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LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman gave a reality check to aspiring entrepreneurs that if they want to build a successful company, you’ll have to sacrifice personal time.
During LinkedIn’s early days, employees were expected to work long hours. (Photo Credits: X)
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has always been clear about his view on work. In the early days of his startup, he didn’t believe in the typical work life balance. In a 2024 podcast, Hoffman gave a blunt reality check to aspiring business owners that if they really want to build a successful company, you’ll have to sacrifice things like binge watching shows or enjoying weekends off. Hoffman explained that during LinkedIn’s early days, employees were expected to work long hours, even if they had children. He encouraged them to have dinner with their families but made it clear that after dinner, they should return to work.
While appearing on The Diary Of A CEO podcast, Hoffman said, “Work life balance is not the startup game, so when we started LinkedIn, we started with people who had families, so we said sure they go home, have dinner with your family, then after your dinner with your family, open up your laptop and get back into the shared work experience and keep working.”
When the interviewer mentioned that not providing employees work-life balance might be seen as harsh today, Reid Hoffman responded by saying that people who think this way don’t really understand how startups work. He explained that running a startup is tough and requires full dedication. If someone is not willing to work hard, they might struggle to keep their job in the long run.
“It’s not that everyone has to work at startups. Working at startups is a voluntary choice but that’s the game for a startup. In the early days of LinkedIn, we try to balance how to be human because like third of the employees had kids right and so you’re like, ‘Okay, but we all have to work this way,’ so we can’t say, ‘Oh you third, you sure you guys can go home,’ and you’re out of the office and then call in or whatever. We’ll all go for dinner and then we’ll all plan on getting back to work after dinner. So you get time with your family, you get to have dinner with your kids, it’s the right human thing but we’re working hard and Saturday morning we’re working,” the CEO explained.
Reid Hoffman explained that maintaining work-life balance while building a startup is only possible in two situations. First, if the startup is very small and has no real competition, then there’s less pressure. Second, if the company is so strong in the market that no one can challenge them. However, in most cases, startups work in highly competitive environments. He shared that in PayPal, they had made a decision to serve dinner at the office so employees will stay and continue working instead of going home. Over time, other companies started doing the same to keep up with the competition.
