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Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

Death march conditions make the most rational sense for exactly the conditions that Paul Graham described:

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast."

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

Death march conditions are not sustainable forever, but I think most of us have had a year or two when we were insanely excited about some project and enjoyed working 60 hour weeks to get it done.

Paul Graham's words suggest the rational case for extremely long hours is when you think you might be able to relax afterwards, perhaps retire early due to the success that you are reaching for.

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The problem is when it doesn't pay off. I'm sure the guys at Heroku think it was a great idea. But look at the 100 other companies that didn't make it.

After your failure, you may be financially behind your peers who did 9 to 6 jobs at traditional tech companies. So you do another and another startup. What was two years of sprinting is now 8 years of it, and at the end the only thing you'll likely have to show is cynicism.

A friend of mine did the expected value math for working at Google vs a startup at typical salaries and bonuses for the two. And for NON-founders you would need to see something like a 75% chance of your employer being acquired or going public in 5 years (there's more to the math, but that was a high level general takeaway).

Being compensated below market rate for sub-founder-level equity is a sucker's game. If you like working at startups (I do), either find one that can pay market rates, or start your own.

I completely agree, but it's also extremely common. A lot of people get lured in by the equity.

But do the math -- 1% equity on a $10M acquisition is $100k. Even 5% on a $20M acquisition is just $1M.

Does anyone have data on how many people made more than $1M on a web start up acquisition or IPO in the past five years?

You need to get market rate, or darn close, or founder-level equity.

You need to get market rate, or darn close, or founder-level equity.

I have done the math, and I agree 100% :)

There is a very important distinction here: Pg's advice applies to situations where your effort is directly coupled to the company value. If you are a salaried employee, then it is a completely different value judgement. When the game or app or gizmo ships on time, and you don't really reap any tangible or intangible reward for that, then what's the point? Figure out your priorities, find someone who can give those to you, and move on.

That assumes that what's being done is creating value. This often isn't the case because of dysfunctional product management / customer development.

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