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.
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.
What about someone who is ultra competitive but also has good sportsmanship?
As long as they can identifying that “we win” is the same as “I win,” that’s fine. I’d invite them to join us for cooperative games.
Those seek real games, and real games are too hard and elusive to describe in rules.
Achieving a healthy work-life-balance IS winning. That’s what the mindless drones don’t get.
counter argument: that makes the company lose, whereas the grindset makes the company win.
“The company” i.e. somebody else’s money.
its a matter of perspective, to the company having people devoted to it is good, to the employee it’s bad.
Maybe companies shouldn’t be allowed a perspective unless they’re worker owned. Case closed! --oh wait, the profiteers need slaves for their yachts.
that sounds like a good way to get independent contractors to be used by more companies.
Labor regulation? Never heardofer
If I’m devoted to winning, that means I want to win myself. If I don’t profit from the company’s success outside of being allowed to keep my job, increasing the company’s bottom line isn’t a “win” for me. That’s not a matter of perspective.
Wow what a mind blowing revelation dude you must be so smart
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.””
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.
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
This man is a sociopath. He shouldn’t be running a major corporation. He should be living in a rubber room.
Winning what? Profit for other people?
Not committed to him winning. Fuck that shit.
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
Yeah well I don’t believe life is a race, and even if it is it’s rigged so who fucking cares?
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.
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.
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.”
Have you tried setting tile with your hands instead? Just a thought.
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Guess what kind of boss a person following this bullshit advice would make
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.
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.
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
