The reason this meme exists is that there is a huge economic benefit to (some, not all) founders and VCs to perpetuating it.
It attracts only young impressionable shutins to the startup and they feel like if they aren't working 18 hours a day they are slacking. Plus there is the "Stanford/Google effect" in play where everyone claims to be studying/working all the time but aren't if you factor out the foam dart / BBQ / bro time.
Oh god, all my life I've seen people waste so much time and then claim that they're so busy. It has developed into a huge pet peeve of mine, especially when they get pissed when I arrive to work at 8 AM and get up to leave at 5 PM. And I've done more in those 9 hours than they've done in their last two 16-hour days.
It attracts only young impressionable shutins to the startup and they feel like if they aren't working 18 hours a day they are slacking.
And the 40 year olds who haven't accomplished anything yet, and hear the clock ticking, and realize they are running out of "at bats".
The reason this meme exists is that there is a huge economic benefit to (some, not all) founders and VCs to perpetuating it.
Yeah, I mean for a founder. I wouldn't expect an employee with minimal or no equity to go all that. What the heck would be their incentive to do it? I do it because A. I actually enjoy it in a way, and B. I stand to become very wealthy if we succeed.
Most startups fail. That's scary. The natural response to fear is to run harder, run faster. And when the ride isn't scary, it's really exciting. Who can sleep when the growth curve looks like that?
And all this trickles down to the employees. And up to the VCs, the dumber fraction of which will try to measure progress by hours spent. If you aren't sweating, you aren't working, right?
Honestly, I think there's little economic benefit to all those hours put in. Especially for people writing code, where I think it's incredibly easy for tired people to be negatively productive. It's fear, excitement, and macho bullshit, not rational self-interest at all.
My start-up is also not a grind. My wife and I are the founders, and we put in our hours early on, but now we work a very regular 9-5 schedule. At least one of us has to leave around 5:15 to pick up our son.
Our employees are also not asked to work crazy hours - we don't rush to get releases out, we're profitable and growing, and we're not concerned about flipping the company tomorrow. Our employees are also now in their late 20s, and we expect them to have children and normal lives too, and we want them to stick with us through that.
Our founders have been true to their promise of work/life balance, and I believe this contributes greatly to our team's success. We're quickly expanding around the country without any VC breathing down our necks and growing at a quicker pace than competitors who try to emphasize the usual work hard play hard mantras. Some of the other comments on here ring true when they suggest that certain kinds of investors benefit most from employees burning themselves out. I think our well rested team with plenty of time for friends and family tackles problems with healthier vigor than our tired competitors!
That's incredibly interesting. I'm actually working on a startup with my SO too. It's been a trip so far. I really feel like we're growing closer because of it. Plus she doesn't bother me about working odd hours because she's next to me :)
I work at a YC startup, and we don't work a 24/7 grind. The VP of Engineering believes that it's not sustainable to work like that, and you can't build a successful company by burning out your engineers. Sure, when there are site issues, it's all-hands on deck, and if you need to get something in for the next push, then definitely you need to work your butt off, but that's just being professional. For the most part, the pace is really great, and we are all very productive.
You know, there exists a technique that makes "get something in for the next release" obsolete.
Basically: have the marketing and sales people sell and market the thing your engineers wrote last week, not the thing you hope they will write next week.
I'm all for not burning out, but I feel like there's something missing from all these articles admonishing people to work less.
It's great that people can work 5-6 hours a day, no weekends, and still build a great business. But if that's truly more efficient, should we expect to see some massive billion dollar companies run that way? How much did Bill Gates, Larry & Sergey, Jeff Bezos, etc. work when they were getting their companies off the ground? When they look back, do they feel the time was wasted, or do they feel it was necessary?
Or to the Metalab example, who's to say that the success Andrew experienced when he cut back on his work was not due in part to the long hours he had put in previously?
Not trying to admonish people to work more - just saying there's some missing analysis here!
We think of productivity as "how much can you get done in an hour" * "how many hours you work."
Unfortunately, as humans, we need recharge time. If I code 80 hours this week, the first twenty hours will be very productive, the next 20 will be slightly less productive, the next 20 will be significantly less productive, and the last 20 might be hurting more than helping.
After a day of rest, I might be back at the same productivity as I was for the middle 40 last week, and degrade from there.
The irony is that the more hours I work, the less I get done, the less difficult problems I can tackle.
Meetings take less out of people, be we still make poorer decisions by tiring our brains rather than taking passive time to rest, and using spare cycles to reflect on how we can squeeze more productivity out of the time we can work.
This, of course, ignores that some people burn out easier than others, and some have higher peaks than others. Working a truly focused 20 hours is more exhausting than 50 hours of semi-focused work for many people, and isn't rewarded in many corporate cultures. Find your own personal style.
I think the difference is what you're building the startup for.
Many startups aren't built to last. They're built to get to a certain size and then sell off their product and make a decent profit from it all. In this case, burnout isn't a worry because, if you get to the point where you're burnt out, your startup failed anyways (in that it didn't achieve the goal of attracting the attention of a larger startup-eating company). It's in these environments that the 24/7 grind is most apparent. Or companies that started with this model and then realized they couldn't sell and now have to try to turn their quick-buck idea into something that lasts.
Some startups, though, are built to last. These are places where burnout is a concern because they plan to be around for 10 - 15 years and they don't want to have to replace their entire staff every two years. In these companies, getting a good work:life balance is important for attracting and retaining talent.
People tend to think that if you're passionate about what you do (or love what you do), then you want to spend every waking hour doing it. But this kind of behavior is self-destructive. Even if you think you want to do it now, it will eventually wear you down and be unsustainable. Everyone needs to take breaks and have other interests and activities. And sometimes you have to force yourself or your employees to strike that balance.
I've always admired people who get more done in less time. We're in hustle mode in our startup right now but I still try to block out time that feels wide open to keep an eye on where we're headed and wind down a little. No use in racing ahead if it's a dead end road.
To continue the vehicular metaphor, it feels like hustle culture advocates burying the needle in the red zone, even though that's the least efficient point on the power curve. And even though that's less a predictor of success than what direction you're headed in.
There are absolutely times when you and your team need to live in the red zone of your tach. But really that's a temporary solution to being caught in the wrong gear. Amazing opportunity, can't upshift = gotta floor it anyways. But curves ahead = can't floor it. All depends.
It's also better to drive slowly towards your goal than to speed in the wrong direction and never look at your map to get your bearings. After a few side projects that never went anywhere, I spend more time taking walks and just thinking about the direction I'm going and I'm spending less time doing unnecessary work as a result. Sometimes you need a break in able to come back to the project refreshed with a new outlook on things.
This is exactly what Mike Alfred of BrightScope tells entrepreneurs, particularly the young ones just going through school and figuring out where they want to be in the scope of things. Until reading this, I'd hardly heard anyone speak out this way. I think it's particularly important to put this bug in kids' ears early; it's not sustainable to live and work like that, and eventually it destroys friendships and relationships and takes a toll larger than initially perceivable.
If it happens that 24/7 weeks exist for a little while, it happens. I get that. But I think what bugs me most about this "24/7 grind" attitude is that it's not a magic pill for a product that doesn't work or isn't destined to become profitable (and I'm using 'destined' lightly here). I've seen plenty of entrepreneurs go all-in on something and fail not because they didn't put the work into it -- but because it wasn't a product that could succeed, even with a tough grind.
It doesn't, but it does too. Time is 24/7 and never stops even if you do. If you have a great idea and you believe that in it, you will be fueled to go 24/7. If you are afraid other's might beat you to it, you will have no choice but to go 24/7. The worst feeling in the world is having a great idea, slack at it, and having others thoroughly beat you and stomp you to the ground. While they are gaining traction, you are playing catch up. And you never catch up. No founder wants to experience that, this is why startup life for most is a 24/7 grind.
Because the prize most are after is the highest level. If you want to start a business making $500k a year. You don't have to grind. But if you want a chance at millions or billions then yes, you do have to grind. You are competing at the highest level. It's like preparing for the Olympics.
In everything in life, there are exceptions. But such are not the norm or the rule.
Not sure why you got downvoted for that. I can see how a reasonable person could disagree, but your position is certainly not outlandish. In fact, I - by and large - agree with you. Especially this bit:
If you want to start a business making $500k a year. You don't have to grind. But if you want a chance at millions or billions then yes, you do have to grind. You are competing at the highest level.
Yeah, if your ambitions are that grand, you can't really expect anything to come easily... personally I feel like you have to be willing to scrape, kick, scratch, claw, bleed, hustle and basically battle your ass off if you're going to get there.
Can't recall the study but a researchers analyzed optimal work behavior. They found that the most/best work is produced when an individual works 7-9 hours per day. The more creative the task (ie coding) the more skewed the optimal time is towards 7 hours/per day. You also want to break the day into 2-3 segments with breaks in-between.
Well, that depends. For those of us doing the "bootstrap while working a dayjob" thing, yeah, it basically does become a nonstop grind. Well, nearly nonstop. Everybody has to take a break sometime.
For me, I allocate damn close to every hour I have outside of my dayjob to working on Fogbeam Labs. Take out sleep time, and time to eat (plus occasional diversions like grocery shopping, etc.) and it's basically:
1. get up and go to the dayjob
2. leave the dayjob and drive to Starbucks or Panera Bread
3. sit there and work on the startup for 4-5 more hours
4. drive home, eat, sleep
5. lather rinse repeat
6. Except Sat. and Sun, which is pretty much:
7. work on the startup all day
Fun? In some ways yes, in some ways no. Healthy? Probably not. Necessary? Well, I think so or I wouldn't be doing it.
My cofounder, on the other hand, doesn't go to quite the same extremes I do, which is fine. I tend to be a little extreme by nature, and I don't really expect anybody else to do the crazy shit I do. :-)
At the end of the day it's just not one size fits all. Kobe Bryant sleeps 4 hours a night (he just tweeted that a couple weeks ago), and plays a ridiculous amount of basketball every day. If I tried to do that I would end up in the hospital. There's some people that will be able to work 12-16 hours a day, and there's some people that can get things done in 6. Execution is ALL that matters. Get it done in 6 hours or 15 minutes, just get it done.
The (original) article references Aaron Levie of Box, and how he works all day long and doesn't take vacations. Box is valued in the billions, MetaLab is not. Is there some correlation there? I'm not sure, but most of the "famous" founders encouraging long hours tend to have had larger companies.
I'm going to ignore your "fuck"s and "this is retarded", and ask why you chose 50+ as a number?
From your profile, you're working at night attempting to become ramen profitable, which would mean that yes, you need to work your ass off.
But not everyone is in your situation, so please quit the "this is retarded" sentiment. It's childish.
For example, I'm part of a 6-person team at a startup in SF and I do not work 80 hours per week. I get to work at 9 and I leave at 6. And we're doing just fine.
What makes you think that you do? I too once worked at a defense contractor, I just didn't let their billed hours == productivity myth infect my thinking. I'm in my second serious startup and neither did the startup grind and both were doing amazing work. Roughly 50 hours a week is the norm which is hardly unsustainable.
Meanwhile my girlfriend and two of my best friends work at a 3 different startups doing the total grind 70+ hour/week schedule, and their results do not seem better. In a lot of ways those companies are doing worse because they are super focused on working harder not working smarter.
[+] [-] outside1234|13 years ago|reply
It attracts only young impressionable shutins to the startup and they feel like if they aren't working 18 hours a day they are slacking. Plus there is the "Stanford/Google effect" in play where everyone claims to be studying/working all the time but aren't if you factor out the foam dart / BBQ / bro time.
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
Oh god, all my life I've seen people waste so much time and then claim that they're so busy. It has developed into a huge pet peeve of mine, especially when they get pissed when I arrive to work at 8 AM and get up to leave at 5 PM. And I've done more in those 9 hours than they've done in their last two 16-hour days.
[+] [-] mindcrime|13 years ago|reply
And the 40 year olds who haven't accomplished anything yet, and hear the clock ticking, and realize they are running out of "at bats".
The reason this meme exists is that there is a huge economic benefit to (some, not all) founders and VCs to perpetuating it.
Yeah, I mean for a founder. I wouldn't expect an employee with minimal or no equity to go all that. What the heck would be their incentive to do it? I do it because A. I actually enjoy it in a way, and B. I stand to become very wealthy if we succeed.
[+] [-] wpietri|13 years ago|reply
Most startups fail. That's scary. The natural response to fear is to run harder, run faster. And when the ride isn't scary, it's really exciting. Who can sleep when the growth curve looks like that?
And all this trickles down to the employees. And up to the VCs, the dumber fraction of which will try to measure progress by hours spent. If you aren't sweating, you aren't working, right?
Honestly, I think there's little economic benefit to all those hours put in. Especially for people writing code, where I think it's incredibly easy for tired people to be negatively productive. It's fear, excitement, and macho bullshit, not rational self-interest at all.
[+] [-] andrewljohnson|13 years ago|reply
Our employees are also not asked to work crazy hours - we don't rush to get releases out, we're profitable and growing, and we're not concerned about flipping the company tomorrow. Our employees are also now in their late 20s, and we expect them to have children and normal lives too, and we want them to stick with us through that.
[+] [-] stephenhuey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] littlegiantcap|13 years ago|reply
Any advice for someone starting down this path?
[+] [-] steven2012|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jes5199|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swampthing|13 years ago|reply
It's great that people can work 5-6 hours a day, no weekends, and still build a great business. But if that's truly more efficient, should we expect to see some massive billion dollar companies run that way? How much did Bill Gates, Larry & Sergey, Jeff Bezos, etc. work when they were getting their companies off the ground? When they look back, do they feel the time was wasted, or do they feel it was necessary?
Or to the Metalab example, who's to say that the success Andrew experienced when he cut back on his work was not due in part to the long hours he had put in previously?
Not trying to admonish people to work more - just saying there's some missing analysis here!
[+] [-] ebiester|13 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, as humans, we need recharge time. If I code 80 hours this week, the first twenty hours will be very productive, the next 20 will be slightly less productive, the next 20 will be significantly less productive, and the last 20 might be hurting more than helping.
After a day of rest, I might be back at the same productivity as I was for the middle 40 last week, and degrade from there.
The irony is that the more hours I work, the less I get done, the less difficult problems I can tackle.
Meetings take less out of people, be we still make poorer decisions by tiring our brains rather than taking passive time to rest, and using spare cycles to reflect on how we can squeeze more productivity out of the time we can work.
This, of course, ignores that some people burn out easier than others, and some have higher peaks than others. Working a truly focused 20 hours is more exhausting than 50 hours of semi-focused work for many people, and isn't rewarded in many corporate cultures. Find your own personal style.
[+] [-] russelluresti|13 years ago|reply
Many startups aren't built to last. They're built to get to a certain size and then sell off their product and make a decent profit from it all. In this case, burnout isn't a worry because, if you get to the point where you're burnt out, your startup failed anyways (in that it didn't achieve the goal of attracting the attention of a larger startup-eating company). It's in these environments that the 24/7 grind is most apparent. Or companies that started with this model and then realized they couldn't sell and now have to try to turn their quick-buck idea into something that lasts.
Some startups, though, are built to last. These are places where burnout is a concern because they plan to be around for 10 - 15 years and they don't want to have to replace their entire staff every two years. In these companies, getting a good work:life balance is important for attracting and retaining talent.
People tend to think that if you're passionate about what you do (or love what you do), then you want to spend every waking hour doing it. But this kind of behavior is self-destructive. Even if you think you want to do it now, it will eventually wear you down and be unsustainable. Everyone needs to take breaks and have other interests and activities. And sometimes you have to force yourself or your employees to strike that balance.
[+] [-] eah13|13 years ago|reply
To continue the vehicular metaphor, it feels like hustle culture advocates burying the needle in the red zone, even though that's the least efficient point on the power curve. And even though that's less a predictor of success than what direction you're headed in.
There are absolutely times when you and your team need to live in the red zone of your tach. But really that's a temporary solution to being caught in the wrong gear. Amazing opportunity, can't upshift = gotta floor it anyways. But curves ahead = can't floor it. All depends.
Hmm. That metaphor actually did OK.
[+] [-] purplelobster|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endlessvoid94|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] casca|13 years ago|reply
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/groove
[+] [-] flog|13 years ago|reply
If you haven't been paid in 6 months, and you've got a 2 month runway you're going to be working long hours.
[+] [-] jennyjenjen|13 years ago|reply
If it happens that 24/7 weeks exist for a little while, it happens. I get that. But I think what bugs me most about this "24/7 grind" attitude is that it's not a magic pill for a product that doesn't work or isn't destined to become profitable (and I'm using 'destined' lightly here). I've seen plenty of entrepreneurs go all-in on something and fail not because they didn't put the work into it -- but because it wasn't a product that could succeed, even with a tough grind.
[+] [-] segmondy|13 years ago|reply
Because the prize most are after is the highest level. If you want to start a business making $500k a year. You don't have to grind. But if you want a chance at millions or billions then yes, you do have to grind. You are competing at the highest level. It's like preparing for the Olympics.
In everything in life, there are exceptions. But such are not the norm or the rule.
[+] [-] mindcrime|13 years ago|reply
If you want to start a business making $500k a year. You don't have to grind. But if you want a chance at millions or billions then yes, you do have to grind. You are competing at the highest level.
Yeah, if your ambitions are that grand, you can't really expect anything to come easily... personally I feel like you have to be willing to scrape, kick, scratch, claw, bleed, hustle and basically battle your ass off if you're going to get there.
[+] [-] curt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindcrime|13 years ago|reply
For me, I allocate damn close to every hour I have outside of my dayjob to working on Fogbeam Labs. Take out sleep time, and time to eat (plus occasional diversions like grocery shopping, etc.) and it's basically:
1. get up and go to the dayjob
2. leave the dayjob and drive to Starbucks or Panera Bread
3. sit there and work on the startup for 4-5 more hours
4. drive home, eat, sleep
5. lather rinse repeat
6. Except Sat. and Sun, which is pretty much:
7. work on the startup all day
Fun? In some ways yes, in some ways no. Healthy? Probably not. Necessary? Well, I think so or I wouldn't be doing it.
My cofounder, on the other hand, doesn't go to quite the same extremes I do, which is fine. I tend to be a little extreme by nature, and I don't really expect anybody else to do the crazy shit I do. :-)
[+] [-] kayoone|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robheaton|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SurfScore|13 years ago|reply
The (original) article references Aaron Levie of Box, and how he works all day long and doesn't take vacations. Box is valued in the billions, MetaLab is not. Is there some correlation there? I'm not sure, but most of the "famous" founders encouraging long hours tend to have had larger companies.
[+] [-] macinjosh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] la-conic|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] spoiledtechie|13 years ago|reply
This is retarded. Ya, you can start relaxing a bit when your company is 50+, but when you startup is just beginning, before profit, then fuck yes.
[+] [-] untog|13 years ago|reply
You can bootstrap a startup quite successfully just using a few hours a week. But not all startups. Depends what you're doing.
[+] [-] endlessvoid94|13 years ago|reply
From your profile, you're working at night attempting to become ramen profitable, which would mean that yes, you need to work your ass off.
But not everyone is in your situation, so please quit the "this is retarded" sentiment. It's childish.
For example, I'm part of a 6-person team at a startup in SF and I do not work 80 hours per week. I get to work at 9 and I leave at 6. And we're doing just fine.
[+] [-] krschultz|13 years ago|reply
Meanwhile my girlfriend and two of my best friends work at a 3 different startups doing the total grind 70+ hour/week schedule, and their results do not seem better. In a lot of ways those companies are doing worse because they are super focused on working harder not working smarter.