Item — HN Reader

> It's interesting that others in the thread have implied that I'm not spending enough time on my startup and will be out-hustled.

I think this is kind of the point though. It seems that running a successful startup rarely allows enough time to spend with our family.

In other words:

  - Good work/life balance
  - Adequate money for current lifestyle
  - Running your own business
  - Sustained success

Pick three.

If you're saying you've got the first three nailed down, it may be too early to tell if the fourth one will pan out, at which point you have to swap one of the other three in order to sustain the success.

Not saying it's impossible, but it seems very uncommon (at least, I've not seen too many examples of it).

But maybe this is anecdotal. Curious to hear if others know of examples.

1 comments

Consider the possibility that your view of the world is very influenced by your social circles and/or media you consume rather than by facts about the world itself.

It is, in fact, not the case that businessmen can't have families. Most do. This is equally true in tech as it is in the rest of the economy. (Also, relatedly, being a startup founder isn't nearly the most all-consuming job available. It isn't even the most all-consuming job available in tech. We're curiously macho about this, as if 14 hour workdays are a unique point of startup pride and not a very common characteristic of systems designed to acculturate young men into professions via hazing.)

> We're curiously macho about this, as if 14 hour workdays are a unique point of startup pride and not a very common characteristic of systems designed to acculturate young men into professions via hazing.

Curious indeed. I've worked at startups where PagerDuty alerts went off in the middle of the night with false alarms every day for two weeks, and wasn't allowed to fix the alerting system because... well, responding to them shows my dedication. It's very important we all suffer together! Just don't let PagerDuty escalate the issue to your frat brothers, initiate.