> I’m speaking from experience. I did it. I worked the 80-90 hours a week getting my startup off the ground. Raised millions in VC. And I regret it terribly.
Plenty of people don’t. I wouldn’t do what you did but no one gets to the top of any field working 40 hours a week. The number of people managing even 100 people who work 40 hour weeks is small.
" I'll keep it short and sweet. Family, religion, friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business. When opportunity knocks, you don't want to be driving to a maternity hospital or sitting in some phony-baloney church. Or synagogue. " - Monty Burns
> If getting to the top of a field is what you want to do, don't have a relationship. And especially, don't have children.
Plenty of people are quite happy to have relationships with those at the tops of their fields. I don’t feel it’s my place to tell them how to live their lives. Many people are the children of parents who worked a lot all their working lives. Most of them have good relationships with one or both of their parents and are reasonably happy with their lives in general. I don’t feel it’s my place to say they shouldn’t have been born.
"A comprehensive review of studies on parents' work schedules and child development spanning the last three decades shows that parents' work schedules in evenings, nights and weekends, so called "nonstandard work schedules" or "unsociable work hours", may have negative consequences for children. When parents work such hours, children tended to have more behavioral problems, poorer cognitive ability (e.g., language, reading and mathematics), and were more likely to be overweight or obese than children in families where parents mostly worked during the daytime hours and week day. This review based on research in developed countries was conducted by a team of researchers from the US and Australia, led by Jianghong Li, a senior researcher from WZB Berlin Social Science Center. "
Plenty of people don’t. I wouldn’t do what you did but no one gets to the top of any field working 40 hours a week. The number of people managing even 100 people who work 40 hour weeks is small.