Ask YC: Should Fridays and Saturday nights matter to a young hacker?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81052

by samson • 19 years ago

26 31 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Last night I spent from 10pm to 7am this morning hacking at the school science building.This his slowly now started to become a not so unusual occurence for me since dropping out of college in the middle of the semester to work on my startup project.

I've come to accept this as a new lifestyle and a necessary exchange of time if I'm to be successful in a highly competitive internet startup scene.

Yet I can't help but hear that little man in the back of my head every once in a while saying "your young and your being dumb, you should be out having some fun".

abarrera• 19 years ago

IMHO it's all about the correct balance. If you want to succeed at anything in life you need to balance your leisure and your work. Too much work will consume you as a person, ruin any relationship and get you emotionally unbalanced. Not working and having way too much fun will ruin your economy, your health and your work. Try to have at least a little bit of fun. Sometimes you need to chill out if you want to focus on something. Don't try to focus it as two different things, they are both connected and part of the same cycle. PS: Don't drink too much tonight ;)

marcus• 19 years ago

A part of me wants to scold you that you need to balance your leisure and work, but I totally understand how one can be consumed by his work and vision. I have the same problem :)

But I usually find that a few hours in the "middle" of the work night spent socially with friends or in a club do wonders to my concentration afterwards.

And even more important we need to get our heads out of the fox holes once in a while otherwise we lose a lot of our creativity and very few things are more important in this field.

viergroupie• 19 years ago

I can't speak for you, but I find that working crazy hours is a big waste of time in the long run. My health, happiness and mental soundness all deteriorate due to a screwed up sleep schedule and lack of socialization. Aside from the long-term consequences to body and mind, all this deterioration adversely affects the quality of my work. I spend a lot more time chasing dead ends when my life is out of whack. So take a break, have a drink with friends, maybe even get laid. Your project will thank you later.

jakewolf• 19 years ago

yeah have fun, go out party, meet some partners, and take off some of that insane workload.

gscott• 19 years ago

When you are young you have time so you should go ahead and work away. Don't eat too much fast food or drink too much soda though.

robg• 19 years ago

And exercise 4x a week with good sleep every night. Even better if you work with friends.

drusenko• 19 years ago

it's always been super important for us to take at least one day and night a weekend off, except in special "crunch time" occasions. otherwise, the weeks seem to blur together. we also take our weekends very seriously, as it's a good time to let loose after a hard week of working.

timr• 19 years ago

Rules I wish I had followed when I was 20(-ish):

1) Listen to the little voice. If he wants to be doing something else, so do you. You can only ignore him for so long.

2) When you can't do #1, make sure that you're doing something valuable. Don't squander your precious youthful enthusiasm on non-productive crap.

3) If you're prone to overwork, make your social life a priority. Never turn down a social invitation, unless you have a life-changing reason not to (your computer will be there when you return).

icky• 19 years ago

> 1) Listen to the little voice. If he wants to be doing something else, so do you. You can only ignore him for so long.

Careful; he can get you in trouble. Wear protection. ;-)

ivankirigin• 19 years ago

I see no reason to miss out on two perfectly fine nights to get work done. Of course those nights matter to a hacker.

matth• 19 years ago

All pretty good advice. However, if you find yourself out with friends and almost all you do is think about your project, work on your project. My girlfriend was dragging me out to parties, weddings, her family's house, etc. All I did was think about my project.

We've since separated. Things are working out far better now for my programming schedule. Unfortunately, no more sex.

Socialize, but not for the sake of it. Also, some people are for the late nights, some aren't. Just remember to keep tabs on your health. And I mean that more in the mental sense.

trekker7• 19 years ago

You've got to balance that stuff out dude... if you really only enjoy hacking and don't like hanging out with friends, going to movies, eating out, partying, whatever, then cool. But if you're working long hours just to be competitive, then don't do it! Life is too short to treat it like some sort of war. Have fun while you're young.

Hacking can be a social activity too. Do you have any friends that are programmers that work on hobby programming? Maybe work alongside them.

But I really give props to you for dropping out of college; probably took a lot of balls. Where did you go to school?

samson• 19 years ago

I've always enjoyed hacking since I was 12, and when I'm doing it, it rarely feels like something I have to do. I do it because i want to.

I didn't study computer science in college, I choose to study Philosophy instead. Mainly because in highschool programming courses weren't challenging, and the questions I had my teachers couldn't answer.

Fortunately philosophy has been a pleasant surprise, I've learned alot of new things related and unrelated to hacking. But I knew there was no point in going on when I spent my time in class drawing out concepts and writing algorithms for my project instead of taking notes.

amichail2• 19 years ago

Why are you using university resources for your startup?

rms3• 19 years ago

They have fast internet and an environment conducive to productivity? It's extremely unlikely that the university would come after him for his IP, especially if he is a student and is not spinning off university sanctioned research into a company.

Of course, you're right, he would still be better off staying away from all university resources, depending on his school's tech transfer policy.

amichail2• 19 years ago

He's actually not a student anymore. Using university resources for your startup is a really bad idea!

downer• 19 years ago

If you feel healthy and you're getting enough sleep then there's no problem. Working nights is fine -- the thing that drives people nutty is rotating shifts, e.g. switching between a night and day schedule too often.

It all depends on what you enjoy, and that's the bottom line. Bill Gates wanted to have his own company more than anything else; he wasn't doing it to make money "so he could do what he really wanted". The #1 thing he wanted to do was run his own software company, and you can see that despite becoming a billionaire long ago he didn't stop. Neither did Steve Jobs. If you're doing what you love then you're doing the right thing.

That said, humans need variety, so when you want to do something else, don't make yourself work more. Making yourself work more is only for people who need discipline and aren't putting in a decent number of hours to start, not for people working overtime to work even more. Bill and Steve had a LOT of variety at their jobs and plenty of social functions (including company social functions).

Think of it this way -- you're making a huge investment of your time and energy, but you're going to BLOW IT ALL if you burn out. You'll get like 80% done and then it will just sit there forever and you won't want to look at it.

So, make sure you don't burn out.

It's a bit like overtraining when you work out; except severe burnout isn't like fatigue that gets better in a couple weeks, it's like needing hip replacement.

rapind• 19 years ago

Hard to say. One of those things you just need to figure out for yourself over time.

I do really recommend adding exercise and a non-computer hobby to the mix though. Makes a ton of difference for your well being and happiness.

alaskamiller• 19 years ago

What school do you go to and do they teach writing composition and spelling?

Alex3917• 19 years ago

"What matters is people. Which kinda sucks when you think about it."

But it's true. You make money by making people happy. And "stuff" is only a small percentage of what goes into making people happy. So if all your skills revolve around making stuff, then you have the ability to tackle a very small percentage of what goes into MSPW. A quick glance into any OB text will confirm.

einarvollset• 19 years ago

Po Branson's book. Read.

rms3• 19 years ago

If you're looking for people to have sex with, this is the easiest, cheapest, and most direct way to make it happen.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cas/?query=w4m

kirse• 19 years ago

Where is the sense of humor on here, this was hilarious.

Part of being young is also relaxing and not being so serious all the time. (pro-tip: Laugh a little more often, it melts away the stress)

mattjaynes• 19 years ago

The last two sentences of Warren Buffet's answer are priceless:

Q: What is your career advice?

A: If you want to make a lot of money go to Wall Street. More importantly though, do what you would do for free, having passion for what you do is the most important thing. I love what I do; I'm not even that busy. I got a total of five phone calls all day yesterday and one of them was a wrong number. Ms. B from NFM had passion, that's why she was successful. A few months ago I was talking to another MBA student, a very talented man, about 30 years old from a great school with a great resume. I asked him what he wanted to do for his career, and he replied that he wanted to go into a particular field, but thought he should work for McKinsey for a few years first to add to his resume. To me that's like saving sex for your old age. It makes no sense.

http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/clubs/investment/WarrenB...

JohnN• 19 years ago

For more on this watch some of this talks....this is from 1998 but still so relevant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfuXKpMFUjc

jey• 19 years ago

Buffett is pure awesome. Thanks for the link!

rms3• 19 years ago

Matt, you should submit this -- I would but I don't want to jack your karma.

imsteve• 19 years ago

You should plan breaks into your lifestyle. Friday nights has always been a minimum for me.

johnnygoodman• 19 years ago

When I was starting up my business there were a lot of nights that turned into day that turned into night. Each spring/winter/etc break during college was me sitting in a room with CS students I'd hired coding furiously and batting design ideas back and forth.

From the outside, you could say with a good bit of justification that I needed to go learn how to ski or drink some beer or something. I'd argue though that "getting lost" is one of the rewards of working on a startup project. There's a mix of satisfaction in the sacrifice, the joy of unbridled creation and the camaraderie of taking on something that you may or may not pull off with a lot of people you respect and trust.

These days, I live in a nice part suburbia with my wife, who would feed me every 10 or so hours during those projects. She's getting an MBA and I'm running the business I started, but our pace of life is much more normal.

My advice, having lived on both sides of the fence, and without knowing the specifics of your situation past what you posted, is to grab as hard as you can for that vision you see. You'll learn, grow and stumble into things and people that will greatly enrich your life.

Good luck!

pg• 19 years ago

I think it's a good idea at any age to take some time off and have fun. But you don't have to do it each Friday and Saturday. That custom is just an artifact of people having regular office jobs. It might work better for one person to work 7 days a week but take two hours off each day, or another person to work solidly for two months and then take an entire week off.

andrewfong• 19 years ago

Not necessarily Friday and Saturday nights -- but socializing with other people is important. There are a number of "good for the startup" reasons to do so -- e.g. bouncing ideas off other people, networking with potential VCs / partners / employees, and keeping your sanity.

But in order to get the maximum benefit, you'll want to have at least some social time not oriented around the startup. My co-founder and I have keep our sanity by spending time talking about girls, baseball, and TV shows. Not sure if it would work if we discussed social networking and Javascript.

Ask YC: Should Fridays and Saturday nights matter to a young hacker?

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