Fuck Glory – Startups are One Long Con (2011)

It seems like this is one big false dichotomy. A venture funded startup doesn't have to be a death slog. Some people just like working harder than others.

Don't slate them because it doesn't suit you. 100 hour weeks aren't for everyone. The best I can do is ±80 hour week while remaining productive. But I like doing that, and I've done that most of my life.

Yes, there are lots of people who get sucked into the image and don't know what they're getting themselves into. The same goes for boring career paths at one of the big accounting firms.

Funded startups can be fun. Working super hard can be fun. Doing something that other people think is cool (glory) can be fun. It's great that you're doing well with a relaxed bootstrap approach. It doesn't mean you have to force that as the only option. Horses for courses.

It is not clear to me that the Venture Capitalist, maligned by this article, is not also working a death slog, trading his youth for glory: I do not get the impression that Paul Graham spends his days relaxing and "enjoying life", and not himself working long, weariful hours. The core thesis of this article--that the concept startups are a con by people to extract value from you--doesn't hold much weight to me: if anything, it is a way for one group or generation to rationalize their own behavior by teaching it as "the way" for the next: it you've wasted your own life, you will be motivated to fight to claim it was not in vain, overestimating the benefits and tying your actions to abstract unmeasurables, such as "glory".

Meh. If startups aren't for you, then do something else. There is a lot more to get out of them than striking it rich or "glory". For the most part, if you don't truly believe that the product/software/hardware a startup is trying to build should exist, then you probably shouldn't be there in the early days when you're likely to be working longer hours to be successful.

Personally, one of the biggest draws for me isn't the glory or the opportunity to get rich, but instead the opportunity to build something I believe needs to exist and the opportunity to create something entirely new in the world from scratch and be responsible for the majority of important design decisions. I've learned far more than I would hacking on someone else's legacy code (unless I had the privilege of working on the legacy code of truly great engineers I respect) or by being told what to build and how to build it (again, unless that person happens to be brilliant at making those types of decisions).

Those who work at startups should do so for the same reason that people who work long hours on open-source projects do so; they are makers that are building something they believe should exist.

“Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

This is so true it hurts and young people will avert their eyes from it. No one wants to believe that youth can be wasted in the pursuit of money and glory to spend in old age.