Why to Not Not Start a Startup
paulgraham.com
paulgraham.com
That was, hands down, the worst thing about my day job. Regardless of the amount of work you have to do or your personal feelings, you will be in the office from early to late because employees at companies like ours are in the office from early to late.
I don't know that "You'll be in the office from early to late because you'll love it so much you don't want to leave" is that wonderful of an improvement on this, incidentally.
My favorite part about being self-employed is that I can say something nobody can say at a big company: "The firm will not benefit from my further presence today. Well then, I'm done. See you tomorrow."
Even worse: You'll be in the office from early to late because even though you don't love it, there's a corporate culture of "isn't this place great?" and you're worried that if you don't stay late people will discover your secret dislike for the work environment.
Never been at such a company, don't plan to ever be at such a company... but I've heard quite a few friends describe their silicon valley jobs that way.
This can clash with cultures in many other parts of the world. In many places, a job is something you do for money, you're not expected to like it, you're just expected to put up with it, go home, and use the money you earn to do the stuff you actually enjoy. Job hopping is discouraged, because it shows you're a disloyal employee and not holding up your end of the bargain. Here, the employer-employee relation is less "you do work for us and we give you money" and more "we're all in this together, and if you're not in this together with us, get your damn ass off the boat".
I say that on average about once or twice a week at Google. (The other days, the firm would benefit from my further presence, and I'm there till late.) Nobody bats an eyelash.
I wonder perhaps if a large part of Google's recruitment and retention advantage is that they get this, and understand that you're responsible for your own productivity and should do whatever it takes (including taking time off) to maintain that. If you want to come in at 1 and work till 10, nobody cares as long as you're getting stuff done in those hours. There've been times where I worked 12 hour days for 2-3 weeks, followed by 6 hour days for the next week after that. The guy who integrated the PacMan doodle was in the office from about 1 PM to 8 AM a couple days before it was scheduled to go live, but then yesterday he came in at about 1 and left after dinner.
I did an internship at Google, so I have only seen one team in action for a small period of time. That said, there were a shocking number of meetings-- daily standups, one-on-one meetings, video conferences with California, weekly team meetings, cross-functionals and a few extra bits of coordination bureaucracy. These were scattered throughout the day in a way that put firm limits on how free of a schedule you can make for yourself.
Also, oftentimes interns don't have a firm grasp on which meetings they can skip and which they really should show up for. There are at least 4 weekly or bi-weekly meetings on my calendar that I rarely go to unless the particular week's topic is relevant to what I'm doing. I always go to meetings that are specifically scheduled with me, and usually go to the daily standups. It takes a while to develop the organizational awareness to make the distinction, though a usually good rule of thumb is that meetings that someone specifically sets up with you should be attended, while meetings that you're invited to simply by virtue of being a member of some group can safely be skipped.
I just quit my summer internship at a technology corporation. I was hired to supposedly work on code but was instead black box testing hardware. It was the most mind numbing and terrible job I have ever had. I have had real jobs before in high school from washing dishes to being a bell hop. I used to think the 9-5 was the holy grail but it really was hell for me. I would much rather work part time doing anything else and pursue things on the side that do that. The point is though is that I don't think the way to realize work sucks for some people is through having a job as waiter. At least for me my first real 9-5 experienced scared me half to a nervous breakdown. The place was devoid of excitement.
After losing most my money and tech skills working on a small business, it's going to take at least another year or two to get anything near the programming skills a start-up would take. And even at that point, how many founders in their young 20s would want a bald guy in his mid-30s for a co-founder, regardless of his drive?
That said, I have little fear of going it alone without funding. Some entrepreneurs featured on Mixergy did just that.
Good luck. Take care.
If anything your age would be a benefit to a co-founder in his 20's -- the startup would be a good balance of experience/youth
A lot of people think we get thousands of applications for each funding cycle. In fact we usually only get several hundred.
I wonder how many applications YC is getting these days, and if the number is now in the thousands.
Which is odd, because I've had a definite impression that the startups we've been funding are getting better. If that's true and we're funding about the same percentage of applicants, then either we're getting better at picking, which is probably too much to hope for, or the applicants are getting better.
Come to think of it, the latter is probably the explanation: the top end of the applicants are getting better, because we're now sufficiently legit that people who wouldn't have applied to YC 5 years ago are willing to. If that's true, it is in fact getting harder to get funded, because even though the percentage we accept is staying roughly constant, there is more competition at the top, where it matters.
Yeah, finding a cofounder who is in "sync" with me would be amazing. If you wanna drop me a line, that'd be great. We need an OKCupid for founders, because I'd put "self-taught hacker", "into customer development" and "reads Hacker News" as mandatories.