vajrapani666

I'm mentoring a team of student-developers and need to come up with a few projects for them to work on. It would be great if they had some things to work on that could solve challenges in underserved communities. A few ideas I had mulling around, was wondering if HN could think of more ideas.

- Food Justice: A place for people with extra produce to offer their produce to their neighbors.

- Criminal Justice: A way for people in New Orleans with incarcerated loved ones in Louisiana State Penitentiary to pool their resources to find rides to the distant prison.

- A place to receive notifications about and engage with city & state legislation around a chosen topic. e.g. "Let me know when the next LGBT bill is up for vote in my city or state". Provide a platform for people to engage with their government (like Countable, but for state & local government)

Any feedback on these ideas? Or more challenges that technology might be able to help address in underserved communities?

I recently took a position as CTO at a seed stage startup. Having been in an administrative position before where I had worked 50-60+ hours a week for years, I've ascribed heavily to the philosophy of working smarter not harder. Ideals like "Work life balance", and "agile principles about sustainable development". I recently had a discussion with one of my peers at work and he remarked that he has never been at a company where the CTO was in the office less than the average engineer. He also felt that its nearly impossible to wear a manager hat and a maker hat at the same time in under 40 hours a week, quoting Paul Graham's maker/manager schedule. He mentioned people at AirBnB and Square, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerburg were all those who worked many long hours.

I feel extremely divided about this. I worked around 40 hours a week and feel like I'm taking away from my personal life and might even be nearing burnout at half the duration this particular peer is working. Measuring productivity on duration is silly to me, and I'd rather ascribe to the model of work where what counts most is prioritization and output. I realize there are major deadlines 2-3 times a year which may require sudden bursts of focus and attention, but that's why I would push back and reduce the time I work weekly the rest of the year.

What is the appropriate level of work/life balance expectation for a CTO for different stage startups (pre-seed, series-a, series-b, post-acquisition) and how does that differ from the expectations on the people that a CTO might manage?

Is my position on work-life balance tenable? Are there examples of successful startup founders who worked smart as opposed to long hours? Did I just land in a particular culture that is incompatible with my orientation towards productivity?