Live data from Hacker News

Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

ycombinator.com

281–290 of 290 posts

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 days / 16 hours or 7 days / 14 hours still leaves time for a normal sleep schedule. Many of the people in our YC batch were doing this for the duration of the batch. My cofounder and I both have families and managed to make a similar schedule work (with more peaks and valleys). The last few weeks have been a crunch where I’ve been getting a lot closer to a true 140ish. That is unsustainable and I’ve had to go into…

You may have a family but how much time are you spending with them. You know yourself but I think it's extremely unhealthy advice to give to people and usually hides a lot of inefficiency and misused hours. Constraints breed creativity and efficiency. Do more with less and all that. Have you done the exercise of "how can I produce the same value output in 80% of the time". The exact percentage doesn't matter, just do…

> Have you done the exercise of "how can I produce the same value output in 80% of the time". The exact percentage doesn't matter, just doing the exercise to improve efficiency and have a more balanced approach. That also gives you space for actual crunch time whereas you seem to work in a perpetual state of crunch.

My cofounder and I do this usually about twice a month where we sit down and purposefully think about this at a macro and micro level.

> Is it real or is it performative? Are you taking care of health? Do you realize work is not everything to life and that you CAN have your cake and eat it too if you slightly balance it out.

It's real! My health is not being taken care of, but that is the "pick 3" axis that I'm compromising on in the short term.

> Is it real or is it performative? Are you taking care of health? Do you realize work is not everything to life and that you CAN have your cake and eat it too if you slightly balance it out.

I think this is not the right way to think about it. People have different preferences. The difference between having 4m in the bank and 8m in the bank at the end of my career is very marginal to me. I would much rather put myself in the position to work towards a tail event.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And somehow you seem to be defending it. Even though there is statistically a better return just working in a bank as a Java dev in a second tier city.

This is absolutely untrue. We pay ourselves and all of our employees competitive salaries.

See you paying them at least $335K in cash seeing that an average enterprise dev can make $140K working 40 hours a week and you want them to work 2.4x as many hours?

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#283
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rules changed in 2003, but until then medical residency programs routinely had doctors working 100+ hours a week or longer. In 2003 a cap of 80 hours a week was instituted along with a maximum of 24 hours in any given period, but programs found various loopholes around that cap which still had doctors working close to 100 hours a week. So further restrictions were placed so that over any 4 week period there's a hard…

Are residents and people working on ships actually making decisions for 100 hours a week? It's the cognitive load that I find difficult to believe about these numbers, not the At one point I was also working crazy hours at a fast food shop. But that was only possible because I could "zone out" and just pour the customer's coffee and make sandwiches. Writing code for that long would have been impossible.

> Are residents and people working on ships actually making decisions for 100 hours a week?

Residencies? Yeah. The guy who came up with the US' system for medical residency was high on cocaine pretty much constantly and expected everyone to perform at his level.

https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/a-day-in-th...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have a family but how much time are you spending with them. You know yourself but I think it's extremely unhealthy advice to give to people and usually hides a lot of inefficiency and misused hours. Constraints breed creativity and efficiency. Do more with less and all that. Have you done the exercise of "how can I produce the same value output in 80% of the time". The exact percentage doesn't matter, just do…

> Have you done the exercise of "how can I produce the same value output in 80% of the time". The exact percentage doesn't matter, just doing the exercise to improve efficiency and have a more balanced approach. That also gives you space for actual crunch time whereas you seem to work in a perpetual state of crunch. My cofounder and I do this usually about twice a month where we sit down and purposefully think about…

Meh. I just don't believe that it is not performative and about "the hour metric" when on second read, I read the phrase about the really unsustainable thint being when you reached the "140 hours". In the last few WEEKS, plural.

4 hours sleep. Every day. And working non stop.

You can pretend all you want but for all that is holy stop giving this bullshit snake oil advice.

You don't have a life and neglect your family. They better enjoy those extra millions and buy themselves a father and a husband.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#285
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rules changed in 2003, but until then medical residency programs routinely had doctors working 100+ hours a week or longer. In 2003 a cap of 80 hours a week was instituted along with a maximum of 24 hours in any given period, but programs found various loopholes around that cap which still had doctors working close to 100 hours a week. So further restrictions were placed so that over any 4 week period there's a hard…

Are residents and people working on ships actually making decisions for 100 hours a week? It's the cognitive load that I find difficult to believe about these numbers, not the At one point I was also working crazy hours at a fast food shop. But that was only possible because I could "zone out" and just pour the customer's coffee and make sandwiches. Writing code for that long would have been impossible.

Obviously not every moment of every hour in a residents day is deep clinical thinking with high cognitive load, but we’re definitely not “zoning out” when making medical decisions. Patient statuses change very quickly and very often in the hospital, and every problem should be re-evaluated like it is a fresh concern. Decisions can be made quicker with more experience but you’re expected to be “on” all the time. Plus, lots of things contribute to cognitive load outside sheer medical decisions - social work, dispo issues, patient preferences, etc. Luckily my residency is closer to 60-70 hours a week but 100 is still common.

Remember - the 80 hour a week limit is not a max limit. It is the max hours per week AVERAGED OVER 4 weeks. You can easily work 100 hours this week if you do 60 the next.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you want to take these bets when you are young, its the opposite, you go into stable careers when your appetite for risk and working around the clock has waned

Thought experiment: What group do you think will have the higher median total earnings over 10 years - the group that worked at BigTech or the group that worked at a YC startup? You make your money first, let it make money for you and then do a startup.

[dead]

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is this "ruining your life"? If things don't go as planned, I imagine the person would be in a good position to pivot to higher education/a different job/starting something new. I think this idea that ruining one's life == not following the exact k-12 -> college -> big corporation route is short sighted.

Do a risk based calculation of compensation and learning. Your will see that you are putting you self at risk - especially if you had the opportunity to work at an renowned business. Eg. Having 2 no name defunct businesses on your resume you claim as startups over 3 years will likely not benefit you so much.

All depends on the person, their goals, their expectations, the experiences they want to have.

Agree we should not deceive anybody that doing this would make them rich or have a successful business. Most startups fail, startups by new college grads who never had a job might fail even more than normal startups. But if an adult wants to burn a few years of their 20s this way, fine. Maximizing earning efficiency of earnings in your 20s might not be optimal either. Maybe you hit a local maximum and would have much higher earnings later after discovering something by following your nose for a few years.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of remote schools, always have been, they’re just lower quality and solve a different problem than traditional in person university

In Canada a lot of well-known schools are shifting much of their delivery to online. They're limited by the government how much they can charge/increase while international student visas have been cut dramatically. It's an existentially moment for international-focused schools, but even the best traditional universities are hurting.

The bigger problem for Canadian universities is that they have never had their funding restored to pre-austerity levels by the various levels of government.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#289
post #278
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Execs universally love working with people who maximize proactivity and strong opinions. Only if they share the same strong opinions.

I hear, "You're the expert, we're paying you a lot, tell us what to do" often!

But what if what to do isn't what they want to do…

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada a lot of well-known schools are shifting much of their delivery to online. They're limited by the government how much they can charge/increase while international student visas have been cut dramatically. It's an existentially moment for international-focused schools, but even the best traditional universities are hurting.

The bigger problem for Canadian universities is that they have never had their funding restored to pre-austerity levels by the various levels of government.

“By the early 1990s, combined federal, provincial, and local spending had peaked at more than 50% of GDP.”

You mean those spending levels?

Post reply on HN