I'm thinking that of the things that get glorified, hard work is probably one of the better choices.
Better than athletes, getting hammered, drugs, 'balling', and Britney Spears.
Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours
181–190 of 246 posts
Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, let me point out: Of all of the people in this country who overwork themselves, the percentage who became billionaire titans-of-industry is, for all intents and purposes, zero. Millions (or tens-of-millions) of Americans overwork. There's one Bill Gates.
No, but I'll overwork myself in my 20s to have 5 million in my 30s, much more achievable.
Maybe! But I think the savvier approach would be to learn how to create wealth without overwork. For what it's worth, I spent many years overworking, nose-to-the-grindstone, trying to make as much as possible, etc. Had a series of panic attacks. Forced myself to lay off the gas pedal and work smarter. Actually make more money now than I did then. And I'm much happier and more relaxed. And I probably do better work.
Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours
#183Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours
#184Work smarter, not harder. I am going to create a startup soon and we're going to work out of my beachfront 2-bedroom FIOS-equipped apt for starters. The schedule will be: 9am-noon: 5 minute standup to spec work for the day, then code. Noon-2pm: Lunch but also surf, bike, boogieboard, suntan, volleyball, just do something fucking outside that involves physical activity. 2-5pm: Code. If you finish early, you get to lea…
Hell yeah man, that sounds like a great plan. I only have a few solid hours of focus and productivity in any given 9 hour work day myself (web developer at a startup). This sounds like the way to do it.
Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fetishizing hard work is a purely American phenomenon. Like many other parts of American culture, it has to do with the country's Puritan roots. Back in England, the Puritans were entirely city people. Even those who lived on the countryside were not farmers. So when they came to America, they had to work extra hard to learn farming and adopt that lifestyle, which was made even more difficult by the fact that the soi…
Actually I think that's entirely backwards. The celebration (calling it "fetishization" is a little loaded for my tastes) of leisure time across a whole workforce is a very recent phenomenon, and it's limited almost exclusively to post-war western Europe. Everyone else is still cheering for elbow grease. Hard labor has been the norm in our society since before it was a society. For thousands of years, people who work…
Are you sure about it? I think that before the industrialization people had only very vague concepts of work efficiency. Before the pocket watch was introduced, people could have had only a very vague idea of the time, especially when not in hearing-range of the church bells. Units produced per worker per minute? Not happening on a farm.
You literally worked for the MAN, a servant, and lived much more in a collective as we could stomach today. Individually going out and "making it"? Not realistic.
Things were slow. Harvest would happen in a few months, your market was local and expanding a business unrealistic in many cases. Travel was super slow and dangerous. Society was restricted in many ways. Wars, fires, famines could happen anytime and destroy everything you had.
Work was usually physically hard, and food might be scarce, and you better not get ill or injured, right? Are you sure putting in 150% would be wise under these circumstances?
But I'm curious if you've some other aspects I am missing, particularly anything authentic from literature describing the ambitious, hard working people you have in mind.
Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours
#186When 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…
> 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. Oh my god, I'm dealing with this now. I made a Python program that automated a lot of our Excel work. It reduced…
I believe the correct play for this scenario is to automate the work and never tell anyone. Though I can imagine that not revealing it could be just a little bit tricky to pull off.
Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours
#187For developers building something, the following are often true: Tweeting != Work TalkingAboutWork != Work Blogging != Work DoingSomethingInYourIDE does not necessarily = Work DoingSomethingInGithub does not necessarily = Work ThinkingButAppearingToBeDoingNothing may = Work Meetings != Work CodeReview may = Work Testing usually = Work DeliveringBuiltSoftware(AndItsPrerequisites) = Work HackerNews definitely != Work
I think the word "Work" above would be better replaced with "Productivity". It's work/life balance, not productivity/life balance. Every hour I can't do what I want at the drop of a pin because I'm in a place, fulfilling an obligation for my company, or something else along those lines - it's work. If the company puts things like meetings in my way of completing my job in the number of hours I allot to my full time e…
"But I don't subtract 5 minutes from my "time spent working" when I check Hacker News while my code is compiling. Am I being productive? No. Am I working? Yes."
I would count reading HN as inspirational and thus inclined to lead to better/more productivity/idea's etc. I can count numerous things on HN that lead me to being a better dev. I also used at a lot of interesting tools/tech that came up on HN and that would later fit/solve certain business requirements. So this surely did make me more productive. I would say though this depends on your ability to filter, scan and retain information derived from articles that are often tl;dr.
Also this article in itself is misleading, so reading an article posted on HN on how to be more productive is not considered productive?
Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fetishizing hard work is a purely American phenomenon True, if by "American" you mean "American, German, Swiss, Austrian, Swedish, Japanese, Victorian British, and Protestant". (I'm sure I left out a few, actually).
I do have some experience with Germans, and I don't think so. Germans are pros. They expect you to be professionals, the expect you to be prepared, on time, and do a good work, and they expect you not to waste anyone's time. This, in the end, makes for a every different business culture than I remember from US -- the meetings are as short as possible. The managers actually listen to their engineers, because their exp…
Nothing you said contradicts the previous poster though. Germans do value hard work. You are inexplicably interpreting "hard work" to mean "long hours". Hard work is working hard, it is entirely orthogonal to how long you spend working.
Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours
#189I can speak as someone who has burned out several times -
The key to working a normal work-day is to develop a thick skin - to understand that there are things that are possibly important, but just aren't going to get done because you don't have the time to do them. And things might blow up because of these things that don't get done, and that's OK, you're just going to have to live with it.
This is not easy and I'm still very bad at it, but I'm working on it.
Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours
#190"Work smarter not harder" is a false dichotomy. Someone working hard and smart is going to accomplish more than someone just working smart. And equating "working hard" with "putting in empty meaningless long hours" is ridiculous. Working hard is about effort, not time. As someone who was praised for being smart and developed a habit of putting in very little effort as a result: working hard is great. Work hard. Just don't work hard and stupid.