I empathize with how hard it is for a female founder in particular and for a woman in general when it comes to mixing children with a career.
That said the advice to freeze your eggs (ie work now, live later) rubs me the wrong way. I wish we could live in a society where people would not have to work themselves to death and were able to... you know... enjoy life
Our society doesn't force or even encourage people to be startup founders -- they choose it for themselves. There are plenty of examples of classes of people who have to work harder than they should in an ideal society, but I'm not sure what point you're making with this particular one.
I think the overarching point they were making was about the difficulty women have with balancing a career with having a child(which is further exacerbated for women founders due to the increased workloads founders face).
I do agree though that choosing to be a founder then complaining about a poor, usually self imposed, work life balance is a bit silly.
being a founder is glamourised. Being rich is glamourised. What more encouragement do people need? Wealthy businesspeople are basically the symbol of social success.
There is an imperative to be a high earner due to skyrocketing housing, medical, and education costs in the United States. At the same time popular media like Wolf of Wall Street, The Social Network, and Shark Tank, show how life affirming and beneficial it is to gain wealth.
To many start-ups seem like a short cut - even if they are laughably not.
For highly skilled technical people and business leaders, we already do live in that society. There are many companies that will happily pay you entirely unreasonable amounts of money to work a 9-5 job. However, you can opt in to lifestyles where you work yourself to death in the hopes of getting even more excessive riches and fame than you would get by living a more relaxed lifestyle.
You can do that as a hobby, or you can do it as a startup but treat the startup as a 9-5. (Your leisurely pace of work might hurt your chances of staying ahead of your competitors, but that's only important if you want the wealth and fame part.)
In order for me to continue building something nobody has built, I need it to be generating revenue. And in order to generate revenue I need to stay ahead of the competition, which probably requires not treating it like a 9-5. So yes I'm pursuing money, but not to achieve vast personal wealth, but rather to ensure my (hopefully) novel business is long-term viable.
I disagree with this - I think it's very much a reflection of the modern world being quite focused on profits and revenue - you can build an exceedingly successful thing that doesn't provide a clear revenue stream. It won't come with the glamour that other options may have but if you look at passion projects from things like open source libraries all the way down to dwarf fortress it's quite possible to make a living building a thing - it just won't give you 200k+ in annual income.
There is a place for artisanal projects in the modern world - a lot of creative folks subsist greatly on patreon as a source of income.
That's more of a crapshoot though. The vast majority of open source projects don't generate enough donations to sustain even a single developer. The vast majority of indie games don't experience the success of Dwarf Fortress.
A clear revenue model from the beginning makes it much more likely that you will be either A. long-term sustainable or B. call it quits before too much time is invested.
I disagree with this - I would agree that most projects don't end up making serious bank but I've seen a pretty impressive diversity of things being represented on patreon and taking in enough expenses to easily cover overhead costs.
If you are working for fun on an artistic/creative endeavor then you'll often need to cut personal corners to keep a real job to keep the lights on but you can seek and receive funding to prevent that hobby from becoming too much of a cost sink. This is also starting from the fact that your goal isn't to build a megacorporation (at least I didn't read it that way) - you're looking for the freedom to build a thing you want to build. You absolutely will pay a personal cost for that freedom, but the internet is a pretty diverse place where I wouldn't be surprised if you could find people willing to subsidize your work.
Like most people pursuing a passion project, it's wise not to quit your day job and throw everything in the basket initially, but if it's something you want to pursue it you can find funding to help lessen the costs you'd otherwise need to pay out of pocket.
Ok, I guess for some founders keeping their business viable at all requires a very large commitment. I think that's going to depend on how saturated is the market you're entering, and various other factors. I still believe that most founders could work much less if they were not in pursuit of vast wealth/fame.
I respect the honesty, and I am there with you. I think inventing something new is exceptionally harder because the burden of communication is exceptional.
I have spent a decade within large scale infrastructure, so I have climbed the shoulders of giants to see what can be. Once you see what can be, then there is the burden to communicate what you see. It's not easy, and you learn deep respect for all the previous innovations because they required exceptional communications.
Here I am, an aging man, and I've invented my thing. It's a programming language for board games that lets you build durable compute. You don't have to worry about failures at all. The machine can live forever! It's great, but I have to communicate and prove its value.
Well we used to have a society with a division of labor and stable institution of marriage so that women didn't have to work themselves to death through the child rearing years but we decided as a society that in order for women to be truly free, they need to be trapped in the same work to death life that men have been in since prehistoric times, to the detriment of their lives and the lives of our children. But it'll be OK because the village can raise the children; just send them off to the tax subsidized day care to be raised in a 1:20 adult: child ratio (they'll be fiiiiiine) and then you can have your career and your "motherhood" (no matter that the child trusts the nanny more than you because you were always at work) too
"We" didn't decide as a society. Rather individual people (and couples) in society decided that they'd prefer to have additional income [and stimulation] by choosing to work outside the home. Collectively, that dramatically increased the labor supply as compared to 100 years ago as well as increased the demand for goods and services.
I don't want to have us go back to the old way where it was looked down upon or judged for women to participate in society as free and equal agents in deciding how they want to spend their one precious life. "Men should work and women should tend to the household and children" is way worse than "Adults should be able to make free choices about their lives [and accept the consequential outcomes resulting from those choices, both beneficial and detrimental]"
Counterpoint: let's say I hate the effect that car-ownership has had on society - you can't just tell me "well then you should just choose not to own a car". The problem is that society itself has been reshaped around the assumption that essentially everyone has a car. For the vast majority of people in the vast majority of locations in the USA, it's simply not viable to live without a car, or ready access to one.
That doesn't mean I should be able to reshape all of society according to my whims, but it seems flippant to dismiss the material circumstances that make single-breadwinner families economically infeasible for most American families by saying that people can just choose to live that life if they want.
What you say is true, but partly orthogonal. If not owning a car is one of the most important things to you, then as a friend, I would counsel you to arrange your life to prioritize that. Live in NYC or Boston. Or Amsterdam or Paris. In all of those places, car ownership is a net negative and so you'll find a lot of life arranged to assume you don't own a car and as a result, a lot of like-minded people.
If your frustration is that many others choose to own a car and prioritize their consumption differently, again as a friend I would tell you in the most polite way I could muster to make your choices based on your values and let others make their choices based on their values. You can also try to reshape all of society or some small corner of it, but first and foremost, I'd advise you to make pragmatic choices to improve your daily existence.
> arrange your life to prioritize that. Live in NYC or Boston. Or Amsterdam or Paris. In all of those places, car ownership is a net negative and so you'll find a lot of life arranged to assume you don't own a car and as a result, a lot of like-minded people.
That was indeed my point - "just go live in NYC or Boston" is not realistic for most people for a variety of reasons.
What I internalize from that is that the life optimization function coefficient on "live without a car" is not high enough for that person to outweigh the coefficients and input variables on other quality of life factors.
If "live without a car" was 1.0 and all other factors were 0.0, they'd decide to go live in NYC/Boston/someplace else that optimized that. Since they don't, they have other factors that they are weighing (probably implicitly) to conclude that they shouldn't do that.
No one can have everything they want. Most people can have the one thing they want most in the world, if they're willing to make enough other sacrifices to get it.
I hate the effect that car-ownership has had on society and I refuse to own a car personally. I advocate for urban planning that reinforces walkable neighborhoods and tighter parking restrictions and choose to live in a city which isn't completely foot-friendly but is better than most. Choosing to live car-free does impose restrictions on my freedom of movement, but it only prevents me from going to places I have no desire to go to.
I'd also say it's absolutely fine to try and reshape all of society according to your whims - that's sort of what everyone is doing in a democracy constantly. Just don't get upset if some folks object and it doesn't work.
But now I have to be twice as financially successful to provide the equivalent level of support my parents did while my wife opts to be a full time parent.
We both made free choices, but the environment has now made that considerably more expensive.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't a value judgment but, sadly, being a stay at home parent isn't economically "valuable" and so the incentives have shifted over the years.
On the economic value point, my spouse elected to stay home when our second was born as we calculated that with their (well above median pay, PhD required) science job, that with two in daycare or paid pre-school, we were just breaking even on an after-tax monthly cash basis and so they’d be working full-time and the only headway we’d be making from their work and missing our kids’ development was maxing out another 401k account.
For us, that was an absolutely economically valued choice to stay home. Now that they’re in school, freelance science consulting adds to the household retirement savings in a very significant way (when self-employed, you can squirrel away about 92% of the gross income up to mid-five figures), which by now has probably filled in the gap from several years of no 401k contributions and growth and provides them with the intellectual stimulation and contribution in their field that is also desired.
I don't believe that is all down to the changing demographics of the labor force. Another aspect is the availability of land in desirable locales (i.e. close to metro areas). There are more than twice as many people in the U.S. now as there were "in the good old days" (by which I'm referring to the 50s and early 60s). And houses have gotten larger. And on top of that, people have been generally expressing a preference toward urbanization, with less than half as many people living in rural areas today compared to the 50s. All these factors have had a significant effect on housing prices, the dominant cost most American families pay.
The fact that you need to provide so much more value as a worker isn't due to the fact that both parents tend to work (at least not directly) it's due to the fact that modern society has much more rent seeking than previous generations had to deal with. Because most families have more wealthy individuals can squeeze families more before they reach the breaking point and have done so to the point where the average family doesn't have as much spare as it should given everyone's productivity.
The inability to have one working parent support a family comes down to wealth inequality like a lot of modern ills.
If you live anywhere with cheap cost of living you can have a pretty chill lifestyle and raise kids. If you want to live in a tournament zip code you have to live a tournament lifestyle. The US is a gigantic country that is mostly empty.
Potentially controversial thought here, but I'd like to bring it up for discussion.
I feel like the work ethic I see throughout the industry is extremely toxic to society, and leads to some of this. In China for example there's a so-called "996" work schedule (9am-9pm, 6 days a week) which is basically expected of everyone in tech, unfortunately, and it seems Silicon Valley is heading that direction as well with all the off-hour meetings, weekend work, and on-call requirements. Many SV companies also demand 72 hours or more of work per week, in my adecnotal observations.
What I'm often observing is:
(a) such toxic work ethic is largely set by male founders who don't care about other important things than work e.g. family plans
(b) others in the industry are forced to compete with those ridiculous standards, including females, those with disabilities, those already with family, those taking care of a family member, etc.
(c) this results in those groups being consequently disrespected by investors because they can't match up to the workaholic male founders who don't care about anything but work. I've heard several investors talk negatively about females behind their back because "they might want to have kids".
(d) this results in more workaholic male CEOs rising to the top
(e) the cycle repeats
Are my observations and inferences correct, or am I off? Open question here.
I'm not sure if you've got the details right, but it is definitely true that if you are taking part in any elite competition, you are probably going to be competing against people who are working very hard. I don't think that this is specific to male cofounders. Even in the counterfactual world where all founders are women, some will work harder than others, and if there is a perception that the harder workers are more likely to succeed, there will be pressure on everyone else to work harder as well.
I guess what I was trying to say is, male founders have a few biological choices that female founders don't, and I'm suggesting that it should be considered unethical to set industry work-hour standards to a level that only males can achieve because males are able to de-prioritize biology.
An article about one of the most widely acclaimed male founders today:
"As an Apple employee in the early 1990s, he almost walked out of the delivery room when the impending birth of his first child threatened to disrupt a presentation he was scheduled to give. As president of Google China from 2005 to 2009, he had a special table installed on his bed so that he could sit directly up from sleep and immediately begin responding to emails, without having to waste time standing up or reaching for a laptop."
I'm hypothesizing that behavior like this, at different scales, is quickly becoming both romanticized and expected of founders, and that is marginalizing all groups except single males.
I personally don't believe, at least at the founder/executive level, that this is a standard that has been set. Rather, there is a degree of self-organization here. Individuals are making decisions that they believe will help them compete better. I doubt there is a practical route toward lessening this effect, short of detonating the whole concept of the startup and possibly the entire economic system. There is zero chance that you're going to convince individual founders to take steps that they believe will make them less competitive in the name of "ethics."
Personally I don't find it romantic at all, and therefore I am not a startup founder. I love my 9-5.
Males can more easily wait till 40+ to have children.
Males don't have periods. If work hours are kept to a healthy level, both males and females can achieve those work hours averaged over a long time because there is sufficient time for rest. If sufficient rest isn't planned into the schedule, there isn't time for periods, and that culture unfairly favors males.
Males don't get pregnant, and are often looked down upon, or lose promotion and investment opportunities, for working less hours to help their pregnant or child-rearing partners. The males who set aside time for family are out-competed by males who either (a) don't value having a partner or children or (b) treat their family like crap by not being there for them. (I'm saying this from direct observations of acquaintances and friends.)
A bit of cultural context on "996" even though most of my cousins in China don't work in tech, the context is useful.
The mandated retirement age is 60 over there so most of my aunts and uncles who have grandkids are primary childcare providers for my cousins. Due to the one child policy from a generation ago, each baby today has 6 adult caretakers, 2 of whom work full time (sometimes "996"), 4 of whom are retired and take shifts on childcare, household tasks, or ordering delivery / grocery shopping. Some of my cousins have opted for a second child, which means 4 60-ish caretakers for 2 kiddos. It's not too bad when there's good communication and teamwork between the adults, even though several of my cousins actually have never changed a diaper and I have no idea how they'll manage when it's their turn to be a grandparent in 20-30 years time.
The one thing I am seeing is non-toxic folks are not opening enough companies that offer great work-life balance, good pay and other perks. So people who like good things are only looking for jobs and not setting up companies and offering these to others.
> wish we could live in a society where people would not have to work themselves to death and were able to... you know... enjoy life
While I do agree, this is where I draw a distinction between "job" and "career." A job is something you do to make money. A career is an end in itself. Balancing a career and parenthood is incredibly hard because they're both large time commitments. Despite what the 90's told women (though this applies equally to men), you can't have it all, and you have to decide what's important to you.
I think the initial intent of feminism was that "have it all" meant "here is a buffet of life paths and each individual is free to pick which ones they want in order to live a meaningful life."
But somehow that's turned into, "we put all of the life paths on your plate and if you don't eat them all, you're a failure". We went from "you can" to "you must".
Maybe there's something fundamental in the nature of esteem and prestige that leads to this. We don't see to be good at building cultures that understand there can be many entirely disparate ways to live that are equally successful.
It's true. Telling people they can have everything does them such a disservice, because it strips them of the knowledge that these decisions exist. We all have to pick and choose where we apply our energies based on what we value most, pretending that isn't the case just means those decisions are made for them.
If I may add to your distinction between "job" and "career" -- a career can be thought of what a person ultimately decides their economic contribution to society over the course of their life is going to be. While full-time parenting is usually not counted as a career, raising the next generation certainly seems like a very critical economic contribution (among others). To this end, there are movements to recognize this contribution by paying the stay-at-home parent (usually the mother) some form of "salary" to not only fully legitimize the role of parenthood in a society that values contributions by money earned, but also to make them more independent and therefore confident by not making them fully financially dependent upon the earning spouse.
There are societies where a woman can have both, a career and a family. And that usually comes with maternity leave, parental leave, child benefits, child care, etc.
I hope I don't misunderstand you but what you said sounded to me like it's either or, and I don't think that has to be true.
I think in some places society does work with this at least reasonably well, at least from the perspective of employees - I'm sure this is harder for startup founders. But I think that startup founders are in the minority, whereas the child-raising discourse usually touches on all kinds of professionals, including normal employees.
Where I live it is common for both parents to take long stretches of leave to be with their children for the first few years of their lives, and later it is common to take special childcare days off if your child is sick, has school events, etc etc. I _think_ the government pays for most or all of this time, so I am thinking there is a way for startup founders to claim it too, but I'm not 100% sure how that works.
I don't know all the ways that it affected each person professionally, but as someone on the team working closely with quite a few of these people I never got the sense that it hindered their position at the company. I've had a TD go on 6-month paternity leave for kid 1, then go back on another 6-month leave less than a year later for #2. He went on leave leading a project and came back leading another project.
Another anecdotal example: when I was joining my first project at the place, our lead producer had just left for maternity leave. Another producer was hired to temporarily fill her role. When the original producer came back, there was no question of her position: of course she was coming back to the team she'd been leading. The replacement producer was simply moved to work on another project.
I often hear in online discourse that it can be disruptive to the project when this type of thing happens, but personally I just never experienced it like that (from the perspective of the teammate who has experienced many people at the company going on parental leave, not from the actual parent perspective). I think when taking these amounts of parental leave is the norm and not the exception, we find that it isn't really as hard or scary as many companies seem to think it is. It also has the benefit of fostering a culture where no one person is absolutely pivotal to the project (or has to work themselves to death lest their project falls apart since everything depends on them...) They _will_ go on leave to spend time with their child, and you as a team/company/management have no option but to be prepared for that.
Yeah, our replacement producer was great! She was great enough to go straight to just leading a different project. I did not sense any resentment or disruption in our original producer coming back though, and she was also great. Of course there was a proper handover etc as well. I think when you assume competence all around and hire competent people this becomes largely a non-issue to be honest.
> when ... and hire competent people this becomes largely a non-issue to be honest.
Good point.
Hmm, maybe one job interview question could be to get a project current status description, and then choose the next steps (as if one got to take over that project for a white)
> I wish we could live in a society where people would not have to work themselves to death and were able to... you know... enjoy life
Compared to almost everyone else who ever lived, if you live in a Western Democracy (and increasingly for many in some non-Western countries), that time is now.
People from past centuries, and people from many poor nations around the world, would be baffled that people living with the opportunities we have available to us complaining about not being able to "enjoy life".
Things certainly aren't perfect, but seize the opportunities already being afforded to you for enjoyment.
> That said the advice to freeze your eggs (ie work now, live later) rubs me the wrong way.
That seems to be based on a lot of assumptions. I consider working a fulfilling job to be living. Whereas raising children seems to be the fulfilling... life role.. to you? I don't view them as separate delineated things.
I think freezing eggs should become cheaper, more viable, and covered by insurance, and there are a couple ways to improve the process.
A lot of times I find dating 28-33 year old women to be predictably annoying because many stigmatize options like freezing eggs while still rushing to check the boxes on various rites of passage, as if freezing eggs is a form of defeat. Whereas older women have just gotten over it, already done it, or something else. And younger women haven't gotten around to "wondering where this is going". My experience, corroborated by some other men. I wonder if that contributes to Leo's age limit. I don't have experience dating men, so I wouldn't know if they do something similar at certain age ranges.
A young Buddhist monk went to a temple one day to renounce his worldly life and find enlightenment. He found the eldest member of the temple to be a very wise man and good friend. This elder also scrubbed the toilets and cleaned up the bathrooms every day.
Seeing this, the new monk spoke with the other monks in the monastery. "This is terrible! The elder should not have to do such a lowly chore. He is a great man and has already helped me to realize many things. I believe we should help give him time to do more relaxing in his old age. Let's take his cleaning supplies and hide them so that he won't have to clean the bathrooms every day." The other monks agreed, and they hid his supplies.
The elder said nothing about the new state of affairs, but instead began fasting. He did not eat for 2 days, then 3, then 5. Concerned, the monks asked him "Why do you not eat?"
That said the advice to freeze your eggs (ie work now, live later) rubs me the wrong way. I wish we could live in a society where people would not have to work themselves to death and were able to... you know... enjoy life