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The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

pratik.is

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Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#101

Post by vinay_ys »

In my experience actual reality is somewhat different – at least at large Internet apps companies.

In high-functioning successful team, everyone is spending significant time in

1. discovery – learning things about the constantly evolving product/functional domain and the tech, and

2. ideation – figuring out what's important and how to solve it,

3. and some non-trivial amount of time in large team collaboration related activities.

But the problem is these activities (and their taxonomies) are not made explicit – their purpose is not explicitly stated; instead people participate in packaged rituals that are supposed to produce results. But because they do it without understanding it, they could feel like a cog in the machine.

But there's also another big part of the reality – those who work themselves too hard and get themselves burnt out are also chasing personal career promotion goals and not succeeding at it.

Then, there are some who don't even have that objective but have a broken work habit and get burnt out.

Of course there are other things at the worst end of the spectrum – bad manager, bad CEO, bad business, bad co-workers, bad vendor-partners etc – that can make things toxic and they get burnt out.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#102

Post by supriyo-biswas »

JohnFen wrote: post #91
alexachilles90 wrote: post #69

The worst is when you are trying to escape the hustle and changing your attitude to take it at your own pace at work but there is that one team member that buys into the hustle culture, sending emails at night, ticking things off their check list like their life depended on it, promoting the race to the bottom.

Why is the existence of that team member a problem? You don't have to read the emails until the start of the workday no matter when they send them.

Because their “endeavor” becomes the benchmark for other employees to replicate, leading to a race to the bottom.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#103

Post by AnimalMuppet »

JohnFen wrote: post #91
alexachilles90 wrote: post #69

The worst is when you are trying to escape the hustle and changing your attitude to take it at your own pace at work but there is that one team member that buys into the hustle culture, sending emails at night, ticking things off their check list like their life depended on it, promoting the race to the bottom.

Why is the existence of that team member a problem? You don't have to read the emails until the start of the workday no matter when they send them.

Because management is going to use their "commitment" to try to make you feel bad for not working harder. (You don't have to accept the guilt package they try to drop on you, of course. But they may also tie things like raises and promotions to it, which is harder to ignore.)

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#104

Post by xyzelement »

> Just observe the colorful language from Bezos’ 2016 letter to shareholders: “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.” Is it just me, or is this just another way of saying: work hard or you will die.

The reason this author is confused/upset by the Bezos quote is because they are talking about the same sport but a different class.

If an olympic champion told you about their training and diet regiment, you'd say "this sounds horrible" but what you'd mean is "it's not for me, because I am not training for the olympics." On the flip-side if your goal was to be an olympic champ too, your reaction would be "this is what it takes, good to know."

Bezos wasn't setting himself up for an easy 9-5 and he wasn't building a me-too company. He was building Amazon into.. well.. what it is, an absolute champion across multiple industries. And perhaps doing that requires what he describes.

If you're not looking to build an Amazon and you're not looking to be a part of the culture that can do it, then of course "this sounds horrible." And that's OK, just realize you're saying that because "it's not for me, because I don't care about that." It could very well be for other people - and those people might have greater wealth and work engagement than you do as a result. And that's OK too.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#105

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

midhhhthrow wrote: post #26
parpfish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not everybody gets sucked into firefighting to 'save the company'. if the fire started due to something you helped create and you have even a smidgen of impostor syndrome, fighting fires is about about saving yourself and cleaning up the messes you've made. the only way to prevent this is to build a team with a strong sense of collective ownership/responsibility and a healthy attitude towards mistakes.

And to realize that mistakes are a normal part of the pro drive work you do. In fact the most productive engineers also make the most mistakes

Professional engineers are incentivized to make mistakes because sprinting is more important than quality, and quality is not measured by the management. They care about check boxes of features.

If quality mattered, the best engineers would be making the fewest mistakes because mistakes are way more expensive than getting it right

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#106

Post by solarmist »

johnea wrote: post #68
jghn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was an eye opening moment when it happened to me. Almost nothing has the impact it purports to have. Percentage-wise, very few things are the emergency/fire that people make them out to be, at least in the grand scheme of things. I think part of it is that people get too wrapped up in their local world and don't see the big picture. For instance "If we don't get this widget added to the thingamabob in the next 3…

All burned out? Just wait.... Until you've been through another 30 years. You haven't even reached mid-burn yet...

Don’t compare suffering. Everyone is entitled to suffer.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#107

Post by pc86 »

Claude_Shannon wrote: post #47
wonderwonder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends where you live. Its relatively easy to land a 100k plus job after a couple years in software in the US. If the argument is things are just way more expensive now, then preach on, its insanity how much a trip to the grocery store costs now.

That feels like USA thing. In Europe it's way lower in average, in Poland average programmist will earn 6-7k per month - around 1.700 USD Heard similarly about pay in Germany - being a programmist doesn't pay you well

Literally the first sentence: "I think it depends on where you live."

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#108

Post by JohnFen »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #103
JohnFen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the existence of that team member a problem? You don't have to read the emails until the start of the workday no matter when they send them.

Because management is going to use their "commitment" to try to make you feel bad for not working harder. (You don't have to accept the guilt package they try to drop on you, of course. But they may also tie things like raises and promotions to it, which is harder to ignore.)

Interesting. In my several decades of working in this industry, I've very rarely seen anyone get meaningful raises anyway. You get a raise by taking a job at another company.

But true, if you're worried about getting promotions, then that's an issue.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#109

Post by KnobbleMcKnees »

fairity wrote: post #55

> I’m not against hustle, but when the hustle becomes an end in-and-of-itself, rather than a means to an end, that is alarming. Is it possible to hustle all the time & not burn out? Yes, but it takes a special type of person who values the hustle, in and of itself, which is rare. It's important to realize that there's no right or wrong with what you choose to value. And, as an employee, changing your org's values is…

> Instead, get clear on what your values are. Then, find an environment where you're surrounded with people who share your values. You'll be much happier.

This is a nice thought in theory but if your values include something along the lines of "treat people like they have families and lives and don't use them like a resource until they burn out", that eliminates a surprisingly large number of companies.

Having worked at a few big tech companies at different stages in their lifecycle, I think I'm starting to see where the sweet spots for joining are where they are more likely to align with the ways I want to work (if not all of my values). Equally I'm also starting to learn when it's time to jump from the ship.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#110

Post by pc86 »

nine_zeros wrote: post #12

I was recently berated and given negative performance ratings for rolling something out 2 weeks late. The reason I rolled it out 2 weeks late was because we were in holiday season and the company CTO had asked people to exercise caution during holidays. But lo and behold, my management didn't like that I was cautious. They gave me a negative rating. I asked, "Why was the 2 weeks so important? Are there any customers…

How do you make the leap from this one company doing stupid management nonsense - 100% accurate in this case, it sounds like - to "the industry is broken beyond repair?"
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