His perspective appears to be from one who is young and self-involved, so I'll be kind: the 60% that he hates have personal goals other than promoting HP's agenda. These goals could be raising a family, taking care of an elder, etc; he will never know. Remember the sacrifices your parents made for you. Working for any company (Ycombinator startups included) will never return the love you give it.
Bottom line: develop your skills, have integrity, be a professional. But, remember that it's just a paycheck at the end of the day. A company will lay you off the moment you are no longer useful to it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; just don't have undue illusions about it.
the 60% that he hates have personal goals other than promoting HP's agenda.
So do the much of the other 40% percent. Does someone wanting to get things done and the passion to get interested in what they are working on immediately make them a promoter of an agenda that is not their own? Is what we decide to work on always a product of external expectations? If so, I suspect your understanding of human behavior is faulty. Not everyone works for money because they have people depending on them or a company line to toe. Not all of this is about deciding the more noble sacrifice, or even about sacrifice at all, ok?
Developing skills is good; having integrity is good; being a professional (whatever that means) can be good. But if you make what you do just about the paycheck, or if you justify that stance by waving at other people who depend on you, I don't know that I can consider that a stance that demonstrates integrity. It demonstrates a willingness to sacrifice, for certain; this is something you consider very noble. But sacrifices can be made for reasons that are anything but noble, and even sacrifices that are noble are not necessarily ones that are wise.
For instance, you raise the point about raising a family, and the way that makes a person become a 60%er. Quite frankly, I wish I would start seeing people around me sacrifice less to their families. Of the men I have met who are married and have families, I can't say that all or even most of them are happy with the balance they feel forced to make. It is almost as though the family goal, or at least the degree to which they feel obligated to focus on it, was foist upon them by someone else. They want to focus on other things too, but they can't and not risk having people sneer at their “bad parenting”. I have recently had to endure a good friend going through a divorce, brought on because he sacrificed his creative spirit to be the family man. It was very noble of him, but it was also amazingly dumb as he learned in hindsight. His family would've held together far better if he had pushed harder for time to be creative and accomplish his other goals in life. Instead, he let it fester, and it imploded in his face.
And as for my parents sacrifices to me, I do remember, and I wish they had made fewer or at least different sacrifices. I would happily give back a number of the presents they gave me when I was younger to see them happier and personally more fulfilled more often. I would not have minded a smaller house, less privacy, fewer toys, or similar withholdings if it just meant I could look back and not feel like such a fucking burden on them. I think it would've allowed me to develop a more positive outlook on life and what it has to offer sooner, rather than having to realize on my own later on that a lot of this self-sacrifice people do gets us largely nowhere.
So no, this is not all about picking the sacrifices we make, with the realization that in the end we're all gonna get screwed and have to except the sublinear returns we do get. It is about realizing that how we treat ourselves, and how much we make sure we are feeling fulfilled in life, has a huge bearing on how we treat those who we care about and who care about us, regardless of the bullshit we tell ourselves about how we can strictly segment our lives. All that is bollocks, and it has real consequences; just ask my now freshly single friend.
i think there's a difference between not making your job your number one priority and actively impeding the people you work with. you are talking about the former, the author of the blog article is talking about the latter.
Bottom line: develop your skills, have integrity, be a professional. But, remember that it's just a paycheck at the end of the day. A company will lay you off the moment you are no longer useful to it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; just don't have undue illusions about it.