I'm skeptical. If someone comes in at 9 and leaves at 5 sharp M-F, there's no way they'd fit in at most SV startups. You're saying they'd fit in at ZeroCater?
I'm sure you're being genuine, but this seems naive. Startups are small teams, building relatively unproven products. There are a lot of lean times and challenges that test everyone's mettle. I don't think it's very likely someone can do their 9-5, even if they're massively productive in that timespan, and not be looked at funny if the cultural norm is for everyone to work crazy hours. I think the way for reasonable hours to actually work at a startup is for the founders to actively make that the culture.
Unless the company works asynchronously/remotely which has an awesome side-effect of making it feasible to value output over effort.
> Startups are small teams, building relatively unproven products. There are a lot of lean times and challenges that test everyone's mettle. I don't think it's very likely someone can do their 9-5, even if they're massively productive in that timespan, and not be looked at funny if the cultural norm is for everyone to work crazy hours.
My experience? people who claim to be working crazy hours are only actually working crazy hours if you count all hours that are either in the office or with co-workers as 'work'
I joke that by that standard, I do 20 hour days. I mean, my partner is my partner in several senses of the word, and yeah, 4 hours a day apart is not at all atypical. (I mean, I'm exaggerating for effect; nobody counts sleep as work... yet.)
But that's not how most people outside of the startup world think about it.
To a normal person? screwing off on hacker news? not work. checking facebook? not work. going to a long lunch with your friends that you work with? not work. playing video games with your friends from work? not work.
You take those things out? and the hours your average startup guy puts in start looking a lot more reasonable.
The thing that irritates me is that there is this culture of exaggerating your hours that is extremely destructive to people who aren't in on the joke. I know people that actually track hours, and they stop tracking hours when a co-worker comes over and starts a conversation. that's not work, in their eyes. And if you track time like that (bullshitting- not work. Hacker news (and using the internet for things other than looking shit up)- not work, eating- not work, commuting- not work; etc...) just getting to 40 hours means you don't have a whole lot of non-sleep personal time during the week; and those (in my experience) diligent ex-defense contractor types can be some of your best employees.
For one, I agree with lsc's response. Our employees are definitely in the office more than 40 hours a week, but that includes hanging around after work for dinner or a couple of beers.
That said, I generally work eight hour days, and I don't feel like I'm being judged when I walk out of the office at the end of the day. It's a solid part of our culture - that's why I said it's one of the perks we live by.
That's a bit of a non-answer. Your answer is also quite common in places which do require basically formal/informal "on call" time, so it's hard to know if you're different from other ones.
It's also an honest answer. We do have an on-call rotation for emergencies, which are very rare. If you're busy, pass it on to the next person on the list. I'd say our team spends about an hour a month total on these.
Operative word is most. I'd also be fine with someone doing that if they were meeting their objectives. We generally don't work much more than that and I think we're all happier for it (and consequently more productive).