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lucumr.pocoo.org

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Re: 996

#551

Post by komali2 »

scubbo wrote: post #545
komali2 wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah well we must just know different folks. Every startup I've been aware of in my personal life was a weekend project amongst people who kept their day job, until they could get into yc or something, and then get to a seed round. The only self funded quit your day job startup I know of in my personal life is the restaurant I opened and closed within a span of a year. Learned my lesson!

Genuinely astonishing - and I mean that literally, not pejoratively. Thanks for this perspective. I do know myself to be very risk-averse and pessimistic, and undoing that mindset is a personal project at the moment. Thanks for these anecdata, it's helpful to be reminded that real people can and do succeed there.

For some more anecdata, I just had another potential new client call in to my co-op wanting to spec out an MVP that they can farm around to investors to get seed funding. He said him and his partners are keeping their day jobs for now. These kinds of projects in my experience usually cost 5-20k USD of self funded money, so of course not nothing, but well within the range of a couple working professionals pooling their money.

If they can't get funding off the MVP then yes they're 20k in the hole, but at least they were working in the meantime.

Re: 996

#552

Post by martin-t »

petralithic wrote: post #522
martin-t wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that you say that because at some point I started dividing people in my head into what I call builders and redistributors: - Builders produce food, mine resources, build houses/machines, do research, provide essential services, etc. - Redistributors take a cut from builders, by providing a non-essential service like salesmen or assistants who call themselves managers, by getting themselves into a position of po…

> Yet at the same time it's not talked about at all. You might be missing a whole paradigm that was written about in the 19th century and implemented in the 20th century, to deleterious effects.

Can you name it?

Re: 996

#553

Post by kaladin-jasnah »

frm88 wrote: post #503
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone graduating from undergrad soon, and a intense and passionate person in CS, all of these reasons are seriously making me reconsider the idea of doing a PhD. I've done the 36-hour straight work grinds, and working from 10 pm to 6 am for multiple days a week. However, I'm tired of doing that, and I've experienced enough burnout already. I'm also not okay with doing highly skilled work for more than 40 hours a…

In Europe there's extensive legislation on how long you are allowed to work per day/week and how you have to be compensated in free time if your workday exceeds 10 hours/day (which is the legal max. per day) for an extended period of time (24 weeks max??? Not sure on this one). Even longer work days or periods have to be legally sanctioned and approved in advance and are severely limited. It's not perfect but it cert…

So, there is a stipend consideration in much of Europe, where if the PhD stipend is the same or lower compared to US schools, it would be difficult to save a reasonable amount of money should I choose to return to the US post-doctorate.

Switzerland does actually seem to have stipends that if transferred to the US, could allow me to return with some US-acceptable levels of savings. The only other option is getting big tech internships at a US PhD, which seems to be advisor dependent.

Re: 996

#554

Post by RestlessMind »

martin-t wrote: post #511
RestlessMind wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by providing a non-essential service like salesmen... Sorry to break this to you but if you think Sales is non-essential, you don't know anything about startups.

You didn't understand what I wrote. Of course you need to sell your product but as a builder you can do it yourself. It's not your specialty so you likely will be worse at it than a dedicated person and will have less time for actual building. The key is that builders can exist without salesmen. But salesmen without builders have nothing to sell.

> but as a builder you can do it yourself

One who can both build and sell is indeed a rare specimen (unicorn?). I know many builders and less than 10% of them can sell.

Re: 996

#555

Post by _DeadFred_ »

cm2012 wrote: post #126

I don't understand what people spend their time at work on. I have a very successful career, top .01% income for my age bracket, and never worked more than 40 hours at one job in my life.

For me it was 'superman syndrome', I got my personal feeling of worth by what I had accomplished lately. Not a healthy way to go at it.

Re: 996

#557

Post by fr_lsl »

getnormality wrote: post #365

If America wants to emulate China it should start with the good qualities, like actually learning math in school.

The American system often prioritizes creativity and critical thinking, whereas the Chinese system is known for discipline and high performance on standardized tests. Simply copying one system into the context of another would likely fail.

Re: 996

#558

Post by rcd2 »

Aurornis wrote: post #23

When founders put 996 in their job descriptions or Tweet about their 996 culture it’s a helpful signal to avoid that company. The only time I’d actually consider crazy schedules was if I was the founder with a huge equity stake and a once in a lifetime opportunity that would benefit from a short period of 996. For average employees? Absolutely not. If someone wants extraordinary hours they need to be providing extrao…

Portugal also has a bit of the culture of working long hours. People joke when you leave at 6pm/7pm and ask “are you taking the afternoon off?”. We also have the “manager + 5 minutes” rule to leave work. Most of the time, when I worked in these types of companies, I was killing time and feeling depressed. After moving to the UK the culture changed. Less working ours so I started attending meetups and doing Udemy courses (most are all 60/70% finished but still!). I’m much more productive here.

Re: 996

#559

Post by renaudg »

qcnguy wrote: post #508
godelski wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right about your analysis but this only moves the question to ask what is the utility of this Kabuki theater?

People who work more get more done. Yes, there are limits. It's not obvious 45 hours a week is that limit. Observe that the two places in the world with cutting edge AI startups are America and China. Europe has none. Maybe Mistral if you're generous, or DeepMind if you ignore that they got bought by Google, which IMO is OK because a lot of US startups have no plausible future outside of being bought and nobody claim…

15 in the top 20 most productive countries per hour worked are European. The US is in 12th place. China is 99th.

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

Diminishing returns is a thing.

Re: 996

#560

Post by alexnewman »

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #89
alexnewman wrote: post #47

If you don’t want to grind, don’t pick a career where only the toughest survive—like startups. In China, programmers get massages. You could be giving the massages. I’m not smart, but I worked 7 days a week for a decade. It takes me 40 hours just to warm up, so real work means 100-hour weeks. Yet I’ve built 3 startups, 2 unicorns. In both, I was the dumbest person in the room—but I outworked everyone.

Being a founder is a completely different situation which the article is explicitly not talking about. Although, frankly, even as a founder, 100-hour 7-day weeks aren’t right for the vast majority of people. Clearly it worked for you, which is great, but 99% of people do not have that level of energy, and furthermore are mentally unable to withstand the sacrifices such a schedule imposes on other aspects of life.

perhaps 99% of people shouldn't start multibillion dollar tech companies
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