I put in 40 maybe 45 hours of work and the company gets to choose how they get to use that time. I give my input. But they make the decision.
When I need to do “deep work”, I turn off Slack and email. Even before remote work was a thing, I would tell my managers I need some quiet time to get $x done and I’m working from home. They would get a couple of more hours in from me then.
I’m not afraid to say “no” traditionally because I thought I could get another job quickly. Things are of course crazier now and I’m a lot less cocky. But I still have a years expenses in the bank in addition to investments.
I have been working for 30 years almost and I have found that early stage, underfunded startups aren’t worth the effort or the monetary return.
In my later years, I’ve had multiple opportunities to be a “CTO” or “director” of a startup. The positions were always just a glorified team lead. I’ve said no.
Prioritization helps, but in a high-growth environment, trade-offs aren’t always straightforward. You mentioned setting a ceiling on your work hours—how do you enforce that when leadership keeps shifting priorities?
I was the second technical hire by the then new CTO of a startup I worked for from 2018-2020. He was hired to bring the development in house from a third party consulting company after the company had traction. He was in his 50s and very technical and I was in my mid 40s. The founders were also adults with families. None of us were young tech bros who put the job before everything else.
I was over the architecture and much of the technical strategy. I knew how to talk to them in terms of the business and they trusted my judgment.
> You mentioned setting a ceiling on your work hours—how do you enforce that when leadership keeps shifting priorities?
Just saying “no” especially after I had proven myself. I knew they weren’t going to fire me as long as I was respectful and professional because I was good at what I did - “cloud native development”. They were forced to make a decision about priorities.
Honestly, would I do that now in 2025 with the job market the way it is? I wish I could say I would. But I would probably just suck it up to a point. But most of the time, you can get them to prioritize.
I left that company in 2020 when a job at BigTech fell into my lap. But in 2023, the company that acquired the startup offered me a job as a staff architect based on a reference. When I spoke to the new CTO and described my thought process about trade offs between on time, on budget and meeting requirements and prioritization without burning people out, he liked my response
