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How hustle culture took over advertising

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Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#131

Post by Regardsyjc »

vinceguidry wrote: post #97
helipad wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Tim Ferriss' belief the opposite of overworking? I thought that was the whole point of the 4-hour Work Week.

The Four Hour workweek is a dream reached either by working really really really hard to build a business, or by basically strong-arming your employer into letting you work while you're relaxing on a beach. It's all right there in his book, but like anything that inspires people, most people read what they want to read and not the actual words on the page.

I think the key lesson in the 4 hour work week and skill you need to be a successful entrepreneur or capitalist is delegation and outsourcing. You need to learn how to scale yourself and your processes by hiring others and profiting from their labor. That's the key to the 4 hour work week and capitalism. You're not going to get the crazy results everybody wants until you learn how to build, hire a team, and profit off their hard work.

The secret to this is that this doesn't require capital at all. You don't need anything to learn how to arbitrage, money, goods, or time.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#132

Post by esotericn »

lanewinfield wrote: post #96
esotericn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Examples, with specific citation: My local bus stop has adverts (London). My local metro station does too (London). They're all over the roads (UK). They're in pubs (UK). They're on paid television services (Sky). They're on paid programs (Windows 10). They're shown before movies (cinema, UK). Advertising is _everywhere_, in paid services, unpaid services, whatever. Unless I'm in my own, or a friend's private home I…

I understand this but it doesn't really counteract my point: it pays for stuff. It (helps) pay for your bus stop (or at least it does in the states), it's on paid television because you'd have to pay EVEN MORE for it, and movies on top of that. Now, if you made an argument that the entire structure is screwed up and the people at the top deserve to make less and therefore not needing as much cash flow and therefore w…

Nah.

I don't believe that my train or bus would cost substantially more without the advertising.

And even if it did, it's just an internalization of costs.

The advertising (if it works) pulls money in through a side channel (someone sees an ad and later buys a thing).

It makes far more sense to just pay for the bus.

Other examples, like ads at the side of the road, don't even pay for anything. Driving along the road, I see an ad in a farmer's field. I'm not using that field in any meaningful sense.

edit: I actually looked up the transport example.

Transport for London had approximately a 1:20 ratio of advertising to fare revenue last year.

So, I'd have to pay approximately 5% more, or 7 pence per bus fare, to not have adverts plastered on the inside and outside of buses, tubes, station platforms, corridors within stations, and probably various roads under TfL authority as well.

I think the world in which we pay 7 pence more for bus fare and have nice artwork on the bus or something instead of hair loss adverts that call us ugly balds is better.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#134

Post by Celarnor »

nimbius wrote: post #29

As a professional diesel mechanic, I find most of the points in this article pretty difficult to understand outside the context of, say, Hollywood? or maybe iPhones? Do programmers really have to show this kind of reckless drive? This hasnt been a thing in tradecraft since...forever i dont think...and if it is, its punished pretty severely. An example: if im rebuilding the idler and pitman assembly on a fourteen ton…

> If you're writing a web application, shouldnt you take care to make sure its secure and well written? Just because nobody had to pick hair out of a windshield doesnt mean a hacked webapp doesnt ruin just as many lives.

No. In fact, where I work (massive multistore ecommerce), this attitude is actively discouraged. They don't want developers spending valuable time worrying about what a malicious actor would do or how it can be protected against. That would be an inappropriate use of company time on non-revenue-generating activities. We HAVE to spend all our time feverishly implementing whatever features business put in for development this quarter to bump conversions and average order volume. If we focus on endpoint security, we aren't adding features, and so we might miss the revenue budget and then stuff REALLY hits the fan.

> An example: if im rebuilding the idler and pitman assembly on a fourteen ton truck, theres no hustle. there is no competition to do it "the fastest." You do it right, because if that assembly fails in a turn you could cause a pretty horrible accident.

In this scenario, you don't have to be in the situation of some company in some other country figuring out a way to sell people a machine that'll rebuild the idler 50% faster. In the SaaS & ecommerce landscape, being beaten to market or having a competitor that can iterate faster than you means you're dead.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#135

Post by robot »

Hustle != Struggle. The original meaning of the hustle culture is that you creatively find your way into an expected result, often creating value along the way.

For example, instead of simply spending money for advertising, you create a valuable piece of content and share it in places your audience hangs out. Then repeat this and be consistent until you get to a result.

Instead of using quick and lazy methods, you achieved something, often creating value for others along the way, and the whole activity was a 'hustle'.

You can hustle 9 till 5 and be done with it. Though, I do get that if you were more persistent and focused on a result, this can easily become 9 till 7 or 12.

So yes, while the term in my opinion was a positive one, it is worth being cautious when explaining it.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#136

Post by TremendousJudge »

eiaoa wrote: post #77
lanewinfield wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hatred of advertising at a larger scale, nice. How are those people on said websites (and almost any other medium) supposed to make money?

> How are those people on said websites (and almost any other medium) supposed to make money? 1. Have less annoying ads that respect the user. 2. Charge money. 3. Some novel funding model that's unexplored because obnoxious ads dominate everything and suck all the air out of the room.

you know, sometimes I wonder how the internet would look like today if every time you loaded content from a server some money would automatically go their way (a tiny payment compensating for server time of sorts)

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#139

Post by apatters »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #110
apatters wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Thailand and our customers are almost all in the US. Some Thai companies have a pretty grueling culture, six days a week, little/no vacation, etc. Our customers don't try to micromanage as long as we're getting results. I think our approach to work just comes down to me setting the tone. I was very lucky to have a teacher all the way back in elementary school who drilled the "Work smarter, not harder" mentalit…

They are lucky to have you, but how does "work smarter, not harder" work for competitors who aren't as smart as you? If you can't compete with others at school, in the workplace, or as a business based on intellectual superiority the gap has to be made up somewhere. Usually that leads to hard work and then a vicious cycle.

That's an interesting question. I'm not sure this is a satisfactory answer, but I think what we do isn't really enabled by superior intellect as much as it is by a focus on good process and introspection.

In other words it comes down to good management -- this is just my pet theory, but as a ruminating introvert, when I did live and work in the US I felt that I witnessed a lot of extroverts get promoted into positions of authority because they were popular, and proceed to make poor decisions.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#140

Post by JustSomeNobody »

apatters wrote: post #24

I'm American but I've lived overseas for nearly a decade, and I hardly ever go back. In recent years when I meet other Americans who are visiting my city, I often get this vague feeling that they're just trying too hard in one way or another. Maybe they're working too hard, or trying too hard to impress someone, or get attention, or assert themselves. I don't know if I've changed or if America is changed or if it's s…

MBA's are trained to wring every ounce of productivity from employees by working them more than 40 hours (because working late is a badge of honor!) while letting them know that, yet again, there are no raises coming and they need to take one for the team and we all need to tighten our belts and blah blah.

And yet, American workers still hold fast to the dream that if they just work harder, they'll be more successful.

That dream doesn't exist. The nightmare that does is that workers are continuing to work for less and less each year.

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