Speaker 1: Totally false. That's the two word tweet that's set off
Speaker 1: a huge debate in Silicon Valley about the merits of
Speaker 1: being a workaholic. Is working on the weekends and sacrificing
Speaker 1: your personal life the key to success? Or is there
Speaker 1: another way? This is game plan. Hi, I'm Rebecca Greenfield
Speaker 1: and I'm Francesco Weepy, And this week we're talking about
Speaker 1: how much we work and how hard we work, and
Speaker 1: if maybe there's a better way to do it than
Speaker 1: just plugging in hours until our brains explode. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: got to be right. I mean, that's what I hope,
Speaker 1: that's the dream. By all accounts, Americans in particular, we
Speaker 1: work a lot. Depending on the study, it's about an
Speaker 1: hour more day than our European counterparts. And for full
Speaker 1: time workers, so people and jobs like ores, Americans work
Speaker 1: something around average forty seven hours a week. And I
Speaker 1: think if you're in a job like working at a
Speaker 1: big corporate law firm or a medicine it's way more
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah. And what I'm wondering and what we're
Speaker 1: going to get into and this conversation is do those
Speaker 1: long hours mean we're working harder or working better or do.
Speaker 1: They just mean we're getting more tired and burning out
Speaker 1: fast and more signaling hard work. That is a thing.
Speaker 1: When I was a blogger, my first job, I had
Speaker 1: a job where I worked ten hour days, no lunch break,
Speaker 1: completely like working all the way through, and that felt
Speaker 1: crazy unsustainable and every single person burned out with writing.
Speaker 1: That's something that I guess you might imagine A boss
Speaker 1: might imagine that you can sit and do it endlessly
Speaker 1: without a break because it's not like manual labor. But
Speaker 1: actually you're going to see really diminishing returns I think
Speaker 1: when you're doing something creative or doing something that requires
Speaker 1: any brain power, because your brain, like any other organ,
Speaker 1: needs a rest. And this is a very American thing.
Speaker 1: It came up in our show last week, which was
Speaker 1: about working abroad and Mom. We talked to our colleagues
Speaker 1: who were not born here about work here. Now all
Speaker 1: of them we're both shocked at the work culture but
Speaker 1: also really liked it. The most surprising thing about the
Speaker 1: work culture in the US is how much time we
Speaker 1: spent working over here. And I tell people as maybe
Speaker 1: to the US, they were very afraid for me. We
Speaker 1: thought that Americans only got two weeks a year of lave.
Speaker 1: I'm from England and to me, the most surprising thing
Speaker 1: about working in the US is how willing people out
Speaker 1: to work on their weekends. The most surprising thing about
Speaker 1: working in the US to me is the lack of
Speaker 1: consecutive weeks of vacation. Yeah, this is an American cliche
Speaker 1: that we are all obsessed with work and logging hours,
Speaker 1: but increasingly companies are moving away from this idea that
Speaker 1: just putting in hours is the best way to get
Speaker 1: work done, both because employees millennials especially do want work
Speaker 1: life balance, but also because they're not sure that just
Speaker 1: working twelve hours in a row leads to the best product, right.
Speaker 1: I feel as a manager, I feel this way. I
Speaker 1: could not care less what time people get into work
Speaker 1: if they're meeting their deadlines and getting work done on time.
Speaker 1: And I think most people have experienced that, Like, when
Speaker 1: you're given a chance to manage your own time, you
Speaker 1: can get a lot done in a really short period
Speaker 1: of time if you're focused enough, And you can get
Speaker 1: nothing done in twelve hours, So the hours are not
Speaker 1: a good way to measure how much work you're getting done.
Speaker 1: I do feel like sometimes if you know you have
Speaker 1: to stay at the office until seven pm, you will
Speaker 1: procrastinate and just stretch out the work until seven pm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, if you're like me and
Speaker 1: you have to leave it five every day, otherwise you
Speaker 1: pick up your kid late. That endpoint is a nice
Speaker 1: kick in the butt to really consolidate your efforts and
Speaker 1: be more efficient about getting your work done right. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make you any worth have an employee, I hope not. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this whole top bait was reignited recently when a venture
Speaker 1: capitalist Keith Rabboy, got into a Twitter war Blake Robbins,
Speaker 1: another tech investor, made the case for working smarter, not harder.
Speaker 1: So he was on team, you can do it on
Speaker 1: your own time. It's hours logg don't matter. Like working
Speaker 1: on the weekends as no one. Yeah, he said something like,
Speaker 1: it's not cool. It doesn't make you cool to say
Speaker 1: you worked through your weekend. That thing you were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier about like performing work, because that's part of it.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, I've luked a twelve hour day. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm so busy. Rabbo I see him was
Speaker 1: tweet disagreed, and he tweeted those words totally false, and
Speaker 1: then he went into why he thinks working hard is
Speaker 1: the key to success. He pointed to people like Elon
Speaker 1: Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg who all put
Speaker 1: in the time and they're very successful. So obviously you
Speaker 1: have to be a workaholic to succeed, was his point.
Speaker 1: They also have another thing in common. They're all men,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the people who end up having
Speaker 1: personal obligations and family obligations on the weekends and at
Speaker 1: night our women. We'll hear more from a boy later,
Speaker 1: but his tweets started a huge debate until I've Gone Valley.
Speaker 1: There are people writing blog post responses and tweets all
Speaker 1: over the place, and one of those people was Sarah Moscoff,
Speaker 1: who took to linked In to write her rebuttal and
Speaker 1: Sarah's joining us now to explain how she feels about
Speaker 1: work life balance. Sarah Muscoff is the founder of Winning,
Speaker 1: which is a start up for parents, and she was
Speaker 1: also an engineer at Twitter, YouTube, and Google. So what
Speaker 1: was your reaction when you saw Keith's tweets about putting
Speaker 1: in hours and working yourself to death as the key
Speaker 1: to succeeding. I was very turned off by the statement. Initially,
Speaker 1: um and and you know, as as a founder with
Speaker 1: children and my co founder also as children, we really
Speaker 1: advocate for building a family friendly work environment that allows
Speaker 1: people to have time to do things outside of work,
Speaker 1: like spend time with their children. Um But the more
Speaker 1: I thought about it, the more I realized I might
Speaker 1: actually be aligned with what Keith is saying or is
Speaker 1: underlying message. Um and. And the reason I think we're
Speaker 1: actually more on the same page than not is because Whinnie,
Speaker 1: we know it. It's going to take many, many years
Speaker 1: to build a really lasting brand for parents. That's part
Speaker 1: of this standard toolkit for every parent. It's not going
Speaker 1: to happen overnight. We're not going to be an overnight
Speaker 1: viral app. And so we're building the company in a
Speaker 1: way that allows us to work on it for many,
Speaker 1: many years. We want to build a culture that's really sustainable,
Speaker 1: not just for us, but also for our employees, so
Speaker 1: that we can spend a really long time on the problem.
Speaker 1: And I think the number one reason startups fail is
Speaker 1: because the founders quit, they burn out, they don't want
Speaker 1: to work on the problem anymore. And we realized by
Speaker 1: building a company where we can have lexibility, and we
Speaker 1: can have breaks and and spend time outside of work.
Speaker 1: It will allow us to really withstand even the toughest
Speaker 1: of times. And his tweets, Keith mentioned a bunch of
Speaker 1: visionaries and really successful people as examples of how you
Speaker 1: have to really work hard and sacrifice everything else in
Speaker 1: order to be successful. What do you say to the
Speaker 1: idea that that's a necessary ingredient for success. I definitely
Speaker 1: think you really have to work hard, and certainly there
Speaker 1: are sacrifices to be made. I think there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things though, that are important to point out. First
Speaker 1: of all, when you're building a technology company, Um, you're
Speaker 1: hiring engineers who are using their brain to solve problems. Uh.
Speaker 1: And when you work on really hard problems that require
Speaker 1: your brain to be operating at like the top capacity,
Speaker 1: you need rest and you need time when you're not
Speaker 1: thinking about the problem to function at the highest level.
Speaker 1: And I think this is maybe something that investors don't understand,
Speaker 1: or some investors don't under stand, because investing in companies
Speaker 1: is very different from writing code. And and when you
Speaker 1: were a team of six engineers, so we're all writing
Speaker 1: code all day, you know, I have a computer science
Speaker 1: degree from m I T. I've worked at top technology companies,
Speaker 1: so I understand what it's like to work work on
Speaker 1: hard problems, uh, and you need rest and you need
Speaker 1: a break. So I think working hard does not mean
Speaker 1: working twelve hours a day, because you cannot work on
Speaker 1: a hard problem for twelve hours and be working at
Speaker 1: the top capacity. What are your hours like, They're like
Speaker 1: kind of the engineer version of nine to five, So
Speaker 1: I would sit around ten to six is when everyone
Speaker 1: is pretty much in the office. You know, we like
Speaker 1: to see our kids off for the day in the morning,
Speaker 1: and then we like to come home and have family dinners.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, not even all of our
Speaker 1: employees don't even have kids, but they still enjoy that
Speaker 1: flexibility to have a life outside of work and have
Speaker 1: time when they and focus on other things. So you
Speaker 1: have this culture set up at WINNIE that that allows
Speaker 1: that flexibility. But would you say it's difficult in general
Speaker 1: for parents who want to be founders or who work
Speaker 1: in the valley to contend with the expectation or the
Speaker 1: culture around working really long hours at the expense of
Speaker 1: everything else. Yeah, And I think a lot of times,
Speaker 1: you know, even these companies that claim to be very
Speaker 1: family friendly because they have great maternity leaves and they
Speaker 1: may have a awesome lactation room, and those things are important,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, but I think a lot of
Speaker 1: it too is the culture that you have for the
Speaker 1: parents that are are working there, not when they're taking
Speaker 1: time off for maternity or paternity leave, but when they're
Speaker 1: actually working day to day. You know, do you have
Speaker 1: late night events that require you to be away from
Speaker 1: your family and drinking, which is not practical for new parents.
Speaker 1: Do you require a lot of travel and long offsite
Speaker 1: where you have to be away from your family. These
Speaker 1: things really lead to a unfamily friendly work environment. I
Speaker 1: think they're often not talked about, but they make a
Speaker 1: bigger impact for working parents than having an extra month
Speaker 1: of maternity or paternity leave. And wondering if you think
Speaker 1: that attitude of someone like Keith is gendered in any way. Oh? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the idea that you can't possibly
Speaker 1: have a family and spend time with that family and
Speaker 1: have a successful startup is coming from just a lack
Speaker 1: of experience doing both. Uh, And I think you absolutely can,
Speaker 1: and we're sort of here to prove that. Why did
Speaker 1: you feel like it was important to write a response
Speaker 1: to these ideas and put them out there in a
Speaker 1: LinkedIn post. First of all, I think in general, I
Speaker 1: want to see more women start companies, and this idea
Speaker 1: that you can't start a company when you have a child,
Speaker 1: or can't have a family and have a company, I
Speaker 1: think is completely false. Like I I actually think it's
Speaker 1: one of the best jobs you can have when you
Speaker 1: have a family, because you get to set the rules
Speaker 1: and you get to create this culture that can be
Speaker 1: extremely family friendly that you may not find at your
Speaker 1: average tech company. So I think that's that's one reason
Speaker 1: I like to speak out and encourage other women to
Speaker 1: start companies and families. But I think also, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that people understand that working
Speaker 1: hard isn't just putting in twelve plus hour days every
Speaker 1: day and then burning out. It's working on it for
Speaker 1: a very long time. Uh. You know, Keith mentioned Kobe Bryant,
Speaker 1: who I'm a big fan of. He went to my
Speaker 1: high school, and Kobe Bryant, you know, played basketball forever
Speaker 1: for for his entire life for many many years. Um,
Speaker 1: And that's what it takes to build a successful company.
Speaker 1: It's not just for one year of your life working
Speaker 1: your butt off, it's for every year again and again
Speaker 1: getting up and working on the same thing. And it's
Speaker 1: this endurance that I think he forgot to mention that's
Speaker 1: really critical. So if you set up your your company
Speaker 1: in a way that you can't have endurance over a
Speaker 1: ten year period, then you're just setting yourself up for failure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to use the cliche, it's a marathon. Yes, it's not
Speaker 1: a sprint. Well, this was really great, Um, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for talking to us about working hard. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for having me. That was Sarah's perspective. But now
Speaker 1: that all the takes have come in, we wanted to
Speaker 1: see where Keith Radboy, who started this entire conversation, stands
Speaker 1: on the issue. Has he changed his point of view
Speaker 1: or is he standing firm? So to find out we
Speaker 1: brought him on the show. Keith Rabboi is a venture
Speaker 1: capitalist at Coast Aventures. He was also a former executive
Speaker 1: at PayPal, Lincoln and Square. Thanks for coming on, Keith,
Speaker 1: it's pleasure to be with you. So you recently got
Speaker 1: involved in a Twitter conversation about working hard. Do you
Speaker 1: want to tell us what happened. Well, I think some
Speaker 1: young VC junior VC uh sort of advise people on
Speaker 1: Twitter that they don't have to work very hard, that
Speaker 1: they should just work smarter, and so I sort of
Speaker 1: rejected that. I think it's kind of ridiculous for a
Speaker 1: junior associated to be giving anybody career advice, but certainly
Speaker 1: bad career advice is destructive. And what was it about
Speaker 1: what he said that you felt the need to respond to. Well,
Speaker 1: the idea that there's a substitute for hard work, especially
Speaker 1: early in your career. Uh, the one thing you can
Speaker 1: control is the effort in the initiative and the tenacity
Speaker 1: that you have, and if you want to be successful professionally,
Speaker 1: the effort is the single thing that's under your control.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of other variables that you may or
Speaker 1: may not be able to influence, but how how much
Speaker 1: you care and how hard you work to pursue an
Speaker 1: objective and to be excellent at your craft is completely
Speaker 1: under your control. So is that your theory on working
Speaker 1: that you just log the hours? Well, I think that
Speaker 1: the people who really care about being successful and highly
Speaker 1: competitive industries have to be both talented and have a
Speaker 1: lot of grit and determination and at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, there's not a lot of substitutes for that effort.
Speaker 1: So is that how you approach work? Are you just
Speaker 1: constantly logging hours? Well, not necessarily logging. I would reject
Speaker 1: the concept of logging hours. I think it's more of
Speaker 1: a mental obsession, like how how how often is your
Speaker 1: brain tuned into a particular problem and being obsessed about
Speaker 1: improving the world and solving the problem. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean necessarily literally typing or literally sitting at a desk,
Speaker 1: but it's how how consciously you're aware of what you're
Speaker 1: trying to do, how you prioritize your time and energies
Speaker 1: around that problem versus other distractions. So some people in
Speaker 1: the some of the reactions to what you said on
Speaker 1: Twitter suggested that for people who want to have families,
Speaker 1: this can be a really problematic approach because you you
Speaker 1: naturally have to give over a certain amount of time
Speaker 1: in order to be good at having a family, and
Speaker 1: that would naturally push women out of the workforce more.
Speaker 1: If everybody was subject to these standards, What do you
Speaker 1: say to that, Well, I think, like, there are only
Speaker 1: twenty four hours in a day, and you know, seven
Speaker 1: days in a week, and everybody confronts that constraint, and
Speaker 1: everybody has priorities and competing sort of things they care about.
Speaker 1: It can be everything from family to kids, to spouses,
Speaker 1: two boyfriends or girlfriends, um to parents, um. But fundamentally,
Speaker 1: if you're going to be one of the best at
Speaker 1: anything in the world that's hyper competitive, there is a
Speaker 1: sacrifice at the end of the day, at the marginal hour,
Speaker 1: the marginal minute, the marginal attention, and it's very difficult
Speaker 1: to be excellent and everything, and so you have to decide.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not choosing for people, recommending for people
Speaker 1: what they should decide to be their priorities. But if
Speaker 1: they say I want to be the best in the
Speaker 1: world that a particular sport, at a particular discipline, whether
Speaker 1: it's law or technology or investing, there is into a
Speaker 1: lot of substitute for making that a primary focus of
Speaker 1: your life. It just doesn't work. It'd be nice if
Speaker 1: you could do three things simultaneously and be awesome at
Speaker 1: all of them, but usually there's tradeoffs. The world is
Speaker 1: the world has tradeoffs in your in your company, in
Speaker 1: your life, and you have to decide what's most important
Speaker 1: to you. But pretending that there are in trade offs
Speaker 1: is just insane. I think that's the startup founder that
Speaker 1: we talked to believed that it wasn't really sustainable to
Speaker 1: be obsessed with one thing and that she wanted to
Speaker 1: build a sustainable company where yeah, she could be obsessed
Speaker 1: with the problem she was working on. But um, that's
Speaker 1: radic that's just totally false. Like so Jeff Bezos, like
Speaker 1: if you read his annual letter from says explicitly you
Speaker 1: have to work hard to be at Amazon and be successful.
Speaker 1: Amazon is the most important company in the planet right now,
Speaker 1: probably and he's been doing it for twenty years and
Speaker 1: his most of his executive team has been around forever. Um,
Speaker 1: So that's clearly false. Test is another good example, Ellen
Speaker 1: Comparers starting a company, running a company, teachewing Glass, and Tesla's,
Speaker 1: you know, probably the most sustainable future company in the
Speaker 1: automotive industry. Um. So, I just think that that's just
Speaker 1: false and there's no evidence of that. It's completely made
Speaker 1: up fiction that people like to tell themselves to comfort themselves.
Speaker 1: So do you think it's even possible to work smart?
Speaker 1: It is possible to work smart, So I don't reject
Speaker 1: the idea that you should, of course be smart in
Speaker 1: leverage your time. I talk a lot about and teach
Speaker 1: a lot of classes UM and mentor people on focus,
Speaker 1: and I think that stuff is very very important. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, most of the people
Speaker 1: you compete with who are pretty damn good are working
Speaker 1: smart by definition, and they work hard. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that there's a work dumb and work more. But
Speaker 1: most of the people who are pretty talented and get
Speaker 1: to a certain level in life are pretty smart and
Speaker 1: are working pretty smartly, And then it's still the question
Speaker 1: of how do you compete with even them? So it's
Speaker 1: like to be the best of the best at any
Speaker 1: feel old requires more than just the talent and being
Speaker 1: pretty good at leveraging your time. If you can't leverage
Speaker 1: your time successfully and smartly, you're probably not going to
Speaker 1: be in a good place anyway. But then you still
Speaker 1: have to put in the effort. I learned this mostly
Speaker 1: as a lawyer UM when I joined Solving the Cromwell
Speaker 1: back in the nineties, which is like the canonical, the
Speaker 1: paradigmatic Wall Street law firm. I was very smart and
Speaker 1: talented as a lawyer, but there's people that were colleagues
Speaker 1: and competitors, meaning people we competed against litigation that we're
Speaker 1: just working harder than I was. And it became pretty
Speaker 1: clear pretty quickly that if I didn't keep up with them,
Speaker 1: not not only would I lose cases, but I would
Speaker 1: lose internal promotions unless I could both be as smart
Speaker 1: or smarter than them and put in the same level
Speaker 1: of effort. So your tweet has started a discussion and
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley about this, and there vcs who even disagree
Speaker 1: with you. Has anything you've heard changed your mind at all? No,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that there's any founders who really disagree.
Speaker 1: I'd say it's plus of people who have actually accomplished
Speaker 1: anything UM that agree with me. UM. I think there's
Speaker 1: people who would aspirationally want to achieve things, but they
Speaker 1: may not be willing to make the trade offs in
Speaker 1: life to achieve a certain objective. You know, as I said,
Speaker 1: I think there are lots of people who want things,
Speaker 1: but there's real trade offs to get from point A
Speaker 1: to point B in life. And you can decide point
Speaker 1: B is not worth it or not interesting to you.
Speaker 1: That's perfectly fine and a valid decision. But pretending that
Speaker 1: there's not tradeoffs to get to point B is just
Speaker 1: fooling yourself. So would you say your work life balance
Speaker 1: is pretty good or okay, yeah right? A venture capital
Speaker 1: definitely gives you more control of your life UM than
Speaker 1: some other jobs, mostly because I really only have fifteen
Speaker 1: or twenty customers, and that there's entrepreneurs I work with
Speaker 1: and only have about four to six partners, So the
Speaker 1: number of people that UM can sort of interrupt my
Speaker 1: days is a lot more limited when I was running
Speaker 1: a company and had teams of tends to hundreds of people.
Speaker 1: If you just assume that one percent of everybody that
Speaker 1: works with you UM is going to have a question
Speaker 1: or challenge, you have a very unpredictable life. Every day.
Speaker 1: When I was running you know, entrepreneurial startups, every day
Speaker 1: something would go wrong literally every day, and the question
Speaker 1: is just the magnitude and what direction it would come
Speaker 1: from UM, And you get used to that at some point,
Speaker 1: like it becomes part of your d n A. And
Speaker 1: part of what makes the role challenging and rewarding and
Speaker 1: exciting is that there's always something new and there's always
Speaker 1: some new kind of mass to help fix and problem solved.
Speaker 1: But you can't control it, so there was no predictability.
Speaker 1: Adventure it tends to be a lot more predictable. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if I think this weekend, you know I
Speaker 1: want to attend a wedding, there's only one percent chance
Speaker 1: that something so urgent occurs that I couldn't attend it,
Speaker 1: Whereas when I was running a company, it might be
Speaker 1: ten or twenty percent chance that something would spike and
Speaker 1: be so important um that it would really disrupt pre
Speaker 1: existing plans. Since you work with founders, do you ever
Speaker 1: worry about them burning out? Um? Generally I don't, So
Speaker 1: I don't believe, and I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: search that you know I started someone twitter back. It's
Speaker 1: anymore that burnout doesn't come from work effort. Burnout comes
Speaker 1: from something different. Burnout comes from banging your head against
Speaker 1: the law without progress, and which very natural. I would
Speaker 1: say the same thing would occur to me. If you
Speaker 1: tackle a problem and can't make incremental progress on it,
Speaker 1: and can't conquer the problem and the challenge it dry,
Speaker 1: it can drive you to burnout. I think when you
Speaker 1: push yourself really hard, but you're making progress and you
Speaker 1: can see improvement, whether it's personal improvement, professional improvement and
Speaker 1: reflective and metrics. You don't tend to get burned out.
Speaker 1: It's like it's sort of there's a sports metaphor is
Speaker 1: when your team's winning, people like to go to practice.
Speaker 1: They don't they don't complain about practice, they practice really well.
Speaker 1: The team gets a losing streak, you know, people's enthusiasm
Speaker 1: tends to wane and it feels more like labor to
Speaker 1: go to practice. So the best way to avoid burnout
Speaker 1: is just to be working on the best startups, but
Speaker 1: working on challenges that UM you feel are important, making
Speaker 1: progress against the challenges so that the application of your
Speaker 1: skills and efforts are making a difference. And if not,
Speaker 1: find a different set of challenges or a different company
Speaker 1: could be either UM that's more likely to provide motivation. Like,
Speaker 1: for example, let me give you a contrast. I could
Speaker 1: work twenty hours a week, which isn't that much by
Speaker 1: American standards at all. But if I wasn't making progress,
Speaker 1: if I didn't think what I was doing was making
Speaker 1: a difference, I'd be frustrated. Well, if there's one thing
Speaker 1: that you want people to get from this conversation, what
Speaker 1: would it be? Figure out what's most important to you
Speaker 1: and the rank creative set of priorities, and then allocate
Speaker 1: your time against those priorities. And to what we teach
Speaker 1: to managers. You know, when I first have to help
Speaker 1: train a new manager, we do this thing called the
Speaker 1: calendar audit. And the way the calendar audit works is
Speaker 1: I first asked the person to go to the whiteboard
Speaker 1: and identify their top three priorities, and then we go
Speaker 1: pull out their Google calendar usually and map their time
Speaker 1: against the parties and look for disconnect. So I think
Speaker 1: in life, you generally want to map your time against
Speaker 1: your priorities. I can't tell people what their parties should be, um,
Speaker 1: but if they tell me what their parties can be
Speaker 1: are what they've decided their parties should be and they
Speaker 1: wanted to be, I can help them get there. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on and talking to us.
Speaker 1: It's been really interesting to hear both sides of this conversation.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to be with you. One criticism that
Speaker 1: popped up during this whole firestorm was that it's easy
Speaker 1: enough for a VC to say that startup founders need
Speaker 1: to basically grind themselves down to the bone, creating a
Speaker 1: product that then benefits said vcs. UM and even other
Speaker 1: vcs made this point. Ban Sabbat had a whole blog
Speaker 1: post that basically said, show a little more empathy to
Speaker 1: the founders that are making your job possible. And there
Speaker 1: is a certain fetishization in the valley of this hard
Speaker 1: work at kind of like a front line low level
Speaker 1: where you know, it's almost celebrated if people are totally
Speaker 1: sacrificing their life at the expense of their work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was that story of the lift driver who she
Speaker 1: was taking left rides basically as she was going into labor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and lift was using this example as like a great
Speaker 1: shining moment for them, like showing how wonderful it was
Speaker 1: that lift drivers were so dedicated instead of being like,
Speaker 1: this is the health risk you should be in the
Speaker 1: hospital if you're going into labor, and like maybe you
Speaker 1: should have a job that makes it such that you
Speaker 1: don't have to work so much that you must work
Speaker 1: until the moment you're going into labor, which I think
Speaker 1: is the dark side of this ethos. It's like, at
Speaker 1: whose expense are we making people work hard? Rights like
Speaker 1: the vcs at the top want everyone below them to
Speaker 1: work really hard, but it's kind of ridiculous. I do
Speaker 1: think that there is a shift happening. Like I said that,
Speaker 1: there are companies offering more flexibility to workers, mostly brought
Speaker 1: on by millennials who are demanding these things, but because
Speaker 1: it's seen as a perk, and like many perks, it's
Speaker 1: very uneven. So the people who are getting work life
Speaker 1: balance and flexibility happen to be in competitive white collar
Speaker 1: fields and they're the ones who are getting this work
Speaker 1: life balance of flexibility, where the people at the bottom,
Speaker 1: like the lift driver, who barely have worker protections, they're
Speaker 1: the ones who happened to be putting in all these hours. Right,
Speaker 1: It's very possible to be one of those people that
Speaker 1: works really long hours and not be getting a great
Speaker 1: product or a company you founded, or around a VC
Speaker 1: funding at the end of it. You could just be
Speaker 1: working those hours in order to maintain your daily life.
Speaker 1: And look, sometimes there will be a big project or
Speaker 1: product or startup idea that you do need to throw
Speaker 1: yourselves into and you have to put in the long hours.
Speaker 1: But I think you just have to realize that you're
Speaker 1: sacrificing not just your work life balance, but maybe the
Speaker 1: sustainability of your employees and your company. Yeah, and those
Speaker 1: intense times where you're putting in sixteen hour days and
Speaker 1: everything's nuts like should probably be your whole career. But
Speaker 1: I think to be able to say that you did
Speaker 1: put in a lot of hours when it really counted
Speaker 1: is important. Sometimes you just have to back up and
Speaker 1: then look at what you lost and make sure that
Speaker 1: you're getting it back. And now it's time for half
Speaker 1: big takes, half fake takes. You can call in with
Speaker 1: your half bake takes at our hotline which totally works
Speaker 1: at two on two six seven zero one six six.
Speaker 1: We have a caller half bag take this week. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'll listen to you guys talk this week about text messaging. Now.
Speaker 1: I have to say I'm writing a book about how
Speaker 1: test how we can vey affect in text messaging essentially,
Speaker 1: and I the question mark exclamation point thing. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's psychological. I can't weigh in on that at all,
Speaker 1: but I will say that you are not being Lucy
Speaker 1: goosey with anything that you write on to messaging. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think that we put more effort and energy into
Speaker 1: how we construct the text message than a lot of
Speaker 1: other platforms one because we don't have a rule book,
Speaker 1: so we don't have anybody saying, oh, you should write
Speaker 1: it this way or we should write it that way. Instead,
Speaker 1: we have to come up with it all of our
Speaker 1: own and figure out how we're going to debate the challenge.
Speaker 1: If you were being loosey goosey with it, then it
Speaker 1: wouldn't bother you so much when you accidentally put in
Speaker 1: the question mark for the explition point, you just send
Speaker 1: a little asterisks and sun and back and be like,
Speaker 1: all right, all is well. But we can't go back
Speaker 1: in time and take back what we said. So that's
Speaker 1: why it matters so much. Anyhow, we have a great day. Bye.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, this is my ideal listener
Speaker 1: writing a book about text messages. It sounds I want
Speaker 1: to read this book. I want it. This is a
Speaker 1: good audience for us. Okay. I have to say when
Speaker 1: I heard this kind of blew my mind, Like I
Speaker 1: did not realize that there was another level of half
Speaker 1: bigness to my half big take about tech Switch, if
Speaker 1: you don't remember, was basically about how this error is
Speaker 1: really common where you can transpose the exclamation point in
Speaker 1: the question mark, and that just totally screws up the meaning.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why everybody does it, and I
Speaker 1: wish we could stop it. But she's totally right, like
Speaker 1: that will ruin your day because we don't have rules
Speaker 1: around this, and so we can't fix these problems. We
Speaker 1: can't fix these text mess ups. I was, yeah, I
Speaker 1: like the lesson of like texting is a real way
Speaker 1: of communicating, kind of like the internet's real. Like just
Speaker 1: because it's over text doesn't mean you're not putting any
Speaker 1: thought into it, Like text are real. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: you're putting more thought into it than you realize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is your not fully formed idea for this week? Francesca, Well,
Speaker 1: this is another example of me standing up against the practice.
Speaker 1: That's something I actually do, but I'm realizing the error
Speaker 1: of my ways. A lot of people try to save
Speaker 1: time in the morning by brushing their teeth in the shower.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for years. Um, there's no point
Speaker 1: in doing it this way. Also, you're there's like at
Speaker 1: chance you're gonna end up spitting out toothpaste on yourself,
Speaker 1: which is gross. I honestly had no idea why people
Speaker 1: did it in the first place, Like you blew my
Speaker 1: mind when you said it was to save time, because
Speaker 1: I just didn't understand how that even could possibly save time. Okay,
Speaker 1: I will give you my ration. You still have to
Speaker 1: brush your teeth, right, you still have to use that time.
Speaker 1: So my rationale originally was, I believe that when you
Speaker 1: get in the shower, there's like a ten second period
Speaker 1: of just kind of like staring into space as the
Speaker 1: water warms up and you kind of soak your whole
Speaker 1: body and water before you really start your shower routine.
Speaker 1: So my genius idea was to combine that time with
Speaker 1: the toothbrushing time and not lounge around in front of
Speaker 1: the mirror like some sort of lady of leisure who
Speaker 1: can just stare at herself and toothbrush the morning away.
Speaker 1: But even if it does save time, it's a its
Speaker 1: ten seconds, and and that ten seconds is not going
Speaker 1: to be like, no one's gonna notice that you got
Speaker 1: to work ten seconds earlier. It shouldn't surprise you that
Speaker 1: I'm a very efficient shower and there's there's no ten
Speaker 1: second waiting around time. You just get in and start scrubbing.
Speaker 1: Didn't get in, he rance down, Get with it, get
Speaker 1: on with it. All right, I'm very impressed. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to improve. I'm gonna I'm gonna improve my shower
Speaker 1: life balance. That's right. Give myself some time to brush
Speaker 1: my teeth and really devote myself to just doing that.
Speaker 1: That's right, Becca. What is your heath big take this week?
Speaker 1: It's air conditioning related, which is a huge topic in
Speaker 1: the summer. I a C unit broke at home at home,
Speaker 1: and so it was a whole regummar roll to get
Speaker 1: it back. In the meantime, though, I was relying on
Speaker 1: a ceiling fan and other fans, and I kind of
Speaker 1: realized that fans are awesome. That's what you say, you're
Speaker 1: a fan. I'm a fan of fans. Air Conditioning is
Speaker 1: very irritating to me. Too cold. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: It is nice when you sleep. It can get very
Speaker 1: hot New York City. I understand, very privileged blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But fans are just they blow the warm air around
Speaker 1: so it's more soothing. I think you're talking about a
Speaker 1: ceiling fan or some kind of like stand up. I
Speaker 1: now bought a new AC unit while I got it
Speaker 1: replaced because bathermom broke, so it was free and honestly,
Speaker 1: last night, I just put it on fan mode. I
Speaker 1: basically plan a lot of money for a fan, but
Speaker 1: a huge fan of fans fans fan mode on the
Speaker 1: A C Unit. I don't mind because they can get
Speaker 1: too cold and sometimes that kind of creeps in on
Speaker 1: you in the middle of the night and you wake
Speaker 1: up freezing and it's weird. Artificial gold air. It's not nice. However,
Speaker 1: actual fans and I have mentioned this on the podcast
Speaker 1: before they tickle my skin. Yeah, I also don't like
Speaker 1: to feel the air, which I've mentioned on the show
Speaker 1: before too, so I get it. But when it's really hot,
Speaker 1: you you know, trade offs. I think what we're learning
Speaker 1: is that both of us have complicated relationships with air
Speaker 1: yes and temperatures yea, as as many women I hate
Speaker 1: to gender as they do, though they do struggle as real.
Speaker 1: And that was half Bake Takes, Half Baked Takes, Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening to another episode of Game Plan.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at RZ Greenfield and
Speaker 1: I'm at Francesca today. You can tweet your half Bake
Speaker 1: takes at us, or you can leave us a voicemail
Speaker 1: at our half bag Take Hotline two one to six
Speaker 1: one seven zero one six six. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: hear from us even more, sign up for our newsletter
Speaker 1: at bloomberg dot com Slash Newsletters. You just check the
Speaker 1: game Plan box. If you like the show, head on
Speaker 1: over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and rate
Speaker 1: and review. We like all of your feedback. This show
Speaker 1: was produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Henderson. Head of
Speaker 1: Podcasts is Alec McCabe and we will see you next week.
Speaker 1: Good bye. I'm totally with it.