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Comment by derrekl | Hacker News Reader

I'm a CTO at a YC grad Care Revolutions. There's a lot of comments on what kind of work environment is bad. What do y'all suggest a startup with limited resources do to be an incredible place to work for while also being a highly productive environment? I'm especially interested in suggestions as it relates to your health both physically and mentally!

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I would start by recognizing that the physical and mental health of your employees is also a "limited resource". Many companies, from scrappy and small to profitable and mega-huge abuse their human capital because health and wellness of human capital doesn't show up in a P&L.

And if you feel with your limited resources that you need to push your work environment to an unhealthy point to survive, you'd better be sure that you're doing that only after exerting the same shrewd force to get the unreasonably good pricing from your vendors, squeezing your investors for as much money as they'll give you, cut-throating your competition to the same ethically-questionable level, and red-teaming your model and roadmap to be sure you're not wasting one breath on anything superfluous.

Beyond that, if you have truly arrived at a point where you are asking things of your employees that could jeopardize their physical and mental health, be honest and open with your people about it. Candor goes a long way. And then, identify the exact things that are taking a toll on physical and mental health, and address them one at a time.

For me the answer would be to leave me alone. Think of it like this - every company has some slogan like "be a part of such and such amazing this and that". To me, this is the opposite of the relationship I want. I don't want my life to be part of your company. I want your company to be a medium-sized part of my life. Some of my colleagues might end up being my friends. That's fine. In general though, I expect to give you 8 hours of my life per day and receive money and associated benefits of being an employee. Some colleagues might be friends, but the company is not my friend. I don't want the company to care for me personally or stick its nose in my personal life. My work and my personal life are separate. The best thing you can do is respect my boundaries.

Base your entire company culture around 40 hour work weeks. If you find people are needing to work more than that to get things done in time, it’s a planning/work load problem, and you need to hire more people.

And recognize that any work people do while stressed and tired is probably adding enough back end technical debt that you'll be double paying for those hours without a long term gain in progress.

Give your people flexibility and space. Neither cost much, at least directly. Results-based, not metrics-based. Et cetera

Company I worked for did M/W/F core hours (5 hours) and the rest from home if need be. Then Tuesdays/Thursdays were work from home.

Unreal. Literally the best feeling ever, no stress at all. The job was hard too but that extra degree of control and self direction made a difference.

People are not rats.

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