Startup Hours (Part Four): Non-Stop Culture

Shanaz Chowdhery
Jul 10, 2017 · 5 min read

Startups face particular difficulty in the work-life balance debates. Working all the time is such a quintessential American thing to do. Layered on top of the relentless American work ethic, startups require a particular amount of dedication to build and grow. I’ve been working at a startup, General Assembly, for the past three years. I’ve watched our DC campus grow from single table in a co-working space to burgeoning campus with six full classrooms. I firmly believe that it’s a combination of the early mornings, late nights, weekends, and the passion and hustle fueling us through them that’s led us to success, but at times, the journey could also feel exhausting.

For the past few months, I’ve tracked everything from how much time I spend in the office to my activity on my work computer. The exercise has been both insightful for productivity optimization and a questionable exercise in vanity metrics. It’s also led to some interesting reflections for both me and my team.

The experiment has led me to conclude that it’s almost impossible to accurately quantify how I spend my time, because my work and personal lives blend together in ways that are impossible to untangle.

As a manager and leader, I’m well aware that the pain points that I experience are often felt ten-fold by my team members. Over the past couple years, I’ve deployed a handful of tactics to help my team cut through the noise of our seemingly endless to-do lists and strive for some semblance of work-life balance.

Trying to bridge the divide, I now track how much vacation each of my team members take and proactively encourage them to take at least fifteen days a year. This exercise became especially important after we switched to an unlimited vacation policy which, in some circles, has a notoriously bad connotation for discouraging employees to take time off. I’ve taken a few steps to combat this, going as far as tracking vacation time in a team-wide Google doc titled “No, seriously — take your time off.” When I notice that a team member is lagging behind in taking days off, I send a gentle nudge asking about the next vacation.

One of the biggest barriers I’ve seen is the anxiety that comes around planning for a vacation: Who’s going to do all of my work and keep an eye on things while I’m gone?! To reduce those concerns, we created “vacation plan checklists.” The checklist asks questions like: What has to be done and who will do it? What should be done and who can do it? and even includes draft out-of-office messages. Finally, I also try to model the behavior I want to see by trying to unplug completely when I’m OOO: I uninstall Slack on my phone, and try to check in only once a day (if necessary).

Vacation is one thing, but part of the complexity of startup hours is managing the day-to-day: the to-do lists are endless, the days are long, and we’re a global company so the emails and Slack messages come at all hours of the night. To break up the day-to-day, we have an internal rule that everyone works from home at least one day per month. I found that this was helpful in reducing the stigma of working from home by setting a baseline expectation that everyone does it. I also try to schedule my emails so that even if I write them at 1am, they’re not sent until 8am. This is to prevent any night-owls on my team from feeling compelled to respond to a late-night email notification. I really wish Slack allowed you to schedule messages instead of simply send reminders. To compensate, I also regularly remind my team members that they’re not responsible for responding to any messages after 6pm.

We’re not doing brain surgery here; I’ll text or call you if there’s actually a time-sensitive emergency.

There’s a delicate balance in being an efficiency enthusiast who wants to maximize the amount of productivity I get out of every minute and in modeling responsible work-life balance to set a good example for my team. Thankfully, one of the benefits of “startup hours” is that there aren’t many rules and people can chart their own paths. Just as I rarely come to the office before 10am for the sake of my own sanity given morning traffic and out of respect for my night-owl work tendencies, I can respect anyone who wants to leave the office by six every day or a rockstar performer who wants to work from home once a week.

One of the greatest benefits of working at startups is that there are so many options on the table.

If you’re working in a startup and feeling the consequences of the grind, I’d encourage you to have an open conversation with your manager. One of the greatest benefits of working at startups is that there are so many options on the table: flexible work hours, working from home, additional vacation days, and more. This is especially true if you’re negotiating a new offer — don’t limit yourself to positionally bargaining around your salary; also ask for the perks that you need to keep your own work-life balance in check. Startups often lack the funds to pay at or above market rates before they are profitable; a large portion of your compensation package may come from equity and other intangibles. During negotiations, seek to maximize the intangibles by asking for the perks and privileges that will help you with maintaining your sanity. Speak up so you don’t leave anything on the table.

This is especially true if you’re negotiating a new offer — don’t limit yourself to positionally bargaining around your salary; also ask for the perks that you need to keep your own work-life balance in check.

Finally, if you’re a member of my team reading this who’s feeling the burn of burnout, let’s talk. Time is a choice. As the saying goes: if we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently. In regards to startup hours, we define the culture and we make the rules, so let’s work together to make them work for you.

Shanaz Chowdhery

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I have very strong opinions about esoteric productivity hacks. Follow me to optimize your efficiency.

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