Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Telling children 'hard work gets you to the top' is simply a lie

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–86 of 86 posts

Re: Telling children 'hard work gets you to the top' is simply a lie

#81

Post by majewsky »

user5994461 wrote: post #57
maxxxxx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were lucky and unlucky. You have probably worked hard but you may also have been co-founder of a bad startup and lost everything. Or you could have gone bankrupt because of medical bills. You definitely should work hard but by no means there is a guarantee you will succeed. You also need some luck.

co-founder of a startup, I'd interpret that as he has nothing and he lives in the most expensive area in the world.

What makes you think that a startup can only be founded in SV?

Re: Telling children 'hard work gets you to the top' is simply a lie

#82

Post by candiodari »

majewsky wrote: post #79
tracker1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every successful person I'm aware of is very driven... now, there's luck involved as well.. but it's a combination. As the song goes[0]: This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill Fifteen percent concentrated power of will Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain And a hundred percent reason to remember the name! [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6hpVHx6QCw

That is certainly true, but survivorship bias still is a thing: Just because every successful person is hard-working, doesn't mean by any stretch that every hard-working person is successful.

Kind of the same thing everyone's saying here isn't it ? Not being driven guarantees failure, but there's just no way to guarantee success - although to a certain extent being driven does guarantee success. It just won't necessarily make you CEO or president or some such.

Re: Telling children 'hard work gets you to the top' is simply a lie

#83

Post by notacoward »

mindcrime wrote: post #55
bherms wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems more likely that the original commenter probably didn't actually read the article and just had a reaction to the title.

No, I read and understood the article. If I'm guilty of anything, it's reacting to more than just what this article is saying. But it strikes me as just one more in a long series of articles / essays / comments that have emerged over the past few years which, collectively, are promoting a message that denigrates the value of hard work and suggest that pretty much everything comes down to luck.

Interesting. The parent was directed to mcbruiser3, and you responded as though it was directed to you. Having trouble getting your message out with only one account?

Re: Telling children 'hard work gets you to the top' is simply a lie

#84

Post by grotsnot »

notacoward wrote: post #83
mindcrime wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I read and understood the article. If I'm guilty of anything, it's reacting to more than just what this article is saying. But it strikes me as just one more in a long series of articles / essays / comments that have emerged over the past few years which, collectively, are promoting a message that denigrates the value of hard work and suggest that pretty much everything comes down to luck.

Interesting. The parent was directed to mcbruiser3, and you responded as though it was directed to you. Having trouble getting your message out with only one account?

mindcrime is the "original commenter" that bherms is referring to...

Re: Telling children 'hard work gets you to the top' is simply a lie

#85

Post by munchbunny »

clock_tower wrote: post #65
munchbunny wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than nitpick on the wording, I think you should try to see the underlying point. It's unfortunate phrasing, but the point isn't about how hard you work or whether it's important to have a good work ethic. I liked this article better, and it conveys more or less the same point as the topic link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/opinion/how-i-learned-to-... The problem is that hard work makes a dent, but not a…

This is either a nitpick of your post, or a complete agreement with it, but I'm not sure which: "work ethic" or "Protestant ethic", in Weber's original understanding, had three parts: hard work, deferred consumption, and reinvestment. Using "have a good work ethic" to mean "work hard", without the other two elements, is a good way to stay poor -- which is to say, a good way to fail to understand how to play the game,…

I would argue that deferred consumption and reinvestment would help further, but still not necessarily enough.

Jumping into the article that I linked, the author was missing a critical chain of thought: that currently in the United States, the path to an "upward mobile" job generally follows these lines:

1. Get good grades in high school 2. Score high on the SAT (which has to be practiced), then get lots of help writing your college essay 3. Pick an area of study that corresponds with a well-paying occupation, and then get into a college that is solid in that department 4. Leverage the career and alumni network to find a well-paying job, or apply to business/law/medical school.

At each step, you have to prioritize how you spend your limited time and energy. I grew up with parents who understood this point and focused my energy into each step when it was time to do so, so I was very lucky in that sense. I also worked my ass off, but steps 1 through 3 were very much helped along by parental guidance.

Re: Telling children 'hard work gets you to the top' is simply a lie

#86

Post by anigbrowl »

vacri wrote: post #78
anigbrowl wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant evasion of the point there

I was just suggesting you update your mental image of coal miners from the 1950s to the 21st century. I remember one politician here a couple of years ago defending miners in his electorate as 'battlers' (aussie slang for poor who are trying to make ends meet)... and at a time when the national median wage was $57k and median household income was $77k, the 'battler' he was defending made $110k...

It's not so much that I have a particular image of coal miners as people still do the more traditional back breaking labor sort of coal mining in the country where I live. The point is that people do heavy manual labor and it doesn't necessarily advance their economic interests, not to comment on the state of the coal industry in 2017.
Post reply on HN