Startups and Moms | Hacker News Reader

Startups and Moms

42floors.com

48 pointshurtmyknee12 comments

As a 2013 Thiel Fellow, this hit close to home for me.

Growing up in an Asian family, I was always pressured to take the safe, traditional college route. And then grow up to be a doctor or lawyer. It's not their fault, of course, who wants a risky life for their kid?

As part of the Thiel Fellowship, I'll be moving away from Vancouver to the Bay Area. Leaving the nest. This article will be my Mother's Day Gift, to let my parents know - it's okay to let go now.

Congrats! You'll now find your crazy, brave, audacious career choice to be fairly commonplace here in the Bay Area. It feels wonderful.

Ping me directly--I'd be happy to help you get settled here.

This is really awesome. But please -- save this as a note for some other time for your mother. As a dad, it'd be heartbreaking to get a "it's time to let go" note on Father's day. It would crush me. Even the most amicable divorce is tough.

Give your mom some flowers and, heck, draw something for her. Or use your talent to express your appreciation for her. But don't give her a goodbye letter on Mother's day.

And there was me hoping this was a plea for "generous parental leave policy" to be as common a startup perk as "full health and dental".

Indeed, the title could be better (OP here). For what it's worth, we do 100% paid parental leave...

Man, when I think about the heart attacks I've put my conservative Indian parents through (frequently getting lost/injured/severely sick as a small child, dropping out of high school, getting married at 19 with no income, refusing prestigious consulting jobs to go work at startups, then leaving 3 jobs in a row with less than a year at each...) it makes me realize that parenting must be even more of an emotional roller-coaster than starting a startup. I'm guessing it never gets easier, either.

Luckily it's turned out pretty well so far. I'll be sure to thank my parents for putting up with me for so long.

We get it. It's an addiction that's glorified by society. Parents can't help because the entrepreneur doesn't want help. Till he ends up totally broke, burnt out, and unemployable. I'm pretty sure then the "don't give us money" rule gets reversed, at least by some parents. It's no different than having a crackhead or dopehead as a child. The chances of success are equal, if not higher for the drug addicts.

So if worried, do this after a university degree; make sure not to let your skills rust; pick up practical experience... and then take a job (even temporarily) if things go downhill?

Broke is better than massively in debt - so don't take on debt.

Burnt out is more difficult, but at least somewhat in your hands (and pretty easy to come by in the course of a 'professional' career).

Unemployable? Now that one's wholly in your hands.

Being an entrepreneur seems like a fair, if still-unorthodox way of gaining a lot of life experience, fast. Surely this a lot healthier than many alternatives (including 'just keep your shoes clean and get a white-collar job', right en-route for potential mid-life crisis and regret?)

Surely, with the experience gained (learning to execute, if naught else), the whole endeavour is a success of sorts irrespective of what happens to the startup?

Unemployable is not wholly in your hands because burnout is not at all in your hands, as evidenced by the startup culture that expects and rewards long hours even though they know how unproductive and unsustainable that is. Burn out is just another way of saying "major depressive disorder" or some other mental illness. It is not glorious and it's only in your control if you never start down that road.

Is it possible to create a startup and working normal hours while still having tight deadlines? Sure. Accountants do it for startups all the time. Why can't founders or developers? Likely because they're spending too much time working long and late, getting done in 4 hours at 2am what they could have accomplished in half an hour at 2pm. It is possible, but I have yet to see it happen.

I agree that burnout is not really in your control when you work for someone. There are games you can play to push out the hard wall, but it is hard to truly regulate it yourself when you are not your own boss.

This does not mean burnout will always happen. It just means your superiors play an important role in managing it.

What are you doing on this site with a notorious startup lean if this is your opinion?

Funny, I have rarely felt that choosing to do a startup was glorified. Quite the opposite, every structure of social pressure seems aligned towards traditional careers.

I should also mention, having failed several times, that I was more employable afterwards because of the skills I had developed. For every Instagram, there are a 1000 founders that didn't make it but are now highly coveted by every major tech company.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com