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Comment by nkozyra | Hacker News Reader

There's a cost of ownership here and it's bigger than most people think. You see the success stories, the dramatizations ...

Very few entrepreneurs are able to let go. At 5 p.m. At 3 a.m. On the weekends. On your wedding day.

It can consume you, particularly if you've tied its success directly to your ego.

Hard for me to not think about the late nights with the laptop. Even after getting married. Even after having a kid. Being tired as hell and not playing with the kid. Not taking the wife on a date in years.

Lot of success stories. Lot of untold cautionary tales.

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There's an enormous opportunity cost. You could be doing somewhere. Yes, that 9 to 5 job at a megacorp sucks. But you are building your 401k. You can turn off after work. If the company has cashflow issues, the worst that could happen is that you might be let go. You are not really on the hook.

You are trading that for the chance to strike gold. Which you might do, but more often than not, you won't. And then you might end up on the very same 9 to 5 job you wanted to avoid in the first place. And retire even later because you could have been building your 401k in that time.

I think this discount the enormous satisfaction that comes with creating your own thing.

9 - 5 working for somebody else can feel a lot longer than 6 - 9 working on your own biz. Especially when you're talking in decades.

And striking gold doesn't always have to be the desired outcome. Simply achieving freedom and autonomy is success.

I've heard it's common for people to accept a lower income to live like this and I can understand why. No need for bullshit meetings and you can do things as you think they should be done.

if you think there’s no bullshit meeting as a founder, think again. think how many meetings you need to do to raise funding, meet with prospects, network. very quickly your ability to do things as you think they should be done diminishes as you hire people who you hopefully trust to do things as they think should be done.

If you are building a B2B VC backed startup. There are many who simply run bootstrapped business making 5 figures a month. See https://www.indiehackers.com/products

One of the big benefits I found of 'doing my own thing' was the ability to pick and choose who to interact with - whether that was a meeting, call, email, etc.

As another commenter said, this is just financial opportunity cost. You can consider it in reverse: imagine the inspirational/motivational opportunity cost incurred by working at a megacorp, when your soul could feel far less deadened by working on a project you have total control of.

Of course, if someone is working on a startup just to get rich, this won't be the case, but I think this isn't that common, or at least isn't in the majority of cases. You only get one chance to exist, and it's infinitesimally short and fleeting; why not spend it doing something that maximizes your enjoyment of it, rather than your financial reward, if it's at all possible to do so?

Sounds like a very expensive lottery ticket

Thanks for sharing, good to put these things in perspective every now and then.

these stories are more common than not too and not exclusive to startups. look at any high level executive at a bank and they’re working 6-9, sacrificing time with their spouse and their kids, to build a career.

i’ve worked with founders who would check slack on their honeymoon, who has their wife begging them not to go in a holiday, and who took a whopping two weeks off (i.e. working from home) to help their wife after their first child was born.

but i also know founders who have found work life balance and have made sure their employees have it too.

There's a reason that faculty have much higher divorce rates than the general population. Throwing yourself into a job is rather personally rewarding but it's not effective at relationships where you are expecting to give up something for the other person.

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