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Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

jwz.org

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Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#231

Post by rapind »

dextorious wrote: post #224
rapind wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect your opinion Antirez, but I hear so much speculation about work habits that I have to ask you: Is this your opinion / experience, or is it based on some specific research / study you can point to? As a fellow developer I'd love this to be true, however a meme / fad started during my working career in rich cultures stating that hard work isn't rewarding or is unnecessary. I question this. My father taught me…

"""My father taught me to work hard, as his father taught him, etc, and this basically states that my father was being scammed. """ He was. It's called the "protestant work ethic". For one, you should work smart, not hard. Second, you should work hard only if you enjoy the task or you get a benefit from working harder. Hard work in itself doesn't mean anything.

I always suspected it had more to do with being raised on a farm (a traditional farm where you have to work most of the day, not an industrial corn farm) then religious beliefs.

No doubt that's right about a great many people though.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#232

Post by agentultra »

For the argument that "my father taught me to work hard...":

If I get more done in an hour than you do, should I continue to work as many hours as physically possible just to get ahead? What if the experience I've gained over a decade of doing this allows me to do twice the work that you do in an hour?

Simply working more hours is just a race to the bottom. There's nothing there. In fact I'd argue that it stifles the mind from seeing the bigger picture. A good mind built for solving problems doesn't try to exhaust itself with repetitive, menial tasks. You may work 16 hours a day but I argue that you will get less and less done per hour. And in the end whether you get rich or not all you'll have to show for it is diabetes, some form of erectile dysfunction (if you happen to have those bits), coronary disease, and an amphetamine addiction.

Instead cultivate your mind and aim higher.

Perseverance does pay off. That should be the lessons of your fathers/mentors/etc who "worked hard."

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#233

Post by rapind »

antirez wrote: post #210
rapind wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect your opinion Antirez, but I hear so much speculation about work habits that I have to ask you: Is this your opinion / experience, or is it based on some specific research / study you can point to? As a fellow developer I'd love this to be true, however a meme / fad started during my working career in rich cultures stating that hard work isn't rewarding or is unnecessary. I question this. My father taught me…

This is my opinion and is based solely on my experience after 15 years of being in the industry, including one successful startup built by me and a friend of mine with a decent "exit" sold to Telecom Italia, and a successful open source software (Redis). Additionally I used to work in different places in the past with many programmers, so what I say is also based on how the success of programmers I know first hand co…

I'm fully aware of who you are, and at least some of your successes (I've used Redis in several projects now, and love it).

For me it's an age thing. I put in some extremely long hours in my youth, and I think it paid off. I'm not putting in as many hours these days, but then again I feel like I'm quite a bit more productive with my time than I used to be.

I think it's the experience itself that's the differentiator, and not the fewer hours. In fact it's the experience that enables me to work fewer hours. When I was younger I really had to bang away trying many more approaches to solve a problem, and that meant longer hours.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#234

Post by fedd »

stevejalim wrote: post #201
regularfry wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not made for being immobile. With a standing desk, I find I move around more.

Agreed. It's not simply a question of standing over sitting; it's about moving . I have a motorised desk (essentially the GeekDesk v2) and shift two or three times a day from sitting to standing to standing while leaning on a sitting stool (which you can do even if you don't have a robo-desk). Plus I move around frequently (kitchen, bathroom, fetch water, etc) and - don't knock it till you've tried it - have a dartbo…

> kitchen, bathroom, fetch water, etc

& smoke! Anyone dares to admit?

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#235

Post by nathanb »

tealtan wrote: post #211
rapind wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect your opinion Antirez, but I hear so much speculation about work habits that I have to ask you: Is this your opinion / experience, or is it based on some specific research / study you can point to? As a fellow developer I'd love this to be true, however a meme / fad started during my working career in rich cultures stating that hard work isn't rewarding or is unnecessary. I question this. My father taught me…

Nothing wrong with working hard. But do it for yourself. Don't do it because a VC tells you to. Don't do it because the owner of a publication that thrives off of startup news tells you to.

I wholeheartedly agree, and I think this is what jwz is getting at as well. Hard work can be rewarding, but only if you let it. Hard work which is pushed on you without your consent is rarely rewarding in any sense of the word.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#236

Post by nostrademons »

henrikschroder wrote: post #177
nostrademons wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the pattern: medicine, law, and engineering are 3 industries where the employees carry significant human capital with them (finance is another one, and i-bankers also give up their lives). I suspect the reason for this is because human capital makes the payoff for additional hours worked non-linear. One cashier working 80 hours a week should be just about as productive as two cashiers working 40 hours a week (a…

> However, one engineer working 80 hours a week is significantly more productive than two engineers working 40 hours a week Only for short periods of time. Every single piece of research on working hours for knowledge workers show that longer periods of overtime decrease productivity. These people work longer hours because the people that pay them are unable to measure productivity properly and instead pay them by ho…

Well, yes. I was mostly using the numbers for illustration's sake; substitute 1 40 hr/week employee vs. 2 20 hr/week employees if it makes the point clearer. (And it should make the point clearer: if you've ever had to manage volunteers, I bet you'd take one dedicated full-timer over a team of 10 half-time volunteers.)

I suspect there's an equilibrium point where the gains of human capital are offset by the losses of fatigue. My point is that you get declining efficiency in both directions; if you try to speed up work by adding more people, you incur costs in communication & learning overhead.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#237

Post by frouaix »

Somehow I fail to equate Zynga with "dent in the universe". Netscape did make a dent. Google did make a dent. If you have the choice of where you'll work, and you want to work that hard, you might want to pay attention to how what actual value will come out of your work for the rest of us...

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#238

Post by 1010100101 »

vidarh wrote: post #163
jwr wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that PG actually did this stuff, while Arrington did not. PG is one of us, Arrington is not.

Mike (disclaimer: I know him) has done more startups than PG, and he did pretty much sleep under his desk for the first couple of years of Techcrunch (well, his desk was in his bedroom, and the Techcrunch "office" was the rest of his house) and has worked equally hard in the other startups he's done while I've known him. Including as a regular employee (that's how I met him - he worked at a startup I co-founded years…

He can't write code.

He publishes a blog to attempt to persuade an audience of those who can.

Before the blog, he worked with a company selling dropping domain names.

Again, he wrote no code.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#239

Post by borism »

vidarh wrote: post #163
jwr wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that PG actually did this stuff, while Arrington did not. PG is one of us, Arrington is not.

Mike (disclaimer: I know him) has done more startups than PG, and he did pretty much sleep under his desk for the first couple of years of Techcrunch (well, his desk was in his bedroom, and the Techcrunch "office" was the rest of his house) and has worked equally hard in the other startups he's done while I've known him. Including as a regular employee (that's how I met him - he worked at a startup I co-founded years…

Techcrunch "office" was the rest of his house

nice definition of "under the desk"

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#240

Post by Fliko »

rapind wrote: post #231
dextorious wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""My father taught me to work hard, as his father taught him, etc, and this basically states that my father was being scammed. """ He was. It's called the "protestant work ethic". For one, you should work smart, not hard. Second, you should work hard only if you enjoy the task or you get a benefit from working harder. Hard work in itself doesn't mean anything.

I always suspected it had more to do with being raised on a farm (a traditional farm where you have to work most of the day, not an industrial corn farm) then religious beliefs. No doubt that's right about a great many people though.

Most people I know who work all day on a farm do it because they absolutely love it and would imagine living no other life.
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