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Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

#41

Post by rhizome »

volaski wrote: post #18
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if one is generous and assumes this kind of behavior is typically well-intentioned, it's foolish to believe that it won't become a detriment as you grow your business. A lot of startup founders don't think much about management principles and the importance of perception in an organization, but these things matter. When founders are emailing around the clock, many employees will come away with the perception tha…

One of the biggest mistakes I made while working on a past startup was listening to an advice like this. What you say is totally valid if your company is a fortune 500 company, but the type of people who start companies shouldn't strive to become those types of managers covered in business case studies. I made this mistake after reading too many business books. It simply doesn't work. From my experience it fucks up t…

You don't know anybody who's worked for Apple.

Re: Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

#42

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

braindead_in wrote: post #31

Not getting is never good a good sign. But the assumption that you can send emails only while awake is wrong as well.

I've sent emails half asleep.

Mistake. Big mistake.

Anyway - there is rock-solid scientific evidence to suggest that sleep deprivation damages cognitive abilities and decision making.

See e.g.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/

Depriving yourself of sleep is false heroism. You do not "get more done." All you're doing is increasing internal friction, decreasing personal effectiveness, and making yourself cranky and stupid.

Re: Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

#43

Post by hawkice »

When someone brags about how little sleep they get, I've found it difficult to convince them that extreme sleep deprivation impacts performance. It's not too dissimilar to a drunk friend trying to negotiate back their car keys -- introducing ludicrous levels of denial seem to be part of the mentally-impaired package.

Perhaps a bigger warning sign is when / if a founder like that ends up using and abusing amphetamines. I used to work at a startup where the VCs did a clawback due to the founders erratic, amphetamine-induced behavior.

Either way, a simple observation: you will be most effective when you trust the judgment of the person you work for. I highly recommend optimizing for how effective you are when considering where you work.

Re: Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

#44

Post by nemothekid »

volaski wrote: post #36
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the biggest problem with your approach: in today's market, it's a lot harder for startups to recruit and retain good employees than it is for good employees to find new employers. Just look at the OP: he left an ostensibly good job to join a YC startup and he's already questioning the founder's behavior and competence. When he starts feeling pressured to work insane hours, or completely loses faith in the foun…

Who would you pick if you had following two candidates: 1. A rockstar developer who wants work-life balance 2. Not famous but passionate junior developer who has potential I would always pick 2 over 1. I know because I have made exactly that mistake of hiring #1. And the company culture went to shit. If I was the founder of that company and found out about this I would have a talk with OP and if there's disagreement…

I think the onus is on you to show that Bill Gates was a 9-5 man. AFAIK I've never seen anything claiming anything or the other.

Re: Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

#46

Post by wpietri »

My personal experience (started 5 companies, 20+ years in tech, 15 of those in SF) is that you are right to worry, but only modestly so unless things get worse.

The best people I've worked with take care of themselves. The worst let the pressure of the situation get to them and burn themselves out. I saw one company totally destroyed by a CEO who sent out a poorly considered "let's reorg the company" email at 2 am after the company Christmas party. Many times I've seen whole teams working stupid hours and ending up making stupid mistakes, or doing the startup equivalent of "controlled flight into terrain"[1]. The worst gig I ever had was at a company where people celebrated "heroic" efforts, because it created a strong incentive to let problems pile up until they could only be resolved through heroic efforts. Macho bullshit is certainly fun and entertaining for a while, but it's a terrible foundation for a serious company.

I know a lot of people who are second- or third-time founders, and a common conversational theme is that the biggest thing they're doing differently is aiming for a sustainable pace. The common line is "it's not a sprint, it's a marathon", but I think even that comparison falls short. A lot of people run exactly one marathon because they train too hard and burn out. Median time-to-exit is something like 6 years, so we aren't talking one race, we're talking about marathon after marathon after marathon. It's not a sprint, it's a running career.

Hopefully this guy can pull it together, so in your shoes I'd call this a yellow flag. But I would work hard to make sure the behavior doesn't spread to the engineering team. Tired programmers make dumb mistakes and then preserve them forever in source control. They will lurk there and spring upon you at the worst possible times, eating up far more time than was ever apparently created by working late.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_flight_into_terrain

Re: Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

#47

Post by rpedela »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #26
volaski wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest mistakes I made while working on a past startup was listening to an advice like this. What you say is totally valid if your company is a fortune 500 company, but the type of people who start companies shouldn't strive to become those types of managers covered in business case studies. I made this mistake after reading too many business books. It simply doesn't work. From my experience it fucks up t…

Here's the biggest problem with your approach: in today's market, it's a lot harder for startups to recruit and retain good employees than it is for good employees to find new employers. Just look at the OP: he left an ostensibly good job to join a YC startup and he's already questioning the founder's behavior and competence. When he starts feeling pressured to work insane hours, or completely loses faith in the foun…

I think there is a middle ground between your view and volaski's view. You are right that random 3 am emails give a bad impression to employees and founders should think about management just as much as product and market. However a founding team and at least the first few employees (2-5 not 50) should be at least somewhat obsessed and have grit otherwise the chance of success is less likely [1].

1. http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_suc...

Re: Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

#48

Post by saryant »

volaski wrote: post #22

I just want to say here, if you are a founder (or THE founder mentioned here) who works hard to the point where other people thinks you're crazy, you are NOT crazy and you are NOT wrong. I am not saying you should completely get rid of rest from your life (because otherwise you will burn out), but working hard on something you believe in and being abnormally passionate about it is nothing to be ashamed of. To OP: It'…

The richest man in history, John D. Rockefeller, kept to a strict schedule including 7.5 hours of sleep a night and ample personal time in the morning and evening.

Somehow he still managed to accrue $660 billion (inflation-adjusted).

Re: Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

#49

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

nugget wrote: post #38
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the biggest problem with your approach: in today's market, it's a lot harder for startups to recruit and retain good employees than it is for good employees to find new employers. Just look at the OP: he left an ostensibly good job to join a YC startup and he's already questioning the founder's behavior and competence. When he starts feeling pressured to work insane hours, or completely loses faith in the foun…

Not all, but almost all of the successful founders I know are obsessively focused on their startups and they don't put much time into other areas of their lives (family, social life, etc). Humans need sleep and whether they sleep 4 or 8 hours doesn't really matter. The work is just always on their minds, 24/7. They are always on call. They are always reachable. They never say no. The passion, focus, and obsession for…

You're missing a key point: it is possible for a founder to be obsessively focused on a business without engaging in behavior that causes employees severe agita.

Without starting a debate about the benefits or perils of work-life balance, most startup employees should recognize the following facts:

1. Startup founders are not created equal. In today's hot market, there are a lot of inexperienced and incompetent people running startups. These people can work as hard as they want and ooze passion from every pore in their bodies but at the end of the day, they're incapable of building successful businesses.

2. Statistically, most startups won't achieve an exit. At those that do, most employees don't "make lots of money."

3. Many startups offer far fewer learning experiences than employees would like to believe because misdirected hustle and hard work are encouraged and rewarded even though they are not correlated with competence and outcomes.

Re: Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

#50

Post by wpietri »

nugget wrote: post #38
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the biggest problem with your approach: in today's market, it's a lot harder for startups to recruit and retain good employees than it is for good employees to find new employers. Just look at the OP: he left an ostensibly good job to join a YC startup and he's already questioning the founder's behavior and competence. When he starts feeling pressured to work insane hours, or completely loses faith in the foun…

Not all, but almost all of the successful founders I know are obsessively focused on their startups and they don't put much time into other areas of their lives (family, social life, etc). Humans need sleep and whether they sleep 4 or 8 hours doesn't really matter. The work is just always on their minds, 24/7. They are always on call. They are always reachable. They never say no. The passion, focus, and obsession for…

I mainly agree, but I think there's a big difference between focus, which is good, and "talks about how little sleep he is getting like it is a badge of honor". A lot of great people I know are very dedicated, but I think that's very different than performing dedication.

Last night, for example, I had dinner with a super bright scientist friend. Within minutes we were into a detailed discussion of the science of using ultrasound to examine breast tissue. (It was great to watch people crane their necks to find out why somebody was talking animatedly about the racial differences in the tissue composition of women's breasts and what implications that has for frequency choices.) It's clear that when he's on a project, he just thinks about this stuff all the time. But never once did he mention how hard he worked, because he he's far too interested in the work to give a shit what people think about how hard he's working.

One of the thing that really troubles me about the current startup zeitgeist is the extent to which people are here because they want to do a startup, rather than their passion for their particular domain. If I were the OP, I'd really be worried that I had a CEO who was here because it was fashionable, one that focused on the performance of working than who was truly dedicated to making things happen.

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