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The Toxic Grind

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: The Toxic Grind

#21

Post by chasd00 »

throwaway9980 wrote: post #6

Hitting my mid-40’s with a reasonably successful multi decade career in tech and I’ve recently realized that some gigantic percentage (plurality, maybe majority) of all the hard work has gone into competing against the people around me for opportunities. Not into actual value creation for others, not in service of others, purely focused on beating out other people for the chances. I’m not sure how to reorient myself.…

competition between organism is pretty fundamental to the way life works. Convincing humans (or any other lifeform) to turn that off is going to be a tall order.

Re: The Toxic Grind

#22

Post by czbond »

It's like article author has never watched a nature documentary where gorillas kill other gorillas for territory (or most other species similar).

Humans are bell curve like all other species. Nature rewards either strength, physical advantage, or mental advantage.... and there is constant competition. That's just the way it works in human nature.... humans are wired that way.

You either participate, don't, or find a different way. Griping about it accomplishes little. The gorilla that is sad he's not a silver back gets his skull crushed.

Re: The Toxic Grind

#23

Post by lumost »

gammabetadelta wrote: post #11

The problem with a lot of these posts is that there's a spectrum of people. On one end you have the sigma grind who work all the time and on the other those who don't do anything and complain. Both are toxic in their own ways since accomplishment is so critical to self-worth. Yet, at the same time you have to listen to your body and rest. I find that the happiest people don't read the hustle culture and just focus on…

as I've gotten older, I've learned that it matters where you invest your "extra capacity". If you invest it in leisure, it's often good for a time - but depressing in the long term, if you invest it in work - you can risk burnout. I'd argue that investing it in any particular area all the time will lead to some form of burnout.

The key is to look for where you get the most return on invested energy. There are times where work is a thankless grind that doesn't care if you put in 20 hours or 80. There are times where putting in an extra 5 hours leads to a promotion/accomplishment of note. When you have 40 hours of spare capacity, binging netflix is not going to make you happy in the long term.

At the office, expecting everyone to want and be able to put in 60 hours a week is going to be a problem. I did this for my first 3 jobs, and it caused friction with those who are putting in their 30/35. Ultimately, it lead to me burning out and changing jobs rapidly for 5 years - because I wasn't getting out of my job something commensurate with the extra investment I was putting in.

Re: The Toxic Grind

#24

Post by president »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
president wrote: post #12

It's an inevitable part of late-stage capitalism, no? Union busting, off-shoring, and imported labor are all needed to prop up the system. Pair this with ever-increasing costs of living and you get a collapsing society. But hey, at least you get cheap goods right?

> an inevitable part of late-stage capitalism, no? No. There is no playbook or inevitability playing out. "Late-stage capitalism" is just lazy cynicism by a different meme.

Well, maybe I should have re-phrased it to "Capitalism with maximizing shareholder value characteristics". Toss human nature on top of that, and you're biased towards "late stage capitalism".

Re: The Toxic Grind

#25

Post by duxup »

synu wrote: post #8

I am still not 100% sure if “sigma male grindset” is a joke or not. It seems like one of those things that started as parody, but sincere believers showed up and took it over.

I thought the “10x developer” was a joke about how people associate being a jerk with being productive / success / having no time to work as an appropriate human / teammate.

I was more than a little horrified when I found people were serious…

Re: The Toxic Grind

#26

Post by krembanan »

I've always been confused by this, as most studies show around 5~ hours a day is the maximum your brain can do work that requires deep focus (programming etc). So what are these people doing where they can work 10+ hours days? You will see seriously diminishing (and often negative) results when overworking. You'll end up waking up the next morning cleaning up and fixing bugs from your overworked brain.

Re: The Toxic Grind

#27

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

> They don’t say that working on a meaningful mission will make you more fulfilled in life. That doesn’t sell. The idea that you should pursue something you genuinely care about, which has nothing to do with getting up at 4 AM in the morning, going to the gym, and working until 11 PM, is not so glamorous.

I’m so freaking glad to be out of the rat race.

For the record, I spend a significant amount of time, “working.”

I use the quotes, because what I do, doesn’t really feel like “work.” It’s a joy. It’s what I always wanted to do.

I also get up at 5AM, walk three miles, and “work” until bedtime, seven days a week. No one pays me, and I’m fine with that.

There is always a “grind” phase of my “work”; particularly when I approach release (I am in that phase, now, on my main project), but you always need to do that, when you ship anything. I still get great joy from shipping, so the “grind” is worth it.

I had to be forced into this position. No one would hire me, so I had to retreat.

Thank Cthulhu.

Re: The Toxic Grind

#28

Post by michaelt »

Havoc wrote: post #18

I had always interpreted the grind as a bit wider. ie not just work but also say hitting the gym at 6AM would count. Doesn’t make the authors point any less valid though I do think this mindset applied to self improvement is less harmful than pure work

The author does explicitly mention "getting up at 4 AM in the morning, going to the gym, and working until 11 PM" so I think he might be on the same page as you.

Re: The Toxic Grind

#30

Post by AndrewKemendo »

This is disappointing to see on the front page as it's the 600,000th article since 2007 about why family and health are better life priorities than work.

As usual the author, who invariably lives in the white collar tech-bubble, and therefore is bombarded with "hustle culture" stuff in their LinkedIn etc...sets up a strawman and then attempts to dismantle it:

>This is a universal longing in a capitalist world — getting ahead of others is the holy grail of life. Why else would you be living if not to have more material things than others?

I'm pretty well read in philosophy and economics and I have never once ever heard a serious and well considered argument that material wealth accumulation is a normative goal for any system.

Someone please point me to a large subset of people or even one serious philosopher who would make this claim.

Further, even the hustle culture people (of whom I'm no fan) don't even make this claim.

Here, this is what the American people value in life according to Pew: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/11/20/where-americ...

Of course every single author of one of these pieces inevitably gives the literal exact same advice on what SHOULD be considered the priorities and wouldn't you know it looks eerily similar to what people self-report as where they find meaning.

Yawn. As a community lets promote better stories to the top.

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