March 29, 2024
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I have had a great time watching a blog post by Jason Calacanis explode on the blogosphere like nothing that I have seen before. Jason wrote a great post about how to save money running a startup. The article is really more about spending lots of money but at the same time making the work life of a startup employee a lifestyle and at the same time making sure that the process is smooth, taking really good care of employees hired with the help of temp agencies so that they will want to put in huge hours. I agreed and thought the article was a nice diversion because I have in fact never worked for a startup.

Well others did not like the post so much. Duncan Riley at Tech Crunch wrote a great piece about how Calacanis fires people who have a life, Robert Scoble defended Jason Calacanis and  Micheal Arrington at Tech Crunch kind of came up in the middle (look at his comments to see his real thoughts).

So how does a Z list blogger like me look at this?

Well I as I wrote a couple paragraphs back, I have never worked for a startup and would not probably do so unless I found a company that I was truly passionate about. I am not scared of work. I always  have had a 40 hr a week job and then spend another 20 hours a week on building a web business.  I have a family that I love to be with although I would rather have time only with them instead of a pager on the side all the time. But this is the life of a guy that supports corporate systems. I chose and I love what I do.

I have always looked at working at a startup as a lifestyle choice. When you work for any company you need to be passionate about what you are doing and strive to make a difference. You need to always think that you are changing the world but when you are at a startup you may in fact be changing the world for many people compared to working at a huge company where you are usually doing the support work of change.

I know that this story is going to turn into one of those really irritating “I only want to make money I don’t want Jason to take my life away” kind of arguments but as a bit of a slacker attitude I am not sure that is at all what Jason was getting at in the first place.

The attitude that I think Jason was getting at was passion. You will work 40 hours a week for the man but when it comes to 60 hours a week it is for passion in what you do. No one ways that this is what everyone could ever want but with a startup the excitement is there and the payoffs can be huge if you go public. If this is not what someone is interested in then it does not make them a lesser person but just that their passion lies outside of work or perhaps more accurately their passion lives outside of the free enterprise portion of their life. Not a big deal.