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Comment by aurareturn | Hacker News Reader

Many founders/bosses often think that their employees are lazy because they don't work as hard as they do. They usually forget that their employees are usually paid a lot less or have magnitudes less equity.

Not everyone owns 15% of the company. I will grind too if I'm paid well enough and the potential reward is worth it.

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Yeah, this is my favorite one, the number of CEOs I’ve had tell me that they were frustrated how little everyone else was putting in compared to them while they’ve had hundreds of times of the return is hilarious.

I was VP Eng of a 40+ person team at a startup, and my workaholic CEO once asked me if it bothered me that other people on the team didn't work as hard as me. My answer was very tactful, but noted that in any decent exit, I would walk away with multiples of some of those people, so it made perfect sense that I'd work harder.

But it is not only about the money. People just have their own lives, interests, and passions. For me, the lack of autonomy when doing my job kills a lot of the motivation.

Yeah all the "10x CEO" types would lose their minds if someone was bossing them around or micromanaging like they tend to.

That and also employees don't have the same power. Employees fundamentally have less autonomy. If you have to work inside someone else's box all the time, you're not going to want to work as hard.

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