It really depends from whose perspective you're looking at. If you are working for a startup this is exactly how you may think. If I am the owner I would probably think otherwise. There is always more work and more responsibilities that someone can take on, and I would expect my people to do just that. If you're doing something specific in half the time it normally takes, it doesn't mean you can't start doing something outside of your scope and expend your knowledge, maybe help others with their work.
> If I am the owner I would probably think otherwise.
If you're the owner, you're the one setting the goals and timelines. If your team seems to easily meet your expectations, then yeah, you're justified in pushing them a bit. But if they can't keep up, you have to make the choice between hiring more people or easing the expectations back to where your existing team can complete the tasks. There is a third option: push harder and expect more from your workers, but the tradeoffs from the short term productivity increase is just that - short term - and detrimental to your business in the long run.
More specifically, if person A can get `N/2` tasks done in a week (where N is the average velocity), and person B can get `N * 2`, reward person B, set up a performance plan for person A, assign out tasks appropriately, and move on with life. If you really need `N * 5` output every week and have four employees, hire another employee. Don't keep giving person A N tasks and expect persons B, C, and D to do their work plus person A's.
In 2007 my mom and I opened up a deli/cafe. We had previous experience in this industry so we didn't think we would struggle. We went bankrupt two years after that. It was an awesome experience.
It is true the rent can kill a business but it also comes down to its location, parking, getting in a out of the parking (which pisses people off if its a busy street and they have to wait because of traffic), everything needs to be running smoothly.
Starting such business is also super expensive. The good thing is that we only had to purchase the equipment. I have a construction company so the reno and everything that needed to be done was done by us. I also have a web design and marketing company so all the advertising was done in-house. These probably helped us save 50k if not more.
I remember, we had snitches coming in an out who were hired by our competitors. They would also come in and look at the expiry date of every produce in hope to find something that has expired so they can make it public.
In the end, we were about 100k out.
Anyhow, it was an awesome businesses and people loved it, however, it just wasn't enough to keep it running.
I stared coding in grade 9 and soon after entered my first Skills Canada competition for web design. Back then Flash was super hot and everyone was using it. After that, I slowly started making websites in html, css, js. During my electrical engineering studies I touched on BASIC and other programming languages. After that I read more on different js frameworks and some python. Most of my learning is self-taught.
Thanks for sharing. I don't think you need a wife and kids to have this outlook on work. If you have a family (mom, dad, uncles, aunts etc.), or friends or even a hobby, balancing those with work is key, and unlike your job/startup those "people" in your life will be around a lot longer and will enrich your life more.
Just for fun:
Larry is too quiet, not enough publicity. I barely see his face.
Tim is just Tim .. too calm.
Jeff Bezos - He should just stick to Amazon. I feel like he wants to be everywhere, just because he can.
Mark - who would even suggest that.
Satya ... Don't have anything on him so no.
Marissa ... Same thing.