Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/

by jwwest • 15 years ago

2376 290 15 years ago

jwz.org

lwat• 15 years ago

Anyone got a readable link please

jf2• 15 years ago

Not sure why you're having trouble reading the page, but here is the text of his blog post:

"Normally I just ignore navel-gazing tech-industry articles like this, but people keep sending it to me, so I guess this guy is famous or something. Michael Arrington posted this article, "Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining" which quotes extensively from my 1994 diary.

He's trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your one and only youth, and if you don't do that, you're a pussy. He's using my words to try and back up that thesis.

I hate this, because it's not true, and it's disingenuous.

What is true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for you to give up your life in order for him to become richer.

Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what's good for you, check your wallet, then count your fingers.

He's telling you the story of, "If you bust your ass and don't sleep, you'll get rich" because the only way that people in his line of work get richer is if young, poorly-socialized, naive geniuses believe that story! Without those coat-tails to ride, VCs might have to work for a living. Once that kid burns out, they'll just slot a new one in.

I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it's true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the software industry, I'll bet you get a very different view of what kind of sleep habits and office hours are successful than the one presented here.

So if your goal is to enrich the Arringtons of the world while maybe, if you win the lottery, scooping some of the groundscore that they overlooked, then by all means, bust your ass while the bankers and speculators cheer you on.

Instead of that, I recommend that you do what you love because you love doing it. If that means long hours, fantastic. If that means leaving the office by 6pm every day for your underwater basket-weaving class, also fantastic. "

yuhong• 15 years ago

Probably OP is complaining about the green-on-black style of jwz's blog.

dylangs1030• 15 years ago

He probably means that the website is reminiscent of the old Yahoo geocities websites - neon colors over a dark (usually black) background, haha.

That aside, it's still pretty readable. Besides, the content is worth the eye strain in this case.

fpgeek2• 15 years ago

There's always the possibility that lwat is at work and jwz is blocked...

guelo5• 15 years ago

If you can't read that I wonder what you would have done back in the terminal days when you wouldn't have had an option. Everybody back then seemed to be able to read it with no problem. Maybe youngster's eyesight has become worse for some unexplained reason.

__david__• 15 years ago

I think it's just what you're used to. When I first saw a Mac I thought it was crazy the way all the windows were white and the text was black. All the white burned my eyes and I thought it was a terrible decision. But obviously everyone can cope with it just fine and it became the norm.

The "oh my eyes" hyperbole about green on black is because people aren't used to it and it is in stark contrast to what "normal" is nowadays--but just use it for an hour and you'll be just fine. I personally think it's a little less straining on the eyes because there's less light hitting your eyes. Lately my terminals and emacs always use a black background.

someone133• 15 years ago

Some people may not enjoy the green-on-black text, so this might be of use:

http://www.readability.com/articles/dirqhjff

renownedmedia• 15 years ago

What could possibly be more readable than the phosphorous CRT look? :p

dminor• 15 years ago

I find this Chrome extension pretty handy for that:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nlbpiflhmdcklcbihn...

pelemele2• 15 years ago

The color scheme is not random. He is probably an old timer like me remembering old green/black monochrome 14" monitors.

http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/images/2011-04-24-i...

Vivtek• 15 years ago

Green and black monitors didn't rip my retinas to shreds. This does. I think he just does it because he can, part of the whole jwz f-bomber persona.

someone133• 15 years ago

Oh, of course - I own one myself! But it's rather hard on the eyes, so I keep the Readability bookmarklet around :-)

draven• 15 years ago

Use the phosphor screensaver (written by jwz) in the xscreensaver distribution together with Lynx/Elinks, as it can function as a terminal emulator: /usr/lib/xscreensaver/phosphor -scale 1 -program "lynx -dump http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-se... | less"

SonicSoul• 15 years ago

i've been using Gleebox for chrome and Firefox to get readibility links for any article.

just type "g !read"

and it saves history so next time it's just "g !" !

felipemnoa• 15 years ago

>>Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what's good for you, check your wallet, then count your fingers.<<

This is just gold.

mjijackson• 15 years ago

Been thinking a lot about this statement, but still not sure exactly what he means by it. I could interpret it a few different ways, and I'm probably over-thinking it. How do you interpret this?

guelo5• 15 years ago

It just means that the VC doesn't have your best interest in mind, they only care about making money.

duncanj• 15 years ago

You may think you're shaking hands with someone but he's actually picking your pocket. "Count your fingers after shaking hands with that guy" is an idiom suggesting that the guy will steal one.

interlagos• 15 years ago

It means that people pushing advice usually do so primarily for their own good. This is a universal truth that applies to many situations.

corin_4• 15 years ago

It struck me more as simple than gold. If a VC that invested in a company gives them advice then obviously his goal is to make more money... but that goal will, in turn make you more money too.

If you don't like the fact that a VC has the potential to make more money than you, the solution is to not take investment from one, not to ignore them after they take investment.

Also remember that yes, they're not putting in a lot of work to make the money - but you aren't putting in a lot of money that you might lose, which they did.

I'm not arguing for or against working crazy hours, just against the idea that you should be scared of any suggestion from a VC.

patio112• 15 years ago

you aren't putting in a lot of money that you might lose, which they did.

VCs make money win or lose. Limited partners actually have capital risk.

People know this, right?

jt2190• 15 years ago

But what is not obvious is that the VC might not care if _your_ company is the one that makes him money. Remember that VCs are managing a portfolio of companies, in order to spread their risk. The VC might decide that your company is in the part of their portfolio that won't go big, and so they won't give it any more but the bare minimum of attention.

wpietri2• 15 years ago

Sigh.

First, the goal of entrepreneurs is not just to make money. Unlike most VCs and all of their LPs.

Interests of VCs and entrepreneurs differ in a number of other ways. A key one being that VCs have a whole portfolio and are hits-driven, while entrepreneurs have exactly one company. That means VCs have an incentive to push for giant hits, even at with an increased risk of failure. That makes VCs more money, but means you're much more likely to be, e.g., that guy who had to shut down everything because you expanded too fast.

dextorious2• 15 years ago

"""It struck me more as simple than gold. If a VC that invested in a company gives them advice then obviously his goal is to make more money... but that goal will, in turn make you more money too."""

You'd be surprised...

s73v3r5• 15 years ago

"It struck me more as simple than gold. If a VC that invested in a company gives them advice then obviously his goal is to make more money... but that goal will, in turn make you more money too."

Not necessarily. Especially when talking about funding, the VCs are NOT out to help you or your business. They are out to make money. Sometimes those goals can coincide, but not often.

And seriously, the rest of that post is just an excuse for their bullshit. They have money. So fucking what? Why should that enable them to take most of the company, when it was your hard work that actually made it successful? I understand they need a return, but there is no reason why they should get the lion's share of the reward.

kanwisher• 15 years ago

Makes total sense, enjoy your work and don't buy into you have to kill yourself to make it big in a startup. And the payout might not be worth it in the end unless your in a lucky percentage.

prawn3• 15 years ago

I'm glad he finished with a note for the people who actually get something out of hard work on their personal project because I doubt I'm alone in getting a lot of personal satisfaction in performing like that. It's not all the time that I pull an all-nighter or a couple of weeks of hard slog, but I often feel better for them.

And I'd rather be doing that for myself on a side project or in the start-up lottery or within my own business than for someone else. If that isn't possible, then even for someone up the chain. If someone else (VC, client of mine, landlord, etc) also profits from this endeavour, so be it.

Sometimes you have to know the lows to fully appreciate the highs.

Further to that, I tend to enjoy weeks of fulfilling hard work with those glimpses of recreation more than I do the ones where I'm procrastinating, spinning my wheels or at a loss for something I can be bothered doing that day. Hard work, or hard holiday - that half-arsed stuff in the middle rarely satisfies.

dskhatri• 15 years ago

I appreciated the final words too. I've noticed an increase in the number of people offering advice about how to do things "right", followed by comment streams about why that's wrong, and "right" would be doing things a different way. But what's right for one person is not for another. I too find myself working super hard on projects that may seem worthless to some, trading off my sleep once in a while. It makes me feel good.

Maybe, rather than give advice, authors should do more of simply describing their experiences, and let the readers make inferences for themselves.

Edit. Deleted the first word (Amen). Another growing practice, and one that I am guilty of in this case, is the overzealous use of showy phrases solely to draw attention.

paganel• 15 years ago

> I appreciated the final words too. I've noticed an increase in the number of people offering advice about how to do things "right", followed by comment streams about why that's wrong, and "right" would be doing things a different way.

Yeah, amen for that. I also have at least 3 personal projects to which I dedicate as much time as possible. I don't want nor expect to make any money out of them, and when one of my co-workers asked me why didn't I spend my free-time on freelancing to gain even more money (like he does) I answered that what I was doing made me feel good and that was that :)

nir3• 15 years ago

That half-arsed stuff in the middle is called living, and it's the only way you can do this sustainably.

Startups are like going to Hollywood. Your goal might be to become as successful as Clooney, but that's not likely to work out. Still, if you're talented & dedicated, you can make a living in this industry and enjoy it.

I've been working for startups for the past 12 years. I won't be a millionaire even if my current company sells for $.5b - there are preferred stock, dilutions down the road, taxes etc. But I hope to be in startups for the rest of my career, simply because it's fun to create something from scratch, work in a small company with relatively little office politics etc.

It's not fun to sleep under a desk, though, or consistently work 12 hours/day. If your boss expects you to do that, he's a poor manager. If your VC tells you to do it, he's trying to exploit you, as JWZ correctly points out.

prawn3• 15 years ago

I'm talking about half-arsed work or time-wasting, not what I enjoy of my life - sorry if that wasn't clear. Living in a rut is little better, in my experience.

This year I have worked on more side projects than I can handle, I've worked through the night and had brutal weeks at my own business, I've done a lot of socialising and I've spent almost three months of the year overseas on holiday.

I hope to work harder and holiday more in 2012. That's not eating into what I value in life, I hope it will eat into those mindless hours on Xbox, checking Hacker News for the fourth time in 20 minutes, seeing if anything's been added to the fridge since my last check an hour ago, thinking about how I really should get the garden in order but not actually doing it, sitting through a TV show I don't really care for, etc.

sixtofour2• 15 years ago

"I've been working for startups for the past 12 years. I won't be a millionaire even if my current company sells for $.5b"

I am the pot calling the kettle black here, but I'd like to point out that working in software for 12 years (or 15 or 20), whether for startups or not, would give most people a shot at being a millionaire, if that goal is chosen, tracked and executed on, and it has nothing to do with the exit lottery. The best use of money, after necessities and safety, is to make more money.

s73v3r5• 15 years ago

"And I'd rather be doing that for myself on a side project or in the start-up lottery or within my own business than for someone else. If that isn't possible, then even for someone up the chain. If someone else (VC, client of mine, landlord, etc) also profits from this endeavour, so be it."

Other people profiting off your work is fine. But if you did the bulk of the work, why shouldn't you get the bulk of the reward? Why should some VC doucebag get the most of the company simply because they had money?

prawn3• 15 years ago

Because I might not be able to do it without them?

tom• 15 years ago

I hope this signals the end of folks walking on egg shells around Arrington. He's no longer a "newsman". He's no longer going to make or break every startup that ends up on AOLCrunch. He's just an investor hoping for deal flow. An investor who's proven he's probably not the guy you'd want to work with, probably not the guy you'd want to partner with, probably not the guy who will ever be on anyone's side but his own. Kudos to Zawinski for calling him out.

akkartik3• 15 years ago

jwz would have said this a year ago or three years ago. Timing has nothing to do with it, I think.

igorgue• 15 years ago

I don't think he was ever able to "make or break" a startup.

suking• 15 years ago

see: quora, qwiki and I'm sure others. Constant fanning on a major tech site definitely can help.

wmf• 15 years ago

Or it just signals that jwz has nothing to gain/lose from Arrington.

notatoad• 15 years ago

people walk on eggshells around arrington? i thought he was pretty much universally reviled, people are constantly calling him out for various crap. maybe not startup people who want his money/coverage, but bloggers and other hangers-on.

i like this site: http://www.ismikearringtonadick.com/

brk• 15 years ago

I find that I really connect with about 1 in 4 of jwz's rants.

It is a general rule that anytime there is someone above you in the hierarchy, they are going to make $2 for every $1.50 you make. Of COURSE the VC's will make more money than you. And the people who put the actual money into the funds should make even more than THEM.

The startup world, and economy in general has changed dramatically from the last time jwz was heavily involved, IMO. It's good that he made what qualifies as his own fuck you money and can now look in on things from the outside and comment thoughtfully. For a lot of people though, working 80 hour weeks grinding out a startup or 3 is still the most probable way of banking a decent retirement fund AND still having some life left to enjoy. I don't think that I'd advise many people to do a 30 year career of crazy startups, but it's kind of a geek lottery and worth the gamble for lots of people.

I don't really see where this is using his name to sell a con. If that were the case, I would think Arrington would pick someone who hadn't dropped out of the game a decade ago to sell his 'con'.

bigiain• 15 years ago

"I don't think that I'd advise many people to do a 30 year career of crazy startups"

And that's at least what _I_ took away from jwz's rant - doing it to get rich is a mug's game, choose to do "crazy startup" type things because you love doing it. You may get rich, you may not - truth is most of us can't tell from the inside whether we're "improving our chances" or not by slogging through as something we hate, it's ~90% likely to fail anyway. In the long run your chances of "happiness" are probably significantly improved by doing what you love now (instead of what you think might be outrageously lucrative).

guelo5• 15 years ago

> working 80 hour weeks grinding out a startup or 3 is still the most probable way of banking a decent retirement fund

Seems doubtful to me. Does anyone have statistics on how many non-founder VC funded engineers have made even $1 million off of equity? I'm going to guess it's less than 1:20,000 employees, a suckers bet. If you're willing to work hard you have a much better chance by starting your own boot-strapped non-pie-in-the-sky business that just sells something at a profit.

ghshephard• 15 years ago

Depends on what time period we are talking about - if over 4 years, then $1 million is a handsome return for an early stage (non founding, first 10) engineer at a successful startup. If over 8 years, then $1 million equity return works out to be $125K/year - not as exciting. I'd suggest the odds for a $1million equity return over eight years is closer to 1/20. Still lousy odds, but a great engineer can shift them by making the company successful.

bigohms2• 15 years ago

Wow. I didn't expect this one bit from Arrington. I'm surprised he is choosing to mine Internet archives for blog fodder over putting that much more time into guiding his portfolio to fewer mistakes and possibly 1% more potential.

Startups, hard? Yes. We ALL know this. Are his opinions skewed towards his agenda? Also yes. There is no hiding the fact that he's in the money. The problem is that the "thought-leader" portion of his rant was lacking. And it's a bit of unfair baseball to bring up a random blog post from some guy nearly 20 years ago. My bets are that he didn't even bother doing follow up on this guy after the fact.

aspensmonster3• 15 years ago

> What _is_ true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for _you_ to give up _your_ life in order for _him_ to become richer.

Isn't this more or less the case for any profits-go-to-owners business model? Or rather, any business model where employees are viewed as calculated costs and not owners worthy of a commiserate portion of the profit?

I've often wondered how a different ownership model would work for a company. One where the owners still make more money than the VPs, who still make more money than the engineers, who still make more money than the techs, who still make more money than the CSRs, who still make more money than the cleaning staff, but everyone is seeing a salary that is at least XX.X percent higher than it was before. Or perhaps a function of CPI, per Capita GDP, and a few other variables. Honestly, company ownership just seems like one big game of who can grab the most power in a given time metric. Rather than money being a means to an end, it is the end. But that's just my inexperienced, undereducated take on the whole thing thus far.

guelo5• 15 years ago

> Isn't this more or less the case for any profits-go-to-owners business model?

Almost every industry out there manages to make good profits without their employees having to give up their lives.

aspensmonster3• 15 years ago

I should have clarified. I was trying to make an observation on "employment" in general, whether you're treated with dignity as an employee or not. Even if you love your job, work <= 40 hours a week, have every weekend and holiday off, see your family every day, and life is going just swell, you're still probably never going to see _profits_ going to you, precisely because you're not considered an owner. You're a cost. And that deal may work out nicely. A six figure salary is nothing to sneeze at. But you're still not an owner. And in all likelyhood, you will never see past 7 figures.

I suppose I think there might be a model out there that better reflects ownership and the concepts of who earned what. More than anything, I don't believe the owner "earns" all of the profits of a company. The [owner + every last other employee in the organization] "earned" the profits. But while every other employee is more or less capped in their earnings, the owner gets the profit.

I understand the concept: take on a big risk, be rewarded for said risk with big gains. I suppose I just don't think anyone should be rewarded for winning a lottery of circumstance. If I owned a company, I don't think I'd see myself as having "earned" tens of millions of dollars and I don't think I'd be OK with taking home millions while the hundreds of staff beneath me did all of the brute work.

But then again, I've never owned a company. Maybe if I did I'd feel a whole lot differently about the whole thing.

larrys5• 15 years ago

"Almost every industry out there manages to make good profits without their employees having to give up their lives."

Medicine and law being two exceptions.

sethg2• 15 years ago

At the last startup I worked for, the VCs sold the company for a loss, so I am just as well pleased that I took five years’ worth of salary instead of a commensurate portion of their loss.

Then again, my salary was somewhat below market rates, and the VCs would have collected a management fee in proportion to what they invested, so maybe the VCs did come out ahead.

aspensmonster3• 15 years ago

"instead of a commensurate portion"

"commensurate."

...I'm an idiot. Today I learned how to spell commensurate!

InclinedPlane4• 15 years ago

There's a difference between putting in 40 hr work-weeks doing solid work and putting in 80 hr work-weeks giving your entire life over to a project for years at a time. If you aren't compensated for the latter with the ability to retire or move up the salary ladder quite a few steps then you probably got screwed.

brown9-2• 15 years ago

>> What _is_ true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for _you_ to give up _your_ life in order for _him_ to become richer. > Isn't this more or less the case for any profits-go-to-owners business model?

Not necessarily. There are plenty of businesses where the principal owners are working just as hard as the "regular" employees, and don't just sit in on a board meeting once a month.

nupark2• 15 years ago

This might be applicable. A software co-operative:

http://www.plausible.coop/blog/?p=25

The biggest problem with the model is financing. You need capital to build something big, and the easiest way to raise a lot of capital is to sell partial ownership of your company.

almacmillan• 15 years ago

We http://www.atomised.coop are a worker's co-operative too and a startup. There are ways to raise finance in the UK certainly because co-ops can have almost any legal structure. e.g we are a limited company with the ability to issue Class B shares (the class A ones are the worker/owner equity). You also get multi-stakeholder co-ops where equity can be divided between investors, workers, customers even. It's called the 'somerset rules' or more commonly multi-stakeholder co-operatives. See http://somerset.coop/somersetrules A firsthand example I know is a train company startup. They divided equity between investors 25%, workers 50% and consumers 25%. I've always thought co-ops could really marry well with open-source & startups but startups know nothing about coops and coops know little about startups.

drcube• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Share_Ownership_Plan

rbreve2• 15 years ago

the goggles they do nothing

rbreve2• 15 years ago

The color theme make my eyes burn here is a readability link http://www.readability.com/articles/dirqhjff

ars• 15 years ago

So strange - I love the color scheme, so easy to read.

(The human eye is most sensitive, and has highest resolution in green.)

pithic• 15 years ago

To succeed, one must work hard and smart. Overwork is rarely smart and, if done regularly, practically a guarantee of failure.

bl4k2• 15 years ago

wait, does jwz really expect us to believe that he doesn't know who arrington is? I mean, the techcrunch conference afterparty two years ago was at his night club .. and I am pretty sure i saw both of them there.

benatkin• 15 years ago

He didn't imply that. What he did imply is that he underestimated Arrington's level of fame. Merely saying "this guy" doesn't imply not knowing who he is.

As far as the nightclub thing...it could have been just a transaction from jwz's perspective.

mahmud2• 15 years ago

In this instance, identification of the individual VC responsible for this specific instance of The Lie is not important. Leaving him unnamed helps us abstract out the pattern to its most condensed brown residue, so we can recognize it on our feet should walk at night in the park, or frequent certain scene sites.

Also, it's not that jwz doesn't know the dude, it's that jwz just doesn't give a fuck.

[Edit:

Just asked jwz, turns out he really doesn't know the guy.

  Increment jwz-man-crush

https://twitter.com/#!/jwz/status/141359337401626624 ]

bl4k2• 15 years ago

when I re-read it I can see that is it more that he doesn't give a fuck. and thanks for clarifying with him.

tptacek• 15 years ago

I would have been surprised and disappointed if Zawinski knew who Arrington was. Why would he? Zawinski is past the valley tech scene.

cdibona• 15 years ago

I've booked/had people book the DNA and it's not uncommon to go through someone other than Jamie. So, yes, it's possible.

swah• 15 years ago

jwz sells beer for a living now (he said so).

betterlabs4• 15 years ago

I would love to hear PG's comment / viewpoint on this whole issue.

I have done 3 startups so far (1 VC funded, 2 bootstrapped) and I work very hard because I love it BUT I never ever work at the expense of the time with my kids and anyone saying you have to give up your life to find success in the startup world is just misleading in a big way. There are tons of examples of highly successful people across many industries who have made a fortune without giving up their lives. And its wise to look beyond such myths which are made to seem like the "norm" sometimes.

akkartik3• 15 years ago

PG's described startups as 'compressing working life into a few years' (http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

But Arrington and Zawinski aren't talking about founders and their startups. They're talking about working too hard on somebody else's startup. Totally different thing.

betterlabs4• 15 years ago

I was actually referring to PG's views on that issue that Arrington wrote about.

And the whole discussion definitely applies to founder and their startups too, imo. The issues are the same and so are the trade-offs. Would you give you your life for your startup but not for anyone else'?

mountaineer• 15 years ago

I'm sure any investor, including PG, would prefer entrepreneurs to work smarter though, it's not just about hours, but it may take that to succeed.

But, after reading this, I remembered this PG essay from a few years ago.

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four." - http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Also: http://paulgraham.com/really.html

betterlabs4• 15 years ago

Yep, I remember that line.

But I believe it doesn't speak about "giving up your life" to do the startup. There is a big difference, I feel, between "low intensity work" and "working hard and smart" and "working hard and smart and giving up everything else".

And that "giving up your life" has to be explained with examples: cancel your long due family vacation because the a sales VP wants you to go to a customer site without having a solid reason, camp at a customer location in the carribean until you get a PO because thet want you to make it happen (though you know camping there is going to do nothing). Postpone a surgery because your travel schedule doesn't allow it. A lot of these can be clearly unreasonable which is why it sucks to do a blanket statement.

And investors and business owners like smart work but I believe they eventually like hard work also - they just don't want you to work smart and not work more because you worked smart. They want you to work smart and work even more for the time you saved by working smart. I DO NOT want to generalize this but as people building businesses we are all (including myself) are too focused on growing and more of everything. And sometimes we and everyone with us loose a lot of what won't come back - youth, family time and more. I have been guilty of this myself as a founder and I remind myself to refrain from this as much as I can.

Eventually its a personal decision though. Do what you think is right for yourself and learn from your "own" experiences.

moonchrome2• 15 years ago

Yeah VC's have it easy, it's all hookers and cocaine for them...

His advice about "do what you like" is true in general but doesn't really account for the fact that you choose to work for a startup and you choose to accept VC money, with all the ups and downs attached to it. If you can't stand the heat - get out of the kitchen.

ryannielsen• 15 years ago

Not all startups take VC. Not all startups that take VC require insane work schedules.

Arrington's article is misleading and destructive – sleeping two hours a night isn't required for success and often leads to outcomes far removed from success. It's rather depressing that it's commonly believed all successful startups are driven by people with a single-minded focus who have no other lives.

JWZ's post is, on the other hand, quite constructive – do what makes you happy. You don't have to fit the mold to be successful.

Yes, a startup will sometimes command your life but that doesn't mean it needs to always command your life. I know many startups who haven't taken VC and let their employees lead fulfilling lives outside of work. I know companies that have taken VC and still encourage their employees to work sane hours.

Working grueling and exhaustive hours doesn't guarantee success.

moonchrome2• 15 years ago

And I didn't say all startups take VC money, nor did I say that all startups require insane work schedules (that was addressing the VC will work you to the bone). But just because it's not always required, it's always a possibility that you will need to work like that in order to succeed, even in a big corporation things can go very wrong and you end up pulling a bad month (when launching a project in one big company I worked with the integrator went bankrupt and we had to finish the project on our own, IIRC I did 320H that month but got 5x pay check).

In startups chance that you will need to work long hours is so high it's almost a certainty - startups are just like that, disorganized, unpredictable, underfunded and understaffed - for various reasons. You have no way of knowing that you won't need to do 80 hours in one week if something unexpected happens, that's the nature of it, it's a high risk/reward game (and I'm not implying that reward is guaranteed if you work "hard") and anyone entering should know what they are getting them selves in to.

Chirael• 15 years ago

Are there I <3 JWZ shirts yet? :)

mahmud2• 15 years ago

WWJWZD bracelet.

dschobel• 15 years ago

I love that this is the top story on HN. I only wish that PG got as much flack for his startup economics hype piece[1] and proposition to compress a lifetime's worth of work effort into four years.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

9oliYQjP• 15 years ago

I've not seen eye to eye with PG on everything he has written. But this particular essay is one of my favourites of his. PG laid out an upper bound, which he later clarifies:

"If $3 million a year seems high, remember that we're talking about the limit case: the case where you not only have zero leisure time but indeed work so hard that you endanger your health."

And his upper limit for hours worked was 2x that of a corporate employee. Taken literally, this could be 80 hours per week, or 16 hour days. PG is not advocating this lifestyle in his essay. He's saying that it's theoretically possible but at the cost of your good health. Arrington says to hell with your health: quit the whining and work through the pain. This is not an upper bound but in fact an average that he's trying to push.

That's why I despise the Arrington article but don't take issue with PG's.

DeAngeloLampkin• 15 years ago

Overall, I loved the "Wealth" essay. I do wonder though if Paul ever considers that the same thing he says about Bill Gates' success could also be said about his own.

"Bill Gates is a smart, determined, and hardworking man, but you need more than that to make as much money as he has. You also need to be very lucky."

Or perhaps PG thinks his personal success is based purely off his own brilliance with no helpful outside factors needed (i.e. competitor blunders, etc)? :)

itmag3• 15 years ago

I see it as an experiment in thinking about leverage. If you minimized all the corporate office bullshit, leveraged your work to the max, AND worked hard on top of that, how much could you earn? The baseline becomes your work earnings WITH corp-bullshit, poor leverage, and lackluster effort, and then he extrapolates from that.

Leverage analogy: think schwerpunkt in blitzkrieg. If you amass all your tanks on one sector of the front and crush the opposing line there, then you will have more of an impact than if you spread the same force out over a wider area.

tchon2• 15 years ago

I think PG's background as an actual programmer and having a computational paradigm versus Arrington's sophistry is an underlying factor here too.

biafra• 15 years ago

Its only 11.43 hours a day if you work on weekends.

I am not advocating this!

I think if you are passionate about your work and work 8 hours a day (5 days a week) at full capacity you are productive enough. I can work more for one or two weeks if necessary (with the adrenalin boost stemming from a near by deadline) but not for much longer.

10101001014• 15 years ago

Agreed.

Another one who should get some flack is Thiel.

He may just be the worst, suggesting kids should forgo a university education and going so far as to actually debate the "issue" whether an education is "worth it".

For some of these VC to make money, they have no need to see university degrees.

But they have their own interests in mind. And, lo and behold, most of them have university degrees.

sogrady• 15 years ago

I did find it ironic that one of Thiel's major complaints about education was the exclusivity of universities like Harvard given that his solution was a program that admitted a mere 20 would-be entrepreneurs.

jwz is right: be alert to the agendas of those who would influence you.

nostromo• 15 years ago

I think you guys are being unduly cynical. Thiel recently debated this on NPR (http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/past-debates/too-...) and I found him very convincing. He repeatedly talked about the concern of young people leaving college with 200k+ in debt -- which I think is very fair.

mhartl• 15 years ago

I helped vet applications for 20 Under 20 and I'm serving as a mentor for the program, and based on my observations there's nothing cynical about it. As currently structured, the program isn't scalable, but they're just getting started. Let's see what they can do given a few years to get the ball rolling.

tryitnow• 15 years ago

Sorry, I don't understand the link to 20 under 20. My understanding is that it is purely philanthropic. And I'm not sure I've ever heard of Thiel advocating what Arrington is advocating.

And honestly, is a university education not being worth it such an evil idea? Many of the best and brightest are autodidacts. From Ben Franklin to Thomas Edison to Bill Gates. Is it so horrible for Thiel to subsidize self-teachers?

In fact, my guess is that some people actually learn better on their own or outside of a university environment. Thiel is providing an innovative alternative to elite universities. He's very experimental in his philanthropy, so let's just see where this goes before giving him "flack."

wpietri2• 15 years ago

I haven't heard his whole pitch, but the summary version I've heard doesn't seem crazy to me.

There are some fields where what really matters is talent and practical experience, not book learning. A lot of the best techies I know either have no degree or have it in something unrelated. The same is true of entrepreneurs and musicians, and probably other fields.

Consider also the absurdly rising cost of education:

"Median household income has grown by a factor of 6.5 in the past 40 years, but the cost of attending a state college has increased by a factor of 15 for in-state students and 24 for out-of-state students. The cost of attending a private college has increased by a factor of more than 13." -- http://www.economist.com/node/16960438

It's simple economics that if the cost of a good keeps increasing, it eventually won't be worth it for some purposes. It's not crazy to ask whether for certain people it's really worth it now. If your aim is entrepreneurship, you might be better off spending $150k and 4 years on starting businesses and learning on your own rather than giving that to Harvard.

tpatke• 15 years ago

There is a big difference between PG and Arrington: PG states that you should be working for yourself. YC is set up to allow entrepreneurs to make money if they work hard and a big part of that is allowing a company to grow before being required to take VC money - allowing for a better valuation.

Sleeping under your desk with .05% equity? Probably a bad investment.

Sleeping under your desk for 45% equity? Well, roll the dice. At least you will get paid if it works.

tchon2• 15 years ago

Yes, 5 basis points is complete and utter crap. If you're going to work crazy hours, you might as well benefit from it proportionally. Gone are the days in tech when early employees would be rewarded for taking pay cuts in exchange for a higher amount of equity only to be completely diluted by each round of funding and the greediness of the MBA holding business founders.

jwr• 15 years ago

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

palish• 15 years ago

That's not true.

Paul worked very hard to grow Viaweb for several years, and eventually guided Viaweb to a lucrative exit via Yahoo.

Arrington worked very hard to grow TechCrunch for several years, and eventually guided it to a lucrative exit via AOL.

vidarh3• 15 years ago

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 ago).

So he's not a programmer. There are non-programmers that also work hard, you know.

cbs2• 15 years ago

One of us what? Hes just some dude that manged to strike it big and is now a VC.

The most common linking factor I can see between the HN poster and PG is entrepreneurial- and tech-focus. Whats so "one of us" about that? Nothing. Or is it the "hacker" group, that weird banner created when pg massaged a term with a loose meaning and appealing connotation into the something divorced from its original meaning that people now want to identify as?

We're on this website playing in his playground, one built to serve the needs of YC with advertizing, finding talent, and indoctrination. That's it; everything else is ancillary.

EGreg3• 15 years ago

This is the comment I left on Uncrunched:

(PS: if you feel inclined to downvote, cool -- but I would like to know the reason. Maybe you can reply and tell me why you seem to disagree.)

LOL Mike. Our company gets things done without having to live like slaves.

There is a reason http://qbix.com/about has pictures of all of us in nature. It’s subtle but it all fits together with our company’s vision. We want to have fun and enjoy LIVING LIFE as we enjoy creating the tools that improve other people’s lives.

Yes, we work hard. And we create things together. But with the internet, 3G, and Wifi we are able to work from anywhere! This is more than can be said for any other industry, and we are lucky to be around in this time when we can travel and still get things done. Not only that, but the geographical constraints are now loosened. Not too long ago you could only choose among engineers that live nearby. Today you can hire engineers that do great work even if they live halfway around the world, and you can connect over the internet, Skype, and a host of other tools that just work.

We are building more of these tools. We believe in liberating people from their computers and focusing on just living their lives and getting things done. We love freedom. We want it for others, and we want it for ourselves.

It takes a careful system and a focus on process, but it can be done. With the right tools, the right guidelines and habits, we can be productive without sleeping under desks.

After all, you have one life, and work is a part of it. We have a motto: people live lives, companies create products.

walkon• 15 years ago

Nice plug.

EGreg3• 15 years ago

Not really a plug - just proud of what we are doing. Actually from a strictly selfish point of view I'd rather have kept it a secret and not said anything, because the more people realize how much talent is out there without geographical boundaries, the harder it'll be for us to hire. But at the same time we really do like our freedom, including freedom of information, and we want to lead by example.

Think of it this way ... the guys at 37signals always have their own vision and culture that they are pushing. We have the culture of freedom, enjoying life, getting things done, and making smart tools that empower people to get things done better, have control over their data and liberate them from having to waste their time on the computer. We are proud to be a company that is able to take advantage of the latest opportunity that is out there ... to get work done without all the nonsense, and to still have time to enjoy our lives!

suivix2• 15 years ago

I think being able to work from anywhere is actually less liberating, because it means you're always battling internally about whether you should be working or not.

EGreg3• 15 years ago

If you love what you do, then you will be thinking about doing it. In fact, the problem is often that you are thinking about it when you are expected to be having fun - because you're out with people.

That's when you know you love your work.

But anyway -- I mean it when I say: people live lives, companies create products. A person can devote only 10-20 hours and still be productive. If you write documentation in a common framework, and you have a common process for everyone, then the developers have an easier time picking up whether others left off, and working together. In a word: better encapsulation. I think Google had this back in the day with their interchangeable desks/developers :P

gizmo• 15 years ago

- Having a boss is liberating because otherwise you are always battling internally about whether you should be working or not

- Having no money is liberating because otherwise you are always battling internally about whether you should buy something or not

- Being in prison is liberating because otherwise you are always battling internally about what to do with your life

staunch2• 15 years ago

It's the height of ridiculousness for someone who retired, at like age 30 to run a nightclub, after working at a startup to say it's a "con". What kind of terrible "con" turns the victim into a millionaire.

There are far more startup employees that have become rich than founders or investors. Tens or hundreds of thousands of them. Of course they don't get as much money as the founders or investors, but how is that anything other than perfectly fair?

Empirically it does require extremely hard work to make a startup successful. You can't point to any major success like Netscape or Google that didn't involve someone at some point sleeping under a desk. That's really all Arriington is saying, and it's quite obviously correct.

For some people it might be no better than playing the lottery, but for other people their odds are going to be very high. Someone like Bill Gates would have been hugely successful as a McDonald's franchisee or anything else he chose to do.

Just because some people are delusional about their odds doesn't make it a con.

vaksel• 15 years ago

for an employee to get rich at a startup...and by which I mean $1 million cashout(which isn't really all that rich anyways)...the company would need to sell for $100mm...and much more likely, the number is closer to $250mm...since employees tend to get ~ half a percent of equity..and that's early employees...so the number is even lower for those that come in later.

So sure, there are billion dollar companies where employees get millions...but those are rare...almost as rare as the number of people who make millions playing the lottery

InclinedPlane4• 15 years ago

JWZ acknowledges that he got lucky with the "Netscape Startup Lottery" and is trying to tell people that most employees at most startups won't see the same results. Even if they are world-class genius coders. Even if they put in 80 hour work weeks for several years.

JWZ isn't a good example to emulate because he is a rare example. Patio11 is a better example because there are literally thousands more devs in a similar position. Self-employed, doing well, but not retired and not outrageously wealthy.

InclinedPlane4• 15 years ago

For reference: if you earn, say, $70k/year at a startup working 80 hr/week 52 weeks a year you are making the equivalent of $13.50 an hour at an hourly position that paid overtime. Alternately: $25/hr for 51 hr/week with 2 weeks of vacation a year. Hope that equity is worth it!

fpgeek2• 15 years ago

Would it be ridiculous for someone who won a literal (rather than metaphorical) lottery to call lotteries a con? Because they are, whether you win one or not.

staunch2• 15 years ago

No. Lotteries are not cons either. In the US the rules are published on every ticket and are upheld.

Not that I buy the comparison to lotteries. I'd say startups are much closer to poker. Some people have no chance at making a living playing poker -- other people could almost certainly do it if they tried.

I bet Bill Gates could have been a very good professional poker player.

mike_esspe• 15 years ago

What do you care about someone becoming rich due to your work, if you are becoming rich too?

Let's consider two situations:

1) You work X hours, paid Y dollars for that

2) You work 2 * X hours, paid 100 * Y dollars for that, and some VC is paid 1000 * Y dollars.

Should you chose the first?

InclinedPlane4• 15 years ago

The point that JWZ is making is that you are by no means guaranteed getting rich, or anywhere close to getting rich by following the "work your ass off as a startup employee" advice that Arrington seems to be providing. It is a pretty sure-fire way to generation substantial ROI for VCs, but it's not a good strategy for coders. Indeed, overall it is probably a less worthwhile strategy than punching a clock to the barest minimum of requirements to earn a salary and then using the remaining free time to acquire new skills (technical or otherwise) or work on personal projects (like one's own startups).

kamaal10• 15 years ago

Oh, C'mon.

So I'm not supposed to work hard and get rich because as a side effect that some one else also is?

My dad is a cab driver. He really works his life off. Under absolutely dismal financial conditions he and may mom have given their whole lives to bring us out of poverty. They got me and my sister decent education. They did what every poor family in India does. They worked hard, saved money, invested it and got their kids good education so that we could now stand on our own legs.

He still pushes a 12-16 hours schedule everyday. You know what? Compared to most of his cab driver peers we are like 1000x better. He has achieved what none of them have ever or will ever achieved.

He pays a lot of commission to the travel office which gives him rentals. And sure they are getting rich too. He is using them and they are using him. That's how it all works. But he would not exist without them and vice versa.

He can of course sit back at home, he is old too(like he is nearing 65) and tell the travel office is getting rich because of his work so he won't go to work. But, he doesn't do that. He works hard for everything he has every earned.

Of course most of his friends and peers call him merely lucky. And that he is also a fool to be working hard not smart.

I really want people to define smart work. Its like people try to say there is some magical way to produce wealth and value out of nothing and that only smart alecs are capable of that.

quanticle3• 15 years ago

It's not about working hard or getting rich. It's about working until you've put your health in danger. It's about coding until you're hallucinating. It might be necessary. But it's not laudable.

Likewise, with your dad, what's laudable is the result. What's not laudable is the process. I'm sure that your dad would have jumped at the opportunity to make the same amount of money for fewer hours worked every day.

In life, you don't get credit for trying. You get credits for results. Yes, working hard is necessary. It's not sufficient, though. You need a lot of luck to strike it rich like jwz did. That's the point he's trying to make. Sometimes, you work 16, 20 hour days, and you just go home bankrupt because the market just isn't there, the investors aren't willing to believe, and the customers don't give a damn. Then what do you have? You've ruined your health, you've alienated your family, you've isolated yourself for what? A dream. An illusion.

I'm not trying to take anything away from your dad. Those 16 hour days had value. But let's not pretend that there was zero luck involved. What if the travel agency hadn't given him rentals? What if his taxi had broken down and he'd been forced into debt in order to secure repairs? What if he'd come down with diabetes, heart disease, cancer, or any number of ailments that could have ended his career? All those things (and many many more) would have prevented him from being able to provide you with that college education.

So yeah, definitely celebrate hard work. But don't pretend that pure hard work and saving money gives you the ability to stand on your own two legs. Those are the prerequisites, but there's a whole lot of other things that have to go right for everything to turn out well.

kamaal10• 15 years ago

My dad has hypertension. He has a weak digestion(Because of stress). His legs are weak. He wears glasses(Because he battled the glare from vehicles all this life). He also has bad moods all the time(Because of the frustration battling traffic all day).

Yet he doesn't give up. That's what it really boils down to. Diseases are a part of life. You have to learn to live beyond and with them. He was lucky that every time he got an opportunity he used it, which opened up more opportunities. And he worked on those opportunities.

And by the way, No one that truly got rich and sustained his riches for a long time ever did it without working hard. The fact that not every body can work hard. The fact that most consider hard work 'not worth it'. The fact that most don't work hard is what has what has given hardworking people edge throughout history. And makes them a minority.

But I agree, Hard work may not always lead to results. But it increases your chances of success.

I consider my dad a personal hero because he demonstrated what focus and true hard work can achieve over time. Had he settled down for mediocrity like everybody else, he would be nothing more than a cab driver to me.

EDIT: Common folks why would you downvote this? Is not giving up beyond all odds, so bad?

larrys5• 15 years ago

"But let's not pretend that there was zero luck involved"

What in his comment gives you the impression that he is claiming that luck did not play a role?

choffstein• 15 years ago

I'll tread softly here, because obviously this is a sensitive issue to you, as it is family.

To me, working "smarter" has always been about recognizing where the "leverage" is in your business and taking advantage of it.

At the end of the day, there are some businesses that simply don't have an obvious or easy "leverage" point. Lawyers and dentists and doctors can only bill so many hours in the day. They are fundamentally limited in their earning potential by the clock. The "leverage" point becomes a practice, where they build a book of business and take off the top from the billing hours of employees.

A taxi driver has very little "leverage" to speak of.

Software, on the other hand, has an incredible amount of leverage: distribution is cheap; the marginal cost of customer acquisition and maintenance tends to be much, much lower than other businesses; initial capital costs are much lower than other businesses. That's why you get rags-to-riches stories in software more than other places: home-runs are cheaper to swing for.

In the taxi-driver business, it is hard to define "smarter." Points of leverage probably include discovering the optimal locations and times for maximize fares-per-hour. Ultimately, you're bound by the number of hours in the day, and that is a tough business to leverage. When there is no leverage, it is tough to work smarter; often, you have to resort to working harder.

Think about Coca-Cola. What is the core asset? Certainly they have developed a brand, but they protect their formula as trade-secret. Coke could theoretically be run as a pretty small organization, maybe just an IP holding company, and leverage bottling and distribution companies to take advantage of their already existing infrastructure. To me, that is working "smarter." That is what a lot of software companies do. Look at all the "bottlers" and "distributors" that are coming out of the wood-work for software. For a start-up, I can pretty much out-source (from open-source, nonetheless) the majority of my components, IT infrastructure, and IT maintenance. That is leverage. That is working "smarter."

kamaal10• 15 years ago

A cab driver has a leverage too. There are hours in a day(24 hour day) where he can bill his customers double and sometimes even three times. The reason a cab driver doesn't earn much is because he can't really scale his business linearly.

I get your point. And I definitely agree, we enjoy a position where we can use our 'time' non linearly to make money. I guess this is what you call leverage.

But how much 'time'? listen, unless I'm working on a new algorithm or something. These days I'm nothing more than a Henry Ford era factory guy. Eclipse does the auto complete for me. There are libraries and API's that have solved most of my problems. There are forums that have answers to questions I don't know. There are design patters that handle architecture use cases.

I don't write code. These days I assemble logical parameterizable templates from my brain, which translate to syntax on Eclipse, which again gets auto completed. We really are in drap and drop era.

Considering all this, winning is boiling down to productivity not intelligence.

I am helpless, the only way I can win as day to day programmer is to do more work in available time.

larrys5• 15 years ago

"And sure they are getting rich too. He is using them and they are using him. That's how it all works. But he would not exist without them and vice versa."

Your dad understands the "pecking order"and so do you. This is a good trait but not understood by everyone. You're lucky he has instilled this in you. Many people in this country don't understand this unfortunately and have a loser attitude.

larrys5• 15 years ago

Reason for down votes?

tjmc2• 15 years ago

Warren Buffett has said “In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable ‘moats’.” Where the castle is a metaphor for the business and the moat its competitive advantage against competitors. The wider the moat the better.

My definition of “smart work” is work that simultaneously earns income and widens the moat between you and your competitors by extending your skillset in areas of demand.

With every respect for your father’s impressive work-ethic, if you worked as hard as he did to become, say, an expert geophysicist specialising in deep-sea oil extraction, where do you think your income would be at the same point of your life with the same amount of work effort applied? That’s the difference between “hard” and “smart” work.

kamaal10• 15 years ago

My dad's initial investment to afford a car was nothing. He drove some ones else's car before he got himself one.

My initial investment is college education and daily learnings.

In order to make money/profit you need to apply seed investment and then work over it in time. Either way you will end up working. Its the seed investment that makes the difference here.

In order to work in the petrochemical industry, you really need to account for what seed investment got you there. Once that is in place. Its back to your plain old hard work to grow from there.

It impossible to generate value without working for it.

kd12212• 15 years ago

Working smart is getting someone or something else to do your work for you. That's one definition, and in the case of VCs, it's how they work.

VCs don't invest in a company. They invest in a functioning system. They invest in individuals whom they trust to build and maintain a functioning system. The nature of the system is largely irrelevant to them, as long as it produces what they desire: money, prestige among peers, hope, relief from boredom, etc.

Understanding a system is essential to working smart, but even more essential is having the balls to exploit and manipulate the system - to add value to them system and to remove waste and inefficiency from the system. Functioning systems are often highly inert; they resist change. That's why I say you need balls to change it.

Your father sits in a cab all day driving people from point to point. He functions in a transportation system. But what did he do to exploit it? Maybe he didn't have the balls to exploit a system he understood. However, you can bet he hopes that, one day, you will.

kamaal10• 15 years ago

You are talking of a totally tangential point. The point of the debate is about people who don't cheat(that's the short form of exploiting the loop hole in the system).

VC's aren't exploiting the system. They bet their money on stuff which they can loose. How many of such bets turn out to be successful. You work hard on your one start up. Remember they are betting on many start up's at one time.

That risk deserves some reward. Eventually considering the research and decisions they need to take over time to stay alive. VC's need to work hard too.

When they make 100x more than you in an IPO, they are basically getting compensated only as much you because they lost money somewhere else.

They may get 100x more from your start up but remember they are loosing elsewhere. So in principle you both earn the same.

galactus• 15 years ago

Was he working 12-16 hours when you were a kid? So did you use to see him only the weekends?

guelo5• 15 years ago

jwz and Arrington are talking about engineers in Silicon Valley. Those guys are relatively well off and have a lot of opportunities. The point is that they shouldn't be fooled into working hard for no extra gain compared to their other opportunities.

s73v3r5• 15 years ago

"So I'm not supposed to work hard and get rich because as a side effect that some one else also is?"

Way to not read the article. That's not what's being said at all. Nothing wrong with working hard, however, the person that should reap the primary benefit of that hard work should be YOU, not some VC or an employer. Furthermore, hard work does NOT mean spending every waking minute slaving away at something.

qntm2• 15 years ago

Are your father's cab driver peers also working 12-16 hour schedules?

alexwolfe• 15 years ago

Some good advice and wisdom in this post. Getting rich from a startup is a lottery, I've personally worked for many over the last ten years (most fail). What isn't a lottery is your time and how you use it. If you do something that makes you happy every day, you don't need to win the lottery to be successful. Nice article.

codeslush• 15 years ago

I LOVE, absolutely LOVE his home page! http://www.jwz.org/ WELL DONE SIR!

basugasubaku• 15 years ago

It's been like that since like 1999. And there's always been this comment in the source:

barce• 15 years ago

tl;dr: don't get played by Arrington.

mythz• 15 years ago

Massive respect for jwz.org for disregarding popular opinion and dropping truth.

snowwrestler• 15 years ago

It's worth pointing out that while Arrington is a VC now, he also started his own company (TechCrunch), worked very hard to grow it for years, and guided it to a nice exit to AOL. So this is not necessarily a case of "do as I say, not as I do." He was famously hard working when he was growing TechCrunch.

rwmj• 15 years ago

And don't forget the people who worked hard, slept under their desks etc and then got ripped off and ended up with no lottery win at all.

antirez3• 15 years ago

Humans are not designed to:

1) Stay long hours sitted, immobile. It ruins your health.

2) To provide a steady high quality output in creative disciplines (writing code qualifies) for more than a 4/5 hours a day (add to this the time to do breaks, install your updates, check news sites, fix the email client, and you'll reach the 7/8 hours per day figure).

It makes sense in a startup to work hard in crucial weeks, you can sustain that for a few days both from the point of view of your body and your productivity, but making this the rule is just plain silly.

Also, remember that a startup has a small percentage of probabilities of making you rich, so better for you to also enjoy life while working at a startup. Try hard in your working hours (but it is more a matter of doing the right things than the wrong things for a lot of hours), but enjoy life when it's 6 pm.

What's silly is that also VCs are likely to don't really get more return from you by overworking you, but there is nothing than humanity has seen more often than a silly boss that feels more comfortable if you are overworking yourself.

alexandros• 15 years ago

It seems to me that Arrington does not realise that managing coders is not the same as managing journos on a blog. Maybe writers can churn and churn while working miserable hours for years on end. It does not work that way in coding. One hour of coding without thinking carefully can have a large negative contribution to your company's ability to meet its goals, by way of causing bad architectural decisions, bugs, and/or downtime.

dgalling• 15 years ago

I highly doubt writers can work the same way. Anyone doing any type of creative work needs these types of breaks. Similarly, one article published without adequate editing/fact-checking can do wonders to destroy the credibility of a blog...

kristofferR• 15 years ago

This may be slightly off topic, but for solving #1 a standing desk is a great idea. My energy levels have improved dramatically and I've also lost some weight since I got my standing desk.

nik_0_0• 15 years ago

If the human body isn't built for sitting 8 hours a day, I'm damn sure its not made for standing 8 hours a day (not mine at least!)

myspy• 15 years ago

Ars Technica had an headline that standing desks are not as good as many think, but I didn't read it. Nevertheless, work to live, don't live to work.

pelemele2• 15 years ago

If someone has to stay long hours on a regular basis someting is wrong...

http://www.despair.com/incompetence.html

rapind9• 15 years ago

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 to work hard, as his father taught him, etc, and this basically states that my father was being scammed. Doesn't every generation at some point rebel against the previous generation's beliefs? Could it be that the whole work less theme (apparently based on science?) is simply rebellion?

All I know is that I plan to teach my kids that working hard for something is itself a reward. That you can't appreciate anything you didn't work for, and the harder you work for it, the more you appreciate it. I also expect this will help them survive in a hyper competitive global workplace.

Maybe if we consider maintaining physical fitness to be part of our daily work, then I'd be on board with these thoughts. I.e. 4-5 hours at a desk being creative, and 3+ hours of some sort of physical exertion.

antirez3• 15 years ago

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 correlates with the amount of work they do.

I also follow two companies here in Sicily that I built in the past, one has six programmers.

So all the above is my "data source", that is not statistically significant.

I don't really think a programmer working 8 hours is going to be less successful of one working 12 hours per day: it is either good enough to be outstanding with the 8 hours, or will fail even with the 12 hours, since the productivity gained by experience, skills, understanding of the problem is the kind of 10x or 100x gain, while from 8 to 12 hours the difference is little (and, again, not sustainable for long time IMHO).

Startups are built by programmers, so I think the same applies to them as well, mostly.

In other words I could say that the output of a programmer correlates more strongly with the work it did to learn writing code, than the work it does writing actual code.

Another important thing is that having fun is not lost time if you want to build a startup. Recently startups are a lot more about providing an "experience" to the user, and enriching yourself in your free time can be very useful to provide something that people want.

tealtan• 15 years ago

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.

scott_s• 15 years ago

I think you're confusing "hard work" with "working with reckless abandon."

I find I am most consistently productive if I work 8 - 10 hours on the weekdays, and 3 - 5 hours on the weekends. I can sustain this for several months without burnout, despite the fact that I work every day. This is more than an average work-week, but it's also not the crazyness of deadline crunch-times. It leaves enough time for workouts and some socializing. Eventually, though I need a few months where I take at least one day off during the weekends.

dextorious2• 15 years ago

"""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.

danielsoneg2• 15 years ago

I suspect two differences:

First, "working hard" and working the sort of insane, body-destroying hours that Arrington & co are advocating are two different things. It's good to work hard, be diligent, and get things done, but balance is essential. Arrington doesn't agree.

Second, Work for our parents and grandparents involved physical labor in some degree - ours does not. Our work takes a huge toll on the body for what seems so sedentary, and requires (I'd suspect) much more demanding mental processes, which are also extremely draining.

So yes, work hard - as did your father and his father - but don't kill yourself, and don't spend it all in what my doctor calls the Chicken position.

s73v3r5• 15 years ago

"My father taught me to work hard, as his father taught him, etc"

This is a very good lesson to learn. Make sure you take it to heart.

The thing to know, is: WHO are you working hard for? If the answer isn't yourself, then you have the wrong answer. Spending your effort and time working hard for the benefit of someone else is being scammed.

jorkos• 15 years ago

I don't think Mike is writing in the spirit you suggest; he's just arguing that you have to work hard to achieve something great. Is there something wrong with that argument? Of course, VCs want the people they invest in to work hard....does that surprise anyone? No one has to take VC money.....know what you're signing up for.

Joss451• 15 years ago

I've lived through a programmer's career already. Everything was good until age 50 when my body punished me for punishing it for 25 years.

Seven heart surgeries. High blood pressure. Damaged kidneys. Removal of an inner ear (from flying while ill and not getting to a doc in some place or another).

Take care of your body, blokes. It's the only thing keeping your brain intact. The cummulative effect of stress over a number of years is to attempt to kill you.

bigohms2• 15 years ago

Thanks for this

dlikhten• 15 years ago

While reading this post I was thinking of a few funny things about life and money:

Money makes money. An example is Kim Kardasian. What does she produce? Nothing. Does she actually make anything better than others? No. She has money. Using that money she was able to be part of a TV show, which she used as an oportunity to make herself a character people liked, used that to up-sell whatever crap she made, used that to make shittons of cash on her wedding.

How is that relevant?

Well, same happens here. If you have money, you can invest, money that is much needed for business to get off the ground. Now you may argue that "don't get investment money, start small, then make a bigger business when you can affort it" which is actually quite valid. However if that is not what you want then you are basically asking people for money. They made the money, and are reaping the benefits of that money.

So basically you get rich, they get rich. You did the work though. However once you get rich, you can now make the bigger business that you wanted to, this time bootstrapped.

mmaunder• 15 years ago

This argument has been painted as VC's vs employees. You're either one or the other and a VC gets rich and employees do all the work. What about company founders that get rich and work insanely hard?

agentultra• 15 years ago

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."

s73v3r5• 15 years ago

Working hard isn't simply working more hours.

frouaix• 15 years ago

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...

AznHisoka• 15 years ago

Overworking yourself sounds sexy, and glamorous until you experience what it's like for your brain cells to literally attack itself due to not getting enough sleep.

grellas• 15 years ago

"Those who work hard make good" is a profoundly American theme that dates back to Horatio Alger and before - it can hardly be said to originate from a cabal of VCs trying to "put one over" on hapless founders and startup employees in Silicon Valley. No doubt Mr. Arrington adds his peculiarly abrasive touch to the debate (toughen up, don't whine, and let's applaud Zynga for what it did to its employees), but he did something very similar not too long ago in chiding investors who were whining about being in the "middle of a terrible blubble" (http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/24/were-in-the-middle-of-a-ter...). Like it or not, this is his philosophy and outlook about what it takes to play the startup game. It is his expression of ideas and social commentary. One can disagree with it as much as one likes but it is unfair to say that this is nothing more than a con job. It is also unfair to take him to task for quoting from a publicly available source to support his idea of what the experiences of startup employees have been like in Silicon Valley - if the goal is to illustrate such experiences, then what better source to use than a diary whose purpose was precisely to document them. If the author of that diary wants to say, "no, that's not what I meant" in response, that is fine but that doesn't justify an ad hominem attack on the person using it to illustrate ideas he wants to espouse.

My point here is strictly about fair argumentation, not about the merits of the debate. Whether right or wrong on the merits, I think the author takes an unfair shot in the way he makes his points here. We all have ideas and core beliefs, even those who are VCs. We all should be free to express them without being accused of nefarious motives.

sausagefeet• 15 years ago

But it is nefarious. Long hours do not equate to more money. Arrington is pushing a work philosophy that help him, not the people he's directing it at and he's using a big name to do it.

Fliko6• 15 years ago

Everyone is free to express themselves, being accused is just a side effect of expression. Hell, Arrington took a stab at jwz in his response.

jwz's advice is extremely valid, it doesn't matter if it's about VCs or vending machines. You have to work hard, but you also have to work smart and be wary that there is always someone waiting to profit off of what you built, he never said it's always the VC.

nknight2• 15 years ago

> It is also unfair to take him to task for quoting from a publicly available source

Quotes which were already removed from their full context, taken further out of context by Arrington, with a shallow, incomplete understanding of the long-term consequences of the events being recounted.

Arrington has a Bachelor's in economics and a law degree, until 1999 he was a securities lawyer. He was still in law school when jwz was actually doing useful things and wrote those diary entries.

Arrington has never been an engineer of any kind. He has no concept of the kind of stress placed on engineers, little grasp of the work environments he wants people to put up with, and as a VC, has a massive conflict of interest.

Invoking a respected name through excerpts of a document that offered only a narrow, fuzzy window into what jwz went through in order to lure young hackers to an inevitable burnout for a likely reward of zilch is just scummy, and it is in no way unfair to call Arrington on his BS.

studentrob• 15 years ago

Amen brotha! Here's to a world where engineers are lead by engineers who lead by example, and not by VCs with law or business degrees.

kylemathews• 15 years ago

The "American dream" is a perfect example of what jwz is talking about.

The american dream is "designed to help a small predatory class dominate a larger prey class" - http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/11/16/the-evolution-of-the-am...

Weaving myths to manipulate underlings to your advantage is a tradition old as time.

earl3• 15 years ago

This isn't some highschool debate wankery. The arrington/jwz/arrington exchange is exactly as jwz characterized it: Arrington plus vcs in general selling a story to engineers that is pretty damn unlikely (a lottery, in fact) in order to enrich primarily themselves. jwz doesn't stand to benefit from people following his advice, while Arrington certainly does.

Further, the fact that you don't include Arrington giving advice that is quite probably not in the targeted recipients' best interests in order to advance the interests of both himself in particular and vcs in general as a "nefarious motive" is stupid.

nitrogen• 15 years ago

...stupid.

I really don't think name calling is necessary. I mostly try to read HN without reading names, but some people, like grellas, earn a reputation by repeatedly making insightful comments. Plus, I don't think any of us here deserve to have our opinions called "stupid." You've been here a bit longer than I have, so I know I don't have to remind you, but in case others are reading, let's try to be slightly more civil.

As an aside, this is the second post I've made in as many days defending the comments of HN regulars. It almost sounds like I'm trying to appeal to the local "cool kids" for some strange reason, but in reality I just don't want to see some of HN's valuable contributors chased off by lowering the level of discourse when things get tense.

This exchange between Arrington and jwz strikes at the heart of the mythos that drives the HN community, so I realize things can get heated. As a startup founder myself it made me think carefully about some of my goals. Let's not allow that to lower our standards.

bambax• 15 years ago

Very well said. I wanted to comment along those lines but couldn't quite put it into words. As much as I dislike Arrington for being the dick that he is, I don't thing he's trying to "sell a con" or even to tell people to work hard. If anything, he's asking the whiners -- who's sole motivation is (supposedly) money -- to either stop whining or get out of the valley. His point is this: doing a startup is brutal; to survive you have to want building something more than anything, or you will not be able to stand the pain. It's a fair point.

thewisedude• 15 years ago

I think just talking about only hard work being a means to success is a over-simplification of working of this complex world. Working smart as opposed to working hard is also important if you want to benefit financially.

Lets say a kid works hard in his college days and gets to be a dentist or a lawyer or somebody like that. Lets say another kid in similar circumstances chooses not to work that hard or makes a bad judgement and ends up in a not so rewarding area- rank and file job. It is totally fathomable that the dentist kid could end up making twice as much by working half as hard as the rank and file kid for the rest of their lives.

All in all, the idea that working harder will reward you in the future seem fair or karmic. The real world probably is not that simple. I would think there are many other equally important factors like opportunities, luck, judgement etc.

jebblue• 15 years ago

I couldn't stay on the web page for more than three seconds, all black.

neilk• 15 years ago

Please check out erinn's comment, which is as good as the original post if not better:

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-se...

joshontheweb• 15 years ago

From all of these comments it becomes apparent why Arrington doesn't allow comments on his blog ;P

beachgeek• 15 years ago

This has been a great discussion all. Being a tech guy myself, I agree with the majority of you. Its pointless working oneself (to death?) for someone else like we do, especially when the end result isn't even cast in stone.

But every time I think my job sucks, its too hard, my boss sucks etc, I think of this guy. I took this pic in India when they were laying a road near where I live. It was 100F and 100% humidity. The guy in the picture was carrying hot rocks and tar in a metal pan and spreading them across the road:

http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt328/hmbsandman/carrying...

In general, I am thankful and immensely grateful. If you are reading this you should be as well.

someone133• 15 years ago

COMPLETELY unrelated, but I do wonder - is this the most upmodded submission here on HN? I know reddit has the /top/ modifier you can add to links (e.g. http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/top/), but I was unable to find anything similar here.

aaronf• 15 years ago

Working consistent long hours does not mean you're getting more done. I believe RescueTime has data showing the average person at work 8-hours a day is only working 2-4 hours. The people I know who are consistently first in and last out are not getting more done - in fact they're usually doing it to make up for something. One theory on productivity says procrastinators and workaholics have the same core issue - but respond to it in opposite ways.

This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode when George Castanza leaves his car at work so his boss thinks he's always there.

We need to stop measuring productivity by hours worked. Instead, productivity should be about finishing what you set out to do. If that only takes 4 hours, GO HOME. Plan the next day. Get some rest. Your output will be higher, and you'll be healthier and happier.

mncolinlee• 15 years ago

I would argue that some of the best code I've ever written didn't take long to write. If Arrington understood both the physical and mental nature of bug-quashing, he'd have a more nuanced view of the slavish work sessions he's advocating.

Sometimes it makes sense to pull overnighters and sometimes it simply burns a coder out and drives him to poor productivity and an infectious bad attitude. It takes an expert to know the difference.

Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

Related Stories