Here is a calculation that might put things in perspective...
Your age + 25
This is how old you will be when a kid born this year graduates from college (typical undergrad.)
If you are waiting to have kids add those years to your age.
How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup
101–110 of 147 posts
Re: How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup
#102"How can I explain to you The Gods and Angels had clipped Daddy’s wings?"
Because they didn't. Daddy's own choices and values have apparently clipped his wings. Hope you're OK with it.
It's nice writing but ultimately it reads like a thin excuse. I hope daddy uses better time management in the future.
Re: How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup
#103I think Paul Graham summed up the situation fairly well when he wrote: "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." and this: "Combine all these multipliers, and I'm claimin…
The !POTENTIAL! return is correlated with the amount of "focussing on one thing during those short few years". You may end up loosing your kids childhood while still working normal hours the rest of your/his/her life. That is provided not to much of your own money is in your startup, if that is the case you loose even more.
The probability of missing out on kids' childhood milestones increases as more time is spent away from home.
Trying to equate a 9-5 job with startup hours in this regard is intellectually dishonest.
Re: How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup
#104I think you have to pick one. Startup or kids. You can work at a burnout pace for 5 years in the hope of getting rich, or you can be there for your young children. In my opinion, if you're going to try the startup thing, there's nothing stopping you from having kids afterwards. Except that if your startup(s) didn't succeed, your skills might translate perfectly into a career that can sustain a family. And having gone…
Or you can work at your startup at a sustainable pace. From a lean startup perspective, the more burnout pace you work at, the less likely you are to close the feedback loop and actually produce the right feature. From a Mythical Man hour perspective, you're more likely to be less productive the more burnout pace that you try to maintain.
I don't think VCs are interested in anyone who wants to work at a sustainable pace. Also, the piece we're discussing doesn't make it sound like the author works at a sustainable pace.
Re: How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup
#105I think Paul Graham summed up the situation fairly well when he wrote: "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." and this: "Combine all these multipliers, and I'm claimin…
This is one of the areas where I think PG has it completely wrong. Sure if you're a 20-something with no kids/life and only care about your startup, you can code 24/7. But many of us don't fit into this stereotypical startup-founder box that PG and others have created. Some of us have kids, some have partners, some have ... a life! Does PG really want a bunch of code obsessed, single minded founders with no hobbies o…
"Enjoy youself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think."
Live each day as if its your last; do the things you won't regret. If you die tomorrow, was all your hard work at the 24-7 startup worth it? Or did you get to spend as much time with your family as you could?
Re: How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have to remember that PG is a startup investor, and has a vested interest in making you feel as though you need to code for 14 hours a day when he's given you a seed-round investment. The overwhelming odds state that your startup will fail, no matter whether you spent six hours or fourteen hours every day working at it.
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Studies show that if you work 14 hours a day, your productivity falls below 8 hours a day output after six weeks or so. Basically, you get tired and sleep deprived. So, while 6 hour a day may be too low, 14 hours a day is probably waste of time in the long term.
Just saying.
Re: How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup
#107I think Paul Graham summed up the situation fairly well when he wrote: "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." and this: "Combine all these multipliers, and I'm claimin…
Most startups fail. Throwing some of the best years of your life away and shirking parental responsibilities for a remote chance of a payoff is simply a dangerous form of gambling. Paul Graham is basically just talking his own book. His model is to fund a heap of cheap companies that overwork work young, naive people. Most of these companies fail. The occasional one succeeds enormously which more than covers the cost…
These startups aren't just targeting 20-somethings anymore, either. It's either that, or else the people who contact me (mid-30s) haven't thought about what my college (graduate and undergraduate) graduation dates imply about my age, or they have an edited version of my resume and can't see these things.
The small number of times I've been interested enough to take the discussion to matters of compensation and effort have been an effective deterrent for me. I earn more base salary and get better equity by my investments, and have much more time to spend with my family and working on income-producing side projects, working my 9-5 as a full-time contractor.
Re: How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup
#108It's a bit of a disturbing read for a couple of reasons:
- Going to an early stage start up as a young father is not a sacrifice, it's a selfish act. You are thinking more about yourself and what you want to do (and not do) rather than what's best for your family. Hate the idea of a 9-to-5 job? Well, suck it: the regular hours and clockwork and guaranteed paycheck will go a long way toward making your family more stable and stress free. Maybe it's a good time to also ask yourself if there are no hidden reasons behind choosing this line of work. I know I've seen fathers do this because they didn't realize they were not interested in the chores involved in raising a young age infant.
- I'm guessing the infant is less than two years old (the text mentions diapers) so I'm shocked that this text is not giving credit to who really, really deserves it: the Mom. At that age, the infant doesn't really care much whether Daddy is around at night time or to play with toys, but this father really needs to realize how much stress his work situation is putting on his wife.
I have a two year old son and I quit the start up I was working at before his birth. I felt it just wouldn't be fair to my wife to stay there. There will always be start ups to join should I ever want to try this again, but a child growing up is an opportunity that doesn't occur often in one's life.
Re: How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would agree with this. People have a way of heavily discounting the present in favor of the uncertain future. It becomes a habit, almost an addiction, to medicate feelings in the present (FUD - perhaps their anxiety over being a parent, even). A friend of mine uses the term "future tripping" - I like it. I will give this guy a lot of credit for honesty. It's tempting to pretend that starting a company is something…
"I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work." Bertrand Russell - "In Praise of Idleness" - http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html "Leisure: The Basis Of Culture" by Josef Pieper also seems on topic, I'm planning to read it myself - http://www.goo…
Wow. I just read the first link "In Praise of Idleness" and I have to say it completely turned my thoughts on work around. I had no idea how fundamentally the work culture has influenced me.
Re: How I Feel as Young Father Involved in Early-stage Startup
#110Seriously! How are people giving "advice" to this guy? It's not a F#$%ing blog post, it's a work of art... Do you guys write in to HBO after every episode of Silicon Valley? It's an great piece (IMHO) & if it helps you reflect, then it's done its job. It's not a problem do be solved (yes, I know... that's what we do... but really though....)
Settle down guy, people are just discussing their feelings about the situation. People do get on forums and discuss episodes of silicon valley after they have aired, and they discuss it with their friends/coworkers in real life. Are these comments not the appropriate place to voice our feelings/insights/experiences with the subject of the post??
feelings/insights/experiences are fine. Comments were condemning the author for staying at work till 2am.... that's just plain crazy to me. I wouldn't be surprised if he took some creative licenses and that's totally OK to do in a poem. I'm just glad that he shared a work of art which is relevant to our community. If it evokes emotions, reflections, that's fine... If we look at it as a blog post asking us to solve his problem for him, that's something else. We don't need to solve the author's problem (i.e. by giving him advice on finding work life balance).
Quite frankly, this piece made me think of the illusions we create for ourselves. In some ways, we're happy to always be busy. I for one, wouldn't really know what to do with "free" time (probably start another side project).
I agree that this is the place to discuss this matter. I guess I typically hold HN to a higher standard and generally the comments are very insightful.