
Success at Work, Failure at Home - sethbannon
http://scott.a16z.com/2014/01/17/success-at-work-failure-at-home/
======
ChuckMcM
I very clearly remember the week this clicked in my brain. Being very
successful, really crushing it, and whining to my wife that the company should
give more vacation, and her reminding me that I had been at work on Christmas
Eve. My whole perspective collapsed around that instant. I could see the hit
in career path I was going to take by changing my perspective, but I decided
to do it anyway. And I have always been glad I made that choice.

The challenge is there will always be people who are willing (either
consciously or unconsciously) to throw away their family and personal
relationships in order to pursue success in their career, and it is difficult,
if not impossible to compete against them with the 'balanced life' bit set.

~~~
nostrademons
I've often wondered about this, whether it's possible to still be a big career
success and compete against those who are willing to give up their whole
personal life for it. I'm not entirely certain I've got an answer, but the
solution that comes to me is to make use of certain competitive advantages you
have that they don't:

1.) When you're heads-down on a goal, you often miss other things that are
going on in the world, like technology shifts or social changes that may
affect your business. Someone who makes time for a social life will be much
better informed about these, because they have more information coming in from
friends and acquaintances.

2.) People who work all their time often get very good at repressing their
emotions, because emotionally, it really sucks to work all the time. That
blinds them to an important source of information, which makes them make poor
global optimizations about their time usage because the rational brain isn't
as effective as the emotional brain at processing large amounts of not-
directly-comparable information.

3.) People who get used to working all the time often get very impatient and
feel they must be doing something productive with every moment. This makes
them unsuitable for jobs which require that you sit back and wait.

The biggest example I can think of of people using these against their
competitors is Warren Buffett, who's famously built a massive investment firm
by being "patient capital", that's willing to wait out the periodic panics and
take advantage of them. While the rest of the financial industry runs around
like chickens with their heads off, he sits back in Omaha, with a normal
middle-class lifestyle, and waits for their emotions to get the best of them
and make them do something. And then he swoops in at reduced prices, buys, and
waits for the price to come around again.

~~~
eitally
It depends on your definition of success and what you want to optimize for.

------
coffeemug
I'm facing many of the challenges Scott is talking about. I churned through
the first part of the essay and thought "yes! yes! yes, yes, let's get to the
solution!" But the second part of the essay falls short for me.

It's a bit like the depression and the broken hand cartoon[1]. I _can 't_
disconnect. I _know_ I'm supposed to turn off my phone, do household chores,
and take my wife out to a nice dinner. I know taking the time to do these
things makes me happier and more productive. It's not that I don't know this,
it's that actually doing it requires enormous discipline, but after spending
80 hours a week slowly changing reality by a sheer force of will, I have no
more willpower left for anything else.

I also know I don't _have to_ feel like I'm changing reality by a sheer force
of will, and in fact, feeling this way is a sign that I have a lot to learn
about leadership and about life. But that's not something I can just decide to
change either.

The problem is very real. The solution, at least for me, is as elusive as
ever.

[1] [http://www.akimbocomics.com/?p=573](http://www.akimbocomics.com/?p=573)

~~~
stephen
> The solution, at least for me, is as elusive as ever.

If you define "the problem" as "I want to work 80 hours/week + have a healthy
family life", well, yes, that's always going to be elusive. I.e. impossible.

Pretty sure the answer is to just not work 80 hours/week.

> but it's not something I can decide to change either

It is probably convenient for you to think that, but unless you have some sort
of mental health condition (delusions of grandeur, etc.), I doubt it.

One way or the other, you're making choices you want to make.

And that's fine, but you might as well be honest with yourself/others about
why you're making them, and that you must implicitly be okay with the trade
offs.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_It is probably convenient for you to think that, but unless you have some
sort of mental health condition (delusions of grandeur, etc.), I doubt it._

So what would you say to the young [insert famous and wealthy figure here]?

~~~
stephen
What would I say? Just what I'd said; that searching for a "solution" that
allows working 80 hour weeks + having a healthy family life is futile because,
IMO, it doesn't exist.

At least when you have kids. I could see a spouse being okay with "5-10 years
of hard work" for lots of freedom after that.

Hard to make that sacrifice with kids though, because after 5-10 years,
they're basically not kids anymore.

Ironically, if the 5-10 years works out, and the kids have a guaranteed life
of luxury because of it, they _might_ be grateful.

But I don't think it usually works out that way.

(Note that I'm only focusing on the "80 hours/week" thing. If you can pull off
"changing the world" (or at least your pocket book) on 40 hours/week, more
power to you.)

------
steven2012
My wife and I are going through this right now. My wife has a senior director
position in a multi-billion dollar financial company, and I am a programmer at
a startup. We just had a child several months ago, and it's been very hard
trying to balance work and life. It's actually the hardest thing we've both
had to do in our lives.

Her job is a minimum of 60-hrs per week, but luckily I'm able to limit my work
to 40-hrs per week, my company has been incredibly supportive. But truth-be-
told my productivity has been affected by at least 50% over these past few
months, especially after my wife and I both went back to work. There's been a
lot of guilt from both our ends, due to how much slips through the crack both
at work and at home because of trying to raise our kid as best as we can.

The key, I hope, is to keep focused as a team, meaning we try to pick each
other's slack with no resentment. It's tough living and raising a family in
Silicon Valley, due to the demands of work, and given how expensive things
like houses in decent areas are.

~~~
DanBC
You're a new parent, you're working 40 hours per week and somehow your
employers are _incredibly supportive_?

I don't know what the psychological term is. Cognitive dissonance? Stockholm
syndrome?

~~~
steven2012
After working the first few months and taking days/weeks off whenever I wanted
to, I took an entire month off with full pay and no PTO days. They didn't even
question it. If I need to take more time off on the order of months, it
wouldn't be a problem. On top of that I had to push out some deadlines by a
couple of months. That's incredibly supportive in my book.

~~~
gaius
How do your cow-orkers feel? Would any of them like a month off on full pay to
pursue a personal project?

------
Theodores
One thing you can do at home is the cooking (including buying the food and the
washing up). It is not hard to do if it is something you always do.

Serve up a great meal prepared from actual ingredients and enjoy eating it -
plus the conversation that goes with it. If you can do this then you are
likely to succeed at home.

If you can make cooking something you enjoy then that becomes an 'inline
hobby', i.e. something to care about, enjoy and look forward to doing. It does
not need extra time. You can feel good about yourself for doing it if what you
serve is well appreciated. But you have to do it as soon as you get in, put
your feet up, watch teevee, allow an hour to pass and it all goes wrong.

~~~
MoosePlissken
> But you have to do it as soon as you get in, put your feet up, watch teevee,
> allow an hour to pass and it all goes wrong.

I totally agree with this. If I plop down on the couch right after getting
home from a day of work, inertia tends to keep me there. I'll become almost
annoyed that I'm hungry and begrudgingly get up to microwave something really
fast. If I go straight to cooking and doing other chores as soon as I get home
I tend to eat a much better meal and feel much more relaxed once I do sit
down.

------
tikhonj
I think this is an example of a problem I see with a lot of hard-working
cultures like startups. You're always optimizing your productivity _locally_.

It's easy to just say "oh, I'll work harder _now_ " because, simply, you'll
get more done than you would otherwise. Today will be more productive. Most
importantly, the increased productivity is _viscerally_ obvious.

But working too much, making sacrifices at home, having problems with your
family, not having enough breaks--all that saps your productivity on a global
state. Sure, at any given day, you will accomplish more by working 12 hours
than 8. But, over time, you will start accomplishing less _per hour_ , largely
without noticing it. And while working longer will still optimize locally, you
will actually become significantly _less_ productive overall!

This is not a character flaw or anything like that. It's just a result of the
fact that local improvements are so much easier to see and understand than
global trends. So to counter it, you have to think ahead of time and ideally
keep some metrics to measure this explicitly. (Of course, I'm not sure what
such metrics would be--measuring productivity is extremely tricky.)

There's a particular study that gets linked that found working a single
60-hour week is an immediate improvement, but working consistent 60-hour weeks
is actually strictly worse than mostly sticking to 40. But it's so easy to
trick yourself into thinking that you _have_ to work those 60 hours because
you need to finish more _now_. It's definitely something you should watch out
for.

EDIT: [http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-
less...](http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons) is
the article I was thinking about.

~~~
levlandau
i agree with the spirit of this but the flaw in this reasoning is an
assumption that all hours are equal. Working __consistent __80 hour weeks _is_
the reason we got the Mac as well as Facebook. The extreme outcome possible
due to one locally focused push could far outweigh any other strategy and
could also be the maximum of the global state.

~~~
wpietri
And what's your proof that without 80-hour weeks we wouldn't have got the Mac
or Facebook?

All of those people were also wearing underwear, so if correlation is all the
proof we need around here, then I've got me a new business book to write:
_Steve 's Secret: What Every Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Has In Common_

I can even try to get data on whether boxers or briefs lead to better
marketplace success, and gin up some fake controversy. It'll be the next NYT
best-seller. Eric Ries, watch out!

~~~
BadassFractal
Thank you for stating that, it's one of my biggest pet peeves as well. The
startup culture is one of doing regression on the 0.001% of the companies who
become unicorns, while completely ignoring the failures.

I really want someone to start putting together stats of successful businesses
that were built working at most 40 hours a week without wrecking homes, by
people who knew how to use their time wisely. People who didn't fart around at
the office, hanging out with the guys watching anime at night and doing
whatever other freshman dorm-room behavior you constantly see the worst
performers do at the coworking spaces.

------
johnrob
Key question: did Ironport succeed _in spite_ of his family sacrifice, or
_because_ of it? It's not fair to recommend spending more time with the family
without addressing what the consequences would have been.

~~~
npc
No matter what, you're always going to be at a disadvantage to someone who is
willing to sacrifice more than you, whether that be health or family or
anything else. I liked the article but it completely danced around the obvious
conclusion which is, "maintaining a healthy relationship with your family is
going to cost you time and energy which is going to at least somewhat lessen
your chances of success and you have to be okay with that."

Edit: I've realized that my last sentence was somewhat ambiguous, I want to
make it clear that I in no way support neglecting your family for a chance at
economic success. When I said you have to be okay with it, I meant being okay
with the _risk of failing_.

~~~
michaelochurch
_No matter what, you 're always going to be at a disadvantage to someone who
is willing to sacrifice more than you, whether that be health or family or
anything else._

Not always. If you're in a line of work where your own competence matters,
sacrificing your health or family life will burn you. It doesn't take long.

The relevant issue is that most white-collar workers (even programmers in many
dysfunctional organizations) are private-sector social climbers by trade and
practice, and competence matters a lot less than image for them. If appearance
matters more than capability, extreme sacrifice can help you.

~~~
npc
>willing

There was an important word there that you seemed to miss. I didn't say that
he who sacrifices more will always win, but they do have more options
available to them, so to speak. Please don't think I'm advocating sacrificing
health and family in the name of success, far from it. I just don't like this
post facto moralizing that glosses over the difficulty of choosing between
working late on something that might be critical to the success of your
enterprise and going home to see your wife and kids.

~~~
md224
I think this discussion highlights something very important about any
Darwinian system, be it inter-species rivalry or free market competition:
evolution has no higher ideals. Whatever is best at domination will dominate;
whatever is best at spreading will spread.

People put so much faith in evolutionary processes as if they believe that
evolution honors some kind of Platonic ideal. Evolution is a cold process, and
it does not give a shit about you or anything you hold dear, unless what you
hold dear is conducive to dominance in the specific arena under discussion.

Not to say natural selection is bad or good... I'm just pointing out that it's
a value-neutral process, and I think it's a good idea to remember that,
especially when we get the urge to derive norms of behavior from evolutionary
evidence.

------
nailer
> And that part about sitting on my ass in front of the TV with a cocktail?
> This ran counter to all of her efforts to teach the kids about pitching in
> as a family. The message of everyone helping to cook, clean, and be
> responsible for the household fell completely flat when daddy wouldn’t so
> much as take out the trash or change a light bulb.

Take out the trash and change a lightbulb by all means, but seriously if
you're providing for your family, it counts.

If his children don't think he's pitching in by paying the rent /mortgage,
then something's very wrong.

~~~
yitchelle
Really depends on the kid's age. Younger kids (less than 10yrs) are not able
to grasp the concept of money or earning money, so explaining that dad is out
making money for a roof over their head and putting food on the table is not
going to cut it. At that age, they just want close interaction with their dad.

~~~
MWil
I'm happy to be proven wrong and of course this is only anecdotally but I was
watching sci-fi movies at age 10 and I could grasp, at least on the surface,
the underlying technology and it's purpose. When we say "kids dont understand
money" I'm thinking they should start to get it at about 7 and certainly have
a basic grasp by 10.

~~~
cunac
most likely you didn't grasp but just accepted without questioning of
feasibility

~~~
MWil
I didn't grow up with a lot of money so, again anecdotally, I'm pretty sure I
had a great respect for what money could afford by that age.

There's a difference between saying kids aren't capable and kid's aren't
commonly knowledgeable or taught. I'll agree with the latter but I'd disagree
with the former.

------
Myrmornis
I dare say I'll get voted down for not being constructive, but I find the
self-help entrepreneurship work-life balance stuff on here really self-
involved and kind of tasteless.

~~~
ricardobeat
While I agree with the emotion, there is meaningful discussion to be had. As a
sidenote I believe you'd do better to express your opinion without rebuking
HN's readership as a whole, under the risk of making your comment just as
tasteless.

------
undershirt
I want to relate this to Richard Branson's family advice to Elon Musk
sprinkled throughout a recent Google Hangout[1].

> I hope he can find some wonderful people to help him. He's got five children
> at home, all boys... he just, uh, he needs to... uh, yeah, I hope you can
> find lots of time. You just got to find lots of people to help you.

I can't imagine the kind of family life Elon Musk can have if he has five boys
while running two companies. He advises young entrepreneurs to work 70-80 hour
weeks as a clear no-brainer way to get ahead. Hearing the hesitation in
Richard Branson's voice in the quote above says a lot about this I think.

[1]:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9y_YSpYxA&feature=share&t=5...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9y_YSpYxA&feature=share&t=55m50s)

~~~
shortlived
At what point in the vid do they talk about family?

~~~
undershirt
55:50

------
rcjordan
It's easy to write about what you should have done _after_ you've made it
through the gauntlet.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Also after you're already loaded. Paraphrasing: I did this and now I'm filthy
rich. But if I had to do it again I'd spend more time with my family. By the
way, now that I'm rich I do spend more time with my family.

------
rdl
I pretty much am thankful a few times a week that I've never had children. It
looks like most of his difficulties at home were due to child rearing tasks;
it would otherwise be easy to spend money on things like the yard and
housecleaning and laundry, and if spending time with your wife isn't enjoyable
in itself, you are doing it wrong.

I guess I should be glad at least some people have children, though.

------
reuven
When I was working at HP, just after graduating from college, the CEO (Lew
Platt) announced that he would be stressing work-life balance among employees.
He specifically said that he wanted to accommodate working mothers, and
especially single-parent families. He officially blessed the idea of job
sharing (such that two people could each have a part-time job) and flexible
hours, to help in that way.

The particularly poignant part of this story was that he learned the
importance of such flexibility the hard way: His wife died from cancer, and he
was left taking care of his children by himself. Suddenly, he realized how
much work it was to raise children, and he decided that HP should try to take
into account people's personal needs, such that they could be with their
families and have jobs.

I don't know how deep those changes really went, and I don't know how many of
them have continued until today. But those announcements and attempts to help
people balance their personal and professional lives have stayed with me for
about two decades.

Sure, I work crazy hours (as a freelancer, and also trying to finish a PhD) --
but part of the reason I work late at night is because I value spending time
with my wife and children. I cringe when I see startups (and other companies)
expecting people, explicitly or implicitly, to sacrifice their family time for
the sake of the company except in unusual circumstances. And yet, there's no
doubt that for many of these companies, success often does demand more than a
simple, 40-hour week.

I'm glad that the original author realizes now that he could and should have
spent more time with his family. But I do wonder if he is willing to tell the
people working at his startups, "Hey, that program can be debugged tomorrow.
Go home and spend time with your children. Software can wait, but they can't."

------
Spooky23
I've learned to define success as the whole package -- a brilliant career that
results to me coming home to an empty house or a house full of people who
resent me is not success.

I try make work a 40-hour a week thing, which is often a losing battle. But
you need to try and make those 40 hours as productive as humanly possible.

------
PStamatiou
Enjoyed this post - reminds me of something i wrote last year on the same
subject
[http://paulstamatiou.com/simplify/](http://paulstamatiou.com/simplify/)

------
whyme
This reminds me of car ownership... When you ask people if they like their
car, most will say yes they do; that is until they decide to get a new one.
It's then that they quickly come up with a large con list to warrant an
upgrade. Afterwards, they will almost always say that last car was never any
good. After all look at the current car vs. the con list of the last. The
thing is, they'll be doing this again with their new car until they outgrow it
or find problems with it too.

And my point is: Hindsight is always 20/20 when your current perspective
_conveniently_ matches the narrative for your newly made situation.

------
Jimega36
As a founder, it appears as if our startup's success or failure depends on us
cofounders. This drives me to work insane hours as some sort of ego self
rationalization tells me that more work will make it succeed.

In general I have seen the work/result correlation hold true. And yet, we all
know how luck plays its role. I personally like to think some events are meant
to happen or not. Especially when it goes bad - when my startup lost a client
in the early days for example it was extremely tough... but we learned so much
that the next bigger one went well. Would working more hours have changed
anything, I doubt it, so there is more to it than work.

More than this, working many hours is sometimes just a way to reduce anxiety
of success or failure, at least for me. What's tricky is understanding which
hours not to do, how to make more of the ones I do, and being confident that
cutting the hours won't affect the bigger picture output too much. Easier said
than done.

------
shenoybr
In my view, this applies not just to CEOs, but other people too. I've seen
many around me and myself included, concentrate work so hard to achieve what
we thought was best for ourselves and to keep our family happy. However, it
would take a toll that our mislabeled 'needy' other halves would bear the
brunt off. Switching off from work is absolutely necessary to keep a work life
balance going and its necessary to keep in mind that there are other things
that are just as important, like our spouses, family and our health, without
which all the hard work is essentially meaningless. I personally tell myself
at the end of the day that the work never ends, there is always something to
do, and it can wait for tomorrow.

------
bbwharris
If you have children and a career, then you have two jobs. Sorry, you don't
get a "break", and you shouldn't expect to "unwind".

This isn't going to be popular, but its selfish as hell to think that you
"deserve" something because of all the hard work you are doing. You don't. The
universe is indifferent and life isn't fair.

The only thing you can do is make every moment count and do the things that
make you happy. If you are feeling the need for a cocktail and an hour in
front of the TV, then I'm going to say that you aren't happy.

------
mchusma
Thanks Scott. Great post, really resonated with me as a recently
(successfully) exited founder. You were the most helpful, empathetic, &
constructive "No" I got from a VC.

------
tdurden
> When we started pulling consistent coding weekends, we brought in the entire
> management team to serve the engineers: We brought them food, washed their
> cars, got oil changes, took in their dry cleaning, and arranged for
> childcare for their kids in the office.

Sorry, but while admirable, this is not normal. I may differ from most of HN,
but I simply don't see the point in making these kinds of sacrifices as an
engineer just because I get free dinner or childcare. It isn't healthy...or
worth it.

~~~
sokoloff
That's not the point. The management team is showing solidarity with their
team by serving them in the only (more symbolic than economically valuable)
ways that they can.

It's a symbolic (but real) sharing of the sacrifice, not a straight up bribe.

Same reason I've come in on Christmas night (we scheduled the work after the
families are reasonably in bed, but the calendar still said "12/25") to spend
time with my teams doing major site maintenance activities, or why I travelled
with the team for a major as-the-ball-dropped New Year's Eve datacenter
migration. It's not because I'm especially good at carrying servers or
building SAN racks...

The engineers make the sacrifice because they believe it's necessary for the
product/company to succeed. They feel better about it because their executives
are physically present there with them rather than on a golf course or diving
into their pools of gold coins...

~~~
mratzloff
But who plans a New Year's Eve datacenter migration? What kind of major site
maintenance is needed on Christmas?

It's one thing if it's an unplanned emergency. It's another entirely if it's
planned. Planning for work on Christmas or New Year's Eve would be enough to
convince me to find employment elsewhere.

~~~
sokoloff
Well, _we_ planned a NYE DC move (5 years ago I think), and years before that
we didn't have the capability to do certain DB tasks with the site on-line, so
we also planned the 2300 on 12/25 work. (And back in 2004, we couldn't even do
releases with the site on-line, so we did regularly scheduled releases on
Mondays starting at 1 AM with the outage starting at 2 AM...)

How does this happen?

Suppose we find ourselves running a high-margin e-commerce business and
needing to take downtime sometime to accomplish some maintenance work. When
should we schedule it? Managers and directors of teams in my Ops org
researched the expected bookings during various windows and suggested those
times. _They recommended them to me._ I spent some of the planning effort
double-checking and making sure the teams would be signed up for that, and got
a consistent message of "This is what Ops does; we all knew what we were
signing up for when we took this job." (Side note: Of the 9 people on that DC
migration trip, 8 still work here, 5+ years later.)

On the 11PM on 12/25 outage, we were upgrading OS on a few key infrastructure
servers that were singletons. (We relied on DB and file servers in a way that
didn't give us the ability to do maintenance and serve traffic at the same
time.)

On the DC move, we were literally decommissioning our main DC and moving those
services to a new DC in the same town. We bought and brought online as much
duplicate gear as we could, but the core transactional systems were a
singleton and needed to be moved, not replicated, and that was going to be 4-8
hours of downtime. My teams chose to put that downtime into a time when we'd
lose $1MM of high-margin bookings rather than $3MM of high-margin bookings.

Our CEO, without me asking, was also keeping tabs on the migration (from his
house) and sent IMs and emails congratulating and thanking the team for our
work when we wrapped things up around 4 AM on 1/1\. So, I got to see both
sides of it: doing what I believed was right as a leader and being present and
engaged when they were doing a less pleasant part of their job, and I got to
feel what it was like to get clear engagement and genuine thanks from above,
even though it was technically "just" a symbolic gesture. He could have sent
that mail at 10 AM the next day, but knowing him, he was keeping tabs on the
work not to check up on us or because he was petrified of a multi-day outage,
but because he wanted to be able to be the first one to thank us.

Side note: these experiences allowed me to better understand what Ops goes
through, and have caused us to prioritize (and since complete) architectural
projects that permit us to do almost every bit of periodic maintenance with
the site online. We haven't taken planned downtime in several years now,
because we've made those improvements. From a pure dollars-and-sense
standpoint, those projects "shouldn't win" over larger business opportunities
that we have, but they did win, in significant part because they were the
right thing to do for our people, and having been there, I can argue for them
from a position of first-hand knowledge.

There is an awful lot of negativity and anti-company sentiment whenever
inevitable situations come up where, on an instantaneous basis, either the
employee can get what's best for them XOR the company can get what's best for
it. I don't personally see these situations to be quite the same as Walmart
opening at 5 PM on Thanksgiving Day, but I'm open to the idea that others see
them as being exactly the same thing.

I understand and respect the perspective of someone who would never do planned
work on a holiday, or even those who would never do planned work on a weekend.
It's a perfectly reasonable point of view, and I will happily employ those
people in roles that don't require off-hours work. Those people will
presumably not choose a career in operations, or at least they probably
shouldn't.

It is always the case that I speak for myself and not my employer, but it's
worth calling that out on this post in particular.

~~~
mratzloff
Thank you for the detailed response. It's a good outcome that the sacrifices
of systems teams are more widely recognized in your company now; at many
companies they are not.

Online maintenance is how we do all our maintenance. Getting to that point as
early as possible is essential for redundancy and failover, anyway, so it is
both good for the company and good for the systems team.

~~~
sokoloff
Online maintenance is huge, and it's somewhat easier to design for now than it
was 10 years ago.

It's very nice to be able to schedule releases at a human/humane time and
there's really only one point in our release process now where it's impossible
to very obviously and fairly automatically revert and regroup. That one point
is clearly called out, and the decision is easy to make when the site has been
operating on live traffic for 60 minutes with zero perceptible technical and
business metrics degradation.

I'd not consider online maint capability to be a necessary part of an MVP,
since any time you spend on it is unlikely to help you understand whether you
even HAVE a business, but I'd prioritize it pretty highly in the very next
phase of company development.

------
gcb0
"All I do is talk to people all day long and so at home, I’d really prefer not
to talk much"

interesting how people feels different about that. I am the same as the
author. But my significant other is the opposite. She spends the day talking,
giving lectures, and when she gets home, she wants to talk even more, with
someone that responds, because all she does is talk to people that just listen
the whole day. Turns out to be a good match. we get home, she talks, I listen.

------
FrankenPC
From my observations of having worked around many CEO's is that the job, by
its very nature demands total dedication. I believe that attempting to start a
family and a funded company at the same time is a sign of a lack of
objectivity. It's as if the individual actually believes they can harbor two
mistresses at the same time. It's simply not a wise idea. Just an observation.
Not trying to make anyone out to be the bad guy.

------
knice
It seems like I read a story like this several times each month. It is good
advice. We all know it deep down. Yet the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" culture
of constant work persists. How do we change that? I ask honestly as someone
who is reformed. It took nearly losing my marriage for me to establish balance
in my life and work. How do we set up an enduring culture of respect for
_actual_ balance?

------
QuantumGood
A simple tip is to look for activities that regenerate, rather than medicate.
"Sitting with a cocktail" isn't a solution to anything, it's treading water at
best. A classic regeneration activity for couples is dancing. Meditation is
another great choice, but isn't for everyone.

------
midas007
I've seen plenty of startup CEOs that add value and some that subtract value.

The ones that _subtract value_ just push to meet arbitrary deadlines and don't
pitch in.

The ones that _add value_ actively remove burdens (go get lunch) and look to
keep people from burning out (send people home or off to the beach).

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lilpirate
Urges me to startup before all the relationships kick in my life! Being young
certainly helps.

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clubhi
This guy seems like a total piece of shit. He gives little respect to his
family or his employees.

------
maaku
Thank you.

------
thrownaway2424
So what I'm reading here is why CEOs shouldn't go to the office on weekends
and check their mail at dinner. What's glaringly absent from the second part
of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either.
Those guys have families and their negligible equity certainly doesn't justify
80-hour weeks. It sounds to me like the author would rather have gone home on
weekends while the engineers stayed at the office.

~~~
yulaow
Each time I read madness as 60h/w, 70h/w or the wtf 80h/w I am really happy to
live and work on EU. I think I would fall in depression really fast if I had
to sacrifice (because over a certain limit, to me, it is only sacrifice) so
much of my time and passion. Also in my opinion, ever over a certain limit
(For me is 50h/w), the productivity of an engineer just vanish. I prefer work
to live against live to work.

~~~
afterburner
And just think, Americans (and Canadians) also get _much_ less vacation time
than Europeans! Geniuses!

~~~
foobarian
I guess the European peons did learn some lessons from all the centuries of
oppression under the feudal nobility. The Americans never had that experience,
so they bought into the company line hook line and sinker.

~~~
mhurron
If you're going to attribute history to why the workforce in Europe is the way
it is, then the American expectation of the peons to work all the time is
because the US never got over having slave labour.

BTW that line of thinking is ridiculous. Europeans and Americans learned about
feudalism the same way, from history books. No one who was around when labour
laws were going into effect has first, second or third hand knowledge of
feudalism, slavery or working conditions during the Industrial Revolution.

~~~
kourt
In addition to slavery, Americans also had The Frontier. A man who didn't like
the wages offered had the option to go make a homestead.

------
michaelochurch
It seems like he felt a need to put in long hours as some sort of morale-
improving service, but he actually damaged the team by doing so.

Bosses should limit themselves to 8 hours in the office, except during times
of crisis (and, even in a startup, to be constantly in crisis mode is bad
management). If the work calls for more, do it from home. Why? Because if the
CEO works 12 hours per day, the VPs are going to feel a need to work 13, the
middle managers work 14, and the grunts have to work 15. Now you have everyone
working an inefficient long day, and less is getting done (and less reliably)
than if people were working sane hours.

You should lead by being available when people need you (which is not the same
thing as being a doormat; your willingness to drop other things or sacrifice
must be appropriate to the level of the need) but putting in mindless face
time just sets a bad example. Low-level investment bankers have to suffer long
face time, but CEOs? If your company is going to be a sweatshop where people
feel like they need to work 15 hour days or will lose face/status, then what's
the point of building it?

Startups don't change our biology or remove the fact that virtually no one can
work efficiently beyond about 55 hours per week for more than a couple weeks.
(That number includes commuting, housework, errands, and assorted nonsense.)

~~~
nicklovescode
I'm curious to see some sort of data on hours worked on startups if that
exists. I would guess that the grunt workers feel that they are obligated to
work ceoHoursWorked + 3 as you mentioned and the ceo imagines she has to work
gruntHoursWorked + 3

~~~
michaelochurch
If I were CEO, I'd probably work long hours, especially early on. But I'd do
most of that time from home, so people can leave at 5 or 6 if their work's
done. Not because I'm a nice guy, but because I'm realistic and know that
working at a sprint pace when it's not needed is going to enervate people and
leave them unable to handle a true crisis.

------
zendev
I can relate to this.

I am a notoriously bad multi-tasker and when I'm concentrating on a project I
had a really hard time paying any attention to my girlfriend. I also found it
harder and harder to relate to the struggles that other people have in a
normal life. Trying to add something significant to the world comes at a cost:
I might not ever be able to have a normal relationship.

~~~
elnate
Chances are the world will keep on spinning without your product. Happiness
should be your primary goal.

~~~
LambdaAlmighty
Why do you assume working on his project doesn't bring him happiness?

Also, though I'm sure you are well-meaning, advising strangers how they ought
to live their life makes you sound like a prick.

~~~
elnate
Article is titled: "Success at Work, Failure at Home" and they say they can
relate to this. Laments that "...comes at a cost: I might not ever be able to
have a normal relationship."

I'm not saying working on their project doesn't bring them some happiness, but
they hardly sound like they're as happy as they could be.

And I'm probably just a prick.

~~~
ItendToDisagree
I agree with your prior statement (happiness should be your goal, and you
probably haven't invented 'sliced bread'). You can't 'have it all' if your
work makes you more happy than (or is more important to you than) your
relationships/home, you should probably focus on that and
divorce/leave/whatever so everyone can move on with their lives.

I read the article as a lament. Although maybe I misread and we're both
pricks. :D

------
andyl
Letting down his Harvard MBA spouse.

Yeah I can relate to that.

Humblebrag.

