
Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston to take year-long sabbatical - etr71115
http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/04/y-combinator-cofounder-jessica-livingston-to-take-year-long-sabbatical/
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julianpye
Congrats to Jessica! As a parent of a 1 year old mastercrawler, I am also so
grateful to Paul taking time off earlier to spend time to watch his kids grow
up and I love his tales of them growing up. Having a family changes
everything. Right now parenthood is incompatible with startups - how can we
change this and make startups better for young parents as well who for now
will just always try to get corporate jobs?

~~~
cliffcrosland
Anecdotal data point: my father was an entrepreneur for 100% of my childhood.
It was rare for him to miss dinner with us, and he attended easily more than
60% of our extracurricular events. He'd often work from home late after we
went to sleep, sometimes sleeping next to the phone to take customer support
calls 12-5am. He had freedom to spend time with family and worked sufficient
hours to achieve successful outcomes for his businesses. I think this form of
scheduling is effective. Another anecdote: apparently Sheryl Sandberg also
eats dinner with her family every day but works from home late at night and
early in the morning.

~~~
chris11
Sleeping next to the phone to take customer support calls sounds really tough.
I don't think I could do that for long.

~~~
unwind
It's probably not _too_ unlike sleeping next to a baby, though. Something that
wakes you up randomly and is sometimes very hard to calm back down ...

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danfitch
Congrats! It's amazing to live in an era of employers allowing friends to take
a deep breath, reflect and come back to work with a renewed sense of
themselves and their purpose. It is a great chance to reflect on what you have
accomplished and what lies ahead.

~~~
booop
Sorry, but why are you (actually looks like a lot of people) congratulating
someone going on a sabbatical?

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askafriend
Because there is a sadistic tendency in our industry to celebrate overworking
yourself to the bone for no real benefit to either yourself or the project you
may be working on. I think more people are realizing this and are celebrating
a more measured and effective approach to work.

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floodyberry-
Does everyone think that the average person has the option to stop working for
months (or even a year) at a time? This is merely celebrating the wealthy
doing things only the wealthy can afford to do.

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askafriend
You make a good point, but the parent comment was asking a more general
question of why we would celebrate someone taking a sabbatical at all.

Although sometimes the importance of an important, successful person who many
people look up to setting the tone is understated.

But yes...Jessica is very rich and has luxuries beyond any of our wildest
imaginations so it's not really a fair comparison to "normal people" or our
industry at large. Your point stands.

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aresant
SF, the city, just approved fully paid leave for new parents for 6 weeks for
everybody.

[http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/San-Francisco-
poised-t...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/San-Francisco-poised-to-
vote-on-full-paid-leave-7228281.php)

~~~
mathattack
That's a miserably low standard to hold ourselves to.

~~~
infinite8s
That's worlds better than what is available anywhere else in the US. The
federal government allows you to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid family leave
without losing your benefits (through FMLA), and while the employer can't
replace you they don't have to return you back to your original position.

~~~
elliotec
It's worlds worse than what is available everywhere else outside the US.

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Fennhella
Thanks for all the work thus far, isn't a day goes by where I don't use a YC
company's service.

hope there's plenty quality time in this sabbatical!

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fs111
serious question: does she even have to work anymore? I would assume that a
cofounder of ycombinator has so much money by now, that they could just retire
or do something more fun with their lives.

~~~
mathattack
One of life's paradoxes... The same thing that drives people to earning a
fortune drives them to work even after they don't need it.

~~~
prawn
I like the path that MySpace Tom took. Cashed out, taught himself photography
and now travels with friends taking great photos.

[https://www.instagram.com/myspacetom/](https://www.instagram.com/myspacetom/)

~~~
fs111
this is the answer!

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pboutros
Good for her! A sabbatical sounds great. And she's definitely earned it.

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booop
Good luck jl. Hope you come back refreshed with new ideas.

Was hoping to find some sabbatical stories in the comments. I was working 12
hours a day with no weekends and felt trapped in a state of urgency and like I
was missing out on things. Took a 3 month sabbatical and it changed
everything!

Sometimes you don't notice that you could have done things better or
differently until you take a step back. I'm about to pass out and wish I
could've written more.

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billhendricksjr
I met Jessica when I interviewed at YC (Summer 2014 batch). She was very nice
in addition to extremely intelligent, of course. She was smiling the entire
time and made a clear effort to make me less nervous. I hope she enjoys the
recharge!

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Natsu
I just wanted to wish you all the best. I hope you have time for many happy
memories with your family :)

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infocollector
Can we make hacker news independent of Ycombinator please ? Or does this
already exist?

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Gratsby
That's kind of awesome.

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hoodoof
I was thinking of taking a holiday too.

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HemanHeartYou
She needs time to "think"

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throwaway_45
I wish I could take a whole year off of work. I think SV lives in its own
bubble.

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ant6n
Move to Canada.

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calcsam
"Livingston disclosed that she hadn’t spent any real time away from her work,
including after her children were born — she placed the blame on herself for
that."

This always seems to be framed as a women's obligation. The children have two
parents.

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rckclmbr
So only one parent should spend time with children? As a father, I'd give
anything to take a year sabbatical to spend more time with my kids.

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dominotw
> I'd give anything to take a year sabbatical to spend more time with my kids.

My family had lots of nannies by profession. Most of them worked for rich
people who had all the time to spend with their kids but they choose not to.
Most of them would spend about a hour or two per day with their kids total.
And these people are not exceptions by any means from what I've seen. I always
found this fascinating and contrary to what everyone say they want, rich
people are fascinating.

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projectileboy
Hard to think of any other individual who has made as large an impact on the
global economy in the 21st century, in addition to opening up the playing
field for women. Kudos.

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n72
This statement seems, at first blush, absolutely absurd to me. Can you make a
case for it?

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projectileboy
Geez, I didn't mean to get everyone so worked up, but I was semi-serious. The
impact of YC is going to be written about 100 years from now. There's a good
chance that no individual company will be considered to have had the same
impact.

~~~
n72
One, you said individual, not YC. Two, think of the handful of companies being
written about from circa 1916. You really want to claim YC will have that kind
of stature?

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projectileboy
Paul Graham and others have stated that Jessica was perhaps the main driving
force behind YC. In 10 years, YC has produced multiple multi-billion dollar
corporations, and it's only just getting started. Once we start seeing power
companies, aircraft companies and more, then... Yes, I think YC will be judged
in the future to have had the single biggest impact on the economy, at least
of any company, in the first half of the 21st century.

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n72
You're basing your case that JL was the mastermind behind YC on a "was
perhaps"?

~~~
projectileboy
I hope you have a better day on the internet tomorrow.

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koolba
From the article:

> She believes that a decade from now, she expects to see “tons of women-
> founded unicorns."

Tons? Remove the women-founded filter and it's still not believable. I don't
think it's realistic to expects tons of unicorns in general. How many have
there been (total) in the past 10 years?

