"Personally, one of the down sides of founding a company is that there is always too much work to do, and sadly I find I don't have much time to code any more"

A founder’s lament sits beneath the surface: the very act of creating an organization around one’s craft begins to displace the craft itself. The workload of a company isn’t merely large; it’s amorphous and endlessly renewing. Hiring, fundraising, compliance, partnerships, customer escalations, board management, recruiting, culture, cash flow, each introduces urgency that fragments attention and devours time. The calendar turns from an instrument of focus into a battleground of obligations. For someone whose identity was forged in the joy of building systems, the erosion of long, uninterrupted stretches of coding feels like a personal loss.

There’s also a paradox. Coding was the engine that made the venture possible; success then pushes the founder into roles where leverage is achieved through others. Influence shifts from writing code to designing processes, setting direction, and unblocking teams. The work is still creative, but it trades the tangible satisfaction of shipping a feature for abstract, delayed outcomes measured through other people’s output. That shift can feel like going from sculptor to museum curator, important, but emotionally distant from the marble.

The sadness acknowledges a real cost: the loss of flow, the tactile feedback loop, the iterative dance of problem and solution. It also signals a broader trade-off baked into leadership. To build something that outlasts one’s individual contribution, one often sacrifices the very activities that sparked the journey. Some founders fight back with guardrails, no-meeting blocks, a clear CTO versus CEO split, strong operations early, or a deliberately small company, but growth tends to reassert pressure.

The statement is ultimately about choice and identity. Do you optimize for personal craftsmanship or organizational impact? Neither is wrong, but pretending the trade-off doesn’t exist leads to burnout and resentment. The mature response is intentional design: decide the role you want, structure the company accordingly, and accept that every path creates and closes doors.