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Comment by surfsvammel | Hacker News Reader

I started a company about 10 years ago. We are making money, but not lots. But that was never the point of the enterprise.

Me, and my co-founders, created the company for us to be able to work with great colleagues and to limit the work hours. Our employees, including ourselves, are not allowed to work more than 40h/week. We have parties and trips where we invite all of our friends and family etc. We make sure our employees have 80% of full salary for at least 9 months for parental leave. Work-life balance is core to our values.

Our employee turn-over is basically zero. And if someone leaves we go out to dinner to thank them, keep in touch and they are always welcome back to our events and parties (also to come back to work for us of course).

I understand the idea of going big with a start-up, make tons of money. But there are other goals one can pursue with a start-up that, at least to some, is just as fulfilling.

Great job! You still have control and ownership and might be better off in the long run.

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This is such a breath of fresh air in the tech world. I dream of working for a people over profits org, where value is placed on your compassion and custodianship as a means of getting things done (and enjoying the journey there).

Then go work for a non-profit. There's a lot of e.g. human rights NGOs needing IT people and having a hard time finding them.

I was at a NGO for a while where we interviewed North Korean refugees about execution and burial sites and collected the information in a PostGIS db with QGIS as a frontend and working towards a custom UI plugin for the interview process, and it was very rewarding. Their operations also had a lot of unique security challenges to deal with.

I'm not sure if working for an NGO is necessarily better in terms of culture. It seems to me you can have good or bad culture and management either way, regardless whether the purpose of the organization is making profits or not.

Definitely. However, by and large in NGOs you will work with people who are intrinsically motivated, and not by their paycheck.

From my interaction with people from NGOs, mostly from foreign aid organizations, there seemed to be as many people genuinely trying to make a difference as the ones that are only interested in their own agenda. I would like to think the smaller an organization the easer it is to maintain certain standards and not the other way around.

Getting talked into working late because your boss is persuasive and his bonus is on the line happens all the time here.

Working late because people are dying is a much better justification, but you will burn out just as fast. People who are too earnest about a cause have difficulty pacing themselves. Every org has people who burn the candle at both ends.

I think the values and work/life balance are really great, but it still has to come with a decent paycheck to be great, which NGO’s often seem to lack.

I have friends who have had awful experiences working for NGOs, and eventually ended up burning out.

It can be all the stress of working for a tech company, with 1/3 of the pay. The dynamic that often shows up is that higher-ups try to use employees' intrinsic motivation to guilt them into working longer hours and accepting low pay, "for the greater good".

There are good and bad NGO workplaces, just as there are good and bad private workplaces. But NGOs as a whole are no safe haven.

There's no magic bullet solution to finding a great life by just applying for a job in the right sector. Non profits are not necessarily healthier places to work.

The world as a whole is still trying to work out how to be productive enough to provide for everyone, fairly or reasonably divide up the pie and achieve the vaunted work-life balance.

That's a relatively new concept. In the past, a lot of people were literally slaves or metaphorically "wage slaves." A standard expectation was that the man of the house was the primary breadwinner and he had a wife handling all the quality of life work -- cooking, cleaning, shopping -- so he could put most of his time and energy into the job. In exchange, he got enough income and benefits to support a family.

We are gradually transitioning to a two income couple model in part because people are living longer and having fewer kids. It no longer makes sense to sequester female labor and limit it to women's work. It doesn't make sense for her life, for her marriage or for society.

The transition is proving bumpy.

I work for a non-profit. Yes, they're chill about some things, but it's not lower-stress by any means, and work/life balance is a joke.

I've seen plenty of toxic non-profits that will happily burn you out while paying far below market rate. Bonus: total disillusionment with the mission that excited you in the first place.

Not saying there aren't great NGO roles, but the company being an NGO isn't a good signal that it is a great role.

This is what I aspire to. Thanks for showing this is possible!

It's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially after reading "A company of one". That it's possible to make a good living with friends and not be the next X or Y hypergrowth company.

For some context, I am currently working for one of the hottest startups in the world (not hyperbole, we have the metrics to back it up), and I have been here long enough to remember when we could all fit in a small room.

The first 2 years were a dream, this last year has been pretty terrible, and coincidently, is when we started our crazy rapid growth.

It went from a place where you felt like you were working with your friends, and could have great conversations/humour and learn, to politics, arguments, poorly defined scopes on projects, process for the sake of process, or no process at all, but not knowing whom to ask, and not being empowered enough to sort it out yourself.

I realized, and I think I kind of knew this previously, that my happiest work was when I was working with a small team of smart people who could relate to each other. Basically, going to work with my friends.

I think after the IPO, it will be time to leave and find/start something similar to what you are doing.

The thing about success is that it's addictive. Particularly with the mindset that you seem to have currently. I'm not judging, and I don't know you, so this is just the feeling I get from your post. You seem to be ambitious and on the trajectory for massive success.

It's easy to justify putting in extra hard work now if you tell yourself that the struggle is only temporary. That once this success materializes, you can relax, take it easy and just "work for fun". Some people pull that off.

Ultimately though, we are all human, and one thing humans do is get addicted to the adrenaline. Particularly if we come out having accomplished something after the struggle. Particularly those of us who have this innate drive to push the envelope. You might relax for a little while afterwards and savor the fruits of your labor, but soon you'll get restless. You'll yearn for the feeling of acute focus, that rush of adrenaline and that state of being on top of the world when things come together and you pull off something big.

This is what drives many already accomplished people to continue. It is a self fulfilling prophecy as well, because it takes this sort of drive to get there in the first place, and it's the same drive that prevents your from ever stopping. Take Musk for example. He has generational wealth. He could sit back, put his money in some safe assets and neither him nor the following 10 generations would have to ever work in their life again. Bezos could have long ago retired and just enjoyed his wealth. The thing is, once you have FU$, it all becomes a game. You no longer need the money, but you still want the feeling of success and prove to yourself that you can do well.

You should take care of that drive. Don't let it consume you. It should be a tool, a means to an end, not the thing that defines you wholly.

Thank you for the incredibly insightful comment. It's given me a lot to think about.

If this is Deliveroo ("limey", hottest startups) and you've been there for a few years you don't need to wait for an IPO to enjoy healthy stock?

It's not deliveroo.

What do people with power want? More power.

You are correct, but this is not the whole picture I feel. Yes, people with power still desire more power. But it's the same drive that fueled all the great pioneers and explorers of the world. Very few if any stopped after the first breakthrough and said: "Alright, I can stop now".

I consider this one of the great distinguishing features of the human race. For some people, enough is never enough. Yes, obsession has it's dark side, but without these people, we'd not be where we are today. The human race needed this trait to push the envelope. We needed (and for a while we'll still need) boneheaded bastards who won't take no for an answer.

Sometimes this obsession gets us dictators who ruin the lives of millions, sometimes it gets us breakthroughs that improve the lives of billions.

When reading such comment, I'm glad I decided to stay in Europe. Here you don't need to do anything special to have 40 h work weeks, paid parental leave and other benefits mentioned by the poster.

The fact that it's not normal, but something to praise is very unfortunate description of many peoples reality.

I agree but it's actually a Swedish company so the comment is a bit misleading. Parental leave with 80% salary is paid for by the government up to 1.5 years.

That’s not the complete picture though. The government pay you in parental leave up to a limit. The most anyone can get is more or less about 2900USD/month for full parental leave. All of our employees make more than that limit, most a lot more. We pay them the difference between what they can get from the government insurance policy up to 80% of their normal salary.

We also keep paying for their pension. There we also pay about 80% of what we would otherwise.

Starting something from nothing and running it yourself, this agency, is a reason in itself to start something. I think it shouldn't be understated that many of us start things because we want to, not because we want to become billionaires of have convenient lifestyles.

I don't think many who starts a company stops at 40h though.

I think there is a lot of confirmation bias on these sorts of discussions on places like HN.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the number of companies started as lifestyle businesses, freelancing, etc. far outweigh what we think of as "startups" here. Many of them are very explicitly targeting number of hours - I know a bunch of people who went freelance mostly because they can target 30h/wk that way a lot more easily than in traditional employment.

Freelancing is one thing but a comparing it to owning a company with employees is very different.

I have no numbers but what I've seen from people owning businesses with employees (or even alone) in various fields none are stopping at 40 hours a week. That is in Sweden.

EDIT: Just for fun I googled some and found an article where they had made a poll in a magazine about small business owners. The distribution was:

Less than 30h 7,5% 31-35h 2,3% 36-40h 6,5% 41-45h 10,5% 46-50h 14,9% 51-55h 13,9% 56-60h 15,8% 61-65h 8,0% 66-70h 7,1% 71-75h 3,4% 76-80h 3,9% More than 80h 6,2%

https://www.foretagande.se/nyheter/sa-manga-timmar-jobbar-eg...

> Freelancing is one thing but a comparing it to owning a company with employees is very different.

Yes of course, but I did not mean to do that. I don't know what the relative distribution is, but think HN readership plausibly has a particular view of "starting a company" which is not very reflective of that distribution...

I'm surprised nobody in this thread has called out StarterStory/IndieHackers as a place to read about stories like this!

https://indiehackers.com https://www.starterstory.com/

Thanks for the shoutout! (Starter Story founder)

or https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm

I'm convinced it's possible to create a company that looks and feels like yours and still makes it big. The idea that you can only grow quickly when everybody's being pushed into a burnout feels hopelessly outdated to me.

(and I'm putting my money where my mouth is: here at TalkJS.com we're VC funded and on a steep growth curve, and we also have sane working hours and good benefits etc etc)

Sure, if you have plenty of money flowing in (whether it’s VC funds or paying customers) it’s relatively easy to provide good working conditions and benefits. Is it sustainable though? Investors will push for an exit, and once you get bought it’s out of your control. If the buyer is a publicly traded company, its shareholders will mostly care about short-term profits rather than the conditions you provide for your workers.

The shenanigans and culture drift happen once you need a layer of “middle management”. Their goals are often focused on their own careers rather than the success of the company as a whole.

I agree, but I would expect to that growing fast usually means bringing in lots of people over a short amount of time. I’ve never done something like that, but I imagine keeping the culture of the company might be challenging.

Its very, very, VERY hard to keep such a company culture when you grow company big time.

You would effectively have to have people dedicated simply to this task, with massive managerial powers checking all management decisions and keep reminding all folks to stick to them (I can't imagine any other way). Its not only about things on paper like benefits and working hours, but overall company culture, agility to change and corner cases. If you manage that, kudos to you, but you are rather an exception.

I've seen it first hand - an amazing, startup-like company, growing super fast, and culture suffered.

I’ve worked at a few places where we pushed an agenda of always getting better at our jobs, so that doing things like we’ve done before gets cheaper, and things we couldn’t do before become feasible.

It’s great for some things, but it also gives the devs more time (and moral authority) to think about the flaws in other parts of the organization. It seemed like there was just as much complaining and stressing about things, it was just different things.

I suspect this is why the “good enough” culture of thick-skinned, slightly masochistic people who put up with the same busy work is the de facto standard.

Part of what drew me to software was that you “figure out” how something works, you write a bit of software to manage that task, and move on to the next problem. I amazes me how many people who are capable of automating simple tasks are content to simply repeat them instead.

I would imagine your zero employee turn-over is more about employee selection. Your company won't get the "I'm going to change the world" hustlers, it will get lifestyle employees. The latter can be good of course, but you won't get access to the really relentless innovators who could totally transform your startup/ create value you didn't think was there.

What's the supporting evidence to suggest that's the case?

Well to start, for most of the relentless innovators and world changers, their life is what they work on. Would you disagree with that?

I definitely think that most people who describe themselves that way probably subscribe to the idea that unhealthy working hours are the only way to be innovative.

But this isn't so much evidence that your claim about the OPs employees is true as an attempted definition of "relentless innovators and world changers".

We could equally baselessly argue relentless innovators who are trying to find the next big thing would prefer a sane working environment so that they can have enough of a life to actually pursue their passion.

The really relentless innovators would never work for your startup. They’d have their own.

These responses are common on here, and in my opinion, unhelpful. A conventional Vc funded businesses is supposed to either get big or fail. That is the model. Everyone working on them and everyone investing in them gets that. Advocating for someone to do something completely different by starting a low-growth business is somewhat irrelevant to the conversation.

I’m not so sure. I sometimes meet startups, at meet-ups or conferences. Many that I have spoken to seem to just run their startup according to some kind of start-up template. There is an expected trajectory, just as you said. Maybe that doesn’t apply as much here at HN as many have read stories like this plenty before, like you said. But, I bet many don’t even consider that there are completely different goals one can pursue with a startup.

Maybe some kid who wants to go it alone will read it and realize that being your own boss does not require buying into the whole "start-up" package.

Don't understand why you got downvoted, because what you're saying is indeed the conventional wisdom : you can't get big without getting big fast , with a lot of VC infused money, and work insane hours.

I think the next (current ?) generation is going to question that : values like "durability" and "long term vision" starts to get fashionable again.

The old industries were based on "family businesses" where you would take extreme care before letting someone new have shares of the company, where growing was measured in terms of generations, based on reputation and quality of work, and sustainability. And that gave giants, which lasted for generations.

I think it's getting clearer and clearer that there are alternatives to "pump and IPO" models, and that they may even be preferable for everybody (founders, employees and customers) except VCs who needs quick cash rotation.

Note: maybe what you meant is just "we're talking about VC funded companies, not other types". Still, i think VC will need to take new aspirations into account when looking for next gen companies to fund.

> Still, i think VC will need to take new aspirations into account when looking for next gen companies to fund.

they don’t. it’s not their model. get big or fail is inherent to their model and is what their fund investors want. for long term steady value or other (valid) models the VC customers (LPs) can just invest in index funds.

The entire point of the VC is risk/reward. remove the reward and why would you take on the risk?

I actually think it's important to share that there are other ways.

We tend to follow patterns and being reminded that there is value in alternatives is precious.

I'm sure many founders think the vc funded startup is the only way to create a cool company as their parents thought that a steady office job was the only way to live a comfortable life.

As it turns out the juicy parts of life are where it's less crowded.

> Everyone working on them and everyone investing in them gets that.

I agree with everything you've said but this. I don't think everyone really fully groks this and hence why comments like the above are helpful.

Young impressionable people don't know there are alternatives when all they hear is "startup, startup, startup" being echo'd out of SV.

PS - it's also frowned upon on HN to say what comments are beneficial/relevant. Just use the arrows next time.

Yes! I like your attitude and I think that many companies could use it. I was inspired into thinking along these lines after reading "Let my People Go Surfing" and if I ever start a proper company then I'd love to hold similar values to yours.

Right now I'm working as a consultant, early on I decided that I'm going to donate 1% of my revenue to 1% For The Planet. One other value that I chose to follow was that health > work and having this attitude I visit the gym 3 times a week, no matter how things are at my consultancy.

I hope that I can keep these values as I move to setting up a proper company out of my activity.

I see that your company managed to become the kind of unicorn we all would actually care about. In a system where growth takes precedence over taking care of people and building employee loyalty, something seems desperately wrong

This is something corporations like banking don't fully get (yet) - there is only so much you can achieve with money as reward for work done. Yes if you underpay severely most brilliant people will go elsewhere because mortgages or whatnot. But there is so much more to life than work, and if we spend most of our waking time there, the better and more supportive the environment is, the better for all involved.

Things like parental leave support, work from home in reasonable cases/amount (not fan of 100% remote from receiving side in general but there might be exceptions), more informal approach, management that reasonably listens to its employees and so on. Suddenly, motivation to join and work hard is much better.

I'd question whether a person who values work/life balance, family, empathetic management, etc. would do well on Wall Street.

It might be that people who do best in these kinds of occupations are cutthroat sociopaths obsessed with money and power.

This means that if you want to attract and retain them, you need to offer them money and power.

what i've found working in tech in financial institutions are just more up front and "ruthless" with the reality that you aren't going to have a cushy 10-year type "career" where your output ebbs and flows between, say, 0-20% (new kid, divorce) or 80-100% (new title, new project). obviously one has to be OK with that coming in, but it was made abundantly clear to me that it's not a lifestyle gig.

getting laid off in a finance job typically comes with severance and an understanding that it's not your fault, necessarily, just that the project didn't meet expectations, or the bank had a bad quarter, or whatever else. it was made clear up front that in exchange, you get to work on very interesting stuff, have long (9hour M-F) but reasonable and well-planned days (no on-call stuff typically), and an understanding that you share in the profits of the institution (typically via bonuses instead of equity a la google at one point), so have incentive to keep working hard.

when compared to startup model that i read about on here a lot (work hella hard then get shafted by equity games), it's honestly refreshing to just get the bottom line up front vs. game playing, loyalty/honor manipulation to work uncompensated, etc.

when compared to what i consider a "normal" office job, where you probably work about 4 solidly productive hours per day over the life of your career, it's just more honest about the value of your labor and that it's sort of ridiculous that we have this charade that knowledge workers are consistently doing 8 hours of deep knowledge work every day they are in front of their computer.

If you can afford to give your employees these benefits your profit margins are vastly larger than most software companies.

Are you the sole founder of this software company? If there are/were other founders, do they also carry the title 'Senior Consultant and Partner'? I've yet to see executive or founder leadership at a software company carry a similar title. Not that titles matter, but I'm just a bit confused on your claim of founding the company vs. what I've seen in the industry with respect to titles.

My eyebrows are practically in orbit. If you believe that, you're being fooled. There is plenty of money to give employees these kinds of benefits, especially in a high-margin business like software. We don't see it very often because VC funding invariably comes with certain expectations about fiscal discipline when it comes to rewarding the rank and file, and because owners of successful bootstrapped startups prioritize taking profits over investing back into their people. But the money is there.

> If you can afford to give your employees these benefits your profit margins are vastly larger than most software companies.

the 40h/week, paid leave, etc. are minimums set by law in my home country, so I really doubt that.

Sounds very cool! Something I would like to achieve one day :) Thanks for sharing, good to know there are people with similar values that "made it".

That's a great comment, it's very refreshing to hear someone write about a different reason for starting a business and how beneficial it can be.

Note on terminology. A new company, or new small tech company is not automatically a startup.

http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

>A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.

My company has always been under 20 people. We’ve developed some unique tech and are the industry leader in our sector. We’re 18 1/2 years old, yet everyone still calls us a start up. WE’RE NOT A START UP! We’re a small tech business.

That's the definition that PG uses but I don't think it's common to the world at large.

Usually the difference is between a first stage company and a self sustaining operation. Once revenue is enough to cover costs and the company can essentially run without outside funding it pretty much stops being a startup.

Definition on Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/startup.asp

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