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Comment by run4yourlives | Hacker News Reader

Now is the time for me to focus on spending as much time with my son and family as I can and I can no longer commit to 100 hour weeks at Engine Yard. I also wanted to move to Portland where my folks live so my son can grow up near his grandparents and my wife and I can have trustworthy babysitters so we can have a social live of our own(even if it’s just a little bit;)

This is a man with his head on his shoulders. My only comment is I wish that more people had this level of dedication to their families.

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I don't understand the whole 100 hour week business (unless it's an exaggeration). Even at 7 days per week, that works out to 14 hours a day, or 9am - 11pm. I could pull off those hours for a few days (and sometimes I do), may be a few weeks if really necessary, but no human being can do this consistently and do even remotely creative work. We run a startup and meet fairly aggressive schedules at half the hours. Why could they possibly need to work 100 hour weeks?

Yes, sometimes it's necessary. Yes, sometimes team spirit takes over and spending fourteen hours a day at work feels like fun. Yes, sometimes there's a creative burst and one could easily pull of a fourteen hour session. But I cannot believe someone could consistently put in an honest day's work and pull off those hours for more than a few months.

FWIW, I've done 100 hours a week for several weeks in a row.

I felt pretty productive since I could intermix the kind of work I was doing. 11AM-6PM would be meetings, interviews/recruiting, etc. Dinner break w/ hulu from 6-7. Then program myself for basically a full day (~7PM-2AM).

try being a founder of a ~100 person startup and you will see how weeks quickly become 100 hours. I never meant to say that I did 100 hour weeks every week but I did a lot of 100 hour weeks and definitely not very many 40 hours weeks.

So true! It is so easy to focus on the wrong thing. Family time is precious and priceless no matter whether your code compiles or not.

Yeah for sure, we all have to work and feed our families but we can do so with 40 hours a week and not 100.

Kudos!

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