
How Sleep Deprivation Drives The High Failure Rates of Tech Startups - thelinuxkid
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelthomsen/2014/03/27/how-sleep-deprivation-drives-the-high-failure-rates-of-tech-startups/
======
senorprogrammer
Once upon a time I did the start-up, sleep-deprived, living at work thing, and
frankly younger me thought it was awesome. Older me looks back and things
younger me was sometimes an idiot.

Recently I had a kid and got to experience the sleep-deprivation effects all
over again except this time with one big difference: I work with an awesome
team who were able to pick up the slack, and I was smart enough to know when
to ask for help (once literally saying "I'm too stupid to do this now, can you
do it?")

Sleep-deprivation is going to continue to be endemic in our industry (not just
amongst start-ups, the twenty-somethings today are going to be having kids
soon themselves). Instead of fighting through the slack, find ways to mitigate
it; build your teams with people you can rely on to cover you when you're
short.

~~~
EC1
I realized this super early on in high school. I don't even bother doing
anything remotely brain intensive if I haven't gotten 8 hours of sleep. I just
can't, I know how great a good sleep feels and anything else sucks in
comparison, so I cast it away as a lost day as my "punishment" for not
sleeping.

~~~
cclogg
Oh yeah man I'm totally with you on that. My unproductive side takes over on
those days: "Hmm could work on that project... na feeling a bit sleepy, how
about some video games... just a bit..."

;)

~~~
jules
I'm the opposite. When I'm sleep deprived menial tasks don't seem as boring as
they do normally, since I need my full attention to do them with the limited
brain capacity.

~~~
specialist
My prior scrum team's PM had 4 hour sprint planning meetings. Every two weeks.

Sounds agile, right? Pure torture.

I'd skip sleep and coffee before the meeting(s), just to survive them.

~~~
mathrawka
Throw in spending three 8+ hour days working on an inception deck. Then do a 2
hour sprint planning meeting, spend 1.5 days working, then a 2 hour sprint
review meeting.

Then throw in a pivot every 2 or 3 weeks, involving a new inception deck.

------
asdfologist
This is a really weak article. As much as the headline is somewhat plausible,
none of the cited evidence even indirectly supports it. In fact, it mentions
only Mayer/Dorsey as data points linking sleep deprivation to success, and
they're counterexamples!

... so why is this article being upvoted?

~~~
ribs
Yeah - maybe sleep deprivation really is a dark blight on the tech industry,
but this article is so tendentious! Google Glass is bad, and not only that,
it's because of sleep deprivation! Proof by assertion.

~~~
Gigablah
Maybe the author was sleep deprived when he wrote the article.

------
jusben1369
One of the fascinating parts about needing "x hours of sleep per night" and in
the past people slept "x hours a night" is I never see anyone take into
account the _seasons_. For all of us at one end of the year we're in a place
with 14 hours of darkness and later we're at 14 hours or more of light. I
think that impacts how much sleep we need probably by 10 - 20%. I for one hate
6:30am flights in winter when it's dark but don't find them nearly as hard in
the middle of summer when the sun's been up for an hour.

------
3rd3
Here is another single datapoint (but supported by a peer-reviewed paper!): I
just bought blue light blocking glasses which I put on at around 9 or 10pm
every day. They look goofy but it seems to actually work! It’s like a real-
life Flux app. I seem to fall asleep much faster and it seems that the bright
bathroom light does not to make me as alert anymore.

[http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-
read/what_keeps_you...](http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-
read/what_keeps_you_awake_at)

[http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S1933X-Eyewear-SCT-Orange-Anti-
Fo...](http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S1933X-Eyewear-SCT-Orange-Anti-
Fog/dp/B000USRG90)

[http://justgetflux.com/](http://justgetflux.com/)

~~~
ChristianMarks
These also work: [http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S0360X-Ultra-spec-SCT-Orange-
Anti...](http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S0360X-Ultra-spec-SCT-Orange-Anti-
Fog/dp/B003OBZ64M/ref=pd_bxgy_hi_img_y/181-7536720-6361927)

I cured my insomnia by replacing white compact fluorescent lamps with amber
lamps from [http://lowbluelights.com](http://lowbluelights.com). An old
comment on this (I have made too many comments here--it's a disgrace!):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495358)

------
nugget
I think success in this context is less about hours of sleep and more about
manic focus. You can sleep 8 hours, spend 2-4 hours on random crap, and still
work/be around work for the other 12-14 hours. I've been either inside or
involved early on with a few very successful startups and none of them felt
like an environment of balance or moderation. The founders and early employees
(especially technical employees) are maniacs who focus on their product,
vision, or whatever it is, at the expense of all else. Founder types
especially seem to think about work 24/7 and never really switch that off
until the companies have matured significantly.

~~~
zaidf
This. I think what people most misunderstand about this kind of environment is
that the hours are merely the side product, not the main focus. It is very
hard to plan that I will put in 16 hour days. But when it happens naturally,
it seems like the easiest thing on the planet(and much easier than _not_ doing
it). To get to that position, a lot of fuzzy things align(like the clarity of
vision, the challenge, the opportunity etc.)

What is also not said is that most manic types also take more extreme
vacations. They might take a week off every few months and completely
disappear to recharge themselves.

~~~
timthorn
How is what you describe an "extreme vacation"? Isn't a week off every few
months fairly normal?

~~~
aragot
"Extreme vacations": I think he emphasizes on disconnecting during vacations,
maybe doing extreme sports in very unique locations.

------
pazimzadeh
Unfortunately, the people used as examples do not support the claims (Marissa
Mayer and Jack Dorsey). Perhaps those two are part of the 1 to 3% of the
population who can get by on four hours of sleep at night. One of college
professors had this phenotype.

Personally, I need between 8 and 9 hours to be at my best.

[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870371250...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703712504576242701752957910)

~~~
jes5199
I've always assumed that Dorsey's comments about his sleep habits were a
combination of macho bravado and myth-building - it's not like anyone is
actually around him enough to know if it's literally true.

------
wisty
People often work long hours because they feel more productive at the end of a
long stretch.

It's hard to be stressed when you're sleep deprived. You just say "fuck it, X
will work well enough, and I'm too tired to care if it's good enough". Which
is probably what you should have done 8 hours ago, but didn't, because you
were worried it wasn't good enough.

I find it's just as useful to close your eyes for a minute, and think "I'll
probably figure it out later, and I'll still be smart enough to refactor any
ugly but pragmatic code when inspiration finally hits" can be just as
productive.

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RankingMember
This explanation makes sense to me. I have seen a sort of reverence for people
who don't get enough sleep, as though they're a good example of people doing
whatever they can for their company, when really they're making themselves
much more likely to do things that have a net negative impact.

As an aside: "my startup" is the new "that novel I'm writing".

------
joesmo
This is a likely explanation for the myriad of terrible ideas and the people
willing to fund them. The problem with sleep deprivation is that the person
who is depriving himself of sleep oftentimes cannot see the obvious (to
others) degradation in the quality of their work, thinking, and life in
general. To the sleep deprived, things look like they're going well to the
point that they will deny that there is any loss in quality. This degrades to
the point that sleep deprivation is now a badge of honor amongst people who
are cranking out worse and worse work with each day that passes.

------
mintykeen
So true! I know when I don't get a decent night's sleep for more than two or
three nights in a row, I get a LOT less productive. I lock myself out of my
car, forget important things I had to do. It's terrible. An occasional
melatonin supplement has been a lifesaver when I just can't turn my brain off,
obsessing over my startup.

------
savv
A concerning statement from a link in the Forbes artcile - 'Marissa Mayer
admitting to 130 hour work weeks at Google' [1]

> "Burnout is about resentment," she said. "It's about knowing what matters to
> you so much that if you don't get it that you're resentful."

Is this statement implying that burnout is a psychological condition related
to 'resentment' rather then the physical symptoms? I can't help but feel that
one could interpret Google's VP as pseudoscience ...

[1] [http://it-
jobs.fins.com/Articles/SBB000142405270230340470457...](http://it-
jobs.fins.com/Articles/SBB0001424052702303404704577309493661513690/How-Google-
s-Marissa-Mayer-Manages-Burnout)

------
rbanffy
Working excessively long hours has obvious negative impacts on a programmer's
performance. If you do it constantly, instead of being considered a hero you
should be considered a liability. Would you board a plane with a pilot who
flies, say, 300 hours a month

I am fine with chasing a bug for hours every once and then or to extend your
schedule when your muse pays you a visit, but if you do it so frequently that
it starts impacting your performance negatively, you should stop out of
consideration for your colleagues.

------
jmzbond
This article may not be the best... but honestly the social construct that
start-upers (especially in the early stage) are maniacally dedicated to work
has become so tight that I worry it's solidifying into an expectation.

When I started working on my idea, I felt guilty when not working. (I
naturally don't feel happy unless I'm productive, but this is probably also
externally influenced.) In January, I worked 100+ hours. I cooked, ate, slept,
went to the gym, but other than that I largely worked. Since I don't consume
media entertainment by nature and am an introvert, it was easy to work on my
passion unless a friend proactively reached out. I slept-worked a lot, but
never felt mentally tired or burned out. Physically though, I became a wreck,
at some point tweaking something to the point where I couldn't turn my head.
Scary.

I used to think 4 hour work weeks were reserved for those who sought escape
from a job they didn't like. But I now realize that the larger goal of
work/life balance is equally important for people who love their jobs. And I
get that time feels threatening: we have to move fast or the opportunity will
pass. But if this idea is something that I'm truly passionate about, I should
have no problem devoting a lifetime to it (not blindly treading water without
success, of course!).

Now, I know my happiness is still driven by productivity, but I'm trying to
redefine that for myself. A day with friends, cleaning the apartment, or
climbing at the gym is actually very productive and a good recharge. I really
hope more entrepreneurs read this article, and really evaluate what working
and living means for them.

FYI I wrote a blarticle about my experience in January and work/life balance
here: [https://medium.com/entrepreneurs-
corner/9461ce206589](https://medium.com/entrepreneurs-corner/9461ce206589)

------
dredmorbius
I'm watching (and writing up) the Improvides' interview of Vincent Walsh on
creativity right now, which addresses a great many barriers to creativity and
problem solving, sleep being among the factors. Highly recommended:

[http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ](http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ)

[http://redd.it/21qgiv](http://redd.it/21qgiv)

Along with the importance of sleep and naps, "creativity is not team sport".

I'm not sure if I ran across this through h/n or not originally, it happened
to be in my downloaded videos queue, however.

------
BadassFractal
I can't function at the top of my game without 9 hours. At 9 I feel godly,
everything sinks in, at 8 I'm OK, at 7 I'm phasing out all the time.

------
InclinedPlane
Sleep deprivation has been a major cause behind more things than people
appreciate. Many major disasters have occurred during the wee hours of the
morning, often by people working later than intended. Chernobyl, for example,
and the Bhopal leak. Sleep deprivation isn't the only cause in those cases but
when there are minimal safeguards the effects of sleep depression become that
much more dangerous.

------
macNchz
>I fall asleep most nights writing and rewriting opening lines and first
paragraphs in my head. And every morning before I wake, I am somehow still
writing sentences in my head, twisted into my sheets while comparing arguments
and searching for counter-arguments that could undo a whole story.

While some of the arguments in the rest of the article seemed a bit dubious,
this opening segment resonated with me—I find myself dreaming in code fairly
often, tossing and turning while my brain works through some non-existent
problem, iterating non-functional lines of code. It's bizarre, uncomfortable,
I don't feel rested and I wake up tense. Generally I take it as a sign that I
need to scale back how much of myself I'm sinking in to my work, as I think
it's more likely to happen when I've been working longer or later days. I
think if I worked in an environment where I was expected to work so much that
I started having dreams like this on a more regular basis, I'd burn out or
quit very quickly.

------
chavesn
I wanted to like this article, because I agree with the premise, but the
author went a bizarre direction in trying to prove his thesis.

As constructed, several far-fetched notions would have to be true to support
the conclusion in the way he argued:

\- the high failure rate must be due largely to bad ideas and not to poor
execution

\- sleep deprivation must be endemic at Google, Facebook and Twitter

\- Google Glass and Android Wear (and corresponding FB and Twitter projects)
must be the product of the sleep-deprived, and shown to be bad ideas (kind of
early), and representative of projects at the company.

I think it would be easier to show that lack of sleep just results in poor
work. It certainly makes more intuitive sense than honing in on the problem of
"crazy" ideas.

------
microcolonel
I hate reading on Forbes, it flashes text in the position:fixed headerbar
every few seconds, an absolute nightmare to focus on the article while that's
happening.(although I do manage to simply remove the headerbar from the page
using the dev tools :P)

~~~
dredmorbius
Install the Stylebot (Chrome) or Stylish (Chrome / Firefox) plugins and make
your CSS edits permanent.

I've created over 1000 custom CSS styles over the past 9 months or so fixing
various site "errors" such as this. Fixed headers, flyouts, and anything that
moves are among the first to go.

------
joerich
Well I don’t believe in the rules like “you have to sleep at least 8 hours”, I
think it depends on the person and in the part of your life you are in. Some
people are able to perform great 8 hours, other people 10 hours and other
people 16 hours (like Jack Dorsey). Each one has to know himself/herself.

What I don’t understand is that if someone is about to faint because he didn’t
sleep enough keeps working… Here is a quote that this article remind me of:

"Make rest a necessity, not an objective. Only rest long enough to gather
strength." \-- Jim Rohn

------
pjmlp
Which only happen in countries without proper unions.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
The tech industry is pretty much non-union the world around.

~~~
pjmlp
Well in my company they will get really pissed off if anyone does more than
50h weekly.

------
kenster07
I think the desire to work as hard and long as possible is admirable -- but if
the long-term result is lower real productivity, then it's ultimately futile
and counterproductive. The flip side is, some people can pull this off
occasionally, and a few can do it more than occasionally.

Oh, and the article does not support the title at all.

------
joshdance
Article itself is not as useful as the discussion it will bring. This is not a
"How" article. It brings up some evidence that might connect to start-up
failure but the evidence presented is super weak.

------
elliptic
I'm not sure I'm more productive on 8 than 6 hours' sleep - is there any way
to verify this? I'd even pay good money to find out the optimal amount of
sleep for me.

~~~
nwinter
Set up some experiments using [http://www.quantified-
mind.com/](http://www.quantified-mind.com/) to see whether there's any
difference in your cognitive performance when you've been sleeping for 6 hours
vs. for 8. Practice the tests a few times, then start a custom experiment with
your sleep variable in there. Alternate back and forth between each, maybe a
week at a time, for a few weeks–test at the same time of day each day. Hit the
Data Minding and see whether there's any perceptible difference in
performance.

(Disclaimer: I wanted this to exist, so I helped Yoni build it.)

------
pragone
Aside: Does anyone else find the top bar on the forbes website with the
flashing headlines extremely distracting?

~~~
aragot
They also refresh the page every so on, which usually prevents reading for a
normal person.

------
michaelochurch
Light on evidence, still true enough to be worth discussing.

I think that sleep deprivation and the high failure rates are connected but
not that the causal arrow isn't so simply drawn. People can be well-rested and
still have terrible ideas. It might go the other way. It could be that,
because these ideas are so terrible, people throw insane amounts of effort
behind them to avoid being blamed when they fail. When you have a death march
(and most VC darlings are whole-company death marches) you're going to see a
split between those who disengage and drop out, and the "A for Effort"
strategists who believe that 110-hour work weeks will be noticed above and
have them "rescued" (promotion in a big company, EIR gig in VC) when their
current project fails. Generally, founders are going to take the "A for
Effort" strategy so that, if they fail, they can launch their careers in VC.
Employees generally don't have those exit options, but they can't exactly
leave before their bosses do in most of these companies.

What we have is an economy of asymmetric risk. Just as hedge fund managers
share profits but not losses, and therefore have a higher-risk tolerance than
the principals, the decision makers in the VC-funded world benefit
disproportionately from obscene risk. Being able to say that one was in
Facebook early is career-making for a VC, while 0x and 5x are essentially
identical in the personal career calculus.

Founders share some of the risk (they suffer if the thing fails) but at least
take part in the upside. Employees get mainly the downside: mediocre equity
and no control, nonexistent career support, high risk of job loss and painful
hours.

This leads to a risk fetishism (young people! fail fast! sleep is for the
weak!) that doesn't make for a good place to work, nor does it produce broad-
based success (VC is an underperforming asset class). It produces terrible
ideas, reckless business expansion, _and_ the extreme long hours of the
startup ecosystem.

TL;DR: the sleep deprivation is a symptom of a deeper problem (risk fetishism
arising out of the principal-agent problem in VC).

------
D9u
Sleep deprivation was an integral part of my work experience, from working on
my dad's farm during the height of the summer harvest, to the Army. If you
couldn't keep up, someone else would.

I often go 30, or more, consecutive hours without sleep when working on
certain projects.

No drugs involved, no coffee, just a driving desire to accomplish my goals.

I also sometimes go 2 or 3 days without eating a real meal.

I think I got around 3 hours of sleep last night.

~~~
amagumori
wow, you're really cool.

