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Startup work-life balance

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Re: Startup work-life balance

#51

Post by Surio »

mberning wrote: post #27
crazygringo wrote: post #10

I used to program all the time in high school. I thought I was happy. Then I went to college, met all sorts of people, had lots of experiences, and realized how narrow my life, and concept of happiness was. So when I hear people talk about how much they love their work, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how great the other parts of life are. And how much a wider range of…

Absoutely. I was similar to the author all the through college. Then I got a job, which was a brutal entry level programmer job. It killed what little social life I had at that point. But the upside was that I was pretty good at it and started making some decent money. Over time I was able to use my professional capital to switch to a company with much healthier expectations. I was able to go out and explore the worl…

>> I realized that the chance of any 1 person making a breakthrough contribution to a company, science, or the arts is vanishingly small.

+1 . Now, if you added http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiglers_law_of_eponymy to your statement, then your next statement: >>The chance to be a good person and positively impact the people in your life and community is 100%.Path well chosen. ;)

Re: Startup work-life balance

#52

Post by drallison »

hippo33 wrote: post #42
drallison wrote: post #40

How can I take this posting seriously with a significant grammar error in the title.

In the same way you take Apple seriously for using the slogan "Think different." :)

I don't. But the error is significantly different. English is changing and adverbs are disappearing. "Your" and the contraction "You're" are significantly different grammatically but sound the same when pronounced.

Re: Startup work-life balance

#53

Post by khyryk »

drp4929 wrote: post #3

Confucius said, "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." If you don't work, you don't have to worry about work-life balance.

What's missing is the admission that many people find out which job(s) they love once they've lived most of their lives and have attained a different perspective of what's important.

Re: Startup work-life balance

#55

Post by Surio »

mberning wrote: post #44
trhtrsh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you had a bad job, not a bad time programming/sciencing.

Yeah, I did. The point I was trying to make is that the lifestyle I led through college in some ways fed in to my willingness to do the same thing professionally. I never knew any better. If things had gone differently, I could still be killing myself on a daily basis. And for what? The possibility of making a few more bucks?

Good answer... now cue all the others with:

but....but...but...but... what about the passion, the passion, the passion of doing greeeat work when you turn 50 or 60 or whatever.... ;-)

Re: Startup work-life balance

#56

Post by hippo33 »

drallison wrote: post #52
hippo33 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same way you take Apple seriously for using the slogan "Think different." :)

I don't. But the error is significantly different. English is changing and adverbs are disappearing. "Your" and the contraction "You're" are significantly different grammatically but sound the same when pronounced.

The grammatical error is not the contraction. "You're thinking about work-life balance all wrong" can be extended to "You are thinking about work-life balance all wrong" The incorrect part is the "all wrong." It should be "You're thinking about work-life balance incorrectly."

Re: Startup work-life balance

#57

Post by bstewartnyc »

# there is no 'balance', only this algorithm running my life while(True): task=getNextTask() if priority(task)>priority(current_task): backBurner.add(current_task) current_task=task startWorkOn(current_task) else: backBurner.add(task)

Re: Startup work-life balance

#58

Post by sneak »

trhtrsh wrote: post #22
crazygringo wrote: post #10

I used to program all the time in high school. I thought I was happy. Then I went to college, met all sorts of people, had lots of experiences, and realized how narrow my life, and concept of happiness was. So when I hear people talk about how much they love their work, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how great the other parts of life are. And how much a wider range of…

I used to go out all the time in college. I got puked on by all sorts of people, had lots of frustrating experiences, adn realized how peer-driven my life, and concept of happiness was. So when I hear people talk about how much they love their friends, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how to take care of themselves without external validation. And how working to accompl…

> So when I hear people talk about how much they love their friends, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how to take care of themselves without external validation.

You espouse a false dichotomy.

There's more to loving friends than loving the external validation they may (or may not!) provide.

Go get some really extraordinary friends and try again.

Re: Startup work-life balance

#60

Post by saraid216 »

freshhawk wrote: post #45
hippo33 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you need to make your life feel balanced is different from your peers. If you need to take more time off, then do it. But if you only need 1 week of vacation like Elon Musk, then that's his balance. That's the point -- let's not create one standard set of rules for what balance is because people operate differently.

What? No. A balanced life means you split your life among all different areas of life. That's what that phrase means. Elon Musk has rejected the idea that work/life balance is necessary and that's just fine . That's how he feels happiest. It seems to be working pretty damn well for him. I'm not saying there's any kind of standard set of rules, I'm saying that if you reject the dogma of balance then say so, don't try…

> redefine what it means because people are dogmatic about "balance = good, not balanced = bad"

You don't seem to understand that this is how language drift works. When "people are dogmatic" about how certain words are used, those connotations leak into the definition itself.

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