Do other founders also feel the need to work alone sometimes? | Hacker News Reader

Do other founders also feel the need to work alone sometimes?

20 points_13gf35 comments

Hey everyone, as a startup founder, I have an amazing team and co-founder who are all very supportive, but sometimes I just feel like getting away from everyone and working alone. As the CEO, I am responsible for various aspects of the company, including business development, marketing, community building, fund raise, game art, legal stuff, and compliances.

However, even though I sometimes work alone, I do not allow my team to work remotely from wherever they want and require them to come to the office. I am wondering if other startup founders also feel this way and what their thoughts and experiences are on the matter. Do you sometimes feel the need to work alone? If so, how do you manage it while maintaining a productive team environment?

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Hi all,

I didn't carefully proofread my post before publishing it. As a result, it didn't fully convey the context and came off in the wrong way.

I'm a founder who has been struggling mentally lately, but I do my best to support my team. We have a very flexible culture, and I allow my employees to take days off and work remotely when they need to. However, we have some equipment and machines that are only available in the office, so there are times when we have to work from there. (I on the other hand do not have any work with the in-office on ground equipment)

I stand by my rule of compulsory work from the office and will continue to enforce it for all employees and myself, but I definitely let employees take as many days off or work from home days as and when they need. Also I believe that I can strategise better alone, and that the team needs to learn to function better without me sometimes, and I want them to learn how to operate independently without always coming to me for help.

I'm a student founder just starting out, and English is not my first language, and I apologise for any confusion or offence caused by my post.

I hope everyone reads the comment and gets more context.

Thank you

> as a founder I'm a special snowflake who needs me time. Of course when my slaves, I mean employees, ask for the same thing I say no. But hey, it's okay because they are so supportive and wonderful to me, their Founder.

Lol.

>However, even though I sometimes work alone, I do not allow my team to work remotely from wherever they want and require them to come to the office.

What makes you think that you should be able to do it, but they dont? From performance perspective

> However, even though I sometimes work alone, I do not allow my team to work remotely from wherever they want and require them to come to the office.

Red flags with this one. You're a fledgling company and putting others below you from ground zero.

Good luck with that.

Yes. Founder here. I understand the criticism of some here saying this is not unique. However, I'd point to a pattern that I've found personally true having been surrounded by founder-types experientially for decades:

https://www.amazon.com/The-Hypomanic-Edge-John-D-Gartner-aud...

I've found the ability to recognize and self-select for in-office, remote, and hybrid work dynamically at runtime since 1999 to be instrumental in my work from coast to coast.

"Hey Guys, I need to go deep. I'll see you in a couple days."

Followed by a demo 5 days after a napkin sketch of something nascent.

You are either incredibly lacking in self-awareness, you feel absurdly superior relative to your employees, or you are trolling. It is hard to tell which!

> how do you manage it while maintaining a productive team environment

Trust your team. If you trusted them enough to hire them, why would you not trust them to be productive?

As companies grow, CEOs are accountable for all the details you listed, but not responsible for actually doing that work. They are responsible for building a team that can independently handle all those tasks. If you don't have a team that you can trust to work independently then you may have hired the wrong team. Ask yourself what really makes them productive - it is your presence, or their ability to do the work?

Assuming your company is established enough, consider working towards a COO ("integrator") to partner with you in running the business.

More here: https://www.eosworldwide.com/blog/visionaries-and-integrator...

Am going through EOS for my business and look forward getting a bit more out of day to day.

CEO: Work on the business, in the market. COO: Work on the organisation, in the business.

Being a founder/CEO is not that special btw. I think you'd go further in life and business if you don't buy into the idea that your job and skill set is unique and special. (A lot of professions have this subculture, not just founders.)

This is the first time I've seen anyone else mention EOS on HN. I'm an Integrator at a 30-person web design/marketing agency (we began self-implementing EOS in 2019). I've been working here for 8 years and kind of grew into the role.

If this is a direction the OP goes down, then they as Visionary need to be very willing to let go of a lot of things and stop having a hand in everything. That's been the biggest "secret" to our success with it.

It can't really work if the Visionary insists on being the one to continue making decisions about the "in the business" stuff. This does require trust and friction between CEO and COO.

> However, even though I sometimes work alone, I do not allow my team to work remotely from wherever they want and require them to come to the office.

It looks terrible to your employees if you apply a different standard to yourself than you do to them. I think there are a ton of benefits to mandating in-office work. One question to think about is, do you mandate in-office work because of these benefits, or do you do it because you don't trust your employees? If the answer is the latter, why don't you trust them? If the former, maybe it's time to update your work policy to give your employees the same freedom you give yourself.

Yes, I've always needed substantial "alone time". But in none of my businesses (over the last 20 years -- yes, before reasonable videoconferencing) have I ever required my employees to come into the office except occasionally for important meetings. I have office space for those who do, but it's entirely up to their own preference.

That practice has never been an impediment to having a productive team environment.

This has got to be a troll post

Poe's law.

If it's not a troll post, I hope the founder gets a solid dose of reality. I mean, if he doesn't take comments like yours to heart and reflects on the absurdity of his worldview, then the narcissism runs deep in that one.

You're absolutely not alone. This is what Paul Graham's post "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" is about.

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

I have only run remote teams since 2018 or so. I find that most focused work requires being alone not only for me but also for the team members. That said, slackers are a real risk and problem. Some people who would be fine in an office somehow just slack at home. So I understand why you’re in this position - obviously since you’re a founder, you’re not the type of person to slack off at work, and it also makes sense that you are trying to increase productivity by having others work in the office.

That said, it is going to hurt your teams moral if they feel different rules apply to you than them. Just be aware that if you take time off to focus alone, your team is going to expect that as well.

> I do not allow my team to work remotely from wherever they want and require them to come to the office.

Why?

Everyone feels that way, that's why WFH took off when it was given a chance.

> However, even though I sometimes work alone, I do not allow my team to work remotely from wherever they want and require them to come to the office.

how they must love you

Yes. Morning meetings to see where everyone is at vs yesterday, brainstorm any issues, and declare what they're working on. Then go solo all day.

Morning meetings are the worst.

I'd much prefer mid afternoon meetings. I can wake up, get to work, minimal interuptions and then be confident of where I'm at by mid afternoon.

Mid afternoon meetings are terrible for me; I never feel like I can really settle into a difficult task unless I know that I have the option to make it the last thing I'm doing that day. As soon as I have something scheduled between 1 and 4, that day becomes a write-off and I try to fill it with other meetings and smaller, less consequential tasks.

If I could start each day with 2-3 short meetings then have the rest of the day available to get something actionable done, both me and my employer would be much better off.

This is why the team needs to determine their meeting cadence as a team. I'd prefer morning meetings, get them out of the way and let me get to work like the person you replied to.

Different people have different preferences, getting a meeting cadence that works best for the majority of the team is going to result in the best results possible.

Meetings should have a shared condition, as in everyone should either have something to share, or be a reciever of information.

The set of all people in the graph meet, and the topics are handled by largest group getting info and being done with the exchange.

Which also means, yes, half the group can get up mid meeting, and the remainder can fall apart into two seperat meetings.

If it's well run it usually takes less than 10 minutes per pizza team.

Probably not real, but if real: Eurgh.

Everyone has this need. Maybe treat your employees like you want to be treated.

I think it's kind of hilarious and telling that you think you can only get advice from other "founders", as if it's a unique and privileged class of people that mere mortals can't understand. It's not like needing time alone to concentrate is an unprecedented situation. Offices have doors that close, campuses have libraries. What's weird is that you seem to think that the employees at your startup don't have the same needs as you.

Maybe they mean they are founders like the changelings in deep space nine who did actually think they were superior beings and also called themselves founders.

The changlings in DS9 didnt change forms - they meerly pivoted to fulfill an alternative product-market fit that they knew all along was better.

Better that bucket, directly over quarks quaters. Come to quarks, quarks is fun..

Maybe OP should take his laptop and go work at Quark's since Quark and OP have similar management ideologies.

Rules of Acquisition #211: "Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them."

I am going to send one of the employees out to find the fanciest bucket they can for my office right now, where I will display it as a symbol of how we, the founders, are special (new rule - no other buckets allowed in the office).

Part of OP's dilemma seems to be that they feel the need to work alone but don't let their team work alone (i.e. in a secluded environment), so they're trying to reconcile those two things. That seems like a broader problem than just needing some alone time to concentrate.

I bet they pretend to have a “flat” organizational hierarchy too

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