
Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining - aaronbrethorst
http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/27/startups-are-hard-so-work-more-cry-less-and-quit-all-the-whining/
======
neilk
This is _insane_. You realize that all the quotes are from a post called the
author describes as a 'cautionary tale'?
(<http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html>)

I think jwz sums it up best in another post, where he talks about the best
case scenario: becoming rich from your startup:

 _I've known dozens of instant-millionaires so far (from Netscape as well as
other companies), and basically, I don't speak to any of them any more,
because the money changed them and turned them into fairly creepy people.
People who spend $10k on a wristwatch and then brag about it (while trying to
aloofly sound like they're not bragging about it.) People whose sense of self-
worth has gone nonlinear, because when they look at their brokerage statement,
they forget that, while skill was certainly a component of why they got to
where they did, luck was also a huge component. Most of these people have
never worked for a company that built a good product and failed anyway. They
don't have any understanding of the fact that skill is often necessary, but
always insufficient. They believe their hype._

\-- <http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/corleone.html>

~~~
ChuckMcM
I don't think people appreciate the money aspect enough. It does change people
and not always along a vector you would expect. It also changes people who
don't get rich.

Your a low number employee and your company goes public, woohoo you are rich,
but people who work with you and came later and are doing the same job as you
are not. The cognitive dissonance is huge, people sometimes feel guilty that
they are rich and their co-workers aren't, sometimes they feel like they 'must
be smarter' because they are rich and their co-workers aren't. Newly rich
people want to marvel in it, and share how amazing it is that they _can_ spend
10K on a watch if they feel like it, and the people around them, doing the
same work and not rich, well they often aren't all that appreciative of what
it must be like.

Those relationships get awkward quickly. And people separate so that they can
be with other people where their lifestyle (or lack of it) won't be a source
of awkwardness.

Not a lot of people talk about the side effects of 'success' but they should
think about it.

~~~
neilk
My point in quoting that wasn't that success is necessarily bad for you (Alex
Ohanian seems to be doing okay, and jwz is himself a counterexample) it's that
success in that sort of business has a large random component.

The point of the OP's post is that huge sacrifices are necessary for great
rewards. I think the truth is more like, _your_ huge sacrifices are necessary
so that _our_ investment strategy works.

Meanwhile, guys like patio11 and the 37 Signals team have shown there's plenty
of different paths to success. And if you think about what people like Jimmy
Wales or Tim Berners-Lee have done, there's lots of ways to "make a dent in
the universe" without even forming a traditional company. I know this is crazy
talk, but not all roads to greatness involve making a VC rich.

But you know, now that I think about it, I think people are going to read what
I just posted and only zero in on the "dozens of instant millionaires"
sentence and ask _how can I get in on that?_

~~~
kamaal
The definition of success itself varies among most of the people. Some people
wish to make a dent in the universe, some people just want money. Some people
want both.

Some people just want to be famous and remembered. Some people want to be
something important part of an ecosystem who get to decide a lot of things.
Some people just like Power and social status. Some people are in just for the
fun of the game.

Some people just want to be happy. List can be really long. Basically its what
you truly want.

Depending on that there are different things you need to be successful. There
is no silver bullet.

------
keiferski
_Work hard. Cry less. And realize you’re part of history_

No, sorry, but you probably aren't. Zynga isn't changing the world and neither
are 99.9% of the startups coming out of SV.

The over-working culture is exactly that - a culture. It has nothing to do
with actual reality, and everything to do with perceived reality. Great, long-
term companies aren't built by entrepreneurs who sleep 2 hours a night.

P.S.: not getting enough sleep decreases productivity. The 37Signals guys have
covered this a few hundred times at this point. I also seem to recall Richard
Branson saying that he "needs his 8 hours."

~~~
wanorris
Well, sort of. Working all the time isn't sustainable. But the point of
starting a startup isn't to do things that are long-term sustainable, it's to
build as much as you can in a short period of time to outrace competitors and
adapt quickly to whatever comes up.

And I say that as someone who needs work-life balance -- that's why I don't
have a startup. I want to spend time with my wife and kids and hobbies and
things, so I have a nice job that I can go to every day and then come home
again.

Expecting to maintain work-life balance while creating a startup is bringing a
knife to a gunfight.

~~~
sliverstorm
Sleeping 2 hours a night is a sprint. Unless you are a superhuman, you can't
sleep 2 hours a night for more than a week and still be more productive than
someone on a normal schedule.

The point being, you can sprint in a crunch. You can sprint to meet a deadline
next week. But unless you expect your company to be bought a week after you
found it, you should probably be pacing yourself at least a little. Go ahead
and give up work/life balance- for a medium-term project you can risk burnout-
and go ahead and work 16 hours a day. But get 8 hours of sleep.

~~~
wanorris
Ok, that sounds fair. Two hours is indeed not sustainable except in sprints.
Though I've known spooky people who seem to be able to get by with not much
more than that on a sustained basis.

~~~
masklinn
> Though I've known spooky people who seem to be able to get by with not much
> more than that on a sustained basis.

Yes, but these people are (physiologically) the exception not the rule (this
characteristic is not uncommon for sailors, for some types of race sailing
it's pretty much a base requirement).

~~~
tibastral2
You are talking about polyphasic sleep, which when you train and skill is a
great tool to sleep less, but I think these guys are not talking about that,
they talk about being "la tête dans le guidon" as we say in France => head in
the handlebar litteraly, or "sous l'eau" => underwater. It is a myth. Startups
are all about creativity. If you don't sleep enough, you are not creative.
PERIOD.

~~~
hugoestr
Let me add more: not creative, not logical, not coherent. Incapable of being
social.

Studies show that chronic lack of sleep is equivalent of being drunk when
driving. Do we really want the cognitive equivalent of drunk workers "changing
the world"?

------
9oliYQjP
There's work. Then there's productive work. What pisses me off is having to
pull an all-nighter doing ultimately meaningless work. In startups there can
be a lot of meaningless work unless you have all your ducks lined up both
strategically and tactically. The older I get, the more I realize that having
your ducks lined up requires presence of mind, clarity, and focus, all
characteristics that are fleeting when you're sleep-deprived and being powered
by Red Bulls and coffee.

In startups, marathon work sessions should be kept to a minimum. _They're
valuable and they're a useful tool_. But they come at a massive cost. The more
you rely on them, the less effective they become and the harder it is for the
person who participates in them to reach their original productivity without
massive amounts of downtime in between sessions. If you're going to commit to
some crazy over-working session, you better have a damn good reason. Most
startups who push this culture don't.

~~~
lightcatcher
As a student, I agree completely with your above philosophy. It seems to me
that just about everything in your article could be generalized to just all
sorts of work, rather than just the sort of works in startups.

------
kingofspain
I'm so glad I was pushing 30 before I really became aware of this startup
scene. The general impression that comes off, to me at least, is work hard,
stop moaning, accept pennies and one day you'll be rich - assuming that
unlikely outcome happens and we don't use of the thousand ways possible to
screw you out of any riches.

To me at least, and as an outsider, I'd say things like this may hold up for
founders, but as a non-founder you better be young and have very little in the
way of commitments. Get the experience and use what you've learned to found
something yourself.

As a caveat, I am obviously not well in on the startup scene, but from what
I've seen & heard over the years, there's very little to tempt me as an
employee.

~~~
itmag
I'm in my early 20s. Startups seem to be the only way out of 40 years of
mediocrity in TPS-land for me, so I don't really think I have much of a
choice. It's startups or nothing for me.

Or maybe I am being myopic? Are there more options to be had in life than
mediocrity/wageslavery vs glory/startups?

~~~
neilk
You are believing exactly what investors and VCs want you to believe. You
aren't escaping wage slavery, you are just substituting a different
slavemaster. Wake up.

There are billions of people on this planet. Do you think that the ones who
aren't in Silicon Valley startups are all _miserable_? Their lives aren't
worth living?

Ok, but more specifically. Let's say you want to lead a creative existence,
working with technology, and you love the SF scene so much you just _have_ to
live here. You don't need to be in a startup for that. As they tell you to be
frugal with a startup, be frugal with you life and all sorts of possibilities
open up.

I know a number of people living in "hacker homes" where they drift in between
working on startups, technology jobs, and then working on projects that just
interest them. Sometimes they'll take an entire year off work to do something
with no monetary gain, like a Burning Man or an open source project. You might
have to live in an less desirable area with a lot of housemates, but once your
rent is sub-$1000 and you cook most of your own food, you can live for an
entire year once you've pulled off a couple of consulting gigs.

You're young, and I presume you don't have a spouse or kids, so this option is
_very_ possible for you.

~~~
itmag
Thanks, that's some cool ideas right there! Upvoted for truth and justice.

I'm all for exploring unconventional lifestyle design patterns. And I _have_
been nursing certain plans of becoming a techno-hippie :)

~~~
neilk
Thanks. By the way -- another possibility is to work for technology projects
which aren't really in the startup game.

A lot of my friends work for the Wikimedia Foundation, Thunderbird, Mozilla,
Tor, and so on. There's no possibility of walking away as a zillionaire, but
neither do you have to work with (or for) dickwads who are only in it for the
money and who are out to screw you out of your share. And if you're any good,
there's a guarantee of doing something significant that you can point to later
on your resume, should you want to go the entrepreneurial route. These
organizations are global, so you get to do a fair bit of travelling too.

Non-profits have their own special brand of problems, but if you tally up the
pros and cons they are definitely an option.

~~~
itmag
How do I get started?

~~~
neilk
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings>

<http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/careers.html>

I don't think you get a job at Tor without being personally known to the
developers. Volunteer, I guess.

------
benwerd
The more I think about this post, the more conflicted I am about it.

On the surface, there are some obvious truths. Startups are hard; they're
definitely not 9-to-5, 5-days-a-week jobs. There are also way too many people
who think they're like a normal job but with added rockstar status and the
potential to suddenly become fabulously wealthy, as if by random.

But. As Arrington says, it's a mindset thing. It obviously does take huge
amounts of effort to get something off the ground, and the people you work
with should be selected for their motivation to do that when it's required.
The danger is that people will interpret his article to mean that everyone
should work long hours all the time; that's simply not right. They should work
the hours it takes to reach the goal, assuming the goal is reachable. Machismo
is not productive.

While it's true that there's a lot of hard work involved and a lot of people
are simply not cut out for it, here are some other truths. Balance leads to
creative thinking. Lack of sleep leads to loss in productivity. Burn-out leads
to no productivity. A business where you ask your employees to give their
lives to the product is fundamentally unsustainable. A company is a community
of people, and you have to understand their human needs to keep them
motivated.

It's also true that if your employees aren't motivated to reach the goal,
something is wrong - either the employee isn't right, or your goal isn't
right. It comes down to hiring the right people, having a killer idea that
motivates people, and being a good leader.

I also bristle at his comment about unionization. I don't think unions are a
bad thing - but any unionization would have to be context-specific for Silicon
Valley. There's nothing wrong with collectively bargaining for rights, but it
can't be a cookie-cutter solution. I'm pretty sure smart tech people are
capable of creating a 21st-century union that supports their rights while
keeping the creative flame of their industry alive.

~~~
benwerd
Also, the more I think about it, the less appropriate his post is in the light
of recent tragic events.

------
pygorex
> Work hard

Yes - a strong work ethic is needed to build a company. But hard work won't
save a mediocre idea or flawed business model. Don't work hard, work smart -
which means working long hours and pushing a deadline when needed. It also
means being skeptical and ruthless with your business model, validating your
ideas and pivoting when needed.

> Cry less

No. Cry more. Vent and complain. Give yourself emotional release. Your brain
needs it. And how can you code optimally or run a company properly when your
brain is working at partial capacity?

If you are smiling, happy and confident all the time when building a startup
you are probably a deluded idiot. That being said - always exude confidence to
your customers and strategic business partnerships. (insert witty remark here
about sausage being made) However ALWAYS be brutally honest with yourself and
your team. If you are honestly challenging and validating your idea and
business model you will lose faith from time to time and may even slip into a
funk. THIS IS NORMAL. If you're honest with your team they will find a way to
help you through.

> And realize you’re part of history.

This is true in the sense that you are living and breathing and working during
the early 21st century - you are a part of history (by this definition every
dog is also a part a history, so don't get too excited). But it's highly
unlikely that you will _make_ history. Like most people (and most dogs) your
startup will toil and die in obscurity. It's absurd to concern yourself with
your legacy before you've built something of value. Build a great company and
let history make up it's own mind.

------
bane
My day job is just hitting 5 years. Of the original team hired under the
founders only about 30% of us are left (we've hired some replacements), and
the founders were part of the group that was cut.

Watching the founders leave was the hardest because you could watch them
slowly come to terms over the first couple of years that:

a) this actually is harder work than what we left

b) it's not just somebody tossing money at you to go work on your pet projects
and screw around, treating the expense account like a personal luxury account

c) there is a reasonable expectation by the investors at the end of all of
this that they will make their money back off of your work

Surprisingly, making the transition to a professional management team was
easier than working with the original founders. During the tenure with the
founders they made all of the mistakes above, plus acted like petulant
children when they ran into each of these problems. Whining, foot stomping
(literally), crying, flying cross-country to be away from the team and showing
up unannounced at a satellite office. Bizarre behavior.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's not just the work that's hard. It's the
intestinal fortitude to deal with technology, business and people, day in and
day out -- especially when all three of those things are often acting at odds
with each other that makes startup life hard, and being small, with startups
those things can be magnified out of all proportion. Minor office quibbles
turn into nuclear explosions, a broken technology stack a looming iceberg,
lack of sales ability into a waiting sink hole.

People often remark about the perks of working at a startup, but it's those
perks that make the often miserable part of the work tolerable. Or at least
act as transparent incentives to work more, cry less and quit all the whining
-- because at least you get three free meals a day!

------
DanielBMarkham
My favorite numbers for startups are that they have a 1-in-20 chance of
succeeding.

I don't know where I got those numbers from -- seems like I've heard PG use a
1-in-10 chance, but you get the general feel for the situation. You should
work in such a way as to acknowledge those numbers. I'm not saying don't work
hard -- far from it. Just work as if this is stage 1 of a 20-stage process,
each stage lasting a year or two. If you're not working in such a fashion that
you can go a decade or two, logic says you have mis-configured your work
habits.

I had this same attitude when I moved from the commercial world into startups,
_get your ass in gear and buck up!_ That was a few years ago, and I've
moderated my views quite a bit due to brutal reality. I think part of the
problem for me was that I was trying to compare the startup world to either
the academic world or to the commercial software world. In both of those
scenarios you worked as hard as hell for a limited period of time and then
_you delivered_. You took the test, you released the product, you passed the
class.

Startups aren't like that because _the work is never done_. There is no huge
finish line you sprint through. It just keeps going and going. The cutesy way
of saying this is "it's a marathon, not a sprint" but I'm not sure that even
covers it adequately. It's not a race at all. It's just a long, hard slog.
Yeah sure, if you've got traction it is a hell of a roller-coaster ride, but
I'd worry about then if-and-only-if that day actually arrives. Work like
Facebook did to get their first million users when you actually start
attracting hundreds of thousands of users and you're looking that potential in
the face, not before.

~~~
nostrademons
PG also said that the 1-in-10 chance is an _average_ , across many different
people, and individual circumstances may dramatically alter those odds. Some
startups are virtually certain to succeed. Others probably have a 1 in a 1000
chance.

I think you're better off working really hard for a while - enough to fully
explore the problem space you've gotten in - and then taking stock of the
situation and learning your lessons. Then, hopefully your odds are better next
time, and with any luck, the process eventually converges on success.

~~~
TillE
> Some startups are virtually certain to succeed.

If your execution is good and your definition of success is sufficiently
modest, that's probably true. But for big successes? It's hard to think of
many examples, even in retrospect.

~~~
nostrademons
I'm guessing PG's definition of success is "likely to generate a return on
investment if YC invests". For that, there're a bunch that are no-brainers,
even if they end up as just a talent acquisition. Parakey, for example: even
if it failed, some company was bound to buy it just to get Blake Ross and Joe
Hewitt (and Facebook did). Ditto Friendfeed; yes, it was ultimately a talent
acquisition, but the founders and investors didn't do all that badly on it.

I don't think you could predict the overwhelming success of a Facebook or
Google in any reasonable timeframe. However, you could probably be fairly
certain that Mark Zuckerburg was sitting on _something_ useful once he got a
few thousand people to sign up.

------
icandoitbetter
Your startup is not part of history. You couldn't find better evidence that SV
is an intellectual bubble than this post.

~~~
artursapek
Agreed, most people have an inflated view of their own startup seemingly
because subconsciously they probably feel they deserve it for the hours they
put in.

What will be a part of history is the bubble itself.

------
agentultra
Work more, cry less, and quite all the whining... is this SV or Full Metal
Jacket?

That's not advice. It's ignorance.

If you cannot get your work done in eight hours a day there is probably
something that's off. Maybe you're underestimating the work. Maybe you're
being optimistic about your deadlines. Maybe you're not being honest with
yourself about how efficiently you're using your time in the day.

After eight hours of working on one thing I'm done. If I've used every hour of
that day to it's full potential I don't have the will or inclination to keep
working. I usually feel pretty good about going home. Tomorrow's another day
at the dream factory. I'll decompress, read a book, hack on something fun,
hang out with my wife, get my sleep and tomorrow I'll wake up fresh and ready
for the new set of challenges.

Whenever a manager or project lead tells me something along the lines of,
"just do what you have to do and get it done," I just want to instinctively
tackle them and slap them hard across the face. Not because I hate working but
because they're standing on the tracks and there's a big freight train coming
that they're not seeing. Managers who do that are lazy and are just passing
the buck. If they don't want to hear why they're about to get hit by a giant
freight train you owe it to the team to do something about it.

You don't do that by keeping your mouth shut and your nose to the grind stone.

 _Edit_ : Fixed some spelling issues.

~~~
kamaal
There is always, repeat always who is going to do more work than you. That's
fundamentally how competition works. And the one who does more work than you
do, will always have an edge over you. Both on the shorter and the longer run.
There are rewards to do that extra. And that motivation will always drive a
person to do more work than you do. And trust me inevitable he will end up
being successful someday.

You may do a quick comparison and call that extra work 'not worth it' when you
compare against other aspects of your life that demand time. But after say a
decade when you look back and find that guy to have taken a huge leap ahead of
you, suddenly you get that thought that occupies every person in such a
situation:

'Why couldn't have I done that?'

And then starts the analysis. You will end up finding that you were a lot more
intelligent than him yet the guy somehow manage to beat you.

That's when you will realize the most dangerous fact of the world.

Hard work * time gives surprising success.

In my case I will rather take my chances do more work than my peers and even
fail. Then have a regret that I could have worked hard and won but I didn't.

~~~
moocow01
Your basing your argument on the idea that everyone is in some linear race and
we will all do an assessment of ourselves and everyone else at the age of 40
to see who is ahead. Unfortunately many of the typically unhappiest people do
this and they base their assessment on money and job titles. Success is not
just about money and job titles. We all (well atleast some of us) have our own
versions. One person who goes home after 8 hours may end up dedicating their
extra time to building a great family life or hobby while pittying his past
high performing coworker who now has made CEO. Who do you think is happier
when they look back - the person who followed what they wanted to do or the
person who 'won' against their peers?

~~~
kamaal
I would still say the CEO.

As a I CEO I will have all the money in the world to chase any hobby/fun
activity I will ever want. Also my kids and family are enjoying luxury and
privileges which other families aren't so even they are happy.

Also I have time and patience only for one hobby. Most of the time even with a
touch schedule I manage to work on my hobby.

~~~
danssig
Except most people who follow your advice are never going to be CEO. They're
going to throw their whole life away chasing this, never to reach it. Other's
may get a lot of money exploiting such people though.

------
csomar
No. You don't need to work harder. Work smarter. I was able to work for
$15/hour two years ago. I did actually work for such rates, but I ended up
increasing my productivity. Learning new tools, techniques, patterns, two
monitors, better working conditions, reading blogs and books...

Now I work less and make more money. I'm still brushing my skills, and the
more I do the more I realize that I can go further. Before you start a Start-
up, make sure you have the necessary skills and that you have mastered them
quite well.

Make a plan. Put 8-10/hours of work per day. Take at least 7 hours of sleep.
Practice sport. Meet with your friends (but don't let them distract you). If
you plan the time required for your startup to get up and running (coding,
testing, papers, marketing, capital...), then you'll be able to work in
healthy conditions and meet deadlines.

And doing that you'll be called a HARD WORKING person. Because no one else (or
few) is doing it. If you are doing what the author suggests then you might
possibly end up destroying your startup, health, relations and life.

------
moocow01
Meh - honestly working insane hours becomes unproductive and is foolishly
glorified by many around SV. Getting 2 hours of sleep on a regular basis is
just going to make you non-functional after a while and will lead to shooting
yourself in the foot. This culture seems to be manufactured by VC-backed
startups with limited runways and some of the more tyranical managers who hear
about the greats like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates that drove people incredibly
hard and achieved enormous success. I think the better path is to work toward
a certain direction that you enjoy, focus on enjoying your work and not trying
to hit some "level", and treat yourself well so you can produce well. Your
enjoyment and health should be your top priority and in return I'd bet your
efforts will be much more effective.

~~~
_delirium
People seem to only take part of the stories of those successful people as
well. Steve Jobs was at times a workaholic, but at other times a total
dilettante who moved to India to seek enlightenment from a guru, and did a lot
of drugs.

------
nanospider
The quality of posts that make it to #1 on ycombinator lately leave me
unmotivated to check the site as frequently as I used to. As a result I work
more, cry less and quit whining.

~~~
angryasian
i check about the same, but probably click and read a lot less.

------
fragsworth
I don't see a problem here. If people are working too hard, let them vent.
What's it to you? Especially if they haven't struck it rich yet. It's not like
you are forced to read their complaints, unless you are their boss, but then I
would question your motives.

------
harryh
It's worth quoting pg here:

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole
working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty
years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially
well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

I don't really understand all the backlash in this thread against hard work in
pursuit of a big goal.

~~~
tjmc
I don't think people are arguing against working hard, I think they're just
pointing out the untold part of pg's wealth essay. Namely, you can work your
butt off for that 4 years and still not make it. Sadly, that's a far more
probable outcome than acquiring 40+ years of working income at the end of your
4 year stint.

Having said that, if you're young, dedicated and focussed and it interests you
- hell, have a crack. But know what you're doing - startups are _always_ a
gamble.

------
freshhawk
Ugh. Silly VC propaganda is now making the front page?

Honestly this is a great attitude to instill in your employees, they will kill
themselves for the company and when they burn out you can hire some more. You
really can get a lot done when you can convince people to sacrifice their
lives. Just make sure you and your technical advisers get enough sleep and
downtime to think clearly and stay motivated and sharp.

If you are a developer then hopefully you've read enough about your profession
to know how real work gets done.

Maybe you are too naive to know that there are people who are more than happy
to sell you a dream so you'll work yourself stupid, selling a chunk of your
life for a lottery ticket (but hey, some of them do pay off).

That naiveté won't last long in this business, so don't worry, you'll learn
one way or another.

------
artursapek
Tim Ferriss described very much the opposite mentality of that of the 22-hour-
work-day SV startup scene in his book "The 4 Hour Work Week." A takeaway that
I've always held close is you have to be aware of whether you are working
effectively vs. working efficiently. While Netscape reached their deadline (I
assume) and enjoyed a successful launch, I have to wonder if they could have
made the same amount of progress by equalizing their hours of sleep/hours of
work, which would have made their work hours more effective. Just speaking
from school experience, on 2 hours of sleep personally I know if I continue to
try working much I start making mistakes that cost me a lot of time, and my
pace just slows in general.

------
jrubinovitz
This post is disappointing to see after all the talk about people working in
start ups being depressed last week. If you are hurting at a start up, you
should definitely take a good look at your life and figure out what you can
change to make it better. I am glad the article says "if you work at a startup
and you think you’re working too hard and sacrificing too much, find a job
somewhere else that will cater to your needs", but I think working with your
start up to try to arrange a job that is more compatible with you is an option
as well. Please do not just suck it up, if you're feeling bad, start making a
plan that will make you feel better.

------
kayoone
Some time ago go i read an article about an ex CEO of some biotech firm who
wanted to complete a very hard multiple days bike race and trained for over a
year. He knew he couldnt keep up with the pros who didnt sleep at all and were
nearly killing themselves, instead he tried to get good sleep everyday while
the pros raced on. In the morning he ended up overtaking many of the guys that
didnt sleep at all and genereally felt very fit throughout the whole race. Of
course he didnt win, but as far as i remember had a very respectable finish.
It was an excerpt from a book but i cant remember the name nor any details
about the race :/

~~~
masklinn
At the other end of the choice, there's Cliff Young[0]

> In 1983, the 61-year-old potato farmer won the first Westfield Sydney to
> Melbourne Ultra Marathon (875 kilometres, 544 miles). The race was run
> between what were then Australia's two largest shopping centres: Westfield
> Parramatta, in Sydney, and Westfield Doncaster, in Melbourne. Cliff arrived
> at the start line with overalls and gumboots. He ran at a slow loping pace
> and trailed the leaders for most of the course, but by denying himself sleep
> and running while the others slept, he slowly gained on them and eventually
> won by a large margin.

> [...]

> The Westfield run took him five days, 15 hours and four minutes, trimming
> almost two days off the record for any previous run between Sydney and
> Melbourne. All of the six competitors who finished the race broke the
> previous record, but Young beat them by running while they were sleeping.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)#Westfield...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_\(athlete\)#Westfield_Sydney_to_Melbourne_Ultra_Marathon)

~~~
danssig
Interesting story. Physical labor is totally different than mental labor, but
if your business is about doing lots of physical labor doing long hours could
make sense.

------
michellegreer1
Sometimes, it seems like a lot of startups end up working this hard because
they aren't being realistic about their chances of survival. It feels like
there are a disproportionate amount of chiefs but not enough Indians.

Lacy cites companies like Twitter and Zynga as success stories. Neither of
these were created by newbies. Evan Williams spent five years at Blogger. Marc
Pincus had already sold one company and has a Wharton MBA. I've seen startups
created by people who haven't even seen functional companies exist. That
doesn't exactly inspire confidence in VCs, employees, or customers.

If you don't have experience and connections, partner with someone who does,
whether it be an incubator, a co-founder, or an angel investor. Suck it up and
give them a cut disproportionate to their efforts on your project. Just make
sure they have valid advice and connections, and that they actually answer
your emails. This is the model YC companies take as well as what fueled
Facebook (Zuck/Parker).

If there is no decision maker in or closely tied to your company with relevant
experience, you will _most likely_ have to work this hard to get anything off
the ground. You will cry. You will suffer exhaustion. Why? Because you are
competing against experienced people who have a vested interest in your
failure. Even if you are in a different space entirely, you still compete with
them for funding, mindshare and talent.

You can work yourself to death. If your model is flawed because you've never
actually seen a functional company work, much of the work you do is spent
simply spinning your wheels to find traction.

------
jph
> And realize you’re part of history.

You're a part of history whatever you do. Spend time with your friends and
family, volunteer to help others, get outdoors and enjoy the world. Take some
college classes if you like, and drop out if you like. Learn something
beautiful and utterly useless like calligraphy. Travel to India. Explore
ideas, meditation, and Zen. I daresay your startup will be better, stronger,
faster, and make a bigger dent in the universe.

~~~
billpatrianakos
This post is trying to say be a part of history in a significant way. But in
reality your Lolcats/Facebook/Whatever wannabe site isnt important in the
least. The only part of history that the people in SV startup land will become
is the part of history where investors were throwing money at companies that
had ideas with no products or execution or strategy for making money at all.
We'll end up as the part of history that's remembered for I justified
valuations, hype, and a huge busted bubble that ruins everything for the few
companies that actually _are_ worth funding. Most of the new trendy startups
I've seen can be run on $50,000 a year max and I'm being generous. All you
need is a server and some code, not a billion dollar valuation for a CRUD web
app.

Very few startups are destined to be great or even decent. Very, very few.
It's a shame that so many are getting so much hype without justification these
days.

------
nagnatron
Fuck this investment banking bullshit.

------
samirageb
As someone that's bootstrapped for 3 years, I can say that working hard is
imperative, but can also be incredibly detrimental to your business. I believe
in the spirit of the blog post, as long as you don't get caught up in
absolutes, because obviously burnout is counter-productive.

Most startups I see are weekend projects, or 3-6 month endeavors that really
don't qualify as being a part of history and are dominated by goal of making
money. However, considering the author it's safe to say that Arrington is
assuming that you're actually trying to MAKE A DIFFERENCE, instead of building
the next coupon loyalty program with game theory and achievements. It's
probably also safe to say that someone with his universally accepted work
ethic is probably seeing alot more 'whining' in his current role than
previously exposed to.

------
schrijver
Caterina Fake, working hard is overrated
<http://caterina.net/archive/001196.html>

> Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing
> to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing
> patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be.
> Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place
> where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can
> be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right
> thing. Working hard, even, if that's what you like to do.

------
brown9-2
It is a logical fallacy to believe that in order to mimic someone else's
success you must also mimic all of the steps they took to get there.

Just because Microsoft, Facebook, or Netscape had long and crazy hours in the
startup days doesn't mean you need to do the same thing to build the next
Microsoft, Facebook, or Microsoft.

It's rather immature thinking to assume there is only one way to do something
like this, or even that "this is just the way things work" when your company
is based in a certain area of the country (Silicon Valley, California).

------
MortenK
There has been done large amounts of research on heavy overtime's effect on
the productivity of software developers.

It doesn't take very much overtime for productivity to absolutely plummet.
We're not talking just a small time drop here. Rather it's a free fall of 80%
or so. This means that even if an engineer works 120 hours every week, he will
_still not be as productive as if he worked the standard 40-50_!

More goofing-off time, running errands during work, an extreme increases in
defect rates etc, are just some of the reasons.

Steve McConnel discusses this at length in his 1996 book "Rapid development",
citing large amounts of case studies, books and other research.

The irony is that these guys who give the bravado laden "quit the whining, put
in the hours" speech, are actually _reducing their time-to-market_ , while
simultaneously destroying their developers!

------
thom
This is crazy. If you took this attitude to its logical conclusion, you'd end
up with a culture in which human need is almost entirely subsumed by corporate
need. Oh, no, wait...

------
Apocryphon
This article seems like a strawman. When was the last time you read people
complaining about startup work ethic?

------
keeran
"If it does, all the really necessary people will just leave and do their
thing somewhere else."

Uh yeah, the developers, who are reading this and thinking "what a dick."

Maybe he should go somewhere else.

------
jowiar
The overworking has nothing to do with changing the world - rather, it runs
contrary to it. If perpetual overworking is necessary for a startup, it's not
pushing anything revolutionary enough to be considered changing the world, as
the overworking serves entirely to get a product to market faster than someone
else, given that someone else can produce an equivalent or superior product.

------
billpatrianakos
It's natural for people to whine. I do it all the time but in the end I'm far
happier with my life than I was when I didn't work for myself.

Some whining is not justified and done by people who are in it solely for the
money. Founders are a tough bunch but even we have to vent at times.

At the same time I'd submit that if you're working all night and day you're
not doing it right. There are times we must put in a 16 hour day but
constantly killing yourself over work hurts you in the long run. The more
punishment you dole out to yourself the less productive you are and the longer
you have to work to catch up.

A lot of whining would cease if people stopped trying to keep up with the
other guy for the sale of keeping up. Become what you're meant to become and
fuck expectations and what other people are doing. Grow to the size you need
to be. Too many startups start taking money too soon and are run as if they're
a huge company when all they need is a single server and a guy to write code.
Premature scaling can probably account for a large portion of the whining
_and_ failure out there.

I see way too many startups trying to be something they're not and shouldn't
be which leads to burn out and failure. This business is tough and a little
whining is to be expected but if we quit making the mistakes I mentioned then
the whining will cease to come from cry babies and will only be heard from
hard working people who truly need to and should be allowed to vent.

------
itmag
Either I am way under-estimating the difficulty of executing a startup, or I
am some kind of superman able to tolerate way more of life's shit sandwiches
(without crying myself to sleep every night).

Which one is it? I kinda need to know before I start a startup :p

Feel free to downwote for hubris (reverse psychology, hah).

------
xarien
And that's why my hiring criteria has always hinged on the level of compulsion
said candidate exhibits. Sleep needs to be a secondary concern when stacked
against a deadline.

Although, I will be the first to admit that every now and then I fully rest up
and swear I'm going to get more sleep because I can actually see the
productivity increase. That thought is often a quickly fleeting thought
however....

~~~
oinksoft
> Sleep needs to be a secondary concern when stacked against a deadline.

Do you tell the candidate this during their interview?

~~~
xarien
I wouldn't hire someone if I didn't believe they possessed the same mentality.
Is it really a big deal given that the chances of having to pull all nighters
in college to meet an assignment deadline is so common? How is work
(especially in a startup) any different or less important?

