Barack Obama's tech guru advises how to survive a high-pressure job

Harper Reed knows about stress . The techie was the CTO for US President Barack Obama's reelection campaign in 2012, charged with building a system to track and distribute information on his entire network of supporters.

"It was hard," says Reed. "There was a certain point where I went to a party three-fourths of the way through and there was a friend of ours who we tried to hire but he couldn't do it. He was like, 'You all seem different.' We were all a little shell-shocked. It's like a Sunday afternoon party in the park and we're all like, 'Well, I guess I gotta go back and do work.'"

This type of scenario will sound familiar to anyone who has worked in a fast-growing startup. Reed says: "Anytime you talk to people who've been at an early stage company that's gone like that or any other kind of gruelling experience, they'll have that camaraderie."

So how did he survive this pressure cooker environment? "The advice I used to give to engineers I hired was 'Don't eat the pizza,'" Reed says. "Sometimes when you walk into these environments it's like doughnuts everywhere and all these little cakes. When you've been there for 18 months, you can't do that."

The point he's making is that you've to look after yourself to bring your "A-game" to work. It's more productive to go home and attack any problem fresh.