
Ask YC: Should Fridays and Saturday nights matter to a young hacker? - samson
Last night I spent from 10pm to 7am this morning hacking at the school science building.This his slowly now started to become a not so unusual occurence for me since dropping out of college in the middle of the semester to work on my startup project.<p>I've come to accept this as a new lifestyle and a necessary exchange of time if I'm to be successful in a highly competitive internet startup scene.<p>Yet I can't help but hear that little man in the back of my head every once in a while saying "your young and your being dumb, you should be out having some fun".
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mattjaynes
The last two sentences of Warren Buffet's answer are priceless:

Q: What is your career advice?

A: If you want to make a lot of money go to Wall Street. More importantly
though, do what you would do for free, having passion for what you do is the
most important thing. I love what I do; I'm not even that busy. I got a total
of five phone calls all day yesterday and one of them was a wrong number. Ms.
B from NFM had passion, that's why she was successful. A few months ago I was
talking to another MBA student, a very talented man, about 30 years old from a
great school with a great resume. I asked him what he wanted to do for his
career, and he replied that he wanted to go into a particular field, but
thought he should work for McKinsey for a few years first to add to his
resume. _To me that's like saving sex for your old age. It makes no sense._

[http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/clubs/investment/WarrenB...](http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/clubs/investment/WarrenBuffett.html)

~~~
JohnN
For more on this watch some of this talks....this is from 1998 but still so
relevant.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfuXKpMFUjc>

~~~
jey
Buffett is pure awesome. Thanks for the link!

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timr
Rules I wish I had followed when I was 20(-ish):

1) Listen to the little voice. If he wants to be doing something else, so do
you. You can only ignore him for so long.

2) When you can't do #1, make sure that you're doing something _valuable_.
Don't squander your precious youthful enthusiasm on non-productive crap.

3) If you're prone to overwork, make your social life a priority. Never turn
down a social invitation, unless you have a life-changing reason not to (your
computer will be there when you return).

~~~
icky
> 1) Listen to the little voice. If he wants to be doing something else, so do
> you. You can only ignore him for so long.

Careful; he can get you in trouble. Wear protection. ;-)

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viergroupie
I can't speak for you, but I find that working crazy hours is a big waste of
time in the long run. My health, happiness and mental soundness all
deteriorate due to a screwed up sleep schedule and lack of socialization.
Aside from the long-term consequences to body and mind, all this deterioration
adversely affects the quality of my work. I spend a lot more time chasing dead
ends when my life is out of whack. So take a break, have a drink with friends,
maybe even get laid. Your project will thank you later.

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pg
I think it's a good idea at any age to take some time off and have fun. But
you don't have to do it each Friday and Saturday. That custom is just an
artifact of people having regular office jobs. It might work better for one
person to work 7 days a week but take two hours off each day, or another
person to work solidly for two months and then take an entire week off.

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trekker7
You've got to balance that stuff out dude... if you _really_ only enjoy
hacking and don't like hanging out with friends, going to movies, eating out,
partying, whatever, then cool. But if you're working long hours just to be
competitive, then don't do it! Life is too short to treat it like some sort of
war. Have fun while you're young.

Hacking can be a social activity too. Do you have any friends that are
programmers that work on hobby programming? Maybe work alongside them.

But I really give props to you for dropping out of college; probably took a
lot of balls. Where did you go to school?

~~~
samson
I've always enjoyed hacking since I was 12, and when I'm doing it, it rarely
feels like something I have to do. I do it because i want to.

I didn't study computer science in college, I choose to study Philosophy
instead. Mainly because in highschool programming courses weren't challenging,
and the questions I had my teachers couldn't answer.

Fortunately philosophy has been a pleasant surprise, I've learned alot of new
things related and unrelated to hacking. But I knew there was no point in
going on when I spent my time in class drawing out concepts and writing
algorithms for my project instead of taking notes.

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abarrera
IMHO it's all about the correct balance. If you want to succeed at anything in
life you need to balance your leisure and your work. Too much work will
consume you as a person, ruin any relationship and get you emotionally
unbalanced. Not working and having way too much fun will ruin your economy,
your health and your work. Try to have at least a little bit of fun. Sometimes
you need to chill out if you want to focus on something. Don't try to focus it
as two different things, they are both connected and part of the same cycle.
PS: Don't drink too much tonight ;)

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marcus
A part of me wants to scold you that you need to balance your leisure and
work, but I totally understand how one can be consumed by his work and vision.
I have the same problem :)

But I usually find that a few hours in the "middle" of the work night spent
socially with friends or in a club do wonders to my concentration afterwards.

And even more important we need to get our heads out of the fox holes once in
a while otherwise we lose a lot of our creativity and very few things are more
important in this field.

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matth
All pretty good advice. However, if you find yourself out with friends and
almost all you do is think about your project, work on your project. My
girlfriend was dragging me out to parties, weddings, her family's house, etc.
All I did was think about my project.

We've since separated. Things are working out far better now for my
programming schedule. Unfortunately, no more sex.

Socialize, but not for the sake of it. Also, some people are for the late
nights, some aren't. Just remember to keep tabs on your health. And I mean
that more in the mental sense.

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drusenko
it's always been super important for us to take at least one day and night a
weekend off, except in special "crunch time" occasions. otherwise, the weeks
seem to blur together. we also take our weekends very seriously, as it's a
good time to let loose after a hard week of working.

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johnnygoodman
When I was starting up my business there were a lot of nights that turned into
day that turned into night. Each spring/winter/etc break during college was me
sitting in a room with CS students I'd hired coding furiously and batting
design ideas back and forth.

From the outside, you could say with a good bit of justification that I needed
to go learn how to ski or drink some beer or something. I'd argue though that
"getting lost" is one of the rewards of working on a startup project. There's
a mix of satisfaction in the sacrifice, the joy of unbridled creation and the
camaraderie of taking on something that you may or may not pull off with a lot
of people you respect and trust.

These days, I live in a nice part suburbia with my wife, who would feed me
every 10 or so hours during those projects. She's getting an MBA and I'm
running the business I started, but our pace of life is much more normal.

My advice, having lived on both sides of the fence, and without knowing the
specifics of your situation past what you posted, is to grab as hard as you
can for that vision you see. You'll learn, grow and stumble into things and
people that will greatly enrich your life.

Good luck!

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andrewfong
Not necessarily Friday and Saturday nights -- but socializing with other
people is important. There are a number of "good for the startup" reasons to
do so -- e.g. bouncing ideas off other people, networking with potential VCs /
partners / employees, and keeping your sanity.

But in order to get the maximum benefit, you'll want to have at least some
social time not oriented around the startup. My co-founder and I have keep our
sanity by spending time talking about girls, baseball, and TV shows. Not sure
if it would work if we discussed social networking and Javascript.

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Alex3917
"What matters is people. Which kinda sucks when you think about it."

But it's true. You make money by making people happy. And "stuff" is only a
small percentage of what goes into making people happy. So if all your skills
revolve around making stuff, then you have the ability to tackle a very small
percentage of what goes into MSPW. A quick glance into any OB text will
confirm.

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gscott
When you are young you have time so you should go ahead and work away. Don't
eat too much fast food or drink too much soda though.

~~~
robg
And exercise 4x a week with good sleep every night. Even better if you work
with friends.

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rapind
Hard to say. One of those things you just need to figure out for yourself over
time.

I do really recommend adding exercise and a non-computer hobby to the mix
though. Makes a ton of difference for your well being and happiness.

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ivankirigin
I see no reason to miss out on two perfectly fine nights to get work done. Of
course those nights matter to a hacker.

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imsteve
You should plan breaks into your lifestyle. Friday nights has always been a
minimum for me.

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alaskamiller
What school do you go to and do they teach writing composition and spelling?

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einarvollset
Po Branson's book. Read.

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rms
If you're looking for people to have sex with, this is the easiest, cheapest,
and most direct way to make it happen.

<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cas/?query=w4m>

~~~
kirse
Where is the sense of humor on here, this was hilarious.

Part of being young is also relaxing and not being so serious all the time.
(pro-tip: Laugh a little more often, it melts away the stress)

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amichail
Why are you using university resources for your startup?

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rms
They have fast internet and an environment conducive to productivity? It's
extremely unlikely that the university would come after him for his IP,
especially if he is a student and is not spinning off university sanctioned
research into a company.

Of course, you're right, he would still be better off staying away from all
university resources, depending on his school's tech transfer policy.

~~~
amichail
He's actually not a student anymore. Using university resources for your
startup is a really bad idea!

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jakewolf
yeah have fun, go out party, meet some partners, and take off some of that
insane workload.

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downer
If you feel healthy and you're getting _enough_ sleep then there's no problem.
Working nights is fine -- the thing that drives people nutty is _rotating_
shifts, e.g. switching between a night and day schedule too often.

It all depends on what you enjoy, and that's the bottom line. Bill Gates
_wanted_ to have his own company more than anything else; he wasn't doing it
to make money "so he could do what he really wanted". The #1 thing he wanted
to do was _run his own software company_ , and you can see that despite
becoming a billionaire long ago he didn't stop. Neither did Steve Jobs. If
you're doing what you love then you're doing the right thing.

That said, humans need variety, so when you _want_ to do something else, don't
_make_ yourself work more. Making yourself work more is only for people who
need discipline and aren't putting in a decent number of hours to start, not
for people working overtime to work even _more_. Bill and Steve had a LOT of
variety at their jobs and plenty of social functions (including company social
functions).

Think of it this way -- you're making a huge investment of your time and
energy, but you're going to BLOW IT ALL if you burn out. You'll get like 80%
done and then it will just sit there forever and you won't want to look at it.

So, make sure you don't burn out.

It's a bit like overtraining when you work out; except severe burnout isn't
like fatigue that gets better in a couple weeks, it's like needing hip
replacement.

