

Work/Life Balance at a Startup -- Just a Pipedream? - jeanhsu
http://www.jeanhsu.com/?p=296

======
patio11
_I spoke to someone a few months ago, and what I remember most vividly about
the conversation was when he said, "once your team starts going home for
dinner, you know you're in trouble."_

This is an example of a social pathology on two levels. First, it means that
working for that one particular company sucks. Second, it is being deployed to
make working sucks normative at _other_ companies, too. (And if it gets widely
repeated by credulous entrepreneurs, it will infect their lives, their
employees lives, etc etc. The viral factor of suck in the social graph has
exceeded k = 1.0, watch out!)

It has not been my experience that the narrative this social pathology tells
about work being necessarily all-consuming has basis in objective reality.
I've done all-consuming work. My business' schedule doesn't resemble that
schedule even a little itty-bitty bit.

~~~
revorad
Patrick, I think you are well aware that much of the difference between your
views on this issue and those of the majority of the startup community stems
from a fundamental disagreement on the definition of a startup. As you pointed
out yesterday (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2382580>), we waste too
much time on naming things.

So, why don't we simply agree that you are in a different business than the
OP's company?

You are a one-man operation who scales by outsourcing; they are a team who
scale by hiring through investment ($1M).

You want careful, measured growth; they want superfast growth, whatever the
cost.

You are an efficient time manager, who's built "passive" income and chooses to
spend a lot of time on HN just for fun; they work crazy hours in the hope of
making it really big some day, even if the personal cost today is high.

I'm sure a typical overworked startup could benefit from adopting some of your
ways, but it is equally hard for them to see your point as it is for you to
see theirs. You haven't been on the other side.

~~~
profquail
_they work crazy hours in the hope of making it really big some day, even if
the personal cost today is high._

When you say, "they", you're talking about entrepreneurs who have made a
personal choice to make that sacrifice; or, a team of entrepreneurs who have
agreed, amongst themselves, to all make that sacrifice together.

I read Patrick's argument as railing against the kind of "entrepreneurs" who
are really just free-loading, glorified managers that get angry when anyone on
the team starts "slacking" (i.e., working less than 80-100 hours / week)
because they're relying on the hard work of _other people_ to bring them their
fortune instead of actually doing anything themselves.

~~~
revorad
I don't think founders are conning employees to exploit them. Employees should
be well aware of what they are getting into. There are plenty of well-paying
normal jobs available out there.

------
jasonkester
Work/Life Balance is fundamentally a personal thing. If you make it a
priority, you can take it with you anywhere you go.

When I talk to a potential employer, I make a point of telling them that I
work 40 hour weeks and I take a lot of time off. I've gone so far as to
negotiate away my stock options in favor of extra paid holiday and the ability
to take unpaid leave. Even when working for startups that think they're in
crunch mode (and have been for the last 6 months), I make Life a priority.

Where I can, I try to spread the faith. Surprisingly, I've never experienced a
case where I couldn't fix things and had to leave.

Stress is infectious. But so is Sanity. I've walked into shops where 60 hour
weeks were the norm and managed to infect the team with the concept of
Work/Life balance. First, you introduce the idea of "the weekend", where I'm
living the back of my truck next to a crag someplace (and so should you), so
don't try to contact me. Then you bring in "leave at six", then eventually "40
hour weeks". All the while keeping the rest of the team on board with the idea
that maybe we should have lives apart from work.

Eventually, you have a whole team working 40 hour weeks and not looking so
unhealthy. Some of whom even have stories to tell when you ask what they did
for the weekend. Better still, if _everybody_ is slacking off at a sane pace,
there's really nothing that management can do about it (except notice how much
more work is getting done).

~~~
pm
Congratulations, this is how it should be. I run a business and have managed
to hire people who come in late, leave at the regular time and still get more
than enough done. I mostly work weekends, but I'm a masochist. I don't wish it
on my employees. They need to have a life.

------
whyleym
I founded a startup with my brother 5 years ago - we launched in my two weeks
paternity leave from work. For the first 4 years we both held down full time
jobs and worked on our startup every evening. I had my 2nd child when the
startup turned 4 any my brother had his first around the same time. I'm not
sure if it's because we are family, but we've always had a policy (not written
down or set in stone) but that if one of us wants some time off then we do.

We pretty much do normal hours (10 - 6), we still work a few evenings, but
we're now both full time so haven't got the added stress of a 'day job'. It
was always our dream to be able to work full time on our startup and now
that's a reality there is honestly no other job i'd rather be doing. We both
get to see our kids everyday, i'm due to be taking my eldest (4) swimming at
lunch.

Based on my experience (every startup is different), we do live and breath it,
but at the same time we always make time for family, holidays and anything
else we want to do (taking the kids for days out, nursery, the gym). Our
startup is actually doing better than ever and I personally feel that because
we put in all the work in the first few years whilst holding down a full time
job we are now in a position to be able to enjoy the fruits of our labour and
have a great work/life balance.

------
jdee
It's not a pipedream. We run a dev team that is both productive and enthused
about the work we do. Every single engineer is out the door by 6, unless there
is something that needs completing urgently. We are constantly shipping new
versions of our product, are very profitable and have a minute churn rate of
developers.

My gut feeling is that developers who cultivate a lifestyle that will
inevitably lead to them burning out are either drinking the koolaid of some
kind of cliched' notion of how developers should perform, or are simply being
exploited by their employers.

Everyone has a right to see their family and keep fit, and in this sellers
market, developers CAN work at a sustainable pace that doesnt put their future
careers at stake.

~~~
arethuza
Isn't it arguably a component to "startup" culture that maximizes apparent
effort (which is easy to measure) rather than actual productivity - which is
very difficult to measure objectively.

Note: I have founded startups (a long time ago now) that very much went with
the traditional startup culture but have also worked at small new companies
that didn't have this culture at all but still did pretty well.

------
wheels
I think the question is entirely different for founders and employees.

For founders, the question loses some of its meaning, because the company
itself is intrinsically tied to personal goals. Founders tend to not refer to
the company as "a job". It's something of a different beast. This doesn't mean
that some time doing non-company stuff won't ever be required to maintain
sanity, but the dynamics are pretty different.

For employees, which this post seems to be about, you're ultimately working to
fulfill _someone else's_ personal goals. There it makes a lot more sense to
balance working on _your own_ personal goals and pastimes or whatever with
working on the goals of the person who's signing your paychecks. The problem
is that if there's a sufficient supply of employees who are willing to forgo
that for whatever reason (loving the work, not having much of a life, peer
pressure) then they're more likely to be favored by the employers with the
implications that go along with that.

~~~
jeanhsu
Yes, I'd imagine it'd be quite different for employees and founders. I don't
know if I'm willing to make that kind of sacrifice though--maybe that means
I'm not cut out to be a founder. Or maybe I haven't found the right
opportunity yet.

------
nsoonhui
I have been involving in a startup since one year ago. Result: I broke one
relationship, and missed another. When my mom came visiting me from another
state I didn't have the time to bring her around, and not even the time to
talk to her. When everyone is enjoying the weekends I have to lock myself in
my room and code, code CODE. When everyone is enjoying TVs after coming back
from work, I read emails, filter resumes and do other work related stuffs. I
don't have personal life; all of my time is consumed by this one little
startup which may or may not work in the future.

Now you know why relationship won't work for me at this stage of time?

So whenever someone told me that they could have a nice work/life balance at a
startup, I smiled. And when girls told me that they would support their
husbands in pursuing their dreams at all cost, I could only conclude that they
didn't know what they wish for.

They haven't seen the true cost of startup, yet.

~~~
jasonkester
What do you suppose would have happened, had you agreed to have dinner with
your mother that night?

I assume you imagine some nightmare scenario where you find yourself living on
the street begging for change and repeating to yourself over and over "Why did
I take that evening off??? What was I thinking???"

In reality, it probably isn't quite that critical. I suggest you try an
experiment: Work an 8 hour day tomorrow.

Don't make up for it by working 16 hours the next day. Work the rest of your
week as normal, then look back and see if there is any noticeable negative
ramification from that day of slacking.

Then try ramping it up. Work a 60 hour week. Work a _50 hour week_ , god
forbid. Living in a ditch yet? Good. Try 45 hours next week.

As the people below are trying to tell you, most of this desperation is in
your head. Yes, you need to work hard and deliver. But you don't need to kill
yourself.

~~~
usedtolurk
Jason's right. I cut back my weekly hours from around 55 to 45 when my
daughter was born. I was surprised that my productivity didn't drop and nobody
even noticed. I wish I had done that years ago.

------
phil_y
I'm involved in a startup since 9 months ago. After the first 3 months wich
were loaded with tons of work, long hours and a lot of stress someone told me
to categorize the work on my todo-list, to think about wich tasks i could
delegate to others and to filter the most important ones (a common model for
this wich helped me a lot can be found here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_management#The_Eisenhower_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_management#The_Eisenhower_Method)).
Now I still have a lot to do, but i can manage to take a day off from time to
time, i even went skiing for 4 days without working there. In my opinion
people lose their attitude and motivation if they dont take time to do
something besides working and think about other things.

------
brown9-2
Until someone can prove that more hours = more value, I refuse to believe this
"startup mentality" is anything but a cargo cult mentality.

Weird for a culture that so prizes data and science to endlessly repeat
certain mantras as truth without any validation.

~~~
grammaton
I think a lot of it comes from people reading certain luminaries - our own
beloved Paul Graham comes to mind - who have good points, but not exercising
critical judgement about whether said points apply to one's own situation.

------
ibagrak
What I found is that passion is one of those things that always seems
excessive in retrospect and insufficient going forward. When I reflect on my
periods of professional exuberance, I am always struck by how much I missed
out being with my family and friends. Likewise, in the times of lull I am
always guilt tripping myself about not being passionate enough, or not giving
it my all.

Ultimately, the right balance depends on your own perspective on life, which
in term depends on your age, personality, family situation, etc. But the older
I get the more convinced I become that you can't go wrong if you err on the
side of life.

------
skotzko
I see some references to family throughout the comments, but one fundamental
thing is that things are different once you have a family. The founder of our
startup always goes home to have dinner w/ his wife and kids, but it would be
a complete mistake to say he's slacking -- he works late into the night from
home.

Steve Blank wrote a great post about how to navigate this tricky balance of
startup/family and what worked for him. It's here:
[http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-
entrepreneur...](http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-
entrepreneur/)

------
webjunkie
If your team cannot wait to leave at 6 you have a problem, but if you send
your team home at 6 because they worked efficiently and achieved something,
that's some work life balance then.

------
wslh
I believe that beyond work/life balance there is a difference between hard
work and madness.

Many startups (and companies) need to go to a psychiatric hospital, they are
very unorganized and the team leaders doesn't take full responsability and
respect for people times.

Another thing is being really focused and concentrated on moving forward in
your 40 hours week (not checking HN too much...) and doing extra hours when
it's really necessary.

------
heat_miser
The most important thing for founders to remember, even if they are under the
gun is that keeping employees working longer hours for a sustained duration
will result in a less reliable product.

I have tried to work 80-100 hours on several occasions for a month or so and
just ended up ripping up most of what I wrote. I have settled into an average
of about a 65 hour workweek by picking up the laptop whenever I feel like it
and stopping when I feel the pointless churn beginning. My output, as measured
by Pivotal Tracker is much higher working less hours, point being my
meaningful productivity is higher.

If I had an employee working that much of their own volition, I would start
offer help on their process and would want to work with them on why they are
approaching things in such a brute-force manner.

I would also see it as a failure on my part to set the right expectations with
customers, investors, etc...

Work/Life balance is relative, but I don't think anyone can sustain a quality
output at 80 hours a week for more than 3 weeks or so.

------
naner
Perhaps I'm naive, but when I see companies that work like this I assume they
either don't know any better or are just scared stupid. Or perhaps it is a
macho startup thing.

~~~
jeanhsu
I don't think it's either of those--I think it's a natural progression of a
startup whose composition is pretty much entirely of young people straight out
of school who don't have as many obligations outside of work, as say, someone
with a spouse and kids (I have a spouse, but no kids). We're all trying to get
on better schedules, and my post was was in no way a criticism of how things
are run at Pulse.

------
maxer
I disagree with a few comments here- if i go home I am just going to play
xbox, would it not be spent better writing code?

Plus I enjoy what I do in the office, it can be stressful but its not like
12-16 hours hard physical labour.

I dont work weekends though other than answer email or support requests

~~~
brown9-2
_if i go home I am just going to play xbox, would it not be spent better
writing code?_

You need to quantify what "better" means here to even begin to answer this
question:

\- better for your mental health to take a break or have some fun?

\- better for your code quality to not introduce mistakes due to tiredness?

\- better from some economic standpoint because you petceive the increased
value in what you produce to be greater than what you value xbox-time at?

------
jonnycat
I don't dare to make any sweeping generalizations about this, but I would love
to see how age, location and amount of time spent working at startups
correlates with some of the opinions here. I suspect there might be some
interesting (if not entirely unsurprising) trends there.

------
madaxe
Balance _is_ a pipedream. Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration -
glib, but true.

We started 5 years ago - I've been on call 24/7 ever since. We've now got
other people on call too, sure, but as the technical lead, I'm where the buck
stops. An average week is in the region of 70-80 hours work.

I have precious little in the way of "life" - I allow myself a few hours off
once a week on Thursdays, but apart from that, spend my time glued to my
laptop, growing the business.

That said, I see several ways out.

1) This sucker actually works, and we retire. 2) This sucker actually works,
and we grow it into a behemoth. 3) Ditto and we sell, and I re-invest the
proceeds into my next mad idea.

1 is pretty unlikely. 2&3 are far more likely, which rather reflects the fact
that my work _is_ my life, and if you're doing a startup without that
attitude, it's going to suffer. A startup is effectively all about selling a
"regular" 20/30's for a decade (or two) of brutally hard work, high stress,
and attaining financial and inventive freedom.

Sorry, I'm rambling. No coffee yet this morning.

~~~
jasonkester
_We started 5 years ago... I have precious little in the way of "life"_

I hate to be the one to point it out, but what you're experiencing is very far
from my definition of "Success". I mean sure, according to your definition
you're definitely perspiring, but isn't there supposed to be some form of
payoff at some point?

All 3 of your potential forecasted outcomes lead to you not having a life any
time soon. As such, it looks like you've set yourself up in a way that
_precludes_ success, as many of us define it.

For me, a successful software business is one that provides the maximum income
(and thus free time) possible for the smallest effort. That's what software's
so good at: turning tiny amounts of work into big benefits. As such, the
ultimate goal is zero effort and infinite free time. You seem to have
contrived the opposite for yourself.

~~~
haploid
I'm not sure what your point is. If the parent doesn't follow the VC-driven
"get big really goddamned fast at all costs" model, he's not successful?

There's nothing wrong with growing a business steadily for 5 years. Speaking
for myself, we've been doing it for 4, and somehow I don't feel like a
miserable failure.

~~~
ido
Jason said nothing about VC or explosive growth.

------
zyfo
I don't get this. On the one hand there's the 40h-a-week camp, backed up by
plenty of research [1] and on the other hand there's the work-as-much-as-you-
possibly-can camp, which seems to be what plenty of successful startup have
been following. So what's the deal? Why this discrepancy? It's not about
manual vs knowledge working - studies on knowledge workers show that even less
than 40h / week is beneficial. Is it about the difference in possible
leverage? Self-directed work? The close link between work and payoff? The
stressful situation in a startup? The 100% commitment?

Any attempts to pin down why and under what circumstances [2] different work
hour guidelines should apply would be greatly appreciated.

1: See studies in this pdf [http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-
productivity-pres...](http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-
presentation.html)

2: What's the difference between starting your own company, running your own
company, joining a startup, doing a PhD, being in a research team, working at
an established startup?

~~~
JanezStupar
It could be that successful startups succeed in spite of overtime not because
of it. Also a lot of successful startups are done by (young) people who
haven't had their asses handed to them because of their insane work ethics.

There indeed are stretches when one gets carried by passion and can work
(almost) 24/7. One should use that wave. But when you find yourself disliking
what you're doing you better stop and not write posts as in the OP.

OP is just making up excuses for feeling of guilt one feels divided between
family and promise they made to themselves/somebody else. To me it seems like
excuses fat people have about losing weight - or drunks about stopping
drinking (when catch yourself saying - shit x is wrong and I dislike shit y in
my life, but I'm still doing great - some red lights should start spinning).

To OP if you're reading this - look into mirror take a deep breath and admit
that you're a workaholic. There are some "mommy" and "daddy" issues in your
soul you need to resolve. You're using your work to punish yourself for
something you're not even guilty of.

