21–30 of 147 posts
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....)
My son is a few months old and I work for an early-stage start-up. Man, stop coding at 2am - what you're hacking will need re-hacking in the morning. Go home to your daughter. There will always be tasks on your board. The only sure thing is your daughter will grow up - quicker than your start-up will fail.
Knowing that I have to collect her from nursery, help with the bedtime routine, I need to finish as much work as possible during the day, no time to waste. At the beginning, it was just impossible for me to think finishing working at 6pm but in fact, I just feel better in my mind and my productivity skyrocketed since then.
Not to mention that I also stopped wasting time with bad projects and client.
Have a baby! Best pomodoro ever ;)
Seriously! 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....)
The only people who care about excellence are the excellent, and we almost never get to call the shots (we're bad at politics). Since the people evaluating our work are in no way qualified to assess excellence or even slightly-better-than-mediocre-goodness, most of our work is just a commodity, and the price is set by the winner's curse: schmucks who haven't learned (either by raising children, or by having people close to them get sick and die) how finite time is.
It's better to compete to excel than to compete to suffer, but the software/startup world is run by people who don't value excellence in the least, and who wouldn't be qualified to evaluate it even if they did. So that steers us toward "compete to suffer" dynamics, also known as "fish frying" (http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/).
There is no rule that people working at startups need to work more hours than anybody else for the startup to 'be real'. Do yourself a favor and close up shop at 6 and have dinner with your family. Your weekly productivity will go up as your 'restless soul' finds the peace it needs. Your happiness levels will go up and your effective productivity will follow suit.
I've worked in two early stage start-ups since I became a dad a few years ago, as employee 1 and 2. I do a few things to help me stay involved as a father: 1. Unless there's a real emergency, which is rare, I leave the office around 6-7, even if I still have work planned for today. It's not really early but it leaves me a couple of hours with my kids (I live really close to work, like a 10 minute motorcycle ride). 2.…
There is no amount of money that can make up for missing dinner times, bed times, play times and even bad times that you experience with your kids. Don't fool yourself into thinking "once I get this right, I'll have all the time in the world to spend with my kids". This will never happen, and if it does it will be too late to form that close bond, and share your life with your kids. I'm in to work (my own business) a…
There is no rule that people working at startups need to work more hours than anybody else for the startup to 'be real'. Do yourself a favor and close up shop at 6 and have dinner with your family. Your weekly productivity will go up as your 'restless soul' finds the peace it needs. Your happiness levels will go up and your effective productivity will follow suit.
There is no amount of money that can make up for missing dinner times, bed times, play times and even bad times that you experience with your kids. Don't fool yourself into thinking "once I get this right, I'll have all the time in the world to spend with my kids". This will never happen, and if it does it will be too late to form that close bond, and share your life with your kids. I'm in to work (my own business) a…
Of all the things that might happen, much as we'd like it to be different, I can guarantee that this is one which won't happen.
However upsetting it may be now (or looking back in the future), time isn't going to wait for you and all those firsts, all those events and experiences you miss, won't wait and won't happen again.
We tell ourselves it isn't a choice but for many of us it is. Most of us could earn enough money to support our family comfortably in a relatively regular 9 - 5 job. We might not be personally as satisfied and we might not be as financially well off, but we can choose one possible version of our life over another.
It's absolutely fair to say that you have to balance the needs of being a "good" father (which let's remember is a subjective term in many ways), against your own personal needs (and indeed the needs of your partner, the rest of your family and so on), but most people reading this board are fortunate enough that there genuinely is an element of choice.
No-one should tell you that working long hours so your child need never go without (or so you're personally happy and the time you spend with them you do so without resentment) is better or worse than coaching their sports team and being there every bath time, but whatever you decide to do, I think the most important thing is to accept that you're doing it because you made a conscious decision - ultimately that's going to be the only way you'll be at peace with it.
And if you haven't made a conscious decision, the for heavens' sake sit down with your other half and do so. Of all the outcomes, doing what you're doing without thinking about what you want and what works best for your family maybe the only truly bad one.