False dichotomy: either it's working eighty hours a week or working nine to five.
It's true that employees in a startup should be flexible: being willing to work late some days, work from home in an emergency, travel with a laptop (in return, startups are also more flexible: no one cares that you're not in your desk at 0930 or if you're working from home or a cafe).
However, eighty hour weeks usually happen for very specific reasons and are followed by less intense periods: it's not a generally applicable way of doing more with less. If you want to do more with less, hire better people (who frequently have other options available to them and won't work on a team that demands eight hour weeks as a matter of routine).
Absolutely true. And if Calacanis meant people who are passionate enough about what they are working on to pull some late nighters when necessary, vs someone who punches the clock every day at 5pm and says "that's not in my job description", then he would find a lot more people in agreement.
> Absolutely true. And if Calacanis meant people who are passionate enough about what they are working on to pull some late nighters when necessary, vs someone who punches the clock every day at 5pm and says "that's not in my job description", then he would find a lot more people in agreement.
Absolutely true: as a software engineer, I'm extremely lucky to work on something I'm passionate about. I am not sure if other professions get the same luxury. I'm more than willing to stay until up wee hours in the morning, debugging non-blocking socket code (like I did this Wednesday) whether in a startup or not, because I actually enjoy this (both the intrinsically satisfying work like designing and implementing a new algorithm and less "glorious" work like this: a sign of a healthy organization is one that rewards both).
The impression Jason gives off is he wants clock punchers who punch the clock out at midnight and give the appearance of being busy.
It's true that employees in a startup should be flexible: being willing to work late some days, work from home in an emergency, travel with a laptop (in return, startups are also more flexible: no one cares that you're not in your desk at 0930 or if you're working from home or a cafe).
However, eighty hour weeks usually happen for very specific reasons and are followed by less intense periods: it's not a generally applicable way of doing more with less. If you want to do more with less, hire better people (who frequently have other options available to them and won't work on a team that demands eight hour weeks as a matter of routine).