Great article. More people need to stand up to their bosses when long hours are requested day in and day out. I had a chat with my boss just the other day after I was forced to work all weekend. I told him, if it happens again, I'm leaving for a different company. He apologized profusely and gave me an extra 2 days vacation to make up for it.
This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. I get 10 emails a week from recruiters and founders trying to get me to come work for them. Don't put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit. This is 2013, it costs approximately 20-30k to live a good life with all the success of the last 2000 years of productivity. There is no reason at all to work all the time. Work a normal 40-50 hours a week, save at least half your paycheck and enjoy the rest of your life. If you simply do that, you'll have complete autonomy over your life at age 35 and will only have to work if you choose to. Otherwise you could choose to work 0 hours a week, spend all the time you want with your family, and hack at open source projects, travel, read, exercise, or generally do whatever you want.
It actually makes me uneasy that 40-50 hours is considered "normal". I know 40+ hours a week is very typical for any fulltime job, but that's SO much time. Between that and driving, cooking, sleeping, doing housework, etc, we have practically no free time (or at least I don't). I also don't feel that I'm any more productive after about 30-35 hours a week; anything over that and I may get burned out, which negates any benefit from the extra time.
> This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. I get 10 emails a week from recruiters and founders trying to get me to come work for them. Don't put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit.
1. To be in the top 5% of earners nationally, you need a household income of more than $180,000/year[1]. In the San Francisco Bay Area (which includes the Peninsula and South Bay), you'd need household income of $350,000 to be in the top 5% of local earners. Most single twenty-something engineers in Silicon Valley are not earning more than either number.
2. Emails from outside recruiters != decent job offers. Recruiters are drawn to warm bodies, so they'll talk to anyone who they think they might be able to put in front of a company. While some companies choose to work with them, keep in mind that because a relatively small percentage of new hires typically come through recruiters, candidates brought to a company via one are often at a disadvantage right off the bat.
3. A lot of companies here, particularly startups, expect work and work-related activities ("culture fit" often involves extracurricular "fun") to be a big part of your life. What that translates to in terms of hours will vary, but if you believe that those founders attempting to lure you away from your current job are offering you a straight 40 hour work week that guarantees you your weekends, you're probably going to be disappointed.
I'm not saying "put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit" (it almost never makes sense) but the notion that "you can do whatever you want" and take advantage of the hot job market in Silicon Valley is a bit unrealistic.
Based on how your current employer responded to your threat to quit, it sounds like you have made yourself invaluable to your employer. But if you think that a big-name tech company or hot startup would respond as favorably to the same threat because "we have the power, not the employers", I suspect you'd be in for a rude awakening.
>This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers.
Maybe you live in Silicon Valley, but not everyone does, and not everyone is an engineer.
In a lot of professions grinding out 60+ hours is the only way to set yourself apart from coworkers and move up the ladder. Moving upwards may not be that important for an engineer who starts at $100k, but for most people who start out in the $50-$70k range it's the only way to enjoy a higher standard of living, better vacations, and pay off student loans faster. I would like to work 40 hours every week but I don't want to be stuck making <$100k for the rest of my life.
I have had some cases where recruiters gave me an easy way out of a bad job. I've had some recruiters place me in a position that doubled my pay and challenged me towards greatness. Another recruiter gave me a really hard sell when I owed the IRS a lot of back taxes... If it wasn't for me they might not have pared down the project plan to something achievable and the might never have gotten the i's dotted and t's crossed and got the product in the hands of the customers, but my boss very specifically denied me recognition for my success.
The average recruiter, however, is filling a hole that is left behind by somebody who burned out. He's hoping that you can hit the ground running without any training, which is rarely realistic, particularly considering that 80% of programming work is doing what management expects to deliver 20% of the value. Because they haven't trained any of the other people working on the project you'll find that it's difficult to get any questions answered of the order of "how do I get this build consistently?", "how do I get this to build in less than an hour?", "which module is the right place to add that functionality?", "which applicationContext.xml file actually gets deployed to the assembly and how?" and stuff like that..
In a case like that you're set up to fail and you need to "think different" and start with the 80% of the work that gets you 20% of the way there, and then when the special job comes around where you're the best in the world you can sprout solutions like mushrooms.
it costs approximately 20-30k to live a good life... save at least half your paycheck
These two things are incompatible for all but high earners. Spend $30k & sock away $30k, pre-taxes that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $85k. Not an obscene salary by any measure, but hardly everyone in their mid twenties is in that position.
Hold on... you live and work in silicon valley and you claim you can get by on 30k a year expenses?
Horseshit. The cheapest rent I've seen around here is 1500 a month, and that's almost 20 grand a year right there. Add standard utilities, food, insurance, and commuting costs and you're already pushing 30k. That's assuming you don't have student loans to worry about.
I totally agree that the power is in our hands, but it is far less simple to make that work then you are letting on. There is a reason salaries in the valley are so high... it's damn expensive to live here. If you're in a position where you may get fired for not putting in 60 hour weeks, more often than not your options are work 60 hour weeks or hope you get another gig before you're forced to move out of the valley.
When I entered university I was assigned to an alumni who would be my mentor: the IT director of a large French car maker. We really met only once, but he told me one thing that has sticked to this day (paraphrased):
"To live a healthy and happy life you need to balance three aspects: work, family and personal. People will tell you you need to balance work and family. But you have to recognize that sometimes you will need to spend time as you please: do not feel ashamed for it."
Life is not just work and family, and nobody should be a slave of either.
When I was 22 or so, my wife asked me what my biggest fear was. At the time, aside from concerns around her health and safety, it was "that nobody will know who I was after I die".
Time and perspective change our priorities.
It is possible to become great person without ever having a successful IPO. Without ever having a product in the first place. And certainly without giving up most of your life in the likely-to-fail attempt to become 'great' (ie, known and a financial success), at the opportunity cost of living your life.
Because lets face it - our success rate is pretty dismally low. Most of us - no matter how smart, no matter how driven - won't achieve "greatness" in the sense alluded to here. We will be neither the next Jobs nor the next Gates nor the next Zuckerburg.
We will write code. We will make products that may or may not make a difference in people's lives. We will earn salaries that are unreasonably out of proportion to what we actually do (take it while it lasts!).
Most of the people who will remember us are in this closed community of startups. And once we stop producing, most of them will forget us. Some of us will go on to something more - but not most.
Except for a select few of us, nobody will look back at you in 50 years and say "wow, this dude... this dude was an awesome coder/businessman/marketer/designer".
But your kid might look back at you in 50 years and say "he was an awesome dad". Your community might remember you for the assistance you gave. And many, many more might remember you for the difference you made in their lives through your interactions with them.
There's nothing wrong with trying for the 'greatness' discussed in the original post. But never lose sight of the fact that this kind of success is only one path. And, frankly, you have your whole life to get there -- the long path taken by most of the people who are successful in that way.
TL;DR:
There is greatness in things other than the work you do and the money you make.
Your perspective completely and unavoidably changes once kids come along.
Your desire to leave your mark and influence on the world has a new target - the one who is looking at you in the morning, asking you for breakfast.
Still, people are people, people want to build great things. You can do both. It is harder. You have only so much time. Social life gets squeezed. Anyway you're no longer in your twenties with your tribe of friends. You have your own tribe now.
Managing people and managing children has a lot of similarities. Andy Grove in his book High Output Management highly recommends one-on-one meetings with both family members and colleagues.
Not the biggest Jack Welch fan, but I think his quote on work life balance is most accurate:
"There's no such thing as work-life balance, there are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences."
You don't need to rationalize spending more time with your family and less at work or vice-versa, just be honest about the consequences of it.
I worked a ton before I had a family, 7 days a week, always online. Now that I have scaled back I do accomplish less work, and I am 100% ok with that. My choice is more time with my wife and kids, and slightly less money (and alot less chance of a big $$ windfall), but I couldn't be happier.
Most people who work like dogs don't attain greatness.
My thesis advisor chose work over family. He left his lover and hardly ever saw his son until his son was forced to move in with him at the age of 14. (At which point you've really missed the chance to bond with him)
Back in grad school he was often the only professor working on Sunday -- I worked Sundays most of the time but I usually took Saturdays completely off. I still go by the physics sometime on the weekend and his door is the only one open with the lights on.
He got a tenured professorship and a defined benefit pension but his work as a physicist has been solidly average (like the average physicist)
A lot of hard work cost him his family and won him some kind of security which is hard to find today, but he definitely didn't achieve greatness.
Nelson Mandela had a great quote on this topic in the context of his relationship or lack thereof with his children.
I don't remember it verbatim but it was basically: You (my children) all taken care of you have what you need to live, I am working to make sure that the same is true for all the other South African children.
That really hit home for me because instead of looking at spending more time with my family, I looked at using my time wisely toward massive structural goals which would have positive outcomes on the world population.
This reminds me of something I once read of Ralph Nader:
Karen Croft, a writer who worked for Nader in the late 1970s at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, once asked him if he had ever considered getting married. She reports: "He said that at a certain point he had to decide whether to have a family or to have a career, that he couldn't have both. That's the kind of person he is. He couldn't have a wife—he's up all night reading the Congressional Record." [1]
There's a part of me that admires the sense of devotion to a personal vision or mission. I believe it's this unrelenting, screw-the-consequences, type of drive that create greatness.
At the same time, as a young single man in his 20s, I am still wrestling with my own personal choices and opinions on this matter.
I'm not sure what to glean from your comment. Do you already have a family? If not, you should consider not having one in the first place. Your would-be wife and children will be happier with someone who supports AND spends time with them.
Shame on you for not getting your priorities straight and putting your family first!
Not really. I am only saying this because I've seen you shaming someone in other thread and wanted to show you a first-hand example that shaming is bad for constructive discussions.
It's somewhat shortsighted, however. What if, by showing compassion to your family / children, you inspired them to benefit the world? If you inspire three of your children to do what you would have done yourself, you potentially get 3x the output of world-saviness.
Slightly trolly, I know, but just being devil's advocate.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Isaacson's book on Jobs mentions a few times that several people close to Jobs saw in him a hole that he tried to fill by succeeding through his work. Jobs himself speculates that he may have become more prone to cancer by running Apple and Pixar.
I realize all of that is speculative, but, damn, there has to be a point at which almost all of us would step back and say it isn't worth it. Why bust your ass, endanger your health, and stress yourself out so you can make someone else a load of cash?
(Also notice that many people who insist on the need for ridiculous hours often get something out of it: management, VCs, etc.)
> Why bust your ass, endanger your health, and stress yourself out so you can make someone else a load of cash?
One aspect that is often overlooked is that Jobs was an adoptee. My partner is also adopted, and I can tell you that she will struggle with deep rooted fears and self-confidence issues for life. She is also a workaholic. This is not a conscious decision she makes but rather a learned method for dealing with, and perhaps ignoring, her pain.
It's easy to look at things objectively as a third-party observer. My personal opinion is that Jobs did not have a choice in the matter. Work was his coping mechanism to deal with his pain.
Larry Ellison is also adopted, and I find it interesting that he was close friends with Steve Jobs. The two are quite similar in many ways.
This is something that I wrestle with on a regular basis. I am not a top engineer... I am not even an engineer at all. I work in support and want to move over to programming. Reading the writing on the wall... programming is the future, if you want to make a good life for yourself from working in technology.
That said, I have a little girl about to hit 2 years old and a wife of almost 5 years. And I'm going to hit 40 in about 2 weeks. I don't learn as quickly and easily I learned when I was much younger.
I know it takes some serious chops and time investment to learn to code. I guess that I just have to trust that I'll get "there" eventually... a little bit at a time.
While I want to continually improve and make a good life for my family... it would be a total travesty to do it at their expense.
btw, the struggle I refer to is the fact that for turning 40 soon... I don't feel old. I just feel like I should have accomplished more with my life, by this time. Know what I mean?
Go for it. Start small. Bite off just a little at a time.
Understand that age is neither good nor bad. There is a lot of ageism in the industry, so one thing you should be prepared to do is strike out on your own if you need to (either part-time as moonlighting or otherwise).
Well, 40 is the traditional time to worry about these things. It's when you have to finally face up to the reality that you're probably not going to change the world yourself. Most people don't.
"If a boss is feeling insecure about how their company is performing, then leaning on their employees for more hours is one of the few ways that they can feel like they’re turning the cogs towards success."
A very important point and very well stated. If I knew of any internet slang signifying a virtual standing ovation I would put it here.
It frequently also comes with pushing an atmosphere of artificial urgency and high interest technical debt (save an hour today and cost the company weeks in a few months) because all are based on panicked short term thinking.
Mostly disagree. My banking years (age 21-23) were really rough (100+ hour workweeks), but it definitely meant we learned much faster and earned significantly more over the long run.
I tend to lose interest if I'm not actively competing against my peers.
Now I just enjoy my job way too much to consider scaling back the hours.
I wouldn't chase 'greatness' anymore than I would chase 'happiness'. I like the sentiment of the piece though even though his equating study with career in the Adams quote annoyed me.
This doesn't answer the dichotomy of work vs. family, but puts it in a different context. What is the most effective way to spend your time?
The president's daughter scrapes her knee, but there's also a school shooting? I think Obama's gonna be giving a speech, and Michelle's on neosporin duty.
(West Wing spoiler alert 2003) The president's daughter is kidnapped? Well, I hope John Goodman is available, it's about to get Season 4 cliffhanger in here. Someone else can be president. Right now it's not the most effective use of Martin Sheen's time.
I can not believe no one has posted this yet, so here it goes
“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – Work, Family, Health, Friends and Spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air.
You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – Family, Health, Friends and Spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it.
Work efficiently during office hours and leave on time. Give the required time to your family, friends and have proper rest. Value has a value only if its value is valued.”
I think one of the key things is that work life and family life in the internet age need not be so separate. Household businesses can thrive and work together to accomplish great things, with unconventional organizational structures (or entirely informal ones).
When LedgerSMB forked I remember working late hours in a hotel room with my wife and son (I had a contract for my business that took me out of town, and we all decided it would only work if we all went), and having sessions with Chris Murtagh who would be typing with one hand, and cradling his infant son in the other. Almost every work break would be spent with my family, except for lunch that year (and only that year). Almost every hour not spent with my family would be spent working. Work and family formed the warp and weft of my life.
Fast forward five years, and what's happened is that these have become even more integrated. I schedule my work around family time, and my family time around work. In emergencies I may have to rebalance. But these are all deeply integrated.
In the distant past, this was actually the norm, so it is not that I can do something today that none of the great men in the past could do, but rather that I can return to the solutions which have worked. To some extent the internet enables this, but it isn't really enabling something new. It is rather re-enabling something very old.
Interestingly I don't think double entry accounting was invented by monks sitting in monasteries, but by the collaboration of merchants (whose families were effectively helping run the businesses). Many of the great things we take for granted today were actually built in such a way.
I could not agree with this more. In my case, the very product I'm working on is all about kids and family. It seems ironic when giving all I can to make the product succeed is taking away from enjoying time with my wife, and kids while they are young.
Sometimes it seems like we can only pick two:
- family
- startup
- health
I know the balance can be achieved, but is it balance we are looking for? I have a fear of being mediocre at both. But, we can do better than this. I can do better.
Reminds me of Clayton Christensen's book How Will You Measure Your Life? which deals with questions of dividing time between work and family. It isn't long and I'm glad I read it (though I wouldn't call it a page turner). One of the points he makes is that your family life is like any other investment, and you need to actively invest in it to be able to get a good return later in life.
[+] [-] pyrrhotech|12 years ago|reply
This is silicon valley. You are an engineer earning a top 5% salary in one of the richest countries in your 20s. You can do whatever you want, the ball is in your hands--not your employers. I get 10 emails a week from recruiters and founders trying to get me to come work for them. Don't put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit. This is 2013, it costs approximately 20-30k to live a good life with all the success of the last 2000 years of productivity. There is no reason at all to work all the time. Work a normal 40-50 hours a week, save at least half your paycheck and enjoy the rest of your life. If you simply do that, you'll have complete autonomy over your life at age 35 and will only have to work if you choose to. Otherwise you could choose to work 0 hours a week, spend all the time you want with your family, and hack at open source projects, travel, read, exercise, or generally do whatever you want.
We have the power, not the employers.
[+] [-] RussianCow|12 years ago|reply
Maybe I'm alone, but I doubt it.
[+] [-] 7Figures2Commas|12 years ago|reply
1. To be in the top 5% of earners nationally, you need a household income of more than $180,000/year[1]. In the San Francisco Bay Area (which includes the Peninsula and South Bay), you'd need household income of $350,000 to be in the top 5% of local earners. Most single twenty-something engineers in Silicon Valley are not earning more than either number.
2. Emails from outside recruiters != decent job offers. Recruiters are drawn to warm bodies, so they'll talk to anyone who they think they might be able to put in front of a company. While some companies choose to work with them, keep in mind that because a relatively small percentage of new hires typically come through recruiters, candidates brought to a company via one are often at a disadvantage right off the bat.
3. A lot of companies here, particularly startups, expect work and work-related activities ("culture fit" often involves extracurricular "fun") to be a big part of your life. What that translates to in terms of hours will vary, but if you believe that those founders attempting to lure you away from your current job are offering you a straight 40 hour work week that guarantees you your weekends, you're probably going to be disappointed.
I'm not saying "put up with the 60-80 hour a week bullshit" (it almost never makes sense) but the notion that "you can do whatever you want" and take advantage of the hot job market in Silicon Valley is a bit unrealistic.
Based on how your current employer responded to your threat to quit, it sounds like you have made yourself invaluable to your employer. But if you think that a big-name tech company or hot startup would respond as favorably to the same threat because "we have the power, not the employers", I suspect you'd be in for a rude awakening.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-p...
[+] [-] Nicholas_C|12 years ago|reply
Maybe you live in Silicon Valley, but not everyone does, and not everyone is an engineer.
In a lot of professions grinding out 60+ hours is the only way to set yourself apart from coworkers and move up the ladder. Moving upwards may not be that important for an engineer who starts at $100k, but for most people who start out in the $50-$70k range it's the only way to enjoy a higher standard of living, better vacations, and pay off student loans faster. I would like to work 40 hours every week but I don't want to be stuck making <$100k for the rest of my life.
[+] [-] PaulHoule|12 years ago|reply
The average recruiter, however, is filling a hole that is left behind by somebody who burned out. He's hoping that you can hit the ground running without any training, which is rarely realistic, particularly considering that 80% of programming work is doing what management expects to deliver 20% of the value. Because they haven't trained any of the other people working on the project you'll find that it's difficult to get any questions answered of the order of "how do I get this build consistently?", "how do I get this to build in less than an hour?", "which module is the right place to add that functionality?", "which applicationContext.xml file actually gets deployed to the assembly and how?" and stuff like that..
In a case like that you're set up to fail and you need to "think different" and start with the 80% of the work that gets you 20% of the way there, and then when the special job comes around where you're the best in the world you can sprout solutions like mushrooms.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|12 years ago|reply
These two things are incompatible for all but high earners. Spend $30k & sock away $30k, pre-taxes that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $85k. Not an obscene salary by any measure, but hardly everyone in their mid twenties is in that position.
[+] [-] mikegreco|12 years ago|reply
Horseshit. The cheapest rent I've seen around here is 1500 a month, and that's almost 20 grand a year right there. Add standard utilities, food, insurance, and commuting costs and you're already pushing 30k. That's assuming you don't have student loans to worry about.
I totally agree that the power is in our hands, but it is far less simple to make that work then you are letting on. There is a reason salaries in the valley are so high... it's damn expensive to live here. If you're in a position where you may get fired for not putting in 60 hour weeks, more often than not your options are work 60 hour weeks or hope you get another gig before you're forced to move out of the valley.
[+] [-] atmosx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lolwutf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wbeckler|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xixi|12 years ago|reply
"To live a healthy and happy life you need to balance three aspects: work, family and personal. People will tell you you need to balance work and family. But you have to recognize that sometimes you will need to spend time as you please: do not feel ashamed for it."
Life is not just work and family, and nobody should be a slave of either.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Jgrubb|12 years ago|reply
I might have this tattooed on me somewhere. Thank you.
[+] [-] GrinningFool|12 years ago|reply
Time and perspective change our priorities.
It is possible to become great person without ever having a successful IPO. Without ever having a product in the first place. And certainly without giving up most of your life in the likely-to-fail attempt to become 'great' (ie, known and a financial success), at the opportunity cost of living your life.
Because lets face it - our success rate is pretty dismally low. Most of us - no matter how smart, no matter how driven - won't achieve "greatness" in the sense alluded to here. We will be neither the next Jobs nor the next Gates nor the next Zuckerburg.
We will write code. We will make products that may or may not make a difference in people's lives. We will earn salaries that are unreasonably out of proportion to what we actually do (take it while it lasts!).
Most of the people who will remember us are in this closed community of startups. And once we stop producing, most of them will forget us. Some of us will go on to something more - but not most.
Except for a select few of us, nobody will look back at you in 50 years and say "wow, this dude... this dude was an awesome coder/businessman/marketer/designer".
But your kid might look back at you in 50 years and say "he was an awesome dad". Your community might remember you for the assistance you gave. And many, many more might remember you for the difference you made in their lives through your interactions with them.
There's nothing wrong with trying for the 'greatness' discussed in the original post. But never lose sight of the fact that this kind of success is only one path. And, frankly, you have your whole life to get there -- the long path taken by most of the people who are successful in that way.
TL;DR:
There is greatness in things other than the work you do and the money you make.
[+] [-] nakedrobot2|12 years ago|reply
Your perspective completely and unavoidably changes once kids come along.
Your desire to leave your mark and influence on the world has a new target - the one who is looking at you in the morning, asking you for breakfast.
Still, people are people, people want to build great things. You can do both. It is harder. You have only so much time. Social life gets squeezed. Anyway you're no longer in your twenties with your tribe of friends. You have your own tribe now.
Managing people and managing children has a lot of similarities. Andy Grove in his book High Output Management highly recommends one-on-one meetings with both family members and colleagues.
[+] [-] return0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swinnipeg|12 years ago|reply
"There's no such thing as work-life balance, there are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences."
You don't need to rationalize spending more time with your family and less at work or vice-versa, just be honest about the consequences of it.
I worked a ton before I had a family, 7 days a week, always online. Now that I have scaled back I do accomplish less work, and I am 100% ok with that. My choice is more time with my wife and kids, and slightly less money (and alot less chance of a big $$ windfall), but I couldn't be happier.
[+] [-] PaulHoule|12 years ago|reply
My thesis advisor chose work over family. He left his lover and hardly ever saw his son until his son was forced to move in with him at the age of 14. (At which point you've really missed the chance to bond with him)
Back in grad school he was often the only professor working on Sunday -- I worked Sundays most of the time but I usually took Saturdays completely off. I still go by the physics sometime on the weekend and his door is the only one open with the lights on.
He got a tenured professorship and a defined benefit pension but his work as a physicist has been solidly average (like the average physicist)
A lot of hard work cost him his family and won him some kind of security which is hard to find today, but he definitely didn't achieve greatness.
[+] [-] harvestmoon|12 years ago|reply
I'd even guess that people who work harder are more likely to attain greatness.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|12 years ago|reply
I don't remember it verbatim but it was basically: You (my children) all taken care of you have what you need to live, I am working to make sure that the same is true for all the other South African children.
That really hit home for me because instead of looking at spending more time with my family, I looked at using my time wisely toward massive structural goals which would have positive outcomes on the world population.
[+] [-] carls|12 years ago|reply
Karen Croft, a writer who worked for Nader in the late 1970s at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, once asked him if he had ever considered getting married. She reports: "He said that at a certain point he had to decide whether to have a family or to have a career, that he couldn't have both. That's the kind of person he is. He couldn't have a wife—he's up all night reading the Congressional Record." [1]
There's a part of me that admires the sense of devotion to a personal vision or mission. I believe it's this unrelenting, screw-the-consequences, type of drive that create greatness.
At the same time, as a young single man in his 20s, I am still wrestling with my own personal choices and opinions on this matter.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader
[+] [-] ledge|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vdaniuk|12 years ago|reply
Not really. I am only saying this because I've seen you shaming someone in other thread and wanted to show you a first-hand example that shaming is bad for constructive discussions.
[+] [-] startupLover420|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoka|12 years ago|reply
Slightly trolly, I know, but just being devil's advocate.
[+] [-] general_failure|12 years ago|reply
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man
[+] [-] icebraining|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6d0debc071|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattgreenrocks|12 years ago|reply
I realize all of that is speculative, but, damn, there has to be a point at which almost all of us would step back and say it isn't worth it. Why bust your ass, endanger your health, and stress yourself out so you can make someone else a load of cash?
(Also notice that many people who insist on the need for ridiculous hours often get something out of it: management, VCs, etc.)
[+] [-] mcone|12 years ago|reply
One aspect that is often overlooked is that Jobs was an adoptee. My partner is also adopted, and I can tell you that she will struggle with deep rooted fears and self-confidence issues for life. She is also a workaholic. This is not a conscious decision she makes but rather a learned method for dealing with, and perhaps ignoring, her pain.
It's easy to look at things objectively as a third-party observer. My personal opinion is that Jobs did not have a choice in the matter. Work was his coping mechanism to deal with his pain.
Larry Ellison is also adopted, and I find it interesting that he was close friends with Steve Jobs. The two are quite similar in many ways.
[+] [-] judk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akulbe|12 years ago|reply
That said, I have a little girl about to hit 2 years old and a wife of almost 5 years. And I'm going to hit 40 in about 2 weeks. I don't learn as quickly and easily I learned when I was much younger.
I know it takes some serious chops and time investment to learn to code. I guess that I just have to trust that I'll get "there" eventually... a little bit at a time.
While I want to continually improve and make a good life for my family... it would be a total travesty to do it at their expense.
btw, the struggle I refer to is the fact that for turning 40 soon... I don't feel old. I just feel like I should have accomplished more with my life, by this time. Know what I mean?
Edited: punctuation
[+] [-] einhverfr|12 years ago|reply
Understand that age is neither good nor bad. There is a lot of ageism in the industry, so one thing you should be prepared to do is strike out on your own if you need to (either part-time as moonlighting or otherwise).
[+] [-] lmm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freshhawk|12 years ago|reply
A very important point and very well stated. If I knew of any internet slang signifying a virtual standing ovation I would put it here.
It frequently also comes with pushing an atmosphere of artificial urgency and high interest technical debt (save an hour today and cost the company weeks in a few months) because all are based on panicked short term thinking.
[+] [-] tslathrow|12 years ago|reply
I tend to lose interest if I'm not actively competing against my peers.
Now I just enjoy my job way too much to consider scaling back the hours.
[+] [-] paulrademacher|12 years ago|reply
He said this to his then-wife :-)
[+] [-] smrtinsert|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brnstz|12 years ago|reply
"I'm very very careful with my time. I try to do nothing that someone else could do. So, I write, I perform and I spend time with my family."
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1opzae/penn_jillette_h...
This doesn't answer the dichotomy of work vs. family, but puts it in a different context. What is the most effective way to spend your time?
The president's daughter scrapes her knee, but there's also a school shooting? I think Obama's gonna be giving a speech, and Michelle's on neosporin duty.
(West Wing spoiler alert 2003) The president's daughter is kidnapped? Well, I hope John Goodman is available, it's about to get Season 4 cliffhanger in here. Someone else can be president. Right now it's not the most effective use of Martin Sheen's time.
[+] [-] judk|12 years ago|reply
The West Wing President Bartlett stepped down because it would be a national security threat to have the President subject to ransom demands.
[+] [-] artsim|12 years ago|reply
“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – Work, Family, Health, Friends and Spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air.
You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – Family, Health, Friends and Spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it.
Work efficiently during office hours and leave on time. Give the required time to your family, friends and have proper rest. Value has a value only if its value is valued.”
- Bryan Dyson – Former CEO of Coca Cola
[+] [-] return0|12 years ago|reply
Don't forget that those people had the wife or some others raising their children, something that was generally not considered men's work.
[+] [-] einhverfr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] needacig|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] einhverfr|12 years ago|reply
When LedgerSMB forked I remember working late hours in a hotel room with my wife and son (I had a contract for my business that took me out of town, and we all decided it would only work if we all went), and having sessions with Chris Murtagh who would be typing with one hand, and cradling his infant son in the other. Almost every work break would be spent with my family, except for lunch that year (and only that year). Almost every hour not spent with my family would be spent working. Work and family formed the warp and weft of my life.
Fast forward five years, and what's happened is that these have become even more integrated. I schedule my work around family time, and my family time around work. In emergencies I may have to rebalance. But these are all deeply integrated.
In the distant past, this was actually the norm, so it is not that I can do something today that none of the great men in the past could do, but rather that I can return to the solutions which have worked. To some extent the internet enables this, but it isn't really enabling something new. It is rather re-enabling something very old.
Interestingly I don't think double entry accounting was invented by monks sitting in monasteries, but by the collaboration of merchants (whose families were effectively helping run the businesses). Many of the great things we take for granted today were actually built in such a way.
[+] [-] jacksonlatka|12 years ago|reply
Sometimes it seems like we can only pick two: - family - startup - health
I know the balance can be achieved, but is it balance we are looking for? I have a fear of being mediocre at both. But, we can do better than this. I can do better.
[+] [-] brannon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyleblarson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] normloman|12 years ago|reply
How is hipchat better than IRC or Jabber? Don't these protocols do the same thing for free (as in freedom and pizza).