<story><title>Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston to take year-long sabbatical</title><url>http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/04/y-combinator-cofounder-jessica-livingston-to-take-year-long-sabbatical/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>edent</author><text>Yes. Yes it is reasonable. A startup is hiring people to perform a job in exchange for compensation.  If they want you to work weekends, they can pay a fair market rate for that.&lt;p&gt;Or they can hire more people.&lt;p&gt;In some countries, it&amp;#x27;s extremely unusual to perform overtime.  If a startup has 10 employees and they each do an hour of overtime a week - they&amp;#x27;re effectively denying another worker a job.&lt;p&gt;Yes, it&amp;#x27;s a bit &amp;quot;mythical man month&amp;quot; - but if there&amp;#x27;s too much work to go around, your employer needs to hire more people.</text></item><item><author>danielbarla</author><text>I completely agree, but is this a &amp;quot;reasonable&amp;quot; approach to take in a startup world (from the startup&amp;#x27;s point of view)?  Or does this make us incompatible &amp;#x2F; unfavourable with startups, as OP said?</text></item><item><author>qmr</author><text>&amp;gt; Right now parenthood is incompatible with startups&lt;p&gt;Be a grownup and assert that your work is at work, and work ends when you leave the office.  Unless you are on call, turn off your email and work phone.  Stop being conned into staying at the office for &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; dinner, ping pong, &amp;quot;teambuilding&amp;quot;, or whatever bullshit is being peddled by your employer.</text></item><item><author>julianpye</author><text>Congrats to Jessica! As a parent of a 1 year old mastercrawler, I am also so grateful to Paul taking time off earlier to spend time to watch his kids grow up and I love his tales of them growing up. 
Having a family changes everything. Right now parenthood is incompatible with startups - how can we change this and make startups better for young parents as well who for now will just always try to get corporate jobs?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>untog</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think reasonable is a good word, here. Of course it&amp;#x27;s reasonable. But when all your other coworkers are 20-something singles who can and will stay to 9pm, how do you remain &amp;quot;competitive&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Obviously, ideally none of this would be necessary. But alas...</text></comment>
<story><title>Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston to take year-long sabbatical</title><url>http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/04/y-combinator-cofounder-jessica-livingston-to-take-year-long-sabbatical/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>edent</author><text>Yes. Yes it is reasonable. A startup is hiring people to perform a job in exchange for compensation.  If they want you to work weekends, they can pay a fair market rate for that.&lt;p&gt;Or they can hire more people.&lt;p&gt;In some countries, it&amp;#x27;s extremely unusual to perform overtime.  If a startup has 10 employees and they each do an hour of overtime a week - they&amp;#x27;re effectively denying another worker a job.&lt;p&gt;Yes, it&amp;#x27;s a bit &amp;quot;mythical man month&amp;quot; - but if there&amp;#x27;s too much work to go around, your employer needs to hire more people.</text></item><item><author>danielbarla</author><text>I completely agree, but is this a &amp;quot;reasonable&amp;quot; approach to take in a startup world (from the startup&amp;#x27;s point of view)?  Or does this make us incompatible &amp;#x2F; unfavourable with startups, as OP said?</text></item><item><author>qmr</author><text>&amp;gt; Right now parenthood is incompatible with startups&lt;p&gt;Be a grownup and assert that your work is at work, and work ends when you leave the office.  Unless you are on call, turn off your email and work phone.  Stop being conned into staying at the office for &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; dinner, ping pong, &amp;quot;teambuilding&amp;quot;, or whatever bullshit is being peddled by your employer.</text></item><item><author>julianpye</author><text>Congrats to Jessica! As a parent of a 1 year old mastercrawler, I am also so grateful to Paul taking time off earlier to spend time to watch his kids grow up and I love his tales of them growing up. 
Having a family changes everything. Right now parenthood is incompatible with startups - how can we change this and make startups better for young parents as well who for now will just always try to get corporate jobs?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chrisan</author><text>&amp;gt; Yes. Yes it is reasonable.&lt;p&gt;Reasonable, sure.  But is it realistic when we have things like this &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11430596&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11430596&lt;/a&gt; ?</text></comment>