There's nothing wrong with hard work.<p>But there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health is impacted to succeed; if you need to work that hard, something else is off - the idea isn't good enough, you're attacking it in the wrong way, whatever.<p>To me this ties into the gross, pervasive trend of wantrepreneurism. Shark Tank, Zuck, Elon Musk - being a founder has never been sexier, never been more interesting or lucrative. In the wake of that, WeWork and GaryV and a whole bunch of people are selling the idea that regardless of how bad your idea is or how unfit you are to be an entrepreneur, all you need is access or hustle to succeed. And that's awful, awful advice.<p>As income inequality continues to grow, I expect this to get worse and worse.
Agree with this 100%. Hustle porn is toxic and and the ethos needs to be avoided.<p>It is clear why people latch onto the narrative. Working insane hours is a way to conceal incompetence.<p>When your boss or employees come knocking and sees the complete waste you have made of your task, you can point at your complete lack of social life and how much you have martyred yourself for your company as proof of your competence. "I can't be a fuck-up, look at how hard I worked!" THAT is a participation trophy.<p>I have a revolutionary new form of hustle: It's called taking care of yourself and getting an education AKA "Growing Up".<p>I do weight training after work every day. I eat healthy. I cook food with my girlfriend. I read multiple programming books a month ( Shout-out to Uncle Bob!). I read multiple other types of books a month. I meditate. I go to bed on time and get up on time. I work on side-projects. I even find time to smoke some weed and play video games with my friends!<p>And I am extremely productive. I'm constantly learning. I measure twice and cut once instead of hopelessly flailing at a keyboard long into the night. I do not need to martyr myself to make sure everyone around me knows how hard I am working, it's just obvious from the quality of my work.
> The guy hoping to help me pick myself up by my bootstraps is Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur known for investing in tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Venmo and amassing a $50 million fortune in the process. But it’s unlikely that you know him as a successful businessman. More likely, you’ll recognize him being plastered all over your social media feeds as an “inspirational speaker” and internet personality who gives lectures on how to hack your life in such a way that you become “more productive” and “more successful.”<p>A VC lecturing everyone to work their asses off reminds me of this:<p>www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/ (not direct-linked due to a referrer-prank):<p>> Michael Arrington posted this article, "Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining" which quotes extensively from my 1994 diary.
He's trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your one and only youth, and if you don't do that, you're a pussy. He's using my words to try and back up that thesis.<p>> I hate this, because it's not true, and it's disingenuous.<p>> What is true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for you to give up your life in order for him to become richer.<p>> Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what's good for you, check your wallet, then count your fingers.
There was an article discussed here on HN a few weeks back about "hustle culture" (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381605" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381605</a>) that encapsulated the trend in the ad industry, but this could apply in tech startups or many other businesses as well:<p><i>To be clear, hustle isn’t just hard work — it’s showing that you’re working hard. It’s Instagram posts about how much you have to travel for work, it’s LinkedIn and Medium memos about how if you’re not working yourself to the bone you’re not doing enough. It also smacks a little bit of “work at all costs.” And if you’re not struggling, you’re probably not working hard enough.</i><p>Sadly, this has been going on for years, even before social media gave it an outlet for fetishization. Accelerators like Y Combinator and TechStars as well as VC and angel communities are a big part of the problem, emphasizing questionable demonstrations of "progress" as a condition for getting into the program and getting attention from investors like Gary V. I've seen it in graduate business programs, too, thanks to lecturers drawn from the investor class and academics who push students to learn how to appeal to them.<p>Some call it "startup theater," but "hustle porn" works, too.
Saw this GaryV video where he was saying how he told a caller to 'eat shit' for the next 3 years, and he was proud of his advice to the caller.<p>A woman called in saying she was working three jobs where one was her main income, and she had 2 side opportunities. Her basic question was which one to pick. He told her 'eat shit' for the next couple years and take no vacations, just completely grind out her existence and nothing else.<p>The guy is seriously a maniac recommending this approach. He doesn't consider at all the risk of burnout, and how a real burnout can set you back so far. There's zero balance to his approach. I've also found it amusing there is no talk of what you should do when you retire or get the money you are aiming for.
Ecclesiastes 4:6 - "Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and (anxious) chasing after the wind."<p>In fact, just read the whole book of Ecclesiastes if you want some sobering realities on the nature of the hustle, the grind, the striving for material things:<p><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+2&version=NASB" rel="nofollow">https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+2&...</a>
The problem with hustle porn is really how little emphasis is put on luck. They show a grind that translates directly into results, not really talking about dealing with failure due to things outside of one's control. Yes hard work gets you primed for new opportunities, but luck still plays a role in which opportunities you come across.
I disagree with the article.<p>I got nowhere fast in life by just sitting around waiting for things to happen. I had all sorts of excuses on why I wasn't succeeding, the article likes to supply plenty, and they are just poisonous thoughts.<p>then i lit a fire under my butt. I wanted to be a principle engineer, so I did research by looking at profiles on linkedin and found a masters at a great school would make that path easier. I spent time waiting in the subway, nights, and weekends studying and applied. I got rejected. I kept improving my application, I got accepted.<p>I changed my mind on what I wanted to be and wanted to be a data scientist, preferably a top tech. lots of rejections, lots of no response. took me years of trying different things and spending my nights and weekends doing kaggle competitions and learning. eventually I got what I wanted.<p>hustling alone didnt get me where I wanted to be, but resting around on my laurels and blaming other things for my lack of success would have done nothing. worse than nothing, it would have made me a bitter failure.<p>the article suggests the hustle culture is a symptom of a failed work system because people are afraid to loose their job. I disagree. I think its because many recognize we are in a rare window in time that we can do so much with our effort. we may have to change our expectations, we may have to fail a bit before we get there, but if we keep trying better things will happen.
What I really don't get is people that will work themselves to death, 60-80 hours a week for products and market segments that I personally consider to be bullshit.<p>If you're under age 30 and working long hours building a dating site app, some iOS or Android game with pay-to-win mechanics, or writing software so that peoples' clicks on ads can be tracked better, are you really doing anything to improve the world?<p>There should not be an extreme sense of urgency and deadline-looming rush when what you're developing is a third rate clash of clans clone.<p>But I read all the time how the video game development industry pushes people like this, until they burn out. There was a huge scandal about the 3D artists employed by a studio which produced the animated comedy movie "sausage party":<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sausage+party+animators+abuse&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sau...</a><p>With the benefit of age and 20 years of experience in the industry, I'm not going to go into "emergency rush" mode for anything short of an ACTUAL emergency.
I am so glad about the way the topic got addressed in this article. What it basically says you just need to live life and needn't bash yourself and constantly rape yourself for the sake of fitness-like ghost benefits of "life-hacking". Overworking, early waking up, self-sleep deprivation for the sake of productivity won't do you any good, and won't make you happy.<p>I was trapped by the hustler-porn during 2012-2014, got a job due to it, amassed some good money and it didn't make me happy at all. I was trying to think of myself as a better person because I struggled more and I was creating the struggle out of nothing just to overcome it and thus I, though I never admitted that to myself or showed that to anyone else, was actually amassing my pride trying to rise myself above others, thus falling myself into pride in the negative sense.<p>Article is very brief and not detailed about the alternative to hustler lifestyle. I guess it's simple - "do ya thang", don't overwork, value living, value some joys, sleep well and just be a _somewhat_ good man I guess. Not everyone will become a millionare. And "_somewhat_ good" is a keyword heere, not "100% good", but "_somewhat_ good"<p>I'd also like to highlight and cite 3 great things been said in the article, which pretty much sum up (as I think about it) what Hussein tried to say in it:<p>>When you believe the normal state of affairs is to feel like you’re struggling to make progress, you’ll be less likely to quit something that isn’t going anywhere.<p>>the myth that “if you work sufficiently hard, you’ll be one of these major influencers and one of these top people.”<p>>So some people end up thinking they have to do particular things that their colleagues don’t do to justify why they haven’t wasted their day.”
I'd also like to notice that while the article says some good things it nonetheless falls itself into the trap of "generational thinking", where it clearly says that life-hacking hustling is the problem of some ghostly "millenials". Then suddenly equating "millenials" with "young people", obviously forgetting that if you say A you cant escape saying B and if you argue along the lines of "generational logic" (and that's failed logic) you can't not mention "Z" people, who also work hard already these days. Aren't they "millenials"? Why? Ah, I get ya, they have been growing with tech, while "millenials" only picked tech just before teens. So that makes "Z" totally different brand of people /s. Not shared environment, not shared culture, but the year you were born is what defines you and defines whether you were growing "with tech". And growing with tech makes you completely (or very) different /s. Totally makes sense. I've read that some of the people going along the lines of this failed "generational" logic even go as far as stating that anyone born in 1998 is a millenial while anyone born in 1999 is already a Z.<p>In all serious, this "generational" bullshit stereotypizes people, similarly to how racism tries to solely define people in terms of their skin shade. That's total bullshit, there are completely different people among people born in 1980-1998 and some were already growing with tech, some didn't, some born in 1999 haven't seen tech to this day, some did, some've grown with it. Some of those born in 1960-1980 grew with tech too, they also are very prey-fallible to these types of "motivational" videos. And it's plain ridiculous to call someone a "young, cause millenial" cause they were born in 1980 but a 1979-borns are "not young, cause boomers". "Generational racism" (I'd go as far as to define it like that) just doesn't add anything to any conversation, enforces stereotypes and need to be fought against.<p>I encourage you to fight against it too. Generational racism wont do any good to people. Thanks!
hyper-competitive, individualistic meritocratic culture and economy. Equating wealth and social status with virtue and worth.<p>people set unrealistic individual expectations.<p>survivroship bias. It's not that these business leaders are superior people, but many of them are lucky. Hustle helps, but so does luck, whether it's having a really high IQ (for tech jobs), family wealth (when starting business and having a safety net if the business fails), or 'right place at right time' (a domain name name + some simple coding could have made you rich in the mid-late 90's ,whereas nowadays you need a full-scale app with tons of stuff to maybe have a shot at a small amount of funding or a small acquisition).
I use to believe this bs. I thought people who took vacations were slackers and people who left the office before I did were lazy. In 2014 I started cutting my medication (bipolar 1 disorder) in half so I could sleep less and work more. Long story short, ended up back-firing leading to a 9 month leave of absence. In the end it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Working smart is the way to go IMO.
While I appreciate the sentiment of this post, I'd like to see some real stats on "hustle porn" culture's effects. My impression is that the author is pitching doom and gloom where there might be only a small - and increasingly diminishing - problem.<p>I'm not constantly peppered by this phenomenon on my feeds. In fact, lately I've been find more of the opposite: the growing culture of valuing 8 hours of sleep, mental health, and the like. This trend seems to be especially strong in the world of entrepreneurs. YC's Startup School had a talk on "How To Win" [1] - all about how to stay sane and healthy as a founder. Podcasts like ZenFounder [2] are teaching more of the same and building up that field. And I haven't even read it yet, but the popularity of books like It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work [3] represent a growing movement of successful people - who I'd say still work quite hard - that avoid these pitfalls and are very loud in teaching others how to do the same.<p>I'm sure, as the author suggests, there're people who take all the motivational talk to an extreme. But there's an alternative that I hope many of us are following: don't just blindly work hard - because working hard is important - but work smart, too.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/videos/53" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/videos/53</a><p>[2] <a href="https://zenfounder.com/" rel="nofollow">https://zenfounder.com/</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Doesnt-Have-Be-Crazy-Work/dp/0062874780" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Doesnt-Have-Be-Crazy-Work/dp/00628747...</a>
I’ve never watched any of those videos but One thing I don’t understand is how ‘victims’ decide to fully trust and follow advice of random YouTube celebrities. Why are they not just a little sceptical?
The discussion around the content of the article here is interesting, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was this quote:<p><i>“No amount of grifting or endless working” will help alleviate the gender pay gap, which, according to the World Economic Forum, won’t close for another 200 years</i><p>I read on here all the time that the “gender pay gap” doesn’t exist. So which one is it?
Here's my take as a 40 year old always trying to keep pushing through the next hurdle. Hustle early and often when you're young. Yes, do it. Try, and don't be afraid of failure, fail often, enjoy failure, and push yourself harder when you fail. That's my message.<p>Anyone that has a deeper understanding of Gary V, Simon S, know that that they have quite a bit more background than just a message of go hustle yourself to the ground. I don't necessarily agree with everything they say, but that's where my (your) personal judgement comes in. Nobody is has all your answers.<p>Alas, the kids/family, once you have a deeply rooted family, that will take over. Time will start shrinking and it becomes harder and harder. Not saying it can't be done or others don't favor their mission over their family, just that it's an issue, so address it.<p>Don't blindly ignore the encouragement to work hard and don't ignore how that affects you.
I wanted to give my thoughts Gary Vaynerchuck since I read some comments about him here. Yeah, he's super extra and too much for a lot of people. That's just kind of the way he is, or maybe more accurately, the way he has become. He's a showman, but with credentials.<p>People kind of get the wrong image of him since they tend to hear only the 'hustle' stuff of working your ass off for a few years on some project. But he has a ton of other advice too, and much more "sensible" ones at that. Not too long ago he changed his eating habits, lost weight and promoted healthy living. I believe he's also put emphasis on getting enough sleep. He's said multiple times that he knows a lot of people who make 50k a year and are happier than many millionaires. I think he usually gives the "eat shit and work hard" type of advice to people who are asking him for a formula to success on their business. And it is true, you have to work hard to achieve something exceptional.<p>Talking about 'hustle', I think it really depends how you define it in the first place. You can do a bad, BS hustle by working to get Internet points and validation from strangers on social media. Or even worse, do something to con people out of their money. To me a positive hustle is putting in constant work, not being afraid to sell and market your stuff, and most importantly, starting before you are ready.<p>I'm not a zealot of the Vaynernation but I have found some of his messages helpful. One of his key principals is to document your journey. I love this idea and I've recently gotten over the fear of doing it myself, posting VLOGs and doing things more publicly using my real name (you can search this username and find out more). Another message is that "you could die tomorrow". Sure, this is a bit dramatic and cliche, but it did give me courage to push on with doing some things that I might have procrastinated on.<p>Overall, I find Gary's content useful for the most part, especially his insights on social media. If you just know him from 'hustle hustle' type of things, I suggest you try to dig a bit deeper to his videos and blogs. He does know his stuff.
The problem is we compare the worst of our lives to the best of other people's lives - be it our body, wealth, health, personality, travel, well-readness, intelligence etc etc. No one has every area of their life in order, there's just not enough time in a day!<p>This Hustle Porn is just one area where people can be led astray, and they all come back to this same principal of belief that there are people who have everything together.<p>A more generalised solution is simply to compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today.
It's part of the deal though. Anyone who willingly participates has a goal where the end justifies the means. Albeit, a sell your soul type of deal at times, but nevertheless the problem is more a lack of self-awareness for why one might be hustling. That self-awareness is also understanding why Hustle Porn beckons.<p>edit: last sentence
I think what gets me about Gary V's "hustle porn" ethos is that most people don't realise he had a career for AGES selling wine for his family wine business and making wine tasting videos for over a decade on youtube. He's posted over 1,000 wine tasting videos. Long before he was known as the hero of hustle porn he was spitting cali cab in his Jets bucket and waxing lyrical about the palate of said wine. I love wine more than most but the thought of producing a 10-20 minute tasting video roughly every 3.6 days for a decade sounds like a sure fire way to cure yourself of imbibing. The guy's a machine.
Why must it be dangerous? Why are individuals not free to take inspiration where they find it?<p>It's true that much of the "hustle" advice is rarely actionable business strategies, but that's not much different from listening to music or having faith in a religion and finding guidance and support within. There's also endless amounts of education material for the people that seek it out, and if the push they need to do so comes from a cheesy video or quote then more power to them.<p>Is the judgement really necessary in all this? I find that much more counter-productive.
It's easy to say that this is the best possible time for a human to be alive, when your occupation is motivational speaker. You've got YouTube, and business class, and 7-minute workouts. The message you've got is to disregard the media you're using to send that message.<p>Try working in a field where this isn't true, and tell us if you still think this is the best time ever to be a human. Do high school teachers (who have to <i>compete</i> with the internet) think 2018 is the greatest?
"Remember to take all things in moderation"<p>Work ethic is great and shows through. But you don't get far ahead when you Karōshi [1] yourself. If it hurts, stop.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi</a>
The thumbnail comes up of a photo of Jay Shetty, he runs many inspirational videos based on his links with ISKCON/Hare Krishnas. Bit misleading as he never talks of working hard to the bone, but more about working and living so you are happier in doing you work and in your life.
It's easy to want to hate on the linked Vaynerchuk video. I couldn't agree more with the message though. Working hard is good; if there's a certain type of life you want. There simply aren't any shortcuts; at least that's the rule and not the exception.
This reminded me of an essay by Amy Hoy: <a href="https://stackingthebricks.com/entreporn/" rel="nofollow">https://stackingthebricks.com/entreporn/</a>
Gary v is extremely annoying. But what makes it porn is that it's what people want to hear. Hes just selling people what they want in the end. It's a bit sad
This is all fine and dandy but let’s be real. How many of you can solve:
Given n non-negative integers representing an elevation map where the width of each bar is 1, compute how much water it is able to trap after raining.<p>In N(1) space and N time