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Comment by a2tech | Hacker News Reader

I know I shouldn't. It may be a terrible thing, but I like to check in at a certain time, work for a predetermined amount of time, and then go home. I work to enjoy the rest of my life, I don't want my work consuming my life. I worked in a startup for a few years, and the way it crept into all the other aspect of my life was disquieting.

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While you may be in the minority on HN your definitely in the majority overall. Different people want/ enjoy different things, no real right or wrong here.

I'd like to question the implication that your life is not affected by work as a normal employee of a big company. Sure, it's most probably not going to be as intense as for a start-up, but that's less because of start-up vs big company, but much more about how committed you are to your work in general. I know lots of people working at big companies who have crazy work-hours and whose social life definitely gets affected by that.

Let's face it, if you want to be successful - start-up or not - you'll have to work your butt off.

It's a balancing act. There are plenty of big companies were you can work normal hours and still be a committed worker.

Spending time with my family and enjoying a few hobbies is my definition of success.

I would go one further: Aiming for the top of the corporate ladder can have a bigger impact on your personal life than doing a startup. For example (from my own experience) I work more hours in my startup but the fact that I get to do it when and where I want it (in the middle of the night sometimes) makes it much less demanding than being away from your family because you're out of town.

Of course, it depends on the type of startup versus the type of business and your ambition level inside the business, but in my case the startup "feels" more relaxed than any business I've been in.

There are different different values of "successful."

Not everyone thinks that being successful means becoming an executive. Many people equate success to being able to pay their bills and have fun away from work. And in most cases, that doesn't mean working your butt off.

There's no shame in wanting to have a life outside work, especially if you have a family to take care of. I think far too many entrepreneurs deceive themselves into thinking 80 hour weeks will pay off so they can be happy later

I think it's less deceiving themselves that that's the likely outcome, and more setting that as a goal and trying not to think about the likelihood of failure.

Many more are probably working the hours because they are enjoying it right now.

That's true, startup work is just too damn enjoyable to quit... However, everything in moderation.

i'd point out that you can be an entrepreneur without working crazy hours. lifestyle businesses are perfectly legitimate, you just probably won't get any of the cashouts that people seem to (somewhat unrealistically) idolize and strive for.

Here's the thing: I don't believe that the second part is true.

I think your chances of getting an enormous cashout are more or less independent of whether you work sixteen-hour days. If you have a great product that people want and the skills to implement it, what's the real difference if you work eighty hours a week instead of forty? Maybe you get the first version written in half (or more likely two thirds) of the time? Big deal.

Sure, there are probably some cases on the margin where speed really matters. But I think that if your product isn't going to take off then working a bit harder won't make it to do, and if your product is going to take off then you can probably get away with eight hour days anyway.

i didn't mean to imply a correlation there between work time and cashing out.

my point was more, you can be an entrepreneur and build a healthy business irrespective of things like raising funds or working 80 hour weeks.

This is true in some cases, but very not true in others. If you have a great product that people want and the skills to implement it, you have a great product that somebody else also has the skills to implement. If they're willing to push theirs on people, they'll take the market. This is especially bad if you're making a product that benefits from a large audience (e.g. anything with social features, things whose production can carry an economy of scale). You could become the Borders to their Amazon.

Sure, as I said there are cases on the margin, and those cases where you just happen to be working against a competitor who just happened to start working on the same problem at roughly the same time are most of 'em. I'm not convinced these sorts of scenarios are all that common, though. Most big success stories involve doing something that nobody else was doing.

According to my numbers derived ex anum I'd say that working twice as hard increases your chance of getting a big payout by... approximately ten percent.

How many big success stories involve people who weren't really working all that hard? Do you really believe that's a common scenario?

Even if they weren't working on it at the same time, as long as somebody's looking when you gain moderate success, you've got a competitor who can use your current work as R&D to catch up — and then they can outpace you if you're giving 30% fueled by pocket change and they're giving 100% with the resources of a millionaire. This might not mean death, but it does mean that falling backward into monumental success is extremely improbable. That's why people say lifestyle businesses are unlikely to yield huge rewards.

What if your software is better architected e:g programmed by people who ruthlessly avoid unnecessary complexity? It may be that a competitor with deep pockets wastes lots on an over-complex or vaguely/fuzzily designed competing product. OTOH, I suppose sadly they've got a lot more to spend on marketing and that is what may kill you.

This is neither here nor there, but I'd love a lifestyle business that could pay me a steady $3k/mo. It would mean I'd be independent enough to do anything I wanted.

I've never worked any other way than as an entrepreneur in one field or another. I'd love to have a chance to try what you describe!

Thanks for saying it.

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