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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

It is not insane... if you are 24 with no family. Everyone thinks that startups are populated by young, single 20-somethings because those are the people who take risks and disrupt the status quo, when actually, it is because they are the only people who can put up with that lifestyle.

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Even if you're 24 with no family... there are better things to be doing with your life than working 10-14 hour days. Some unsolicited advice: don't wait until your 30's to figure that out.

my background was working fast food, being a day labourer and long periods of unemployment. I knew this from day 1 going into tech. I find people who come from wealthier backgrounds than me tend to over work.

Or that the lifestyle is designed to attract and then wring every last bit of labor from gifted but low-paid and fungible workers.

It's insane if you're 24 too. You're just too dumb to know that you're being had because you've never worked in an adult environment.

I'm 23 and I'd never work more than eight hours a day. I have hobbies, friends, and interests beyond work. I stay at my current job because we respect people's lives.

Couldn't it be both? That is, those are the people who can take risks because they are the only people who can put up with that lifestyle? (Not sure if it's true or more precisely to what extent it's true, in fact I'm pretty sure some startups did well without "that lifestyle", for instance a guy from LinkedIn wrote somewhere how they worked a standard work week; I'm just not seeing the contradiction implied by your "when actually...")

It's completely insane. There's no reason to be a workaholic at any age, and there's no excuse for exploiting your employees.

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