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Comment by codr4life | Hacker News Reader

Why would you work 80 hours per week when a couple of hours a day is enough to get by? Or even encourage that? There's plenty more important things in life than work and funny money, and plenty more important things in work than number of hours spent behind the keyboard.

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Because you know that you go full throttle for 3-5 years and then you have the possibility to retire.

I would sacrifice 5 years of my life in order to get financial freedom for the rest of it.

And then you get run over by a bus.

I guess the alternative is to learn very little, have fun, run up huge debt, because why not, you're going to get run over by a bus tomorrow. But, then you don't. Well, crap.

Go ahead and postpone life then, no one will stop you; life still doesn't give a shit about plans. You should try being close do dying a couple of times, that will align your perspective with reality in no time at all.

Statistically speaking the odds are that in 5 years I'll be 5 years older, not hit by a bus, nor killed by some disease.

I'd love to be 5 years wiser and richer also :)

Would you sacrifice five years of your life if the odds of a financially independent exit was less than 10%? Less than 10% of startups succeed, and that's before breaking that cohort into startups that barely succeed and ones that'll leave you independently wealthy.

If you're being paid $200/hr it doesn't depend on the exit.

Don't know many startup employees making $200/hr

Except for every needle that will give you that is buried in a haystack of failed ventures and empty promises.

Some people are motivated by different things. No rate would get me to 80 hours a week: that's over 11 hours a day, every day which isn't healthy for any length of time. But 60 hours a week at 75% of that rate for a year or a year and a half would for me mean the ability to augment my stock and mostly passive residential real estate investments to the point where I wouldn't need to have an employment derived income. I'd strongly consider it. I'd rather be there in 18 months than 48-60, or never if I worked just enough hours to "get by" as it were.

They might do it for short stints to "get ahead" if their scheduling allows it. If I know I'm going to get that extra time off in the future or I'm getting paid for it (garaunteeing I was compensated for it) I might do it for a week or two to save up for a nice vacation or time off to do my own thing. As a manager or business owner... I'd never encourage it and possibly not allow it. The hours worked beyond 40 in a week often have drastic diminishing returns and increases in mistakes or poor thinking.

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