Tuesday, February 01, 2000
Silicon's new rich still can't buy time
Ever-changing techno-world a rough pace
BY KIM CURTIS
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — For Silicon Valley's young entrepreneurs, the millions seem to come easy. Finding time to spend them is the hard part.
These nouveau riche spend an hour or more in traffic getting to work, slog home 12-15 hours later and can't remember their last vacation. Couple that with increasingly outrageous prices for homes, and you've summarized the down side to the economic boom in this technology hot zone south of San Francisco.
“My friends didn't see me for three years,” says 32-year-old Dan Whaley, co-founder and chief technology officer for GetThere.com, a Web site that provides travel services. “The carrot's always just slightly in front of your nose. ... You're working your butt off, but you're living this incredible Silicon Valley dream.”
Starting a business has always required long hours, but when the business seems to evolve daily — as does the Internet — the pace and the workload are that much tougher.
Mr. Whaley laughs when he thinks back to his company's infancy when he worked 18-20 hours a day, kept his possessions at his office and slept in a sleeping bag under his desk.
“I only happened to move into an apartment when I was walking down the street for coffee and saw a rental sign. I moved in, but I still ended up sleeping 50 percent of the time at the office because I was too tired to walk across the street,” he said.
Now, Mr. Whaley works 60-80 hours a week, “which is great,” he says. He bought a home, which he shares with a roommate.
Such workaholic lifestyles might sound unhealthy, but that's not necessarily the case, according to Catherine Chambliss, chairwoman of the psychology department at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania.
The term “workaholic” applies to “neurotic, highly driven people who were opting to work excessively as a way of avoiding the personal sphere,” she said. “This group seems to represent something different. It's a real passionate blending of work and play.”
For example, there's Joe Cha, 30, who co-founded Xuma, a company that builds and manages Web sites. “It's like if you're a chef and you love cooking. You cook at home.”
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Silicon's new rich still can't buy time
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