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Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

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Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#3

Post by rfnslyr »

When I worked at a large corporation, I nearly automated all of my work and I was called lazy. I'd do about an hour work a day, customize an existing script to process new data, then read for the remaining 6 hours. Co-workers called me a lazy nerd and proceeded to copy paste words into excel for 8 hours.

Now I get to wake up at 12, smoke a joint, have a beer, take a shower, go for a walk with my dog, and then work on whatever the hell interests me that particular day. I dictate my own hours, rates, and clients. Meanwhile my friends in law firms and other similar disciplines talk about how much and how hard they work. I don't get it. Congrats busting your ass for a year doing 60 hour work weeks for $20/hr? They haven't gone out in weeks. They have nearly no friends beyond their immediate work circle. No interests. Nothing.

I think somewhere down the line we got lost, or fucked by the previous generation, probably a combination of both. Work has consumed life. I don't know too many people with external interests beyond work. You get the odd hardcore cyclist, the casual musician, the nerd etc, but most people just go home, crack open a beer and watch some TV.

Work should be about providing a means for you to live your life. The moment I finished my work, it left my head entirely. The way it should be.

My goal has always been to leave the office as early as humanly possible while still completing the work I had to do that day.

We've grown into a culture where the following happens: do decently in highschool -> pick a degree that you hope will pay out but don't really care about -> office life. It's saddening.

Our lives are WAY too goddamn short to be spending 1/3rd of it sleeping, and another 2/3rds working with the occasional weekend.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#5

Post by yangez »

> I have a friend who brags that he busts his * 60 hours a week driving a Coca-Cola delivery truck. Congratulations, I work 35 and make twice as much as he does.

This is a straw man. The point is that if you worked 50 vs 35 hours at the same job, you'd simply get more done - even considering diminishing returns.

There's a reason many hugely successful people are notorious workaholics - see Elon Musk, Oprah, Marissa Meyer, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, etc. One of the simplest advantages that you can get is to just put in more hours than the next guy. No new-age "find-yourself" touchy-feely work-life balance talk will change that.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#6

Post by ryguytilidie »

I just don't get it at all. Just this morning I quit a job partly because of the hilarious hours and how inflexible our executive team was about them. It's like there's some sort of shame in working a normal workday, eating dinner at a normal hour and having your own life. I really vow to never put my health and well being on the line for a job where if we hit the jackpot I might get like 50 k and every other time I will get nothing.

Its one thing if you're a founder and want to spend all your waking hours pursing your dream, but a hiring strategy of "I will only hire people who want to work slave hours on my project for 1/50000th of my equity", is just no.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#7

Post by jmduke »

rfnslyr wrote: post #3

When I worked at a large corporation, I nearly automated all of my work and I was called lazy. I'd do about an hour work a day, customize an existing script to process new data, then read for the remaining 6 hours. Co-workers called me a lazy nerd and proceeded to copy paste words into excel for 8 hours. Now I get to wake up at 12, smoke a joint, have a beer, take a shower, go for a walk with my dog, and then work on…

See, I think there's an ideal that lies in between "work the bare minimum to support yourself" and "work your entire life to the exclusion of other activities."

If I was in your position, I would have tried to get a raise instead of lingering in my mainly automated position -- ideally into another position I can automate. I don't want work to vanish from my head as soon as I leave my office, because that means it didn't particularly affect me in any way.

I don't think this is a particularly 'right' way to handle this. Some people want different things out of their work, and I think that's normal. You mentioned you're freelancing now -- are you doing stuff based off of what you were working on earlier, or did you switch paths?

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#8

Post by tehwalrus »

I believe this is more of a problem in the US than elsewhere, although there is some office in every city where this is the culture (like a game of chicken over who will get up to leave first, that goes on beyond 8pm every evening.)

I like to imagine the whole of life as a not-for-profit business; where if you can cover your (living) costs, you've won, and you don't need to work any harder. If you can cover those costs in 2 days per week, great; three days for "side" projects and fun, and two days for relaxing. If you need to save up for a new toy, just work an extra day for a month.

This especially makes sense for programmers, who have well-paid telecommutable desk jobs and are in a position to request pro-rata work - "You want to give me a 20% pay rise? great, I'll keep the same salary and work 4 days, thanks."

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#9

Post by ryguytilidie »

yangez wrote: post #5

> I have a friend who brags that he busts his * 60 hours a week driving a Coca-Cola delivery truck. Congratulations, I work 35 and make twice as much as he does. This is a straw man. The point is that if you worked 50 vs 35 hours at the same job, you'd simply get more done - even considering diminishing returns. There's a reason many hugely successful people are notorious workaholics - see Elon Musk, Oprah, Marissa M…

But where does that end? We decide the 8 hour work week isn't productive enough, even though worker productivity has skyrocketed, so we go to 10, then we decide 10 hour days are for socialist pussies and go to 12 hour days, then eventually we are calling people lazy for sleeping and ridiculing them for not dragging concrete blocks for a .0000001% holding Elon Musk's Mars Miner corporation. I mean at some point life has to be about being happy versus maximizing the profitability of the company you work for...
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