Re:European startups need to work as hard as Valley ones – o...
by DenisM on Friday November 20, 2009 @02:03PM
(#953060)
I think there is a popular ideology (perhaps of protestant roots) that makes it "noble" to work long hours, hence why such stories are appealing to readers (and writers). It's a kind of narrative fallacy which people use to explain success without getting into too much detail: "he worked long hours he succeeded, this makes sense to me logically and ethically as those who work visibly hard are truly worthy".
If you want to create a great company it's best to seek proper work/life balance that delivers best outcome over the entire period of the few years, rather than optimize an appealing narrative.
The worst thing you can do it get trapped in the narrative yourself.
Re:European startups need to work as hard as Valley ones – o...
by mahmud on Saturday November 21, 2009 @03:53AM
(#954367)
Startup scenesters tend to confuse work with "features"; the most productive days are actually spent pulling contracts over the phone, not implementing RESTful APIs for exotic handhelds :-)
the vision of the workaholic, always at their desk entrepreneur is in my experience usually propagated by people with little actual operational experience of raw startups. this post from Naval Ravikant sums up what i've learnt about productivity, http://startupboy.com/2005/11/29/the-80-hour-myth/
and on the london vs SV work ethic. my peers in london work just as hard as my peers in SV.