13 ms·

The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

268 points by pl0x 8y ago

Dig1t 8y ago
I disagree with this.
- sincerely 8y ago
  Why?
- adjkant 8y ago
  "Greatest comment ever" As others said, why? Give us some reasons.
adamnemecek 8y ago
I imagine it might be because it’s easier to tell yourself “you just have to work harder” rather than to accept that it wasn’t written in the stars.
knaik94 8y ago
The problem with hustle porn is really how little emphasis is put on luck. They show a grind that translates directly into results, not really talking about dealing with failure due to things outside of one's control. Yes hard work gets you primed for new opportunities, but luck still plays a role in which opportunities you come across.
- AznHisoka 8y ago
  This. It's easy to hustle, and hustle, and work hard, and hustle.. when you've found that product-market fit, or you've found that profitable niche, or you've found that market opportunity. Otherwise, the chances of you succeeding is nil. It's like you're playing World of Warcraft, or Diablo II and can't find that loophole to farm new items. Once you've found that secret, you can then hustle.
- themagician 8y ago
  That’s the American way though. Individual success, socialized failure.
  - pluma 8y ago
    Luckily our fellow libertarians are busy promoting "individual success, individualized failure" as an alternative. Because if you're a failure, it shouldn't be our job to provide for you or pay for your recovery, right? Right? /s
- andrewl 8y ago
  Luck is a part of it for sure. And survivorship bias isn't usually discussed in motivational stories. XKCD has something on it: https://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/
  - paulpauper 8y ago
    No one wants to listen to a Ted talk in which a successful person attributes his success to luck (although in invoking Cunningham's law I'm sure one exists)
    - pluma 8y ago
      ...which begs the question, what is the point of a Ted talk about success stories if they're really just stories of being lucky without admitting that fact? It's a nice bedtime story, yeah, but people look at this crap for inspiration and guidance. "I want to be like that guy" except nothing in the story can be replicated to recreate the same outcome. EDIT: Is "envy porn" a phrase yet?
  - arbol 8y ago
    Excellent.
- refurb 8y ago
  Yeah, but you can’t control luck. The one thing you can control is how hard you work.
- collyw 8y ago
  The way I look at it, the more you work the more opportunities you have to have good luck. No guarantee of it. (Kind of like smoking doesn't guarantee you will die of lung cancer, just increases your chances). There are probably smarter ways of increasing your luck though.
two2two 8y ago
It's part of the deal though. Anyone who willingly participates has a goal where the end justifies the means. Albeit, a sell your soul type of deal at times, but nevertheless the problem is more a lack of self-awareness for why one might be hustling. That self-awareness is also understanding why Hustle Porn beckons. edit: last sentence
apocalypstyx 8y ago
Don't look for gold, sell shovels. (Or today, sell self-help and life-style brands.)
- p1necone 8y ago
  I dunno if the comparison is quite right, at least shovels were actually useful in the gold rush.
  - 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
    Shovelbot 3000. It uses the latest cutting edge techniques in computer vision to determine the best angle to dig. Except that it can’t actually dig holes.
    - peterkelly 8y ago
      And it has a tendency to get bricked by auto-installed firmware updates, which you can't disable as it requires a working wifi connection to operate.
  - apocalypstyx 8y ago
    Please don't slander The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess[1] [1] https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8846.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8846.html
- ahje 8y ago
  Shovels as a service?
exogeny 8y ago
There's nothing wrong with hard work. But there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health is impacted to succeed; if you need to work that hard, something else is off - the idea isn't good enough, you're attacking it in the wrong way, whatever. To me this ties into the gross, pervasive trend of wantrepreneurism. Shark Tank, Zuck, Elon Musk - being a founder has never been sexier, never been more interesting or lucrative. In the wake of that, WeWork and GaryV and a whole bunch of people are selling the idea that regardless of how bad your idea is or how unfit you are to be an entrepreneur, all you need is access or hustle to succeed. And that's awful, awful advice. As income inequality continues to grow, I expect this to get worse and worse.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health is impacted to succeed Know your pay-offs. Gambling your health to enrich someone else, while you scrape by with pennies, is a last resort. Gambling your health for tremendous gains is a fair choice. These are gambles humans leaving Africa and navigating the oceans made. (The cost of loss was death.) It’s a risk we’ll face expanding to the Moon and Mars and Alpha Centauri. Be thoughtful about the risks you take—not all are offered equally—but don’t discard them outright for being risky.
  - marmaduke 8y ago
    I suspect "work" here refers to that thing you do so that you can pay for the life-risking adventures worth having. If you kill yourself working how can you kill yourself scuba diving with sharks?
  - crpatino 8y ago
    Exploring outer space is inherently risky, there's no safe choice and no guarantee you are going to succeed either. Leaving a crapsack country is also inherently risky to a lesser degree. There are no legal, safe options to do it, but at least you probably know a buch of people who succeeded. But, if you already are part of a profession where even mediocre practicioners have 50+% odds of making it into the 2-3% of top earners amongst the general population, it is an imbecile's choice to wreck your health for a lottery ticket to make it into the top 0.001% with 0.001% odds of winning; specially if you can still apply the same talent, passion and effort without the health wrecking by cutting an order of magnitude to your goal. IF you did read the article and still came out thinking like that, chances are you are trying to rationalize a past (or present) bad life-choice.
Animats 8y ago
See "Stakhanovite movement", the USSR's version from the 1930s. This is not a new idea. Or a good one. Even the USSR dumped it.
rampage101 8y ago
Saw this GaryV video where he was saying how he told a caller to 'eat shit' for the next 3 years, and he was proud of his advice to the caller. A woman called in saying she was working three jobs where one was her main income, and she had 2 side opportunities. Her basic question was which one to pick. He told her 'eat shit' for the next couple years and take no vacations, just completely grind out her existence and nothing else. The guy is seriously a maniac recommending this approach. He doesn't consider at all the risk of burnout, and how a real burnout can set you back so far. There's zero balance to his approach. I've also found it amusing there is no talk of what you should do when you retire or get the money you are aiming for.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > He told her 'eat shit' for the next couple years and take no vacations I did this for three years. It sucks, and my god is it a roll of the dice with your health, wealth and happiness. But for me, at the time, the risk of breaking was worth the chance at stability and autonomy. It’s terrible universal advice. But if wealth and power matter to you; and you diligently save, take sensible risks, and remain health- and mental-health-wise grounded, it can skip you up quickly. (Important, for me: having friends I could spend evenings with, eating macaroni and drinking cheap wine. Also, don’t do this if you haven’t found product-market fit.)
  - AznHisoka 8y ago
    How did you eat shit exactly? a failed startup?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - pluma 8y ago
    It's only ever "worth it" if it works out. It's never "worth it" if it didn't. This is basically the survivor fallacy: you didn't win because you risked ruining yourself, you won because you got lucky. Risking to ruin yourself just meant you increased your chances of winning (while also significantly increasing your chances of losing). Teaching people they'll be successful as long as they're willing to "eat shit" for years may create a handful of winners but it will also cause a ridiculous amount of ruined lives (not to mention families and relationships). Imagine playing Russian roulette with only one empty chamber but afterwards everyone who survives also gets a toin coss to determine if he also wins a billion dollars on top. Sure, if you win, it was totally worth it because you came out of it unharmed and you have a billion dollars. If you win the roulette but lose the coin toss, hey at least you were ever so close to winning the billion dollars. Maybe you'll write an inspiring blog post about how waking up before dawn and doing push-ups helped you come that far and about your plans to win that coin toss if you get another chance in the future. Or you are sour about losing the coin toss and traumatised from the roulette but people now just lecture you about how you held the coin wrong and you should be lucky you even made it to the coin toss because if you fumbled the coin toss you really weren't skilled enough to win the roulette or you should have played for a few more rounds after nobody else was left because then you'd have definitely performed better at tossing that coin. But if you lose the roulette, you're probably in no state to lament to anyone how terrible of an idea it was to play in the first place. And if you look at the really successful ones, you'll notice they actually sometimes shot themselves but their parents or family were rich enough to make sure they wore a bullet-proof helmet. It's luck. Risking your health and social life just slightly increases the number of coin tosses while loading more bullets in the chamber. Look at how many entrepreneurs are putting themselves out there and working themselves to death, then look at how many are billionaires -- heck, look at how many are millionaires. The rest that just vanishes? At best they gave up and decided to do something else.
brian_herman__ 8y ago
? I thought this was a about pornography such clickbait shouldn’t be on this site....
golemotron 8y ago
It's only 'dangerous' if you feel anointed to protect people from their choices.
mikemotherwell 8y ago
The problem is we compare the worst of our lives to the best of other people's lives - be it our body, wealth, health, personality, travel, well-readness, intelligence etc etc. No one has every area of their life in order, there's just not enough time in a day! This Hustle Porn is just one area where people can be led astray, and they all come back to this same principal of belief that there are people who have everything together. A more generalised solution is simply to compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today.
- JimboOmega 8y ago
  I don't think looking back on the past is productive either; it's easy to say, gee, a couple years ago, I was in a happy relationship, I liked my job, now I'm single and trying to find a new one, I must be a failure, etc. You have to let go of comparisons.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ilamont 8y ago
There was an article discussed here on HN a few weeks back about "hustle culture" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381605) that encapsulated the trend in the ad industry, but this could apply in tech startups or many other businesses as well: To be clear, hustle isn’t just hard work — it’s showing that you’re working hard. It’s Instagram posts about how much you have to travel for work, it’s LinkedIn and Medium memos about how if you’re not working yourself to the bone you’re not doing enough. It also smacks a little bit of “work at all costs.” And if you’re not struggling, you’re probably not working hard enough. Sadly, this has been going on for years, even before social media gave it an outlet for fetishization. Accelerators like Y Combinator and TechStars as well as VC and angel communities are a big part of the problem, emphasizing questionable demonstrations of "progress" as a condition for getting into the program and getting attention from investors like Gary V. I've seen it in graduate business programs, too, thanks to lecturers drawn from the investor class and academics who push students to learn how to appeal to them. Some call it "startup theater," but "hustle porn" works, too.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
auntad 8y ago
While I appreciate the sentiment of this post, I'd like to see some real stats on "hustle porn" culture's effects. My impression is that the author is pitching doom and gloom where there might be only a small - and increasingly diminishing - problem. I'm not constantly peppered by this phenomenon on my feeds. In fact, lately I've been find more of the opposite: the growing culture of valuing 8 hours of sleep, mental health, and the like. This trend seems to be especially strong in the world of entrepreneurs. YC's Startup School had a talk on "How To Win" [1] - all about how to stay sane and healthy as a founder. Podcasts like ZenFounder [2] are teaching more of the same and building up that field. And I haven't even read it yet, but the popularity of books like It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work [3] represent a growing movement of successful people - who I'd say still work quite hard - that avoid these pitfalls and are very loud in teaching others how to do the same. I'm sure, as the author suggests, there're people who take all the motivational talk to an extreme. But there's an alternative that I hope many of us are following: don't just blindly work hard - because working hard is important - but work smart, too. [1] https://www.startupschool.org/videos/53 https://www.startupschool.org/videos/53 [2] https://zenfounder.com/ https://zenfounder.com/ [3] https://www.amazon.com/Doesnt-Have-Be-Crazy-Work/dp/0062874780 https://www.amazon.com/Doesnt-Have-Be-Crazy-Work/dp/00628747...
- spamizbad 8y ago
  That could be because you consume media on the bleeding edge of these trends. "Hustle Porn" was quite popular in tech several years ago. It lost its luster and it's no surprise that the hustlers have now moved into broader markets.
honkycat 8y ago
Agree with this 100%. Hustle porn is toxic and and the ethos needs to be avoided. It is clear why people latch onto the narrative. Working insane hours is a way to conceal incompetence. When your boss or employees come knocking and sees the complete waste you have made of your task, you can point at your complete lack of social life and how much you have martyred yourself for your company as proof of your competence. "I can't be a fuck-up, look at how hard I worked!" THAT is a participation trophy. I have a revolutionary new form of hustle: It's called taking care of yourself and getting an education AKA "Growing Up". I do weight training after work every day. I eat healthy. I cook food with my girlfriend. I read multiple programming books a month ( Shout-out to Uncle Bob!). I read multiple other types of books a month. I meditate. I go to bed on time and get up on time. I work on side-projects. I even find time to smoke some weed and play video games with my friends! And I am extremely productive. I'm constantly learning. I measure twice and cut once instead of hopelessly flailing at a keyboard long into the night. I do not need to martyr myself to make sure everyone around me knows how hard I am working, it's just obvious from the quality of my work.
- trevyn 8y ago
  I think working hard is fun, regardless of whether anyone’s watching me or if it’s productive.
  - honkycat 8y ago
    Personally, I think I work pretty hard! I don't think I slack off, I just recognize that I'm going to get more out of doing weight training than I will spending another hour on the same code-base I've been hacking on for the last 8 hours. To be clear: I hate working out. HATE. IT. It is so boring!
    - xvilka 8y ago
      I think this is exactly the same problem. If you don't like it why to push? Just do training of another kind of the sport? Maybe more active or team one.
paulpauper 8y ago
hyper-competitive, individualistic meritocratic culture and economy. Equating wealth and social status with virtue and worth. people set unrealistic individual expectations. survivroship bias. It's not that these business leaders are superior people, but many of them are lucky. Hustle helps, but so does luck, whether it's having a really high IQ (for tech jobs), family wealth (when starting business and having a safety net if the business fails), or 'right place at right time' (a domain name name + some simple coding could have made you rich in the mid-late 90's ,whereas nowadays you need a full-scale app with tons of stuff to maybe have a shot at a small amount of funding or a small acquisition).
genericone 8y ago
Is Will Smith's movie Happyness hustle porn?
- topkai22 8y ago
  It’s been a while since I watched it, but only kind of. A major component of that movie is how he deals with and prioritizes NON work stuff (his kid.)
thrwia22 8y ago
I am so glad about the way the topic got addressed in this article. What it basically says you just need to live life and needn't bash yourself and constantly rape yourself for the sake of fitness-like ghost benefits of "life-hacking". Overworking, early waking up, self-sleep deprivation for the sake of productivity won't do you any good, and won't make you happy. I was trapped by the hustler-porn during 2012-2014, got a job due to it, amassed some good money and it didn't make me happy at all. I was trying to think of myself as a better person because I struggled more and I was creating the struggle out of nothing just to overcome it and thus I, though I never admitted that to myself or showed that to anyone else, was actually amassing my pride trying to rise myself above others, thus falling myself into pride in the negative sense. Article is very brief and not detailed about the alternative to hustler lifestyle. I guess it's simple - "do ya thang", don't overwork, value living, value some joys, sleep well and just be a _somewhat_ good man I guess. Not everyone will become a millionare. And "_somewhat_ good" is a keyword heere, not "100% good", but "_somewhat_ good" I'd also like to highlight and cite 3 great things been said in the article, which pretty much sum up (as I think about it) what Hussein tried to say in it: >When you believe the normal state of affairs is to feel like you’re struggling to make progress, you’ll be less likely to quit something that isn’t going anywhere. >the myth that “if you work sufficiently hard, you’ll be one of these major influencers and one of these top people.” >So some people end up thinking they have to do particular things that their colleagues don’t do to justify why they haven’t wasted their day.”
moneytide1 8y ago
But it creates a competitive energy within the audience which improves collective productivity.
thrwia22 8y ago
I'd also like to notice that while the article says some good things it nonetheless falls itself into the trap of "generational thinking", where it clearly says that life-hacking hustling is the problem of some ghostly "millenials". Then suddenly equating "millenials" with "young people", obviously forgetting that if you say A you cant escape saying B and if you argue along the lines of "generational logic" (and that's failed logic) you can't not mention "Z" people, who also work hard already these days. Aren't they "millenials"? Why? Ah, I get ya, they have been growing with tech, while "millenials" only picked tech just before teens. So that makes "Z" totally different brand of people /s. Not shared environment, not shared culture, but the year you were born is what defines you and defines whether you were growing "with tech". And growing with tech makes you completely (or very) different /s. Totally makes sense. I've read that some of the people going along the lines of this failed "generational" logic even go as far as stating that anyone born in 1998 is a millenial while anyone born in 1999 is already a Z. In all serious, this "generational" bullshit stereotypizes people, similarly to how racism tries to solely define people in terms of their skin shade. That's total bullshit, there are completely different people among people born in 1980-1998 and some were already growing with tech, some didn't, some born in 1999 haven't seen tech to this day, some did, some've grown with it. Some of those born in 1960-1980 grew with tech too, they also are very prey-fallible to these types of "motivational" videos. And it's plain ridiculous to call someone a "young, cause millenial" cause they were born in 1980 but a 1979-borns are "not young, cause boomers". "Generational racism" (I'd go as far as to define it like that) just doesn't add anything to any conversation, enforces stereotypes and need to be fought against. I encourage you to fight against it too. Generational racism wont do any good to people. Thanks!
rhinojosa 8y ago
Here's my take as a 40 year old always trying to keep pushing through the next hurdle. Hustle early and often when you're young. Yes, do it. Try, and don't be afraid of failure, fail often, enjoy failure, and push yourself harder when you fail. That's my message. Anyone that has a deeper understanding of Gary V, Simon S, know that that they have quite a bit more background than just a message of go hustle yourself to the ground. I don't necessarily agree with everything they say, but that's where my (your) personal judgement comes in. Nobody is has all your answers. Alas, the kids/family, once you have a deeply rooted family, that will take over. Time will start shrinking and it becomes harder and harder. Not saying it can't be done or others don't favor their mission over their family, just that it's an issue, so address it. Don't blindly ignore the encouragement to work hard and don't ignore how that affects you.
autokad 8y ago
I disagree with the article. I got nowhere fast in life by just sitting around waiting for things to happen. I had all sorts of excuses on why I wasn't succeeding, the article likes to supply plenty, and they are just poisonous thoughts. then i lit a fire under my butt. I wanted to be a principle engineer, so I did research by looking at profiles on linkedin and found a masters at a great school would make that path easier. I spent time waiting in the subway, nights, and weekends studying and applied. I got rejected. I kept improving my application, I got accepted. I changed my mind on what I wanted to be and wanted to be a data scientist, preferably a top tech. lots of rejections, lots of no response. took me years of trying different things and spending my nights and weekends doing kaggle competitions and learning. eventually I got what I wanted. hustling alone didnt get me where I wanted to be, but resting around on my laurels and blaming other things for my lack of success would have done nothing. worse than nothing, it would have made me a bitter failure. the article suggests the hustle culture is a symptom of a failed work system because people are afraid to loose their job. I disagree. I think its because many recognize we are in a rare window in time that we can do so much with our effort. we may have to change our expectations, we may have to fail a bit before we get there, but if we keep trying better things will happen.
- mattpk 8y ago
  I agree with you for the most part, but there definitely is a toxic extreme of "hustle culture", in which people believe the sheer amount of "hard work" is the only coefficient.
  - syshum 8y ago
    All things in moderation. There is an extreme amount of entitlement and apathy in the US today as well. So while extreme "hustle culture" is bad, and working yourself to death is very bad, the idea that you might have to "work Saturdays" in your 20's to get ahead also should not be considered an "extreme" position. But to many people working even 40 hours a week is considered "too much work", being away from facebook for more than 2 hours is a burden, etc.
- uh_what 8y ago
manigandham 8y ago
Why must it be dangerous? Why are individuals not free to take inspiration where they find it? It's true that much of the "hustle" advice is rarely actionable business strategies, but that's not much different from listening to music or having faith in a religion and finding guidance and support within. There's also endless amounts of education material for the people that seek it out, and if the push they need to do so comes from a cheesy video or quote then more power to them. Is the judgement really necessary in all this? I find that much more counter-productive.
walrus01 8y ago
What I really don't get is people that will work themselves to death, 60-80 hours a week for products and market segments that I personally consider to be bullshit. If you're under age 30 and working long hours building a dating site app, some iOS or Android game with pay-to-win mechanics, or writing software so that peoples' clicks on ads can be tracked better, are you really doing anything to improve the world? There should not be an extreme sense of urgency and deadline-looming rush when what you're developing is a third rate clash of clans clone. But I read all the time how the video game development industry pushes people like this, until they burn out. There was a huge scandal about the 3D artists employed by a studio which produced the animated comedy movie "sausage party": https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sausage+party+animators+abuse&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sau... With the benefit of age and 20 years of experience in the industry, I'm not going to go into "emergency rush" mode for anything short of an ACTUAL emergency.
kirse 8y ago
Ecclesiastes 4:6 - "Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and (anxious) chasing after the wind." In fact, just read the whole book of Ecclesiastes if you want some sobering realities on the nature of the hustle, the grind, the striving for material things: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+2&version=NASB https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+2&...
- ak39 8y ago
  This is all well and good if the grind is about next level “material things”. A bigger house, another car, private schooling for the kids, that holiday etc. But there’s a huge proportion of humanity that has to grind just to keep their heads above water. One uninsured medical incident and it’s tickets for them.
  - mkesper 8y ago
    But that's a problem of the system and cannot be overcome by 'working harder'.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  Man, talk about a timeless book. Thanks for the reminder.
SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago
The discussion around the content of the article here is interesting, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was this quote: “No amount of grifting or endless working” will help alleviate the gender pay gap, which, according to the World Economic Forum, won’t close for another 200 years I read on here all the time that the “gender pay gap” doesn’t exist. So which one is it?
- rukittenme 8y ago
  If you find yourself questioning reality after every opinion you read you should really form your own opinion. Take the time to read the arguments present by both sides.
- jldugger 8y ago
  I see it as there being two kinds of gender pay gaps. The first one is the gap between comparable men and women in the same job at the same employer. You might call this gender bias, since the only discriminate factor here is gender. This is generally a small gap, though this is not true for all job titles. And it's pretty rare to find the gap disfavor men, so we should probably investigate why this emerges. The second one is the wide chasm between what men make on average and what women make. If you find it confusing why these two are different, consider nurses vs doctors. These two jobs vary by pay and gender balance, and for this combined population women make less money on average. This is something we probably want to be concerned about as a society, but likely cannot solve it with enforcement of existing laws as it has myriad factors like degree selection, gender role norms, employer selection, time in workforce, labor participation by age, overtime availability, and everything in the first category. I call this systemic bias, because there's not one bad actor we need to punish here. Rather, it emerges as the a rational equilibrium, in response to societal level pressures -- not all of which are rational themselves. This is the sphere where we cross our fingers that maybe Computer Engineer Barbie will adjust things a percentage point while we search for the hundred other, much harder things we need to do to unbias society. So, re: "grifting or endless working." Not a prescription for solving systemic gender bias. Getting up early for your teaching job or working more hours as a nurse won't solve the fact that you're not an engineer or surgeon. A few dozen more women in VC funded executive positions won't move the needle either. But in general, you should probably take what folks on HN say with a grain of salt.
ardy42 8y ago
> The guy hoping to help me pick myself up by my bootstraps is Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur known for investing in tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Venmo and amassing a $50 million fortune in the process. But it’s unlikely that you know him as a successful businessman. More likely, you’ll recognize him being plastered all over your social media feeds as an “inspirational speaker” and internet personality who gives lectures on how to hack your life in such a way that you become “more productive” and “more successful.” A VC lecturing everyone to work their asses off reminds me of this: www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/ (not direct-linked due to a referrer-prank): > Michael Arrington posted this article, "Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining" which quotes extensively from my 1994 diary. He's trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your one and only youth, and if you don't do that, you're a pussy. He's using my words to try and back up that thesis. > I hate this, because it's not true, and it's disingenuous. > What is true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for you to give up your life in order for him to become richer. > Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what's good for you, check your wallet, then count your fingers.
KamiCrit 8y ago
"Remember to take all things in moderation" Work ethic is great and shows through. But you don't get far ahead when you Karōshi [1] yourself. If it hurts, stop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi
plugger 8y ago
I think what gets me about Gary V's "hustle porn" ethos is that most people don't realise he had a career for AGES selling wine for his family wine business and making wine tasting videos for over a decade on youtube. He's posted over 1,000 wine tasting videos. Long before he was known as the hero of hustle porn he was spitting cali cab in his Jets bucket and waxing lyrical about the palate of said wine. I love wine more than most but the thought of producing a 10-20 minute tasting video roughly every 3.6 days for a decade sounds like a sure fire way to cure yourself of imbibing. The guy's a machine.
- rajacombinator 8y ago
  Is this sarcasm...? Producing a 10-20 minute wine tasting video 2x weekly sounds both enjoyable and easy for people who like wine.
  - plugger 8y ago
    Definitely not sarcasm. I'm sure it would be fun initially but after doing it for a decade plus I would definitely get tired of it. And I'm a huge lover of wine and a pretty avid collector.
andromedavision 8y ago
It's easy to want to hate on the linked Vaynerchuk video. I couldn't agree more with the message though. Working hard is good; if there's a certain type of life you want. There simply aren't any shortcuts; at least that's the rule and not the exception.
JerryPavlic 8y ago
Let's be honest - it's all about perspective. Gary V is trying to motivate people. 50 cent was motivating people. Michael Jordan was motivating people. Nelson Mandela was motivating people. Why i'm even considering putting these 3 names in the same paragraph is to escalate on the fact that every human being will find his own perspective to life and purpose. The name of the game is that no matter what becomes your purpose or what do become your life guidelines - you keep yourself healthy. And I've seen young athletes breaking their backs from over training. Rappers loosing their lives from hustling (ok not exactly true, but i know it happens) And peacemakers getting black eyes on protests. We make our own choices. We find our own leaders. Nothing is wrong with Gary V's motivational speeches - what's wrong is if people take it for the holy truth, which is the basic problem of any ideology.
zn44 8y ago
I’ve never watched any of those videos but One thing I don’t understand is how ‘victims’ decide to fully trust and follow advice of random YouTube celebrities. Why are they not just a little sceptical?
- Abutere 8y ago
  The videos are incredibly well produced, super slick editing. Makes it seem more exciting and profound than it really is. Not related to this article, but one of the most effective recruiting tools terror groups have is slickly produced marketing videos. They appeal strongly to individuals with a vulnerability that the group seems to address in their videos, such as not fitting in or existential boredom.
ackbar03 8y ago
Gary v is extremely annoying. But what makes it porn is that it's what people want to hear. Hes just selling people what they want in the end. It's a bit sad
carlospwk 8y ago
I wanted to give my thoughts Gary Vaynerchuck since I read some comments about him here. Yeah, he's super extra and too much for a lot of people. That's just kind of the way he is, or maybe more accurately, the way he has become. He's a showman, but with credentials. People kind of get the wrong image of him since they tend to hear only the 'hustle' stuff of working your ass off for a few years on some project. But he has a ton of other advice too, and much more "sensible" ones at that. Not too long ago he changed his eating habits, lost weight and promoted healthy living. I believe he's also put emphasis on getting enough sleep. He's said multiple times that he knows a lot of people who make 50k a year and are happier than many millionaires. I think he usually gives the "eat shit and work hard" type of advice to people who are asking him for a formula to success on their business. And it is true, you have to work hard to achieve something exceptional. Talking about 'hustle', I think it really depends how you define it in the first place. You can do a bad, BS hustle by working to get Internet points and validation from strangers on social media. Or even worse, do something to con people out of their money. To me a positive hustle is putting in constant work, not being afraid to sell and market your stuff, and most importantly, starting before you are ready. I'm not a zealot of the Vaynernation but I have found some of his messages helpful. One of his key principals is to document your journey. I love this idea and I've recently gotten over the fear of doing it myself, posting VLOGs and doing things more publicly using my real name (you can search this username and find out more). Another message is that "you could die tomorrow". Sure, this is a bit dramatic and cliche, but it did give me courage to push on with doing some things that I might have procrastinated on. Overall, I find Gary's content useful for the most part, especially his insights on social media. If you just know him from 'hustle hustle' type of things, I suggest you try to dig a bit deeper to his videos and blogs. He does know his stuff.
sunseb 8y ago
It's easy to say you should work less when you are successful.
robotbikes 8y ago
The energy drink pyramid scheme reminded me of Thunder Muscle from 'The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret'.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  Oh man, Todd Margaret was gold!
jdorfman 8y ago
I use to believe this bs. I thought people who took vacations were slackers and people who left the office before I did were lazy. In 2014 I started cutting my medication (bipolar 1 disorder) in half so I could sleep less and work more. Long story short, ended up back-firing leading to a 9 month leave of absence. In the end it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Working smart is the way to go IMO.
a-saleh 8y ago
This reminded me of an essay by Amy Hoy: https://stackingthebricks.com/entreporn/ https://stackingthebricks.com/entreporn/
robbywashere_ 8y ago
This is all fine and dandy but let’s be real. How many of you can solve: Given n non-negative integers representing an elevation map where the width of each bar is 1, compute how much water it is able to trap after raining. In N(1) space and N time
- joppy 8y ago
  None, because a two-dimensional bar graph can’t trap any water? This is completely irrelevant to the article being discussed.
youarentryan 8y ago
John D. Rockefeller would take mid-day breaks to do some gardening around the house. Work hard, but keep a balanced and cheery pace :)
amriksohata 8y ago
The thumbnail comes up of a photo of Jay Shetty, he runs many inspirational videos based on his links with ISKCON/Hare Krishnas. Bit misleading as he never talks of working hard to the bone, but more about working and living so you are happier in doing you work and in your life.
ken 8y ago
It's easy to say that this is the best possible time for a human to be alive, when your occupation is motivational speaker. You've got YouTube, and business class, and 7-minute workouts. The message you've got is to disregard the media you're using to send that message. Try working in a field where this isn't true, and tell us if you still think this is the best time ever to be a human. Do high school teachers (who have to compete with the internet) think 2018 is the greatest?
- kungtotte 8y ago
  It actually is the best time to be a human in general, that doesn't mean every person has a perfect life. Things are better now than they've ever been. There's still poverty, war, famine, disease, etc. but way fewer people die to those things than at any point in history. 80% of the world's children get their vaccines. Girls go to school almost as long as boys. Child mortality is dropping sharply in the world, etc. So does things still suck for the person who gets terminal cancer? Of course it does. But humanity is doing great.

268 points by pl0x 8y ago

Dig1t 8y ago

I disagree with this.

sincerely 8y ago
Why?
adjkant 8y ago
"Greatest comment ever" As others said, why? Give us some reasons.

adamnemecek 8y ago

I imagine it might be because it’s easier to tell yourself “you just have to work harder” rather than to accept that it wasn’t written in the stars.

knaik94 8y ago

The problem with hustle porn is really how little emphasis is put on luck. They show a grind that translates directly into results, not really talking about dealing with failure due to things outside of one's control. Yes hard work gets you primed for new opportunities, but luck still plays a role in which opportunities you come across.

AznHisoka 8y ago
This. It's easy to hustle, and hustle, and work hard, and hustle.. when you've found that product-market fit, or you've found that profitable niche, or you've found that market opportunity. Otherwise, the chances of you succeeding is nil. It's like you're playing World of Warcraft, or Diablo II and can't find that loophole to farm new items. Once you've found that secret, you can then hustle.
themagician 8y ago
That’s the American way though. Individual success, socialized failure.
- pluma 8y ago
  Luckily our fellow libertarians are busy promoting "individual success, individualized failure" as an alternative. Because if you're a failure, it shouldn't be our job to provide for you or pay for your recovery, right? Right? /s
andrewl 8y ago
Luck is a part of it for sure. And survivorship bias isn't usually discussed in motivational stories. XKCD has something on it: https://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/
- paulpauper 8y ago
  No one wants to listen to a Ted talk in which a successful person attributes his success to luck (although in invoking Cunningham's law I'm sure one exists)
  - pluma 8y ago
    ...which begs the question, what is the point of a Ted talk about success stories if they're really just stories of being lucky without admitting that fact? It's a nice bedtime story, yeah, but people look at this crap for inspiration and guidance. "I want to be like that guy" except nothing in the story can be replicated to recreate the same outcome. EDIT: Is "envy porn" a phrase yet?
- arbol 8y ago
  Excellent.
refurb 8y ago
Yeah, but you can’t control luck. The one thing you can control is how hard you work.
collyw 8y ago
The way I look at it, the more you work the more opportunities you have to have good luck. No guarantee of it. (Kind of like smoking doesn't guarantee you will die of lung cancer, just increases your chances). There are probably smarter ways of increasing your luck though.

two2two 8y ago

It's part of the deal though. Anyone who willingly participates has a goal where the end justifies the means. Albeit, a sell your soul type of deal at times, but nevertheless the problem is more a lack of self-awareness for why one might be hustling. That self-awareness is also understanding why Hustle Porn beckons. edit: last sentence

apocalypstyx 8y ago

Don't look for gold, sell shovels. (Or today, sell self-help and life-style brands.)

p1necone 8y ago
I dunno if the comparison is quite right, at least shovels were actually useful in the gold rush.
- 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
  Shovelbot 3000. It uses the latest cutting edge techniques in computer vision to determine the best angle to dig. Except that it can’t actually dig holes.
  - peterkelly 8y ago
    And it has a tendency to get bricked by auto-installed firmware updates, which you can't disable as it requires a working wifi connection to operate.
- apocalypstyx 8y ago
  Please don't slander The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess[1] [1] https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8846.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8846.html
ahje 8y ago
Shovels as a service?

exogeny 8y ago

There's nothing wrong with hard work. But there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health is impacted to succeed; if you need to work that hard, something else is off - the idea isn't good enough, you're attacking it in the wrong way, whatever. To me this ties into the gross, pervasive trend of wantrepreneurism. Shark Tank, Zuck, Elon Musk - being a founder has never been sexier, never been more interesting or lucrative. In the wake of that, WeWork and GaryV and a whole bunch of people are selling the idea that regardless of how bad your idea is or how unfit you are to be an entrepreneur, all you need is access or hustle to succeed. And that's awful, awful advice. As income inequality continues to grow, I expect this to get worse and worse.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health is impacted to succeed Know your pay-offs. Gambling your health to enrich someone else, while you scrape by with pennies, is a last resort. Gambling your health for tremendous gains is a fair choice. These are gambles humans leaving Africa and navigating the oceans made. (The cost of loss was death.) It’s a risk we’ll face expanding to the Moon and Mars and Alpha Centauri. Be thoughtful about the risks you take—not all are offered equally—but don’t discard them outright for being risky.
- marmaduke 8y ago
  I suspect "work" here refers to that thing you do so that you can pay for the life-risking adventures worth having. If you kill yourself working how can you kill yourself scuba diving with sharks?
- crpatino 8y ago
  Exploring outer space is inherently risky, there's no safe choice and no guarantee you are going to succeed either. Leaving a crapsack country is also inherently risky to a lesser degree. There are no legal, safe options to do it, but at least you probably know a buch of people who succeeded. But, if you already are part of a profession where even mediocre practicioners have 50+% odds of making it into the 2-3% of top earners amongst the general population, it is an imbecile's choice to wreck your health for a lottery ticket to make it into the top 0.001% with 0.001% odds of winning; specially if you can still apply the same talent, passion and effort without the health wrecking by cutting an order of magnitude to your goal. IF you did read the article and still came out thinking like that, chances are you are trying to rationalize a past (or present) bad life-choice.

Animats 8y ago

See "Stakhanovite movement", the USSR's version from the 1930s. This is not a new idea. Or a good one. Even the USSR dumped it.

rampage101 8y ago

Saw this GaryV video where he was saying how he told a caller to 'eat shit' for the next 3 years, and he was proud of his advice to the caller. A woman called in saying she was working three jobs where one was her main income, and she had 2 side opportunities. Her basic question was which one to pick. He told her 'eat shit' for the next couple years and take no vacations, just completely grind out her existence and nothing else. The guy is seriously a maniac recommending this approach. He doesn't consider at all the risk of burnout, and how a real burnout can set you back so far. There's zero balance to his approach. I've also found it amusing there is no talk of what you should do when you retire or get the money you are aiming for.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> He told her 'eat shit' for the next couple years and take no vacations I did this for three years. It sucks, and my god is it a roll of the dice with your health, wealth and happiness. But for me, at the time, the risk of breaking was worth the chance at stability and autonomy. It’s terrible universal advice. But if wealth and power matter to you; and you diligently save, take sensible risks, and remain health- and mental-health-wise grounded, it can skip you up quickly. (Important, for me: having friends I could spend evenings with, eating macaroni and drinking cheap wine. Also, don’t do this if you haven’t found product-market fit.)
- AznHisoka 8y ago
  How did you eat shit exactly? a failed startup?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- pluma 8y ago
  It's only ever "worth it" if it works out. It's never "worth it" if it didn't. This is basically the survivor fallacy: you didn't win because you risked ruining yourself, you won because you got lucky. Risking to ruin yourself just meant you increased your chances of winning (while also significantly increasing your chances of losing). Teaching people they'll be successful as long as they're willing to "eat shit" for years may create a handful of winners but it will also cause a ridiculous amount of ruined lives (not to mention families and relationships). Imagine playing Russian roulette with only one empty chamber but afterwards everyone who survives also gets a toin coss to determine if he also wins a billion dollars on top. Sure, if you win, it was totally worth it because you came out of it unharmed and you have a billion dollars. If you win the roulette but lose the coin toss, hey at least you were ever so close to winning the billion dollars. Maybe you'll write an inspiring blog post about how waking up before dawn and doing push-ups helped you come that far and about your plans to win that coin toss if you get another chance in the future. Or you are sour about losing the coin toss and traumatised from the roulette but people now just lecture you about how you held the coin wrong and you should be lucky you even made it to the coin toss because if you fumbled the coin toss you really weren't skilled enough to win the roulette or you should have played for a few more rounds after nobody else was left because then you'd have definitely performed better at tossing that coin. But if you lose the roulette, you're probably in no state to lament to anyone how terrible of an idea it was to play in the first place. And if you look at the really successful ones, you'll notice they actually sometimes shot themselves but their parents or family were rich enough to make sure they wore a bullet-proof helmet. It's luck. Risking your health and social life just slightly increases the number of coin tosses while loading more bullets in the chamber. Look at how many entrepreneurs are putting themselves out there and working themselves to death, then look at how many are billionaires -- heck, look at how many are millionaires. The rest that just vanishes? At best they gave up and decided to do something else.

brian_herman__ 8y ago

? I thought this was a about pornography such clickbait shouldn’t be on this site....

golemotron 8y ago

It's only 'dangerous' if you feel anointed to protect people from their choices.

mikemotherwell 8y ago

The problem is we compare the worst of our lives to the best of other people's lives - be it our body, wealth, health, personality, travel, well-readness, intelligence etc etc. No one has every area of their life in order, there's just not enough time in a day! This Hustle Porn is just one area where people can be led astray, and they all come back to this same principal of belief that there are people who have everything together. A more generalised solution is simply to compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today.

JimboOmega 8y ago
I don't think looking back on the past is productive either; it's easy to say, gee, a couple years ago, I was in a happy relationship, I liked my job, now I'm single and trying to find a new one, I must be a failure, etc. You have to let go of comparisons.

deleted 8y ago

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ilamont 8y ago

There was an article discussed here on HN a few weeks back about "hustle culture" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381605) that encapsulated the trend in the ad industry, but this could apply in tech startups or many other businesses as well: To be clear, hustle isn’t just hard work — it’s showing that you’re working hard. It’s Instagram posts about how much you have to travel for work, it’s LinkedIn and Medium memos about how if you’re not working yourself to the bone you’re not doing enough. It also smacks a little bit of “work at all costs.” And if you’re not struggling, you’re probably not working hard enough. Sadly, this has been going on for years, even before social media gave it an outlet for fetishization. Accelerators like Y Combinator and TechStars as well as VC and angel communities are a big part of the problem, emphasizing questionable demonstrations of "progress" as a condition for getting into the program and getting attention from investors like Gary V. I've seen it in graduate business programs, too, thanks to lecturers drawn from the investor class and academics who push students to learn how to appeal to them. Some call it "startup theater," but "hustle porn" works, too.

deleted 8y ago
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auntad 8y ago

While I appreciate the sentiment of this post, I'd like to see some real stats on "hustle porn" culture's effects. My impression is that the author is pitching doom and gloom where there might be only a small - and increasingly diminishing - problem. I'm not constantly peppered by this phenomenon on my feeds. In fact, lately I've been find more of the opposite: the growing culture of valuing 8 hours of sleep, mental health, and the like. This trend seems to be especially strong in the world of entrepreneurs. YC's Startup School had a talk on "How To Win" [1] - all about how to stay sane and healthy as a founder. Podcasts like ZenFounder [2] are teaching more of the same and building up that field. And I haven't even read it yet, but the popularity of books like It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work [3] represent a growing movement of successful people - who I'd say still work quite hard - that avoid these pitfalls and are very loud in teaching others how to do the same. I'm sure, as the author suggests, there're people who take all the motivational talk to an extreme. But there's an alternative that I hope many of us are following: don't just blindly work hard - because working hard is important - but work smart, too. [1] https://www.startupschool.org/videos/53 https://www.startupschool.org/videos/53 [2] https://zenfounder.com/ https://zenfounder.com/ [3] https://www.amazon.com/Doesnt-Have-Be-Crazy-Work/dp/0062874780 https://www.amazon.com/Doesnt-Have-Be-Crazy-Work/dp/00628747...

spamizbad 8y ago
That could be because you consume media on the bleeding edge of these trends. "Hustle Porn" was quite popular in tech several years ago. It lost its luster and it's no surprise that the hustlers have now moved into broader markets.

honkycat 8y ago

Agree with this 100%. Hustle porn is toxic and and the ethos needs to be avoided. It is clear why people latch onto the narrative. Working insane hours is a way to conceal incompetence. When your boss or employees come knocking and sees the complete waste you have made of your task, you can point at your complete lack of social life and how much you have martyred yourself for your company as proof of your competence. "I can't be a fuck-up, look at how hard I worked!" THAT is a participation trophy. I have a revolutionary new form of hustle: It's called taking care of yourself and getting an education AKA "Growing Up". I do weight training after work every day. I eat healthy. I cook food with my girlfriend. I read multiple programming books a month ( Shout-out to Uncle Bob!). I read multiple other types of books a month. I meditate. I go to bed on time and get up on time. I work on side-projects. I even find time to smoke some weed and play video games with my friends! And I am extremely productive. I'm constantly learning. I measure twice and cut once instead of hopelessly flailing at a keyboard long into the night. I do not need to martyr myself to make sure everyone around me knows how hard I am working, it's just obvious from the quality of my work.

trevyn 8y ago
I think working hard is fun, regardless of whether anyone’s watching me or if it’s productive.
- honkycat 8y ago
  Personally, I think I work pretty hard! I don't think I slack off, I just recognize that I'm going to get more out of doing weight training than I will spending another hour on the same code-base I've been hacking on for the last 8 hours. To be clear: I hate working out. HATE. IT. It is so boring!
  - xvilka 8y ago
    I think this is exactly the same problem. If you don't like it why to push? Just do training of another kind of the sport? Maybe more active or team one.

paulpauper 8y ago

hyper-competitive, individualistic meritocratic culture and economy. Equating wealth and social status with virtue and worth. people set unrealistic individual expectations. survivroship bias. It's not that these business leaders are superior people, but many of them are lucky. Hustle helps, but so does luck, whether it's having a really high IQ (for tech jobs), family wealth (when starting business and having a safety net if the business fails), or 'right place at right time' (a domain name name + some simple coding could have made you rich in the mid-late 90's ,whereas nowadays you need a full-scale app with tons of stuff to maybe have a shot at a small amount of funding or a small acquisition).

genericone 8y ago

Is Will Smith's movie Happyness hustle porn?

topkai22 8y ago
It’s been a while since I watched it, but only kind of. A major component of that movie is how he deals with and prioritizes NON work stuff (his kid.)

thrwia22 8y ago

I am so glad about the way the topic got addressed in this article. What it basically says you just need to live life and needn't bash yourself and constantly rape yourself for the sake of fitness-like ghost benefits of "life-hacking". Overworking, early waking up, self-sleep deprivation for the sake of productivity won't do you any good, and won't make you happy. I was trapped by the hustler-porn during 2012-2014, got a job due to it, amassed some good money and it didn't make me happy at all. I was trying to think of myself as a better person because I struggled more and I was creating the struggle out of nothing just to overcome it and thus I, though I never admitted that to myself or showed that to anyone else, was actually amassing my pride trying to rise myself above others, thus falling myself into pride in the negative sense. Article is very brief and not detailed about the alternative to hustler lifestyle. I guess it's simple - "do ya thang", don't overwork, value living, value some joys, sleep well and just be a _somewhat_ good man I guess. Not everyone will become a millionare. And "_somewhat_ good" is a keyword heere, not "100% good", but "_somewhat_ good" I'd also like to highlight and cite 3 great things been said in the article, which pretty much sum up (as I think about it) what Hussein tried to say in it: >When you believe the normal state of affairs is to feel like you’re struggling to make progress, you’ll be less likely to quit something that isn’t going anywhere. >the myth that “if you work sufficiently hard, you’ll be one of these major influencers and one of these top people.” >So some people end up thinking they have to do particular things that their colleagues don’t do to justify why they haven’t wasted their day.”

moneytide1 8y ago

But it creates a competitive energy within the audience which improves collective productivity.

thrwia22 8y ago

I'd also like to notice that while the article says some good things it nonetheless falls itself into the trap of "generational thinking", where it clearly says that life-hacking hustling is the problem of some ghostly "millenials". Then suddenly equating "millenials" with "young people", obviously forgetting that if you say A you cant escape saying B and if you argue along the lines of "generational logic" (and that's failed logic) you can't not mention "Z" people, who also work hard already these days. Aren't they "millenials"? Why? Ah, I get ya, they have been growing with tech, while "millenials" only picked tech just before teens. So that makes "Z" totally different brand of people /s. Not shared environment, not shared culture, but the year you were born is what defines you and defines whether you were growing "with tech". And growing with tech makes you completely (or very) different /s. Totally makes sense. I've read that some of the people going along the lines of this failed "generational" logic even go as far as stating that anyone born in 1998 is a millenial while anyone born in 1999 is already a Z. In all serious, this "generational" bullshit stereotypizes people, similarly to how racism tries to solely define people in terms of their skin shade. That's total bullshit, there are completely different people among people born in 1980-1998 and some were already growing with tech, some didn't, some born in 1999 haven't seen tech to this day, some did, some've grown with it. Some of those born in 1960-1980 grew with tech too, they also are very prey-fallible to these types of "motivational" videos. And it's plain ridiculous to call someone a "young, cause millenial" cause they were born in 1980 but a 1979-borns are "not young, cause boomers". "Generational racism" (I'd go as far as to define it like that) just doesn't add anything to any conversation, enforces stereotypes and need to be fought against. I encourage you to fight against it too. Generational racism wont do any good to people. Thanks!

rhinojosa 8y ago

Here's my take as a 40 year old always trying to keep pushing through the next hurdle. Hustle early and often when you're young. Yes, do it. Try, and don't be afraid of failure, fail often, enjoy failure, and push yourself harder when you fail. That's my message. Anyone that has a deeper understanding of Gary V, Simon S, know that that they have quite a bit more background than just a message of go hustle yourself to the ground. I don't necessarily agree with everything they say, but that's where my (your) personal judgement comes in. Nobody is has all your answers. Alas, the kids/family, once you have a deeply rooted family, that will take over. Time will start shrinking and it becomes harder and harder. Not saying it can't be done or others don't favor their mission over their family, just that it's an issue, so address it. Don't blindly ignore the encouragement to work hard and don't ignore how that affects you.

autokad 8y ago

I disagree with the article. I got nowhere fast in life by just sitting around waiting for things to happen. I had all sorts of excuses on why I wasn't succeeding, the article likes to supply plenty, and they are just poisonous thoughts. then i lit a fire under my butt. I wanted to be a principle engineer, so I did research by looking at profiles on linkedin and found a masters at a great school would make that path easier. I spent time waiting in the subway, nights, and weekends studying and applied. I got rejected. I kept improving my application, I got accepted. I changed my mind on what I wanted to be and wanted to be a data scientist, preferably a top tech. lots of rejections, lots of no response. took me years of trying different things and spending my nights and weekends doing kaggle competitions and learning. eventually I got what I wanted. hustling alone didnt get me where I wanted to be, but resting around on my laurels and blaming other things for my lack of success would have done nothing. worse than nothing, it would have made me a bitter failure. the article suggests the hustle culture is a symptom of a failed work system because people are afraid to loose their job. I disagree. I think its because many recognize we are in a rare window in time that we can do so much with our effort. we may have to change our expectations, we may have to fail a bit before we get there, but if we keep trying better things will happen.

mattpk 8y ago
I agree with you for the most part, but there definitely is a toxic extreme of "hustle culture", in which people believe the sheer amount of "hard work" is the only coefficient.
- syshum 8y ago
  All things in moderation. There is an extreme amount of entitlement and apathy in the US today as well. So while extreme "hustle culture" is bad, and working yourself to death is very bad, the idea that you might have to "work Saturdays" in your 20's to get ahead also should not be considered an "extreme" position. But to many people working even 40 hours a week is considered "too much work", being away from facebook for more than 2 hours is a burden, etc.
uh_what 8y ago

manigandham 8y ago

Why must it be dangerous? Why are individuals not free to take inspiration where they find it? It's true that much of the "hustle" advice is rarely actionable business strategies, but that's not much different from listening to music or having faith in a religion and finding guidance and support within. There's also endless amounts of education material for the people that seek it out, and if the push they need to do so comes from a cheesy video or quote then more power to them. Is the judgement really necessary in all this? I find that much more counter-productive.

walrus01 8y ago

What I really don't get is people that will work themselves to death, 60-80 hours a week for products and market segments that I personally consider to be bullshit. If you're under age 30 and working long hours building a dating site app, some iOS or Android game with pay-to-win mechanics, or writing software so that peoples' clicks on ads can be tracked better, are you really doing anything to improve the world? There should not be an extreme sense of urgency and deadline-looming rush when what you're developing is a third rate clash of clans clone. But I read all the time how the video game development industry pushes people like this, until they burn out. There was a huge scandal about the 3D artists employed by a studio which produced the animated comedy movie "sausage party": https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sausage+party+animators+abuse&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sau... With the benefit of age and 20 years of experience in the industry, I'm not going to go into "emergency rush" mode for anything short of an ACTUAL emergency.

kirse 8y ago

Ecclesiastes 4:6 - "Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and (anxious) chasing after the wind." In fact, just read the whole book of Ecclesiastes if you want some sobering realities on the nature of the hustle, the grind, the striving for material things: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+2&version=NASB https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+2&...

ak39 8y ago
This is all well and good if the grind is about next level “material things”. A bigger house, another car, private schooling for the kids, that holiday etc. But there’s a huge proportion of humanity that has to grind just to keep their heads above water. One uninsured medical incident and it’s tickets for them.
- mkesper 8y ago
  But that's a problem of the system and cannot be overcome by 'working harder'.
DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
Man, talk about a timeless book. Thanks for the reminder.

SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago

The discussion around the content of the article here is interesting, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was this quote: “No amount of grifting or endless working” will help alleviate the gender pay gap, which, according to the World Economic Forum, won’t close for another 200 years I read on here all the time that the “gender pay gap” doesn’t exist. So which one is it?

rukittenme 8y ago
If you find yourself questioning reality after every opinion you read you should really form your own opinion. Take the time to read the arguments present by both sides.
jldugger 8y ago
I see it as there being two kinds of gender pay gaps. The first one is the gap between comparable men and women in the same job at the same employer. You might call this gender bias, since the only discriminate factor here is gender. This is generally a small gap, though this is not true for all job titles. And it's pretty rare to find the gap disfavor men, so we should probably investigate why this emerges. The second one is the wide chasm between what men make on average and what women make. If you find it confusing why these two are different, consider nurses vs doctors. These two jobs vary by pay and gender balance, and for this combined population women make less money on average. This is something we probably want to be concerned about as a society, but likely cannot solve it with enforcement of existing laws as it has myriad factors like degree selection, gender role norms, employer selection, time in workforce, labor participation by age, overtime availability, and everything in the first category. I call this systemic bias, because there's not one bad actor we need to punish here. Rather, it emerges as the a rational equilibrium, in response to societal level pressures -- not all of which are rational themselves. This is the sphere where we cross our fingers that maybe Computer Engineer Barbie will adjust things a percentage point while we search for the hundred other, much harder things we need to do to unbias society. So, re: "grifting or endless working." Not a prescription for solving systemic gender bias. Getting up early for your teaching job or working more hours as a nurse won't solve the fact that you're not an engineer or surgeon. A few dozen more women in VC funded executive positions won't move the needle either. But in general, you should probably take what folks on HN say with a grain of salt.

ardy42 8y ago

> The guy hoping to help me pick myself up by my bootstraps is Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur known for investing in tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Venmo and amassing a $50 million fortune in the process. But it’s unlikely that you know him as a successful businessman. More likely, you’ll recognize him being plastered all over your social media feeds as an “inspirational speaker” and internet personality who gives lectures on how to hack your life in such a way that you become “more productive” and “more successful.” A VC lecturing everyone to work their asses off reminds me of this: www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/ (not direct-linked due to a referrer-prank): > Michael Arrington posted this article, "Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining" which quotes extensively from my 1994 diary. He's trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your one and only youth, and if you don't do that, you're a pussy. He's using my words to try and back up that thesis. > I hate this, because it's not true, and it's disingenuous. > What is true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for you to give up your life in order for him to become richer. > Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what's good for you, check your wallet, then count your fingers.

KamiCrit 8y ago

"Remember to take all things in moderation" Work ethic is great and shows through. But you don't get far ahead when you Karōshi [1] yourself. If it hurts, stop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi

plugger 8y ago

I think what gets me about Gary V's "hustle porn" ethos is that most people don't realise he had a career for AGES selling wine for his family wine business and making wine tasting videos for over a decade on youtube. He's posted over 1,000 wine tasting videos. Long before he was known as the hero of hustle porn he was spitting cali cab in his Jets bucket and waxing lyrical about the palate of said wine. I love wine more than most but the thought of producing a 10-20 minute tasting video roughly every 3.6 days for a decade sounds like a sure fire way to cure yourself of imbibing. The guy's a machine.

rajacombinator 8y ago
Is this sarcasm...? Producing a 10-20 minute wine tasting video 2x weekly sounds both enjoyable and easy for people who like wine.
- plugger 8y ago
  Definitely not sarcasm. I'm sure it would be fun initially but after doing it for a decade plus I would definitely get tired of it. And I'm a huge lover of wine and a pretty avid collector.

andromedavision 8y ago

It's easy to want to hate on the linked Vaynerchuk video. I couldn't agree more with the message though. Working hard is good; if there's a certain type of life you want. There simply aren't any shortcuts; at least that's the rule and not the exception.

JerryPavlic 8y ago

Let's be honest - it's all about perspective. Gary V is trying to motivate people. 50 cent was motivating people. Michael Jordan was motivating people. Nelson Mandela was motivating people. Why i'm even considering putting these 3 names in the same paragraph is to escalate on the fact that every human being will find his own perspective to life and purpose. The name of the game is that no matter what becomes your purpose or what do become your life guidelines - you keep yourself healthy. And I've seen young athletes breaking their backs from over training. Rappers loosing their lives from hustling (ok not exactly true, but i know it happens) And peacemakers getting black eyes on protests. We make our own choices. We find our own leaders. Nothing is wrong with Gary V's motivational speeches - what's wrong is if people take it for the holy truth, which is the basic problem of any ideology.

zn44 8y ago

I’ve never watched any of those videos but One thing I don’t understand is how ‘victims’ decide to fully trust and follow advice of random YouTube celebrities. Why are they not just a little sceptical?

Abutere 8y ago
The videos are incredibly well produced, super slick editing. Makes it seem more exciting and profound than it really is. Not related to this article, but one of the most effective recruiting tools terror groups have is slickly produced marketing videos. They appeal strongly to individuals with a vulnerability that the group seems to address in their videos, such as not fitting in or existential boredom.

ackbar03 8y ago

Gary v is extremely annoying. But what makes it porn is that it's what people want to hear. Hes just selling people what they want in the end. It's a bit sad

carlospwk 8y ago

I wanted to give my thoughts Gary Vaynerchuck since I read some comments about him here. Yeah, he's super extra and too much for a lot of people. That's just kind of the way he is, or maybe more accurately, the way he has become. He's a showman, but with credentials. People kind of get the wrong image of him since they tend to hear only the 'hustle' stuff of working your ass off for a few years on some project. But he has a ton of other advice too, and much more "sensible" ones at that. Not too long ago he changed his eating habits, lost weight and promoted healthy living. I believe he's also put emphasis on getting enough sleep. He's said multiple times that he knows a lot of people who make 50k a year and are happier than many millionaires. I think he usually gives the "eat shit and work hard" type of advice to people who are asking him for a formula to success on their business. And it is true, you have to work hard to achieve something exceptional. Talking about 'hustle', I think it really depends how you define it in the first place. You can do a bad, BS hustle by working to get Internet points and validation from strangers on social media. Or even worse, do something to con people out of their money. To me a positive hustle is putting in constant work, not being afraid to sell and market your stuff, and most importantly, starting before you are ready. I'm not a zealot of the Vaynernation but I have found some of his messages helpful. One of his key principals is to document your journey. I love this idea and I've recently gotten over the fear of doing it myself, posting VLOGs and doing things more publicly using my real name (you can search this username and find out more). Another message is that "you could die tomorrow". Sure, this is a bit dramatic and cliche, but it did give me courage to push on with doing some things that I might have procrastinated on. Overall, I find Gary's content useful for the most part, especially his insights on social media. If you just know him from 'hustle hustle' type of things, I suggest you try to dig a bit deeper to his videos and blogs. He does know his stuff.

sunseb 8y ago

It's easy to say you should work less when you are successful.

robotbikes 8y ago

The energy drink pyramid scheme reminded me of Thunder Muscle from 'The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret'.

ryanmercer 8y ago
Oh man, Todd Margaret was gold!

jdorfman 8y ago

I use to believe this bs. I thought people who took vacations were slackers and people who left the office before I did were lazy. In 2014 I started cutting my medication (bipolar 1 disorder) in half so I could sleep less and work more. Long story short, ended up back-firing leading to a 9 month leave of absence. In the end it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Working smart is the way to go IMO.

a-saleh 8y ago

This reminded me of an essay by Amy Hoy: https://stackingthebricks.com/entreporn/ https://stackingthebricks.com/entreporn/

robbywashere_ 8y ago

This is all fine and dandy but let’s be real. How many of you can solve: Given n non-negative integers representing an elevation map where the width of each bar is 1, compute how much water it is able to trap after raining. In N(1) space and N time

joppy 8y ago
None, because a two-dimensional bar graph can’t trap any water? This is completely irrelevant to the article being discussed.

youarentryan 8y ago

John D. Rockefeller would take mid-day breaks to do some gardening around the house. Work hard, but keep a balanced and cheery pace :)

amriksohata 8y ago

The thumbnail comes up of a photo of Jay Shetty, he runs many inspirational videos based on his links with ISKCON/Hare Krishnas. Bit misleading as he never talks of working hard to the bone, but more about working and living so you are happier in doing you work and in your life.

ken 8y ago

It's easy to say that this is the best possible time for a human to be alive, when your occupation is motivational speaker. You've got YouTube, and business class, and 7-minute workouts. The message you've got is to disregard the media you're using to send that message. Try working in a field where this isn't true, and tell us if you still think this is the best time ever to be a human. Do high school teachers (who have to compete with the internet) think 2018 is the greatest?

kungtotte 8y ago
It actually is the best time to be a human in general, that doesn't mean every person has a perfect life. Things are better now than they've ever been. There's still poverty, war, famine, disease, etc. but way fewer people die to those things than at any point in history. 80% of the world's children get their vaccines. Girls go to school almost as long as boys. Child mortality is dropping sharply in the world, etc. So does things still suck for the person who gets terminal cancer? Of course it does. But humanity is doing great.