LinkedIn’s cofounder Reid Hoffman says seeking work-life balance is a red flag that you’re ‘not committed to winning’
LinkedIn's cofounder Reid Hoffman says seeking work-life balance is a red flag that you're 'not committed to winning’
The rest of the context seems important
for founders and entrepreneurs: if you’re serious about starting a company.
Not that I want to encourage this kind of life but with that context he is kinda right. Entrepreneurship is one of those areas where you genuinely get out what you put in. If you want your business to be better, you have to commit the time to it.
Yeah, that’s honestly very true about starting a small business.
I dig it with context. I did the same thing in 2001 when I decided to go back to my original career of tile and flooring.
I got into IS/IT in 1998 after a decade in flooring and worked a couple jobs until I found some wicked smart programmers and they made a search engine while I was "adult supervision". Fact was, I bought my first suit in '99 and played businessman. It was typical dot-com startup energy, we had some crappy office space that I renovated with some help from my ex-employees on the construction side. Found some venture capital in our new smelling conference room. Bought a foosball and air hockey table. Some weird automatic coffee machine that never worked right. Hired a receptionist/office manager. Bought lunch every day from a takeout or delivery place on the company card. MANY late nights and we'd either chip in for dinner or I'd buy, because lets face it, I was riding their coattails. I could negotiate and write emails, I made sure the network stayed up and I was a good shit filter.
By mid 2001 we sold that search engine to a porn clip website which is since defunct. Not fuckyou money but definitely set the fortunes of the seven of us. Those six guys all went on to do various shit and by all measures are successful with a work/life balance. They all have families now and the kids are either grown or still in college. The only guy I really kept in touch with immediately went into a large university IT department, he's been there since. I took my money and went all-in with tile and flooring and I worked my ass off for 15 years. Stacked money, got a little lucky with mining bitcoin, and now I have a 401k and a mutual fund.
Now I work 40/week for another company and they know I can technically walk away any time I want at 54 years old. (note: the latest stock market shit may have weakened my position but I refuse to look during the panic period). It's fucking EASY compared to either the dot-com startup or the 15 years after that. I mean, I worked 16 hour days on dark, humid bathrooms just to finish on schedule. 70 hour weeks setting tile will really wear your ass out.
So I guess this is a long ass post to say, "I understand the grind, but you can't do it for 30 years. If you have an exit plan then grind away but if you don't see that brass ring in front of you stop killing yourself."
Yeah, that's actually a fair comment. Getting a new business off the ground, pretty much any business, is something that requires a big time commitment at the start.
Thanks, the fact that this the source is an American business magazine made me expect this wasn't meant for the underpaid and overworked.
Guess what kind of boss a person following this bullshit advice would make
Still not always true. If you start a business in a field that interests you and you like it so much that you want to work on it day and night that is ok imo. But if you work in sth day and night because you want to earn tons of money from it, dominate the sector and drive others out of the business, that is a mental disease.
LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman should go eat glass. This is how his likely schedule looks:
8 am: Meetings (optional)
11 am: tax deductible "business" lunch
1 pm: meetings (optional)
6 pm: tax deductible "business" dinner
The worst people on Earth are the ones who are constantly obsessing about "winning" every situation, so that makes perfect sense to me.
Legit, I think this is why board games are a great activity when getting to know new people. Most people don't want to play with someone ultra competitive, who'll either gloat when they win, or flip the board when they lose. If someone's willing to behave that way over a game, imagine how they'd be over something that's actually important.
Winning what? Profit for other people?
For me, winning is a job with flexible hours that let's me go home and do some garage work and then cook. I want vacation time and time to see the doctor. I want a good retirement plan and good coverage for the 3 bullshit doctor things... The body doc, the eye doc and the teeth doc. I want a doctor who enjoys work and is not simply seeing me and a thousand other people. I want cheap medicine that is effective. I want free analysis and no copay surprise. i want free hospital stays. I also want free schools k-12 and university for my kids. And I want free vaccines and freedom of speech without fear or retaliation. And I want diversity at my work, I don't wanna be the only black guy! Or the only Chinese or Korean or woman. And I want my job to not make things that hurt people.
"Jeez what a loser"
_- Asshole linkedin co-founder, probably
I'll be joining the Dow people next week when it drops another 68 percent. They say it hurts less if you jump from the fifth floor or higher. But if you go too high like the 20th floor, you could have enough times to freakout. So you gotta find your Happy medium.
This is it. When they forced us back into the office, it was less about afternoon naps and avoiding traffic. It was more about being able to see my dr that closes at 4pm or taking my elderly parents to their appointments. Cooking dinners to avoid takeout and getting ‘me’ time between zoom calls. They took that away from us. Now it’s 9-5 and not a minute more.
Anyone who devotes the majority of their life to their job is sort of a loser in my opinion.
Unless it's something they're genuinely passionate about that gives them purpose, it's the saddest thing in the world. I don't think that describes the vast majority of us doing our mundane corporate slave work though.
Agreed. I've met some people who devoted their lives to work in nonprofits or public service who I would definitely not call losers. I wouldn't want to be their spouse, but I admire them.
Weird. I feel like I’m winning when I’m on a long vacation doing something adventurous and I feel like I’m fucking losing when I’m staring at a computer screen in an office.
For real I love it when I'm not at work having fun and living life even if it's just boring and I'm at home just working on some house projects and riding my bike
Workers, at best, only get a tiny fraction of "winning" when it happens. Why should anyone destroy themselves for spoils that multimillionaire C-suites take for themselves?
I am not committed to winning. That's a good thing. I'm committed to living a decent life.
Some might say that is winning.
“Reid Hoffman has a reality check for entrepreneurs: if you’re serious about starting a company, you should say goodbye to binge-watching your favorite Netflix show after dinner or sleeping in on the weekends—you need to be on the work grind all hours of the day.”
You’re clearly not committed to reading articles either. “It’s a headline, it must be about me. Let me make sure I share my opinion without reading the article!”
Opinions based on false perceptions when the truth is 20seconds of discovery away, is just willful and lazy ignorance. Thats not just a red flag, thats also red hat behavior. You can do better than that if you want to.
Exactly. Thanks for putting it so clearly.
You're damn fucking right I'm not.
This man is a sociopath. He shouldn't be running a major corporation. He should be living in a rubber room.
Translation: You're not someone we can overwork so easily.
Yeah ...dont fall for this shit
He absolutely has free time and a work and life balance he just wants to take away YOUR life and exploit you
We have different definitions of winning. If I never work for an asshole like you ever again, I win.
Just because he has no life doesn’t mean others shouldn’t have one. Boo this man.
Boo, Wendy Testaburger boo
Indeed, boo this man 👻
I guess that would make sense to someone with narcissistic or psychopathic personality organization. "All benefits must accrue to me."
Exactly, I am happy normal people stop following this trend en masse. We just need normal lives, we're not aiming to be the richest or the best of the best. It's unhealthy and not cozy at all.
Winning by whose definition?
His line going up.
If you're not willing to sacrifice your life and happiness for me then what do you think you're doing with your life?
Yeah fuck that, every fuckin job description I read these days with some variation of "ownership mindset" makes my blood boil, fuck this economy and fuck society I'm not having kids and see them go through the same rat race as me, let these cunts cry about lack of workers and demographic collapse
And I think that's where the issue falls with this. People who found companies feel entitled to similar labor levels as their own
Yup, they expect ordinary workers to put in the same amount of effort for a tiny salary compared to theirs which doesn't scale with the profits of the company, and when there are losses they lose their jobs while the people who made the decisions that led to the losses get to keep their jobs, fuck that shit.
Rooting for the collapse of this entire system is what sustains me.
"Just roleplay having actual ownership!"
I'm not even committed to competing to begin with.
Yeah well I don’t believe life is a race, and even if it is it’s rigged so who fucking cares?
text
A STRANGE GAME THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY
How about a nice game of chess?
Title bait. He said that about entrepreneurship and starting a business, which I can understand as it is very unlikely that you work as an "standard" employee.
"“When we started LinkedIn, we started with people who had families. So we said, sure, go home have dinner with your family. Then, after dinner with your family, open up your laptop and get back in the shared work experience and keep working.”"
Lol dumbass, I'm barely earning my participation trophy.
If I even get a participation trophy, I'll probably skip the ceremony.
I'm only committed to winning in that way if winning means that I am getting a cut of the company profits.
I'm at my salary will reflect the profitability and growth of the company.
Otherwise I'm just another wage slave that you're trying to abuse, and take away my work is rights
I worked at LNKD through a good part of its rampup. Jeff Weiner made Linkedin what it was. Reid Hoffman was mostly useless and came along for the ride. His "masters of scale" podcast series was a bit of a joke too, he never had anything to do with anything technical or at scale. He is just stealing credit from his betters.
Classic famous ceo Behavior, same with Jobs / Wozniak.
Every "famous leader" ; if you want to know a good company, look at ones which didn't have famous leaders or did have leaders notorious for not being famous. DEC, Sun. IBM, after all, though not as cool.
Explains the insanity you see in LinkedIn posts and comments.
I'm worried that LinkedIn has gotten worse. If it's not an update about a new job or a work anniversary, it's some influencer-type grind-cult post or a "how to do X with specifically our product" kind of advertiser seminar clip (and I don't need more ansible in my life, thanks).
I'm not sure it wasn't ever much better, but I remember otherwise.
I'm fine with boring influencer crap. I just hope it doesn't become as bad of a right-wing cesspool as Twitter.
LinkedIn is useful for actually finding jobs because I enter my resume ONCE. I hope they don't throw that away.
Win a career, loose a family, mmh...
I don't give a fuck about winning, I want to be happy.
Objecting to alienation is lèse majesté, serfs! Labor for the labor god.
Not committed to him winning. Fuck that shit.
Well. I don’t usually listen to the opinions of fat fucks. Because they can’t even manage their own lives. As a technically obese man myself. I power lift and have never had a healthy bmi technically. We should be ignored because we suck at our own health.
Amen brother
shut the fuck up dude lmao you are so sad
^words of a not-sad human being.
Yeah Okay Grant Cardone..
Winning what? There are different prizes and different lottery ticket prices.
What really tells you are not committed to winning is listening to someone's talk on that.
Read the article maybe.
Sounds like little Trump. Winning!
Reid Hoffman can stick his tongue in my ass.
I would like to see an email from him with a bullet point list of five things he did this week.
FTAH==F**K THAT ASSHOLE
I mean, it’s a flag, just not a red one.
Lol dumbfuck.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the grindset. Lots of people have extreme dedication to their craft (not me lol).
The grindset becomes an issue when you're giving someone else all of your time and they're taking advantage.
