Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Memes I hate: "I don't live to work, I work to live, man"

I read this post on TechCrunch where a London VC calls out EU start-up teams for not working as hard as their Silicon Valley counterparts.  There is certainly a case to be made here - I have often commented to friends on the same issue.  One obvious counterpoint is that I see European startups paying WAY WAY less for talent than Silicon Valley alternatives, even when London is such an expensive city to live in.  But the beef I have is with all the snarky comments to the effect of “I don’t live to work, I work to live”.

It’s a phrase I used to hear a lot as a hiring manager for a big US multinational back in the late nineties.  Primarily from young guys, straight out of college.


I had taken over a failing department for a big oilfield services giant, as my first management role.  It was tough, I came into a team that was failing - 17% first line fix rate - and hated themselves and the company they worked for.  Long story short, my first conversation was to tell my boss I needed more people, he backed me in that.  I personally recruited a team of 20 young energetic technically competent people, paid them well, raised the rest of the existing team to the same level, and then was able to ask a lot of them.  Oh and I fired the one problem character.

It worked.  They worked their asses off (within legal office hours limits) and we turned the Service Desk around to a 70%+ first line fix rate in six months.  I didn’t think it was rocket science, it was just basic people management and leading from the front.  It wasn’t much different to being back at boarding school and corralling willful teenage boys.  If I expected team members to show up on a bank holiday I did too.  If we were going to extend service hours and bring in shifts, I made sure I spent time on each shift.

This is the source of the anecdote friends of mine have heard previously:  my name has been on Dick Cheney’s desk.  Of course it was being nominated for the Chairman’s award for outstanding team performance, but it’s still a nice throwaway line.  It's also a testament to how far we were able to turn things around.  However, I digress.

The point is, nothing is more corrosive to team and individual performance than the attitude:  I don’t live to work I work to live.  Amazingly it was a common line, said with humor, in interviews.  (Fail!).  It was also something I’d hear when people from other parts of the company would try to disrupt the team, out of boredom, or dissatisfaction with their own roles.

Do people realise how stupid that makes them sound?  When you hear people say it it is almost always the case that “I work to live” pretty much means you take no ownership for what you do, you sit as a passive cog in a machine you have little influence over, and then piss away your paycheck at the weekends.  That makes you a zombie.  That’s not living, that’s giving up any control over your own life and drowning the sorrows in drink and distraction.

The flipside is just as stupid.  Nobody lives to work – they live to live. Taking control of one’s working situation - creating for yourself a career (which no-one gives to you, you have to make your career) - to provide you with the resources you need or want to live the lifestyle you choose is not living to work. It’s called being an adult.

Most of the European commenters to the article citing work/life issues know not of what they speak.  I have worked in Silicon Valley start-ups for 10 years, and now run one myself.

We work our asses off and probably put in the sort of long hours being referred to. But I also have the flexibility to go to my daughter’s school to pick her up at 2pm many days; to pick up my son from special ed at 4:30 several days a week; to see them off in the mornings; to take them to events; to be the one who takes them to the doctor’s office; to volunteer for school trips. I have more time with my wife and children than I ever had free time working 9-5 for a big company in London – where I worked far fewer hours per week.

I have to put in a bit of effort co-ordinating my day.  But keeping active means you waste less time sleeping, and you focus on what’s important.

Start-ups aren’t stupid. They provide an outstanding lifestyle choice for people who choose to make their career in Silicon Valley - sure, a choice that involves working hard, pretty much all the time, but mainly because you love what you do, are passionate about doing it, and are doing something that matters.  Something that makes a difference.

Look at the Netflix HR policy slide deck that’s been floating around for months (on slideshare here). They don’t care how much time you take off or when you take it, just get your job done. You don’t get that in Europe because the flip-side of companies giving people a nice cozy 9-5 existence where they can “work to live” is that they tend to feel the need to get every minute of that out of you – it’s a lose lose.

I don’t live to work.  I don’t work to live.  I live to live and I work because I want to be doing something insanely great.  We’re bootstrapping a company that we believe will fundamentally change the way people interact with their audience, however big or small that might be, and a company that we believe will be a billion dollar business.

And that’s living too.

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