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Success at Work, Failure at Home

scott.a16z.com

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Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#91

Post by jusben1369 »

nailer wrote: post #27

> And that part about sitting on my ass in front of the TV with a cocktail? This ran counter to all of her efforts to teach the kids about pitching in as a family. The message of everyone helping to cook, clean, and be responsible for the household fell completely flat when daddy wouldn’t so much as take out the trash or change a light bulb. Take out the trash and change a lightbulb by all means, but seriously if you…

The 1950's called they want their rationalization back! Think of this a different way. If the woman who decides to stay at home keeps the house incredibly clean, the children bathed and well nourished and is there when they wake up, come home and go to bed but speaks to them only once or twice a day is she crushing her role or sucking at it? I'd say sucking.

Your role is to nourish their brains and souls not just cover their heads and bodies.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#92

Post by bzbarsky »

cunac wrote: post #53
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? My 4-year-old gets anxious when I take the day off or even if it is a national holiday. She says I'm supposed to be at work so the family doesn't get hungry. Saturday and Sunday are family days she tells me. I'm not sure about children being born with the expectation of fatherly company. Historically it wasn't universal. Some native Americans had separate housing for men and for women and children. In other a…

Having children of my own I find very disturbing that 4 year old gets worried about such thing. For sure she didn't come up with that by herself but most likely listening/being told by parents

Or just by having fairy tales read to her, say. I don't mean Disney-fied ones, of course.

If you read those, there's poor people, people starving to death, people out looking for firewood in the winter, etc, etc. And while some kids just accept it as-is others ask questions. Yes, at 4. It _really_ depends on the child.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#93

Post by mcphilip »

jusben1369 wrote: post #89
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #17

So what I'm reading here is why CEOs shouldn't go to the office on weekends and check their mail at dinner. What's glaringly absent from the second part of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either. Those guys have families and their negligible equity certainly doesn't justify 80-hour weeks. It sounds to me like the author would rather have gone home on weekends while the engineers staye…

I'm only going to reply to this because so many of you got this impression. My take was "very early on you have to do these incredibly long development hours to ship a product, hit a milestone, and raise" The engineer's were looking at a rough 3 - 6 months of weekends etc. The CEO was looking at a rough 7 years. I'm not advocating that the engineers needed to even do that rough 3 -6 months just highlighting why I thi…

Maybe I'm just unlucky but I've never worked at a startup where pressure relents on engineering after the initial push. I feel on call 24/7 now that we're in production with paying customers.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#94

Post by jusben1369 »

coffeemug wrote: post #74

I'm facing many of the challenges Scott is talking about. I churned through the first part of the essay and thought "yes! yes! yes, yes, let's get to the solution!" But the second part of the essay falls short for me. It's a bit like the depression and the broken hand cartoon[1]. I can't disconnect. I know I'm supposed to turn off my phone, do household chores, and take my wife out to a nice dinner. I know taking the…

Yes I agree it's hard and I struggle with some of these issues but I'm luckier I'm a bit older (wiser) Probably would have screwed it up more 10 years ago. He mentions "truth in calendaring" which is pretty good. The raw point there is that right now your actions reflect your preferences. You love everything about your startup and want to be connected to every little blip every waking second. There's nothing wrong with that per se. Some people just freaking love to work and build things and have that adrenaline thrill. The problem arises if you think about losing your family. He makes a quick reference in the article but it sounds like his wife pretty much threatened to leave him and only then did he pull his head out of his ass. So think about it like that. How much fun would your startup be if you were coming home to an empty house? That'll chill you enough to shut off the phone or force calendar an evening a week or a full 6 hours one weekend afternoon unplugged and just fully immersed with your family.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#95

Post by jusben1369 »

mcphilip wrote: post #93
jusben1369 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only going to reply to this because so many of you got this impression. My take was "very early on you have to do these incredibly long development hours to ship a product, hit a milestone, and raise" The engineer's were looking at a rough 3 - 6 months of weekends etc. The CEO was looking at a rough 7 years. I'm not advocating that the engineers needed to even do that rough 3 -6 months just highlighting why I thi…

Maybe I'm just unlucky but I've never worked at a startup where pressure relents on engineering after the initial push. I feel on call 24/7 now that we're in production with paying customers.

As I said I'm not endosring it. Just explaining what seemed like a gap for so many readers.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#96

Post by bzbarsky »

larrys wrote: post #56
codingdave wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misunderstanding in young families, and one that causes a lot of damage to families in the long run. The misunderstanding is the assumption that the wife was not working all day. IF she has a job, then she was working. If she stays at home with kids, she was also working. Coming home and relaxing, saying, "Hey, I'm paying the mortgage" is also saying, "Hey, the work my wife did today was worth nothin…

"If she stays at home with kids, she was also working." I think it's reasonable to believe that some jobs are harder than other jobs. Staying home with the kids, while hard (and maybe even boring) isn't as demanding as the jobs that some people have. I have to tell you that I'd rather the person who operates on a heart or a brain or flys a 777 (and there are many more I'm just picking a few obvious ones) focus on the…

While some jobs are in fact harder than other jobs, I will bet that being a typical stay-at-home parent with three children (the situation under discussion here) is in fact harder in most ways than being an average 777 pilot. It's certainly harder than programming, and I say that having tried both. Especially if the children are fairly closely spaced and still young. If you think staying at home with three kids is likely to be _boring_ (as opposed to not intellectually stimulating, which is a different story), I have to wonder whether you've ever tried it.

Of course it's a lot easier in the short term to get away with being a crappy parent than a crappy pilot...

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#97

Post by Bahamut »

mcphilip wrote: post #93
jusben1369 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only going to reply to this because so many of you got this impression. My take was "very early on you have to do these incredibly long development hours to ship a product, hit a milestone, and raise" The engineer's were looking at a rough 3 - 6 months of weekends etc. The CEO was looking at a rough 7 years. I'm not advocating that the engineers needed to even do that rough 3 -6 months just highlighting why I thi…

Maybe I'm just unlucky but I've never worked at a startup where pressure relents on engineering after the initial push. I feel on call 24/7 now that we're in production with paying customers.

I think you're just unlucky - if my CEO sees me working at 8 pm or later, he tells me to go home, even if we're in a big push. He wants me ready to do more quality work the day after, and not burn out.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#98

Post by brc »

yitchelle wrote: post #37
nailer wrote: post #27

> And that part about sitting on my ass in front of the TV with a cocktail? This ran counter to all of her efforts to teach the kids about pitching in as a family. The message of everyone helping to cook, clean, and be responsible for the household fell completely flat when daddy wouldn’t so much as take out the trash or change a light bulb. Take out the trash and change a lightbulb by all means, but seriously if you…

Really depends on the kid's age. Younger kids (less than 10yrs) are not able to grasp the concept of money or earning money, so explaining that dad is out making money for a roof over their head and putting food on the table is not going to cut it. At that age, they just want close interaction with their dad.

Children can grasp anything if you explain it to them. A 4 or 5 year old can easily understand the concepts of work and money if you explain it to them.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#99

Post by andyidsinga »

cliffcrosland wrote: post #90
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

I very clearly remember the week this clicked in my brain. Being very successful, really crushing it, and whining to my wife that the company should give more vacation, and her reminding me that I had been at work on Christmas Eve. My whole perspective collapsed around that instant. I could see the hit in career path I was going to take by changing my perspective, but I decided to do it anyway. And I have always been…

There appears to be an implicit assumption in many of these comments that success is measured solely by career progress. The vibe seems to be something like: "How can I successfully compete with these folks who do nothing but work?" The truth is, maybe you shouldn't try. Clayton Christensen, author of the mega-influential book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," wrote another book that addresses this issue called, "How Will…

YES! its worth telling managers and subordinates that we wont be working more than 40 - 50 hours. and that we should work both hard and smart in he alotted time ...then get the F out of work and do other things.

i often find it refreshing to hear about the cool things people do when not working and bummed when i hear someone - especially one of my devs - worked through a weekend. then comes the difficult and uncomfortable chore of figuring out what i fucked up that caused them to have to work like that.

Re: Success at Work, Failure at Home

#100

Post by codereflection »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #17

So what I'm reading here is why CEOs shouldn't go to the office on weekends and check their mail at dinner. What's glaringly absent from the second part of this article is not asking the engineers to come in on weekends, either. Those guys have families and their negligible equity certainly doesn't justify 80-hour weeks. It sounds to me like the author would rather have gone home on weekends while the engineers staye…

Did everyone here miss the part about the importance of work/life balance at IronPort and how HE wasn't living it? Every company has deadlines to meet, and sometimes you have to work extra time. This guy, however, was working ALL the time, not just during those crunch periods.
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