Almost every company that I've worked for didn't actually value hard work or excellence. I think the only one I worked for that did was a model shop that built

Almost every company that I've worked for didn't actually value hard work or excellence. I think the only one I worked for that did was a model shop that built music boxes, since you can't build pieces of shit that don't work and expect your customer to come back to you. Organizations don't tend to care about excellence because, when they have reached an appreciable size, hard work and innovation become threats to the cash cow that they've built. Making things more efficient can make other people's jobs obsolete, and by working hard, you might actually get too much work done and also threaten other people's jobs. If nobody is overtly threatened by you, hard work still probably won't benefit you because the pipeline of work will never end; if you get all your work done early, there's always more work to be done. Does this mean you'll get paid more for doing more work? A lot of the time, no. Some people get lucky, but don't count on getting a reasonable bonus or any kind of recognition. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, by the way. It can make sense not to rock the boat when the cash keeps flowing. But typical company rhetoric and outdated advice from older generations are still convincing some people that being a "better worker" will advance them. Hard work isn't everything, as lots of successful people were in the right place at the right time. I'm not just talking about multi-billionaires like Mark Cuban(who got lucky IMO), but I've known many executives in relatively small companies who got to where they were because they were either around since the beginning or knew someone else who recommended them for a position. Being executive is a difficult job and requires making difficult choices, but they don't necessarily ever work harder than people in other careers. More than likely, it's the quality of choices they made throughout their life that got them where they are. I'm not trying to say that working hard doesn't have a role, or that people should be lazy, but it's a smaller piece of the pie than many people think. I really feel sorry for the people in my life whom I know work extremely hard and work more hours. They're not getting paid more, usually. If they worked less and spent the excess time coming up with other ways to make money, they might be in better positions in the long run; perhaps better than depending completely on employers and hoping that their 401k is going to allow them to retire comfortably.