
Note, this is not a “lifestyle job” - lifelesswork
I just came across this YCombinator-backed company careers page  (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bottomless.com&#x2F;jobs) and saw this:<p>&quot;Be part of our founding team. Note, this is not a &quot;lifestyle job&quot;. Our goal is to build something great for a lot of people, not to maximize work&#x2F;life balance.&quot;<p>I am genuinely curious what type of people actually decide to take these jobs? I understand that working at a startup will be different than working at BIGCORP, but what kind of people decide to go for a company that clearly announces long works hours (and probably below average pay) like that?<p>It&#x27;s difficult for me to understand whether the founders of these companies are genuinely deluded, or whether they just hope to find someone dumb enough to buy into their &quot;mission&quot;? As long as you&#x27;re an employee, then being a part of the &quot;founding team&quot; doesn&#x27;t mean anything. Am I missing something?
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lkrubner
What I learned is that these jobs are only really fun if you are the founder.
Over 20 years, I was the technical co-founder at 3 different startups, and I
had crazy fun at each of those jobs, even when we were working 70 hours a
week. Because when you are a founder, you're really only under the pressure
that you yourself set for yourself. Yes, I worked very hard, but I was working
on my ideas, I was meeting cool people, I had absolute freedom to set my own
hours. It was fun.

I then made the mistake of thinking that I would also have the same kind of
fun as an employee. I became the tech lead at a startup, thinking I would have
the kind of freedom that I previously had. This was a mistake. I was very
excited about the technology that this startup was working on, but in the end
I found, these jobs are much less fun, if you are not the founder, because
there is a lot of pressure that comes from up above you, and when you come up
with what you think is a great idea, you don't get to implement it. And there
are additional frustrations: for instance, on this project I came to believe
that it was crucial that we fire our initial data scientist, but the top
leadership refused to fire him. This was a major roadblock that I would not
have faced if I was the founder, as I would have had the authority to fire
someone if I was the founder.

For anyone interested, I wrote in great detail about the experience here:

[https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-
Steps/dp/09...](https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-
Steps/dp/0998997617/)

~~~
bob33212
Im in the same boat. It would be nice if there was someway to get a group of
us to work together without just 1 or 2 of us enjoying ourselves. I would do
well in most SRE positions, but not when someone else can overrule me. So that
makes me the CTO, but I don't enjoy 100% of the CTO responsibilities.

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Meph504
There are times in life where sometimes you just want to built something
amazing, and you don't want that process hindered by those who only work 9-5.
I personally worked this way until my mid 30s, and the best companies I was a
part of were those companies where most of coworkers were young, smart, and
passionate about what we wanted to do, our lives had no balance because we all
obsessed over what we were building.

To me, this is likely who they are looking for, and why they are unapologetic
about putting it there.

Typically founding team means a stake in the company, and that your efforts
can shape the company and you have a voice at the table.

I'd say everyone could benifit from working on a passion project like this at
least once, but that's just me.

~~~
beaconstudios
this company sells coffee.

~~~
gatherhunterer
“We’re making the world a better place through heat-induced liquid caffeine
dosage vendor solutions.”

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carterjbastian
From my perspective, the message that "we don't care about work-life balance"
is equivalent to "we expect you to prioritize your job over your physical,
mental, and emotional health".

That, to me, is a really big red flag. The founders are making it clear that
they care more about their bottom line than they do about their future
employees. I think this is an immature and problematic way of going about
business.

~~~
gatherhunterer
It’s also bad for business. Healthy workers do healthy work and they can do it
for years without becoming disillusioned or overly invested. If the company
fails because of uncontrollable factors like an economic crash they will still
have a healthy personal life and all of that time won’t feel like a waste.

The attitude of trying to solve one big problem now so that everything else
will fall into place doesn’t work. If the company does well you still only
have your work. You don’t just win a great life because you reached a finish
line in one area. I take issue with the term “work-life balance” but every job
is a lifestyle job. The line that the OP quoted is just start-up talk for
“hustle culture”.

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Arainach
I also saw this ad, and was amused by one of their perks being "unlimited
PTO". The combination of that and "not a lifestyle job" tells you everything
you need to know about so-called unlimited time off policies.

~~~
badpun
Hah, last time I interviewed for a remote job in an American startup with
unlimited PTO, I said: you know, I'm from Europe, here we don't have unlimited
PTO, but 5 or 6 weeks of vacation are common - so I don't really want
unlimited and would be happy with just 5 weeks. Are you OK with that? That was
met with a bit of an uncomfortable silence, and then they said that the
standard is that everybody takes 2 weeks of vacation once a year plus maybe an
occasional day off a couple times a year. Which was exactly what I suspected.

In the previous US startup I worked for, which also had an "unlimited PTO", I
checked the company calendar and it was standard to take at most 2-3 weeks of
vacation per year. Seeing what I saw, I now consider the unlimited PTO a red
flag, as in - somebody is looking for suckers.

~~~
JJMcJ
Accrued vacation must be carried on the books of a company as a liability
until the vacation is taken. So you have two weeks vacation a year, you work a
year without taking any vacation, the company has actually paid for 54 weeks
for their accounting.

Also, in many American states, accrued vacation must be paid out when you
leave the job. So it's not just an imaginary liability.

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ed
Right out of school that’s exactly what I wanted, and put me in a good
position to start my own company 3 years later. Now, in my mid-30’s, I’m
optimizing for flexibility more than anything else. Just depends where you are
in your life / professional goals.

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musicale
Seeking compliant robots eager to trade their physical and mental health for
excessive work hours and minimal compensation so that the real founders can
cash out as quickly as possible. Does this sound enticing? Inquire within.

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el_dev_hell
I respect their honesty.

 _Translation:_ 70 hour work weeks (minimum). You better not have a family.
Not answering your phone at 2:31AM on a Sunday is grounds for instant
dismissal.

Hopefully, they're including a decent sum of equity (even if you're more
likely to win the lottery).

I wouldn't touch this with a 400 meter pole.

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throwaway_45
How hard can it be to make a wifi food scale? Why do you need data scientist.
Inventory management is very well studied science. There are plenty of
formulas to calculate optimal reordering points. You probably can use seasonal
ARIMA to forecast coffee use. I know this is just going to come off as sour
grapes, but how does a company like this get into YC?

Someone should be able to whip this up in a few days.

~~~
andyn
It seems a bit like Juicero - maybe investors are trying to find a corner of
market based on food subscriptions.

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rolltiide
Just sets the tone for the culture fit.

What they describe is the reality for most small tech businesses, other
companies just lie about it for recruitment purposes and then subject
employees to various pressures to make more commitments. This just cuts
through that and there are people available for it and it saves everyone a
little time.

All these operations are based on getting your job done in an optimal time.

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flukus
> It's difficult for me to understand whether the founders of these companies
> are genuinely deluded, or whether they just hope to find someone dumb enough
> to buy into their "mission"?

There is also the desperate. People that have just been laid off elsewhere
with no cash reserves, people just trying to break into the industry (they
mention a student loan allowance), people with a criminal record, the list
goes on.

Preventing the desperate from being exploited is why we have labor laws to
begin with.

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deogeo
> Our goal is [..] _not_ to maximize work/life balance.

Maximizing work/life would mean work is large compared to life. So _not_
maximizing it means work won't take up much time - your worries are misplaced,
OP!

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burger_moon
At least they're upfront about I guess. Unlike most companies including those
that fall into BIGCORP where you're stack ranked out if you aren't competing
on hours spent in office.

~~~
rchaud
The flipside is the BIGCORP will likely be around in 5 years, will offer a
decent healthcare plan and any share-based compensation is likely to be worth
more than $0 when you vest.

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world32
This is why burnout is a thing amongst tech workers, especially for Silicon
Valley style startups. I also can't understand why some employees would fall
for these YC cliches "changing the world", "hustle, work hard play hard",
"passionate about our business" but the fact is a lot of people do fall for
that. They end up working long hours, for a company that really doesn't do
anything remarkable at all, if this company didn't exist no-one would care.
Yet their peers and the YC-culture tells them that they should be really
passionate about this so when the reality doesn't live up to that people
burnout.

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ahoka
This is exactly a lifestyle job. Lifestyle for people who think their work is
substitute for personality. It's very saddening that software development
became this.

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Justsignedup
A company that doesn't balance work and life is a company who doesn't want
people to be sane.

There are many reasons why I cannot work long hours. Disability. Kids. Wife.
Family obligations. And that's just to name a few. And I'm a guy, I never will
become pregnant. To ignore those is to basically say "we only hire guys in
peak physical and mental health with no obligations who are willing to destroy
their body and mind for profit."

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pasithee
I've worked in seven different start ups as a Dir of Tech, CTO, software
engineer, etc. It's naive to assume that these guys, although amateur as far
as job postings go, don't represent 95% of tech starts up. I had no problem
putting in 70+ hours a week for years. The moment I became a mother, even
before I actually had the baby, this career trajectory seems to have
evaporated. The company I worked for at the time, the offers from the start
ups I received later on, all have the culture that promotes this form of
enslavement, really... and with acquisition, finance rounds, etc that nice
looking equity becomes meaningless at payday.. if there is ever one. A new
framework is needed to support a diverse workforce... really; and it can start
with VCs making calls on where the put the money but most likely, the cultural
shift will need to come from the ground up... like every other revolution

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j7ake
If you really wanted to learn how to manage supply chain of coffee, maybe
working at an actual coffee shop (where you actually see the action happening)
would benefit more than working at this startup.

It is just amazing how much more hype (YC-backed, millions of funding) a tech
startup gets for doing this work versus other jobs that also solve similar
problems.

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muzani
I actually really enjoy jobs like that, where you can just intently focus on a
mission. Even if the mission is coffee.

 _However_ , companies that put it as a job _requirement_ take the fun out of
it.

In a sense, it's nice to constantly give presents to your spouse and her
family. But a forced tribute is not fun.

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antisemiotic
My first job was more or less like this, I guess vicarious ambition (i.e.
making someone else's dream come true) can carry naive young people a long
way. I'll never do that again though.

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helen___keller
There's plenty of people who enjoy a period of intense growth and hard work.

To me the bigger issue is sustainability and scalability. You can build a
small dedicated team with a culture like this, but once you have that culture
it won't go away easily. When you're trying to scale up and retain a large
staff, I would argue that a culture of overworking is detrimental. Good luck
retaining employees who have less equity and are not directly connected with
the founder, but who are still expected to work 60+ hours a week.

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youeseh
If you do decide to accept a position, then do yourself a service and
negotiate a market-value salary that reflects all the overtime you'll be
contributing.

As for equity: that is what you get for the risk that the company will go
bankrupt. The earlier you join the company, the higher the risk, and therefore
the higher the equity.

Don't mix salary and equity! If things don't workout.. say, a month before
your cliff, then at least you'll walk away knowing you got paid fairly.

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dhruvkar
I'd totally be a sucker for this type of job description ~6 years ago (32 now,
married and a kid on the way).

I want(ed) to build something that made a dent in the world (so perhaps not
coffee refills). And somehow making a dent & working long/hard hours were
conflated.

A more mission driven company with a similar description would have totally
lured me in. :D

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croo
I've met with a person who said "holiday is the enemy of work" and he really
meant it. When he worked he wanted to work 80 hour for months when he wanted
holyday he rested for months. For him mixing the two was just unnecessary
complication.

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codingslave
Probably someone who is young and wants to eventually start their own company.

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tedmiston
That company in particular has only 2 employees right now (the founders).

With respect to this particular company, I only know them from trying their
product, so I wouldn't necessarily make any assumptions around comp when the
data doesn't exist yet. Presumably the early employee offers are generous in
equity. Usually founding team means high equity, and the company is pretty
green as well. They have just raised a $1.9M Series A and they presumably have
revenue coming in from their current customers. It's good that they are
upfront about the stage.

I think this kind of job can be good for someone who wants to go all-in on
their career, potentially right out of school (see their student loan
repayment perk), and compress years of learning down to learn things several
times faster than a bigger startup and tens to hundreds of times faster than a
big company. Seed stage can be extremely fun and rewarding but of course there
is increased risk of burnout. Another reason to consider this type of
opportunity is if the company or problem they're solving is obsessively
interesting to you (e.g., you'd consider founding your own company in the
space).

Bottomless is having real scaling pains right now. They have initial traction
but their software needs help. As a user, I get the impression from a quality
perspective that they've outsourced initial development. There are bugs going
unfixed for weeks and months. My first experience with their product was okay:
there is potential, but the scale and first coffee arrived weeks late so I had
to buy coffee from somewhere else when the projections were missed more than
once. They are clearly overwhelmed right now. The second experience was bad:
my credit card was charged overnight by surprise for a product I didn't want
with the sole warning and option to opt out of the charge occurring overnight
< 8 hours beforehand while I was sleeping, then my card being charged before I
woke up, then they refused to cancel the shipment and put up a fight refunding
to my card. (Their recurring shipping does not run on a fixed calendar
schedule so the customer has to rely on the business to notify them of when it
determines new orders will be created.) Though I pointed out that this process
is unreasonable and also does not match what is listed on their website
("12-24 hours notice"… which is still too low especially when traveling), they
did not offer to or issue the refund initially without me being extremely
persistent and I had to fight with them for it. They could really use people
focusing on these kinds of challenges full time to make the product / service
better. I am going to give their product another chance because I like the
concept, but for a software engineer interested in this space I'd imagine
they're offering an opportunity with significant product ownership given how
clearly strained they are right now, how much needs to be built, and their
fresh funding.

~~~
yeahitslikethat
You are much more forgiving than I am. It should have been an instant refund.

If they make you fight for what is yours, then charge back. You don't have
tolerate that kind of service.

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dyeje
That line stuck out to me as well, but I got to hand it to them the filter
probably works great.

~~~
JJMcJ
It's like spam emails. They are ridiculous exactly so that they only deal with
people who have already fallen for the con.

