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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

Frankly I'm getting tired of this drum HN keeps beating about startups not offering a good work/life balance. Some startups don't, true. Some FAANGs don't either, what's the difference?

I know plenty of startups that have a sane working culture as a key point of differentiation in the job market.

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Agreed, I am 40+ and am a CTO at a startup which has great work/life balance. We pay approximately market (for a normal dev job, not FAANG), haven't had people do overtime in well over a year, are transparent about finances, and have practically zero politics. It is also possible for a startup to be "stable", especially if it's bootstrapped/profitable.

'have practically zero politics' tingles my bs-meter. How would you know how your employees feel about this? There is always politics. Of course not for the ones who cannot be promoted further, but for everyone else. My boss not acknowledging the existence of politics would be a red flag to me.

Politics isn't just about promotion. It's about what kind of work people get to do, whose opinion is respected, etc.

I don't care about getting promoted in my current role (at a small start-up where the eng org is flat), but I'm miserable because there's obviously a clique of people who are "trusted" and take over the technical direction of anything interesting. What's left is basically just implementing their ideas and then having them rewrite it on you or nitpick it in PRs until they practically wrote it.

Well said. I feel your pain.

I have worked in plenty of places where there is little drama. These are usually run by well respected, competent managers who are also transparent. If you always run into office politics, the problem could possibly be you.

By the same token, if you don't notice anyone suffering around you, the problem is probably you.

Three people on a road trip have politics. There are degrees though.

I’ve worked in places with nasty politics. It’s brutal and awful.

In a smaller place with a flatter org, you’re usually going to have less nastiness, for the simple reason that there aren’t any bullshit roles with organizational power. Bullshit attracts assholes.

When small companies suck, it’s usually because the owner is a jerk.

Loose definitions of "startup" means there will be lots of exceptions or talking past each other when one tries to make declarations about the nature of startups.

One popular definition of "startup" (Steve Blank's) basically precludes profitability.

You might work at a small or young company that is not a startup. A "startup" is a specific type of business designed for rapid growth. If there are profits, that means holding cash in a bank offers better returns that re-investing into sales/operations which implies there is no fast growth.

We are small (<$5M ARR) and were indeed re-investing excess cash into hiring/ops, which actually caused significant problems when COVID hit and our revenue dropped.

So I'd call that a startup? It's not like we're not trying to achieve rapid growth, we just haven't found the secret magic yet to turn into a unicorn. Doesn't mean we're not trying.

Maybe its a matter of language.

A typical HN startup is wannable Unicorn get rich quick scheme. Maybe we need a new term for that.

Critical. I have been part of multiple startups that have fantastic work/life balance.

In one case I'd get meetings like "hey, I know you have a kid and all, but we're hitting a deadline soon. Just to let you know next week you're probably gonna have to put in extra hours. But I didn't want to sneak it on you. Let me know if there are any days you can't work extra so I can make sure the other days are covered by someone else." and other times not count my hrs if I work 7.5 hrs or 8.5 hrs in a day.

Startups can be kind. It just has to come from up top.

And I'm not even talking about my current startup which is significantly better.

So yeah. Don't think that startups are all shit. I interview the founders. Are these the people I want to work for, I want to make rich, I believe in.

Love this! Curious, is this a California company or somewhere in flyover country? (I see this style often in Texas companies)

Am I reading that right that you consider 7.5 hrs or 8.5hrs a day to be not very many hours? (Not counting suggests that they might otherwise expect you to do more than that).

I have been at this for a while, reaching mid-40's, and the truth is while there are startups with life balance stories and corporations with unlimited overtime, the stereotypes really apply for the large majority of companies.

The difference is percentages. I am highly confident that if we looked at a large number of high-growth startups and then at the top ~10 paying tech companies and compared the work/life balance, the disparity would be abundantly clear. In other words, you are much more likely to have good work/life balance at a large tech company than at a high-growth startup. Individual examples to the contrary will obviously exist on both sides, but don't negate the reality of what the average employee is likely to see.

I'm an average employee. I am likely to see shitty stuff throughout my career.

Same here. I work at a startup with competitive pay and great work-life balance. I think people are becoming aware that startups should be treated like any other job (unless you're an early employee with significant equity).

In general, the difference is bucket loads of cash.

This article is about work/money balance and specifically money/money balance.

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