Anyone find apartment setting not ideal for start-up work? • Hacker News Board

Re: Anyone find apartment setting not ideal for start-up work?

#11

Post by brett » Fri, Apr 06, 2007, 2:36 AM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #9

danielha wrote: post #7

At such an early stage, I think an apartment works quite well. My cofounder and I share an apartment (with a couple other friends) and things get done. Integrate your startup with your life because the startup is your life if you're serious. But it really depends on you as a person. If it's just that you're somebody that needs to be supervised/forced in a specific environment to be productive, then you might reevalua…

I don't see it as black and white. Everyone has their conditions under which they work at their optimal level. Identifying those conditions and finding a way to make it work I think is more important than forcing yourself to work under difficult conditions SIMPLY because you are a start-up. There is a huge misconception that just because you are a start-up you HAVE to make your life difficult. It already will be diff…

I'd agree. The more environments you can work in the better, but often will power is as much about being smart enough to give yourself the ambient conditions you need to succeed as it is about just mandating how you are going to behave.

This only goes so far though. Daniel's probably right that you're in trouble if you require another person to motivate you to do work, but I don't think that's what you meant in the first place.

Re: Anyone find apartment setting not ideal for start-up work?

#12

Post by BrandonM » Fri, Apr 06, 2007, 2:49 AM UTC

I find that even though my desktop environment is geared toward productivity (i.e. I can switch quickly between vi, the shell, firefox, etc), I actually get more work done from on campus when I VNC to home. That is, I waste less time doing things like reading random posts on this site, and actually do what I set out to do. Even now, I have a homework assignment due in about 10 hours that I can't bring myself to work on.

So I must agree that at least having some sort of separate workspace must help somehow. I think the real root problem, however, is to layout a schedule for yourself and follow it. Going to an office forces you to do that; writing a schedule down and being committed to following it could feasibly accomplish the same goal.

Note to self: make a schedule.

Re: Anyone find apartment setting not ideal for start-up work?

#13

Post by danielha » Fri, Apr 06, 2007, 3:12 AM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #9

danielha wrote: post #7

At such an early stage, I think an apartment works quite well. My cofounder and I share an apartment (with a couple other friends) and things get done. Integrate your startup with your life because the startup is your life if you're serious. But it really depends on you as a person. If it's just that you're somebody that needs to be supervised/forced in a specific environment to be productive, then you might reevalua…

I don't see it as black and white. Everyone has their conditions under which they work at their optimal level. Identifying those conditions and finding a way to make it work I think is more important than forcing yourself to work under difficult conditions SIMPLY because you are a start-up. There is a huge misconception that just because you are a start-up you HAVE to make your life difficult. It already will be diff…

What I said may have come off more stringent than I had intended. Of course there are optimal places; that's a given. I mentioned an extreme case: absolutely requiring very particular conditions to work, an office for example. I'm saying that startups greatly benefit from adaptability, and if you can hack away in your apartment (integrated with living), it likely will be the most productive stage of your company's growth.

Re: Anyone find apartment setting not ideal for start-up work?

#14

Post by drusenko » Fri, Apr 06, 2007, 7:10 AM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #2

I know sitting in the apartment coding all day, eating cookies while watching the Daily Show sounds like a dream moment. But it was one of the first lessons I learned when I entered college: it doesn't work for me. I like to take each morning as a new work day--shower, hit the library, make calls, hit a class or two, continue work on start-up. I'm assuming YComb doesn't provide office space. So I'm curious if there h…

This past session (w2007) several of us have been working from home (Weebly, Zenter). OTOH, the crystal towers situation is quite nice, it beats any office i know of hands down. Several other startups chose to go to an office b/c they were used to that (heysan), so i think it goes both ways.

Re: Anyone find apartment setting not ideal for start-up work?

#15

Post by kogir » Fri, Apr 06, 2007, 9:00 AM UTC

The first thing that comes to mind is cost. You're already paying for the apartment. If you can avoid it, why pay for office space as well?

Re: Anyone find apartment setting not ideal for start-up work?

#16

Post by bigtoga » Fri, Apr 06, 2007, 9:44 AM UTC

I don't know how long you guys have been working from home but I'll provide a little insight from someone who's been doing it mostly for about 12 years. I've been working at home with various projects/jobs since I was about 24 (36 now). For the first 2-3 years, it was all part-time of 2-4 days a week but, for the past decade, it's been full-time.

I tell you - even 12 years on, it is still hard to do. I do a lot of traveling as a consultant and trainer and these are usually Monday through Friday gigs. When I get back to the "office" and start to work again on Monday, I've totally lost the groove lol. That's it - it only takes a week of me getting out of the mindset of working at home to lose it. When I come back to the office on Monday, I want to read reddit, catch up on all the stuff I missed and I almost always find that Mondays have a lot of wasted time in them lol.

It took me probably 2-3 years initially to get the mindset down and learn how to separate work from play. Distractions are huge at home but, for a 20-something with no significant other, they are less so. Now, I have a spouse and a fun little three year old at home - those are more distracting than all the strip clubs and PS3s in the world lol. But you manage.

Last bit - I would suggest that, when you are looking for a spouse/significant other, make sure that person is okay with a comment like, "Honey, I'm going into work now. I want you to think as though my office is 30 miles away from you and you can't just walk in and ask me a question. Send me an email or phone me if you have a question. Also, don't ask me stupid shit during the day because I'm dealing with complex stuff and inane prattle takes me out of the mindset I need to work." If you have a great spouse who understands this, you'll be able to work from home much more efficiently.

Re: Anyone find apartment setting not ideal for start-up work?

#17

Post by Harj » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 1:24 PM UTC

This really is a personal choice. We were lucky with our startup because we got desk space at the Obvious corp building in South Park (Obvious are the guys behind Twitter, Evan Williams et al). It's a fantastic working environment with lots of smart people around and great productive atmosphere.

However there were certain days when I actually found myself getting into the zone of productivity just sitting on the couch and working my laptop. If you find yourself in one those zones is it worth breaking it just because you've programmed yourself to think you're more productive in an office/library/wherever? I don't think so.

While there are just a couple of you working on your startup, I think you should just work wherever you think you'll be most productive that day. The majority of the time I work at Obvious, sometimes I work on my couch and sometimes in a random coffee shop or bench somewhere nice. I can only do this for so long before we start hiring and then we all need to be in the same place so I may as well make the most of it now.