Should we talk about the fact that founder Jody Sherman didn't just die?
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blog.launch.co
I think the problem is with the culture of being founder: there is agreement that you can sacrifice almost everything for your work. It is not true. As long as you enjoy what you do, it's ok to work long hours at critical stages of your startup, but it is also ok to take pauses, go to drink with friends, and avoid the pressure in general.
Another thing that always makes me a bit suspicious is that "we are going to change the world". This is a good recipe for pressure. Maybe there is another way to take it, and is simply, I work without too expectations, I try to do my best, but well it's not a drama if this does not work as expected. I'm also worth as an individual, outside my work, outside the business.
Maybe we are building a too aggressive culture and this is the result? I think that "back to technology" should be the motto for the next 10 years.
Yes, I agree. I am really hoping to see a Flight to Substance. I am doubtful, however, because I think the "cool kids" malignancy-- the VC darlings, the investor in-crowd who all collude on terms-- has taken over the organism. I am very optimistic about the long-term future of the technological economy, but I think there's going to be some short-term bleeding and pain before we get there, because nothing good is going to happen until some established players are removed from power and they won't go down without a fight.
The "change the world" bullshit coming from most of these VC darlings is an excuse to underpay and exploit people, especially fresh college kids.
Bill Gates is fucking changing the world. Some build-to-flip IUsedThisToilet app that exists to get some idiot a hiring bonus along with his douchey PM job is not.
Now, none of this applies if we're talking about big business vendor/regulatory lock-in type situations, but that's not the part of the economy I think you're talking about.
So what makes you thnk that the current VC "organism" has "power" and that "nothing good is going to happen" until they are removed? I mean, why can't people just ignore them and go do things separately?
They also compare notes on who they like and who they don't, and if you turn down a term sheet you're likely to have that VC pick up a phone and dry up interest in other VC firms that are supposed to be his competitors.
And if you're right about the Silicon Valley VC crowd, that's a business opportunity for new VCs in that area to set better terms and not collude.
I think there should be a startup renaissance, to bringing quality back to technology. Like the woodworking rule of "measure twice, cut once" instead of the current "measure once, cut twice." or "don't measure and cut as many times as it takes to get the job done" that some seem to have.
When you do a job for quality, you take your time to make sure it is right and there isn't as much pressure. Sure you have a deadline, but if management agrees that more time should be given to do it right the first time, instead of rush it and put stress and pressure on the employee, it might avoid these suicides.
I think the key is to do what you want, and not what society pressures you into doing.
That doesn't make them any easier. In fact, it can make failure (or not big enough success) hit even harder.
Again I am all for achieving great things. I don't think you can put in 100 hours of work a week for several years and still remain healthy. We may call that a mental health problem but the key issue is not mental but social.
It's just like all nighters. Sure, you get more done tonight, but you're useless tomorrow. Trading 3 hours today for 8 hours tomorrow. Bravo! Good job!
Same goes for stuffing too much into a single week.
The real problem is that social context matters and that devoting all one's time towards work for an extended period distorts that context. Coding in isolation (which to be fair is where we all bulk code) also distorts that context.
I usually put in far more than 38 hours a week. The reason I can do this is I work from home around my wife and kids. But I also put in less than 38 hours of heavy-lifting work (the rest is spent in smaller time parcels doing things like financial review, strategic planning, marketing, blogging--- yes I include that since it is part of my marketing--- etc).
To live is to work. But when work is devoid of non-work social context, i.e. where work and home life are separate, then one cannot merely work. This also has the effect of excluding women and all kinds of other problems.
And our society is setup to tell you that luck has nothing to do with it. Our heroes are idolized as self-made people. And if you had only tried hard you actually might have made it. But you didn't. And why not?
Well actually, despite overtones of meritocracy and that failure is ok and you can start over and remake yourself, the true message of our culture is that you either got it or you don't.
Witness the obsession with the young founder. He's got it. Made millions in months. Why can't you? Because you don't got it.
Bingo. But let's talk about what that actually means for a second because I am not sure the root cause is depression or mental illness (I am not even sure that current American definitions of mental illness make sense). The root cause is exactly what you articulated.
When you give up everything else for your work, your work becomes your life. All of your friends are your work colleagues. You can't effectively meet family responsibilities, so your business must be your family. This can work for a time (few weeks here, a month there) and indeed every time I have started a significant project there has been a few weeks where that not only had to be done but was really beneficial to do.
I think one book that every founder should read is Victor Turner's "The Ritual Process" which addresses life and ritual among the Ndembo of Africa, and Turner uses this to discuss questions of liminality and initiation elsewhere. At that initial stage of a start-up, many commonalities can be found. Putting that time in for a few weeks on the part of all founders is important to the gelling of the team. I remember starting the LedgerSMB project, working late at night from my day job, spending very very little family time, and working with another developer who would work with me (programming, meetings discussing things) while his infant son was sleeping in his arms.
I am going through the same thing now, setting up a hosting business with another LedgerSMB developer and nearing the end of that initial "initiatory push." There is nothing wrong with that push. It's vital to give a new project or business form and get things of the ground, and it is vital for the initial team to gel.
But the problem is when that becomes normality, to be sustained indefinitely. At some point, we have to break through that liminal stage and re-integrate with the rest of our society. Otherwise we die inside a little at a time, and it is unsurprising that this physically takes the lives of some founders.
But the collateral damage is real. Going out on a limb financially is celebrated but most stories don't end with a win - just the ones we tell. Most startups fail and a lot of these risk takers we celebrate end up with financial strains for years to come, busted relationships or broken marriages. Anything can derail the startup process. Experienced entrepreneurs are acutely aware of this and if the end comes when you're out on that limb it can be devastating.
I am sure there are many more suicides and countless lives broken that we just don't hear about because they never achieved prominence or success. It's worth pausing a moment to think about that.
To the criticism of Jason's post. He has his haters for whatever reasons, though I find them to be highly unfair - I think it's clear that he genuinely loves startups and will do whatever he can to help the ecosystem succeed. I've met him twice and he's been nothing but generous. I think it's wrong to accuse him of using this for traffic. It's an important point he's making, and he's right nobody was talking about it in this case, for some reason.
I agree on the startup stress but you have to admit that the above quote isn't fair either. College kids attempt suicide at a pretty regular clip - be it from social or institutional pressures. I personally believe that suicidal people are prone and it's not their circumstances so much as it's them.
But you can't separate social context from this, can you? College students, for example, are very much liminal figures. One essentially enter adolescence somewhere around high school and becomes a full adult after graduating college in our society. This extended adolescence is very likely a part of the problem, and it keeps people in this liminal state.
The same problem exists in start-ups. We think of the start-up phase as being sort of an extended rite of passage, which involves insane work schedules, personal sacrifices, and the like and which lasts from founding to IPO or acquisition. But that puts people through the same basic problems just to a greater extent. Again, I have nothing against insane work schedules and personal sacrifices. These can be helpful in this rite of passage process but one has to admit that they are not sustainable, and therefore one goal needs to narrow the scope. I would prefer to see the scope narrowed to be from launch to first customer delivery. Sure, put in 160 hr workweeks between those points, have bunk beds in the break room, or whatever you need to do. An extended hackathon isn't a bad way to look at it. Let everyone live in the office for all I care, but make it a short and reasonable time for this. Don't let it stretch on for five months let alone five years. (In reality two weeks is probably optimal.) Then get back to a normal work week, and running a proper business.
The biggest danger from startups as I see it isn't even the financial loss. That's very bad, don't get me wrong-- $100,000 losses aren't uncommon-- but it isn't the worst thing. The worst thing that comes out of startup failure is the confluence of opportunity cost with the extremely harsh age-grading of VC-istan.
Most industries give you 25 years to build a career, and then 15 more on the plateau before you even start to worry about age discrimination. That's something people start to face in their 60s, not 30s. In VC-istan, you have much less time and losing 2 years to a dogshit startup is catastrophic. The loss of opportunities even between 25 and 30 is a substantial drop. By 35, if you're not retired or an executive (never mind whether you actually want to manage) people start to ask what happened.
VC-istan is a hypocritical culture, because it superficially champions risk and failure, but if you don't have an unbroken stream of successes, you become yesterday's dogshit pretty much immediately. What "we accept failure" means in VC-istan is that people with the political skill to make their failures appear to be someone else's fault can continue their careers uninterrupted, but how is that different from the rest of Corporate America? It's not. VC-istan is just as narcissistic and intolerant of missteps. If you're not VP/Eng by 35 and a Founder by 40, goodbye.
The real calamity you risk in a bad startup is the career damage. You can easily end up in a position well below your level of ability in the next job, and once that happens, you're screwed because most people get bored rapidly and lose motivation when this occurs. I have no idea what happens to the people who fall under their age curve. I hope to never find out.
It's no wonder why people are so depressed. A world in which the aging process starts so prematurely is depressing. It's like modeling, but with uglier people.
The other point to bear in mind is that a bad startup does not mean any particular individual was responsible. I've had a bad startup in my lifetime and went on to have a successful 2nd one, as did 2 of my cofounders there. The original startup was VC funded. 2 of the 3 others were not.
I agree 125%. Everyone who understands business knows that it's a risky world in which good people can make mistakes, or even do everything right and still fail.
My point is that this "we accept failure" attitude in VC-istan is paper-thin. If you're a 35-year-old with a 32-year-old's resume, you're judged to be a permanent loser, and you're competing with people who haven't made mistakes yet.
When VCs say "we invest in people, not ideas" they're full of shit. They invest in resumes. Oh, and if you want to become fundable, you should spend your 20s in finance, not tech, so as to exploit the VCs' "just like me" bias. Dirty secret: most founders are ex-bankers and traders. There's a reason for that.
Many VCs respect traction and revenue though, so going on ideas alone is not the only way.
As for the part about most founders being ex-bankers and traders part, that's not my experience, at least. Nor does it seem to be true of most of the tech founders I read about, although alot of them certainly do bring in financial firepower as their companies grow.
If not, I think my opinion of SV just went down yet another notch...
It's not explicit ageism so much as brutal and unrealistic age-grading that doesn't allow for career mistakes. If you're 40 and an executive, no one looks askance at you, but if you're 40 and still a full-time programmer, you're judged to be a loser unless you can prove that you're a top-1% engineer (which is miserable because most of the people you have to prove yourself to are not even top 20 percenters.)
My shortest job ever (3.5 months) was a company where I was brought into a management role and my responsibility was to generate paper that would be used to get rid of some "old" (late 20s to 40s) engineers. I was to be the 28-year-old douche who fired the old-timers, because the 25-year-old douche they hired 3 months earlier (now a full-blown manager, last I heard) to do it didn't want to get his name dirty.
Being asked to perjure myself and disparage people whose work I knew nothing about (but whom I liked personally) ended that job quickly.
I tend to think of this age discrimination as something where both classes are victims. Older programmers start losing opportunities, but younger programmers are attractive precisely because they're easier to take advantage of. Both young and old lose in this.
Outside of VC-istan, the idea that you face inexorable career decline in your 50s would seem bizarre, brutal, and unreasonable.
Sad to say, as someone who just recently passed 40 and is definitely feeling the agism of Silicon Valley up close and personal.
Jody Sherman - who committed suicide after all - was under the increased pressure of knowing if he doesn't make THIS one a hit, he probably won't be given another chance. That is part of the whole stress, and the problems related to it, that are in question in this thread.
I don't claim any personal experience forming a startup but I've never heard anyone complain of adverse effects of a failed startup on their professional careers. The skills that you develop in the mere act of trying are always touted as a consolation prize for a startup that fails. Within reason[1], these skills are presumably valuable in themselves and would make for good additions on a CV/resume. Do you have any examples of anyone hurting their career from a failed startup?
[1] Obviously, claiming failure of a startup trying to market perpetual motion machines would probably not be wise.
It also doesn't matter if something in life derails you from the game for a few years. I have the situation where the first several years of the life of my special needs child required a different approach to things. Am I any worse at doing startups than 5 years ago. Hell know, I am more experienced than ever. I've done startups for over a decade. I have had some real successes. No home runs (the one exit I got was small 7 figures and the acquirer tanked shortly afterwards), but I can show a track record of knowing what I'm doing.
But I'm now 41.
Given that the route to startup success now seems to go through angels, unless you are a superstar who can go straight to a big Series A with a VC. Many angels - not all - are young and made their money being in early in someone else's startup. Their comfort leve is investing in younger and less experienced people.
VCs themselves are looking to find Zuckerberg cos they missed him first time around.
No point complaining. It's the reality I live in. Just means I have to bootstrap longer and find revenues earlier. I am hoping this just means I build a stronger company. Getting funding to grow is never easy. It's not supposed to be, but the system is broken when it completely discounts experience in favor of youth and an ability of strings enabling you to work 100-hour weeks living on Ramen.
So if you take someone like me, add 15 years of badassness (to age 44) but somehow fuck up that person's career on paper so he's stuck in junior-level jobs, you have someone who's a complete mess: an incorrigible overperformer.
I think that once you're 1.5-2.0 sigma, in capability, above the social position that's available to you, your goose is cooked because it's hard to condescend in the right way and, once the discrepancy is vast enough, it becomes an impossible task.
I think that software is a great field for these talented individuals. The necessary tools(other than luck) to produce profitable software products are: 1)talent, 2)experience, 3)a powerful enough computer to develop your software, and 4)an economically feasible way to distribute your software.
It seems like your "1.5-2.0 sigma, in capacity" individuals possess 1) by definition. 4) is ubiquitous now that the internet and payment processing are cheap and ubiquitous. 2) seems achievable for anyone who has 1). 3) is affordable to most interns I know in the software industry!
That said, I agree with your observations(in this and other comments) in reference to corporate structure and social positions and managers and etc. Managers shouldn't be managing their underlings, they should be managing away all of the bullshit that makes their underlings less successful.
My experience is that unlike in finance, a lot of older guys in tech are unfortunately out of date.
I'm in my 30s, and it's taken a ton of time/effort for me to even keep up with tech in my area, and I'm hopefully doing a bit better than treading water here. I'm not sure that too many people would want to do that over a 20-30 period, particularly since most tech employers don't encourage their employees to learn new skills.
I see a lot of "You know how to do X, so do more of that..." type of stuff. Tech employees need to develop their own learning regimen outside of work to keep up to date.
Only the paranoid survive. Always be paranoid that you're out of date. Never stop learning.
They are and they should be. The problem though is that rites of passage are, well, rites of passage. You go from one social state to another.
The confusion I think is in making the liminal state in that rite the object of the passage. It's a paradoxical place to be, being at once both very lonely, and filled with the bonds with the initiation brothers and sisters.
I'm a well-paid white-collar professional and I'd still find the financial burden of between $150 to $250 a week or more hard to swallow. Seriously, who has an extra $600/month lying around? And that's a conservative cost - heaven help you if your insurance isn't up to snuff or if you need meds. Not to mention the extra time out of one's day, because most therapists will not do house calls. How much does an hour of your time cost? How much more that of an entrepreneur?
Let's talk social acceptability: how many people want to invest in a person (which is really what entrepreneurship is all about) who is seeing a therapist? How many people want to have relationships with those they know have mental health issues?
4) incomplete. There is inadequate (and declining!) consideration to social context in the question of mental health.
For healthy people, but particularly people genetically susceptible to stress-related disorders, startup work can trigger full-blown depression and bi-polar manic/depressive cycles. That's just part of the job, and you need to be prepared for it and take care of yourself.
IMO, successful founders are the ones that successfully cope with the inevitable manic/depressive cycles. Self-awareness of our limitations, and good medication are life-savers. Once you start testing out different medication options, prepare to spend up to a year finding a combination that works to help keep you stable through the most stressful and depressed times. Don't give up hope. Ever.
The next push is to replicate the more positive result of environment enrichment, which has been shown in mice but not people. Basically, environment enrichment has been shown to help facilitate LTP (long-term potentiation — an extreme period of neurogenosis) and makes the hippocampus less prone to stress-induced atrophy.
I've personally been a few very high stress work environments, but I use this knowledge to help convince myself to relax productively.
Last year the [U.S.] Army's vice-chief of staff urged psychiatrists to change the term to "post-traumatic stress injury." Apparently, too many troops come home with PTSI but refuse to seek help. And as a result, some portion of them end up taking their own lives. The Army's hope is that renaming the phenomenon as an "injury" will reduce the fear of being stigmatized [0].
(Apparently some psychiatrists have rejected the idea of changing the name, because heaven forbid that they should alter their sacred naming convention for no better reason than that it might help some people.)
[0] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/05/key-psychiatric-...
And so too is the daily stress level for most startup founders... There is a general high stress level involved in the day to day running of a business (particularly if you don't have prior experience doing it), but sometimes horrible things can happen in a business that make stress levels go through the roof.
I can't prove it, but I don't think it's too far off to say that the stress reaction founders experience at the really difficult points of their startup experience IS actually comparable to the stress reaction experienced by soldiers witnessing a horrible atrocity.
Being betrayed by a co-founder or investor. Having key employees quit. Lawsuits. Running out of cash.
Why is this accepted, considered common knowledge?
It doesn't have to be this way. Not at all. The vast majority of crazy stress related to "starting a company" is self-inflicted, through poor choices, poor preparation, and personality issues, like grandiosity.
Hey, that sounds like the reasons we go to war too!
Actually getting your job done and being a martyr are two different things, and you need to decide which you want. If you want the former, then when five p.m. comes around, stand up and walk away from the computer. Your work will still be waiting for you tomorrow either way, but this way you'll be fit to do it.
This stuff is sad. And it makes me think that true startup founders aren't doing it right. If your startup is so central to your life experiences that without it, life isn't worth living, then you have a problem, and you should seek professional help.
Making this worse is the culture of startup founders gloating about how hard they work and how much of a mental toll it takes on them (and those around them).
Work smarter, not harder.
The same VCs that laud founders also push them to these extremes while claiming to support balance. I know few founders who haven't experienced that.
It's just the reality of choosing this career path, which some of us old enough to know better, still choose - for whatever our reasons.
This is why one should be skeptical when dealing with the investor side of ht equation. They will talk a good game, about their love for entrepreneurs, but what they love is those who make them money. They don't really care about those left burnt out. Similarly the media which fetishizes startup success/failure and creates the false narrative, from the safety of a paycheck and never having put it all on the line.
[Insert obligatory MAN IN TH ARENA quotes here..]
I think of the analogy with head injuries in the NFL. They're the cost of doing business if you want to exceed, and look at what happened to Alex Smith when he took a break to recover from a concussion. Benched. Replaced. Now out on his ear.
So I agree with you, I want to get there. Just don't know how to get there from here. Make sense?
I'm also not one that values balance. I'm more concerned about failing and being left without a paddle than working 24/7 and missing a personal life.
Buuuuut I think this is one of those situations where cause/effect is a little muddied. As a founder you push yourself to an extreme.
However when there's a world where the investors can place their money where they like
...and they fetishize and laud the founders who work to extremes
...where the stories of success involve near bankruptcies, second mortgages, maxed out credit cards, relationship difficulties and these things are seen as a mark of effort
...and where they pattern match to rather crazy degrees to cut through the stupid numbers of pitches they have to mine through to find a winner...
then what seems to happen is that founders internalize that if you aren't making those huge sacricfices you just cannot compete.
It'd be like the Tour De France, or steroids-era baseball. So long as the rewards are going to those who cheat and risk their lives with dangerous drugs, there's a perverse incentive for even elite athletes to cheat and take the same risks. Is it a choice? Sure. But it's sort of the only choice.
Doesn't make much sense to sink a lot of money into a team and then have a bunch of 20-somethings who struggle with the reality of startup life.
And the cynic in me says the trick is not to sink a lot of money in eg YC only funds a team for a few months. VC's etc can wait to see who survives in the 'sink or swim' game and the follow-on accordingly.
There has to be measurable differences in the ability to make decisions when you have a well-balanced life than if you're laser-focused on your company for years.
Even if that means I'd be working for a startup that grows slower, it's more controlled, intelligent growth. Growing smarter, not faster, if you will.
Obviously people are going to disagree with this, and that's their thing, but the culture of giving up everything for the off-chance of succeeding at a startup and then having no clue what to do after you've failed... has to stop. Or it'll just stop naturally when all the startup founders have given up on life (which is what we should try to avoid).
Whether or not this is the way to do that, I do not know.
I'm afraid the terms "inspired" and "encouraged" don't properly convey the mechanism of "suicide waves". I'm still having a hard time describing it, but I think seeing suicides from people in a similar situation to you almost reminds you that suicide is an option at your disposal
Really?
>>>I think seeing suicides from people in a similar situation to you almost reminds you that suicide is an option at your disposal
Seems like a pretty damn good comment. Make it a top level on the next suicide thread, maybe it will help someone think more rationally about WHY they are suddenly looking at suicide as an option.
I think either way, public or (relatively) private, similar people in a bad mental place are going to hear about this.
Get up early, go home at a reasonable hour (5 or 6pm) and leave your computer at work. Read a book, go out with friends, have a social life when you have the energy.
Do not sacrifice your health for extended periods of time -- it's not worth your mental, physical, and social health to get a bunch of money.
In my case I developed schzioaffective disorder, and ended up in a hospital and short-term disability. After that I was fired after having a panic attack. When others discovered I was mentally ill they bullied and harassed me. Yes adult bullying, and harassing, and adult social kliqs and all that exist. It is not just teenagers who are abused by bullies but adults as well.
In your startup you have to have a way to treat people who develop a mental illness and find a way to get them therapy and medication to get better and accommodate them and support them. You should not consider them of less value and demote them and cut their salary, you should not fire them, or consider it a weakness or personality flaw.
The way classical management treats the mentally ill, it is no wonder that suicides are up, and that some became workplace shooters, and many others just go on disability or become homeless or end up in an endless cycle of jails and mental hospitals. You need to have management deal with mental illnesses better than it currently does and it can even effect the CEO of your business as well.
It would do you well to hire some people with psychology, and sociology skills that can work with therapy that any employee can go to for help. You also need people who can watch out for warning signs as well. This should be a function of your HR department and your EAP (Employee Assistance Program) with the state or some other government agency.
Yes I've been suicidal in the past, yes I had friends kill themselves over issues of not finding work, stress from the job, and other stuff. I am a member of Generation-X the suicide generation and in my early 40's. It is a miracle that I am still alive, but since I am mentally ill no startup or community wants me. Being excluded can lead to suicidal thoughts as well you know.
Maybe this was a long time coming* for both Aaron and Jody, for completely unrelated reasons, and perhaps the close timing is "coincidental" in that we are all subjected to some of the same larger trends, no matter who we are.
* I do not necessarily mean years. I am more suggesting weeks, in other words maybe they both decided Christmas was not the time to do this to other people.
But the slow buildup of damage due to the everyday smashing of your head against one brick wall or another, is both hard to measure, and difficult to communicate to people outside the startup bubble world. And even if you do get some sympathy, inevitably they say something like "you're so smart and talented, you can get a job anywhere and live a normal, relaxed life!" They're trying to help, but to your ears it just sounds like "PLEASE, QUIT NOW BEFORE YOU FAIL AND ALL YOUR DREAMS COME CRASHING DOWN AND YOU FALL APART IN FRONT OF EVERYONE WHO LOVES AND ADMIRES YOU!" and it has the paradoxical effect of making you even more depressed.
Just saying.
The argument that discussing the circumstances of Jody's death is necessary because there is a systemic issue of founders killing themselves is outrageous and an insult to the reader's intelligence. Is there any evidence at all that founders are more likely to kill themselves than, say, the unemployed or indeed any other vocational group? Sure, being a founder is stressful but then so are many other vocations in life...
http://www.lvrj.com/business/jody-sherman-ecomom-founder-and... -- "The Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner confirmed that Sherman, Ecomom's chairman and CEO, died early Monday morning. It was ruled a suicide."
First of all, what family and friends want is not the sole factor in what should be publicly discussed. If I die because I am drunk behind the wheel tomorrow, I bet none of my loved ones would want to focus on that aspect of my passing, and yet I think a case could be made that it is a legitimate topic of public concern.
Of course what Jody did was a private decision...and yet that is the problem the OP is alluding to. From all reports, Jody was a wonderful engaging person with a lot to live for. And yet he killed himself? If there is something about the tech world that causes such wonderful people to be untreated and lost, then is is a topic that should be considered publicly, and not hushed on the grounds of "bad taste"
My take on this blog entry is that the writer wants constructive dialogue. I'm personally fine with that. Suicide is a touchy subject and I understand some people aren't comfortable discussing it. But I think your accusations against the author are unreasonable.
The lack of details didn't take away from the message, in most cases. For an example of this, see Mark Suster's two posts. I think both of his posts stand alone.
So, is genius linked with craziness? Is this why we aren't all geniuses? Is mankind only so smart because if we get any smarter, we cease to function correctly? Maybe it's just not evolutionarily advantageous to be smarter than we are; it makes us mopey, and we end up cutting our ears off when we're trying to woo girls, which rarely results in offspring.
"Should We Talk about the Fact That Jody Sherman Didn't Just Die, But That He Killed Himself?"
I first thought it was about someone who hadn't died. Then I started reading the article and thought it was about someone with the same name. THEN I realized what I was reading.
Grandiosity is a problem in the startup space. Grandiosity can be a sign of personality disorders… or, if you ask me, it can be a sign of hanging out with people who exhibit grandiosity, tell you it's what you have to have to achieve what you want, who laud you for having it, and who mysteriously aren't there to help you when you fall on your ass. In fact, who tear you up when you do.
Yeah, it sounds like high school, doesn't it? Only the stakes are a lot higher.
Every time I hear somebody say they are going to "change the world," I cringe. I imagine those people as some combination of arrogant fucks (pardon my english) and/or depression waiting to happen.
Please, please be reasonable. If you want to change the world, start by volunteering at a soup kitchen. Don't expect your startup to "change the world." Don't think you have to, to achieve your dreams and help people, either. Don't talk yourself up. If you're insecure, let yourself be insecure, don't slap a layer of grandiosity and self-aggrandizement on top.
Please, don't be somebody to other people who you aren't… the more you pretend to be confident to others, while being insecure inside, the less you feel like anyone KNOWS you, or cares about you, the more alone you feel, the more likely you are to really, desperately feel the pain of isolation.
The best way to be happy is to be grateful for what you have, not to constantly anticipate becoming famous or rich or having an outsized impact on the world when you haven't even made a tiny, local impact first. Have perspective. Volunteer. Spend time with your friends, and your family if you like them. If your friends exhibit all of the above symptoms, make a few new friends who are totally disconnected to the whole "ecosystem" so you can simply be real with them. (Note: not saying you should drop your grandiose friends. But consider whether they're healthy for you.)
Otherwise you risk being caught up in a spiral of obsession and disconnection, a constant raising of stakes ("Who's going to change the world more!? Who's more ridiculously confident?! Who can work longer and harder?!") which will, statistically speaking, never pay off.
| Every time I hear somebody say they are going to
| "change the world," I cringe. I imagine those
| people as some combination of arrogant fucks
| (pardon my english) and/or depression waiting
| to happen.
I just remember thinking that it was a pretty arrogant stance and question. (If the person on the other side of the world has a business and smart phone, they probably doing pretty well...)
You're right… it IS arrogant. And it's also sad, like a group of little kids talking about how important and badass they are, who they're gonna beat up and which famous actress/actor they're going to marry, right up til mom & dad call them home. Especially because they seem to be in denial that it's all fantasy.
This year we (my husband & I) funded 3 full fistula surgeries for poor women in the developing world: http://www.fistulafoundation.org/whatyoucando/loveasister.ht...
For the low low cost of $1500, we gave three women back the ability to be productive, to be a part of their communities again, to be free from stigma… in short, not to be covered in their own excrement and urine all the time, for the lack of a simple surgery. Three women. Changed lives. And all it took was a little bit of our money and an organization that is actually changing the world. I had it easy… I just had to fork over the money. They're the ones on the ground making it happen. Doctors who do the surgeries in adverse conditions, coordinating to keep costs low, taking care of the women post-op, the women who walk so far to get taken care of and endure all the awful things they've endured…
We just develop software. No big deal.
I think people like to wrap themselves in illusions because they think it'll make them feel better… when really, deep down, they know they're lying to themselves, which only makes them feel worse.
Screw grandiosity.
Things that I would call "world changing":
1. Improving education (e.g. Kahn Academy)
2. Curing disease.
3. Reducing/eliminating poverty.
etc.
Creating a B2B app that is used globally is not what I would call "world changing." It's obviously really useful to people and has great reach, which is something to be excited about, but "We're Changing The World(tm)" is over-stating your case.
Sure, there are some bits of software that save lives… but that's not what the "startups" in question are doing, is it?
The rest is simple convenience. Convenience is nice and all, and everybody loves it, and it pays well, and it can increase human productivity and connectedness, but that isn't really world-changing.
Nobody on HN is inventing the next telegraph, or the next x-ray. It's all variations and slight improvements on things that already exist. It's just software. No big deal. And yet the phrase "changing the world" or "change the world" is the one on everyone's lips.
Make no mistake, I love what I do, and I'm not cut out to be that doctor in any way. I'm happy with my place in the world. I've also got no illusions that, in the grand scheme of things, I'm 'changing the world' or, really, very important to anyone but my immediate circle of loved ones. Believe me, this is a better way to live.
The more you talk yourself up, the more you believe you're super ultra important and doing super ultra important work, the more you create a gulf between your exterior grandiose persona people see and your interior doubt and insecurity, the more you are isolated, the more you are alone, the more you risk losing if you make a mistake, the more social excoriation you (feel) you deserve/are likely to get, the more scared you are to ask for help or admit fear, the more hopeless you feel when you fuck up, the more likely you are to cut yourself off from others, to work yourself to death, to commit suicide.
And the saddest part of all is that it was all in your head. You weren't that important to start with. You can fuck up and the world keeps turning, just as it had. Nobody dies because you run out of money or kill your startup through an oversight.
Having a realistic understanding of your importance to the world makes you free to experiment, to ask for help, to admit failure, to make mistakes, and not feel badly about it. You don't have to feel like you're losing face, risking anything, or letting anyone down.
Grandiosity, on the other hand, imbues every act with such great importance that it seems like a matter of life or death. Grandiosity feels good right up until it becomes clear you're just a human after all. Unfortunately, then grandiosity sometimes literally becomes a matter of life or death.
It's deadly easy to substitute one factually false self-image (grandiosity) with another factually false self-image (despairing that you're the worst person ever and there's no escape).
This is sad. And it's all the more sad because it's totally avoidable.
NB: If you recognize yourself in the descriptions of grandiosity (and its side effects) above, know that I'm not a doctor. But my best recommendation is the audiobook (specifically the AUDIO book) of When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. It's a life-saving, life-affirming dose of reality.
I was commenting on what I thought seemed a dismissive attitude towards the role of software towards world-changing needs. You seem to think that because software developers work in relative comfort and safety, then what they do must be less noble or significant than the people on the front lines.
The people on the front lines, God bless them, but they're just one part of the solution. Let's not romanticize them at the cost of bashing those who have the potential to create great multipliers for their work.
And while I'm a software developer, I've been a journalist for most of my life and have covered a variety of truly awful situations. In education, for example, tragic stories at the classroom level are not the result of just some terrible teacher, or because adults don't care enough, etc. etc. Some of the problems have the potential to be alleviated through thoughtful logistical support, something which today, software is an essential part of. It's not sexy, and the people in charge of that aspect will never have their names recorded in history or immortalized in a movie, but it's important work nonetheless.
Maybe not all software developers are working on world-changing stuff (neither are all doctors or aid workers, for that matter). But I would hope we have more software developers who see how software can change the world and aspire toward it.
Just because there are a few dishonest douchebag startups doesn't mean we should discourage other developers to chase after these higher aspirations.
Go to a few tech meetups and count the times you hear "changing the world!@!" about something that is truly, at best, a diversion. Repeat several times a year. Also read the posts here from startups who are hiring, count the times they say "change the world" "revolutionize the xyz" etc. See how many of them actually do anything that you or I would consider world-changing.[1]
Then see if you don't agree with me about the phrase. :)
At any rate, I'm not arguing with you, I don't know you. I'm arguing with the startup world's obsession with the phrase, and the epidemic of grandiosity that infects it. It's literally killing people. That's my beef.
[1] I don't actually recommend you doing all these things because it would probably depress you. It depresses me!
I'm not steeped deep in the startup world, personally, but I get enough exposure through friends and through HN to know what you're talking about and don't blame you for being jaded. I just thought -- and was probably a bit picky about it -- that your cynicism went a slight step farther than it needed to.
OK, let's assume a lot of startups are cynically using "world changing" as a way to attract hype and/or mask the fact that they are shallow-minded professionals. Let's look at startups that are changing the world: Facebook, for example. I'm sure eyes roll every time Mark Zuckerberg talks about FB's world-changing effects...but in FB's case, the problem is that, perhaps, not enough of its developers realize they are changing the world, and that is a problem if the change is negative.
I don't disagree with you that some/many/most of digital startups may have delusions of grandeur. But I'd suffer 99 of such fools (assuming that most of them fizzle out) for every 1 person who really does believe that software can change the world, and then sets about to do so. And similarly, I hope that more non-software people who want to change the world continue to take seriously the effects/potential of software (and other logistics), and not just it as some technical operating detail they have to put up with.
Do you think the people who talk up how they're "changing the world" includes the 1 out of 99 (or fewer) who actually does?
I don't. The people I know who are really out there changing the world focus on small effects first, because they know that's the only way to create real and lasting change. They don't try to do it all in one bite and they don't crow about it either.
Also, my whole point wasn't that we should shut down people who talk about changing the world, but that those people are creating a situation ripe for depression in themselves. Yeah, it annoys me, but the results -- that its prevalence makes more and more vulnerable people believe this is the way they have to be, and that results potentially in ever more tragedy -- are what drives me to talk about it instead of just ignoring the annoying buggers.
To my mind the only cure is A) explaining the facts and costs of grandiosity, and B) introducing a little reality to the equation. You only seem to be objecting to B, but the thing is, it wasn't advice for you… or that 1 in 1,000 who is probably not here in the first place, who wouldn't identify & identify with A, which is the only reason someone would consider me credible enough to listen to.
You can't "support" a person who is lying to themselves. You call them out -- they hate you for it. You support them by "believing in them" -- you deepen their investment in their lie. Nobody wins.
Why is it that people all agree "it's mentally hard running a startup"?
Is it really so hard? Or is that another face of the grandiosity at work?
[1] Obviously I'm not saying this is the cause of all depression or even all startup depression. But I've seen it at work too many times to believe it's insignificant. And in terms of clinical diagnoses, grandiosity is a sign of NPD, and NPD is highly correlated with depression. I don't think a diagnosis of NPD fits an entire culture where grandiosity is the norm, however, but I do believe it can cause depression and not without good reason.
I am now 36. I think every business has to seek to change the world for the better, but I also think that happens through the little things, not the grandiose. The problems of the future will not be solved by grand technological or government solutions but by the radical actions of neighbors helping neighbors....
I guess I'm one that you could say has delusions of grandeur, and I think it's the greatest gift I've ever been given. You'll never hear me say I want to change the world, but I do want to change my world, and I, like many, have lofty ambitions and am not ashamed of that fact.
I also don't think it's fair to conflate ambition with false confidence. In fact, I'd argue that increased confidence leads to increased ambition.
What's really wrong with a constant raising of stakes if that's what you're into?
The lack of public knowledge about the mental-health dangers of grandiosity is not surprising, considering that most of the people who pull the levers of pop-culture suffer from grandiosity themselves.
Also, it doesn't really express degree, either. Either everything changes the world, or nothing does.
"This stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t … Technologies can make it easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in a radical new light that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important."