done enough of it to know that's just not the case.

I think coding is different for two reasons - and please do excuse me, because
while I've _done_ physical work, I don't do it for a living, so I'm coming at
this slanted:

First, with physical work, you're doing, well, physical work. There's a
correlation between physical activity and mental acuity, and, as you mention,
you can take out some of your stress out on productive labor (if I do that, I
have to buy a new mouse). You also have a balance between the physical and
mental side - I'm not sure if there's a corresponding mental equivalent to
muscle memory.

Second, you can 'outsource' some of the modeling to the actual physical object
- the work you're doing has a tangible component, so you don't have to keep
the entire thing in your head. That part, to me, is the most draining aspect
of coding - I've gotten much better at structuring my code so I can
compartmentalize most of that away, but when I'm working with older code or
other people's code, I've basically got to have a very accurate representation
of the entire program in mind the whole time. That gets really tiring really
fast.

I think one of the other big differences, though, is that I can screw up an
awful lot more than you can and get away with it - if I completely arse up a
section of code, I can go back in and redo it at basically zero cost. If you
arse up a floor, well, now we need to buy the raw materials for a new floor.
The corollary between experts and amateurs mostly holds between construction
and coding - give an idiot enough time and eventually you can have either a
house or a program - the difference is he'll cost you an awful lot more trying
to build the house. That breeds a level of patience and caution which,
frankly, is probably better for one's outlook on life in general.

Anyway, again, sorry if I seemed to demean physical labor - I really didn't
intend to. Like I said, I've seen enough experts in action to know the
difference isn't in the hands.

~~~
electromagnetic
You didn't offend me, and I could tell you weren't meaning to demean physical
labour.

> I'm not sure if there's a corresponding mental equivalent to muscle memory.

Have you ever driven to walmart, or work, or your girlfriends (someones) house
when you was slightly distracted when driving. You don't drive dangerously,
you're not swerving of being stupid like if you was drunk or distracted,
you're just not thinking and you end up going the wrong way or doing the wrong
thing. There's been a couple of times in the morning when I've accidentally
changed the time on the microwave, because I always used to have to hit the
timer button before putting in the time. Now I don't, but on autopilot I can
somehow manage to find 'time' on a different keypad layout and change the time
to 1:30.

I agree with the second, having a tactile object to work with seems to free up
a lot of the cognitive ability for the task at hand. Although, when I was
doing electrical work you often needed that mental model to know where wires
were running, so stepping into someone elses job (especially when it was done
wrong or poorly) was a major head-job.

> I can go back in and redo it at basically zero cost

That's why I write fiction, because as a professional career it's only loss of
time that matters. Thankfully in my job (vinyl siding) my materials are fairly
cheap, so waste isn't a huge concern for us (but a good worker always
minimizes it, like unless you're confident you use a piece that's already
garbage to make a template rather than wing it on a new sheet) because our
company gets paid for our reputation and how presentable our jobs are (there's
a big aesthetic difference between done and done properly).

> Like I said, I've seen enough experts in action to know the difference isn't
> in the hands.

That's in all jobs, I've seen my fair share of talentless doctors, etc. (At 15
I called a doctor out wrong when I self diagnosed psoriasis, the hallmark is
scaly skin that pin-prick bleeds when scraped and I had it and I had
psoriasis, but that doctor couldn't admit he was wrong to a 15 year old)

~~~
arethuza
I've had a couple of experiences where I've _almost_ driven on the wrong side
of the road in the UK after driving in Europe or the US for a while.

Note that I've never even got close to driving on the wrong side when abroad -
only after I return home.

------
tom
I hope this signals the end of folks walking on egg shells around Arrington.
He's no longer a "newsman". He's no longer going to make or break every
startup that ends up on AOLCrunch. He's just an investor hoping for deal flow.
An investor who's proven he's probably not the guy you'd want to work with,
probably not the guy you'd want to partner with, probably not the guy who will
ever be on anyone's side but his own. Kudos to Zawinski for calling him out.

~~~
akkartik
jwz would have said this a year ago or three years ago. Timing has nothing to
do with it, I think.

------
grellas
"Those who work hard make good" is a profoundly American theme that dates back
to Horatio Alger and before - it can hardly be said to originate from a cabal
of VCs trying to "put one over" on hapless founders and startup employees in
Silicon Valley. No doubt Mr. Arrington adds his peculiarly abrasive touch to
the debate (toughen up, don't whine, and let's applaud Zynga for what it did
to its employees), but he did something very similar not too long ago in
chiding investors who were whining about being in the "middle of a terrible
blubble" ([http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/24/were-in-the-middle-of-a-
ter...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/24/were-in-the-middle-of-a-terrible-
blubble/)). Like it or not, this is his philosophy and outlook about what it
takes to play the startup game. It is his expression of ideas and social
commentary. One can disagree with it as much as one likes but it _is_ unfair
to say that this is nothing more than a con job. It is also unfair to take him
to task for quoting from a publicly available source to support his idea of
what the experiences of startup employees have been like in Silicon Valley -
if the goal is to illustrate such experiences, then what better source to use
than a diary whose purpose was precisely to document them. If the author of
that diary wants to say, "no, that's not what I meant" in response, that is
fine but that doesn't justify an _ad hominem_ attack on the person using it to
illustrate ideas he wants to espouse.

My point here is strictly about fair argumentation, not about the merits of
the debate. Whether right or wrong on the merits, I think the author takes an
unfair shot in the way he makes his points here. We all have ideas and core
beliefs, even those who are VCs. We all should be free to express them without
being accused of nefarious motives.

~~~
nknight
> _It is also unfair to take him to task for quoting from a publicly available
> source_

Quotes which were already removed from their full context, taken further out
of context by Arrington, with a shallow, incomplete understanding of the long-
term consequences of the events being recounted.

Arrington has a Bachelor's in economics and a law degree, until 1999 he was a
securities lawyer. He was still in law school when jwz was actually doing
useful things and wrote those diary entries.

Arrington has never been an engineer of any kind. He has no concept of the
kind of stress placed on engineers, little grasp of the work environments he
wants people to put up with, and as a VC, has a massive conflict of interest.

Invoking a respected name through excerpts of a document that offered only a
narrow, fuzzy window into what jwz went through in order to lure young hackers
to an inevitable burnout for a likely reward of zilch is just scummy, and it
is in no way unfair to call Arrington on his BS.

~~~
studentrob
Amen brotha! Here's to a world where engineers are lead by engineers who lead
by example, and not by VCs with law or business degrees.

------
dschobel
I love that this is the top story on HN. I only wish that PG got as much flack
for his startup economics hype piece[1] and proposition to compress a
lifetime's worth of work effort into four years.

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

~~~
1010100101
Agreed.

Another one who should get some flack is Thiel.

He may just be the worst, suggesting kids should forgo a university education
and going so far as to actually debate the "issue" whether an education is
"worth it".

For some of these VC to make money, they have no need to see university
degrees.

But they have their own interests in mind. And, lo and behold, most of them
have university degrees.

~~~
nostromo
I think you guys are being unduly cynical. Thiel recently debated this on NPR
([http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/past-
debates/too-...](http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/past-debates/too-
many-kids-go-to-college/)) and I found him very convincing. He repeatedly
talked about the concern of young people leaving college with 200k+ in debt --
which I think is very fair.

~~~
_delirium
Thiel's also discussed elsewhere his frustration with the liberal politics of
academia, which he sees as an impediment to libertarian policies gaining wider
buy-in, so I think he might have motivations for attempting to undermine it
besides pure concern for students' debt. (Though it's quite possible he
earnestly dislikes academia for multiple, independent reasons.)

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Nail on head. Common politician tactic.

He's a hardcore objectivist libertarian. He most certainly doesn't care the
least bit about student loan debts.

But this is kind of an ad hominem. He's also correct.

------
felipemnoa
>>Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what's good for you, check
your wallet, then count your fingers.<<

This is just gold.

~~~
corin_
It struck me more as simple than gold. If a VC that invested in a company
gives them advice then _obviously_ his goal is to make more money... but that
goal will, in turn make _you_ more money too.

If you don't like the fact that a VC has the potential to make more money than
you, the solution is to not take investment from one, not to ignore them after
they take investment.

Also remember that yes, they're not putting in a lot of work to make the money
- but you aren't putting in a lot of money that you might lose, which they
did.

I'm not arguing for or against working crazy hours, just against the idea that
you should be scared of any suggestion from a VC.

~~~
patio11
_you aren't putting in a lot of money that you might lose, which they did._

VCs make money win or lose. Limited partners actually have capital risk.

People know this, right?

~~~
corin_
Afraid not (afraid I don't know, not you're wrong) - how does a VC make money
if a company they invested in goes bust and shuts down?

~~~
patio11
VCs invest money from so-called limited partners: universities, pension funds,
wealthy families, etc. They're partners in the VC firm by dint of providing
money, but they don't get operational control of deals.

The fee structure of a VC firm is similar to that of a hedge fund: they take a
management fee (based on the committed fund size) and a performance fee (based
on the profits, if any, from investing). Typical numbers are 2% annually and
20%, respectively.

If a VC fund invests $100 million in a company and, after four years, the
company goes kablooey, that actually cost the LPs about $110 million or so.
The VCs made $10 million.

~~~
corin_
Of course, and I did know that had I been thinking straight, but I don't think
it detracts from the point I was trying (badly) to make.

Obviously advice from a VC is given selfishly, as you doing well means he does
well, but for them to do well (i.e. get the performance fee), that will mean
that you have done well too.

~~~
sector
A VCs risk profile does not look like yours, due to the fact that they're
diversified and you're not. Imagine your company is doing well and there are
two ways to proceed:

option 1: your company can be sold today for $75m.

option 2: you can try for $1,000m or zero, with an 85% chance that you'll
fail.

The VC is likely to prefer option 2, whereas if you aren't already rich, you'd
likely prefer option 1.

Many a VC funded company has died because the VCs needed you to make a ton of
money very quickly, or die trying, in order for their model to work. When
considering VC investment, one really needs to be certain that their business
needs align closely with your own (and are likely to continue in alignment) if
you want to avoid heartbreak.

------
prawn
I'm glad he finished with a note for the people who actually get something out
of hard work on their personal project because I doubt I'm alone in getting a
lot of personal satisfaction in performing like that. It's not all the time
that I pull an all-nighter or a couple of weeks of hard slog, but I often feel
better for them.

And I'd rather be doing that for myself on a side project or in the start-up
lottery or within my own business than for someone else. If that isn't
possible, then even for someone up the chain. If someone else (VC, client of
mine, landlord, etc) also profits from this endeavour, so be it.

Sometimes you have to know the lows to fully appreciate the highs.

Further to that, I tend to enjoy weeks of fulfilling hard work with those
glimpses of recreation more than I do the ones where I'm procrastinating,
spinning my wheels or at a loss for something I can be bothered doing that
day. Hard work, or hard holiday - that half-arsed stuff in the middle rarely
satisfies.

~~~
nir
That half-arsed stuff in the middle is called living, and it's the only way
you can do this sustainably.

Startups are like going to Hollywood. Your goal might be to become as
successful as Clooney, but that's not likely to work out. Still, if you're
talented & dedicated, you _can_ make a living in this industry and enjoy it.

I've been working for startups for the past 12 years. I won't be a millionaire
even if my current company sells for $.5b - there are preferred stock,
dilutions down the road, taxes etc. But I hope to be in startups for the rest
of my career, simply because it's fun to create something from scratch, work
in a small company with relatively little office politics etc.

It's not fun to sleep under a desk, though, or consistently work 12 hours/day.
If your boss expects you to do that, he's a poor manager. If your VC tells you
to do it, he's trying to exploit you, as JWZ correctly points out.

~~~
prawn
I'm talking about half-arsed work or time-wasting, not what I enjoy of my life
- sorry if that wasn't clear. Living in a rut is little better, in my
experience.

This year I have worked on more side projects than I can handle, I've worked
through the night and had brutal weeks at my own business, I've done a lot of
socialising and I've spent almost three months of the year overseas on
holiday.

I hope to work harder and holiday more in 2012. That's not eating into what I
value in life, I hope it will eat into those mindless hours on Xbox, checking
Hacker News for the fourth time in 20 minutes, seeing if anything's been added
to the fridge since my last check an hour ago, thinking about how I really
should get the garden in order but not actually doing it, sitting through a TV
show I don't really care for, etc.

~~~
nir
Please don't take my comment as criticism - I used to do the same when I
started out, and it was a lot of fun. Definitely an experience worth going
through. I was just referring to the longer term, so that people new to this
field won't get the impression we all sleep under our desks till retirement :)
Good luck with your startup/s!

------
Joss451
I've lived through a programmer's career already. Everything was good until
age 50 when my body punished me for punishing it for 25 years.

Seven heart surgeries. High blood pressure. Damaged kidneys. Removal of an
inner ear (from flying while ill and not getting to a doc in some place or
another).

Take care of your body, blokes. It's the only thing keeping your brain intact.
The cummulative effect of stress over a number of years is to attempt to kill
you.

~~~
bigohms
Thanks for this

------
betterlabs
I would love to hear PG's comment / viewpoint on this whole issue.

I have done 3 startups so far (1 VC funded, 2 bootstrapped) and I work very
hard because I love it BUT I never ever work at the expense of the time with
my kids and anyone saying you have to give up your life to find success in the
startup world is just misleading in a big way. There are tons of examples of
highly successful people across many industries who have made a fortune
without giving up their lives. And its wise to look beyond such myths which
are made to seem like the "norm" sometimes.

~~~
akkartik
PG's described startups as 'compressing working life into a few years'
(<http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html>)

But Arrington and Zawinski aren't talking about founders and their startups.
They're talking about working too hard on _somebody else's startup._ Totally
different thing.

~~~
betterlabs
I was actually referring to PG's views on that issue that Arrington wrote
about.

And the whole discussion definitely applies to founder and their startups too,
imo. The issues are the same and so are the trade-offs. Would you give you
your life for your startup but not for anyone else'?

~~~
akkartik
Ah, I assumed the three startups you mentioned were your own.

jwz talked about working hard and enriching others. That's not an issue if
it's your own startup.

~~~
vidarh
It _is_ an issue if there are VC's involved. One of the startups I co-founded
and owned 25% on at outset ended up with a whopping 1% of the proceeds of the
exit. I'm not bitter - in this case the exit recovered _maybe_ 30% of the cash
the VC's injected, after about 8 years - and so the dilution was
understandable. But unless you bootstrap, you will increasingly be working to
_also_ enrich others, after VC's, options to other employees etc..

Exceedingly few VC-funded businesses end up with founders holding on to
massive stakes all the way through to an acquisition or IPO. That is the
tradeoff you make whenever you take VC money: You hope you accelerate your
growth enough to more than offset the piece you give away. That is also why it
is often more financially attractive for regular employees to join a VC funded
startup: the growth rates are often similarly faster (but you often fail
faster too, and more spectacularly; though failing faster is not necessarily a
bad thing if you're first going to fail)

------
bigohms
Wow. I didn't expect this one bit from Arrington. I'm surprised he is choosing
to mine Internet archives for blog fodder over putting that much more time
into guiding his portfolio to fewer mistakes and possibly 1% more potential.

Startups, hard? Yes. We ALL know this. Are his opinions skewed towards his
agenda? Also yes. There is no hiding the fact that he's in the money. The
problem is that the "thought-leader" portion of his rant was lacking. And it's
a bit of unfair baseball to bring up a random blog post from some guy nearly
20 years ago. My bets are that he didn't even bother doing follow up on this
guy after the fact.

------
someone13
Some people may not enjoy the green-on-black text, so this might be of use:

<http://www.readability.com/articles/dirqhjff>

~~~
pelemele
The color scheme is not random. He is probably an old timer like me
remembering old green/black monochrome 14" monitors.

[http://www.classic-
computers.org.nz/blog/images/2011-04-24-i...](http://www.classic-
computers.org.nz/blog/images/2011-04-24-ibm-xt-with-mono-monitor.jpg)

~~~
draven
Use the phosphor screensaver (written by jwz) in the xscreensaver distribution
together with Lynx/Elinks, as it can function as a terminal emulator:
/usr/lib/xscreensaver/phosphor -scale 1 -program "lynx -dump
[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-
se...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/)
| less"

------
rwmj
And don't forget the people who worked hard, slept under their desks etc and
then got ripped off and ended up with no lottery win at all.

------
dlikhten
While reading this post I was thinking of a few funny things about life and
money:

Money makes money. An example is Kim Kardasian. What does she produce?
Nothing. Does she actually make anything better than others? No. She has
money. Using that money she was able to be part of a TV show, which she used
as an oportunity to make herself a character people liked, used that to up-
sell whatever crap she made, used that to make shittons of cash on her
wedding.

How is that relevant?

Well, same happens here. If you have money, you can invest, money that is much
needed for business to get off the ground. Now you may argue that "don't get
investment money, start small, then make a bigger business when you can affort
it" which is actually quite valid. However if that is not what you want then
you are basically asking people for money. They made the money, and are
reaping the benefits of that money.

So basically you get rich, they get rich. You did the work though. However
once you get rich, you can now make the bigger business that you wanted to,
this time bootstrapped.

------
alexwolfe
Some good advice and wisdom in this post. Getting rich from a startup is a
lottery, I've personally worked for many over the last ten years (most fail).
What isn't a lottery is your time and how you use it. If you do something that
makes you happy every day, you don't need to win the lottery to be successful.
Nice article.

------
aspensmonster
> What _is_ true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for
> _you_ to give up _your_ life in order for _him_ to become richer.

Isn't this more or less the case for any profits-go-to-owners business model?
Or rather, any business model where employees are viewed as calculated costs
and not owners worthy of a commiserate portion of the profit?

I've often wondered how a different ownership model would work for a company.
One where the owners still make more money than the VPs, who still make more
money than the engineers, who still make more money than the techs, who still
make more money than the CSRs, who still make more money than the cleaning
staff, but everyone is seeing a salary that is at least XX.X percent higher
than it was before. Or perhaps a function of CPI, per Capita GDP, and a few
other variables. Honestly, company ownership just seems like one big game of
who can grab the most power in a given time metric. Rather than money being a
means to an end, it is the end. But that's just my inexperienced,
undereducated take on the whole thing thus far.

~~~
guelo
> Isn't this more or less the case for any profits-go-to-owners business
> model?

Almost every industry out there manages to make good profits without their
employees having to give up their lives.

~~~
larrys
"Almost every industry out there manages to make good profits without their
employees having to give up their lives."

Medicine and law being two exceptions.

~~~
nostrademons
Note the pattern: medicine, law, and engineering are 3 industries where the
employees carry significant human capital with them (finance is another one,
and i-bankers also give up their lives).

I suspect the reason for this is because human capital makes the payoff for
additional hours worked non-linear. One cashier working 80 hours a week should
be just about as productive as two cashiers working 40 hours a week (a bit
more even, because of fatigue). However, one engineer working 80 hours a week
is significantly more productive than two engineers working 40 hours a week,
because of the overhead required to get the second engineer up to speed and
then the communication delays needed to make sure any information makes its
way to both engineers.

Note that these professions are paid more as a result, too, because they're
not fungible laborers. If that one engineer quits, you are a lot more hosed
than if one of your cashiers quits.

The effect of both of this is that professional jobs tend to work longer
hours, both because the worker himself is more productive doing so, and
because they reap a greater percentage of the rewards for doing so. They have
the option of deliberately short-circuiting these incentives, by eg. quitting
and traveling the world for a year using savings. I know folks who've done
this, and greatly enjoyed it. But it runs counter to societal expectations, so
many don't.

~~~
henrikschroder
> However, one engineer working 80 hours a week is significantly more
> productive than two engineers working 40 hours a week

Only for short periods of time.

Every single piece of research on working hours for knowledge workers show
that longer periods of overtime decrease productivity. These people work
longer hours because the people that pay them are unable to measure
productivity properly and instead pay them by hours worked. Good for your
salary. Crap for your company's productivity.

~~~
nostrademons
Well, yes. I was mostly using the numbers for illustration's sake; substitute
1 40 hr/week employee vs. 2 20 hr/week employees if it makes the point
clearer. (And it should make the point clearer: if you've ever had to manage
volunteers, I bet you'd take one dedicated full-timer over a team of 10 half-
time volunteers.)

I suspect there's an equilibrium point where the gains of human capital are
offset by the losses of fatigue. My point is that you get declining efficiency
in both directions; if you try to speed up work by adding more people, you
incur costs in communication & learning overhead.

------
bl4k
wait, does jwz really expect us to believe that he doesn't know who arrington
is? I mean, the techcrunch conference afterparty two years ago was at his
night club .. and I am pretty sure i saw both of them there.

~~~
mahmud
In this instance, identification of the individual VC responsible for this
specific instance of _The Lie_ is not important. Leaving him unnamed helps us
abstract out the pattern to its most condensed brown residue, so we can
recognize it on our feet should walk at night in the park, or frequent certain
_scene_ sites.

Also, it's not that jwz doesn't know the dude, it's that jwz just doesn't give
a fuck.

[Edit:

Just asked jwz, turns out he _really_ doesn't know the guy.

    
    
      Increment jwz-man-crush
    

<https://twitter.com/#!/jwz/status/141359337401626624> ]

~~~
bl4k
when I re-read it I can see that is it more that he doesn't give a fuck. and
thanks for clarifying with him.

------
pithic
To succeed, one must work hard and smart. Overwork is rarely smart and, if
done regularly, practically a guarantee of failure.

------
agentultra
For the argument that "my father taught me to work hard...":

If I get more done in an hour than you do, should I continue to work as many
hours as physically possible just to get ahead? What if the experience I've
gained over a decade of doing this allows me to do twice the work that you do
in an hour?

Simply working more hours is just a race to the bottom. There's nothing there.
In fact I'd argue that it stifles the mind from seeing the bigger picture. A
good mind built for solving problems doesn't try to exhaust itself with
repetitive, menial tasks. You may work 16 hours a day but I argue that you
will get less and less done per hour. And in the end whether you get rich or
not all you'll have to show for it is diabetes, some form of erectile
dysfunction (if you happen to have those bits), coronary disease, and an
amphetamine addiction.

Instead cultivate your mind and aim higher.

Perseverance does pay off. That should be the lessons of your
fathers/mentors/etc who "worked hard."

~~~
s73v3r
Working hard isn't simply working more hours.

------
aaronf
Working consistent long hours does not mean you're getting more done. I
believe RescueTime has data showing the average person at work 8-hours a day
is only working 2-4 hours. The people I know who are consistently first in and
last out are not getting more done - in fact they're usually doing it to make
up for something. One theory on productivity says procrastinators and
workaholics have the same core issue - but respond to it in opposite ways.

This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode when George Castanza leaves his car at
work so his boss thinks he's always there.

We need to stop measuring productivity by hours worked. Instead, productivity
should be about finishing what you set out to do. If that only takes 4 hours,
GO HOME. Plan the next day. Get some rest. Your output will be higher, and
you'll be healthier and happier.

------
kanwisher
Makes total sense, enjoy your work and don't buy into you have to kill
yourself to make it big in a startup. And the payout might not be worth it in
the end unless your in a lucky percentage.

------
kamaal
Oh, C'mon.

So I'm not supposed to work hard and get rich because as a side effect that
some one else also is?

My dad is a cab driver. He really works his life off. Under absolutely dismal
financial conditions he and may mom have given their whole lives to bring us
out of poverty. They got me and my sister decent education. They did what
every poor family in India does. They worked hard, saved money, invested it
and got their kids good education so that we could now stand on our own legs.

He still pushes a 12-16 hours schedule everyday. You know what? Compared to
most of his cab driver peers we are like 1000x better. He has achieved what
none of them have ever or will ever achieved.

He pays a lot of commission to the travel office which gives him rentals. And
sure they are getting rich too. He is using them and they are using him.
That's how it all works. But he would not exist without them and vice versa.

He can of course sit back at home, he is old too(like he is nearing 65) and
tell the travel office is getting rich because of his work so he won't go to
work. But, he doesn't do that. He works hard for everything he has every
earned.

Of course most of his friends and peers call him merely lucky. And that he is
also a fool to be working hard not smart.

I really want people to define smart work. Its like people try to say there is
some magical way to produce wealth and value out of nothing and that only
smart alecs are capable of that.

~~~
quanticle
It's not about working hard or getting rich. It's about working until you've
put your health in danger. It's about coding until you're hallucinating. It
might be necessary. But it's not laudable.

Likewise, with your dad, what's laudable is the _result_. What's not laudable
is the process. I'm sure that your dad would have jumped at the opportunity to
make the same amount of money for fewer hours worked every day.

In life, you don't get credit for trying. You get credits for results. Yes,
working hard is necessary. It's not sufficient, though. You need a lot of luck
to strike it rich like jwz did. That's the point he's trying to make.
Sometimes, you work 16, 20 hour days, and you just go home bankrupt because
the market just isn't there, the investors aren't willing to believe, and the
customers don't give a damn. Then what do you have? You've ruined your health,
you've alienated your family, you've isolated yourself for what? A dream. An
illusion.

I'm not trying to take anything away from your dad. Those 16 hour days had
value. But let's not pretend that there was _zero_ luck involved. What if the
travel agency hadn't given him rentals? What if his taxi had broken down and
he'd been forced into debt in order to secure repairs? What if he'd come down
with diabetes, heart disease, cancer, or any number of ailments that could
have ended his career? All those things (and many many more) would have
prevented him from being able to provide you with that college education.

So yeah, definitely celebrate hard work. But don't pretend that pure hard work
and saving money gives you the ability to stand on your own two legs. Those
are the prerequisites, but there's a whole lot of other things that have to go
right for everything to turn out well.

~~~
kamaal
My dad has hypertension. He has a weak digestion(Because of stress). His legs
are weak. He wears glasses(Because he battled the glare from vehicles all this
life). He also has bad moods all the time(Because of the frustration battling
traffic all day).

Yet he doesn't give up. That's what it really boils down to. Diseases are a
part of life. You have to learn to live beyond and with them. He was lucky
that every time he got an opportunity he used it, which opened up more
opportunities. And he worked on those opportunities.

And by the way, No one that truly got rich and sustained his riches for a long
time ever did it without working hard. The fact that not every body can work
hard. The fact that most consider hard work 'not worth it'. The fact that most
don't work hard is what has what has given hardworking people edge throughout
history. And makes them a minority.

But I agree, Hard work may not always lead to results. But it increases your
chances of success.

I consider my dad a personal hero because he demonstrated what focus and true
hard work can achieve over time. Had he settled down for mediocrity like
everybody else, he would be nothing more than a cab driver to me.

EDIT: Common folks why would you downvote this? Is not giving up beyond all
odds, so bad?

~~~
tsunamifury
Because our dad was paid for every hour of work he put in. He invested his
time by the hour and his risk was minimal. For a startup coder he or she is
investing by the month or year, and to walk away from that with not much to
show for it can be awful.

These coders arent paid extra for all nighters, they aren't compensated for
losing relationships, they aren't covered when they burnout, all for a
realistically very slim chance of striking it rich.

~~~
kamaal
I already mentioned in one of the threads below. Our work as software
professionals today is more dependent on productivity not intelligence.

We are quickly assimilating in to normal crowd. We may even be judged by the
same metrics they are.

~~~
kamaal
For all those people who are not getting it. Today success of most software
shops is about business innovation not technology innovation. Yes there are
instances of Google and other big web giants innovating greatly in the
technology area. But they amount to less than 1% of the software crowd.

We are all writing software to solve business problems. We are not writing
software for Software innovation.

Unless you are doing something special. Most software today is written in
IDE's. You don't have to remember syntax at all these days. The IDE will do it
for you. It knows what libraries you want, it knows how many exceptions your
code can run into. It knows how to compile, build and package your code. I can
give you your code coverage. It can even do documentation for you. There is
hardly anything IDE's can't do these days.

All you need is a little semantic awareness. And there are solutions to nearly
every problem you are likely to run into a software shop. There are libraries,
API's and frameworks that have understood and defined your problems as a
generic case and solved them. There are forums to help you out on edge cases.

All you do these days is know a solution to a generic pattern of problems. You
fundamentally pull out those logical solutions from your brain and
parameterize them for the solution need at hand. And remaining is simply IDE
play.

Very little or really a non quantifiable of highly intellectual work is
happening in business based software shops today. Google, Facebook are
exceptions, not the normal.

And this isn't surprising. We need armies of programmers to do all the bulk of
the business job out there. If you are still thinking that as a software guy
you are going to work with math theorems, then you have got it wrong.

Given all these, my success depends on only two things. How much aware of the
reusable solutions. How quickly and how many problems can I solve using them.
Which is productivity.

This is drag and drop programming demystified.

~~~
sausax82
I am not sure whether you have ever worked at a startup or not. Your
understanding of current software development is what big software service
companies do with mediocre programmers. Startups never have army of
programmers but few intelligent programmers. And there is nothing bad in using
IDE, innovation does not mean to write a solution from scratch. There will
always be need of abstraction based on current libraries and programming
environment.

------
mythz
Massive respect for jwz.org for disregarding popular opinion and dropping
truth.

------
thewisedude
I think just talking about only hard work being a means to success is a over-
simplification of working of this complex world. Working smart as opposed to
working hard is also important if you want to benefit financially.

Lets say a kid works hard in his college days and gets to be a dentist or a
lawyer or somebody like that. Lets say another kid in similar circumstances
chooses not to work that hard or makes a bad judgement and ends up in a not so
rewarding area- rank and file job. It is totally fathomable that the dentist
kid could end up making twice as much by working half as hard as the rank and
file kid for the rest of their lives.

All in all, the idea that working harder will reward you in the future seem
fair or karmic. The real world probably is not that simple. I would think
there are many other equally important factors like opportunities, luck,
judgement etc.

------
snowwrestler
It's worth pointing out that while Arrington is a VC now, he also started his
own company (TechCrunch), worked very hard to grow it for years, and guided it
to a nice exit to AOL. So this is not necessarily a case of "do as I say, not
as I do." He was famously hard working when he was growing TechCrunch.

------
frouaix
Somehow I fail to equate Zynga with "dent in the universe". Netscape did make
a dent. Google did make a dent. If you have the choice of where you'll work,
and you want to work that hard, you might want to pay attention to how what
actual value will come out of your work for the rest of us...

------
mncolinlee
I would argue that some of the best code I've ever written didn't take long to
write. If Arrington understood both the physical and mental nature of bug-
quashing, he'd have a more nuanced view of the slavish work sessions he's
advocating.

Sometimes it makes sense to pull overnighters and sometimes it simply burns a
coder out and drives him to poor productivity and an infectious bad attitude.
It takes an expert to know the difference.

------
jorkos
I don't think Mike is writing in the spirit you suggest; he's just arguing
that you have to work hard to achieve something great. Is there something
wrong with that argument? Of course, VCs want the people they invest in to
work hard....does that surprise anyone? No one has to take VC money.....know
what you're signing up for.

------
EGreg
This is the comment I left on Uncrunched:

(PS: if you feel inclined to downvote, cool -- but I would like to know the
reason. Maybe you can reply and tell me why you seem to disagree.)

LOL Mike. Our company gets things done without having to live like slaves.

There is a reason <http://qbix.com/about> has pictures of all of us in nature.
It’s subtle but it all fits together with our company’s vision. We want to
have fun and enjoy LIVING LIFE as we enjoy creating the tools that improve
other people’s lives.

Yes, we work hard. And we create things together. But with the internet, 3G,
and Wifi we are able to work from anywhere! This is more than can be said for
any other industry, and we are lucky to be around in this time when we can
travel and still get things done. Not only that, but the geographical
constraints are now loosened. Not too long ago you could only choose among
engineers that live nearby. Today you can hire engineers that do great work
even if they live halfway around the world, and you can connect over the
internet, Skype, and a host of other tools that just work.

We are building more of these tools. We believe in liberating people from
their computers and focusing on just living their lives and getting things
done. We love freedom. We want it for others, and we want it for ourselves.

It takes a careful system and a focus on process, but it can be done. With the
right tools, the right guidelines and habits, we can be productive without
sleeping under desks.

After all, you have one life, and work is a part of it. We have a motto:
people live lives, companies create products.

~~~
suivix
I think being able to work from anywhere is actually _less_ liberating,
because it means you're always battling internally about whether you should be
working or not.

~~~
EGreg
If you love what you do, then you will be thinking about doing it. In fact,
the problem is often that you are thinking about it when you are expected to
be having fun - because you're out with people.

That's when you know you love your work.

But anyway -- I mean it when I say: people live lives, companies create
products. A person can devote only 10-20 hours and still be productive. If you
write documentation in a common framework, and you have a common process for
everyone, then the developers have an easier time picking up whether others
left off, and working together. In a word: better encapsulation. I think
Google had this back in the day with their interchangeable desks/developers :P

------
someone13
COMPLETELY unrelated, but I do wonder - is this the most upmodded submission
here on HN? I know reddit has the /top/ modifier you can add to links (e.g.
<http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/top/>), but I was unable to find anything
similar here.

------
brk
I find that I really connect with about 1 in 4 of jwz's rants.

It is a general rule that anytime there is someone above you in the hierarchy,
they are going to make $2 for every $1.50 you make. Of COURSE the VC's will
make more money than you. And the people who put the actual money into the
funds should make even more than THEM.

The startup world, and economy in general has changed dramatically from the
last time jwz was heavily involved, IMO. It's good that he made what qualifies
as his own fuck you money and can now look in on things from the outside and
comment thoughtfully. For a lot of people though, working 80 hour weeks
grinding out a startup or 3 is still the most probable way of banking a decent
retirement fund AND still having some life left to enjoy. I don't think that
I'd advise many people to do a 30 year career of crazy startups, but it's kind
of a geek lottery and worth the gamble for lots of people.

I don't really see where this is using his name to sell a con. If that were
the case, I would think Arrington would pick someone who hadn't dropped out of
the game a decade ago to sell his 'con'.

~~~
guelo
> working 80 hour weeks grinding out a startup or 3 is still the most probable
> way of banking a decent retirement fund

Seems doubtful to me. Does anyone have statistics on how many non-founder VC
funded engineers have made even $1 million off of equity? I'm going to guess
it's less than 1:20,000 employees, a suckers bet. If you're willing to work
hard you have a much better chance by starting your own boot-strapped non-pie-
in-the-sky business that just sells something at a profit.

~~~
ghshephard
Depends on what time period we are talking about - if over 4 years, then $1
million is a handsome return for an early stage (non founding, first 10)
engineer at a successful startup. If over 8 years, then $1 million equity
return works out to be $125K/year - not as exciting. I'd suggest the odds for
a $1million equity return over eight years is closer to 1/20. Still lousy
odds, but a great engineer can shift them by making the company successful.

~~~
steve8918
I know engineers that have made over $250k/yr total compensation (including
salary, bonus, and stock options) over the last 2 years alone. And this is for
a well established post-IPO company (not Google). I think their take home just
from monthly vesting stock was roughly $150k over 2 years.

I still remember the thread where someone asked about how much people made out
on an exit, and it seemed like firmly 80% of the people who responded said
that they got screwed by the founders or VC, and only one said that he made
enough for a downpayment on a house. So to me, 5% odds to make $1MM over 8
years seems really high.

It would be an interesting statistic to see how many startups have been
started since 2008 and what their success rate has been.

------
staunch
It's the height of ridiculousness for someone who retired, at like age 30 to
run a nightclub, after working at a startup to say it's a "con". What kind of
terrible "con" turns the victim into a millionaire.

There are _far_ more startup employees that have become rich than founders or
investors. Tens or hundreds of thousands of them. Of course they don't get _as
much_ money as the founders or investors, but how is that anything other than
perfectly fair?

Empirically it does require _extremely_ hard work to make a startup
successful. You can't point to any major success like Netscape or Google that
didn't involve someone at some point sleeping under a desk. That's really all
Arriington is saying, and it's quite obviously correct.

For some people it might be no better than playing the lottery, but for other
people their odds are going to be very high. Someone like Bill Gates would
have been hugely successful as a McDonald's franchisee or anything else he
chose to do.

Just because some people are delusional about their odds doesn't make it a
con.

~~~
InclinedPlane
JWZ acknowledges that he got lucky with the "Netscape Startup Lottery" and is
trying to tell people that most employees at most startups won't see the same
results. Even if they are world-class genius coders. Even if they put in 80
hour work weeks for several years.

JWZ isn't a good example to emulate because he is a rare example. Patio11 is a
better example because there are literally thousands more devs in a similar
position. Self-employed, doing well, but not retired and not outrageously
wealthy.

~~~
InclinedPlane
For reference: if you earn, say, $70k/year at a startup working 80 hr/week 52
weeks a year you are making the equivalent of $13.50 an hour at an hourly
position that paid overtime. Alternately: $25/hr for 51 hr/week with 2 weeks
of vacation a year. Hope that equity is worth it!

------
neilk
Please check out erinn's comment, which is as good as the original post if not
better:

[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-
se...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-
con/#comment-98274)

------
mmaunder
This argument has been painted as VC's vs employees. You're either one or the
other and a VC gets rich and employees do all the work. What about company
founders that get rich and work insanely hard?

------
AznHisoka
Overworking yourself sounds sexy, and glamorous until you experience what it's
like for your brain cells to literally attack itself due to not getting enough
sleep.

------
Chirael
Are there I <3 JWZ shirts yet? :)

~~~
mahmud
WWJWZD bracelet.

------
joshontheweb
From all of these comments it becomes apparent why Arrington doesn't allow
comments on his blog ;P

------
codeslush
I LOVE, absolutely LOVE his home page! <http://www.jwz.org/> WELL DONE SIR!

~~~
basugasubaku
It's been like that since like 1999. And there's always been this comment in
the source:

<!-- mail me if you find the secret -->

<!-- (no, you can't have a hint) -->

------
jebblue
I couldn't stay on the web page for more than three seconds, all black.

------
beachgeek
This has been a great discussion all. Being a tech guy myself, I agree with
the majority of you. Its pointless working oneself (to death?) for someone
else like we do, especially when the end result isn't even cast in stone.

But every time I think my job sucks, its too hard, my boss sucks etc, I think
of this guy. I took this pic in India when they were laying a road near where
I live. It was 100F and 100% humidity. The guy in the picture was carrying hot
rocks and tar in a metal pan and spreading them across the road:

[http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt328/hmbsandman/carrying...](http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt328/hmbsandman/carrying_rocks.jpg)

In general, I am thankful and immensely grateful. If you are reading this you
should be as well.

------
lwat
Anyone got a readable link please

~~~
jf
Not sure why you're having trouble reading the page, but here is the text of
his blog post:

"Normally I just ignore navel-gazing tech-industry articles like this, but
people keep sending it to me, so I guess this guy is famous or something.
Michael Arrington posted this article, "Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry
Less, And Quit All The Whining" which quotes extensively from my 1994 diary.

He's trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software
industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your one
and only youth, and if you don't do that, you're a pussy. He's using my words
to try and back up that thesis.

I hate this, because it's not true, and it's disingenuous.

What is true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for you
to give up your life in order for him to become richer.

Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what's good for you, check your
wallet, then count your fingers.

He's telling you the story of, "If you bust your ass and don't sleep, you'll
get rich" because the only way that people in his line of work get richer is
if young, poorly-socialized, naive geniuses believe that story! Without those
coat-tails to ride, VCs might have to work for a living. Once that kid burns
out, they'll just slot a new one in.

I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it's
true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much
as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under
their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the
software industry, I'll bet you get a very different view of what kind of
sleep habits and office hours are successful than the one presented here.

So if your goal is to enrich the Arringtons of the world while maybe, if you
win the lottery, scooping some of the groundscore that they overlooked, then
by all means, bust your ass while the bankers and speculators cheer you on.

Instead of that, I recommend that you do what you love because you love doing
it. If that means long hours, fantastic. If that means leaving the office by
6pm every day for your underwater basket-weaving class, also fantastic. "

~~~
dylangs1030
He probably means that the website is reminiscent of the old Yahoo geocities
websites - neon colors over a dark (usually black) background, haha.

That aside, it's still pretty readable. Besides, the content is worth the eye
strain in this case.

~~~
SimHacker
Ha ha! We're talking about jwz, and you think Geocities is old.

------
barce
tl;dr: don't get played by Arrington.

------
rbreve
the goggles they do nothing

~~~
rbreve
The color theme make my eyes burn here is a readability link
<http://www.readability.com/articles/dirqhjff>

~~~
ars
So strange - I love the color scheme, so easy to read.

(The human eye is most sensitive, and has highest resolution in green.)

~~~
chrislomax
I'll be honest, it killed my eyes too. I was reading it up close on my big
monitor and by the time I was looking back at my laptop all I could see were
lines!

------
mike_esspe
What do you care about someone becoming rich due to your work, if you are
becoming rich too?

Let's consider two situations:

1) You work X hours, paid Y dollars for that

2) You work 2 * X hours, paid 100 * Y dollars for that, and some VC is paid
1000 * Y dollars.

Should you chose the first?

~~~
InclinedPlane
The point that JWZ is making is that you are by no means guaranteed getting
rich, or anywhere close to getting rich by following the "work your ass off as
a startup employee" advice that Arrington seems to be providing. It is a
pretty sure-fire way to generation substantial ROI for VCs, but it's not a
good strategy for coders. Indeed, overall it is probably a less worthwhile
strategy than punching a clock to the barest minimum of requirements to earn a
salary and then using the remaining free time to acquire new skills (technical
or otherwise) or work on personal projects (like one's own startups).

------
moonchrome
Yeah VC's have it easy, it's all hookers and cocaine for them...

His advice about "do what you like" is true in general but doesn't really
account for the fact that you choose to work for a startup and you choose to
accept VC money, with all the ups and downs attached to it. If you can't stand
the heat - get out of the kitchen.

~~~
ryannielsen
Not all startups take VC. Not all startups that take VC require insane work
schedules.

Arrington's article is misleading and destructive – sleeping two hours a night
isn't required for success and often leads to outcomes far removed from
success. It's rather depressing that it's commonly believed all successful
startups are driven by people with a single-minded focus who have no other
lives.

JWZ's post is, on the other hand, quite constructive – do what makes you
happy. You don't have to fit the mold to be successful.

Yes, a startup will sometimes command your life but that doesn't mean it needs
to _always_ command your life. I know many startups who haven't taken VC and
let their employees lead fulfilling lives outside of work. I know companies
that _have_ taken VC and still encourage their employees to work sane hours.

Working grueling and exhaustive hours doesn't guarantee success.

~~~
moonchrome
And I didn't say all startups take VC money, nor did I say that all startups
require insane work schedules (that was addressing the VC will work you to the
bone). But just because it's not _always_ required, it's always a
_possibility_ that you will need to work like that in order to succeed, even
in a big corporation things can go very wrong and you end up pulling a bad
month (when launching a project in one big company I worked with the
integrator went bankrupt and we had to finish the project on our own, IIRC I
did 320H that month but got 5x pay check).

In startups chance that you will need to work long hours is so high it's
almost a certainty - startups are just like that, disorganized, unpredictable,
underfunded and understaffed - for various reasons. You have no way of knowing
that you won't need to do 80 hours in one week if something unexpected
happens, that's the nature of it, it's a high risk/reward game (and I'm not
implying that reward is guaranteed if you work "hard") and anyone entering
should know what they are getting them selves in to.

~~~
mavelikara
> anyone entering should know what they are getting them selves in to.

Fair enough, but people hiring others to work for them for 80hrs/week should
also expect some push back from some of those employees attached with this
notion of "living a life before it is too late".

