Ask YC: Should Fridays and Saturday nights matter to a young hacker?

I see no reason to miss out on two perfectly fine nights to get work done. Of course those nights matter to a hacker.

You've got to balance that stuff out dude... if you really only enjoy hacking and don't like hanging out with friends, going to movies, eating out, partying, whatever, then cool. But if you're working long hours just to be competitive, then don't do it! Life is too short to treat it like some sort of war. Have fun while you're young.

Hacking can be a social activity too. Do you have any friends that are programmers that work on hobby programming? Maybe work alongside them.

But I really give props to you for dropping out of college; probably took a lot of balls. Where did you go to school?

If you feel healthy and you're getting enough sleep then there's no problem. Working nights is fine -- the thing that drives people nutty is rotating shifts, e.g. switching between a night and day schedule too often.

It all depends on what you enjoy, and that's the bottom line. Bill Gates wanted to have his own company more than anything else; he wasn't doing it to make money "so he could do what he really wanted". The #1 thing he wanted to do was run his own software company, and you can see that despite becoming a billionaire long ago he didn't stop. Neither did Steve Jobs. If you're doing what you love then you're doing the right thing.

That said, humans need variety, so when you want to do something else, don't make yourself work more. Making yourself work more is only for people who need discipline and aren't putting in a decent number of hours to start, not for people working overtime to work even more. Bill and Steve had a LOT of variety at their jobs and plenty of social functions (including company social functions).

Think of it this way -- you're making a huge investment of your time and energy, but you're going to BLOW IT ALL if you burn out. You'll get like 80% done and then it will just sit there forever and you won't want to look at it.

So, make sure you don't burn out.

It's a bit like overtraining when you work out; except severe burnout isn't like fatigue that gets better in a couple weeks, it's like needing hip replacement.

Hard to say. One of those things you just need to figure out for yourself over time.

I do really recommend adding exercise and a non-computer hobby to the mix though. Makes a ton of difference for your well being and happiness.

"What matters is people. Which kinda sucks when you think about it."

But it's true. You make money by making people happy. And "stuff" is only a small percentage of what goes into making people happy. So if all your skills revolve around making stuff, then you have the ability to tackle a very small percentage of what goes into MSPW. A quick glance into any OB text will confirm.