I noticed there is zero mention of burnout in the article, which is exactly what every one of these founders will get if they keep pushing at the crazy pace they are going at, and highlights the problem with this kind of mentality.

Burnout is a bitch, at least in my case it felt like I developed ADHD. Couldn't focus on anything, couldn't remember things that were said at meetings. I managed to pull back and now things are fine but had I not I probably would have been fired from my job.

Beyond that my other thought is more philosophical: which is there is more to life than just work. I sympathize deeply with these founders because I had a mentality that was just like theirs. That mentality started to change once I met my now wife and we started building our life together. She and many of our friends are from Brazil and they taught me that the grind/hussle culture described in this article is very much an American phenomenon and everyone else is on the outside looking in going "what in the hell are those folks doing???".

When I started my company before I met my wife the goal was a billion dollar exit, private jets and super yachts and the idea that my company could become a tech behemoth. Now that vision has largely shifted to "I just want a small business that pads my income and maybe lets me buy a few toys"

Don't take your health and lifestyle advice from start-up founders, episode 36. Elizabeth Holmes writes the same kind of nonsense.

It's just an attempt to pass themselves off as exceptional beings who owe their success solely to their talent and iron discipline.

I don't know anyone who can keep going in the long term by neglecting their sleep and their physical and mental health.

Not sleeping is disastrous for productivity. Why would you advertise to your investors, customers, and coworkers that you’re intentionally cognitively impaired?

It's incredible that we're at a point where people here feel the need to argue – apparently in all seriousness – that sleep and fun are important. As if that was something not self-evident.

And I mean intrinsically, of course, not just as a means to help produce more value for shareholders.

This sounds like abuse. Give them the money to satisfy their ego, take their lives away and multiply your your wealth?

Then they hate the society, don’t have moral compass and relentlessly keep trying to increase control and resources for even more ego stuff.

Sounds very unhealthy to me. Fits with the observation that numbers are all time high but everyone hates their lives and trying to destroy the system(whatever they perceive it as). Suboptimal practices are better as they leave some life on the table.

I am sick to death of founder propaganda like this, none of them actually work this much. 'No Booze' i believe, all of them do psychedelics and designer drugs now anyways. I would love if it a single reporter asked the obvious question in all of this "If the AI is so good, how come you have to work this 20 hour monster days?" the AI is both a mega machine capable of doing every persons job and somehow this doesnt lead to reduced work hours or increased output for anyone? Im not buying it.

AI Startup founders have a winning formula: No Booze, No Sleep, No Fun... for their employees.

Archive Link: https://archive.is/LtZFs

Cutting alcohol out of my life was one of the best decisions I ever made. Better health and more money in my wallet at the end of the week. But come on you gotta sleep, and you gotta have some fun, call it decompression if you want to be serious about it.

> Laqua, whose father is a lawyer for an insurance company, said he hires only people willing to work seven days a week. Of his 40-plus employees, around 30 are ex-founders. His welcome gift to new hires is a mattress to keep at work. > “I live at the office,” said Laqua, who considers himself the most hardcore of his peers. Employees share similar feelings. Though not a work requirement, Laqua said, “two-thirds of our early employees got Corgi tattoos.”

How do you get former founders to put in that kind of dedication to _someone else's company_?

Also, are these actually AI companies? By what definition? Corgi's home page appears to be _only_ a list of open positions presently, none of which are ML/AI engineers.

I worked crazy hours in my early 20s because I liked it. I liked computers, I liked my team, and to be frank, I had not much else to do. If I went home early, I would be spending time on the internet anyway.

But the thing is, unless you're building your own business, it just doesn't matter. No one will remember this in five years. In a corporate environment, every doc, every line of code you wrote will be replaced or forgotten far sooner than you suspect. Two or three reorgs later, your team might not even exist as a distinct entity. There will be no statue of you in the hallway after you're gone.

It's also not your family. If you become any sort of a liability, if you make an off-color joke, if the revenue metrics are off by 5% - thanks kid, here's the door. The first layoffs you go through will be devastating precisely because they crush that illusion. Yeah, your manager might be a genuinely nice and caring person, but by the end of the day, if they're asked to sort a spreadsheet with your name in it and then draw a line somewhere, they will, and there will be "nothing they could do".

The only lasting thing you're getting out of the heroics is the money you save, the skills you learn on the job, and for a short while, the reference you get from your old boss when you apply for the next job. If you optimize for that, you'll probably have a satisfying career. If you don't, you wake up one day realizing that you've given up a good chunk of your life to make Sam Altman 0.01% richer, and that's that.

If a company is demanding that you sacrifice social life and well-being, ask yourself what's it worth to you. Are they paying more than anyone else? Or do they just want to get more kLOC out of you for free?

I would add “no eating”, who has time for that when you have a founder video to make

All these companies could have been built with booze, sleep, and fun.

“Winning” lol

When will people realize that the money doesn’t mean anything if it costs you your life?

One day a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach, with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish.

About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach, trying to relieve some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family. “You aren’t going to catch many fish that way,” said the businessman to the fisherman.

“You should be working rather than lying on the beach!”

The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, “And what will my reward be?”

“Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!” was the businessman’s answer. “And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman, still smiling. The businessman replied, “You will make money and you’ll be able to buy a boat, which will then result in larger catches of fish!”

“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman again.

The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman’s questions. “You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work for you!” he said.

“And then what will my reward be?” repeated the fisherman.

The businessman was getting angry. “Don’t you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish for you!”

Once again the fisherman asked, “And then what will my reward be?”

The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman, “Don’t you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won’t have a care in the world!”

The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, “And what do you think I’m doing right now?”

Does that winning formula include shoveling money into a furnace and the inability to turn a profit?

Seems generally worse for the world if we want to force everyone to work 24/7 with no joy or interests outside of work. Ah well. Do you think they can recognize it? I don't think any of these companies will have anything interesting to say, last ten years, or improve lives.

It mostly looks like an act to me, a cargo cult where if they offer up enough "work" they'll be rewarded, disregarding any usefulness.

what happened to microdosing on lsd or drinking raw untreated water? i'm so behind

If AI actually makes development faster, shouldn't going without sleep or fun or life be less necessary - otherwise what is the point of it all. If anything, keeping healthy with a balanced perspective is even more called upon and valuable with AI offloading work in the loop.

The booze I can take or leave but is laughable to give up booze but then impair your judgement another way with a low sleep schedule.

The tattoo thing is super cringe

No internet. No phone. That will do this guy some real good.

if you can't find something people want, work extra hard I guess

all these companies could have been built with booze, sleep, and fun.

Sacrifice the better years of your life and any real life experience to bet it all on some stroke of luck.

This is perfectly sane and completely different from gambling, right. "I am smarter than the others". This won't result on a pile of completely empty husks full of neuroses. There is still room on the streets for more homeless people.

No Booze is the only item on this list that is helpful (as someone who has been the personal coach to Unicorn Founders over the last 20+ years, currently with a waitlist).

For certain, the elimination of all alcohol will help everyone achieve more in life. If this triggers you, consider you may have a drug problem.

No Sleep kills your energy and productivity. You need proper sleep to be your best. Could you imagine an NBA player saying the secret to winning an NBA championship is not sleeping and working out all night?

Mastering leadership will get you time back, and prioritizing self care time so you can go hard is the winning combo.

No Fun. Again, you need to recharge, find creative inspiration, have healthy relationships.

Overall, it is a very negative signal if founders are doing #2 & #3. It signals they are trying to cosplay looking like what they think success looks like.

The reason I have a job is because the actual most successful unicorn founders understand they need world class support, coaching, and self care to really build something incredible.

Talking nonsense seriously.

"Winning Formula", attract your attention

No Sleep, No Fun -> No Efficiency, No Creativity -> No good product, No good company -> No health, No life

Related:

New trend: extreme hours at AI startups

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45156674

996

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45149049

It's the same tired trope that they trotted out in the .com boom. Same trope resurrected in whatever the recovery of the '08 recession was. And now since AI is the big hot thing, they'll bandy about the same mythic, stoic, ascetic founder baloney. "Get rich by giving up everything about yourself." It's just sad how so many are so taken in by it. "But no, I'll be one of the different ones" says ten thousand others. Fine, whatever, you do you. I guess we'll all have to be subject to the same navel-gazing when 99.999% crash and burn about how much I was changed, or we were so close but I'll never give up the mission or other hogwash that every other one of these delusional "founders" fall back on. They'll just go onto the next scam.

The correction can't come fast enough so the real, actual value-producers are left standing.