First off, I agree; this is the attitude of the ideal future, the one that we aim for when we make "progress" as a society. But. As a programmer and as a found

First off, I agree; this is the attitude of the ideal future, the one that we aim for when we make "progress" as a society. But. As a programmer and as a founder of a digital (non-physical) company, DHH is in a bubble. He's living closer to that future than billions of his fellow humans. The idea that "hard work" is correlated with success comes from the context where papers don't sort themselves, bricks don't build themselves, and water doesn't pump itself. In that context, working hard for someone else's benefit signals that you care about them, and working hard alongside someone else strengthens your relationship. All those associations with hard work are deeply ingrained in us. It's only when people have access to systems which do function on their own that they can "work less". Those systems are still being built (and debugged!), and not everyone has access to them, or the time/tools/knowledge needed to build one themselves. This post seems like it's an expression of DHH's frustration, but it's a message that needs to be targeted to a particular audience: leaders of large corporations. It's too easy for them to weigh the costs and benefits of scaling up a low-paid, hard-working work force (and being rewarded for "creating jobs"), vs. taking the risk of jumping to a new and expensive technology or system (which might not even work out!), and opt for the former. These business leaders aren't necessarily risk takers, but they should be, and we should reward them for that. As a random postscript, I'd like to point out also that "hard work" isn't always time-correlated, but also effort- and energy-correlated. For instance, moving a heavy sleeper sofa up a narrow staircase with a low ceiling and a right-angle turn could take only 10 minutes but requires a lot of strength and energy.