startups are hard: part II

Friday, I wrote about Michael Arrington’s Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, and Quit All the Whining:

Today’s labor gets to nibble on organic food, be pampered with acupuncturists, and generally be coddled like no other employees on the planet. And when they get frustrated, or it’s just their time, they go out and start companies of their own, take venture capital or not, and see what they’re made of.

 I ended the post on an open question: Is it really that simple?

It's a nice story: Folks work in the industry for a while, think they can do better than their bosses, and then strike out on their own to do things their way. I believe the picture is a bit more complicated.

Here's why: 

1. Founders who are putting everything they have into a startup are still afraid of being replaced for slowing down enough to breathe.   

In U Can’t Haz Sadz: The Hushed Dangers of Startup Depression, BetaBeat quoted this interaction with a 24 year-old founder:

Sometimes you get run down and depressed because your product is fucking awesome, your team is great, and you can’t stop yourself from working ’round the clock on it because you love it. But, your body rebels against that. Makes you tired unexpectedly, makes small problems inflate. And then you freak out, thinking that one off day is going to set into motion many, many more. So,” she finished. “You keep it inside.” 

But, we asked her, wouldn’t it befit all parties involved to make this an open dialogue? Founders could get the help they need and investors could be satisfied with knowing the full condition of their investment. The idea was roundly rejected, one Gchat ping at a time: 

“No

I don’t even think it would help

I think I’d get replaced”

Is it really necessary to run someone with this much passion until they burn out? What does that do? Who does it help?

I ask, but then I see comments like this:

I cried myself to sleep many nights working for a Fortune 500, I think it builds character. Crying feels good. I wish people would stop denying the emotional side of creating a business. Yeah, I get it — you love it so much you want to tear yourself open so people can see what is inside your soul. Do it! Cry. Get out the stress, and then keep crushing it. You’re leveling up.

Character. Got it.

2. Constantly sprinting isn't just hard. It's unhealthy and bad for production.   

If Arrington can quote JWZ's journal to prove a point, so can I:

I've just noticed that there's still purple ink on the inside of my right wrist spelling the word VOID: the hand-stamp from a concert that I went to last week. I left work, went to the show, and came back to work immediately afterwards. I've been here since.

Allow me to sound a little bit like Mom.

Let's talk about sprints. I'm not talking about a few all-nighters to catch a release. (Though, even in the short term working over 21 hours straight is the equivalent to being legally drunk.) I'm talking about "sprints" that turn into marathons but never slow down. 

The side-effects of going without sleep on a regular basis are a reliable slow news day drum to beat, but there is plenty of data that demonstrates consistently working more than 40 hours a week isn’t just bad for morale. Henry Ford got a lot of flack in his industry for reducing his assembly lines from ten hours to eight hours, but he said the loss in productivity from tired workers wasn’t worth the extra time on the assembly line. In study after study and industry after industry it has been found that the 8-hour work day is best for production: 

A hundred years of industrial research has proven beyond question that exhausted workers create errors that blow schedules, destroy equipment, create cost overruns, erode product quality, and threaten the bottom line. They are a danger to their projects, their managers, their employers, each other, and themselves.

Yikes! 

And that research was with industries like manufacturing that primarily run on physical labor. It's even worse for creatives (i.e. developers). 

3. Hai. There's a recession on. Is leaving for greener pastures really an option?

When Arrington said if you don't like working at a startup, "find a job elsewhere that will cater to your needs," at first, I thought he was being insensitive for assuming that workers could just pick up and get another job, but he has to believe there are other options out there. Otherwise, what one of his commenters said might be true:

Acupuncture and organic foods are not coddling workers, big guy. Coddling workers is giving them some time to themselves so that they can get acupuncture and organic foods on their own time. It doesn’t matter how many Ping-Pong tables you have set up if your employees can’t ever leave the building. Then it’s a prison. A country-club prison, to be sure. But still a prison.

4. When companies as big as Zynga are still called startups, who can't claim to be a startup?


Startups have a lifecycle. In the early stages, the company is small and struggles finding the time to raise funds and support its product, and it makes sense that everyone has to work so hard, but it's not supposed to be like that forever. The traditional end of the startup lifecycle is when the investors leave, and the company is acquired, IPOs, or turns enough of a product to pay off its debts. But what about companies that put off the endgame for years? When does the crunch stop being a necessity and start being an excuse?