Congrats to Jessica! As a parent of a 1 year old mastercrawler, I am also so grateful to Paul taking time off earlier to spend time to watch his kids grow up and I love his tales of them growing up.
Having a family changes everything. Right now parenthood is incompatible with startups - how can we change this and make startups better for young parents as well who for now will just always try to get corporate jobs?
Consider these two statements that I believe to be true.
"Start-ups are these great enterprises where individuals make huge sacrifices in order to take a chance at achieving amazing things."
"Great parents make huge sacrifices in the best interest of their children".
The problem is that you can only make so many sacrifices in life. Maybe one day we'll live in a utopia, but not anytime soon. Sometimes you have to pick one.
> "Great parents make huge sacrifices in the best interest of their children".
I have 3 kids all below 6yo, and can't understand why people believe they have to make so many sacrifices for their kids. I go drink beers with friends every week-end, my wife and I watch movies, go hiking or camping with the kids, do normal stuff adult do. At home, with the kids, I do the stuff that I like and listen to the music I like, watch cartoons with them. I'll never force myself to listen to shitty kid music, or watch silly cartoons: I have found some cartoons that we all can enjoy (Miyasaki, Les Shadocks, Old Disneys, Pink Panther, ...)
I also consider that sacrificing yourself to your kids is not only bad for you, it is bad for them too: it is a burden on their shoulder they didn't ask for. Moreover, faking it do not work, they'll know before you that you are bored by shitty kid's music or cartoons. Oh, and we play Lego together too.
I agree some parents get too involved and stop doing anything they like because they think their kids need 100% attendance and "only the best" (which is actually not).
That said, I have a hard time to believe that you could get away without any sacrifices (not talking about neglect).
Those diapers don't clean themselves, and although small children themselves are rarely boring and in fact mostly hilarious, you still can't just go on with the same activities you had before and possibly would prefer at that moment.
Additionally, kids are very different when it comes to needed attention and and care. Some children wake up at 4am, others nicely at 8 or even 9. Some children are sick more than others, some children are more "low-maintenance" (ugly word for a human actually) than others.
The children's age is of course a huge factor. The younger they are, the more the balance between your needs and theirs tips more to the side of them, and I think rightly so.
I still want to reinforce you sentiment that children do not need to be one big sacrifice and constant burden. They can be a nuisance at times, but mostly they are just great human beings in a very special time of their life, and you have the privilege of keeping their company.
The older they get, the less they need your labour, and can hold their own. For that reason alone, you should not give them 100% pampering all the time.
There are some changes in my life because of the kids, most are good changes (having three genuine smiles welcoming you after work), some are annoying (having to shout on them so they clean the Lego field in the living room). None of these changes I would call sacrifice.
And yes some kids are much more difficult, but still a big part is on the parents. If you're never afraid or worried about other people yourself, your kids are more likely to be sociable with other adults. Just one example, many other would come to mind.
Also I have moderate and adaptable needs when it comes to entertainments, so I can spend most of my time with the kids doing stuff I like. When kids are below 10 they enjoy mostly to be with their parents or siblings, regardless if it's watching cartoons or watching dad fixing stuff. But someone who would be found of extreme hiking would not be able to bring the kids on the Everest, obviously.
However I'm also picky and will not usually do the activities I dislike. E.g. I hate zoos and so we don't go there. (Farms are ok)
>I have 3 kids all below 6yo, and can't understand why people believe they have to make so many sacrifices for their kids
Because different circumstances.
My first kid was an absolute angel, sleeping through the night pretty much well from the get-go. My wife and I did the same as you - kept life normal, and all was good.
My second child has had massive issues sleeping, starting anywhere from 8-9pm, and lasting until 3 or 4am.
We tried everything, some things that worked, some things that didn't - the main issue though, is that while you're trying stuff you're still not getting sleep, and that just - well, it destroys you.
If people can keep regular lives when this happens, I take my hat off to them. Personally, I struggled hugely - and that's where the "this is a sacrifice" bit only begins.
(and this is coming from someone who has it relatively easy: not being dirt-poor/having multiple jobs/being separated/a million other issues that make life that bit trickier)
100% agreed, there's varying degrees of neccessary involvedness, but there's no way to make "barely no sacrifices" there (and the ones I know who state that either let their spouse make the sacrifices or lock the kids up in day care more often than not).
On the other hand, maybe people should stop making so many sacrifices for work and simply be more efficient. With one newborn at home and another one in the making, I cofounded an early stage startup. Difference was, we got 6 seasoned industry veterans as founders and validated product-market fit before even starting out. That way, none of us really killed themselves (pretty normal 45-50h focused work weeks and weekends off), and we still have growth that's through the roof. I really like that I can have both.
Watching cartoons and listening to kids' music isn't a "sacrifice", not for me. It's fun to watch my boys enjoy something. I get great joy watching my three year old watch Octonauts and get so excited when the decorator crab steals Shellington's magnifying glass or whatever. I'll listen to Caspar Babypants every day on the way to daycare because it makes them happy, which makes me really happy. It's not a sacrifice. They'll be plenty of time to rock out to my music with them later on. Enjoy this while it lasts.
As an almost 30 year old male who is very anxious about the prospect of having to have children in the next <5 years due to my girlfriend's biological clock, I find this very reassuring. Looking back on it, my childhood was similar to what you describe and I gained a huge amount of independence from it.
Granted, as a single child, it seems that being left to my own devices so often while growing up may have added to my introverted tendencies. However, having some siblings around should help my future little introverts find balance.
As an almost 30 year old male who is very anxious about the prospect of having to have children in the next <5 years due to my girlfriend's biological clock, I find this very reassuring.
I don't think your parent's post is necessarily representative. It depends a lot on the child and the circumstances. E.g., we live relatively far away from family, so we cannot just bring our daughter to her grandparents for a sleepover.
Our life has definitely changed and where there used to be a lot of time to hack and tinker, it's far less now. Our daughter falls asleep easily and sleeps until 8 or 9 in the weekends, so we are still pretty lucky :).
The important thing is that you also get a lot back. Having a child is a lot of fun. They are cute and do funny things. And you can do nice things together, like going to a playground or hiking a bit.
I also think having a child put more balance in our lives. Work is really 8:00-17:00 (you have to pick them up ;)), but you also become more focused and efficient.
Thank you for writing this. I'm about to become a new dad and this is very reassuring and I have seen exactly what you describe in my brother, ie needlessly sacrificing himself for the "sake of his kids".
every family is different, and I don't know the particulars of your situation but let me just say that life was a LOT easier when my kids were younger like yours. Before becoming slave to the school calendar, before homework, and sports (practices, games, travel) and their own social lives, and all the shuttling around, there was far less coordination and scheduling to worry about, and far more time for myself. Every parent I know feels harried and exhausted and overwhelmed at times.
You can "opt out" of a lot of this, some of it is trial and error to find the right balance, and some of it is phases that come and go. But your kids will probably need and want things from you that will require a lot of your time. mostly you'll gladly do it, and that is the price of being parent.
School calendar is an annoyance. But I managed until now to have no fixed activity for the kids on week-ends, and we avoid birthdays (another annoyance), so when we want to go to second-hand furniture markets, we just fill a bag with 2 diapers, one plastic spoon and go. They'll eat what we find there, and enjoy the furnitures.
This is 'grown-up' truth vs. children's belief they can have everything; you sometimes have to chose. How you chose determines everything. I was very successful at what I did, but I couldn't save enough to early, or semi-retire due to family dependencies. I made the choice to take what little I did manage to save and live in East Java, Indonesia, where the savings will last me approximately one year. They would last all of 2 months maximum in NYC, or any other big Western city. The flip side is that I have been healthier than ever before. Sleeping more than 8 hours per day, exercising each day, meditating and just playing with my one-year old in a very rural setting (half or more houses have dirt floors here), with clean air. It is about choices, and sometimes the right choice is clouded by our daily routine, or personal fear to break out and try something new. I may be returning to a similar job if I don't find a way to make a minimal income to remain here, but it will always have been beneficial to my mental and physical well-being moving forward.
I wish Jessica all the best, and regardless of her regrets with her family before, she is headed in a positive direction. Better late than never.
One of main reasons people work so hard is because they believe they can have everything. And all the stuff you have right now is "everything" to a great many people in human history, so it's obviously possible that you can have more.
I have successfully bootstrapped a VPS / cloud hosting company with my 2 partners while my wife was pregnant of our first. We've had two more in the years after. Me and my wife both work 4 days so we can each spend a day a week with the kids (and weekends are reserved family time too).
I started coding in my spare time and me and my partners only quit the day jobs when the company was pretty much self-sustaining. 7 years later we are an established and fast growing company (and if you're Dutch: We're hiring! https://www.tilaa.com/en/jobs ;).
I'm not sure if things are much different in the US (I'm from the Netherlands), but I definitely think it's possible to have it both (a loving family and a flourishing business) without making big sacrifices.
{INSERT HIGH PERCENTAGE HERE}% of startups fail. What makes anyone think "fixing it for parents" is a more important goal than fixing those odds?
It baffles me, when I hear these sorts of lines. If you can fix startups so parents can do them, fixing them so that current founders can work less hard, with the same or greater chance of success seems as important.
When I phrase it like that, I think the problem with the question becomes self evident.
You're assuming that work is fungible, and that success is a monotonic function of amount of work.
There are certain types of work that I don't have the mental energy to do when I get home from a full workday, or at least not to do well. And, honestly, if I try too hard, I risk lowering the quality of my work the next day and burning out completely at some point. And burnout is a fairly large reason that startups fail: "But I think the underlying cause is usually that they've become demoralized" (http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html).
There are other types of work (e.g., practicing piano or voice, two pursuits where the amount of time spent is pretty steadily and monotonically correlated with success) that I can do just fine. It seems more than likely that, if we get it to the point where you can do a successful startup on 5 or 6 hours a day, spending an additional 5 or 6 hours per day on the startup is unlikely to make you more successful, but those same 5 or 6 hours can be productively directed towards music practice, raising children, or whatever else you want to do.
(There's also a line of argument about parenthood being of intrinsic importance, above success at startups, success at music, etc., but I'll let someone else argue that point.)
nah, you're mis reading this. the issue is continuity. most people will never become successful because of hyper-competetion and the need for continuity (ie, being in the game). You don't see that many michael jordan career sabbaticals among the great athletes either. And obviously being a great athlete takes loads of work, but not each effort is the same contribution obviously either. But great athletes have a very short window to prove themselves as junior/early pro players, and 95%and fewer in the talen pool will never take a "sabbatical" from the NFL (or whatever league/sport) and get their job back with no questions asked...its cut throat enough as it is for a bench/roster seat.
Then, there are people who are so successful in terms of their brand and personal networks etc that they can dabble in and out of various projects at will. But that is not your typical junior partner or junior parent or early-career stage founder. At least not realistically.
I'm not so sure we should fix the problems of a high percentage of startups failing. One issue is that it's a risk reward trade off -- if there's a high probability of having a successful startup (a rather nice outcome), then everybody would do it. Secondly, as a broader societal concern, a high portion of startups succeeding probably means the problems they're trying to tackle are too easy. Either way, it's not sustainable.
> Right now parenthood is incompatible with startups
Be a grownup and assert that your work is at work, and work ends when you leave the office. Unless you are on call, turn off your email and work phone. Stop being conned into staying at the office for "free" dinner, ping pong, "teambuilding", or whatever bullshit is being peddled by your employer.
I completely agree, but is this a "reasonable" approach to take in a startup world (from the startup's point of view)? Or does this make us incompatible / unfavourable with startups, as OP said?
Yes. Yes it is reasonable. A startup is hiring people to perform a job in exchange for compensation. If they want you to work weekends, they can pay a fair market rate for that.
Or they can hire more people.
In some countries, it's extremely unusual to perform overtime. If a startup has 10 employees and they each do an hour of overtime a week - they're effectively denying another worker a job.
Yes, it's a bit "mythical man month" - but if there's too much work to go around, your employer needs to hire more people.
I don't think reasonable is a good word, here. Of course it's reasonable. But when all your other coworkers are 20-something singles who can and will stay to 9pm, how do you remain "competitive"?
Obviously, ideally none of this would be necessary. But alas...
I think if you can be that high energy contributor while you are in office and draw the line clearly stating your expectations, most colleagues can understand and respect that. 6 hours of high quality work any day trumps 8 hours of low quality work. Why should anyone expect that. The guidelines and rules are created for "everyone" who can't define their own schedule. If you can then more power to you.
Anecdotal data point: my father was an entrepreneur for 100% of my childhood. It was rare for him to miss dinner with us, and he attended easily more than 60% of our extracurricular events. He'd often work from home late after we went to sleep, sometimes sleeping next to the phone to take customer support calls 12-5am. He had freedom to spend time with family and worked sufficient hours to achieve successful outcomes for his businesses. I think this form of scheduling is effective. Another anecdote: apparently Sheryl Sandberg also eats dinner with her family every day but works from home late at night and early in the morning.
My dad was a traveling salesman (self-employed) and he was away a lot during the week, but only in the Winter. He was always home on weekends. That's when Mom "slept in" (I suspect, with a good book and a cup of coffee). As long as their bedroom door was closed, the rule was that kids should "go ask your Dad".
So we did, and he took us swimming, ice skating, sledding, we had sock fights (with rolled up knee socks) and cooked breakfast together.
During the summers he did most of his business via the telephone from his home office. He was nearly always available for waterskiing or whatever other bit of kid-fun popped into our goofy little heads.
I think, if I asked him, he wouldn't be of the opinion that he gave up anything to spend time with his family. I think he'd tell me that "giving something up" is what you do when you replace it with something you want to do less.
From here it looks like he just went with the flow. It was simple, he lived by the rules he laid upon his children. We all did what we "had to do" (work, school) when it was the time to do it. And then, we were free to play the rest of the time.
>It was rare for him to miss dinner with us, and he attended easily more than 60% of our extracurricular events... I think this form of scheduling is effective.
Thanks for posting this. As a parent of small kids, this is pretty much well what I'm doing right now, and it's lovely and reassuring to see that your father's scheduling worked out for you.
Before kids, being able to define my own working hours was awesome; now with small children, it's working out really well, and "being there" is a noticeable quality-of-life thing, especially when you're not having to ask for a boss' permission to do so!
My father worked for a series of banks and brokers, and I never saw him - in no small part because as soon as I was old enough (6) I was shipped off to boarding school.
not being an entrepreneur likewise doesn't mean that it's happy family time, all the time.
Some folks want a relationship with their children, others don't.
Honestly? Get rid of this notion that everything in a startup has to be done yesterday. Despite what people say, time is not that critical in a startup. You don't need to press everyone to live at the company. Hell, you'll probably get more done if you press your people to work more of a regular hour schedule, as they won't be exhausted and burnt out.
Get rid of this notion that everything in a startup has to be done yesterday.
Totally agree. If you can't iterate, you're either in a niche like manufacturing (where your USP had better trump 2 weeks lead time, or your business plan is rotten anyway), or you're simply doing it wrong.
Right now parenthood is incompatible with startups - how can we change this and make startups better for young parents as well who for now will just always try to get corporate jobs?
I have a 2 year old and am a work at home dad. My wife and I share responsibilities and launching and relaunching some of our own businesses at our own pace. We find that this works a lot better than working for others. I just came back from a 1.5 hour mountain bike trip, had some homebaked sourdough (learned yesterday) and spent some time with my daughter. Now I am preparing to dig in to work for awhile. This afternoon I will take a break at 3PM to go play a new RPG, Blades in the Dark, for a few hours, in a local pub. Life is good. (Of course, we live in China and overheads aren't San Francisco or London, but that's by design. London also has no mountain biking, and the climate here is closer to high altitude LA.)
Not an example. You can have kids or not have kids. But my girlfriend's uni teacher at University College London said 'I have two kids - I call them the enemies of entrepreneurs'. It should not be like that. Being free means that you can take care of your kid whenever it needs you. Being able to setup your own company structure means you can support everyone's personal lives. In startup situations this is so much easier, since you know them personally.
> It should not be like that. Being free means that you can take care of your kid whenever it needs you.
The crux of the issue is that you have two things require an inordinate amount of time and attention, and both of which are very schedule unforgiving.
When my infant son is hungry, he has to be fed.
Similarly, when I had a very early stage startup, and an important customer demo first thing Monday AM, the work had to get done over the weekend.
What happens when you have a conflict between the two priorities?
You tapped your investor to get a meeting scheduled with Apple in order to convince them to use your data in their map application. Apple gives you a time, and lets you know Jobs will be in this meeting[1].
How bad do you want success?
[1] If this seems contrived situation, it actually happened. Former US VP Al Gore, a partner with one of our investors, was on the board of Apple and arranged the meeting. When the team went to present to Apple, they found out Steve Jobs wouldn't be able to attend the meeting. We later found out that he was in the hospital, and sadly, he eventually passed on.
It is a contrived situation. 99.99999999999999% of times, this will not apply. And saying that you're going to have to be prepared in case it will is just silly.
That's when you find out what/who your real priorities are. Everything else is empty talk.
You can always not schedule meetings on Monday AM if doing so means neglecting your priorities. Unless weekends with the fam aren't really a priority?
Priorities are tricky like that. They're wholly up to you to make.
And yes, not having that meeting on Monday AM might mean losing a client. Is that more important or is weekend with fam more important? That part is up to you.
The choice between spending a weekend with the family vs ensuring a critical customer demo happens is an easy choice to make.
The harder choice occurs when you don't really have a choice. You are the only member[1] who can feed your infant, who requires food every 1-2 hours (if you're lucky you get 2 hours in between), AND your co-founder is counting on you to do your 1/2 of the work for the demo.
[1] In the US, pediatricians recommend only nursing for the first 6 months. That's not something all families can follow, but our family decided to adhere to that recommendation. Further for the first few weeks, pediatricians also recommend not using pacifiers and bottles, so the baby (and mother) can get a solid nursing routine going. This puts a massive constraint on mothers during the first few months of parenthood.
> [1] In the US, pediatricians recommend only nursing for the first 6 months
That's what maternity/paternity leave is supposed to be for. And yes I agree that's hard to do as a founder. Personally I have an incredibly bad track record at taking even a week off and I'm not even a founder per se.
That said, there is always a choice. You might not like the options, or the consequences, but there is always a choice.
The choice might just be to quit/sell your business and get a job job, if you want more time to spend with your baby. Or it might be to put up your baby for adoption so you can focus fully on the business. There are better choices/options somewhere between the extremes.
I have an interesting insight into this through my girlfriend. Soon after she was born, one of the parents essentially skipped town to focus on their business, the other quit their high paying fancy job to focus on the kid. Now one of them is rich, the other has a daughter that adores them.
Material wealth is only one form of wealth, the least gratifying and the most transient in my opinion. I'd argue that the parent who has a daughter that adores them is the rich one.
That being said, the conundrum becomes whether one should give up one's passions and dreams for one's children. You end up with all sorts of sick (IMO) scenarios where parents impose their dreams and goals on their kids and vicariously live through them. That's why I know I will never have children - because if I did, it would mean giving up on my dreams.
That's what maternity/paternity leave is supposed to be for.
It doesn't stop after the first 6 months. The first few years, they will get infected by most germs passed around among kids in daycare. If you are unlucky, you get infected too.
There are sometimes months (like our last month :p) where they get a cold or stomach flu three or four times in a month. Obviously, when they are sick, you can't bring them to daycare. Your own defences get weakened as well as a result sleep interruptions. So, we typically end up getting somewhat sick half of the time as well.
I am happy that we are in Europe, where there is decent sick leave and insurance. (My wife and I both work.)
> > [1] In the US, pediatricians recommend only nursing for the first 6 months
> That's what maternity/paternity leave is supposed to be for.
And of course choosing to take that leave is choosing to abandon the startup. That's fine; as you note, one always has a choice. But one simply can't have two top priorities — and there are only 24 hours in each day.
The REAL middle ground could be something like a small business which doesn't require insane amounts of time to run, so that you can still raise your kids. You might not make it to a billion dollars, but boo hoo.
I'm at a growing startup of almost 100 employees. In my 2 years there I've repeatedly heard the CEO bash our partners' "lifestyle businesses" for their lack of ambition. These are companies of 20-30 people where the founders are pulling in 300-500k a year without working much more than 40 hours a week. Ironically, if our upside game flops our company would devolve to exactly the same thing.
This is a fantastic middle ground as far as I'm concerned and I'll be very happy to take a stab at this myself after I feel that I've learned all I need to know from working for the man.
Yes... that's why I flippantly mentioned flipping a house, which isn't a business as such but can be used to make money on the side where the money isn't linked to the time you spend.
It's a bit odd to assert that parenthood should change to facilitate startups. Suddenly it seems like we are in Shulamith Firestone territory, except that it's men, not women, who are objecting to the amount of work involved in raising children.
Congrats! It's amazing to live in an era of employers allowing friends to take a deep breath, reflect and come back to work with a renewed sense of themselves and their purpose. It is a great chance to reflect on what you have accomplished and what lies ahead.
And I find that when you really dig deep and go for the projects that you are truly passionate about you will participate with people who are your friends. Words are words but the founders of Y combinator are a small group. I would think they are friends. A personal opinion/thought
Not sure what is really the meaning. I work hard as I am sure we all do. I am reading this thread while chasing around my 4 kiddos. We all need a beak and we are lucky and grateful to be given those opportunities. I follow hacker news daily so I am just happy that someone who made this all happen to get a chance to relax and reflect. It's deserved.
I guess you don't know, jl is pg's wife, they started hn together before they were married. It's not an employer giving a 'friend' a break, it's a co-founder taking a year off from their successful company.
pg already stepped back from the day-to-day, handing the reins over to Sam Altman.
That's why your comment comes across as strange. You've been here nearly 7 years, surprised you didn't know that.
I've taken 1.5 years worth of sabbaticals since I graduated 6 years ago. Can't recommend enough especially if you want to learn, build side projects and take better care of your health!
Where do you work that this is possible? I graduated recently and my employer is pretty generous and flexible with vacation time, but I can't imagine asking for several months off just because I feel like it.
Probably just quits and comes back to (a probably new) employer in a few months or is self-employed. I took 9 months off of work, I wouldn't call it a sabbatical but you could phrase it that way I suppose. Funemployment.
That does sound nice, but a sabbatical usually means you're at least partially paid and you continue your old job when you come back. Also, I don't think I know anyone just out of college who could afford to do that.
I heard Intel lets some people take a short sabbatical after 10 years of employment. 1.5 years after 6 years seems unbelievable. I've personally never seen a company that allows sabbaticals in my 15 or so year career.
Because there is a sadistic tendency in our industry to celebrate overworking yourself to the bone for no real benefit to either yourself or the project you may be working on. I think more people are realizing this and are celebrating a more measured and effective approach to work.
Does everyone think that the average person has the option to stop working for months (or even a year) at a time? This is merely celebrating the wealthy doing things only the wealthy can afford to do.
You make a good point, but the parent comment was asking a more general question of why we would celebrate someone taking a sabbatical at all.
Although sometimes the importance of an important, successful person who many people look up to setting the tone is understated.
But yes...Jessica is very rich and has luxuries beyond any of our wildest imaginations so it's not really a fair comparison to "normal people" or our industry at large. Your point stands.
I guess that's like 3 months at 50%, assuming you can take another 6 weeks unpaid.
In Quebec, both parents get a combined total of 57 weeks, with some pay cut, paid through a provincial insurance program. As in, everybody gets it, and the employer isn't directly financially burdened by babies.
That's worlds better than what is available anywhere else in the US. The federal government allows you to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid family leave without losing your benefits (through FMLA), and while the employer can't replace you they don't have to return you back to your original position.
Yet another reason not to start a business in San Francisco. If the city wants new parents to have 6 weeks' leave, then it should pay that, not require businesses to pay for it. As it is, it's an unfunded mandate (and, really, a way of reducing everyone's wages, since employers will need to get some form of insurance to cover the risk of an employee leaving for a month and a half).
And of course, it makes life easy for large organisations like government and big business, while making things harder for small business (who have a higher variability due to lower number of employees).
This may seem insignificant and if so let me know, but the wording of this led me to believe SF was going to PAY for 6 weeks of maternity leave for everybody rather than making it mandatory that employers provide it.
serious question: does she even have to work anymore? I would assume that a cofounder of ycombinator has so much money by now, that they could just retire or do something more fun with their lives.
I think for many people who have had that level of success, the idea of "just retiring" is not very appealing. They have gotten to where they are because they have a strong drive to accomplish things that doesn't go away. If they just stopped everything and took a vacation, sooner or later they'll probably find themselves bored and want to dive back into a significant project again.
Good luck jl. Hope you come back refreshed with new ideas.
Was hoping to find some sabbatical stories in the comments. I was working 12 hours a day with no weekends and felt trapped in a state of urgency and like I was missing out on things. Took a 3 month sabbatical and it changed everything!
Sometimes you don't notice that you could have done things better or differently until you take a step back. I'm about to pass out and wish I could've written more.
I met Jessica when I interviewed at YC (Summer 2014 batch). She was very nice in addition to extremely intelligent, of course. She was smiling the entire time and made a clear effort to make me less nervous. I hope she enjoys the recharge!
She is taking a sabbatical and will presumably not be paid. Any man could do the same. I understand you're trying to make a point about the fact that parental leave should be equal, but this was an off-base and unnecessarily acerbic way of making it.
I would have loved to have the privilege to watch the first year of my daughter's development without distraction.... But I'm a man... so, two weeks (and two weeks seems generous in comparison to my friends' experience)
This seems like an example of how things are broken. Women are penalized[1] as employees because, unlike men, they might take maternity leave someday. One solution is to give everyone parental leave — and some countries do.
As a single guy, I love this, since it penalises folks in relationships, since they might someday take parental leave but I'll be in the office day-in and day-out.
Still don't see how this has to do with gender. The FMLA guarantees at least 12 weeks of unpaid paternity leave. Sure it is unpaid, but some companies offer paid leave. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix are all examples of places that offer paid paternity leaves of longer than two weeks. Netflix offers a year of paid leave to both moms and dads. Sure some leave policies give more leave to mothers than fathers, but some groups are arguing fathers should get just as much.
You may not have had an option to take a year of paid leave. But technically anyone can take a self-funded sabbitical. Just most people probably wouldn't be able to come back to their old job.
But it's not like Jessica is really taking a risk here. She's the cofounder of an extremely successful startup incubator. I"m sure YC wants her back. And she probably has enough money to retire and do whatever she wants. Plus, I'm assuming she has the skills to get another great work opportunity if she doesn't want to go back to YC in a year.
I do think that a lot of companies are much more accommodating for mothers than fathers. But I just think that Jessica is in a position where she can basically do whatever she wants no matter what any company is willing to work with. So I don't think gender has anything to do with it. Anyone would have the same opportunities in her position. For instance, Bob O'Rear retired early from Microsoft to start a cattle ranch in Texas.
"Livingston disclosed that she hadn’t spent any real time away from her work, including after her children were born — she placed the blame on herself for that."
This always seems to be framed as a women's obligation. The children have two parents.
Actually, I "blamed" myself for that because I never set up any formal parental leave program at YC back in 2009, which I would have been responsible for doing.
I really wish that we would not conflate a woman's stated desire to spend time with her offspring with general societal criticism. If she wishes to spend time with them and can arrange to do so, good on her.
Criticizing mothers for not spending enough time with the kids while not criticizing fathers is certainly sexist and problematic. But real parental involvement is generally understood to be good for the kids. So, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
I started my consulting business at the same time my kids were born. Fortunately, most of the work was done in my home office, and so I was with them as much as their mother during their first two years.
The world is a bit stacked against those who aren't at home for their kids childhood. For example, in the first year, a kid will grow a tiny bit during each nap that they take. If you are at home, you get to see this. If you are at work away from home, you miss two or three tiny growth increments each day.
So it is both parent's obligation, but can be difficult to carry off if one works away from home.
Hasn't Paul already stepped back from day-to-day management so presumably spends more time with their children?
Also, if she blames herself, doesn't that mean she sees herself as having agency to either work or not work, which means that she isn't obliged to do either?
> I'd give anything to take a year sabbatical to spend more time with my kids.
My family had lots of nannies by profession. Most of them worked for rich people who had all the time to spend with their kids but they choose not to. Most of them would spend about a hour or two per day with their kids total. And these people are not exceptions by any means from what I've seen. I always found this fascinating and contrary to what everyone say they want, rich people are fascinating.
In that case, it looks like it was framed as her personal interest rather than female-specific and an obligation. If it's her personal interest, why judge it?
Hard to think of any other individual who has made as large an impact on the global economy in the 21st century, in addition to opening up the playing field for women. Kudos.
Geez, I didn't mean to get everyone so worked up, but I was semi-serious. The impact of YC is going to be written about 100 years from now. There's a good chance that no individual company will be considered to have had the same impact.
One, you said individual, not YC. Two, think of the handful of companies being written about from circa 1916. You really want to claim YC will have that kind of stature?
Paul Graham and others have stated that Jessica was perhaps the main driving force behind YC. In 10 years, YC has produced multiple multi-billion dollar corporations, and it's only just getting started. Once we start seeing power companies, aircraft companies and more, then... Yes, I think YC will be judged in the future to have had the single biggest impact on the economy, at least of any company, in the first half of the 21st century.
YC's indirect influence, by shaping culture, seems to be even greater than its direct effect. I haven't been through YC, but they've had a positive influence on my life, just observing from afar.
Their contribution to the culture of startups, awareness of the importance of "nice people", creating the alumni network, fostering a supportive and intensely creative atmosphere within YC during the launch phase, diffusing good ideas and practices. Jessica, as part of the YC leadership (especially with PG's support and encouragement), has been central to that, both figuring it out and getting it all to actually work day-to-day.
Beyond the core YC team, this cultural progress has been possible because of a broad receptivity in the generation of potential founders that have flocked to YC. If Paul & Jessica had been alone in their attitude, they never would have developed momentum. It's been part of a generational shift in attitudes towards business, and I love that.
So thank you both Paul & Jessica for being so open about YC, and for having an attitude of service, and to everyone who has worked together with them! Here's to future generations of idealist entrepreneurs.
I can't think of any YC company that laypeople will remember in 100 years. Reddit maybe? Maybe there will be something in the future, but there's certainly nothing like that right now.
It's bad enough that you prosecuted a nitpicking argument to the point of hounding, but adding personal insults takes this way over the line. Please don't do this again.
Okay, it would have been prudent to not bother with the "was perhaps" rebuttal. But the initial comment was par for the HN course and then a regular back-and-forth took place. Again, par for the HN course. And then there was an ad hominem directed at me. To which I foolishly responded. Yet I'm the one that gets chastised? You sure this doesn't have anything to do with the side I was taking in the argument?
On a recent comment thread, I talked about how rankings are inherently zero-sum - there can only be one at the top.
A non zero-sum way of saying things might just be to thank JL for all the great work she's done, huge impact she's had, and so on. No arguments about 'the top person'.
I have huge respect for jl but there is a significant number of senior executives who have a huge influence on the global economy in the 21st century.
Gwynne Shotwell would be a good example. She is the President & COO of SpaceX, that is actively significantly reducing the cost of launching satellites, and working on global internet access.
> She believes that a decade from now, she expects to see “tons of women-founded unicorns."
Tons? Remove the women-founded filter and it's still not believable. I don't think it's realistic to expects tons of unicorns in general. How many have there been (total) in the past 10 years?
